III.

THERE is also the tendency on the part of the. labourers to co-operative effort, from which some people expect the elevation of the labourers and the composing of the quarrel between capital and labour by merging the two; and this tendency does certainly exist; it is, moreover, in the direction of Socialism in the widest sense of the word; only it is a much slower tendency, and a smaller one, more especially in the field of production, as already stated. Of the two tendencies, one to co-operation on the part of labour, and one to the spread and consolidation of companies on the part of capital, the former will not develop fast enough. The company will develop much faster, and Socialism might much sooner come as the term of that evolution unchecked than through co-operation. But the one might be restrained by the State; the other might be quickened; the State might become the working man's bank, to some extent, as it has been the creditor of the farmer in Ireland; it might lend at market rate, say at 3 or 3 per cent., to such associations of workers as had saved a moiety of capital, if they could show the likelihood of success in their projected enterprise. But as this point has already been considered, it is not necessary to enlarge on it here any further than to say that the working classes, now that they have got so much political power, may not improbably press for some State assistance to increase the number of owners of capital, especially as the results of unaided efforts must be extremely small and slow.

What political action to improve their economical position they may take cannot be precisely stated. It is by no means likely that they will ever combine to demand a maximum working day in England. They will not ask the help of the State for the purpose; nor will they, with the Socialists, ask it to fix a minimum of wages, which they can if they choose themselves fix through Trades Unions. They may ask for the nationalization of the land; though it is not clear, if landlords were compensated, what they would gain by it beyond the creation of small farmers, the granting of allotments to agricultural or other labourers, as an occupation for slack times; all of which may be secured otherwise: so that it is not easy to forecast the resultant line of action of the working classes, more especially as the interests of the skilled and unskilled labourers are not always identical, however the desires for higher wages and fewer hours may be common to both.

IV.

THUS far as to the existing tendencies. As to the final goal, it is very difficult to say what it will be, or what the end in which society will rest (if, indeed, it ever attains to rest other than provisional equilibrium). And it is difficult because of the new and unforeseen factors that arise in the course of an everexpanding evolution which might upset our calculations; new factors, industrial, social, moral, religious; new physical discoveries, like steam or electricity, that might revolutionize industry; new moral or religious forces that might revolutionize manners, and

the scheme of life, and with it indirectly the distribution of wealth; and great physical discoveries and inventions affecting industry, we may indeed certainly look for as in the normal course of evolution.

Society may indeed come to the collective ownership of land and capital, but it will not be for a long time; it may come to equality of material goods, but it will be at a time still more remote. On the other hand, the system of private property and freedom of contract may last indefinitely or for ever; but if it does, we may safely prophesy that it will be brought more in accordance with reason, justice, and the general good, and, though there be never equality of property, there will be a nearer approach to equality of opportunities, and a somewhat nearer approximation of the existing great extremes of fortune.

Eminent writers during the past hundred years have prophesied far more confidently as to the future: Karl Marx, as we have seen, that the concentration of capital in the hands of a few would lead, naturally, necessarily, and at no distant date, to their expropriation, and to a Collectivist régime; and De Tocqueville, that society was being borne invincibly to a state of general equality of conditions, where the State would continually become more powerful. On the other hand, the sociologists, who, if their science were all that its name implies, should be able to forecast the future, "to look into the seeds of time and say which grains would grow and which would not," predict very differently: Comte, that the concentration of capital in ever fewer hands would and should lead definitively, to the political rule of the capitalists, tempered by the

counsel of positive philosophers, and that within a short space of time; while Herbert Spencer, as we have already seen, filled with the doctrine of evolution, and impressed with the lesson it teaches as to the length of time required for changes for the better, discerns at " the limits of evolution," countless generations hence, as goal, a system of property and contract, purified and supplemented by voluntary benevolence, with the authority of the State reduced to a minimum.

In like manner Mill prophesied; but his conclusion was different. He prophesied that co-operative production, "sooner than people in general imagined," would transform society by superseding the capitalist employer; and with respect to the two exactly opposite prophecies of Mill and Comte, all that need be said is that neither of them has been as yet fulfilled. Co-operative production has not advanced, nor, on the other hand, has the capitalist attained supreme political power, though of the two perhaps the prophecy of Comte has come nearer to fulfilment.

When De Tocqueville wrote his remarkable book on "Democracy in America," the new tendency to inequality had not shown itself in America, there was great equality of conditions, and there was likewise considerable equality of conditions in France as a consequence of the Revolution. De Tocqueville generalized from what he then saw, and prophesied a further and a general equality, though somewhat prematurely, because a tendency to a prodigious inequality was setting in at the time he was writing, a tendency first manifested in England, that increased, spread,

embraced the civilized world, that was followed by a new social conquest, and the rise of a new and potent monied aristocracy. It grew greater; and generalizing from this tendency, Karl Marx prophesied it would grow still greater until all capital was concentrated in a few hands: the capitalists would then be expropriated, and Socialism and equality would come. But Marx, as already stated, based his prophecy on a misread tendency, a short tendency which had spent its full force before he died, just as De Tocqueville based his prediction on a supposed tendency gathered from the facts of a generation earlier. Both were wrong, a great current towards inequality came, especially in America, after De Tocqueville wrote, in 1835, just as there came a check to the concentration of capital in fewer hands, and a tendency to its dispersal, before Marx died.

Others also have prophesied in our century, though without pretending to base their predictions on the scientific study of political or social phenomena: St. Simon, that the golden age was in the future, and that society would reach it through his doctrine ; Carlyle, that the abyss lay before society, unless the Great Man appeared to save it. To the like effect the poet-laureate also speaks: “Before Earth reach her earthly best a God must mingle with the game."

What is the lesson to be gathered from the prophets and writers on the science of society? Not that we should expect an early and radical transformation of society; neither the supremacy of a few capitalists, nor yet their early expropriation; hardly even that we should expect the coming of the