oyers of themselves" could not determine their own wages,
still less would they determine the details of the work required of
them. A postman, like a private messenger, is bound to do certain
things, not one of which he prescribes personally to himself. At stated
hours he must daily be present at an office, receive a bundle of
letters, and then set out to deliver them at private doors, in
accordance with orders which he finds written on the envelopes. Such is
the case at present, and socialism would do nothing to modify it. If our
author thinks that a man, under these conditions, is his own employer,
our author must be easily satisfied, and we will not quarrel with his
opinion. It will be enough to point out that the moment he descends to
details his promise that socialism would equalise economic opportunity
for all reduces itself to the contention that the ordinary labourer or
worker would, if the state employed him, have a better chance of
promotion and increased wages than he has to-day, when employed by a
private firm, and (we may add, though our author does not here say so)
that some sort of useful work would be devised by the state for
everybody.

Now, although every item of this contention, and especially the last, is
disputable, let us suppose, for argument's sake, that it is, on the
whole, well founded. Even so, we have not touched the real crux of the
question. We have dealt only with the case of the ordinary worker, who
fulfils the ordinary functions which must always be those of nine men
out of every ten, let society be constituted in what way we will. It
remains for us to consider the case of those who are fitted, or believe
themselves to be fitted, for work of a wider kind, and who aspire to
gain, by performing this, an indefinitely ampler remuneration. This
ambitious and exceptionally active class is the class for which the
promise of equal opportunities possesses its main significance, and in
its relation to which it mainly requires to be examined. Indeed, the
writer from whom we are quoting recognises this himself; for he gives
his special attention to the economic position of those who, in greater
or less degree, are endowed with what he calls "genius"; and in order to
illustrate how socialism would deal with these, he cites two cases from
the annals of electrical engineering, in which opportunities, not
forthcoming otherwise, were given by the state to inventors of realising
successful inventions.