There are a number of outstanding economic problems that affect locally, each community that has adopted the capitalist system. Among the most important of them are: 1. The relations between the job owner and the job taker. These relations involve the question as to whether job control shall be vested in those who hold the property or in those who do the work. The issue is an old one, intensified to-day by the absentee ownership which stocks and bonds make possible, and aggravated by the presence of vast industrial establishments in which there are employed thousands of workers without the possibility of any direct contact between job owners and job takers. 2. The distribution of wealth and income. Another old issue has returned to plague a society that makes it possible for some to enjoy "progress" while others must suffer from "poverty." Labor saving machinery has increased the quantity of the industrial product, but as yet there has been no general effort to see that the advantages of this wealth production go to those who are in need of food, clothing and shelter. Indeed, under the present order, millions of those who work are called upon to accept a standard of living which represents less than physical health and social decency, while those who own the land and the machinery with which the wealth is produced are able to exact a rent or unearned income that keeps them permanently on easy street. This embittering contrast between the house of have and the house of want is leading to-day, as it has in any historical society, to division and conflict, for, as Madison wisely observed in the Federalist, "The most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property." 3. The interrelation of industries. So long as there was a direct connection between a worker and the product which he turned out, economic life was simple. When, however, the coal dug in eastern Pennsylvania was used to heat houses in Minneapolis, while wheat grown in Dakota was milled in Duluth, made into crackers in Boston and sold all over New England, there arose the problem of the relation between mining, wheat raising, transport, manufacturing, and merchandising. Thus far the banker has acted as the go-between in holding this machinery together, but he labors under two important disqualifications: first, he does not represent anyone except himself and his fellow owners and is therefore not socially responsible for what he does; in the second place, like every other business man, he is out to make a profit rather than to render the community a service. Hence the structure of industrial society rests in chaotic dependence upon the ambitions and foibles of self-selected financiers. 4. Attempts at government control of industry.