to which many earnest and sincere reformers are now trying to lead us, when they ask us to accept nationalization of industry or its organization under Guild monopolies, as a remedy for the evils which are evident in our economic system. If they succeed life will cease to be an adventure and become a drill; the tendency to variation which, as science teaches us, is the secret of development, will be killed or checked, and we shall be standardized, like Government boots.
This book is written to show that the greater output of goods and services on which material progress depends cannot be expected with certainty under any form of Socialism that has yet been proposed; that Capitalism, though a certain amount of robbery goes on in its backyard, does not itself rob anybody, but has wrought great benefits for all classes; and that, if improved and expanded as it may be without any sudden change in human nature such as other systems demand, it may earn for us the great material advance that is needed to provide us with a better, nobler, and more beautiful world.
London, January 1920.
