by the community, and it may be withdrawn by the community.
Such measures as these a Labour Government will, no doubt, eventually take, and they will do much to relieve poverty and increase the production of commodities of general use. But they will add rather to the comfort of workers who are already above the poverty-line, and they will not prevent an excessive accumulation of wealth, though they may finally disperse it. This means the continuance of deep poverty. As long as a gifted man may amass a fortune in a comparatively short time, without adding to the wealth of the community, there will be squalid poverty somewhere.
In sum, if the political ideal of Labour were fully realised, it would not put an end to, and might not very materially lessen, our widespread poverty. It would not enlarge the amount of available productive employment, and so the weak in body or mind or character would still form a pitiable army of slum-dwellers. It would, having no more control of industry than the present Parliament has, be unable to meet any grave disturbance of the industrial world, such as the release of hundreds of thousands of workers by disarmament. It would have no power to secure for the workers their full share of the advantage of any new application of science, and it would be unable to guide into new positions the men displaced by this application. We should continue to suffer the disadvantage of an imperfectly organised industrial system; each
