Page:James Ramsay MacDonald - The Socialist Movement.pdf/159

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DEMANDS OF SOCIALISM
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principle, and they will be carried on into then Socialist state. Factories will be inspected to reduce accident risks under Socialism just as under commercialism, under Socialism injured workmen will be compensated, and workmen temporarily displaced or idle from no fault of their own will be insured against loss when Socialism has come in its fulness. The casualties and other accidents which beset the path of the workman are a fair charge upon industry. They are as much legitimate costs upon production as are the mending and renewal of machinery. Any other view is unthinkable to the Socialist. Industry must be carried on and its breakdowns must be provided for, and surely there is no more pressing—though to-day no more neglected—responsibility lying at its door than the proper care of the men and women who are the victims of its uncertainties and its dangers. The whole of this part of the Socialist programme, therefore, is aimed at securing that the human factors in industry are as carefully tended, and as jealously kept from deteriorating as machines and factory walls are now. When the community owns the machines it will not regard them as of greater value than the people who work them, for it will be as interested in human efficiency as capitalists are now interested in mechanical efficiency.

A part of this programme, however, will be dropped when Socialism is attained. It is purely protective against conditions which the Socialist is determined to remove. The feeding of needy children is a case in point.