Page:Can a man be a Christian on a pound a week? - Hardie.djvu/19

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has come to stay. Competition is dead, and monopoly is already on the throne ruling the market in which human life is being bought and sold. Every commodity is produced at the cost of so much of that energy and brain power which go to the making of human existence. What is the end of all labour, of all useful human effort? Is it not that we may live? Can any other reason be given? If, then, the end of all industry be that man may obtain the wherewithal to live, is not Socialism the better way? Under Socialism there would still be monopoly, as in the case of the trust, but with this difference: that whereas the trust is privately owned and run exclusively with the object of making profit, under Socialism land and capital would be owned in common by the entire community, and be controlled and operated and cultivated so as to produce the end in view—the supply of the necessaries of life—with the least expenditure of human effort. Take, for example, the waterworks of a great city. These as a rule belong to the city, and every effort is made to ensure that the supply is abundant, pure, and economical. Here producers and consumers are one and the same set of persons—the citizens. As the citizens are supplying themselves, they naturally see that they do it well. They have no motive for adulterating the supply or stinting it; self-interest, in fact, impels them in quite the other direction. Why cannot the same rule of production be applied to bread and clothing and houses? That it should is what Socialism proposes.

THE KINGDOM OF GOD.

Christ laid down no elaborate system of either economics or theology. No great teacher