 terribly embittered the
competition between capitalists when a promising opening presented itself. The
idleness of capital, the result of its timidity, of course meant the idleness of
labor in corresponding degree. Moreover, every change in the adjustments of
business, every slightest alteration in the condition of commerce or
manufactures, not to speak of the innumerable business failures that took place
yearly, even in the best of times, were constantly throwing a multitude of men
out of employment for periods of weeks or months, or even years. A great number
of these seekers after employment were constantly traversing the country,
becoming in time professional vagabonds, then criminals. Give us work! was the
cry of an army of the unemployed at nearly all seasons, and in seasons of
dullness in business this army swelled to a host so vast and desperate as to
threaten the stability of the government. Could there conceivably be a more
conclusive demonstration of the imbecility of the system of private enterprise
as a method for enriching a nation than the fact that, in an age of such general
poverty and want of everything, capitalists had to throttle one another to find
a safe chance to invest their capital and workmen rioted and burned because they
could find no work to do?
    Now, Mr. West,« continued Dr. Leete, »I want you to bear in mind that these
points of which I have been speaking indicate only negatively the advantages of
the national organization of industry by showing certain fatal defects and
prodigious imbecilities of the systems of private enterprise which are not found
in it. These alone, you must admit, would pretty well explain why the nation is
so much richer than in your day. But the larger half of our advantage over you,
the positive side of it, I have yet barely spoken of. Supposing the system of
private enterprise in industry were without any of the great leaks I have
mentioned; that there were no waste on account of misdirected effort growing out
of mistakes as to the demand, and inability to command a general view of the
industrial field. Suppose, also, there were no neutralizing and duplicating of
effort from competition. Suppose, also, there were no waste from business panics
and crisis through bankruptcy and long interruptions of industry, and also none
from the idleness of capital and labor. Supposing these evils, which are
essential to the conduct of industry by capital in private hands, could all be
miraculously prevented, and the system yet retained; even then the superiority
of the results attained by the modern industrial system of national control
would remain overwhelming.
    You used to have some pretty large textile manufacturing establishments,
even
