some one to represent him in the control and management of some institution or concern. The vote once given, the voter has no further control over the representative, but must trust wholly to his knowledge, understanding, foresight, judgment, honesty, prudence, and to his possessing every quality which is requisite both for proper and wise management as well as for faithful stewardship.

It is therefore manifest that even supposing a vote without property to have any driving-force, the substitution of the vote for property is the substitution of the direct and only certain means of control for an indirect, distant, impersonal, and extremely faulty method of control-an occasional Yea or Nay at a dust-throwing election.

The adoption of the Collectivist policy had therefore this plain and necessary consequence, that while it left the economic position, the resources and consequently the power of the capitalists quite untouched, it at once undermined the power of the worker as against the capitalist, not only by refusing to add to his property reserve, but also by replacing such power of direct control as resulted from such property as he did possess by the worthless right to vote.

It is obvious, therefore, that no good has yet come of any political activity by the labouring classes; nor will good ever come unless that activity be directed towards precisely the same object as the economic agitation in the country. For only so will the leaders have any aim they can understand, any test they can apply, or any force to make their votes at least equivalent to a similar number

of votes on the other side. A quiescent Labour constituency can be adequately represented by a Liberal or a Conservative member, for such constituencies are content with anything; but nobody but the most active and incorruptible Labour representative can adequately represent a fighting Labour constituency. He must possess a complete insensibility to any policy or attraction inconsistent with his real function. Economic agitation and political agitation should represent but two facets of one policy, which, itself plain and simple, must be directed to one great end-the strengthening of the economic resource of labour absolutely, and the elimination of dictatorial control.

It is not mere security which is needed, and in no circumstances whatever must it be forgotten that while the state remains a proletariate state, every conceivable escape which is an escape merely from the present insecurity must necessarily involve a strengthening of those very conditions which make such a state spiritually intolerable. These conditions destroy freedom and enthrone tyranny, and they find their most complete fulfilment and operation in the wage-system. And the wage-system, as we would again remind our reader, necessarily and at all times involves, first, the negation of the right of property in a man's work, and secondly, the negation of his right of control of his own activities.

From this examination of the actual nature of the policy that was adopted and followed with such disastrous results to the working classes, it is now possible to lay down the right principles of any action which aims at the

overthrow of the proletariate state and the establishment of such a distributive basis of property as alone can afford a foundation for the freedom of the individual, the restoration of true competition and the maintenance of justice.

If, as is true to-day and is true of every society whose framework is not that of a creed other than economic, or a religion, the political demands of the worker cannot exceed his economic demands, since both depend on the same resource; and if the economic demand cannot normally exceed the amount of that resource or property which alone can make it effective, it follows that every effort should have been directed towards simultaneously securing an increase of that reserve, and opposing every restriction of fact or of law upon its free disposition.

But this was not the test of the policy that has been pursued, for that policy, as we have seen, both advocated and supported measures which, while they lessened the existing resources of labour, restricted the right of disposal of such resources as remained. The final consequence of this was not seen.

It was that you cannot lessen a man's reserve of property to-day without lessening his power of bargaining and so causing a fall in wages.

Thus the real operation of modern reform, as supported by Labour, was to offer 'benefits' but no property, promises and gifts but no rights; with this result, that the right of the disposal of such gifts, as it must reside somewhere, and did not reside in the donees, remained in the donors. For the donees through their blind spokesmen had asked not for rights but for gifts.

Nor does the matter rest there. The very bestowal of such gifts actually destroyed, as it proceeded, the power of the donees to claim a free choice even in those matters where formerly a free choice was open to them. For with each gift wages fell; and, gifts being still the order of the day, wages continue to fall.

As we have already pointed out but must point out again, the more complete the working of proletariate industry, the more do wages come to represent not the wages of demand but the wages of industrial efficiency. And this efficiency, though it varies in time, in place, and in trade, depends upon some minimum provision of food, shelter, training, rest, and so forth. An efficiency wage thus represents the cost price of such conditions of this kind of efficiency. When, therefore, by legislation or otherwise a worker is gratuitously provided with any of these requirements, his wage necessarily tends to fall by the amount represented by the cost of the gift. As a consequence, reform legislation which provides for free this and free that, on system, and not by way of temporary amelioration, leads not to an increase in wages, but to a fall. Some will urge that it really makes no difference in the long run because the cost will eventually come out of the employer's pocket, that what he does not pay in wages he will pay in taxes. But even if that were true there is this capital difference. worker had the money he was not bound to spend it solely on such necessaries of efficiency; he might for instance invest it in a strike fund. But where he gets not money but benefits' he is left, if he does not accept the 'benefit,' with nothing. Thus this kind of reform restricts the

When the

area of his choice, and transfers the direction of his activities and his mode of living from himself to an official. For all these gifts are not absolute but conditional. And the conditions when examined prove to be those which industrialists consider conduce to more efficient work in the factory: they are conditions of good behaviour; becoming conduct; temperance; perhaps vegetarianism; attention to work; avoidance of disturbances; respect for officials, and a proper reverence for the legitimate demands of wealth.

Such is the tendency of the reform which the mistaken policy of the Labour leaders has advocated. It will give a man anything but control; free food but not money to buy food; free baths but not money to pay for baths; free libraries but not money to support libraries; free medicine but not money to buy medicine; free doctors but not money to pay for a doctor; free everything but no money to buy anything.

Since so much is promised or given towards supplying a worker with all that, as a labourer, he can decently ask for; and since no provision was made to create any reserve of property by means of which he might be able to withhold his labour if his wage were reduced, wages are steadily falling. Mr. Orage calculates the rate of the fall at about one per cent per annum.

These are Pyrrhic victories.

If the reader still thinks that this view of the matter is false or exaggerated; that modern reform is at bottom reforming, and that its bad features are due rather to the enormous difficulties it has to contend with than to its