from the unfettered operation of the enlightened
self-interest of individuals and groups of individuals engaged in
obtaining for themselves, by the freest use of industrial means
available, the largest quantity of money.

So far as these evils are in form or in magnitude the peculiar
products of the last two centuries, they are in large measure
traceable to methods of production controlled by machinery, and to the
social estimate of machine-products which gives machinery this
controlling power.

If this is so, such progress as shall abate these evils and secure for
humanity the uses of machinery without the abuses will lie in two
directions, each of which deserves consideration: (i) an adequate
social control over machine-production; (2) an education in the arts
of consumption such as may assign proper limits to the sphere of
machine-production.

Sec. 4. That machinery subject to the unrestricted guidance of the
commercial interests of an individual or a class cannot be safely
trusted to work for the general welfare, is already conceded by all
who admit the desirability or necessity of the restrictive legislation
of Factory Acts, Mines Regulation Acts, and the large growth of public
provisions for guarding against economic, hygienic, and other injuries
arising from the conditions of modern industrial life.

These provisions, whether designed directly to secure the interests of
a class of employees, as in the case of Factory Acts, or to protect
the consuming public, as in the case of Adulteration Acts, must be
regarded as involving an admission of a genuine antagonism between the
apparent interests of individuals and of the whole community, which it
is the business of society to guard against.

All this legislation is rightly interpreted as a restriction of the
freedom of individual industry under modern methods of production,
required in the public interest. Uncontrolled machine-production would
in some cases force children of six or eight years to work ten hours a
day in an unhealthy factory, would introduce suddenly a host of
Chinese or other "cheap" workers to oust native labour accustomed to a
higher standard of comfort, would permit an ingenious manufacturer to
injure the consumer by noxious adulteration of his goods, would force
wages to be paid by orders upon shops owned or controlled by
employers, would oblige workers to herd together in dens of
infection, and to breed physical and moral diseases which wo