have opened and popularized this speculation. A growing number of writers, and among them economists of the first rank, do not hesitate to put the aim toward far greater economic equality on a par with the two other equalities. Nor is the aim confined any longer to books.

A distinguished Australian judge, the late Sir William Windeyer, said while in this country: "We have not learned to manage our social legislation without most regrettable blunders. Our state railways have got into politics, there has been jobbery, and the application of the best inventions has been kept back by selfish interests. We have lived gluttonously on borrowed money, and piled up large city debts. All this is true, but it is not all the truth. It all came so fast that it ran away with us. We are beginning to face the situation, and shall eventually learn our lesson. Meantime, in spite of our blundering, nothing would induce the Australian people to turn back. We have accepted the democratic principle, and shall learn in good time to apply it industrially to our monopolies, as we have learned to apply it generally to politics."

Much of this legislation shows openly and directly that it aims to make the massing of great private fortunes increasingly difficult. One of the foremost of New Zealand legislators, Hon. W. P. Reeves, states the purpose with great boldness, "It is the unconcealed object of our social legislation to make democracy consistent and possible-to create conditions. out of which such threatening extremes of wealthownership cannot grow." These attempts may fail. Capital may take wings, and the daring of individual

enterprise may be dulled to the general loss; but a multitude of people are so incredulous about this that legislators will be compelled to far wider experimenting in the same general direction.

Thus, in the world of comparative politics, this clearly conceived ideal of giving labor a new chance, of using the powers of government expressly to this end, has been openly accepted. It is conspicuously under trial. Its story occupies increasing space in the laborer's thought. Though failure follow in its track, the heart of this great purpose is a noble one: to use the full strength of public authority to raise the standard of comfort, of leisure, and of culture among those classes that have known far too little of either. As this endeavor becomes known, it raises hopes for the future and discontent with actual limitations. Every ideal passion among the laboring sections now centres about this aspiration to raise this life standard and to preserve it against all adversaries.

Thus far the actual proofs that popular government can perform these prodigies in well-doing are meagre enough, but the effort will be made, and it will come through the avenues of politics.

It is thus the sum of these causes of unrest, reaching new intensity in each succeeding period of business depression, and assuming a more consciously political character, that distinguishes the restlessness. of our age.

It is here that we reach such important difference as there is between our unrest and that of the past. The forces of discontent can now show themselves in politics. Even if our dissatisfactions are no greater than in other days; even if they are fewer, they have

found a more effective medium of expression. It is not only discontent plus education; not only discontent plus the press to voice it; it is discontent plus the vote. The spirit of revolt can now make record of itself in political activity. It can be turned to account by every demagogue. It can create legislation and direct the machinery of government. The word "socialism" stands for the new defiance. It embodies the unrest and the disapproval of commercial society as it now exists.

CHAPTER IV

THE SOCIAL QUESTION AND ITS ECONOMIC SIGNIFICANCE

ONE sees social questions innumerable, but what is meant by "the social question," as if a single issue dominated all others; as if society were afflicted with a single ailment? Statesmen and economists of first eminence can be quoted as speaking and writing upon "the question " as if so simple a term covered the facts. I have seen in a private library nearly one hundred different volumes and pamphlets with the title "The Social Question," or titles strictly synonymous, implying that some one all-inclusive issue had arisen to vex the present generation.

It is first to be noted that those who speak of "the social question" differ widely and often radically as to what the question is. There is a social question to the ultra-individualist, Auberon Herbert, but it has scarcely a single point in common with the social question of that man of ponderous learning, Dr. Schaeffle. Henry George had his question, but it differed fundamentally in two out of the three chief points from the question of Sidney Webb and John Burns. There is not one issue, nor the same issue, for the single taxer and for the socialist. It is an error well-nigh humorous to suppose that even socialists have anything like a single issue. Compare the Marx tradition with that of the English Fabians, or

with that of the able collectivist leaders of the Belgian Parliament. Both in theory and in practical remedies are differences not only of degree, but of kind. Even a little study of the social literature shows that in doctrine and in practice the writers are dealing with a great variety of conflicting issues. I have made from this literature, in the last fifteen years, a list of eighty-four "remedies" for the social question, i.e. remedies that were believed to be sovereign. The causes of our ills, in these writings, were fewer than the remedies, but the "root evils" were so many and so various, that to speak of a question or the question without explanation is open to confusion. Is it "over-production" or "under-consumption"? Is it "adherence to the gold standard" or is it the "silver craze"? Is it "monopolies" or "speculation" or

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extravagance" or "over-saving"? Is it the "three rents" or the "private ownership of land"? These are a few of the most commonly assigned causes of our troubles that are most nearly akin. But who could create out of them a single issue? Especially if remedies are introduced, we face many questions, and not one question. If the followers of Henry George are right in holding that the present forms of private land ownership constitute the supreme evil, they are justified in insisting upon "the question and upon "the remedy." The socialist who adds to the George evil the private control of the "means of production" raises new complications for which a simple formula is more difficult. If the socialist has become confessedly "opportunist," the simple formula, for theory and its application, is still more inadequate. Shall the term " social question," then, be