the young from the market, and other collateral improvements, must be taken into account. If we take one hour a day from the actual workers in our heavier industries, we absorb at once more than a million new men without increasing production. In any case, it is lamentable to dangle before the eyes of men the ideal of working only four hours a day. We want more of Browning’s gospel of work with cheerfulness. No doubt the idea is that, if the hours of labour are reduced, the leisure will be employed in reading Bergson and mastering Brahms. This optimistic theory seems to be at variance with our experience. Improvement of financial position more usually means the substitution of Bass or Dewar for cheap ale, and of stalls for the gallery at the variety theatre. A later chapter will, however, discuss our interests in this connection.
The fact remains that collectivism is the only remedy of poverty. The redistribution of wealth, or the prevention of excessive wealth, would, in my view, add comparatively little to the wages of the millions; and we must not put to the credit of an economic scheme the profit of such changes as disarmament. It is not this, but the note of efficiency, organisation, and economy which appeals to me in the Socialist ideal. It would abolish a vast amount of duplicate and unnecessary work, and it would conduct to their proper place in the industrial order the large army of casual workers. London or New York is a colossal monument of industrial inefficiency. Our chaotic mass of dupli-
