gain seem to invite their steps! Aut socialismus aut nihil is written on the forehead of the syndicate. Try by a stretch of imagination to picture the success of the coal and iron syndicates. The two industries are very closely allied. Any disturbance of the one would certainly produce disorder in the other. Common counsels between them would grow into a necessity. Imagine then a dispute about wages to arise. Strikes are disastrous enough when they are confined to a portion of the community. What would they come to when it was a struggle between the working men from Land's End to John o' Groats, armed with supreme power in politics by the household, or it may be by universal suffrage, and a handful of stubborn capitalists? Is it not apparent that the capitalists, under the Spartan kingship of selfishness and folly, are inviting the advent of the dreaded social revolution?

Why

If the outside speculator is the cause of all the mischief, there ought to be special legislation directed against him. Gambling hells are illegal. should not the greater hell of the Exchange, as the ironmasters represent it to be, also be dealt with by the law? Surely there is some other way of getting rid of the speculative parasite than by reverting to the system of monopolies on a gigantic scale. The

most urgent need of the time is to intellectualise and moralise industrial relations through and through -yet the capitalist would fain make the mental and moral atmosphere more stifling than ever. No such objection can be urged against the vertical organisation which I have suggested in these Circles of Industry. Here the organisation is solely to render the industries of the world more steady by such an interchange of knowledge along parallel lines of members of a productive series as is essential for that purpose. Do not let it be supposed that I intend all producers concerned in placing on the market one commodity or class of commodities to form one group. That would be identical with the monopolist syndicate, a thing as vicious in principle as it is impracticable. I mean many groups, or, to vary the simile, many parallel lines of industrial association within the same square of production. In this there could be no danger of monopoly; for each parallel line, reaching, for instance, from the cotton plantation of America to the wareroom of Manchester, would compete with all the others, and so tend to keep down prices. It is largely owing to the want of touch between members of an industrial series that the parasitic speculator gets a chance. He lodges himself and spins his deadly

web in the gaps of the series, not between the parallel lines, but in breaks of continuity along the lines, and from that vantage-ground he wages war on his prey. Intellectualise and moralise industry in the way of making the members of a series better acquainted with each other's functions and business experiences, with a little more brotherly-mindedness in the pursuit of wealth, and the parasite will disappear with the dark nooks and crannies of the gaps which have served as his citadel.

The programme which has been sketched in the earlier portion of this paper is also radically different from that of the Socialists. It wages no war against the capitalist class. It sees no injury or danger to society in private ownership of capital. It has not a word to say against the State as an institution. Above all, it makes no attempt to import into industry the democratic expedient of counting of heads. It is precisely that method of choosing leaders by counting of heads, as Carlyle pointed out, which is the weakness of democracy. A popular vote favours the candidate who has the best ability for getting himself elected. It does not necessarily favour him who is ablest for the work to be done. Very often the voters have erroneous iews about the work to be done. Still oftener,

they cannot have the means of gauging the candidate's fitness for it. Voting is a poor mechanical contrivance at the best, a putting together of bones which may serve the purposes of a museum, but which is not well adapted for furnishing the basal skeleton on which living tissue is to grow. Productive co-operation has failed mainly because it has neglected the great social law of natural selection, just as democracies will fail if, by payment of members or otherwise, they tempt themselves to choose political leaders outside the ranks of those who in the free competition of life have proved themselves to be fit to govern. The rights of man only require that the different classes of society should be so dealt with as to give the Darwinian principle a fair field by eliminating those obstacles to it which arise from the distinctive qualities of humanity. A quadruped conveys no factitious advantage to its offspring to aid it in the struggle for existence. Among the lower animals there reigns that perfect equality which democrats desire. There is no hereditary peerage in their society. The son of the stoutest buffalo on the prairies must face the buffalo world in the strength of his own inherent qualities. He can show no inherited titledeeds giving him the right to prevail. He may be

L

a stronger buffalo than others in virtue of his sire. But at least his strength must be in his own limbs if he is to lead the herd and get the choicest pasture. It is different in human society. A strong sire may, by handing down title-deeds and accumulated wealth, so endow his offspring for centuries that the weaklings of his race will have an immense advantage over stronger sons of weaker sires in the battle of life. In our Blunderland of advanced civilisation the schoolboy often whips the schoolmaster; the foolish often rule the wise; the mute, inglorious Milton, whose music has been stifled by capricious fortune, may have to wait upon Squire Western, or tremble before Justice Shallow. This should not be. It need not be. It cannot long continue. By the adoption of very simple means, already at their command, the people can, without doing violence to any class, assert their rights. Men cannot be put on an equality by a stroke of the pen or a vote of the House of Commons. But it is possible so to open up the path of promotion, and so to put within the reach of all the means of equipping themselves for advancing along it, as to balance to a great degree the inherited privileges of the few. That is not saying that natural selection in society would improve the race by killing out the weak to favour