PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS—-SECTION F. 1955) 
under the scheme of Competition, Liberty, Right of Inheritance, 
Property Right, or Individualism as it is called? To be more 
effective in one essential, it must utterly fail in the other. The 
workers must be trained and allocated to specific occupations in 
strict conformity to the amount and nature of the labour actually 
required to produce the primary satisfactions and comforts 
desired. Training for every specific occupation requires con- 
siderable time, but for the occupation of skill a large amount of 
time must be consumed in acquiring the necessary training, 
irrespective of questions with regard to the unequal distribution 
of capacity. 
Now, on the basis of equality, it may be easy to divide 
products; that according to actual needs is simple enough, 
involving no insuperable difficulty. But what about the alloca- 
tion to different employments? How can the easy, the refined, 
and the skilled occupations be allocated on any scheme of 
equality? The majority must, as heretofore, sweat at the hard 
and dirty forms of labour ; but what power or what plan can be 
devised which will enable any elective executive to doom once 
and for ever the majority of learners and workers to the hard 
and irksome occupations, and to fix the minority in the refined, 
the easy and skilled services? Suppose it were for a time insti- 
tuted, how long would the unfortunate majority be content to 
submit to their lot before an irresistible cry for redistribution of 
occupations arose; and if it arose, where is the force stronger 
than the majority of freemen to preserve the break-down of the 
social organisation necessary to produce the primary supply 
wants according to individual needs? What compensation can 
be given to the masses toiling in the more wearisome occupations? 
Extra allowance of satisfactions cannot be thought of, for that 
would destroy the coveted ideal of equality in the distribution 
of satisfactions according to needs. Shorter hours cannot 
be allowed without trenching upon equality of leisure. The 
unequal distribution of natural capacity, and the time necessary 
to acquire knowledge of more than one technical branch of skilled 
employment make it impossible to share in turn for a time all 
possible forms of labour. In short, the practical difficulties 
standing in the way of eguadity in the allocation of employment 
appear to be insuperable, and would most certainly, if there were 
no other objection, destroy any social organisation on a /arye 
scale which had been courageous enough to attempt it. Reference 
to simple communities, as in America, following agriculture 
pursuits mainly, and not of themselves fulfilling for themselves 
the whole round of human wants, are utterly misleading. Such 
small communities are composed of a peculiar, select class, who 
voluntarily bind themselves to a more or less ascetic life, and all 
such petty attempts tend to perish from lack of internal vitality. 
With a large mixed body of men, embracing all occupations, and 
