What the Socialists did not take into consideration was that by throwing the whole burden of taxation on the wealthy and the comparatively well-off, and at the same time checking and killing private venture in trade and manufacture, the sources would inevitably be soon dried up. In the peninsula of Sinai are huge reservoirs which in the time of the Pharaohs stored vast supplies of water that was conducted by rills to fertilize the country. In later times these reservoirs were neglected, broken, choked, and consequently the fields they once nourished were parched up and became desert.
By the minimum wage, the Socialists sought to kill endeavour. The stupid, clumsy, bad workman not worth his salt, even the man crippled in hand and foot was to receive the same wage as the adroit, intelligent, and experienced artisan. In a co-operative workshop the inefficients would receive as much as the efficient, and the idle as the industrious. By converting every fifth man into a Government salaried official, the country would be covered with a beaureaucratic net. Incompetent and uninstructed men would be appointed to superintend work of which they know nothing. We see this now among ourselves. Nor is the Government alone to blame in this way. Our County Councils appoint these noodles to manage the highways, to superintend nuisances, to value land, to kill rats, etc., without exacting from them capacity for the tasks imposed on them. Mr. Nassau Senior says, that after the Revolution of '48 a Poor Law was as much needed for the relief of the ci-devant rich as of the poor. None had money to spend in the shops, and the shopkeepers accordingly had to put up their shutters.
The great mass of the discharged workmen from the ateliers nationaux remained discontented; all they really cared for was sensual gratification and pay for doing no work. If they could be drafted into the body of agents for looking after branches of industry, of which they knew nothing, they would be content and not trouble about political schemes. The Government knew this, and employed as many as they could, and so pacified and silenced some of them.
The Baron de Billing gives a good reason for the place-hunting so inherent in the Frenchman. "Money has far more influence
