valueless as those by which they seek to apologize for private property
and the State.

We are, nevertheless, going to examine the objection, and see if there
is any truth in it.

First of all,--Is it not evident that if a society, founded on the
principle of free work, were really menaced by loafers, it could protect
itself without the authoritarian organization we have nowadays, and
without having recourse to wagedom?

Let us take a group of volunteers, combining for some particular
enterprise. Having its success at heart, they all work with a will, save
one of the associates, who is frequently absent from his post. Must they
on his account dissolve the group, elect a president to impose fines,
and work out a code of penalties? It is evident that neither the one nor
the other will be done, but that some day the comrade who imperils their
enterprise will be told: "Friend, we should like to work with you; but
as you are often absent from your post, and you do your work
negligently, we must part. Go and find other comrades who will put up
with your indifference!"

This way is so natural that it is practiced everywhere, even nowadays,
in all industries, in competition with all possible systems of fines,
docking of wages, supervision, etc.; a workman may enter the factory at
the appointed time, but if he does his work badly, if he hinders his
comrades by his laziness or other defects, if he is quarrelsome, there
is an end of it; he is compelled to leave the workshop.

Authoritarians pretend that it is the almighty employer and his
overseers who maintain regularity and quality of work in factories. In
reality, in every somewhat complicated enterprise, in which the goods
produced pass through many hands before being finished, it is the
factory itself, the workmen as a unity, who see to the good quality of
the work. Therefore the best factories of British private industry have
few overseers, far less on an average than the French factories, and
less than the British State factories.

A certain standard of public morals is maintained in the same way.
Authoritarians say it is due to rural guards, judges, and policemen,
whereas in reality it is maintained _in spite_ of judges, policemen, and
rural guards. "Many are the laws producing criminals!" was said long
ago.

Not only in industrial workshops do things go on in this way; it happens
everywhere, every day, on a scale that only bookworms have as yet no
notion of. Wh