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unknown scale would be the logical outcome of world economic
affiliations in producer groups.

The organization of society along the lines of production will therefore
necessarily broaden the outlook of those whose visions are now limited
by the confines of a political state, and the present ties of loyalty
which bind the individual within a geographic area would then attach him
to a world organization and would compel him to think in world terms.
That there are limitations imposed by the affiliation of the individual
with an economic group cannot be denied, but such limitations are far
less drastic than those prescribed by restricted geographic areas.

2. _The Need of Organization_

The organization of society in terms of economic activity, building up
through intimate local units, through district and divisional units to
world organization within the major industrial groups does not provide
any basis for effective co-operation between the individual groups. The
metal workers of the world might produce machinery and the farmers
wheat, but by what means are they to exchange their product and regulate
their output in a way to secure the maximum of advantage on both sides?

There are two outstanding characteristics of present-day economic life.
One is its world scope. The other is the intimate and constant
inter-working of the various parts of the economic machine so well
described by J.A. Hobson in his book on "The Industrial System."
Agriculture, mining, transportation, manufacturing and so on are all
linked into one functioning mechanism. To be sure there are times when
the machine does not work very well--as after a great economic
depression, but the purpose is there, the intermittent working harmony
of the mechanism is unquestioned, the experience in world economic
activity is a permanent part of the heritage of the race, and there
remains only the task of making world economic relations more effective
and more permanent than they have been in the past. The ice has been
broken in the sea of world economic life and the human race has already
taken many a plunge in its waters.

Under any form of society that can be foreseen in the immediate future,
the need of close co-operation between the various parts of the world
economic mechanism will tend to increase rather than to diminish, and it
is therefore of great importance to have at hand a means of maintaining
and facilitating the contacts between the differ