t the rapidly extending sphere of
government control and service, or at the spread of voluntary
combinations which restrict individual liberty, it is evident that
the tendencies of social development at the close of the nineteenth
century are as strongly toward association and regulation as they were
at its beginning toward individualism and freedom from all control.

*90. Socialism.*--All of these changes are departures from the purely
competitive ideal of society. Together they constitute a distinct
movement toward a quite different ideal of society--that which is
described as socialistic. Socialism in this sense means the adoption
of measures directed to the general advantage, even though they
diminish individual freedom and restrict enterprise. It is the
tendency to consider the general good first, and to limit individual
rights or introduce collective action wherever this will subserve the
general good.

Socialism thus understood, the process of limiting private action and
introducing public control, has gone very far, as has been seen in
this and the preceding chapter. How far it is destined to extend, to
what fields of industry collective action is to be applied, and which
fields are to be left to individual action can only be seen as time
goes on. Many further changes in the same direction have been
advocated in Parliament and other public bodies in recent years and
failed of being agreed to by very small majorities only. It seems
almost certain from the progress of opinion that further socialistic
measures will be adopted within the near future. The views of those
who approve this socialistic tendency and would extend it still
further are well indicated in the following expressions used in the
minority report of the Royal Commission on Labor of 1895. "The whole
force of democratic statesmanship must, in our opinion, henceforth be
directed to the substitution as fast as possible of public for
capitalist enterprise, and where the substitution is not yet
practicable, to the strict and detailed regulation of all industrial
operations so as to secure to every worker the conditions of efficient
citizenship."

There is a somewhat different use of the word socialism, according to
which it means the deliberate adoption of such an organization of
society as will rid it of competition altogether. This is a complete
social and philosophic ideal, involving the consistent reorganization
of all society, and is very diff