competition, does not propose to adopt the analogous remedy of giving a monopoly to one section of our own population. The English pauper is here; we do not want to suppress him, but only to suppress his pauperism; and he certainly cannot be excluded from any share in the fund devoted to the support of labour. The evil, therefore, of which we complain is primarily the inadequacy of the support provided, not,--though that may also be complained of,--the undesirable method by which those funds are distributed. In other words, the complaint may so far be taken to mean that there are too many competitors, not that, given the competitors, their shares are determined by competition, instead of being determined by monopoly or by some other principle. We have therefore to inquire whether any principle can be suggested which will effect the desired end, and which will yet really exclude competition. The popular suggestion is that the remedy lies in suppressing competition by equalising the prizes. If no prizes are to be won, there will so far be less reason for competing. Enough may be provided for all by simply taking something from those who have too much. Now, I may probably assume that we all agree in approving the contemplated end--a greater equality of wealth, and especially an elevation of the lower classes to a higher position in the scale of comfort. Every social reformer, whatever his particular creed, would probably agree that some of us are too rich, and that a great many are too poor. But we still have to ask, in what sense it is conceivable that a real suppression of competition can contribute to the desired end. It is obvious that when we denounce competition we often mean not that it is to be abolished, but that it is to be regulated and limited in its application. So, for example, people sometimes speak as if competition were the antithesis to co-operation. But I need hardly say that individualists, as well as their opponents, may legitimately sing the praises of co-operation. Nobody was more forward than Mill, for example, and Mill's followers, in advocating the principles of the early co-operative societies. He and they rejoiced to believe that the co-operative societies had revealed unsuspected virtues and capacities in the class from which they sprang; that they had done much to raise the standard of life and to extend sympathy and human relations among previously disconnected units of society. But it is, of course, equally obvious that they have grown up in a society which supposes free competition in every part of its industrial system; that co-operative societies, so far as the outside world is concerned, have to buy in the cheapest and sell in the dearest market; that the rate of wages of their members is still fixed by competition; and that they encourage habits of saving and forethought which presuppose that each man is to have private ends of his own. In what sense, then, can co-operation