Agricultural alternatives 459 



system also. It seems that in agriculture at least there are two possible 

 alternatives, either a final settlement of the wage-question on a footing 

 satisfactory to the labourer, or a return to avrovpyia. Probably neither 

 of these will be found to exclude the other or to be equally applicable 

 to the circumstances of all countries. That communal ownership and 

 shifting tenure can be revived seems impossible under modern con- 

 ditions, whatever some Socialists may fancy. On the other hand 

 voluntary cooperation in marketing seems to have a great future before 

 it. Of a movement in that direction I have found no traces among 

 the ancients : but modern developments in the way of transport may 

 remove many difficulties. At any rate it is in such efforts of adaptation 

 and compromise that expert agriculturists seem to be looking for help. 

 As to labour, slavery and serfdom being excluded from modern civilized 

 states, the coming problem is how to secure the performance of agri- 

 cultural work. The choice Ijes between attractive wage-conditions, 

 appealing to individual interest, and the Socialist scheme of tasks 

 carried out under official direction, assumed to be in the best interests 

 of a whole community. Both plans offer a substitute for the crude 

 compulsory methods vainly employed in the ancient world. Which 

 plan is the more suited to the demands of human nature, whether self- 

 disposal or communism is to be the dominant aim and note of society, 

 coming generations must decide. 



