at and power.

"Still other local industries, too insignificant or unorganized even for
municipal operation, might be left to voluntary co-operative
enterprises."

On page 829 of the same issue of "Everybody's," Hillquit adds that
"under a system of Socialism each worker will be a partner in the
industrial enterprise in which he will be employed, sharing in its
prosperity and losses alike."

At first sight this fourth plan seems attractive, but upon examination
we notice that nothing is said as to how the millions of persons to be
employed by the national, state or municipal governments will be
assigned to the different enterprises. Will the people be forced to
labor at repugnant tasks? That will make endless turmoil and trouble in
the Marxian state. But if all persons enjoy equal rights under the
Socialist government there would be a grand rush for the most congenial
occupations, and especially for the most lucrative. The result would be
an immense amount of discontent and jealousy in those who failed to
secure the positions they desired. True, these objections might not hold
for well-to-do persons like Hillquit, founder of the "New York Call,"
for he and other Socialist politicians who have become wealthy by always
remaining leaders of their dues-paying comrades might, perhaps, invest
their money in co-operative enterprises. But such persons constitute
only a small part of the population of the country.

The many objections brought against these four systems could not be
obviated by the adoption of a fifth, in which all would be free to
choose their occupations, and would for the same number of hours of work
receive as recompense an amount determined by all the factors which
should be taken into consideration, such as skill, the physical
difficulty of the labor, danger, disagreeableness of the work and the
increased value added to the raw material.

In trying to arrange the details of such a system, innumerable
difficulties would arise. Unskilled laborers would want physical labor
rather than skill or talent made the principal factor in determining the
scale; for they would recall the promises of Socialist orators that in
the new state all should enjoy equal rights, and they would consider it
a grave injustice to work as hard or even harder than skilled laborers
and yet receive lower wages through want of skill and talent due to no
fault of theirs. Should the plea of these millions of unskilled
laborers go unhee