Intelligent human society, permeated more than we realise by the essentials of Christianity, has already gone far in securing remedies, notwithstanding the too frequent other-worldliness or lack of vision of those who should have been foremost in rebuilding Jerusalem in this green and pleasant land. Industrialism no sooner huddled together labourers and their families in the courts and alleys of insanitary towns and overworked them for scanty wages, than the voices of such philanthropists as Percival, Oastler, Shaftesbury, Owen, and of many others were heard in favour of interference with that freedom (!) of contract between workers and employers, which the professors of the dismal science regarded as a fundamental principle in political economy. And so gradually, too slowly, regulated industry, improved sanitation, better housing, the isolation and hospitalisation of infectious cases, the readier access than in rural districts of all sick to skilled treatment, higher wages, better food began to counteract the evils of industrialism and urbanization. Communal action was taken in the regulation of industry, in the promotion of sanitation, in providing elementary education; and the result is seen in the remarkable fact that, notwithstanding its enormous handicap, urban life has become almost as safe as rural life, so far as life itself is concerned, though not in standard of health. The first lesson, then, which has already been partially learnt, is that _no member of a community can live to himself_. We now believe in the solidarity of society; that the sores of one section of it means peril for all. And we are gradually learning to appreciate that this is true not only in respect of the acute infectious diseases, and of chronic infectious diseases, such as tuberculosis and syphilis, but of every disease and of every other factor in life which causes individual inefficiency, and which consequently inflicts additional burdens on the competent section of the community. I do not wish to underestimate the basic self-centredness, if not actual selfishness, which, to a varying extent, is part of the nature of all of us; but in industrial, as in other social problems, whatever may be the intermediate turmoil and misunderstandings and disturbance which appear to loom so threateningly, it is plain that the mere cash nexus of relationship is becoming more and more entangled in a moral nexus; and that a prophet’s vision is scarcely needed to forecast a future of consolidation and conformity of efforts of employers and employed such as has never yet been generally realised. In such a consolidation the idea of servitude will disappear, and mutual service will take its place. This will happen by the growth of an idealistic standpoint; even more, perhaps through motives of community self-defence.