Page:A hundred years hence - the expectations of an optimist (IA hundredyearshenc00russrich).pdf/87

 State. A public properly and sufficiently educated will, with enormous difficulty (because there is nothing so hard to get rid of as a bad habit of dependency), gradually undertake the task of doing for itself by free combination what at present we try to get done for us by governmental machinery. One sees how this sort of thing is gradually evolving, in spite of the violent efforts of politicians to shove the world backwards and keep us walking on crutches instead of strengthening us to walk alone. Statutes determining the wages of labourers and the price of commodities are laughed at as examples of mediæval foolishness, though (what is exactly the same thing in principle) Government still interferes with the freights charged by railway companies, and indeed is obliged thus to interfere because it has already gone out of the right way by the powers it has granted to railway companies. The new education—the education which builds character instead of merely diffusing information (generally useless)—will teach us the far greater advantages attaching to results attained by free combination, and the State will be relieved of many functions at present regarded as essential to it, and often sought to be increased.

Now the working of free combination for the attainment of these results would be almost impossible without the constant inter-