If we view production of wealth from the standpoint
of an employer, we find that socialism is not without its
strong features. Surely the employing class cannot find
its present relation to the employed altogether agreeable.
136 SOCIALISM AND SOCIAL REFORM.
It is not pleasant to be engaged in perpetual struggle,
and to be viewed with suspicion, and even positive hostil-
ity. Many an employer, weary of turmoil, would assur-
edly welcome a system which promises social peace,
although it might effect a reduction in his own income,
could he feel convinced that this new system was able to
keep its promises in this respect. Working men may
say what they please, but the lot of the employer is too
frequently anything but an agreeable one, and that he
should at times become embittered, when he sees himself
perpetually misunderstood, misinterpreted, and antago-
nized, is not strange. A far stronger plea for socialism,
from the standpoint of the employer engaged in produc-
tion, might be made than one would be inclined to be-
lieve at first blush.*

The promises which socialism holds out to the em-

* " III tlio present stage of liuman progress, wlieu ideas of equality
are daily spreading more widely among the poorer classes, and can
no longer bo checked by anything short of the entire suppression of
printed discussion, and even of freedom of speech, it is not to bo
expected that the division of the human race into two hereditary
classes, employers and employed, can be permanently maintained.
