here were no waste on account of misdirected
effort growing out of mistakes as to the demand, and inability to
command a general view of the industrial field. Suppose, also, there
were no neutralizing and duplicating of effort from competition.
Suppose, also, there were no waste from business panics and crises
through bankruptcy and long interruptions of industry, and also none
from the idleness of capital and labor. Supposing these evils, which
are essential to the conduct of industry by capital in private hands,
could all be miraculously prevented, and the system yet retained; even
then the superiority of the results attained by the modern industrial
system of national control would remain overwhelming.

"You used to have some pretty large textile manufacturing
establishments, even in your day, although not comparable with ours.
No doubt you have visited these great mills in your time, covering
acres of ground, employing thousands of hands, and combining under one
roof, under one control, the hundred distinct processes between, say,
the cotton bale and the bale of glossy calicoes. You have admired the
vast economy of labor as of mechanical force resulting from the
perfect interworking with the rest of every wheel and every hand. No
doubt you have reflected how much less the same force of workers
employed in that factory would accomplish if they were scattered, each
man working independently. Would you think it an exaggeration to say
that the utmost product of those workers, working thus apart, however
amicable their relations might be, was increased not merely by a
percentage, but many fold, when their efforts were organized under one
control? Well now, Mr. West, the organization of the industry of the
nation under a single control, so that all its processes interlock,
has multiplied the total product over the utmost that could be done
under the former system, even leaving out of account the four great
wastes mentioned, in the same proportion that the product of those
millworkers was increased by cooperation. The effectiveness of the
working force of a nation, under the myriad-headed leadership of
private capital, even if the leaders were not mutual enemies, as
compared with that which it attains under a single head, may be
likened to the military efficiency of a mob, or a horde of barbarians
with a thousand petty chiefs, as compared with that of a disciplined
army under one general--such a fighting machine, for examp