of any final settlement of the industrial problem. "It is an
extraordinary thing," I said, "that you should not yet have said a
word about the method of adjusting wages. Since the nation is
the sole employer, the government must fix the rate of wages
and determine just how much everybody shall earn, from the
doctors to the diggers. All I can say is, that this plan would never
have worked with us, and I don't see how it can now unless
human nature has changed. In my day, nobody was satisfied with
his wages or salary. Even if he felt he received enough, he was
sure his neighbor had too much, which was as bad. If the
universal discontent on this subject, instead of being dissipated
in curses and strikes directed against innumerable employers,
could have been concentrated upon one, and that the government,
the strongest ever devised would not have seen two pay
days."

Dr. Leete laughed heartily.

"Very true, very true," he said, "a general strike would most
probably have followed the first pay day, and a strike directed
against a government is a revolution."

"How, then, do you avoid a revolution every pay day?" if
demanded. "Has some prodigious philosopher devised a new
system of calculus satisfactory to all for determining the exact
and comparative value of all sorts of service, whether by brawn
or brain, by hand or voice, by ear or eye? Or has human nature
itself changed, so that no man looks upon his own things but
`every man on the things of his neighbor'? One or the other of
these events must be the explanation."