TIIE A M E R1C A N - S C A N1) IN A VIA N R E VIE JV 
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of the Icelandic middleman has been on the increase, as a result of 
the pressure ot international commerce and exchange. The wealth 
ot the island tends more and more to become concentrated in the 
hands of the agents of distribution, and their substantial control of 
the bureaucracy and thereby of the State itself would be only a matter 
of time were it not for the competition of certain more representative 
agencies, viz., the national government and the co-operative societies. 
Economic conditions arising out of the war compelled the Ice¬ 
landic government to go into business on its own account, and the 
emergency agency then established is at present writing still in opera¬ 
tion. There is of course great opposition to State distribution, which 
if made permanent would undermine the power of the commercial 
classes, and an indefinite continuance of the system is hardly contem¬ 
plated, but the experience has at least served to break the ice and to 
familiarize the public with a possible means of regulating or if need 
be eliminating private control of distribution. More important than 
the State’s experiments in this field are the activities of the co-opera¬ 
tive societies, which afford a means of doing away with the middleman 
altogether. The co-operative movement is naturally not popular 
with those scheduled for elimination, but seems to have taken firm 
root among the peasantry, who are alive to the necessity of cheaper 
buying and marketing. 
We are now able to undertake a summary of Icelandic political 
tendencies in terms of the economic struggle for power on which, 
however obscurely, these tendencies are inevitably based. So inter¬ 
preted, two mutually antagonistic groups stand forth, viz., a group 
representative of the orthodox agencies of distribution and a group 
supporting the co-operative movement. Between these rivals there 
can be no compromise, and the fight promises to be long and hard. 
It will be decided in favor of the co-operatives if these are able to 
attract into their ranks a large proportion of the official class. With¬ 
out attempting to make any predictions, it may be said that so far the 
bureaucracy for the most part has either held aloof or sided with the 
tradesmen, but that its point of view has not yet become fixed, and it 
is possible enough that economic pressure may eventually induce many 
of its members to go over to the co-operative group in spite of the 
social drawing power of riches which is at bottom the best asset of 
the commercial class. In any case the bureaucracy, because of its 
relative poverty, cannot maintain much longer the unique independ¬ 
ence which it acquired before the middleman rose to affluence. If 
it is not absorbed into the co-operative movement, it will eventually 
become subsidiary to the business interests, which even now are depriv¬ 
ing it of its once assured social preeminence. 
