BY R. M. JOHNSTON, F.L.S. 



11 





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 

 necessarv 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 equality in the 

 allocation of employments appear to be insuperable, and would 

 most certainly, if there were no other objection, destroy any 

 social organisation on a large scale which had been courageous 

 enough to attempt it. Reference to simple communities — as 

 in America — following agricultural pursuits mainly, and not 

 of themselves fulfilling for themselves the whole round of 

 human wants, are utterly misleading. Such small com- 

 munities are composed of a peculiar select class, who 

 voluntarily bind themselves to a more or less ascetic life, and 

 all such partial attempts tend to perish from lack of internal 

 vitality. With a large mixed body of men embracing all 

 occupations and endowed with ordinary passions and desires, 

 the results would be chaotic and disastrous in the extreme. 



One effect, terrible to contemplate, would seem to be 

 inevitable, viz., that the indiscriminate distribution of products 

 among all men would destroy the major source of savings at 

 present so largely devoted to the creation and maintenance of 

 the powerful and costly auxiliary aids to human labour ; and 

 the slight individual gain per head in material satisfaction 

 would only be of a very temporary character, for it would 

 soon be lost by the new impulse given to the improvident to 

 rapidly increase their numbers. 



What Would be the Probable Effect Upon Social 

 Well-being if the Major Source of Savings 

 were Destroyed ? 



In another place it has been indicated that the mere " two- 

 hands," or the unaided labour of man, would not only fail to 

 produce the average comforts and luxuries now enjoyed by 

 nearly all classes of men, but more calamitous still — they 

 Would fail to produce the prime necessaries of life in sufficient 

 quantity to maintain the lives of the existing population. 

 Defects in the existing scheme of civilisation — some of which 

 seem to be ineradicable — may be truly charged yearly with 

 the destruction of thousands of valuable lives, but were the 

 present major source of savings dissipated or destroyed by 

 equality in share of earnings — either by lowering the powers 

 of production, or by slightly raising temporarily the average 



