s of a governing body depend almost
entirely upon the suitability to its particular function of the size
and quality of the constituency it represents and the area it
administers. This may be stated with something approaching scientific
confidence. A local governing body for too small an area or elected
upon an unsound franchise _cannot_ be efficient. But obviously before
you can transfer property from private to collective control you must
have something in the way of a governing institution which has a
reasonably good chance of developing into an efficient controlling
body. The leading conception of this Administrative Area paper
appeared subsequently running through a series of tracts, _The New
Heptarchy Series_, in which one finds it applied first to this group
of administrative problems and then to that.[23] These tracts are
remarkable if only because they present the first systematic
recognition on the part of any organized Socialist body of the fact
that a scientific reconstruction of the methods of government
constitutes not simply an incidental but a necessary part of the
complete Socialist scheme, the first recognition of the widening scope
of the Socialist design that makes it again a deliberately
constructive project.[24]

[22] See Appendix to _Mankind in the Making_. (Chapman and
Hall, 1905.)

[23] 1. _Municipalization by Provinces._ 2. _On the Reform
of Municipal Service._ 3. _Public Control of Electric Power
and Transit._ 4. _The Revival of Agriculture: a National
Policy for Great Britain._ 5. _The Abolition of Poor Law
Guardians._ Others to follow. (Fabian Society, 1905-6.)

[24] This generalization is a sweeping one, and would need,
were one attempting to give more than a very broad
impression of the sequence of Socialist ideas, considerable
modification. Such earlier tracts as _The New Reform Bill_,
_Facts for Londoners_, _Facts for Bristol_, dealt mainly
with the question of machinery.

It is only an initial recognition, a mere first raid into a great and
largely unexplored province of study. This province is in the broadest
terms, social psychology. A huge amount of thought, discussion,
experiment, is to be done in this field--needs imperatively to be done
before the process of the socialization of economic life can go very
far beyond its present attainments. Except for these first admissions,
Socialism has