With regard to the population question, and the question of the struggle for existence so intimately connected with it, we can no longer ignore the practice of limitation of families, which has now become so prevalent. It cannot be regarded as a satisfactory solution of the population question. In the past it has been one of the surest signs of a stagnant and decadent nation. No race or nation, in which the rights and duties of motherhood or the family moralities are slightly valued, can hope permanently to maintain a high standard of life and worth. We may most surely forecast the future of a class or nation from the manner in which the rights and duties of motherhood are observed by it. To use the language of biology, race suicide is the most unfavourable variation which classes and nations can inflict upon themselves. But we are not in this book concerned with the general question. What we have to note here is that the practice of limiting families, having become so prevalent, will tend to diminish the intensity of the struggle for existence, which it is the aim of socialism to regulate. For this reason we must recognise it as a fact which has an important bearing on our subject. It was a theory of the Marx school that the _bourgeoisie_, in the course of the development of capitalism, would be ‘no longer capable of controlling the industrial world.’[3] The recent development of the trust system in America and Germany has shown that the _bourgeoisie_ are only too capable of doing so on the vastest scale. The leaders of the trusts are showing that they can regulate production, wages, prices, and the markets, not for nations only but for the world. Oligarchies showed their capacity in Rome, Carthage, Venice, and Holland for centuries. They came to ruin at last, but the causes of their ruin were wider and deeper than mere want of capacity. With these we are not concerned here. The concern of socialism is that the oligarchy or plutocracy which is foreshadowed in the gigantic trust system should not be allowed to gain a permanent footing, but should be regulated and transformed in the way required by the public good. The trust is a menace alike to labour and to society. With the growth of the trust system free competition really ceases to exist, and the alternative lies between a gigantic system of monopoly and socialism.