“Here,” says Mr. Elder, “we have indeed a monumental undertaking, one that staggers the mind to contemplate, one that challenges a combination of figures to express. Yet we are not fairly started at our task.... We have taken but one commodity where the number of commodities is practically infinite. We cannot follow the Socialists many steps; their range becomes so vast, their intricacies so bewildering, their complications so overwhelming, the throne of reason would be threatened by the stupendous scale of thought demanded almost at the outset. It is said that a German scientist once undertook to figure out the number of possible moves on a chess-board. He reached a point where the combination of figures required could no longer be expressed in any known language, and then his mind unhinged. On the chess-board there are just thirty-two pieces to be moved on sixty-four spots.” The Socialist program may seem very plausible and extremely attractive when the Socialist propagandist is describing it in broad generalities and you do not examine its details too critically; but, when you get down to cases, John, and begin to try to find out how all these magnificent promises are to be kept, you will begin to feel that you are in danger of joining the German scientist whose “mind unhinged.” Just for the sake of argument, let us admit that the Socialist functionaries have finally succeeded in performing the apparently impossible task of ascertaining exactly how much your labor-time has been worth to the community. This fact equitably determined, the worker would probably be given labor checks, for which he could secure other things of equal value with his labor. For example, if it required 1,000,000 days’ labor to provide this year’s shoes for the community and 2,000,000 pairs of shoes were made in that time, we can imagine that a check for one day’s labor might exchange for two pairs of shoes. It is easy to see that it would require no small amount of book-keeping to keep even this matter of detail adjusted fairly, especially when we remember what intricate calculations are necessary to find out how many persons contributed to the production of these shoes, and how the value of the time of each worker must be figured. But the same difficulty would present itself with every kind of commodity in any way dependent upon the labor-power of man.