172   HISTORIC GROWTH OF MAN.

MEASURE FOR MEASURE.   173

those in whom it rules as well as those who submit to its heartless exactions.

The grouping of members in the new social order secures to each one a free choice of employment. Already in the new education, as sketched in the last chapter, the boy or girl will have been taught how to use each of his faculties with the greatest success or efficiency. The industries are so organized that the mental and physical labor of each member is fully productive and no part of it is wasted. And the normal law is that each member receives back the full product of his labor, or else receives in exchange with some one else, that which has cost that other person an equal amount of labor, or in other terms an equal amount of vital force.

The amount of this force can be measured with sufficient exactness for practical purposes. We must consider that in doing any piece of work, other things have been involved besides the muscular force of the workman. The tools he used and the materials required in the work had to be made and furnished by somebody. Even the wearing out of his own clothes in working is an element of cost in the case. The unproductive time used in his industrial and general education is also an element.

By the scientific law for the conservation of forces, we know that each person expends and can expend just as much force as he has received, and no more. He may use this force unwisely, he may employ wasteful methods, or lie may use it with the utmost efficiency. The law teaches that man can transfer forces from one object to another. But he cannot create them. This natural law shows that where

the plan of society makes these forces wholly productive there each member will produce as much as he consumes. And the normal wants of each member may be safely made the basis for the distribution of the products of labor. " From each according to his ability; to each according to his needs. " With such a system there is no danger that any one will receive more than his just share.

Nature has worked for us already. She has expended constructive force in forming the wood, textile tissues, fuel, fruits, grains and minerals. She has lifted masses of water into the reservoirs of clouds and mountains, to be released by man to turn his machines of production. Allan unites his forces with these stores of nature and thus carries his production of wealth far beyond the demands for present consumption. In many forms this surplus gives each succeeding generation, or even each succeeding year, a better vantage ground, better resources for a mastery of nature and of the conditions for happiness.

HAS ANY PERSON A RIGHT to become rich

from the profits on other men's labor while they remain poor? This is a vital question. If this right exists naturally, if its basis is natural law, then poverty and wealth, misery and affluence, will march side by side through all coming time. We must search this question to the very bottom.

The whole growth of human society, the vast upward march of man from brutal savagism to humane civilization, all this was possible only through the specialization of labor. It was the division of the different employments among those