We have at one time the cotton mills making more goods than they can sell, and at another time we have them unable to fulfil their orders. We have in one street a dozen small shops all selling the same kind of goods, and so spending in rent, in fittings, in wages of servants, and other ways, about four times as much as would be spent if all the work were done in one big shop. We have one contractor sending men and tools and bricks and wood from north London to build a house in south London, and another contractor in south London going to the same trouble and expense to build a house in north London. We have in Essex and other parts of England thousands of acres of good land lying idle because it does not _pay_ to till it, and at the same time we have thousands of labourers out of work who would be only too glad to till it. So in one part of a city you may see hundreds of houses standing empty, and in another part of the same city you may see hard-working people living three and four families in a small cottage. Then, under competition, where there are many firms in the same trade, and where each firm wants to get as much trade as it can, a great deal of money is spent by these firms in trying to get the trade from each other. Thus all the cost of advertisements, of travellers' wages, and a lot of the cost of book-keeping, arise from the fact that there are many firms all trying to snatch the trade from each other. Non-Socialists claim that this clumsy and costly way of going to work is really the best way there is. They say that competition gets the work done by the best men and at the lowest rate. Perhaps some of them believe this; but it is not true. The mistake is caused by the fact that _competition_ is better than _monopoly_. That is to say, if there is only one tram company in a town the fares will be higher than if there are two; because when there are two one tries to undersell the other. But take a town where there are two tram companies undercutting and working against each other, and hand the trams over to the Corporation, and you will find that the work is done better, is done cheaper, and the men are better paid than under competition. This is because the Corporation is at less cost, has less waste, and does not want _profits_. Well, under _Socialism_ all the work of the nation would be managed by the nation--or perhaps I had better say by "the people," for some of the work would be _local_ and some would be _national_. I will show you what I mean. It might be better for each town to manage its own gas and water, to bake its own bread and brew its own beer. But it would be better for the post office to be managed by the nation, because that has to do with _all_ the towns. So we should find that some kinds of work were best done locally--that is, by each town or county--and that some were best done nationally, that is, by a body of officials acting for the nation.