Voluntary and State agency, however, will continue to co-exist. Each has its peculiar merits and demerits, and each individual case to be dealt with has its peculiar conditions. Science and experience must in each case therefore decide which agency applies best. There is no foregone conclusion that under State Socialism all private industries will collapse. The principle of the system is that no method of industry, hurtful to society as a whole, may exist, and the power of the State shall be rigorously used to protect the interests of the whole, as against conflicting individual interests. Even now it is felt, through the growing democratic spirit, that for our public bodies to take advantage of the struggle for employment of starving, hard-pressed men and women, is a national disgrace. It will soon be a point of honour with the nation to fix a minimum wage for public employés much above the competitive rate. Some County Councils have already been moved to direct that workers employed by them, or under their contracts, should be paid trade-union wages. Parliament has in some cases acted similarly, and when we remember that Government at this moment is the largest employer of labour in the kingdom, we realize that its example in giving wages determined more by equity than by competition will have a raising effect upon wages in private employment. There is not any danger, however, that the movement of taking over the industries of the country by the State will stop short of the most favourable point. As I write this chapter, the following paragraph has appeared in a socialist journal of to-day: “It is proposed to establish a gigantic trust to control the entire iron-producing interests of the United States. This, of course, is eminently proper from an economic view, as it is a clearly demonstrated fact that production on a large scale is cheaper than production on a small scale. Carnegie, Rockefeller and Morgan, proposers of the iron trust, are, from a certain standpoint, benefactors of the race, inasmuch as they will demonstrate the practicability of the co-operative idea on a national scale in production. In due time the people will recognize the folly of allowing these men to reap the whole profits, and the system will be readjusted.”