e trying to "skin" a business
rival, but very probably you would be just as keen to beat the London
distributers and distinguish yourself in that way. And you would get a
pretty good salary; modern Socialism does not propose to maintain any
dead-level to the detriment of able men. Modern Socialism has cleared
itself of that jealous hatred of prosperity that was once a part of
class-war Socialism. You would be, you see, far more than you are now,
one of the pillars of your town's prosperity--and the Town Hall would
be a place worth sitting in....

So far as the rank and file of the distributing service is concerned
the chief differences would be a better education, security for a
minimum living, an assured old age, shorter hours, more private
freedom and more opportunity. Since the whole business would be public
and the customer would be one's indirect master through the polling
booth, promotion would be far more by merit than it is now in private
businesses, where irrelevant personal considerations are often
overpowering, and it would be open to any one to apply for a transfer
to some fresh position if he or she found insufficient scope in the
old one. The staff of the stores will certainly "live out," and their
homes and way of living will be closely parallel to that of the two
people I have sketched in Secs. 1 and 2.

In the various municipal and State Transit Services, the condition of
affairs would be even closer to a broadened and liberalized version of
things as they are. The conductors and drivers will no doubt wear
uniforms for convenience of recognition, but a uniform will carry with
it no association with the idea of a livery as it does at the present
time. Mostly this service will be run by young men, and each one, like
the private of the democratic French Army, will feel that he has a
marshal's _baton_ in his knapsack. He will have had a good education;
he will have short hours of duty and leisure for self-improvement or
other pursuits, and if he remains a conductor or driver all his life
he will have only his own unpretending qualities to thank for that. He
will probably remain a conductor if he likes to remain a conductor,
and go elsewhere if he does not. He is not obliged to take that
_baton_ out and bother with it if he has quiet tastes.

The great organized industries, mining, cotton, iron, building and the
like, would differ chiefly in the permanence of employment and the
systematic evasion of the s