it often turns out in practice that "the State" is not even the known
and accredited servants of the State, but, as has been well said, is
only some obscure clerk, hidden in the recesses of a Government bureau,
into whose power the chance has fallen for the moment to pull one of
the stops which control the Government machine. In former days it often
happened that "The State" was a barber, a fiddler, or a bad woman. In
our day it often happens that "the State" is a little functionary on
whom a big functionary is forced to depend.

I cannot see the sense of spending time to read and write observations,
such as I find in the writings of many men of great attainments and of
great influence, of which the following might be a general type: If the
statesmen could attain to the requisite knowledge and wisdom, it is
conceivable that the State might perform important regulative functions
in the production and distribution of wealth, against which no positive
and sweeping theoretical objection could be made from the side of
economic science; but statesmen never can acquire the requisite
knowledge and wisdom.--To me this seems a mere waste of words. The
inadequacy of the State to regulative tasks is agreed upon, as a matter
of fact, by all. Why, then, bring State regulation into the discussion
simply in order to throw it out again? The whole subject ought to be
discussed and settled aside from the hypothesis of State regulation.

The little group of public servants who, as I have said, constitute the
State, when the State determines on anything, could not do much for
themselves or anybody else by their own force. If they do anything,
they must dispose of men, as in an army, or of capital, as in a
treasury. But the army, or police, or _posse comitatus_, is more or
less All-of-us, and the capital in the treasury is the product of the
labor and saving of All-of-us. Therefore, when the State means