Page:Future of England - Peel.djvu/63

Rh and our capital—which combine to rear it. But what is it, this industrial organisation, actually in itself?

London, again, guides us down all the multiplicity of her streets to an initial answer. For that city is the world centre of the small method of production: tiny industries flourish there in any number, and will continue to do so. They are bred by hope, the confidence of the small man that he can fight his own hand and can be sergeant instead of private in the grand army of life. And so we trace in London, as in all other of our cities, an infinity of retail shops, of personal businesses, of minnows living in the whirlpool as best they can, of small parties foraging against poverty, of vedettes feeling the way for the Napoleonic hosts of commerce, until we climb to the room of the solitary worker, who has no master but the morrow for which he has not provided, and no subordinate but the yesterday which he has won from death.

One main division of our industrial structure is, therefore, the small business. But if we apply to this department the ideas of socialism and syndicalism, these have no meaning and are of no use here, while even trade unionism can find poor footing in this broken ground.

To propose that these businesses with their ups and downs of fortune should be socialised and acquired by the State is obviously impracticable. To advocate that the workers themselves should