this country under an executive of their own class, until they have first been through an apprenticeship at the humbler task of organising men and women with their own capital in constructive work of a less ambitious character—until they have assisted far more largely than they have yet done in building up capital, not to be wasted in strikes, or employed by capitalists in fighting strikers, but in securing homes and employment for themselves and others on just and honourable terms. The true remedy for capitalist oppression where it exists, is not the strike of no work, but the strike of true work, and against this last blow the oppressor has no weapon. If labour leaders spent half the energy in co-operative organisation that they now waste in co-operative disorganisation, the end of our present unjust system would be at hand. In Garden City such leaders will have a fair field for the exercise of pro-municipal functions—functions which are exercised for the municipality, though not by it—and the formation of building societies of this type would be of the greatest possible utility.
But would not the amount of capital required for the building of the dwelling-houses of a town of 30,000 be enormous? Some persons with whom I have discussed the question look at the matter thus. So many houses in Garden City at so many hundred of pounds a-piece, capital required so much.[1] This is, of course, quite a mistaken way of regarding the problem. Let us test the matter thus. How many houses have been built in London within the last ten years? Shall we say, at the very roughest of guesses 150,000, costing on an average
- ↑ The position was so stated by Mr. Buckingham in "National Evils and Practical Remedies," see Chap. x.
