“For all his heat,” says Kelleher (“Common Ownership,” p. 105), “Mr. Suthers is far from answering a very serious objection, or rather, consciously or unconsciously, from dealing with the real point of the objection at all. It is not the mere details of the socialistic state that the critics of Socialism are demanding to have explained, but its essential constitution. It is no reply to say that we do not require or expect to know the details about the future under the existing system. We do not, but we know the conditions in which these details will work themselves out, and rightly or wrongly we accept them, because, with all their faults, we are convinced that they are the best that are available for us.” Moreover, not all the Socialists have been as loath to forecast the details of the proposed Co-operative Commonwealth as Mr. Suthers. H. G. Wells has given us a rather elaborate series of prognostications in his “New Worlds for Old,” and the following--Mrs. Besant’s picture of the future which Socialism proposes--is said by Bliss to be “one of the best short ideals of Socialism yet written.” In quoting this “prophecy” I have found it necessary to abridge it slightly, but you will find all the details that have been omitted in Mrs. Besant’s contribution to the “Fabian Essays.” “The unemployed have been transformed into communal workers--in the country on great farms, improvements of the bonanza farms in America--in the towns in various trades. Public stores for agricultural and industrial products are open in all convenient places, and filled with the goods thus communally produced. The great industries, worked as Trusts, are controlled by the state instead of by capitalist rings.... After a while the private producers will disappear, not because there will be any law against individualistic production, but because it will not pay. The best form of management during the transition period, and possibly for a long time to come, will be through the Communal Councils which will appoint committees to superintend the various branches of industry. These committees will engage the necessary manager and foreman for each shop, factory, etc., and will hold power of dismissal as of appointment.... This (making the worker accommodate himself to the demand for labor), however, hardly solves the general question as to the apportioning of laborers to the various forms of labor. But a solution has been found by the ingenious author of ‘Looking Backward.’ Leaving young men and women free to choose their employments, he would equalize the rates of volunteering by equalizing the attractions of the trades.... But there are unpleasant and indispensable forms of labor which, one would imagine, can attract none--mining, sewer-cleaning, etc. These might be rendered attractive by making the hours of labor in them much shorter than the normal working day of pleasanter occupations.... Further, much