en a railway company, federated with other companies, fails
to fulfil its engagements, when its trains are late and goods lie
neglected at the stations, the other companies threaten to cancel the
contract, and that threat usually suffices.

It is generally believed, at any rate it is taught in State-approved
schools, that commerce only keeps to its engagements from fear of
lawsuits. Nothing of the sort; nine times in ten the trader who has not
kept his word will not appear before a judge. There, where trade is very
active, as in London, the sole fact of having driven a creditor to bring
a lawsuit suffices for the immense majority of merchants to refuse for
good to have any dealings with a man who has compelled one of them to go
to law.

This being so, why should means that are used to-day among workers in
the workshop, traders in the trade, and railway companies in the
organization of transport, not be made use of in a society based on
voluntary work?

Take, for example, an association stipulating that each of its members
should carry out the following contract: "We undertake to give you the
use of our houses, stores, streets, means of transport, schools,
museums, etc., on condition that, from twenty to forty-five or fifty
years of age, you consecrate four or five hours a day to some work
recognized as necessary to existence. Choose yourself the producing
groups which you wish to join, or organize a new group, provided that it
will undertake to produce necessaries. And as for the remainder of your
time, combine together with whomsoever you like, for recreation, art, or
science, according to the bent of your taste.

"Twelve or fifteen hundred hours of work a year, in one of the groups
producing food, clothes, or houses, or employed in public sanitation,
transport, and so on, is all we ask of you. For this amount of work we
guarantee to you the free use of all that these groups produce, or will
produce. But if not one, of the thousands of groups of our federation,
will receive you, whatever be their motive; if you are absolutely
incapable of producing anything useful, or if you refuse to do it, then
live like an isolated man or like an invalid. If we are rich enough to
give you the necessaries of life we shall be delighted to give them to
you. You are a man, and you have the right to live. But as you wish to
live under special conditions, and leave the ranks, it is more than
probable that you will suffer for it in you