her bacon--just as now already Australia brands her wines and New
Zealand protects her from deception (and insures clean, decent
slaughtering) in the matter of Canterbury lamb. I rather like to think
of the red dagger of London on the wholesome bottled ales of her great
(municipalized) breweries, and Maidstone or Rochester, let us say,
boasting a special reputation for jam or pickles. Good honest food all
of it will be, made by honest unsweated women and men, with the pride
of broad vales and uplands, counties, principalities and great cities
behind it. Each county and municipality will be competing freely
against its fellows, not in price but quality, the cheeses of Cheshire
against the cheeses of France and Switzerland, the beer of Munich
against the Kentish brew; bread from the bakeries of London and Paris,
biscuits from Reading town, chocolates from Switzerland and
Bourneville, side by side with butter from the meadows of Denmark and
Russia.

Then, when the provisions have been bought, she will go perhaps to the
other departments of the great store and buy or order the fine linen
and cotton of the Manchester men, the delicate woollens of the
Bradford city looms, the silks of London or Mercia, Northampton or
American boots, and so forth, just as she does now in any of the great
stores. But, as I say, all these goods will be honest goods, made to
wear as well as look well, and the shopman will have no "premiums" to
tempt him to force rubbish upon her instead of worthy makes by
specious "introduction."

But suppose she wants a hat or a dress made. Then, probably, for all
that the world is under Socialism she will have to go to private
enterprise; a matter of taste and individuality such as dress cannot
be managed in a wholesale way. She will probably find in the same
building as the big department store, a number of little
establishments, of Madame This, of Mrs. That, some perhaps with
windows displaying a costume or so or a hat or so, and here she will
choose her particular artiste and contrive the thing with her. I am
inclined to think the dressmaker or milliner will charge a fee
according to her skill and reputation for designing and cutting and so
on, and that the customer will pay the store separately for material
and the municipal workshop for the making under the artiste's
direction. I don't think, that is, that the milliner or dressmaker
will make a trading profit, but only an artiste's fee.

And if the l