The effect of the socialistic theory on these points is to remove two vital interests of man from the range of competition, and to place them on an ethical and scientific basis under social control. In so far as the working day of the employees of government, municipalities, co-operative societies, companies, and private firms approximates to eight hours, in so far as the wage paid by them secures to the workers a fit and reasonable standard of living, in so far is the socialistic ideal realised. Every one conversant with the history of the last sixty years knows how vast an improvement has been made in both respects. We have thus reviewed the great social and economic movements of our time. How shall we interpret them? There are two main tendencies: one towards control of the economic processes by the people in state, municipality, and co-operative society; the other towards the consolidation of capitalism in trusts. In both we see plan, constructive and organising intelligence, the limitation of the anarchy of competition. But while the former makes for the public good, the latter is subservient to overgrown wealth. The portentous growth of the trusts is indeed an object-lesson to the world. It proves that socialism is not an idle question; nor is it utopian or revolutionary merely. It is a question forced upon the present generation by the most gigantic industrial movement of recent times. All good citizens, all friends of righteousness and of progress, all inquirers worthy of the name, are under an imperative obligation to understand the true inwardness of the subject. In considering the question of the practicability of a rational socialism, let us remember that it only proposes to accomplish on a wider scale and for a more enlightened time a task analogous to that undertaken by the guilds for the mediæval world. The guild was an organisation for the promotion of the common interests of the workers at a time when law and order were not sufficiently established by strong central governments, and when the present distinction between labourer and capitalist had not declared itself. It was a fairly equitable organisation of an industry which was local and associated with city life, and which worked with a very limited and undeveloped technique. Socialism proposes an equitable organisation of industry for the modern world with its enormous mechanical development and large industry, under a democracy guided by science and professing allegiance to the highest moral ideals. CHAPTER XV THE PREVALENT SOCIALISM