instance, under such a system, each local unit is
responsible for its own activities and for its own discipline. It is
obvious that no matter how efficient the bureaucracy, it would hardly be
possible for a centralized authority to control, from one point, the six
millions of farms and the quarter million industrial establishments of
the United States. It is only where the handling of local matters rests
with those immediately concerned that the highest degree of local pride,
initiative and energy can be generated and maintained.

Such a system leaves the central authority free from detail so that it
may devote all of its energies to decisions on matters of general
policy, and to such procedure as affects the welfare of the whole rather
than of any particular part. Economic society, to be organized
successfully, must be built of units that will prove self-acting and
self-directing in all matters of purely local concern. At the same time,
a scheme of economic life must be devised that will make it easy and
natural for these economic units to function co-operatively in all
matters connected with the well-being of the whole industry or of the
whole economic society.

4. _Economic Forms_

Much has been done to organize the economic life of the planet,
particularly during the past two centuries. Prior to the industrial
revolution the economic life of the masses of the people, with the
exception of a little trading and shipping, was localized and
individualized in the village, the commune, the homestead and the home.
The industrial revolution, with its dependence upon mechanical power,
served to concentrate economic life in larger units--the factory, the
plant, the industrial city. As a matter of necessity, organization
followed in the wake of this concentration. The owners of industry
organized on the one side: the workers organized on the other. Besides
these two major forms of organization within the field of industry,
there was the organization of the state, which has played a leading role
in the life of present-day society.

The organization of the owners, which is far more complex and more
highly developed than that of the workers, has followed four general
lines:

1. The organization of one line of industry. Woolen mills in
Massachusetts and in New York unite to form the American Woolen
Company: sugar refineries are consolidated into the American Sugar
Refining Company.

2. The organization