We have abundant evidence that the American people have done much hard thinking on social politics during recent years. A striking instance of it appears in President Roosevelt’s message to Congress in December 1908. We may summarise as follows the proposals for social legislation which it contained. Besides the general control of the great corporations which he has all along urged, he advocated supervision of corporate finance, a progressive inheritance tax on large fortunes, lightening of the burden of taxation on the small man, prohibition of child labour, diminution of woman labour, shortening of hours of all mechanical labour, an eight hours’ day to be extended as soon and as far as practicable to the entire work to be carried on by Government. He particularly urges the immediate passing of an effective Employers’ Liability Act. This is a good beginning, and it is a happy omen that such legislation should be advocated by a man with so fearless and stainless a record as Mr. Roosevelt. If the American people are prepared to follow him a beneficent solution of many grave problems is assured. In the foregoing pages we have discussed the State as a possible engine of social amelioration. But we should not forget that the most hopeful movement of recent times, the co-operative movement, owes little to the State. The State has very great power, but it has no magical power. And it is a grave mistake to regard it too much as the pivot of social evolution. The State itself is only a phase of social evolution. We can trace its rise and progress in history, and its record has not been a good one. While it has been a decisive element of strength in the struggle for existence, it has also too long and too much been an organ for the exploiting of the mass of the people by the ruling minority. Recent English socialism has given excessive prominence to the State; to the prejudice of the question, and for two reasons. The State means compulsion, and it suggests the official. Socialism carried out by the State suggests bureaucracy, and is opposed to freedom. Such a conception of the subject is most misleading and in the highest degree prejudicial to progress. In its propaganda the Fabian Society has too often interpreted socialism in terms of the State and the municipality. Though most important, the State and the municipality are only historic phases of deeper principles and forces. It may be a way to make the subject intelligible. But this convenience is more than counterbalanced by the tactical disadvantage that orators on the other side find an easy way of ‘confuting’ socialism, by asking how the State or municipality can grapple with the vast complexity of modern industry, and how freedom could be conserved under the compulsory action of the State and its officials.