rude ages when the lack of
social organization made any sort of coöperation impossible.«
    »I will readily admit,« I said, »that our industrial system was ethically
very bad, but as a mere wealth-making machine, apart from moral aspects, it
seemed to us admirable.«
    »As I said,« responded the doctor, »the subject is too large to discuss at
length now, but if you are really interested to know the main criticisms which
we moderns make on your industrial system as compared with our own, I can touch
briefly on some of them.
    The wastes which resulted from leaving the conduct of industry to
irresponsible individuals, wholly without mutual understanding or concert, were
mainly four: first, the waste by mistaken undertakings; second, the waste from
the competition and mutual hostility of those engaged in industry; third, the
waste by periodical gluts and crises, with the consequent interuptions of
industry; fourth, the waste from idle capital and labor at all limes. Any one of
these four great leaks, were all the others stopped, would suffice to make the
difference between wealth and poverty on the part of a nation.
    Take the waste by mistaken undertakings, to begin with. In your day the
production and distribution of commodities being without concert or
organization, there was no means of knowing just what demand there was for any
class of products, or what was the rate of supply. Therefore, any enterprise by
a private capitalist was always a doubtful experiment. The projector having no
general view of the field of industry and consumption, such as our government
has, could never be sure either what the people wanted, or what arrangements
other capitalists were making to supply them. In view of this, we are not
surprised to learn that the chances were considered several to one in favor of
the failure of any given business enterprise, and that it was common for persons
who at last succeeded in making a hit to have failed repeatedly. If a shoemaker,
for every pair of shoes he succeeded in completing, spoiled the leather of four
or five pair, besides losing the time spent on them, he would stand about the
same chance of getting rich as your contemporaries did with their system of
private enterprise, and its average of four or five failures to one success.
    The next of the great wastes was that from competition. The field of
industry was a battlefield as wide as the world, in which the workers wasted, in
assailing one another, energies which, if expended in concerted effort, as
to-day, would have enriched all. As for mercy