Now, let us suppose first that the official directors of labour are left practically free to follow their own devices. The situation which will arise may be illustrated by the following imaginary case: The nation, let us say, requires two sister ships. They are built in different yards, under two different directors, and a thousand labourers are employed in the construction of each; but while the labourers who work under one director take a year to complete their task, those who work under the other complete theirs within ten months. This would mean for the community that, through the inferiority of the former of these two officials, two months' labour of the national shipwrights had been lost; and the public interest would require that the industrial regiment commanded by him should as quickly as possible pass out of his control into that of an official who could render it more efficient than he. And under the existing system this, as we have seen already, is precisely what sooner or later would be brought about automatically. The inefficient director, in proportion to his relative inefficiency, loses his customers, and can direct labour no longer, or is obliged to direct it on a very much reduced scale. But if each director of labour owed, as he would do under socialism, his means of directing it, not to the results of his individual efficiency, but to a single common source--namely, to the collective capital of the country or the forcible authority of the law--there is nothing in the fact that one constructor of ships wastes labour in constructing them which another constructor would have saved, to prevent him from continuing in his post, or even to insure that he will vacate it in favour of an abler man, whether an official rival or otherwise, as soon as such a man is available.
There is also this further fact to be noted. Although we are assuming that the socialistic directors of labour will exert their talents to the utmost without requiring the stimulus of a proportionate reward in money, we must necessarily assume that they will value their posts for some reason or other just as much as they would do were the largest emoluments attached to them. Consequently we may, condescending to vulgar language, say, as a certainty, that they will do their very best to stick to them. All these official persons, as contrasted with the labouring public, will occupy positions of similar and desirable privilege; and while their latent rivalry among themselves will be hampered in the manner just indicated, they will none of them be inclined to welcome any further rivalry from without. If the least efficient of our two naval constructors could not be forced by the fact of his relative inefficiency to hand over all or any portion of his authority to the other, and would certainly not be likely to do so of his own free will, it is still less likely that either would be willing to make such a sacrifice in favour of a man outside the privileged ranks, who desired an opportunity of demonstrating his practical superiority to both.