In the matter of land, however, our Socialist authorities are not so thoroughly in agreement. For example, when they are talking with the farmer, or other small land owner, who does not wish to have his real estate expropriated, some Socialists are quite willing to admit that their program makes no provision for the confiscation of farm lands. As you have seen, however, the Socialists are quite ready to hide any feature in their scheme that seems likely to arouse opposition in the minds of the small property holders. Yet, land being invariably included in “means of production” by all authoritative Socialists, it is not easy to see how any real Socialist can promise to exclude farm lands from the general plan of confiscation. It is far easier to assume that the _Appeal to Reason_ and the Socialist propagandists who write propaganda matter to induce the farmer to vote the Socialist ticket are not telling him the truth about this phase of the question. Then, too, when we remember the Socialist proposition that all labor in the Co-operative Commonwealth shall be performed collectively and not under the direction of an employer, it is pretty difficult to imagine how a farmer will be able to operate a farm when he is prevented from employing others to help him. Certainly, Mrs. Besant’s suggestion is the more logical one--farm lands must be expropriated and the industry of agriculture pursued on great farms, operating on the bonanza farm basis which has already proved such a gigantic failure in this country. With all means of production, distribution and exchange in the hands of the Commonwealth, there would naturally be but one source of employment for labor--The Commonwealth. If you wanted a job, John, you would have to go to the employment bureau of the Commonwealth and present your application, upon which you would be assigned to such a position as might chance to be open at the time your application was received. You are a machinist, but it might chance that machinists are not much in demand on the day you apply for the job. Accordingly, you would be sent to paint houses, or to build streets; anything that happened to be open would be assigned to you and you would have to take it or starve to death, because the Commonwealth, as we have seen in a previous letter, could not be expected to find for every applicant the particular kind of work that he preferred to perform. Under our present system, inadequate as it is in some respects, a man can select the work that he prefers, and there is no limit to the heights that he can ascend, provided he shows an ability to occupy a higher position in the industrial world. To-day merit counts; to-day knowledge and initiative, as well as industry, mean something. But, under the system that Socialism proposes, it would be the favor of the bosses or, at least, the votes of one’s associates that could alone secure promotion.