_First:_ The act of transfer, whether it take the form of confiscation or otherwise, must be the will of a legal majority of the people. If the unit is the city, a legal majority of the citizens there; if the unit is the state, then a legal majority of the citizens of the state; if the unit is the nation, then a legal majority in the nation. I use the term "legal majority" to indicate my profound conviction that the process itself must be a legal, constitutional process. Of course, in the event of some great upheaval occurring, such as, for example, the rising of a suffering and desperate people in consequence of some terrific panic or period of depression, brought on by capitalist misrule, or by war, this might be swept away. Throughout the world's history such upheavals have occurred, when the people's wrath, or their desperation, has assumed the form of a cyclone, and in such times laws have been of no more resistance than straws in the pathway of the cyclone sweeping across the plain. Omitting such dire happenings from our calculations--for so we must wish to do--we may lay down this principle of the imperative necessity for a legal majority, acting in legal manner.
_Second:_ The process must be gradual. There will be no _coup de force_. No effort will be made to socialize those industries which have not been made ready by a degree of monopolization. This we can say with confidence, if for no other reason than that we cannot conceive a legal majority being stirred sufficiently to take action in the absence of some degree of oppression or danger, such as monopoly alone contains. Further, as a matter of hard, practical sense, it is not conceivable that any government will ever be able to deal with all the industries at one time. The railroads may be first to be taken, or it may be the mines in one state and the oil wells in another. The important point is to see that the process of socialization _must_ be piecemeal and gradual. This does not mean that it must be a _slow_ process, suggesting the slowness of geologic formations, but that it must be gradual, progressive, advancing from step to step, and giving opportunities for adjusting things. Otherwise there would be chaos and anarchy.