66

THE  SOCIALISM  OF  TO-DAY.

locality,  and,  at  the  end  of  the  year,  the  profits  would  be
distributed  as  a  dividend.
Risk  and  the  chances  of  loss  would  disappear,  because
manufacture,  instead  of  producing  haphazard,  would  proceed
on  a  combined  principle  in  response  to  known  wants.  What
a  contrast  there  is  to-day  between  the  admirable  order  which
reigns  in  every  factory,  and  the  anarchy  which  desolates
the  industrial  world  !  In  each  factory,  the  master  sees  that
nothing  useless  is  made  ;  in  order  to  make  fifty  four-wheeled
waggons  only  two  hundred  tires  are  prepared.  But  if  it  is  a
question  of  supplying  the  general  demand,  which  is  unknown,
each  manufacturer  produces  according  to  guess,  and  then  tries
to  sell  his  whole  stock  in  competition  with  others.  There
follow,  of  course,  monetary  and  commercial  crises  from  overproduction, ­
  and  thus  equilibrium  is  restored.  This  is  secured,
however,  only  at  the  cost  of  immense  losses  to  the  masters,
and  of  stoppages  of  work,  yet  more  disastrous  to  the  operatives.
These  crises,  this  suffering,  would  be  avoided  if,  the  demand
being  known,  by  means  of  statistics,  the  various  associations
would  come  to  a  mutual  understanding  in  order  to  meet  it.
The  activity  of  the  various  branches  of  production  would  be
regulated  with  as  much  precision  as  are  the  different  kinds
of  work  in  one  of  our  present  factories.
Already  there  are  great  metal  foundries  in  which  a  whole
series  of  technical  operations  is  performed,  linked  together  into
one  organic  whole,  which  extracts  the  ore  and  the  coal  from
the  ground,  and  turns  out  completely  finished  locomotives,
ships,  and  machines  of  all  kinds.  Krupp’s  works  in  Germany,
those  of  Le  Creusot  in  France,  and  of  Seraing  in  Belgium  are
examples  of  these  admirable  combinations,  I  his  is  the  system
which  should  be  extended  to  the  whole  community.  Then
the  productive  capital  and  all  the  instruments  of  production
would  belong  permanently  to  the  different  societies  grouped
in  trade  corporations.  Newly  invented  methods  of  production
would  become  the  property  of  the  societies,  private  individuals,
as  such,  not  having  the  working  of  them.  On  the  other  hand,
all  articles  of  consumption,  or  their  price,  would  be  divided
among  those  who  had  contributed  to  produce  them,  exactly  as