exertions. But how small a part of all the labor performed in England,
from the lowest paid to the highest, is done by persons working for
their own benefit. From the Irish reaper or hodman to the chief justice
or the minister of state, nearly all the work of society is remunerated
by day wages or fixed salaries. A factory operative has less personal
interest in his work than a member of a Communist association, since he
is not, like him, working for a partnership of which he is himself a
member. It will no doubt be said that, though the laborers themselves
have not, in most cases, a personal interest in their work, they are
watched and superintended, and their labor directed, and the mental part
of the labor performed, by persons who have. Even this, however, is far
from being universally the fact. In all public, and many of the largest
and most successful private undertakings, not only the labors of detail,
but the control and superintendence are entrusted to salaried officers.
And though the 'master's eye,' when the master is vigilant and
intelligent, is of proverbial value, it must be remembered that in a
Socialist farm or manufactory, each laborer would be under the eye, not
of one master, but of the whole community. In the extreme case of
obstinate perseverance in not performing the due share of work, the
community would have the same resources which society now has for
compelling conformity to the necessary conditions of the association.
Dismissal, the only remedy at present, is no remedy when any other
laborer who may be engaged does no better than his predecessor: the
power of dismissal only enables an employer to obtain from his workmen
the customary amount of labor, but that customary labor may be of any
degree of inefficiency. Even the laborer who loses his employment by
idleness or negligence has nothing worse to suffer, in the most
unfavorable case, than the discipline of a workhouse, and if the desire
to avoid this be a sufficient motive in the one system, it would be
sufficient in the other. I am not undervaluing the strength of the