Page:Ragged Trousered Philanthropists.djvu/351

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The Great Oration


who are willing to work will be welcomed by the State and will be at once employed in producing or distributing the necessaries and comforts of life. They will have to work fewer hours than before. They will not have to work so hard for there will be no need to drive or bully, because there will be plenty of people to do the work, and most of it will be done by machinery, and with their paper money they will be able to buy abundance of the things they help to produce. The shops and stores where these people were formerly employed will be acquired by the State, which will pay the former owners fair compensation in the same manner as to the factory owners. Some of the buildings will be utilised by the State as National Service Stores, others transformed into factories, and others will be pulled down to make room for dwellings or public buildings. It will be the duty of the Government to build a sufficient number of houses to accommodate the families of all those in its employment, and as a consequence of this and because of the general disorganisation and decay of what is now called "business," all other house property of all kinds will rapidly depreciate in value. The slums and the wretched dwellings now occupied by the working classes, the miserable, uncomfortable, jerry built "villas" occupied by the lower middle classes and by "business" people, will be left empty and valueless upon the hands of their rack-renting landlords, who will very soon voluntarily offer to hand them, and the ground they stand upon, to the State on those terms accorded to the other property owners, namely, in return for a pension. Some of these people will be content to live in idleness on the income allowed them for life as compensation by the State; others will devote themselves to art or science; and some others will offer their services to the commuuity as managers and superintendents; and the State will always be glad to employ all those who are willing to help in the great work of production and distribution.

'By this time the nation will be the sole employer of labour, and as no one will be able to procure the necessaries of life without paper money, and as the only way to obtain this will be by working, it will mean that every mentally and physically capable person in the community will be helping in the great work of production and distribution. We shall not need, as at present, to maintain a police force to protect the

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