Page:The Case for Capitalism (1920).djvu/184

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those who are willing to work would be at once employed by the State in producing or distributing the necessaries and comforts of life. The Government would build houses for the families of all those in its employment, and all other house property of all kinds would rapidly fall 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."

By this time the nation would be the only employer, and as no one would be able to get the necessaries of life without paper money, and as the only way to get it would be by working, every mentally and physically capable person in the community would be helping in the great work of production and distribution. There would be no unemployed and no overlapping. For every one labour-saving machine in use to-day, the State would, if necessary, employ a thousand, and there would be produced