the leading countries are busy planning how
and where the next war is to be fought. (See "The Next War," Will Erwin.
Dutton, 1921; "The Coming War with America," John MacLean. British
Socialist Party, 1920; "War in the Future," F. von Bernbardi. Berlin,
1920; "The Inevitable War between Japan and America," F. Wencker.
Stuttgart, 1921; "Coal, Iron and War," E.C. Eckel. New York, Holt, 1920,
etc.) Before the grass was green over the graves where lies the flower
of Europe's manhood, leaders of the present order were busy with the
blueprints of another carnage.

The facts speak for themselves. The existence of such chaos is a matter
of every day comment and experience. Though its nature and its causes
are little understood, there is no issue of more immediate concern to
the western world than the intelligent solution of the vexing questions
arising out of the production and distribution of wealth.

Until the Russian Revolution of 1917, the entire western world was so
organized that one group or class owned the land, the machines and the
productive devices with which other groups or classes worked in order to
live. The establishment of this "capitalist" system between 1750 when it
had its start in England, and 1860, when it secured a foothold in Japan,
has raised certain questions of economic procedure which lie at the
background of the economic problems which men are seeking to understand
and to solve.

There is no necessity for an elaborate discussion of these problems,
since they are at the moment quite generally under the dissecting knife
of social students, reformers and revolutionaries. They may be divided
into two main groups:--those which are localized in character and those
which are world-wide in character. Perhaps the latter group might be
called "worldized."

2. _Localized Problems_

There are a number of outstanding economic problems that affect locally,
each community that has adopted the capitalist system. Among the most
important of them are:

1. The relations between the job owner and the job taker.

These relations involve the question as to whether job control shall be
vested in those who hold the property or in those who do the work. The
issue is an old one, intensified to-day by the absentee ownership which
stocks and bonds make possible, and aggravated by the presence of vast
industrial establishments in which there are employed thousands of
workers without the possibility of any direct co