"socialized" very considerable portions of "the means of production and of the land." In several countries this process has gone go far that the term "state socialism" accurately describes the stage of socialization already reached. No part of the "machinery of production" is so important as the railroad, yet it has been taken over in one country after another until the United States and England are almost alone among more than thirty countries to preserve private ownership. It is from English railway managers themselves that we now hear, "Our roads will be under government control within a few years. It is only a question of time." If we add to this history of socialized property, the telegraph, telephone and express companies, coal mines, life and fire insurance, trolley and gas systems, vast areas of public domain and forests, we get some measure of this process.
To the question, how is socialism to take possession, it is said, "We shall continue as we have begun. We have only to go straight on upon the same road, and long before the century is out we shall have every scrap of important business socialized."
Thus far, we see that these great private properties have been, upon the whole, fairly bought and paid for. There has been hardly an instance of confiscation. Even if railways, trolley and gas properties "originated in robbery," it is recognized that the properties have passed in large part to those who later bought in good faith. I have heard a socialist lecturer very eloquent on this point. "We should be," he said, "just as dirty thieves as the worst of them, not to take this immense transfer of property to innocent hands
