152 PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS—SECTION F. 
manifest, therefore, that in the present scheme of the division of 
labour there are two ugly defects. /irs¢, there is no interest 
intelligently organised to train and determine according to natural 
proportions the occupations of the future breadwinners. — Second, 
the only existing agency which determines the extent of employ- 
ment is guided by a principle which has for its object neither the 
supply of the highest quota of satisfactions to consumers nor the 
more needful provision for securing employment for all bread- 
winners. In the latter case, competition, instead of befriending 
the wage-earner and dependants as consumers, operates all the 
more harshly upon the larger number who are handicapped in 
the race by aimless training, or no training, for the nature of 
services that might possibly be otherwise open to some of them. 
UvopiaAN SCHEMES OF SOCIALISTS. 
It is not a matter of surprise, therefore, that the mass of wage- 
earners should readily sympathise with every vague Utopian 
scheme of the Socialists, which holds out, however faultily, some 
promise or plan for dealing more effectually with the root 
difficulties which affect them most nearly, viz., security of employ- 
ment, protection from over-competition, shorter hours labour with 
more adequate remuneration, redistribution of wealth, &e., &c. 
But it is needless to point out that, before the redistribution of 
the aggregate of all forms of existing wealth of exchange (so- 
called) can be dealt with, it must be clear that this wealth consists 
of such forms as might effectually satisfy all the primary wants and 
comforts of human beings. That existing wealth in exchange, even 
if equally distributed, would fulfil this most necessary provision 
is a pureassumption. It has already been shown that a great part 
of the existing nominal wealth of exchange largely owned by the 
rich consists of the mere ¢oo/s and iustruments of production, and 
that the real wealth appropriated as consumable wealth, or primary 
satisfactions, is already more widely and evenly distributed than 
is generally supposed. Even under the most thorough Socialistic 
scheme this form of wealth would be far less generally distributed 
than at present ; for, according to such a scheme, it would be 
wholly reserved in the hands of the executive Government. It 
is utterly misleading to reckon upon the existing wealth of 
capitalists as a source for raising the quota of the real consumable 
and primary satifactions. The only distribution possible in this 
respect would be the empty idea of part-ownership. It is the 
increase to necessary current productions designed for actual 
consumption (material satisfactions) which alone can raise the 
average standard of primary satisfactions, and so dispose of 
material want, or poverty and distress. The question therefore 
arises—Suppose that such a scheme were practicable, would the 
producing energies of men be greater and more effective than 
