THE COMING SLAVERY. 739 



agencies. Even one of their own organizations for effecting social 

 changes yields them proof. It is compelled to have its councils, its 

 local and general officers, its authoritative leaders, who must be obeyed 

 under penalty of confusion and failure. And the experience of those 

 who are loudest in their advocacy of a new social order under the 

 paternal control of a government shows that, even in private volun- 

 tarily-formed societies, the power of the regulative organization be- 

 comes great, if not irresistible ; often, indeed, causing grumbling and 

 restiveness among those controlled. Trades-unions which carry on a 

 kind of industrial war in defense of workers' interests versus employ- 

 ers' interests find that subordination almost military in its strictness is 

 needful to secure efficient action ; for divided councils prove fatal to 

 success. And even in bodies of co-operators, formed for carrying on 

 manufacturing or distributing businesses, and not needing that obe- 

 dience to leaders which is required where the aims are offensive or de- 

 fensive, it is still found that the administrative agency acquires so great 

 a power that there arise complaints about " the tyranny of organiza- 

 tion." Judge, then, what must happen when, instead of combinations, 

 small, local, and voluntary, to which men may belong or not as they 

 please, we have a national combination in which each citizen finds 

 himself incorporated, and from which he can not separate himself 

 without leaving the country ! Judge what must under such conditions 

 become the power of a graduated and centralized officialism, holding 

 in its hands the resources of the community, and having behind it 

 whatever amount of force it finds requisite to carry out its decrees 

 and maintain what it calls order ! Well may a Prince Bismarck dis- 

 play leanings toward state-socialism. 



And then, after recognizing, as they must if they think out their 

 scheme, the power possessed by the regulative agency in the new 

 social system so temptingly pictured, let its advocates ask themselves 

 to what end this power must be used. Not dwelling exclusively, as 

 they habitually do, on the material well-being and the mental gratifi- 

 cations to be provided for them by a beneficent administration, let 

 them dwell a little on the price to be paid. The officials can not 

 create the needful supplies ; they can but distribute among individu- 

 als that which the individuals have joined to produce. If the public 

 agency is required to provide for them, it must reciprocally require 

 them to furnish the means. There can not be, as under our existing 

 system, agreement between employer and employed this the scheme 

 excludes. There must in place of it be command by local authorities 

 over workers, and acceptance by the workers of that which the au- 

 thorities assign to them. And this, indeed, is the arrangement dis- 

 tinctly, but as it would seem inadvertently, pointed to by the members 

 of the Democratic Federation. For they propose that production 

 should be carried on by " agricultural and industrial armies under 

 state control " ; apparently not remembering that armies presuppose 



