of the most disagreeable and laborious work might be done by machinery, as it would be now if it were not cheaper to exploit a helot class.... In truth, the extension of machinery is very likely to solve many of the problems connected with differential advantages in employment; and it seems certain that in the very near future the skilled worker will not be the man who is able to perform a particular set of operations, but the man who has been trained in the use of machinery.... Out of the value of the communal produce ... all charges and expenses are deducted, and the remaining value should be divided among the communal workers as a ‘bonus.’ It would be obviously inconvenient, if not impossible, for the district authority to sub-divide this value and allot so much to each of its separate undertakings--so much left-over from gas works for the men employed there, so much from the tramways for the men employed on them, and so on. It would be far simpler and easier for the municipal employes to be regarded as a single body, in the service of a single employer, the local authority; and that the surplus from the whole businesses carried on by the Communal Council should be divided without distinction among the whole of the communal employes.” Taking Mrs. Besant as a guide and calling upon other Socialist authorities for further directions, let us see if we can put our jig-saw puzzle together and thus ascertain what kind of a place the Co-operative Commonwealth is likely to be. In the first place, John, it is scarcely probable that any Socialist will deny that all means of production, distribution and exchange will be in the hands of the collective state. This means that all the manufacturing will be done by the communal authorities acting for the people; that all the methods of disposing of these products, through shops or otherwise, will be under the same direction, and that all means of transportation--railways, steamships, etc.--will, like the Post Office to-day, be in the hands of the people or their representatives. So far, in all probability, we shall meet with no denial from the Socialists.