American slave owners, and his closing assurance that socialists "are not much concerned about this issue," we may test with some fairness a far larger opinion than his own. Mr. Hillquit has served with distinction on the National Executive Committee of his party. That the I. W. W. should see in him so hopeless a conservative, gives us some hint of what this more revolutionary contingent would do with "methods of compensation."
A writer and teacher of deserved distinction, C. Hanford Henderson, writes his socialist book Pay-Day, to show why profit is theft. The motto on the fly leaf reads, "Thou shalt not steal;" but as the thieves have been the receivers of "profit," this moral warning cannot apply to those who are now to enter into possession of their own. Mr Henderson says, "The trust is a conscious violation of the Federal law. It is, moreover, built up out of stolen labor-power. On either count, the trust might with perfect justice and propriety be directly confiscated by the State. It is both contrabrand and stolen property." He concedes that this is "a harsh measure," and therefore tempers his surgery: "It might readily be enacted that any further transfer of stocks and bonds would be illegal and void, and that when the present owners died, the State should inherit their holdings. In this way the transfer from private to public ownership would be accomplished gradually and peacefully, without hardship to any actual owner of such securities. His heirs would, of course, be disappointed. But if it be granted that the living owner had no defensible right to such securities, it would be a sen-
