"By means of general and local boards of trade, and the directors attached to each individual company, the quantities of the various commodities required for consumption (the relative value of each in regard to each other), the number of hands required in various trades and descriptions of labor, and all other matters connected with production and distribution, could in a short time be as easily determined for a nation as for an individual company under the present arrangements . . . . As individuals compose families, and families towns, under the existing system, so likewise would they after the joint-stock change had been effected. The present distribution of people in towns and villages, bad as it is, would not be directly interfered with. . . . . Under this joint-stock system . . . . every individual would be at liberty to accumulate as much as he pleased, and to enjoy such accumulations when and where he might think proper. . . . . Society would be, as it were, one great joint-stock company, composed of an indefinite number of smaller companies, all laboring, producing and exchanging with each other on terms of the most perfect equality. . . . ."
"Our new system of society by shares, which is only a concession made to existing society, in order to arrive at communism, established in such a way as to admit of individual property in productions in connection with a common property in production powers—making every individual dependent on his own exertions, and at the same time allowing him an equal participation in every advantage afforded by nature and art—is fitted to take society as it is, and to prepare the way for other and better changes." (Bray, pp. 158, 160, 162, 163, 168, 170 and 194.)
We have only a few words to say in reply to Mr.
