732 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



will long retain the character given them by those who set them 

 up. Rapidly or slowly they will be transformed into institutions 

 unlike those intended so unlike as even to be unrecognizable by 

 their devisers. And what, in the case before us, will be the meta- 

 morphosis ? The answer pointed to by instances above given, 

 and warranted by various analogies, is manifest. 



A cardinal trait in all advancing organization is the develop- 

 ment of the regulative apparatus. If the parts of a whole are to 

 act together, there must be appliances by which their actions are 

 directed ; and in proportion as the whole is large and complex, 

 and has many requirements to be met by many agencies, the 

 directive apparatus must be extensive, elaborate, and powerful. 

 That it is thus with individual organisms needs no saying ; and 

 that it must be thus with social organisms is obvious. Beyond 

 the regulative apparatus such as in our own society is required for 

 carrying on national defense and maintaining public order and 

 personal safety, there must, under the regime of socialism, be a 

 regulative apparatus everywhere controlling all kinds of produc- 

 tion and distribution, and everywhere apportioning the shares of 

 products of each kind required for each locality, each working 

 establishment, each individual. Under our existing voluntary 

 co-operation, with its free contracts and its competition, produc- 

 tion and distribution need no official oversight. Demand and 

 supply, and the desire of each man to gain a living by supplying 

 the needs of his fellows, spontaneously evolve that wonderful 

 system whereby a great city has its food daily brought round to 

 all doors or stored at adjacent shops; has clothing for its citi- 

 zens everywhere at hand in multitudinous varieties; has its 

 houses and furniture and fuel ready made or stocked in each 

 locality ; and has mental pabulum from halfpenny papers, hourly 

 hawked round, to weekly shoals of novels, and less abundant 

 books of instruction, furnished without stint for small payments. 

 And throughout the kingdom, production as well as 'distribution 

 is similarly carried on with the smallest amount of superintend- 

 ence which proves efficient ; while the quantities of the numerous 

 commodities required daily in each locality are adjusted without 

 any other agency than the pursuit of profit. Suppose now that 

 this industrial regime of willinghood, acting spontaneously, is 

 replaced by a regime of industrial obedience, enforced by public 

 officials. Imagine the vast administration required for that dis- 

 tribution of all commodities to all people in every city, town, and 

 village, which is now effected by traders ! Imagine, again, the 

 still more vast administration required for doing all that farmers, 

 manufacturers, and merchants do ; having not only its various 

 orders of local superintendents, but its sub-centers and chief 

 centers needed for apportioning the quantities of each thing every- 



