Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/388

 366 THE ECONOMIC JOURNAL against which the democracy sullenly revolts. In the interests of this autocracy, the real interests of each community tend to be ignored, to the detriment of its capacity to hold its own in the race struggle that competition between comnmnunites rather than between individuals in a comnmnunity which is perhaps now becoming the main field of natural selection. In examining each of these (tificulties in greater detail, it will be fair, as Mr. Courthey reminds us, to consider, not only how far they can be solved by the existing order and in what way they are actually being dealt with by the application of Socialist principles, but also what hope might, on the other hand, be found in the greatest possible development of Individualism. For to-day it is the Individualist who is offering us, as a solution of social difficulties, an untri.ed and nebulous Utopia; whilst the Socialist occupies the superaor position of calling only for the conscious and explicit adoption and extension of prin- ciples of social organization to which the stern logic of facts has already driven the practical man. History and experiment have indeed changed sides, and rank now among the allies of the practical Socialist reformer. Factory Acts and municipal gas-works we know, but the voice of Mr. Auberon Herbert, advocating ' voluntary taxation,' is as the voice of o. ne crying in the wildera.ess. Inequality in wealth distribution as, of course, no new thing, and it is mmecessary to contend that the inequality of the present age is more flagrant than that of its predecessors.' The extreme depth of poverty of those who actually die of starvation is, indeed, obviously no less than before; and when 35 per cent. of the million inhabitants of East London are found to be inadequately supplied with the bare necessaries of life, and probably a third of the entire community become paupers at 65, it would profit us little to inquire whether this percentage is greater or less than that during the Middle Ages. On the other hand, the wealth produc- tion of the community advances by leaps and bounds, being now far greater than ever it was, and greater than that of any other country of the Old World. The riches of a comparatively small the owners of our land and capital are colossal and number of increasing. Nor is inequality. there any doubt or dispute as to the causes of this The supersession of the petite by the grande industri has given the main fruits of invention and the new power over Nature to a comparatively small proprietary class, upon whom the mass of the people are dependent for leave to earn their living. When it suits any person having the use of land and capital to