You can imagine the answer he received to this question, John. Yet, the soap-boxer still asserted that this was the amount each worker had earned, and insisted that the difference between $48 and the sum he had received represented the amount of which his employer was “robbing” him. From the look on the faces of some of the men, I felt that the agitator had made an impression upon them. He reeled off his statistics so glibly that you really couldn’t blame them for believing him. Of course, he also told them that, under Socialism, nothing of this kind could happen--that they would get their $2,500 a year, and more, too, and that they would have to work only half as long a time each day in order to earn this amount of money. “We must change the ‘system,’” he cried. “We must stop the making of goods for profit! Then, and then only, will you put an end to the exploitation that is the cause of all your poverty and misery. It is the only way you can throw the parasite-capitalist off your back. You are being robbed of four-fifths of your wages, and you’re not allowed to keep even the little you get, because capitalism, after robbing you by taking four-fifths of the money you earn, puts the prices of everything you buy higher and higher until there isn’t a penny of your earnings left for yourself, and you don’t get a chance to live decently, at that.” You have heard this kind of talk. You may have thought that there was some truth in it. You--like all the rest of us--are confronted with the problem of the cost of living, and--like most of us--you wish that you could earn more money. “Is it possible,” you ask, “that I am earning four times as much as I get, and that I am being ‘robbed’ of the greater part of it?” If you listen to the Socialists you will come to believe that this is just what is happening. A Socialist paper published in Kansas has spent a lot of money to advertise the fact that, when Socialism triumphs and you get what you actually earn, you will be paid $2,000 a year for six hours a day. This is a very conservative estimate--for a Socialist. As you may have learned by this time, the writers and speakers who undertake to tell the worker what is to happen to him under Socialism do not agree about the amount of money he will get and the length of time he will have to work in the Co-operative Commonwealth, any more than they do when they try to estimate the extent of the “robbery” from which he is suffering. Usually, the rate of payment is fixed at $2,500 for four hours’ work a day. A writer in a popular magazine fixes the sum the worker will be paid at $5,000. Suthers, the English Socialist, promises the equivalent of $10,000 a year, and there is a band of “comrades” on the Pacific Coast who can demonstrate “scientifically” that a 3-hour day affords sufficient time in which to earn a decent living and even the luxuries of life.