outlay on him? On the whole, society may be able to support all its
members, but some must earn less than enough for their support, and
others more; and that brings us back once more to the wages question,
on which you have hitherto said nothing. It was at just this point, if
you remember, that our talk ended last evening; and I say again, as I
did then, that here I should suppose a national industrial system like
yours would find its main difficulty. How, I ask once more, can you
adjust satisfactorily the comparative wages or remuneration of the
multitude of avocations, so unlike and so incommensurable, which are
necessary for the service of society? In our day the market rate
determined the price of labor of all sorts, as well as of goods. The
employer paid as little as he could, and the worker got as much. It
was not a pretty system ethically, I admit; but it did, at least,
furnish us a rough and ready formula for settling a question which
must be settled ten thousand times a day if the world was ever going
to get forward. There seemed to us no other practicable way of doing
it."

"Yes," replied Dr. Leete, "it was the only practicable way under a
system which made the interests of every individual antagonistic to
those of every other; but it would have been a pity if humanity could
never have devised a better plan, for yours was simply the application
to the mutual relations of men of the devil's maxim, 'Your necessity
is my opportunity.' The reward of any service depended not upon its
difficulty, danger, or hardship, for throughout the world it seems
that the most perilous, severe, and repulsive labor was done by the
worst paid classes; but solely upon the strait of those who needed the
service."

"All that is conceded," I said. "But, with all its defects, the plan
of settling prices by the market rate was a practical plan; and I
cannot conceive what satisfactory substitute you can have devised for
it. The government being the only possible employer, there is of
course no labor market or market rate. Wages of all sorts must be
arbitrarily fixed by the government. I cannot imagine a more complex
and delicate function than that must be, or one, however performed,
more certain to breed universal dissatisfaction."

"I beg your pardon," replied Dr. Leete, "but I think you exaggerate
the difficulty. Suppose a board of fairly sensible men were charged
with settling the wages for all sorts of trades under a system which