eople making the shoes get the best possible conditions of
labor and the highest possible wages--as near as possible to the net
value of their product, that is.

Some people, however, object to wearing factory-made shoes; they want
shoes of a special kind, to suit their individual fancy. There are
also, we will suppose, some shoemakers who do not like to work in the
State factories, preferring to make shoes by hand to suit individual
tastes. Now, if the people who want the handmade shoes are willing to
pay the shoemakers as much as they could earn in the socialized
factories no reasonable objection could be urged against it. If they
would not pay that amount, or near it, the shoemakers, it is
reasonable to suppose, would not want to work for them. It would
adjust itself.

Under Socialism the land would belong to the people. By this I do not
mean that the private _use_ of land would be forbidden, because that
would be impossible. There would be no object in taking away the small
farms from their owners. On the contrary, the number of such farms
might be greatly increased. There are many people to-day who would
like to have small farms if they could only get a fair chance, if the
railroads and trusts of one kind and another were not always sucking
all the juice from the orange. Socialism would make it possible for
the farmer to get what he could produce, without having to divide up
with the railroad companies, the owners of grain elevators,
money-lenders, and a host of other parasites.

I have no doubt, Jonathan, that under Socialism there would be many
privately-worked farms. Nor have I any doubt whatever that the farmers
would be much better off than under existing conditions. For to-day
the farmer is not the happy, independent man he is sometimes supposed
to be. Very often his lot is worse than that of the city wage-earner.
At any rate, the money return for his labor is often less. You know
that a great many farmers do not own their farms: they are mortgaged
and the farmer has to pay an average interest of six per cent. upon
the mortgage.

Now, let us look for a moment at such a farmer's conditions, as shown
by the census statistics. According to the census of 1900, there were
in the United States 5,737,372 farms, each averaging about 146 acres.
The total value of farm products in 1899 was $4,717,069,973. Now then,
if we divide the value of the products by the number of farms, we can
get the average annual product