“The system is thus based on private property, competition, individual effort, individual responsibility and individual choice. Under it, all men and women are more or less often faced by problems which they have to decide and, according as their decision is right or wrong, their welfare and that of their dependents will wax or wane. It is thus very stimulating and bracing, and might be expected to bring out the best effort of the individual to do good work that will be well paid so that he and his may prosper and multiply. If only every one had a fair start and began life with an equal chance of turning his industry and powers to good account, it would be difficult to devise a scheme of economic life more likely to produce great results from human nature as it now is; by stimulating its instincts for gain and rivalry to a great output of goods and services and by sharpening its faculties, not only for exercise in this purely material use, but also for solving the bigger problems of life and human intercourse that lie behind it.” The capitalistic system dates from the Industrial Revolution (1780-1830), when domestic industry was replaced by factory production. Since those days, as Labour was plentiful and ill-organized and capital more difficult to obtain, the capitalist occupied relatively to the worker a stronger position in industry. This transient incident is what Mr. Sidney Webb in his _A Constitution for a Socialist Commonwealth of Great Britain_ describes as “the central wrong of the Capitalist System”:— “But the central wrong of the Capitalist System is neither the poverty of the poor nor the riches of the rich: it is the power which the mere ownership of the instruments of production gives to a relatively small section of the community over the actions of their fellow citizens and over the mental and physical environment of successive generations. Under such a system personal freedom becomes, for large masses of people, little better than a mockery. The tiny minority of rich men enjoy, not personal freedom only, but also personal power over the lives of other people; whilst the underlying mass of poor men find their personal freedom restricted to the choice between obeying the orders of irresponsible masters intent on their own pleasure or their own gain, or remaining without the means of subsistence for themselves and their families.” Our Debt to Capitalism