like the shareholder, a remote and impalpable being compared with the familiar "employer" of earlier times; and though he may succeed in creating something of a Napoleonic legend and exercising something of a Napoleonic fascination over the minds of his subjects, his emergence has increased and emphasized the distasteful inequality in the distribution of industrial

power.

CHAPTER VIII

INDUSTRY AND THE CONSUMER

The sheep took the money, and put it away into a box: then she said, "I never put things into people's handsthat would never do-you must get it for yourself." Through the Looking-glass.

§1. The Consumer's Grievances against Capitalism. Armed with these reflections on the nature of Capitalism, its strength and its limitations, we may proceed to an examination of the attempts which have been made, in imagination and in practice, to modify it, to supplement it, or to wipe it off the face of the earth. We may approach our task by dividing such attempts provisionally into two main classes, though we shall find as we proceed that the line of division tends to become blurred. In the first main class the motive force is supplied by the feeling that though under Capitalism the consumer is the ultimate king, to whose service even the most Olympian captain of industry must dedicate his days, yet in one way or another his interests are in danger of neglect. In the second main class the motive force is supplied by the considerations which have been developed at the end of the preceding chapter-by grief or indignation at the utter exclusion of the ordinary worker in capitalist industry from all share in control over the conditions and results of his work. It is with the first main class that this chapter and the next will be concerned.

The grievances, real or imaginary, of the consumer "under the existing system" may be tabulated in some such form as follows. First, there is the danger that he will not always be able to buy what he is trying to buy. According to the theory of Capitalism he expresses his desires to the middleman, who transmits them to the manufacturer and sees that they are satisfied. But in this process at its best there is room for delay and misapprehension. Further, both maker and dealer have a strong interest în selling what they have got, and in continuing to make and stock what they have made up their minds to make and stock. From every hoarding and newspaper and tube train carriage they explain vociferously to the consumer what he wants, until he almost-but not quite comes to believe that it is true. Finally, it is not given to everyone to detect at sight, or at any rate to be able to be able to prove, the difference between home-grown and imported beef, between milk of the plain and watered varieties, between the pill which is 100 per cent sugar and that which is really as efficacious as a small-tooth comb. On the whole the forces of competition and publicity prevent such grievances nowadays from reaching serious dimensions; but they exist.

Secondly, the average consumer is prone to suspect that the prices of the goods which he buys are unnecessarily loaded with payments for the services of superfluous middlemen. In this he may be judging hastily, but we have already indicated a limited sympathy with his attitude.

Thirdly, the consumer may suspect that the supply of certain goods which he buys is being curtailed and their price raised by the monopolistic action of producers or

dealers. Enough has been said in the previous chapters of the concentration of industrial power, of the combine and the selling agency, to indicate that his suspicion may often be well founded: and it is important to be clear exactly wherein his grievance consists. It is not that he is being forced to pay a higher price for the goods that he buys than they are worth to him; for he is free to take them or leave them as he chooses. It is that the monopolist finds it to his advantage to sell a smaller quantity of goods at a higher price rather than a larger quantity at a lower, and restricts therefore the flow of goods below what it would be if competitive conditions prevailed, diminishing thereby the aggregate enjoyment of the consuming public.

The fourth grievance affects the consumer not of today, but of to-morrow and the day after. It is possible that self-interest is leading private capitalists to make reckless exploitation of certain natural resources— animal stocks or minerals or forest trees-to the great advantage of the present army of consumers, but to the prejudice of the interests of future generations, or even of existing generations in future years. In his individual capacity the present consumer is not likely to complain; but as a thoughtful citizen he may make the grievance of the future his own, or at least acquiesce in such action by others.

The fifth grievance is of a more far-reaching and subversive kind. Capitalism only bows down to the consumer so far as his wants are interpreted to it in terms of a money offer. But they may be incapable of being thus interpreted, for either of two reasons. He may be unaware that he wants something, such as education for his children, and therefore never dream of

offering a money price for it. In this case his grievance is unconscious, but, according to some views, none the less real; moreover, as in the instance given, his failure to realize his own wants may give rise to a grievance on the part of other people. Or, more simply still, he may want something very badly, such as bread, and be unable to offer a money price for it because he has not enough money.

Now some of these grievances are partially redressed by the use of the negative or inhibitory powers of the State (p. 3)-the first by legislation against adulteration and fraud, the fourth by restrictions on the cutting of timber, the slaughter of fish and game, etc., the third by a great variety of devices which will call for brief comment at a later stage. But the detailed study of such negative control lies outside the limits which we have imposed on our subject, and we must pass on to more thoroughgoing schemes for removing the consumer's disabilities. These all embody, in one form or another, the ambitious notion of undoing the great division of function which first took place when Eve picked the apple and Adam ate it, and reintegrating the consumer with the producer: not, however, by a return to the penurious self-sufficiency of the household system (p. 8), but by handing over the reins of industrial government to the appointed representatives of the consuming public.

§ 2. The Methods of Consumers' Co-operation. Within this imposing edifice we must enter in succession three rooms, each conveniently labeled with the consumer's own initial-Co-operation, Collectivism and Communism. Co-operation entails the voluntary banding