ceived less than $500. These figures are likely to be as true for other textile cities. In all industries only one tenth of the men receive more than $1,000 and only one eighth of the women more than $500. Other classes than the wageworkers must be receiving the difference between the total value of the product and the wages paid the producer. That difference takes the form of dividends, profits, rent, interest. The reformer proposes that this difference shall be diminished in favor of the wage-earner. The Socialist idea, simplified, is that this difference shall be abolished, that the total value of production shall revert to the producer. Anything less than this is less than Socialism. The history of Socialist thought in the past contains much more than this, and its history in the future must be a continuous elaboration and reconsideration of what is here so baldly stated. A revolution in the relation between the worker and property disturbs all other relations of life. But whatever other changes take place, nine tenths of Socialism lie in the one great change, the establishment of a new, hitherto unrealized unity between production and ownership. The epic of the future, whether bloody or peaceful, will be the story of the Worker and His Work. |