some waste, but at the same time conferring certain benefits which are rightly very dear to the great majority of mankind, and will continue to be so.
To most of us, to find ourselves members of a monstrous organization which regulated our lives from our birth to our death, telling us what work we are to do, what necessaries of life we are to consume, and what pleasures we are to enjoy, would seem to be a fate under which, though we might get a much larger supply of some of the good things of life than we now enjoy, we should only do so through the sacrifice of all the freedom and fumbling and failure which make life worth living because they are our own fault and make men and women of us by testing us and battering us with our own blunders and teaching us to take risks. It might be cheaper to have national retail stores at which we all had to shop, instead of half a dozen shops in the same street competing for our custom, but should we be so well served, and should we have the same variety of choice, and should we not suffer very considerable inconvenience by having our wants supplied by people who had no incentive of private gain to spur them to do the best that they can for their customers?
