important to remember that when prices fall wages are _quick_ to
follow, while when prices soar higher and higher wages are very _slow_
to follow. That is why it wouldn't do us any good to have a law
regulating prices, supposing that a law forcing down prices could be
enacted and enforced. Wages would follow prices downward with
wonderful swiftness. And that is why, also, we do need to become the
masters of the wealth we produce. For wages climb upward with leaden
feet, my friend, when prices soar with eagle wings. It is always the
workers who are at a disadvantage in a system where one class controls
the means of producing and distributing wealth.

But, friend Jonathan, that is due to the fact that the advantages of
the trust form of industry are not used as well as they might be. They
are all grasped by the master class. The trouble with the trust is
simply this: the people as a whole do not share the benefits. We
continue the same old wage system under the new forms of industry: we
have not changed our mode of distributing the wealth produced so as to
conform to the new modes of producing it. The heart of the economic
conflict is right there.

We must find a remedy for this, Jonathan. Labor unionism is a good
thing, but it is no remedy for this condition. It is a valuable weapon
with, which to fight for better wages and shorter hours, and every
workingman ought to belong to the union of his trade or calling. But
unionism does not and cannot do away with the profit system; it cannot
break the power of the trusts to extort monopoly prices from the
people. To do these things we must bring into play the forces of
government: we must vote a new status for the trust. The union is for
the economic struggle of groups of workers day by day against the
master class so long as the present class division exists. But that is
not a solution of the problem. What we need to do is to vote the class
divisions out of existence. _We need to own the trusts, Jonathan!_

This is the Socialist position. What is needed now is the harmonizing
of our social relations with the new forms of production. When private
property came into the primitive world in the form of slavery, social
relations were changed and from a rude communism society passed into a
system of individualism and class rule. When, later on, slave labor
gave way before serf labor, the social relations were again modified
to correspond. When capitalism came, with wage-paid la