voluntary combination. By these means the efficiency
of labour might be enhanced and its regular remuneration raised. By
sternly withholding all external supports we should teach the working
classes to stand alone, and if there were pain in the disciplinary
process there was yet hope in the future. They would come by degrees to
a position of economic independence in which they would be able to face
the risks of life, not in reliance upon the State, but by the force of
their own brains and the strength of their own right arms.

These views no longer command the same measure of assent. On all sides
we find the State making active provision for the poorer classes and not
by any means for the destitute alone. We find it educating the children,
providing medical inspection, authorizing the feeding of the necessitous
at the expense of the ratepayers, helping them to obtain employment
through free Labour Exchanges, seeking to organize the labour market
with a view to the mitigation of unemployment, and providing old age
pensions for all whose incomes fall below thirteen shillings a week,
without exacting any contribution. Now, in all this, we may well ask, is
the State going forward blindly on the paths of broad and generous but
unconsidered charity? Is it and can it remain indifferent to the effect
on individual initiative and personal or parental responsibility? Or may
we suppose that the wiser heads are well aware of what they are about,
have looked at the matter on all sides, and are guided by a reasonable
conception of the duty of the State and the responsibilities of the
individual? Are we, in fact--for this is really the question--seeking
charity or justice?

We said above that it was the function of the State to secure the
conditions upon which mind and character may develop themselves.
Similarly we may say now that the function of the State is to secure
conditions upon which its citizens are able to win by their own efforts
all that is necessary to a full civic efficiency. It is not for the
State to feed, house, or clothe them. It is for the State to take care
that the economic conditions are such that the normal man who is not
defective in mind or body or will can by useful labour feed, house, and
clothe himself and his family. The "right to work" and the right to a
"living wage" are just as valid as the rights of person or property.
That is to say, they are integral conditions of a good social order. A
society in