Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/232

218 first plea appears to be sound in principle, though it may often have been applied to cases not properly coming within it. As to the second, the convenience of giving to an all but universal custom the force of law is incontestable, but it is at least doubtful whether this is sufficient to deprive individuals who deliberately wish to put themselves outside it of the liberty of doing so. Unless their action could be brought within the first line of argument, sufficient reason for restraint does not appear.

These limitations of individual liberty are familiar to us, and have obtained a firm hold in our legislation; but we enter upon comparatively new ground when we turn to the proposals that an increasing number of industries should be undertaken and directed by state or municipality, and that a minimum and not inadequate subsistence should be assured to all those engaged in such industries, if indeed the principle be not presently extended outside the monopolies so established. The ideas which are clothed in the phrases "the socialization of the instruments of industry" and "the guarantee of a minimum wage to all workmen "appear to involve a complete reorganization of society and an absolute abandonment of the theories of the past. This is not enough to justify their immediate rejection or their immediate acceptance. The past has not been so good that we can refuse to look at any proposals, however strange in appearance, offering a better promise for the future. It has not been so bad that we must abandon its methods in despair, as if no change could be for the worse, if not for the better. No one could now be found to deny the possibility, and few to question the utility, of the socialization of some services. The post office is in all civilized countries organized as a national institution, and the complaints that are sometimes heard as to defects in its administration never extend to a demand for its abolition. Some of our largest municipalities have undertaken the supply of water and of gas, or even of electric light, to the inhabitants, and a movement has begun, which seems likely to be extended, of undertaking the service of tramways. Demands have also been made for the municipalization or nationalization of the telephone service.

New considerations of great difficulty arise when we pass to the suggestion of the undertaking by local authorities of productive industries not in the nature of monopolies. In monopolies direct competition, often competition in any shape, is practically impossible; in other industries competition is a general rule; and it is by virtue of such competition that the members of the community do in the long run obtain their wants supplied in the most economical manner. When commodities are easily carried without serious deterioration, the constantly changing conditions of production and of transport induce a constant variation in the