Let us now consider the alternative which, in any socialistic society, would most closely coincide with fact.

This is the assumption that the official directors of labour would not be technical autocrats, but would be subject to the control of their brother officials, the statesmen, who represented the great mass of the people.
Now, no doubt the intervention of a body of this kind might obviate some of the difficulties on which we have just been dwelling.

It might lead to the removal of some directors of labour who were not only relatively inefficient, but were positively and notoriously mischievous; but it would introduce difficulties greater than those it obviated.

For while the industrial officials would, in exact proportion to their efficiency, embody the special expertness peculiar to a gifted few, the political officials, in proportion as they represented their electorate, would embody the preponderating opinions and the general intelligence of the many.

The political officials, therefore, could, from the very nature of the case, never represent any ideas or condition of knowledge which appreciably transcended or conflicted with those of the least intelligent; and the logical result would be that no industrial improvements could in a socialistic community be initiated by the highest intelligence, if they went beyond what could be apprehended and consciously approved of by the lowest.
And here again, though our estimate is only general and speculative--for it deals with a state of things which at present has no existence--we can turn to historical facts for illustrations of its substantial truth.
For example, if in the days of Columbus all the capital of Europe and the control of its entire labour had been vested in a government which represented the all but universal opinion of all the western nations, the discovery of America would have obviously been beyond the limits of possibility.