INDIVIDUALISM VERSUS COLLECTIVISM. 219 



sources of cheapest supply that is, of supply under conditions of 

 least toil and effort and any arrest of this mobility involves a 

 corresponding setback in the advancement of the economic con- 

 dition of mankind. It is a necessary consequence of this process 

 that the local production of special commodities should be sub- 

 ject to diminution and extinction, and that the labors hitherto 

 engaged in such local production should become gradually worth- 

 less. There would be a danger of pressure to do away with in- 

 vasive competition action which would be destructive of the 

 most powerful cause of improvement in the condition of the peo- 

 ple. The position thus taken may be illustrated by an experience 

 to which I have elsewhere referred, but so pregnant with sugges- 

 tion that I need not apologize for recalling it. My native county, 

 Cornwall, was in my boyhood the scene of widespread activity in 

 copper and tin mining. There had not been wanting warnings 

 that the competition of richer deposits in far countries would put 

 an end to these industries in the county, but the warnings had not 

 been realized and remained unheeded. In the years that have 

 since passed they have been gradually and almost completely ful- 

 filled. The mines were abandoned one by one, and the population 

 of the county has steadily diminished in every recent census. 

 What would the experience have been had the mines been a 

 county or national property worked by county or nation ? Can 

 one think that the same process would have been maintained had 

 the collective owner worked the mines directly, and the working- 

 men looked to county or nation for the continuance of work and 

 wages ? However much we may contemplate the reconstruction 

 of an industrial system, it must, if it is to be a living social or- 

 ganism, be constantly responsive to the ever-changing conditions 

 of growth ; some parts must wax while others wane, extending 

 here and contracting there, and manifesting at every moment 

 those phenomena of vigor and decline which characterize life. In 

 the development of industry new and easier ways are constantly 

 being invented of doing old things ; places are being discovered 

 better suited for old industries than those to which resort had 

 been made; there is a continuous supersession of the worth of 

 known processes and of the utility of old forms of work involving 

 a supersession, or at least a transfer, of the labor hitherto devoted 

 to them. All these things compel a perpetual shifting of seats of 

 industry and of the settlements of man, and no organization can 

 be entertained as practicable which does not lend itself to those 

 necessities. They are the prerequisites of a diminution of the toil 

 of humanity. As I have said before, the theory of. individual 

 liberty, however guarded, afforded a working plan ; society could 

 and did march under it. The scheme of collective action gives no 

 such promise of practicability ; it seems to lack the provision of 



