f its own special interest! The result would
resemble the helter-skelter of modern economic society.

7. _Effective Economic Units_

Economic life has been haphazard in the past. In the future it will be
one of the most scientifically built of all human institutions. It is so
vital a part of the social life, and it yields itself so readily to
structural co-ordination that the best structural minds will turn to it
perforce, as the logical field for their activities.

The economic structure of the future, to be sound, must be built of
effective working units. It is as impossible to build a live social
system with dead component elements as it is to build a live body with
dead cells.

At least for the time being, an intricate and complicated structure is
needed to handle the problem of livelihood. As time goes on, the nature
of the economic system may be greatly modified, and its structure
simplified correspondingly. While the complicated economic structure
remains, however, the problem will be one of co-relating the activities
of vast numbers of economic units, and of prevailing on them to function
with less friction and greater harmony.

Like every social structure, the economic system will be built up of
lesser social groups, beginning with the simplest local body of farmers,
miners or mill workers, and continuing on, by successive stages of
organization to the largest and most highly complex groups in the
community.

The nature of each of the units that enters into the economic structure
must vary with the locality, with the industry, and so on, hence it will
prove to be impossible to lay down any arbitrary rules concerning their
organization. It is possible, however, to suggest certain
characteristics that must be present in effective working units:

1. _The economic unit, which is to be built into the new society as
stones are built into a wall, must bear a very close relation to the
present working forms of economic life._

Ultimately, the economic units of which society is composed will differ
completely from those now existing. It is quite out of the question,
however, to build a new economic structure and new economic units at the
same time. Habit and convention are too strong. Innovation is too
terrifying and too problematical. The life of local economic units will
be carried on to-morrow very much as it is carried on to-day by the
masses of the people. The most workable economic superstru