ion? A. On the ground that it brings into play a
man's best qualities.--Q. Does it effect this? A. This is occasionally
its result, but it also brings out his worst qualities by stimulating
him to struggle with his fellows for the relative improvement of his
own position rather than for the absolute advancement of the interests
of all."[252]

"Apart altogether from its injustice, competitive capitalism, regarded
as a system of serving the community, is a business bungle. What the
party of the Fourth Estate objects to in the existing commercial and
industrial system is, not merely the stealages which go on under the
guise of rent, profit, and interest, but the enormous waste arising
from lack of consolidation and co-operation in the processes of
production and distribution."[253] "During the last half-century we
have lost more by our 'business principle' of dividing up our national
work into competing one-man and one-company speculations, and
insisting on every separate speculation paying its own separate way,
than by all the tariffs and blockades that have been set up against
us."[254] "In our age there is, as we have seen, throughout our whole
economic sphere, no social order at all. There is absolute social
anarchy. Against this anarchy Socialism is a protest."[255] "There is
only one remedy for both the waste and the stealages, and that is the
substitution of public enterprise with organisation for private
enterprise with competition."[256] "Socialism means the socialising of
the means and instruments of production, distribution, and exchange.
For the individual capitalist it would substitute, as the director and
controller of production and distribution, the community in its
organised capacity. The commercial and industrial chaos and waste
which are the outcome of monopolistic competition would give place to
the orderliness of associated effort, and under Socialism society
would for the first time in history behave like an organism."[257]
Private capitalism and consequent competition are responsible not only
for waste and muddle, but also for the adulteration of food and other
necessaries of life. "Every man who knows anything of trade knows how
general is the knavish practice of adulteration. Now all adulteration
is directly due to competition. Did not Mr. John Bright once say that
adulteration is only another form of competition?"[258]

There is much truth in the contention of the Socialists that
co-operation is