through
several generations, is in grave danger of immediate catastrophe. The
whole world is in the position of an insolvent debtor who is so deeply
involved that his creditors cannot afford to let him go into bankruptcy,
and so keep him out of the Poor Debtor's Court by doling out support
from day to day. Confidence is the only thing that keeps matters going;
what happens when this is lost is now being demonstrated in many parts
of Europe. The optimist claims that increased production, coupled with
enforced economy, will produce a satisfactory solution, but there is no
evidence that labour, now having the whip-hand, will give up its present
advantage sufficiently to make this possible; even if it did, payment
must be in the form of exchange or else in further promises to pay,
while the capacity of the world for consumption is limited somewhere,
though thus far "big business" has failed to recognize this fact. At
present the interest charges on debts, both public and private, have
reached a point where they come near to consuming all possible profits
even from a highly accelerated rate of production. Altogether it is
reasonable to assume that the present financial-industrial system is
near its term for reasons inherent in itself, let alone the possibility
of a further extension of the drastic and completely effective measures
of destruction that are characteristics of Bolshevism and its
blood-brothers.

Assuming that this is so, two questions arise: what is to take the place
of imperial industry, and how is this substitution to be brought about?

I think the answer to the first is: a social and industrial system based
on small, self-contained, largely self-sufficing units, where supply
follows demand, where production is primarily for use not profit, and
where in all industrial operations some system will obtain which is more
or less that of the guilds of the Middle Ages. I should like to go into
this a little more in detail before trying to answer the second
question.

The normal social unit is a group of families predominantly of the same
race, territorially compact, of substantially the same ideals as
expressed in religion and the philosophy of life, and sufficiently
numerous to provide from within itself the major part of those things
which are necessary to physical, intellectual and spiritual well-being.
It should consist of a central nucleus of houses, each with its garden,
the churches, schools and public buil