serve the community more efficiently than
private enterprise, with greater comfort and liberty to the individual
and to the community.

While in the Socialist regime labor would be compulsory, it is
inconceivable that a free people would tolerate a bureaucratic rule
assigning to each individual his or her proper task, no matter how
ingenious the assignment might be. Even if the bureaucracy were
omniscient, such a condition of life would be intolerable. Just as it is
necessary to insist that all must be secured in their right to labor,
and required to labor, it is necessary also that the choice of one's
occupation should be as far as possible personal and free, subject only
to the laws of supply and demand. The greatest amount of personal
freedom compatible with the requisite efficiency would be secured to the
workers in their chosen occupations through their craft organizations.

But, it will be objected, all occupations are not equally desirable.
There are certain forms of work which, disagreeable in themselves, are
just as essential to the well-being of society as the most artistic and
pleasing. Who will do the dirty work, and the dangerous work, under
Socialism? Will these occupations also be left to choice, and, if so,
will there not be an insurmountable difficulty arising from the natural
reluctance of men to choose such work?

In answering the question and affirming the principle of free
choice--for so it must be answered--the Socialist is called upon to show
that the absence of compulsion would not involve the neglect of these
disagreeable, but highly important, social services; that it would be
compatible with social safety to leave them to personal choice. In the
first place, much of this kind of work that is now performed by human
labor could be more efficiently done by mechanical means. Much of the
work done by sweated women and children in our cities is in fact done in
competition with machines. Machinery has been invented, and is now
available, to do thousands of the disagreeable and hurtful things now
done by human beings. Professor Franklin H. Giddings is perfectly right
when he says: "Modern civilization does not require, it does not need,
the drudgery of needle-women or the crushing toil of men in a score of
life-destroying occupations. If these wretched beings should drop out
of existence and no others take their places, the economic activities of
the world would not greatly suffer. A thousand device