But the war is teaching with dramatic swiftness what it might have needed decades of peace to bring home to us. We _are_ thinking of the common welfare. High prices may still be a rough guide to show men's needs, but we are learning to raise wheat because others need it--not merely because the price is high. Prices may also be a rough guide to consumption, but we are learning that eating wheat or sugar is not merely a matter of what I can afford. It is a question of whether I take wheat or sugar away from some one else who needs it--the soldier in France, the child in Belgium, the family of my less fortunate neighbor. The great argument for not interfering with private exchange in all such matters has been that if prices should by some authority be kept low in time of scarcity, men would consume the supply too rapidly; whereas if prices rise in response to scarcity, men at once begin to economize and so prevent the total exhaustion of the supply. We now reflect that if prices of milk rise it does not mean uniform economy--it means cutting off to a large degree the children of the poor and leaving relatively untouched the consumption of the well-to-do. Merely raising the _price_ of meat or wheat means taking these articles from the table of one class to leave them upon the table of another. War, requiring, as it does, the united strength and purpose of the whole people, has found this method antiquated. In Europe governments have said to their peoples: we _must_ all think of the common weal; we _must_ all share alike. In this country, the appeal of the food administrator, though largely without force of law, has been loyally answered by the great majority. It is doubtless rash to predict how much peace will retain of what war has taught, but who of us will again say so easily, "My work or leisure, my economy or my luxury, is my own affair, if I can afford it?" Who can fail to see that common welfare comes not without common intention? The second great defect in our economic order, from the point of view of coöperation, has been the inequality of its distribution. This has been due largely to competition when parties were unequal, not merely in their ability, but in their opportunity. And the most serious, though not the most apparent, aspect of this inequality, has not been that some have more comfort or luxuries to enjoy; it is the fact that wealth means power. In so far as it can set prices on all that we eat, wear, and enjoy, it is controlling the intimate affairs of life more thoroughly than any government ever attempted. In so far as it controls natural resources, means of transportation, organization of credit, and the capital necessary for large-scale manufacturing and marketing, it can set prices. The great questions then are, as with political power: How can this great power be coöperatively used? Is it serving all or a few?