Of course, if the executive were sensible it could solve the problem satisfactorily enough.  It could retain the monetary system we know to-day and it could supply the commodities to the consumers, not as a matter of right, but by selling them to them at a price.  This price it could then move upwards or downwards, raising, say, the price of mutton and reducing that of wool, until it found that the consumption of the two things was adjusted in the required ratio.  But if it acted in this manner, what essentially would it be doing?  It would be seeking by deliberate contrivance to reproduce, in respect of this particular problem, the very conditions which occur to-day without aim or effort on the part of anyone at all.

The moral of this illustration must not be misinterpreted.  It does not show the folly of Socialism or the superiority of Laissez-faire.  What it does show is the existence in the economic world of an order more profound and more permanent than any of our social schemes, and equally applicable to them all.

Sec.5. Some Reflections upon Capital.  Another aspect of the great cooperation is of even greater significance.  It embraces not only a multitude of living men, but it links the present together with the future and the past.  The goods and services which we enjoy to-day we owe only in part to the labors of the week, the month, or the year, only in part even to the efforts of our contemporaries.  The men, long since dead and forgotten, who built our railways, or sunk our coal mines, or engaged in any of a great variety of tasks, are still contributing to the satisfaction of our daily wants.  The expression is not altogether fanciful; for, had it not been reasonable to expect that those labors would be of use to us to-day, many of them in all probability would never have been undertaken.  It was to meet our present wants, and even our future wants, that many men toiled on monotonous tasks ten, twenty, thirty years ago.  And yet, of course, we should deceive ourselves if we supposed that this was the motive of these men, that our welfare was the centre of their heart’s desire.  We in our turn dedicate to the future, and often to a distant future, an immense portion of our energies.  Let any reader who doubts this, study the statistics of the occupations of the people, and reflect on how long a period must elapse before the labors of this trade or that can fulfil their ultimate function.  How long would the period be in the case of a man making bricks, which will later be employed in the erection of a factory, where machinery will be made, to equip an electrical generating station designed to supply, over a period of many years, light, heat, and power to people living in a remote Continent?  A longer time, it may be hazarded, than he is accustomed to look ahead.