“Dear Judge Gary: Until further notice stay where you are and do as you have been doing, except as to these particulars: Instead of consulting with J. Pierpont Morgan and your Wall Street cabinet, consult with me and my cabinet. Instead of making steel for profit, make it solely for use. It will not be necessary for you to make steel rails that break in order to keep steel stock from breaking on the market. Make everything as good as you can, sell everything you make at cost, increase the wages of your workingmen and shorten their hours. Do everything you can, in fact, to make the lot of the steel-worker as comfortable as may be.” Would such a letter create a riot? Would Judge Gary indignantly resign and the workers flee? Would the production of steel be interrupted for a single moment? Yet, in no more violent way than this would the Socialists take over the ownership and control of any industry. The men now in charge would be left in charge—at least until better men could be found to take their places. Probably, here and there, a man would have to be changed. Not every man who can squeeze out profits is good for anything else. But the men who could forget profits and make good in usefulness—the men who could look at their problems solely from the point of view of the public—such men would be let alone. They would not only be let alone, but they would be given a better opportunity than they now have to make good. Profits ever stand in the way of making good in the real sense. Steel rails that break and kill passengers are not made poor because the steel trust officials do not know how to make them better. They are made poor because it would decrease profits to make them better. Every intelligent manager of industry knows of many things that he might do to increase the worth of his product, but most of this knowledge goes to waste because it would interfere with profits. Let no man fear that Socialism, if tried, would crumple up because the government would be unable to find competent managers of industry. Every industry will continue to produce men who are competent to take charge of its technical work. The matter of executive heads is of secondary importance. The Postmaster General of the United States, who, almost invariably, is a mere politician, is at the head of one of the greatest enterprises in the world, yet the mails go on. The men who sort letters must know their business. The Postmaster General need not know his. It would be better if he did, of course, but even if he does not the mails go on. So much more important, collectively, are the real workers of the world than any man who figureheads over them.