ependent calculations were nearly equal to one another, or
were even of the same order of magnitude; and, if they differed
widely, what number would our world executive select? Would it decide
to waste an immense quantity of either wool or mutton; or would it
decide that it could not, after all, supply the full human needs for
one or other of the commodities?

Of course, if the executive were sensible it could solve the problem
satisfactorily enough. It could retain the monetary system we know
to-day and it could supply the commodities to the consumers, not as a
matter of right, but by selling them to them _at a price_. This price
it could then move upwards or downwards, raising, say, the price of
mutton and reducing that of wool, until it found that the consumption
of the two things was adjusted in the required ratio. But if it acted
in this manner, what essentially would it be doing? It would be
seeking by deliberate contrivance to reproduce, in respect of this
particular problem, the very conditions which occur to-day without aim
or effort on the part of anyone at all.

The moral of this illustration must not be misinterpreted. It does
not show the folly of Socialism or the superiority of
Laissez-faire. What it does show is the existence in the economic
world of an order more profound and more permanent than any of our
social schemes, and equally applicable to them all.

Sec.5. _Some Reflections upon Capital_. Another aspect of the great
cooperation is of even greater significance. It embraces not only a
multitude of living men, but it links the present together with the
future and the past. The goods and services which we enjoy to-day we
owe only in part to the labors of the week, the month, or the year,
only in part even to the efforts of our contemporaries. The men, long
since dead and forgotten, who built our railways, or sunk our coal
mines, or engaged in any of a great variety of tasks, are still
contributing to the satisfaction of our daily wants. The expression is
not altogether fanciful; for, had it not been reasonable to expect
that those labors would be of use to us to-day, many of them in all
probability would never have been undertaken. It was to meet our
present wants, and even our future wants, that many men toiled on
monotonous tasks ten, twenty, thirty years ago. And yet, of course, we
should deceive ourselves if we supposed that this was the motive of
these men, that our welfare was the centre