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Rh sanctioned, it might afford a precedent for transferring the entire burden of maintaining children from their parents to the State.

Nothing seems to be a more marked tendency of the present day than the growing inclination there is to seek the intervention of the State in matters which before were left to individual effort. This reliance upon the State may be regarded as an essential characteristic of socialism in its present phase, and we shall have occasion to describe the important economic influence which may be exercised by such an application of the socialistic principle. Thus in discussing the subject of the nationalization of the land, it will be shown that this is just such an application of the socialistic principle as that to which we are now referring. Nationalization of the land means that all the land in the country should be bought by the State, and distributed at what is termed a fair price among the entire people. The advocates of the scheme hope that in this way, through the intervention of the State, all those who wish to possess land would not have to wait until they could purchase it in the open market, but would be able to obtain it from the State whenever they wanted it, on reasonable terms. We have here only referred to the scheme as affording an example of what we wish to signify by modern socialism. We will postpone any further discussion of it to a subsequent chapter.