anti-social power thus bestowed upon
individuals would necessitate the extension of state-control to them
also. The work of distribution would thus pass into routine-industry
administered by the public for the public interest. Thus the area of
socialised industry would extend until it absorbed one after another
all industries possessing the machine-character and capable of
administration by routine. It might thus appear that, after all, the
forebodings of the individualist would be verified, the work of life
would be reduced to a dull monotonous mechanism grinding out under
bureaucratic sway an even quantity of material comforts for a
community absorbed in the satisfaction of its orderly behaviour.

This goal seems inevitable if we assume that no change takes place in
the quantity and quality of the consumption of the community, that
individual consumers save or try to save the same proportion of their
incomes as now, and apply the portion that they spend to the purchase
of increased quantities of ever-cheapening machine-made goods.

But are we justified in considering it necessary, or even probable,
that consumption will in amount and character remain unchanged? In
proportion as the large industries pass into the condition of
monopolies, whether under private or public control, the area of safe
and profitable-investment for the average "saving" man will be more
restricted. Thus some of the useless "saving" which takes the shape of
excessive plant, machinery, and other forms of capital will be
prevented. In other words, the quantity of consumption will increase,
and this increase will give fuller employment to the machinery of
production and? to the labour engaged in working it and in
distributing the increased product. If, however, increased consumption
merely took the form of consuming increased quantities of the same
material goods as before, the gain would be limited to the rise of
material comfort of the poorer classes, and this gain might be set off
by the congested and torpor-breeding luxury of the better-to-do. A
mere increase in quantity of consumption would do nothing to avert the
drifting of industry into a bureaucratic mechanism.

Sec. 11. It is to improved quality and character of consumption that we
can alone look for a guarantee of social progress. Allusion has been
already made to the class of artistic and intellectual work which
cannot be undertaken by machinery. It must never be forgotten that art