“Oh,” he said, “we do not propose to give them for their property money that they could invest; we shall give them bonds.” “How does that make any difference?” I persisted. “Interest-bearing bonds would have a more definite effect than actual money. By giving such bonds you would establish a perpetually-idle class, and so defeat the aims of your movement.” “But the bonds will not bear interest,” he replied. “Interest is usury--a crime which will not be permitted in the Socialist State. As Leatham says (“The Class War,” p. 11): ‘Everyone who lends his neighbor £5 and exacts £5 5s. in return is a criminal.’ Holders of bonds may dispose of them, if they can find anybody who is foolish enough to want to hoard money, but--once the value of the bonds has been spent--that will end the matter, and we shall have eliminated the property-possessing parasites without violence or ‘confiscation.’” Is it possible to conceive of a more one-sided arrangement? Valuable property is to be taken from its owners and in return they are to be given bonds which may or may not possess real value. In case nobody can be found to purchase them, the possessors will have to be content with the satisfaction of framing the certificates as evidence that they were once members of an “exploiting class.” In this, however, the Socialists are really most logical. To take wealth from a citizen in one kind would be the height of folly, if the same wealth were promptly returned to him in another kind. Such a transfer of productive property would mean nothing to the community. The only way in which the Socialist scheme can be carried out is to eliminate entirely all private rights in property used for purposes of production, distribution and exchange. If we admit the Socialist contention that labor is entitled to all value produced, no matter how it is produced, and that the worker is now the victim of spoliation, the only logical attitude is a defence of confiscation. Most Socialists assume this position and excuse it on the ground that such an act on the part of the Co-operative State would be eminently just. Rev. Charles H. Vail, in “Modern Socialism” (p. 152), upholds this method of reasoning. “As to the confiscation of property,” he says, “the misconception here relates to the justice of confiscation, and is due to a failure to comprehend the nature of capitalist accumulations. The Socialist contends that all such is the result of spoliation and exploitation. The capitalist is able to appropriate the product of labor by reason of his ownership of certain means of production. Private property, then, in the instruments of production is unjust. The confiscation of private property is therefore just. If capital represents the fleecings of labor, no one can contend that its holders have claim to compensation on the ground of equity. The only grounds upon which compensation can be argued is that of mercy or expediency.”