PRODUCTION selling .prices; the requirements of the existing markets and the hunt for new ones; the scarcity of capital for large operations and the heavy interest to be paid· on it; new investments, the effect of speculation and monopoly, and a score of related problems which worry the capitalist and make industry such a difficult and cumbersome network to-day would all disappear. At present these require divers departments of study and highly trained men to keep unravelling the tangled skein of plutocratic cross purposes, many specialists to calculate the actualities and possibilities of profit and loss, and a large force of aids to help steer the industrial ship between the perilous rocks which beset the chaotic course of capitalist competition, national and international. All this would be automatically done away with by the socialisation of industry and the termination of the competitive system; and thereby the problems of production,· will be immensely lightened. The knotted complexity of capitalist industry need therefore inspire no undue fear ·for the· future. Those who talk of labour not being equal to manage " modern " ifidustry fail to take into account the factors referred to above. The industrial labyrinth will turn out t-o be far less formidable on the day of .the social re-construction. In passing it may be mentioned that all the other phases of life would also be very much simplified as a result of the indicated changes : various present-day habits, customs, compulsory and unwholesome modes of living will naturally fall into disuse. Furthermore it must be considered that the task of increased production would be enormously facilitat~d by the addition to the ranks of Jabour of vast numbers whom the altered economic conditions will liberate for work. Recent statistics show that in 1920 there were in the United States over 41 million persons of both sexes engaged in gainful occupations out of a_total population of over 1◊5 millions. Out of those 41 millions only 26 millions were actually employed in the industries, including transportation and agriculture, the balance of 15 millions consisting mostly of persons engaged. in trade, of commercial travellers, advertisers, and various other middlemen of the present system. In other words, 15 million persons would be ·released for useful work by a revolution in the United States. A similar situation, proportionate to popuJ'ation, would develop in other countries. The greater production necessitated by the social revolution would therefore have an additional anny of many million persons at its disposal. The systematic incorporation of those millions into 91 Biblioteca G·ro Bianco
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