The profits of the manufacturer, in these circumstances, are greatly increased, no longer at the cost of increased hardship to the workers but with advantage to the whole community. Thus the law has already, in various ways, interfered with the free course of competition, and its interference has been beneficial all round. The grounds of its intervention have always been moral; legislators and constituents alike have felt that certain evils must be suppressed at whatever loss of profits or of trade. But the results have been, not only morally but also economically, of immense national benefit. Slowly the great truth is emerging into recognition that the enforcement of good conditions and good payment for the workers of a nation is not only the humane but also the profitable policy. Slowly, step by step, in that piecemeal, groping and wasteful manner which seems to be a part of the English nature, and which, while so maddening to some of us who happen to possess an infusion of more logical but hotter blood, yet, on the whole, works out so well in practice, the British law goes forward, setting check after check in the path of unlimited competition. Almost every step has been taken amid outcries of opposition and prophecies of ruin. At every advance, the “practical man” has assured the government of the day, beforehand, that his particular trade would be destroyed, and, afterwards, that he had lost nothing. In spite of all these steps and all these consequences, the vast majority of English people still believe themselves to be living under a _régime_ of pure competition and are ready to declare such a _régime_ not only beneficial but inevitable. In fact, however, modern life, even in our own small islands, comprises not one _régime_ only but many. Every stage, from a modified feudalism up to an almost undiluted socialism, is represented by existing conditions in Great Britain. Some stages are dwindling; some are growing; and it is well within the power of concerted human action to determine which shall grow and which shall dwindle. As far as we have gone, our law has directly stopped many gross forms of overwork and oppression. The home worker it has helped, if at all, only in so far as it has enforced certain provisions as to housing and sanitation. Indirectly, the Factory Acts have served to raise wages by forming a basis of minimum comfort upon which trade union organisation could be built. In Great Britain, the law has never yet intervened, directly and of set purpose, to raise wages. In parts indeed of Greater Britain the law has directly so intervened; but the history of that intervention belongs to another chapter. CHAPTER II SUPPOSED REMEDIES