Socialism would abolish all these rents, taxes, royalties, salaries, commissions, profits, and interests, and thereby so greatly reduce the cost of production and of carriage that in the open market we should be able to offer our goods at such prices as to defy the competition of any but a Socialist State. But there is another way in which British trade is handicapped in competition with the trade of other nations. It is instructive to notice that our most dangerous rival is America, where wages are higher and all the conditions of the worker better than in this country. How, then, do the Americans contrive so often to beat us? Is it not notorious that the reason given for America's success is the superior energy and acuteness of the American over the British manager and employer? American firms are more pushing, more up-to-date. They seek new markets, and study the desires of consumers; they use more modern machinery, and they produce more new inventions. Are the paucity of our invention and the conservatism of our management due to the "invincible ignorance" or restrictive policy of the British working man? They are due to quite other causes. The conservatism and sluggishness of our firms are due to British conceit: to the belief that when "Britain first at Heaven's command arose from out the azure main" she was invested with an eternal and unquestionable charter to act henceforth and for ever as the "workshop of the world"; and say what they will in their inmost hearts, her manufacturers still have unshaken faith in their destiny, and think scorn of any foreigner who presumes to cross their path. Therefore the British manufacturer remains conservative, and gets left by more enterprising rivals. A word as to the superior inventiveness of the Americans. There are two great reasons why America produces more new and valuable patents. The first cause is the eagerness of the American manufacturer to secure the newest and the best machinery, and the apathetic contentment of the British manufacturer with old and cheap methods of production. There is a better market in America for inventions. The second cause is the superiority of the American patent law and patent office. In England a patentee has to pay L99 for a fourteen years' patent, and even then gets no guarantee of validity. In America the patentee gets a seventeen years' patent for L7. In England, out of 56,000 patents more than 54,000 were voided and less than 2000 survived. In America there is no voiding. One of the consequences of this is that American firms have a choice of thirty-two patents where our firms have _one_. According to the American patent office report for 1897, the American patents had, in seventeen years, found employment for 1,776,152 persons, besides raising wages in many cases as much as 173 per cent. These few figures only give a view of part of the disadvantage under which British inventors and British manufacturers suffer.