e morrow, either for himself or his
children, for the nation guarantees the nurture, education, and
comfortable maintenance of every citizen from the cradle to the grave."

"That is a sweeping guarantee!" I said. "What certainty can there be
that the value of a man's labor will recompense the nation for its
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
fu