ue, but to the making
of permanent improvements, which would give employment to the people, and
make them content with the new order of things. Highways, parks, public
buildings, monuments, could be builded; nor would it be out of place to
give better factories and homes to the workers. Such in itself would be
socialistic, save that it would be done by the oligarchs, a class apart.
With the interest rate down to zero, and no field for the investment of
sporadic capital, savings among the people would utterly cease, and
old-age pensions be granted as a matter of course. It is also a logical
necessity of such a system that, when the population began to press
against the means of subsistence, (expansion being impossible), the birth
rate of the lower classes would be lessened. Whether by their own
initiative, or by the interference of the rulers, it would have to be
done, and it would be done. In other words, the oligarchy would mean the
capitalization of labor and the enslavement of the whole population. But
it would be a fairer, juster form of slavery than any the world has yet
seen. The per capita wage and consumption would be increased, and, with
a stringent control of the birth rate, there is no reason why such a
country should not be so ruled through many generations.

On the other hand, as the capitalistic exploitation of the planet
approaches its maximum, and countries are crowded out of the field of
foreign exchanges, there is a large likelihood that their change in
direction will be toward socialism. Were the theory of collective
ownership and operation then to arise for the first time, such a movement
would stand small chance of success. But such is not the case. The
doctrine of socialism has flourished and grown throughout the nineteenth
century; its tenets have been preached wherever the interests of labor
and capital have clashed; and it has received exemplification time and
again by the State's assumption of functions which had always belonged
solely to the individual.

When capitalistic production has attained its maximum development, it
must confront a dividing of the ways; and the strength of capital on the
one hand, and the education and wisdom of the workers on the other, will
determine which path society is to travel. It is possible, considering
the inertia of the masses, that the whole world might in time come to be
dominated by a group of industrial oligarchies, or by one great
oligarchy,