where the functions of the State have always been wider in the industrial sphere.

But these considerations, however strong, may in some directions have to give way to stronger, and they have considerably less force in the case of the mining industries, both because the raising of coal or metalliferous ore does not seem a work the management of which calls for any transcendent ability in the mine-owner, who moreover mostly deputes the work to a manager, and next because these extractive industries easily lend themselves to monopolies and combinations injurious to the public interest, as in the case of the Pennsylvania coalmasters, who agreed to limit supply so as to keep up prices. There are other reasons why the production of coal, which is both a primary necessary of life, and the basis of all our industries, should be under the management of the State, which could take more precautions for the safety, and care for the health, of the large mining population, probably thereby saving the cost of the present inspectors. We should not then have restrictions on the output of coal as in the year of the coal famine, for the sake of raising prices; nor, on the other hand, a too liberal use or reckless waste, or even a too free export of a prime necessary of future generations.' Mining is a

1 On this point Prof. Sidgwick remarks, “The restriction of private property in the contents of the earth may hereafter become a matter of great practical importance, through the progress of geology and the gradual exhaustion of the stores of valuable minerals easily obtainable." ("Principles of Pol. Econ.," Book III. ch. iv. § 13.)

case where the maximum of State interference is already called for, and already exists; it would be only going a little further to substitute complete State management for the private enterprise that requires so much regulation. The State could then set an example of the virtues which it has inculcated on the present owners, but which they have found so hard to practise, and the resulting experience would be of great service before going any farther in the direction of State Socialism. The State management would both disclose its own capacities, and it would exercise a very salutary effect on the much greater field of productive industry, remaining intact under private direction.

As to our great industries which have been planted and developed under private enterprise, they should be left to private enterprise, until at least the great superiority of Government management is demonstrated; but they may be interfered with in the interest of the workers' health and comfort, and the proceeds are to be held liable to such requisitions as the State may deem just and fair. In addition to manufacturing and agricultural industry-embracing most of the production proper of goods-their circulation should be left to voluntary enterprise, which in the form of the Co-operative Store, and the great wholesale house, is fast eliminating the unnecessary and parasitic middle-men whose profits so largely swell the consumer's price. No doubt the small men will go to the wall as well as the unnecessary middlemen, but this though a painful necessity, is a less evil than the alternative of high prices to the poor for

inferior goods. And the great distributing capitalist will make great profits; but he also confers a service, and those who do not like him are free to patronize their own co-operative stores. The sale of drink, food, drugs, and the like, may be interfered with to secure purity and good quality to the public, but there would be no advantage gained by the State or municipalities undertaking the work of distribution, and substituting its officials for the existing ones. In fact if the State is not the universal producer, it could not with any advantage be the general distributor, though by appointing inspectors to certify as to quality, it performs a useful and necessary work in protecting the public, while leaving the work in the hands otherwise best suited to it.

The public might also require protection from high prices due to monopoly through the combination of distributors, which is more possible in the sphere of distribution than in that of production, and to which, moreover, there is a distinctly increasing tendency at present in certain directions, and here it would seem desirable that the monopolists should have before their mind the possibility of State interference, and even of State expropriation as a salutary restraint to prevent too great abuse of their position.

There is one necessary, in addition to fuel, light and water, the production of which cannot be wholly left to private enterprise,-namely, houses, so far as intended for the working classes and the poor. The municipalities should in the first instance supply a certain proportion of houses of this description in order to break the monopoly of the present

owners, and to deliver the poor from exorbitant rents, amounting frequently to a quarter of their wages, for a bad house. The ground landlord, the builder, and the house-owner between them divide a very large revenue, levied on every one in the form of rents, but which press especially on the poor, the rent of whose houses is raised to a scarcity price in many places, because they must live, or find it convenient to live, near their place of work, and because there are many applicants. The demand for houses and house accommodation exceeding the supply, forces up the rent, though the house be bad and unhealthy; and here is one case where the municipalities might counteract the selfishness, and stay the hand of the house-owner, by partly supplying houses for the lower classes at rents which would allow them only current interest.

11.

THERE is a large province of industry in which co-operative labour cannot be applied with any very decided advantage, and in which for other reasons it is not desirable to attempt it on a large scale. I mean agriculture, because in it the advantages of the large system of production so conspicuous in manufactures is disputed, and in any case is not great, while the application of it on a large scale in Europe generally, would amount not only to a universal agrarian revolution, but to a revolution in social habits. and in daily private life. Here, therefore, there is no room for State enterprise, any more than for the extreme thing desired by the collectivist-socialists,

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For hundreds of years the cultivators of the land have been living in France, Germany, and most countries in isolated farmhouses, or in villages, cultivating the soil with the help of the grown members of their families, and sometimes of hired labourers. This has been the case too in Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and (though to a much less extent) in England also. The cultivators of the land are attached to their way of life, and everywhere are peculiarly conservative in habits and sentiments.

Now co-operative farming, as conceived by the Socialists, would require them to change their way of life, to live in a common residence, or at least in close proximity to each other, to abandon their traditional homesteads, to give up their sense of private proprietary rights, their sense of independence, the things, the most cherished and consecrated in their feelings, and that make the very essence of their life, and all for what? That by their united labour thrown into a common stock they might finally, after re-division, have perhaps a little more than they would have had working on their own farm for themselves. For this doubtful gain added to the inseparable company of their fellow-co-operators, of which they might easily have too much, they are to submit to be officered and brigaded by the State. For a possible trifle extra per annum, they are to bring themselves, or let themselves be put into community enforced and distasteful, (for all this is gravely proposed by the Collectivist leaders, though for prudential reasons but slightly referred to in working-men's programmes). But however tempting the prospect is made, and however