at large. But the last few
paragraphs will doubtless suggest that such a single-minded addiction to
competitive gain and competitive spending as the stabilised and
amplified price-system would enjoin, must lead to an effectual
retardation, perhaps to a decline, of those material sciences on which
modern technology draws; and that the state of the industrial arts
should therefore cease to advance, if only the scheme of investment and
businesslike sabotage can be made sufficiently secure. That such may be
the outcome is a contingency which the argument will have to meet and to
allow for; but it is after all a contingency that need not be expected
to derange the sequence of events, except in the way of retardation.
Even without further advance in technological expedients or in the
relevant material sciences, there will still necessarily ensue an
effectual advance in the industrial arts, in the sense that further
organisation and enlargement of the material equipment and industrial
processes on lines already securely known and not to be forgotten must
bring an effectually enhanced efficiency of the industrial process as a
whole.

In illustration, it is scarcely to be assumed even as a tentative
hypothesis that the system of transport and communication will not
undergo extension and improvement on the lines already familiar, even in
the absence of new technological contrivances. At the same time a
continued increase of population is to be counted on; which has, for the
purpose in hand, much the same effect as an advance in the industrial
arts. Human contact and mutual understanding will necessarily grow wider
and closer, and will have its effect on the habits of thought prevalent
in the communities that are to live under the promised regime of peace.
The system of transport and communication having to handle a more
voluminous and exacting traffic, in the service of a larger and more
compact population, will have to be organised and administered on
mechanically drawn schedules of time, place, volume, velocity, and
price, of a still more exacting accuracy than hitherto. The like will
necessarily apply throughout the industrial occupations that employ
extensive plant or processes, or that articulate with industrial
processes of that nature; which will necessarily comprise a larger
proportion of the industrial process at large than hitherto.

As has already been remarked more than once in the course of the
argument, a populat