tinction between such articles and the products with which trade combinations deal, but it has yet to be proved that one person has any right to live at the cost of life to another."

The sequence of ideas is difficult to grasp, but no one can doubt, after reading this, that Mr. Smith does not think his system applicable to, let us say, the great industry of agriculture. The fact that the agriculturist is worse paid than the bedstead manufacturer, is nothing to him it does not occur to him that the ploughman may ask whether the bedstead maker has any right to live at the cost of the ploughman's his life, or, to drop exaggeration, whether the one is to go without butcher's meat, in order that the other may have his fill.

Perhaps with some uneasy feeling that he is here on dangerous ground, Mr. Smith does not pursue this line of reply any further, but launches into a meaningless diatribe about justice. Into this I shall not follow him, for I know nothing more desperate than the condition of a man who identifies justice with a 10 per cent. increase of income to himself or the class he champions, and this is scarcely the place for an elementary disquisition on the absurdity of supposing that the present distribution of wealth falls short of justice by that trifling amount. Justice in Mr. Smith's conception of her must be very blind indeed, when she is ready to accept the "cost of production" and a reasonable profit settled by his combination as her one criterion.

Of course if Mr. Smith's scheme led to better means of production being introduced, it would, so far, tend to the benefit of the whole community. He claims that this is the case, giving as an example the bedstead manufacture, in which certain improvements have been introduced since the combination was founded. But I cannot see that he makes any attempt to prove that his system is better in this respect than the system of open competition. The bedstead manufacture has been improved. Certainly, but would it not have been improved as much, or more, if the open system had continued? The manufacturer, under his system, he says, has every inducement to devise improvements, because he can keep to himself the difference between his cost of production and the greater cost recognised as the standard by the association. But supposing a manufacturer working under free competition discovers and introduces an improvement, he may be, and often is, remunerated still more highly. Instead of keeping the whole difference in cost as extra profit and therefore having to be content with his former turnover, he may reduce his price by an amount considerably less than this difference in cost, and thus get both a considerably larger profit than before and a larger sale on which to get it. I do not see how any impartial person, after reading Mr. Smith's book, especially the chapter. by Mr. Addinsell, can doubt that the New Trades Combination Scheme is inimical to improvement. Instead of allowing the first introducer of an improvement to increase his sales by reducing his price, it compels him to go on denying the consumer any share of the advantage until the

association as a whole officially recognises his improvement as the proper method, and we may be sure this will not happen till nearly the whole of the members have adopted it. With what pleasure the stupid and backward would repress the desire of the intelligent and enterprising to benefit themselves by benefiting the community cannot really be appreciated by any one who has not read Mr. Addinsell's chapter. If we were to believe Mr. Addinsell we should have to believe that scarcely any improvements in production except such as could be patented have ever been effected. "It is," he tells us-and he is a chartered accountant-" purely a matter of opinion as to which is the best method," and he goes on still more astoundingly, "It is seldom that a manufacturer will change his methods because another maker thinks he has a better one." If this is so, we need surely no longer pity the poor manufacturers, even if, as Mr. Smith would have us believe, nine-tenths of them always work at a loss. Their incompetence and obstinacy deserves no other reward. The remainder of the paragraph is worth transcribing in full:

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"Moreover the improvement is generally problematical as the discussion soon shows. As for the advantage" (scilicet, if any?), "the new method" ((i.e., the N. T. C. S.) secures it to the right person instead of giving it away. Before he joins an association the maker in possession of the advantage gives it "[but not necessarily at first the whole of it] away to his customers. Afterwards he has to retain it. It is true that he may have done a little more trade, although this is seldom proved; but even if he did, the value of the association is more to him than the trade thus obtained. It is a favourite saying of the promoter of this system, 'You are not in business for the purpose of making this or that; you are in business for the purpose of making money-the only proof of your success is your balance sheet.' Another of his teachings is, If you have a a real improvement in your methods, the law gives you the right to protect it. If you do not protect it you cannot complain if others value it at your own estimate. If it is not worth protecting, it is worth nothing.' I may say that it is part of the system to acknowledge and protect patent rights. Sometimes it is done in one way, sometimes in another, by mutual consent, but the right and advantage are never ignored."

Mr. Smith has a very poor opinion of economists, about whom he knows nothing, and among whom he rather oddly includes "the late Mr. E. A. Freeman," who is presumably the great historian and was never an economist. After perusing Mr. Smith's work and the introduction thereto I am inclined to share his opinion. It is impossible to deny that it is in the highest degree discreditable to the present as well as the past generation of economists, that it should he possible for a purely selfish and probably on the whole injurious scheme of trade combination like Mr. Smith's to be held up by unbiassed persons of education, as something for the public to admire and wish god-speed. Ought we not to abandon for a while our researches into the deeper

mysteries of our science and devote ourselves to the task of explaining to a wider public how competition works? That people get their breakfasts every day, and that every great improvement in production has been introduced under the pressure of free competition they must know, though they appear sometimes to forget it. But they regard this as a mere coincidence. Finding the plug of the boat a little in the way of their feet they endeavour to pull it out, and we careless boatmen let them pull. Fortunately it is rather tight.

EDWIN CANNAN

The Social Philosophy of Rodbertus. By Professor E. C. K. GONNER. (Macmillans. 1899.)

RODBERTUS is one of those writers who have rather deserved success than commanded it. As a practical reformer, in his native Germany, he was outshone by Lassalle; and, as a theoretical expounder of socialism, by Marx. In this country he has never been well known, even by the few students of German economics. Before Professor Gonner's monograph, the longest and best account of Rodbertus was undoubtedly Mr. Dawson's (German Socialism, 1888, pp. 61-90), which the English reader has since 1890 been able to supplement with Prof. Böhm Bawerk's criticism of Rodbertus in his Capital and Interest (Engl. transl. 1890, pp. 328-365).

The question of plagiarism need not detain us longer than it detains. Professor Gonner. The professor truly says that the doctrine of surplus value could hardly have been borrowed by Rodbertus from Marx, seeing that it occurs in Rodbertus as early as 1837 (p. 6). We might add that, if there was any borrowing, it was by both the German writers from the English Thompson, who gives the doctrine, name and all, in his Distribution of Wealth, 1829. (See Menger's Right to Whole Produce of Labour, Engl. transl. 1899, p. 55.) But there was probably no delib. erate borrowing at all.

Rodbertus lived a quiet life on his Pomeranian estate and gave his political philosophy to the world in a succession of independent essays, letters, addresses, and articles, from which Professor Gonner has had some difficulty in extracting a consistent theory (28), though he spares his readers the difficulties. It is not in the main outlines a very intricate philosophy; the intricacy begins with the economics.

The evolution of society in history is contrasted with the evolution of the individual, which is a matter of physical nature (19, 37). The growth of social life from the family to the tribe, and from the tribe to the nation, is continuous, and nothing is lost (21). This growth too is not blind but conscious; "each state has to direct its own development; it must consciously select and pursue the course best adapted to its maintenance and well-being" (38) under leaders (21). And there is a "gradual growth of higher and less material ends" (21). There is a subordination of the personal advantage of individuals to the advantage

of society as a whole (39.) Survival of the fittest and progress by struggle for existence prevail, even between nations, only till the growth of social life shall have grown, as it will grow, beyond nationalities (40). At present we are in the stage of nationalities, and we cannot pass at a bound beyond it (63). The present economic arrangements of society. are unsatisfactory. There is an industrial unification of the whole of means of division of labour, the constructive side of which is on the whole more important than its destructive. The large markets have supplanted the small local groups; there is an "opportunity for a system of national unity in production" if it could only be seized (72). The individual is now dependent on the industrial conditions of society. He works by means of others and into their hands. He can never secure the whole product of his labour; and Rodbertus considers that he never ought to advance such a claim (74). Yet Rodbertus thinks that the labourer is progressively worse and worse paid as modern industry goes forward (127), and that labour, though not now the only index and measure of value, ought to be both (10, 100, 103, 114). How does he reconcile these positions?

They are not really inconsistent. Rodbertus distinguishes the far future, the near future, and the present. Humanity passed from slavery to serfdom and from serfdom to hired labour (50, 67, 197). Rodbertus has the vision of a system under which the last would disappear; there would be no private ownership of land and capital, and the state would exercise the functions of industrial leadership now practised for private profit by our men of business (183 and c.). But this is in the far future. In the near future no removal of private property in land or capital is probable (197). In the present the evils are undoubted. There is no exact correspondence between labour and value, because there cannot, in competitive trade and with private ownership of the agents of production, be an exact correspondence between the production and the needs of consumers (103). Still less is there a correspondence between what a workman produces and what he receives as wages; competition forces him to take as wages not the value of his product but the cost of his subsistence (105). He therefore receives a decreasing proportion of the product, and this decrease in his share is one of the causes of crises (86, 87). Crises are due to the fact that what is produced is not what is demanded by the producer, but what may or may not be demanded by the rest who are not producers (cf. 171).

Rodbertus, though not always consistent on the point, maintains that under any system the workman would not receive his whole product, even supposing that his product could be exactly ascertained. Besides the management of business, there are certain highly important political, educational, and civilising functions of society, which will always need to be maintained. They are now performed largely on private venture by owners of rent and other surplus value. In the

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future one expedient in the way of compromise might be the conversion of the landlords and men of business into salaried officials (48, 62, 67, 132, 168, 196, das Kapital 123, 168, 229, Kleine Schriften 345). Historical progress is a record of compromises (Kapital 228).

One of the greatest problems for the social philosopher in the immediate present is the arrangement of a compromise between labour and its opponents, land and capital. Unlike Marx, Rodbertus is not averse to "remedial measures," especially such as would arrest the tendency to give the worker a less and less proportion of his product. He has little faith in Trades Unions (83). His own plan is really far more ambitious than that of any union or federation of unions. It is that of the Normal Working Day (198 seq.), to be secured by the intervention of the State. It is not enough to prescribe a "Time-Labour-Day," say a ten-hours' day. The nature of the labour and the energy of the worker make 10 hours very different in different cases; and the "brazen law of wages will drive wages down just as easily with such a prescription as without it (Kleine Schriften 338). We want a "Working-Labour-Day," reckoned not by time but by work done; by the full normal average quantum of effort, allowance made for skill and special hardship and every other peculiarity of a trade (ib. 339). The State must get the employers and the employed to work out this calculation together, and thereafter to agree on periodical alterations to make the wages keep pace with increased productivity of industry.

This (he allows ib. 340) is the principle of piecework, but (he contends) without any of the abuses of piecework. The State will guard against any attempt of the employer to lower rates by taking advantage of any special dexterity or diligence of individuals, and yet the good workman will be paid better than the bad. One advantage of the plan is that it would enable us easily to introduce a better standard of value and means of exchange than the present. We could value the products of each regulated trade by their cost in the Labour units, and even pay the workers in these units, the cotton spinner by the baker's product so measured, and the baker by the cotton spinner's, the lowest unit of currency being one hour." "Products of equal working time are equal in value to one another." We have of course to regard not only the working time of the immediate worker, but the working time of the maker of his tools (ib. 343), and there must also be considered the quota due towards support of the necessary functions of government. A workman might be rightly paid and yet get only a third part of his apparent product (ib. 345).

It might be maintained that in order to carry out the plan of Rodbertus we need to take socialism for granted at starting. A State that could do all that this plan includes might go on easily to all the rest of the socialistic system; and [Rodbertus evidently thought so (ib. 341). But what becomes of the fitness of the scheme as a compromise? It is plainly not a compromise; but the frank adoption of one of the twoconflicting systems. The results will not please all socialists. The