single order of the government must pass, and concluded:

"I was anxious to discover how much time would be required to fill the simplest order. I found that no order could be executed in less than 95 days and in three-quarters of the cases the work would require 155 days. If, by an unfortunate chance, however, there is the smallest modification necessary, eight months, ten months, and even more are required.

"The result, as may be readily seen, is, in the first place, to cause a serious interruption in the service. I have known cases where establishments have had to hold up pressing orders to get the necessary authority from the minister for the funds required to carry out the order and deliver it before it would be too late.

"I have already spoken of the high cost of such work. This is due to the fact that the superintendents, knowing that there will be a considerable delay before they can obtain the necessary authority, seek to make up for lost time as far as possible by shortening the time of delivery."

As for the administration of the telegraph in France this is what I find in the Dalimier report:

"After much hesitation the department has decided to adopt the installation of a telegraph 'multiple.' The first appropriations were made in the 1911 budget, but the preliminary investigations could not have been very thorough, since, despite the stations established since 1903 in the cities above mentioned, and in which the 'multiple' system is in operation, it was necessary, in July, 1911, to appoint technical experts to examine these systems with a view to choosing a system adapted to the needs of Paris."

Protectionists and Socialists are forever harping on the old strain that governments and municipalities "ought to provide work for workers." The enterprises resulting from such efforts, far from bringing about labor economies, must always increase labor expenses. Among the excuses assigned for shorter hours of work is found the argument that if each worker does only half duty there will be work for two workers. Then, not only must the working hours be short, but there must be no over-production during the time spent by the workmen in factory or shop. We encounter everywhere protestations against piece-work and demands for work by the hour "at which nobody need kill himself." And not only must each man profit in some measure by the right to be lazy, proclaimed by Lafargue, but if he does not do the work for which he is paid he is accomplishing a duty of high social consequence by leaving work for his comrades.

If the superintendent of the workshop wishes to introduce a machine which could do the work of four workmen he is accused of taking the work from the laborer instead of giving it to him. Consequently he immediately antagonizes all the labor organizations and all the municipal or government employees. He is starving the people. He is neglecting the fundamental duty of government and municipal undertakings. He is a traitor. And, as an official must be a hero in order to face all this wrath, he is generally careful not to provoke it. If he learns that somewhere a machine is doing the work that he succeeds in getting done only by heavy expenditure for labor, he is

careful not to ask for it. If he can he will be ignorant that such a machine exists.

The material and moral depression evident in every state and city undertaking is easily explicable with the above facts in mind, and I have frequently received extraordinary confidences on this subject.

The Socialist is accustomed to declare that he and his comrades are not enemies of progress, and, in spite of the facts, he will treat as calumniators those who accuse him of it. He declares that Socialists are not hostile to new processes, nor to new machinery, except when they put the workmen out of work and do more work at less expense. It follows that he accepts the new processes and the new machinery on condition that no economy is involved in their use.1 But then, what is the use?

'See Yves Guyot, Science Economique, 4th edition, page 230.

CHAPTER V

LABOR

1. "The Government a Model Employer."-Raising Salaries, Reducing Hours of Labor, Lessening Returns. 2. Increasing the Number of Employees.-Government Railways.-Australia.

3. Salary Increase in Paris.-Jewelers Turned Street Sweepers.-Amalgamation.

4. Direct and Indirect Salaries.—Outside Work of the Employees of the Navy Yards.-Increase in the Cost of Construction.

5. Employees of the Western Railway.

6. Pensions. "Active Service" According to the Law of 1876. Difficulties in the Way of Equitable Wage and Pension Adjustment.

7. The English Trade Unions and Over-Generous Municipalities. Influence of Associations of Municipal Employees.

8. Salaries of the Miners in the Mines of the Saar District. 9. Unproductive Character of the Work of Government

and Municipal Employees.-Benjamin Welton and the Inefficiency of Municipal Service in the United States. -Causes.-The Sewer Diggers of Manhattan. 10. "Laborophobia."-The Employees of the Western Railway of France.

11. The Employees of the Swiss Federal Railroad.-Recall of M. Renault and the Strike on French Government Railways. "Syndicalist Action Recognized by the Western State Railway."-M. Goude and the Navy Yard at Brest.-An Insulting Salutation.-School Teachers.-General Labor Confederation.-Defective

System of Instruction.-The National Printing Office
and the General Labor Confederation.-The "P. T.
T."-Liberty of Opinion.-Outrage and Menace.-The
Austrian Chamber of Deputies and the State Railway
Employees.

12. "An Industrial Budget."-Employees the Actual Proprietors of the Service.-The Prophecy of Numa Droz.— Technical Skill.-A Switchman, Minister of Public Works.-The Program of the Employees of the National Printing Office.

13. The Ideal Administration.-Why It Won't Work.-Intermeddling.

14. Political Danger of Government and Municipal Undertakings.—Employees the Masters of Their Employers.— Government of New Zealand and the Strikers.-Employees Forbidden to Take Part in Public Affairs.—An Ineffectual Prohibition.-Excluding British Municipal Employees from the Franchise.-Suppression of Political Rights Is the Inevitable Consequence of Development of Public Operation.

15. Rules for the Model Government Employer.

1. "The government ought to prove itself a model for all other employers." Such is the stereotyped phrase in general circulation in Socialist circles, and all those who repeat the phrase mean by it that the state shall raise wages, shorten hours of work, and be satisfied with a smaller return from labor.

As a matter of fact, this conception of the model state is one of a robbery of the whole body of taxpayers for the sake of the minority who will profit by it. Yet many taxpayers seem resigned to having such. a conception realized at their expense, and the more democratic the state the more imperative are the demands of privileged classes, and the more chance there is of their ultimate triumph.