Let us not, may it be repeated, forge that the extent of co-operative activity is limited by present desire and in exactly the same way as the commercial activity. Even co-operative undertakings must pay their way. The difference is three-fold, however. Firstly, the business entertainment provider devotes his energies to those activities which make the greatest _quantitive_ appeal. He does not ask: “Shall I attract enough people to make this pay its way?”--but instead, as a rule, he asks which production will attract _most_ people and produce most profit. It is nevertheless obvious that because a play, for example, is not likely to be a popular success, or an artiste a star, or a programme superlatively attractive, it is not right to assume that these would not merit and receive sufficient support to cover expenses. From ten plays (or ten musical programmes), one of which should succeed in a business sense of the word and nine of which would only pay their way, the commercial man naturally chooses the former. The other nine are _never chosen_, unless unintentionally. Yet some of them might be works of greater artistic merit. It is the business of co-operative activities to select and to produce works of worth which belong to the latter category. The art-life of the community would gain from this in two ways: (_a_) since the tastes of the majority are low, the nine unproduced works will almost certainly include some of higher artistic value; and (_b_) there will be greater variety. Secondly, the selection of the works to be produced is made by the business-man and not by the consumer. The business-man will object to this statement, saying that his selection is dictated by public demands; but it isn’t. In the first place, the public, whether popular or other works are concerned, has no power to select at all; it can only take or leave what is offered, which is a very different thing, leading at the best to incomplete satisfaction and at the worst to considerable waste. In the second place, the business-man selects not according to popular demands but according to _his ideas_ of popular demand--again a different matter. If it were not, he would not suffer so many financial failures, for which the public has to pay in several ways, such as higher prices, lower quality, conservatism, etc. In the third place, the commercial provider is in competition with all his fellows. Each seeks to attract the biggest crowd, and to do so indulges in the “star system”, in spectacular but not necessarily artistic production, in expensive advertising, and so on. All of these increase the price of the production without in any way improving its artistic or recreative value.