se are the three directions in which the greatest amount
of creative power has been developed lately.

Of course, none of these may, in any degree, be taken as a substitute
for Communism, or even for Socialism, both of which imply the common
possession of the instruments of production. But we certainly must look
at all these attempts as upon _experiments_--like those which Owen,
Fourier, and Saint Simon tried in their colonies--experiments which
prepare human thought to conceive some of the practical forms in which a
communist society might find its expression. The synthesis of all these
partial experiments will have to be made some day by the constructive
genius of some one of the civilized nations. But samples of the bricks
out of which the great synthetic building will have to be built, and
even samples of some of its rooms, are being prepared by the immense
effort of the constructive genius of man.

BRIGHTON.

_January, 1913._

THE CONQUEST OF BREAD

CHAPTER I

OUR RICHES

I

The human race has travelled a long way, since those remote ages when
men fashioned their rude implements of flint and lived on the precarious
spoils of hunting, leaving to their children for their only heritage a
shelter beneath the rocks, some poor utensils--and Nature, vast,
unknown, and terrific, with whom they had to fight for their wretched
existence.

During the long succession of agitated ages which have elapsed since,
mankind has nevertheless amassed untold treasures. It has cleared the
land, dried the marshes, hewn down forests, made roads, pierced
mountains; it has been building, inventing, observing, reasoning; it has
created a complex machinery, wrested her secrets from Nature, and
finally it pressed steam and electricity into its service. And the
result is, that now the child of the civilized man finds at its birth,
ready for its use, an immense capital accumulated by those who have gone
before him. And this capital enables man to acquire, merely by his own
labour combined with the labour of others, riches surpassing the dreams
of the fairy tales of the Thousand and One Nights.

The soil is cleared to a great extent, fit for the reception of the best
seeds, ready to give a rich return for the skill and labour spent upon
it--a return more than sufficient for all the wants of humanity. The
methods of rational cultivation are known.

On the wide prairies of America each hundred men, with the aid of