Socialists do not expect ever to make the cleaning of sewers as pleasant as the packing of geraniums. They do expect, however, to offer such extraordinarily good compensation for this extraordinarily unpleasant work that the sewers will be cleaned. Why should anyone expect that plan to fail, since the present plan does not fail? We now offer very poor wages for this very unpleasant work, yet the sewers do not go uncleaned. Is it to be supposed that the same men who are now doing this dirty work for low wages would refuse to do it for high wages? Most certainly the government would be compelled to offer wages high enough to get the dirty, but important, work done. It is lack of work that now makes men take dirty work at dirty wages. Under Socialism there can be no lack of work, because the people will own their own industrial machinery and will be free to use it. Furthermore, machinery is now doing much of the dirty work, and, as time goes on, will do more of it. Socialists are often asked what they will do with the man who will not work. If facetiously inclined, they usually reply that one thing they will certainly not do with him is to make him a millionaire. But, really, the question is absurd. What do the opponents of Socialism believe a Socialist government would do with the man who would not work? Do they believe such a man would be given a hero medal, or be pensioned for life? What is there to do with such a man, but to let him starve? I mean a man having the ability to work and having work offered to him, who would nevertheless refuse to work. But, outside the ranks of criminals, there is no such man, nor will there ever be. Socialists would punish thieves precisely as capitalists punish them, except for the fact that Socialists would not discriminate in favor of the biggest thieves. To answer the question in a single sentence, Socialists would depend upon the spurs afforded by the desires for food, clothing and shelter, to keep most of the people at work, and the odd man who might choose to steal would be treated in the ordinary way—imprisoned. But the question, “What will you do with the man who will not work?” reveals a strange belief that is held by those who do not hold much of a clutch upon the facts of life. I have a very dear old aunt who believes from the bottom of her honest heart that the great mass of unemployed are either drunkards or loafers. In discussing the problem of the unemployed with gentlemen who are living upon the sunny side of the street, they almost invariably fire this question, “Why don’t those fellows get out into the country where the farmers are crying for help and can’t get any?”