waste which Society could not
endure. With individual operations controlled by fallible men enormous
waste is inevitable. It is essential to Society that this waste be
minimized. No industrial or commercial enterprise can go on without
risk. Profit is the compensation for risk. One of the things which I
believe, but which cannot be proved, is that from the dawn of history
losses to individuals by which Society gained have exceeded profits to
individuals, and the excess of these losses is the Social accumulation,
increased, of course, by residues left after individuals have got what
they could. Whitney died poor, but mankind has the cotton-gin. Bell
died rich, but there is a profit to mankind in the telephone. Socialists
propose to assume risks and absorb profits. I do not believe Society
could afford this. I am profoundly convinced that under the Socialist
program the inevitable waste would be so enormously increased as to
result in disaster approaching a Social cataclysm. This is an old
argument whose validity Socialists scout. Nevertheless I believe it
sound. The number of these whose intellectual and physical strength is
sufficient for the wisest direction of great enterprises is very small.
Some who are interested in our great industrial trusts are said to carry
heavy insurance on the life of Mr. Morgan, lest he die and leave no
successor. If the natural ability is found its possessor will probably
lack the knowledge which Mr. Morgan[4] has accumulated, and in the
light of which he directs his operations. It is essential that great
operations--and the business of the future will be conducted on a great
scale--be directed by great wisdom and power. The possessors of high
qualities we now discover by the trying-out process. They can be
discovered in no other way, and great effort can be secured only by the
hope of great reward. Until human nature changes we can expect nothing
different. Socialism implies popular selection of industrial leadership.
Wherever tried thus far in the world's history there has usually been
abject failure. The mass can choose leaders in emotion but not directors
of industry. The selection of experts by the non-expert can be wise only
by accident. If the selection is not popular, then Socialism is tyranny,
as its enemies charge. If it be popular, or in so far as it is popular,
direction is likely to fall to the great persuaders and not to the great
directors. Never did a "peoples party" yet esca
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