ll see
very speedily that this great social revolution we propose necessarily
involves a revolution in business and industry that will be equally
far reaching. The two revolutions are indeed inseparable, two sides of
one wheel, and it is scarcely possible that one could happen without
the other.

Of course the community supports all its children now--the only point
is that it does not support them in its collective character as a
State "as a whole." All the children in the world are supported by all
the people in the world, but very unfairly and irregularly, through
the intervention of that great multitude of small private proprietors,
the parents. When the parents fail, Charity and the Parish step in. If
the reader will refer to those ten cases from Edinburgh I have already
quoted in Chapter III., Sec. 1, he will note that in eight out of the ten
there comes in the eleemosynary element; in the seventh case
especially he will get an inkling of its waste. A change in the system
that diminished (though it by no means abolished) this separate
dependence of children upon parents, each child depending upon those
"pieces" from its particular parental feast, need not necessarily
diminish the amount of wheat, or leather, or milk in the world; the
children would still get the bread and milk and boots, but through
different channels and in a different spirit. They might even get
more. The method of making and distribution will evidently have to be
a different one and run counter to currently accepted notions; that is
all. Not only is it true that a change of system need not diminish the
amount of food in the world; it might even increase it. The Socialist
declares that his system would increase it. He proposes a method of
making and distribution, a change in industrial conditions and in the
conventions of property, that he declares will not only not diminish
but greatly increase the production of the world, and changes in the
administration that he is equally convinced will insure a far juster
and better use of all that is produced.

This side of his proposals we will proceed to consider in our next
chapter.

CHAPTER IV

THE SECOND MAIN GENERALIZATION OF SOCIALISM

Sec. 1.

We have considered the Socialist criticism of the present state of
affairs in relation to the most important of all public questions, the
question of the welfare and upbringing of the next generation. We have
stated the general principle of so