business were managed by the College of Cardinals. And what, under a regime of socialism, would be true of human thought, a-seeking to embody itself in printed books or newspapers, would be equally true of it as applied to the methods of industry, and seeking to embody itself in multiplied or improved commodities. Such, then, are the disadvantages which socialism, as contrasted with the existing system, would introduce in connection with the problem of how to detect, and how, having detected it, to invest with suitable powers, the men whose ability is, at any given moment, calculated to raise labour to the highest pitch of productiveness--how to give power to these, and to take it away from others in exact proportion as their talents, as exhibited in its practical results, fall short of the maximum which is at the time obtainable. This problem, as we have seen already, the existing system solves by its machinery of private competition, and of independent capitals, which automatically increase the powers of the ablest directors of labour, and concurrently decrease or extinguish those of the less able. Socialism, with its collective capital, and its able men reduced or elevated to the rank of state officials, while not obviating, but on the contrary emphasising the necessity for placing labour under the highest directive ability, or, in other words, the necessity for competition among able men, would dislocate the only machinery by which such competition can be made effective; and, if it did not destroy the efficiency of the highest ability altogether, would reduce this to a minimum, and confine it within the narrowest limits. In this chapter, however, we have been dealing with the machinery only. We have been assuming the unabated activity of the powers by which the machinery is to be driven. That is to say, we have been assuming that every man who possesses, or imagines himself to possess, any exceptional gift for directing labour--whether as an inventor, a man of science, an organiser, or in any other capacity--would be no less eager, under the circumstances with which socialism would surround him, to develop and exert his faculties than he is at the present day. We will now pass on to the question of how far this assumption is correct. The question of machinery is secondary. It is a question of detail only; for if there is no power in the background by which the machinery may be driven, it will not make much difference in the result whether the machinery be bad or good.