mightier, and often better, than free competition.
However, that is no new discovery, and the introduction of Socialism
is not needed to bring about co-operation. In Germany, Switzerland,
and Denmark national and private co-operation are far more developed
than in Great Britain, and waste, muddle, and stealages are rare in
those countries, although none of these is ruled by a Socialist
Government. Co-operation, national as well as private, is developing
also in Great Britain, and it will continue to develop as its value
becomes more and more understood. It is a curious fact that
Socialists, though they recommend co-operation in the abstract, oppose
it in the concrete for similar reasons. They fear that satisfied and
prosperous co-operators will oppose Socialism.[259]

The assertion that adulteration is due to competition is not founded
upon fact. Adulteration springs from many causes, and would continue
to flourish even under the Socialistic _regime_. If all cowkeepers
were salaried officials of the Socialist State or municipality, they
might nevertheless mix water with the milk to obtain milk for their
own consumption and that of their families, and to diminish the labour
of milking. Adulteration may be abolished by efficient supervision and
well-devised and rigorously enforced sanitary laws.

Let us now glance at the doctrine

"THE SOCIALIST STATE WILL ARISE BY NATURAL DEVELOPMENT, AND IT WILL
HANDLE BUSINESS MORE EFFICIENTLY THAN DO PRIVATE INDIVIDUALS"

"The State now registers, inspects, and controls nearly all the
industrial functions which it has not yet absorbed. The inspection is
often detailed and rigidly enforced. The State, in most of the larger
industrial operations, prescribes the age of the worker, the hours of
work, the amount of air, light, cubic space, heat, lavatory
accommodation, holidays, and meal-times; where, when, and how wages
shall be paid; how machinery, staircases, lift-holes, mines, and
quarries are to be fenced and guarded; how and when the plant shall be
cleaned, repaired, and worked."[260] "Step by step political power and
political organisation have been used for industrial ends, until a
Minister of the Crown is the largest employer of labour in the
country, and at least 200,000 men, not counting the army and navy, are
directly in the service of the community, without the intervention of
the profit of any middleman."[261]

From the fact that the State inspects many things and car