388 STUDIES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL CHAP. 



would be more beneficial and more calculated to promote 

 the higher interests of man. And if these industrial 

 armies were allowed to reap the full advantages, material 

 as well as moral, which they created, the results would be 

 so striking that almost the entire population, male and 

 female alike, would claim to be so trained and organized 

 for their own physical, moral, and economic benefit. And 

 the enjoyment of life under such a system of voluntary 

 organized labour would be so enhanced that few indeed 

 would wish to escape from it. Labour in companionship 

 for the common good almost ceases to be labour at all. 

 Friendly emulation takes the place of unfriendly 

 competition, and esprit de corps urges each local organ- 

 isation to surpass other local organizations in efficiency. 

 In such a grand industrial organization, with equal 

 opportunities of education and training for all, there 

 would necessarily be numbers of inventors and students 

 whose aim and delight would be to so improve the 

 machinery and the methods of work as to continually 

 diminish all the less pleasant forms of labour, and thus 

 proportionately increase the amount of leisure and the 

 higher enjoyments of social life. 



It has been objected to all such proposals for the 

 organization of industry that it would deteriorate 

 character by destroying individuality; but no such 

 objection is made to the military organization, while 

 under its best forms the reverse is found to occur. In 

 point of fact, all organization is beneficial to character 

 just in proportion as it rises above slavery. And when it 

 shall have reached the point of being the organization of 

 social equals for the equal benefit of all, it will attain to 

 its most beneficial influence. Then, character and merit 

 will alone give authority, and the highest and best will 

 inevitably rise to the highest positions. And, just in 

 proportion as the rank and file became educated, and felt 

 the inspiring influences of comradeship and emulation, 

 they could be left more and more to their own initiative ; 

 each one's individuality would have the fullest play, 

 controlled only by the influence and opinion of his 

 immediate fellow- workers, and the whole great organiza- 



