Socialism was primarily a system for the regulation of labor by co-operation without competition. Louis Blanc was the father of the system, and his "Organisation du Travail" was published in 1840. In this book he denounces the plan of "individualism," and advocates "solidarity," in which each workman is to be paid according to his need - a bachelor two francs a day, a married man two and one-half and a man with a family three francs. In 1848 national workshops were tried in Paris on the Louis Blanc principle. Government was the employer of labor, and private enterprise was abolished as far as possible. It was soon found that the national workshops were overcrowded, work was ill-done, idle hands multiplied, and profitless work had to be invented to keep the men out of mischief. Some 1,500 tailors were set to work in the Hotel Clichy at two francs a day, but the scheme was a total failure.

Plato's "Republic" is an ideal communism. Minos and Lycurgus were communists. The early Christians had "all things in common," but the notion of government being the sole employer of labor, and paying each, not according to the work done, but according to individual necessity, was left to the device of Louis Blanc.

Bellamy's novel entitled "Looking Backward" is based somewhat on the same idea.

Communism is a scheme for associating men and women together without recourse to the laws of social and political economy usually resorted to. The representatives of communism are Robert Owen, St. Simon, Fourier, Proudhon and Enfantin.

(1) Owen published his scheme in 1813, and tried it in 1825 at Orbiston, in Lanarkshire. This scheme failed, and in 1843 he opened his "Harmony Hall" in Hampshire, but this also was a failure.

(2) St. Simon established a corporate society at Menilmontant, but Louis Philippe charged it with immorality and irreligion. The leaders were imprisoned and the commune dissolved.

(3) Fourier established his "phalanstery" at Rambouillet, but it proved a total failure.

(4) Proudhon is noted for his axiom, "La propriete, c'est le vol," 1848, and for his Banque du Peuple, 1849, which had for its object the suppression of capital. It was closed by authority, and Proudhon fled to Geneva.

(5) Enfantin, a partisan of St. Simon, advocated the abolition of marriage ties, and was prosecuted on the grounds of public decency.

FourieriSm was the social system devised by Charles Fourier. He would divide men into groups of 400 families, and these groups into series, and these series into phalanxes. A single group he would place under one immense roof, and there should be supplied every appliance of industry and art. No army would be required, no wars could ever break out, as all the world would be one great family.

Simonianism was the school of the Industrialists, founded in 1825 by St. Simon for the amelioration of the working classes, perverted after his death into a communistic society, advocating the aristocracy of toil, the perfect equality of man, community of property and the abolition of inheritance and marriage. Abolished by law in 1833.