THE COMING OF SOCIALISM 103 



enormously increased, and they have all been assumed 

 through the dispossession of individuals. 



But before we take the side of the Socialist in rejoicing 

 at this fact, or with the Individualist in bewailing it 

 before we take sides, if take sides we must it will be 

 well to ask a question which both have practically over- 

 looked. There is no doubt that State jmd civic enterprise 

 have increased^"Fut has private enterprise contracted? 

 Can the former increase only at the expense of the latter? 

 Are the two spheres mutually exclusive, or is it possible 

 that the general law of the growth of spiritual subjects, 

 whether individual or social, holds here too, and that each 

 in developing may strengthen its opposite? 



Let us look once more at the facts of the case the 

 facts cited by the Socialist to prove that ' ' every day they 

 limit private enterprise more closely, and by eliminating 

 private ownership remove the anarchic competition of 

 private greed." What do we see when we look abroad 

 at the commercial and industrial community of to-day? 

 Is it a mammoth State, a Leviathan, gradually absorbing 

 its citizens into itself, annihilating their private wills and 

 all the good and evil which spring therefrom, and reducing 

 them first into mere employees and then into mere tools? 

 Or is it a country whose people are more free, whose 

 private wealth is greater, whose individual enterprises are 

 more far-reaching, whose persons are more effective in 

 their command of the material conditions of life than at 

 any other period in its history? And is competition less 

 keen, and the race for wealth no longer run, except by 

 the few? We are told by those who are engaged in 

 business, whether its scale be great or small, that com- 

 petition is daily becoming more sharp, and that the weak 



