"How is the price of an article determined?"

"The price is the labor it has cost to make and deliver
it, and it is determined by the first principles of arithmetic.
The million workers in the nation's wheat-fields have
worked a hundred days each, and the total product of the
labor is a billion bushels, so the value of a bushel of wheat
is the tenth part of a farm labor-day. If we employ an
arbitrary symbol, and pay, say, five dollars a day for farm-
work, then the cost of a bushel of wheat is fifty cents."

"You say 'for farm-work,'" said Mr. Maynard. "Then
labor is not to be paid alike?"

"Manifestly not, since some work is easy and some hard,
and we should have millions of rural mail-carriers, and no
coal-miners. Of course the wages may be left the same,
and the hours varied; one or the other will have to be
varied continually, according as a greater or less number
of workers is needed in any particular industry. That is
precisely what is done at present, except that the transfer
of the workers is accomplished blindly and imperfectly, by
rumors and advertisements, instead of instantly and com~
pletely, by a universal government bulletin."

"How about those occupations in which time is difficult
to calculate? What is the labor cost of a book?"

"Obviously it is the labor cost of the paper, printing, and
binding of it -- about a fifth of its present cost."

"And the author?"

"I have already said that the state could not control in~
tellectual production. The state might say that it had
taken a year to write the book, and the author might say it
had taken thirty. Goethe said that every _bon_mot_ of his had
cost a purse of gold. What I outline here is a national,
or rather international, system for the providing of the
material needs of men. Since a man has intellectual needs
also, he will work longer, earn more, and provide for them
to his own taste and in his own way. I live on the same
earth as the majority, I wear the same kind of shoes and
sleep in the same kind of bed; but I do not think the same
kind of thoughts, and I do not wish to pay for such think~
ers as the majority selects. I wish such things to be left

[[406]]

p405 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p406w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p407

v?