robbery when they died? Who will note the slightest improvement of conditions when the “bad men” of the present day are dead? Then how ridiculous it is to say that if Mr. Morgan, Mr. Rockefeller and some others were in jail we should have no more robbery. So long as we have a system that makes men bad we shall have bad men. Let us now inquire what it is about the capitalist system that makes men bad. We shall not have far to look. It is the private ownership and control, for the sake of private profits, of the means of life. Think how gigantic is this power! All of our food, clothing and shelter is made with machinery. A few own the machinery. The others cannot use it without permission. And, if permission be given, it can be used only upon such terms as the owners offer. Those terms are always the lowest wages for which anybody can be found to work. Is it any wonder that the few who control this machinery go mad with the desire to accumulate wealth? Is it any wonder that they press their advantage to the limit? Are you sure you would have done less if you had been placed in the same circumstances? I am not sure I should have done less. In fact, I am quite sure I should have done as much, or more, if I could. I say this because I take into account the tremendous power of habit and environment. An environment of money makes those whom it surrounds forget men. The _Titanic_ was not raced through icebergs to her doom because her owners were indifferent to the loss of human life. The _Titanic_ was raced to her doom because her owners _forgot_ human life. They thought only of the money that would come from the advertisement of a quick trip across the Atlantic. If they had not been made mad by this thought they would at least have remembered their ship, with its cost of $8,000,000. But in their money-madness they forgot not only their passengers, but their own ship. Yet, if the manager of the company had been sailing the ship for the government, without thought of profit, he would have thought of the passengers, the crew, the ship and the icebergs. And if the trusts were owned by the government, the men in charge of them would think of the workers when they fixed wages and of the consumers when they fixed the prices of finished products. So easy is it to dispose of the argument that Socialism is impracticable because it could not be made to work “without changing human nature.” Some men believe we must forever go on grabbing, grabbing, grabbing, while others go on starving, starving, starving. Human nature will “change” just so rapidly as conditions are changed. If one sits on a red-hot stove, it is “human nature” to arise. But if the stove be permitted to cool, one who sits on it will not arise until other reasons than heat have made him wish to do so. Yet, the human nature of the man in each case is the same. It has in no wise changed. It is only the stove that has changed.