582 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



easily suppose to be absent, common sense and prudence, if they 

 tried to extort the highest prices in cases of necessaries supposed 

 to be controlled by them, or, on the other hand, to reduce wages 

 to the lowest point, on the ground that laborers had no alterna- 

 tive work ; such would be dangerous policy for themselves, though 

 no doubt there would be a temptation to it which might prove too 

 great for some employers. Only in such a case of abuse would 

 the state be called upon to interfere, and either strictly regulate 

 or itself undertake the function abused. 



But the result of these several considerations is to put off uni- 

 versal socialism indefinitely as a natural evolution, and points 

 merely to the introduction of such partial applications of state 

 socialism as peremptory public exigence may require, in those 

 cases where a social function could not be intrusted to private 

 enterprise, whether monopolistic or competitive. 



There is also the tendency on the part of the laborers to co- 

 operative effort, from which some people expect the elevation 

 of the laborers and the composing of the quarrel between capital 

 and labor by merging the two ; and this tendency does certainly 

 exist ; it is, moreover, in the direction of socialism in the widest 

 sense of the word ; only it is a much slower tendency, and a small- 

 er one, more especially in the field of production, as already stated. 

 Of the two tendencies, one to co-operation on the part of labor, 

 and one to the spread and consolidation of companies on the part 

 of capital, the former will not develop fast enough. The com- 

 pany will develop much faster, and socialism might much sooner 

 come as the term of that evolution unchecked than through co- 

 operation. But the one might be restrained by the state, the other 

 might be quickened ; the state might become the workingman's 

 bank, to some extent, as it has been the creditor of the farmer 

 in Ireland ; it might lend at market rate, three or three and a half 

 per cent, to such associations of workers as had saved a moiety of 

 capital, if they could show the likelihood of success in their pro- 

 jected enterprise. But as this point has already been considered, 

 it is not necessary to enlarge on it here any further than to say 

 that the working classes, now that they have got so much political 

 power, may not improbably press for some state assistance to in- 

 crease the numbers of owners of capital, especially as the results 

 of unaided efforts must be extremely small and slow. 



What political action to improve their economical position 

 they may take can not be precisely stated. It is by no means 

 likely that they will ever combine to demand a maximum work- 

 ing day in England. They will not ask the help of the state for 

 the purpose ; nor will they, with the socialists, ask it to fix a mini- 

 mum of wages, which they can if they choose themselves fix 

 through trades-unions. They may ask for the nationalization 



