cial reconstruction that emerges
from that criticism. We have now to enter upon the question of ways
and means, the economic question. We have to ask whether the vision we
have conjured up of a whole population well fed, well clad, well
educated--in a word, well brought-up--is, after all, only an amiable
dream. Is it true that humanity is producing all that it can produce
at the present time, and managing everything about as well as it can
be managed; that, as a matter of fact, there isn't enough of food and
care to go round, and hence the unavoidable anxiety in the life of
every one (except in the case of a small minority of exceptionally
secure people), and the absolute wretchedness of vast myriads of the
poorer sort?

The Socialist says, No! He asserts that our economic system is as
chaotic and wasteful as our system of rearing children--is only
another aspect of the same planlessness--that it does its work with a
needless excess of friction, that it might be far simpler and almost
infinitely more productive than it is.

Let us detach ourselves a little from our everyday habits of thinking
in these matters; let us cease to take customary things for granted,
and let us try and consider how our economic arrangements would strike
a disinterested intelligence that looked at them freshly for the first
time. Let us take some matter of primary economic importance, such as
the housing of the population, and do our best to criticize it in this
spirit of personal aloofness.

In order to do that, let us try to detach ourselves a little from our
own personal interest in these affairs. Imagine a mind ignorant of our
history and traditions, coming from some other sphere, from some world
more civilized, from some other planet perhaps, to this earth. Would
our system of housing strike it as the very wisest and most practical
possible, would it really seem to be the attainable maximum of outcome
for human exertion, or would it seem confused, disorderly, wasteful
and bad? The Socialist holds that the latter would certainly be the
verdict of such an impartial examination.

What would our visitor find in such a country as England, for example?
He would find a few thousand people housed with conspicuous comfort
and sumptuousness, in large, airy and often extremely beautiful homes
equipped with every convenience--except such as economize labour--and
waited on by many thousands of attendants. He would find next, several
hundreds of th