tion of employing one
another and paying one another; the teacher, for example, will be
educating the sons of the tramway men up to the requirements of the
public paymaster, and travelling in the trams to and from his work;
there will be close mutual observation and criticism, therefore, and a
strong community of spirit, and that will put very definite limits
indeed upon the possibly evil influence of class and service interests
in politics.

[16] _On Municipal and National Trading_, by Lord Avebury.
(Macmillan & Co., 1907.)

_Socialism would destroy Incentive and Efficiency._ This is dealt with
in Chapter V. on the Spirit of Gain and the Spirit of Service.

_Socialism is economically unsound._ The student of Socialism who
studies--and every student of Socialism should study very
carefully--the literature directed against Socialism, will encounter a
number of rather confused and frequently very confusing arguments
running upon "business" or "economic" lines. In nearly all of these
the root error is a misconception of the nature and aim of Socialist
claims. Sometimes this misconception is stated and manifest, often it
is subtly implied, and then it presents the greatest difficulties to
the inexpert dialectician. I find, for instance, Mr. W. H. Lever, in
an article on Socialism and Business in the _Magazine of Commerce_ for
October 1907, assuming that there will be no increase in the total
wealth of the community under Socialism, whereas, as my fourth chapter
shows, Socialist proposals in the matter of property aim directly at
the cessation of the waste occasioned by competition through the
duplication and multiplication of material and organizations (see for
example the quotation from Elihu, p. 69), and at the removal of the
obstructive claims of private ownership (see p. 65) from the path of
production. If Socialism does not increase the total wealth of the
community, Socialism is impossible.

Having made this assumption, however, Mr. Lever next assumes that all
contemporary business is productive of honest, needed commodities, and
that its public utility and its profitable conduct measure one
another. But this ignores the manifest fact that success in business
now-a-days is far more often won by the mere salesmanship of mediocre
or inferior or short-weight goods than it is by producing exceptional
value, and the Kentish railways, for example, are a standing contrast
of the conflict between public servic