There are several important items that have been omitted, but it does not seem necessary to enumerate them. Enough has been shown to demonstrate that, to perform all this work and to compile such an overwhelming amount of statistical labor alone, a huge army of public officials will be required, and they must be public officials of such capability and integrity as not to be subject to the human weaknesses that are responsible for so many of the blunders in work of this kind--blunders that might prove fatal to the entire system of production and even threaten the very existence of the nation. Do you think that human intelligence is equal to such a task? The soap-box orator may call your attention to the fact that this work is being done to-day. Yes, it is being done, but, as the Socialist so very often asserts, many of our worst evils are due to the fact that the work is being done so badly. The Socialist also assures us that he will remedy all these evils, which means that Socialism will do the work much better than it is being performed at the present time. Do you think that this is possible? Do you believe that so gigantic a system of State machinery can be organized and made to operate without a hitch? Is it possible that a system of collective government composed of human units, all subject to human frailties, can perform what private enterprise, with its vast resources and its boundless ambition, has never been able to accomplish, especially when no hope of extra recompense stimulates these human units in the performance of their appointed tasks? CHAPTER X LABOR’S FULL PRODUCT My dear Smith, There is a good reason why the Socialists are unwilling to tell you just what their State will be, or how it will work. _They themselves do not know._ You can divide the present-day Socialists into two classes. The best of them are utopian dreamers--theorists who hope that things will work out all right, and who are willing to take a chance. The worst of them are mere office-seekers, eager for place or pelf, and willing to become special pleaders for the oppressed in return for their votes. There was a time when the Socialists were actuated by a high and unselfish ideal. It was a fallacious ideal, it is true. They were fighting for principles that would have worked the ruin of the nations had they been put into practice. But, as you know, a man can be both sincere and wrong at the same time. The early Socialists were sincere, even though they were wrong. But those Socialists of to-day who have turned the philosophy of Socialism into a purely political movement, and who do not ask you to believe as they do so long as you vote as they want you to vote, have neither high ideals nor good principles. They are just as bad political grafters as have ever been harbored by any of the old political parties.