ore than the
restriction of governmental authority. In fact, true liberty consists,
as we have seen, not in divesting the government of effective power, but
in making it an instrument for the unhampered expression and prompt
enforcement of public opinion. The old negative conception of liberty
would in practice merely result in limiting the power of the government
to control social conditions. This would not necessarily mean, however,
the immunity of the individual from external control. To limit the power
of the government may permit the extension over the individual of some
other form of control even more irresponsible than that of the
government itself--the control which inevitably results from the
economic supremacy of a class who own the land and the capital.

The introduction of the factory system forced the great majority of
small independent producers down into the ranks of mere wage-earners,
and subjected them in their daily work to a class rule under which
everything was subordinated to the controlling purpose of the
employers--the desire for profits.

The significance of this change from the old handicraft system of
industry to present-day capitalistic production is fully understood by
all students of modern industry. Even Herbert Spencer, the great
expounder of individualism, admitted that the so-called liberty of the
laborer "amounts in practice to little more than the ability to exchange
one slavery for another" and that "the coercion of circumstances often
bears more hardly on him than the coercion of a master does on one in
bondage."[180] This dependence of the laborer, however, he regarded as
unfortunate, and looked forward to the gradual amelioration of present
conditions through the growth of co-operation in production.

Individualism as an economic doctrine was advocated in the eighteenth
century by those who believed in a larger measure of freedom for the
industrial classes. The small business which was then the rule meant the
wide diffusion of economic power. A _laissez faire_ policy would have
furthered the interests of that large body of small independent
producers who had but little representation in and but little influence
upon the government. It would have contributed materially to the
progress of the democratic movement by enlarging the sphere of
industrial freedom for all independent producers. It does not follow,
however, that this doctrine which served a useful purpose in connection
wi