regard what should be at most only a distant goal, as a possible point of early departure, as something from which we could start to-morrow. With a large allowance of time a portion of their scheme may be realized, while some steps in the general direction, both in the sphere of legislative and governmental management, might even be taken early.

An extension of government management in the sphere of industry is undoubtedly quite possible, and I agree with Professor Sidgwick in thinking that in certain directions such extension would be generally advantageous. What these directions are we have intimated already in a general way, and the subject will be considered more fully hereafter. Here let it suffice to say that this is pre-eminently one of the cases where an induction from the part to the whole would be fallacious, where what would be true for part of the field of industry and enterprise occupied by the Government would not be true if it were universally occupied.

At least for a very long time, and probably for ever. For it is essentially a case where the categories of time and rate of motion, as well as quantity, are all important and of the essence of the argument. Now time and rate of movement involve the whole fact of social evolution, and the doctrine of social evolution is accepted and insisted on even by Karl Marx and Lassalle, being indeed one of the few points in which the new Socialism is superior to the old. It is absolutely not in men's power, as they rightly say, to change suddenly an economic system; the thing chiefly implied in evolution being that it takes place slowly by way of

natural growth and decay. Our whole economical system is a kind of organism with a life and growth and mutual relations of parts, and as such it cannot be suddenly changed. Moreover, it rests, as before stated, on existing human nature, which no one imagines can be suddenly or greatly changed. Society, as a whole, is also an organism in a fuller sense of the word; it changes, but changes slowly. The State is also an organism which changes, which in modern times enlarges its functions slowly and naturally with the growth of civilization. Now we have seen that the Collectivist programme implies, when accomplished, a total revolution in the State, in Society, in private life, and in the existing economical system, a revolution to effect which social evolution asks centuries, working by its usual natural methods, but which impatient Revolutionists and Collectivists in general expect in a generation. At any rate, few seem willing to defer the Socialist millenium beyond A.D. 2000, any considerable postponing of the date seeming to take away rapidly from its sustaining and stimulating power.

The three revolutions, economical, political, and social, could all be decreed. The question is how far, with substantially unchanged human nature and dispositions, they could be made effective towards their aim; and the certainty is that the attempt to make them so would bring chaos, and confusion worse confounded, until human nature rose in revolt against the impossible thing.

There are no doubt some Collectivists who disclaim revolution, and who do not expect their programme to

be fully realized for generations. And these evolution Collectivists are very much wiser and more practical than the others. But if the conclusions we have come to be correct, there are certain portions of the system. which can never be realized, being essentially impracticable, and certain portions that would be bad for the majority of the working classes. If, then, the evolution Collectivists throw those parts over, or get rid of what Schæffle calls "the critical blots" of Collectivism, they would become practical State Socialists, and could work in line with Radicals or Tories, so far as these respectively take up and advocate Social Reform or practicable and beneficial Socialist measures.

CHAPTER IX.

PRACTICABLE STATE SOCIALISM:

(1.) — LEGISLATIVE.

ALTHOUGH the main argument of the Socialists, that all wealth is the product of labour, and should therefore belong to the labouring classes, is fallacious, and although the remedies of the extreme Socialists for admitted social ills are either impracticable for the most part and pregnant with social chaos, or where they would be practicable would not be beneficial to the working classes or the community, it does not follow that the Socialists have got no case, nor that there are not real remedies for real social evils and injustices; remedies slower and less heroic than those prescribed, but more sure and lasting. I believe they have a case, and that there are such remedies.

The strength of the case of the Socialists lies undoubtedly in the fact that the Land and Capital, the two great requisites of production, other than labour, have, as a fact, got into the hands of comparatively small classes, and out of those of the large labouring classes, and with this result as respects their relation to capital, that they are obliged to accept

wages reduced by employers' profits composed mainly of interest and of wages of management rated as large as interest; that these labourers' wages in many cases, and still more the wages of common or unskilled labourers, tend to the Ricardian minimum or the smallest amount that will suffice to support the labourer and his family until such time at least as the children's labour can assist; that from the uncertain and changing circumstances of modern inanufacturing industry in particular, which produces for an indefinite and shifting, but world-wide market, only the best labourers can expect to get constant and regular work, while even of these many may be thrown out by new labour-saving machinery, changes of fashion, or a commercial crisis; that from these different causes there is always in existence what Marx called the "reserve army of labour," a phrase which i describes the sorrows of their situation, being only partially employed, and the remaining time anxiously idling while subsisting on siege allowance from their society's funds, sometimes on the public charity or benevolence; that besides and beyond these at the bottom of all lies a mournful multitude of men and women and children, the certain result and product, predictable with scientific precision, of our whole individualistic and sauve qui peut system, who can get no work save of the most casual kind, not to speak of the considerable number who have no particular intention of working, being indeed mostly unfit for any work; who, having been born in a destitute condition, and never having had the chance to learn an honest calling, took naturally