[1175] In this case Stuart Mill seems to compare rent to a monopoly revenue: “A thing which is limited in quantity, even though its possessors do not act in concert, is still a monopolised article.” (Ibid., Book II, chap. 16, § 2.) The expression, though adopted by several other writers, is not quite accurate. In the case of a monopoly the owners fix the quantity which they will produce beforehand with a view to getting a maximum of profit. But this cannot apply to landowners. At any rate, if there is any monopoly it must be an incomplete one.

[1176] Stuart Mill, Principles, Book III, chap. 5, § 1.

[1177] Such was the argument employed by J. B. Say in the course of a controversy with Ricardo. “It is perfectly obvious that if the needs of society raise the price of corn to such a level as to permit of the cultivation of inferior lands which yield nothing beyond wages for the workmen and profits on the capital, then that demand on the part of society, coupled with the price which it can afford to pay for the corn, allows of a profit on the most fertile or best situated lands.” (Traité, 6th edition, p. 410.) Continuing, he remarks: “David Ricardo in the same chapter clearly shows that the profit from land is not the cause but the effect of the demand for corn, and the reasons which he adduces in support of this view may be turned against him to prove that other items in cost of production, notably the wages of labour, are not the cause but the effect of the current price of goods.” Ricardo himself seemed on the point of being converted to this view. See p. 554, note 2.

[1178] The theory of economic equilibrium enables us to give a still better demonstration of the general nature of this theory of rent. On this point we may refer to Pareto’s Cours and Sensi’s La Teoria della Rendita (Rome, 1912).

[1179] Cf. supra, p. 555, note 2.

[1180] Hermann, Staatswirtschaftliche Untersuchungen, Part V: Vom Gewinn. Even in the preface he declares that the doctrine of the rent of land must be regarded as a particular instance in the exposition of the law governing the returns from fixed capital in general.

[1181] Mangoldt, Die Lehre vom Unternehmergewinn (Leipzig, 1855), pp. 109 et seq.

[1182] Die nationalökonomische Theorie der ausschliessenden Absatzverhältnisse (Tübingen)—a work in which he attempts a justification of rents in general and of the rent of land in particular. Rent he regards as the reward offered to anyone who knows how to utilise either his personal capacity or his capital or land in a way that is particularly advantageous to society. It supplies an allurement that acts as the source of all progress and of all economic activity, a sort of natural right of ownership which society spontaneously confers upon those individuals who know how to serve society, and which competition causes to disappear at the opportune moment. The rent of land can be justified on this ground wherever legislation has not made an abuse of it. This new claim on behalf of rent is very interesting, and those who regard rent as exclusively unearned increment may ponder over this new characteristic of unearned incomes.

[1183] P. 148.

[1184] “The sum paid for the use of land differs in no material respect from the sum paid for the use of other kinds of capital—a machine, for example. Although the land or the machine has to be returned to its rightful owner in the same condition as it was received, one ought to pay something just because such capitals are economically scarce; in other words, the amount existing at any one time or place is not greater than the demand. What differentiates land from machinery is that savings might easily be employed in turning out new machinery, but cannot very well increase the quantity of land in existence, or at any rate cannot transform existing soils in a manner that is profitable.” (Pareto, Cours d’Économie politique, vol. ii, § 759.) Marshall makes use of analogous terms: “If the supply of any factor of production is limited, and incapable of much increase by man’s effort in any given period of time, then the income to be derived from it is to be regarded as of the nature of rent rather than profits in inquiries as to the action of economic causes during that period; although for longer periods it may rightly be regarded as profits which are required to cover part of the expenses of production and which therefore directly enter into those expenses.” (Principles, 1st ed., Book VI, chap. 3, § 1.)

[1185] Ibid., Book VI, chap. 3, § 7.

[1186] Did space permit, this would be the place to refer to the latest glorification of the doctrine of rent, which is to be found in Clark’s Distribution of Wealth, published in 1899. In that work, upon the strength of which the author enjoys a well-deserved reputation, revenues of various kinds are successively treated as rents. Imagine a fixed amount of capital applied along with successive doses of labour: each new dose of labour will produce less than the preceding one, while the production of the last dose regulates the remuneration of all the rest. But the product of the preceding doses is greater than that of the last, and a surplus value will be produced which will represent the product of capital and which will be exactly analogous to rent. Or suppose, on the other hand, that the quantity of labour is fixed and applied along with successive doses of capital; the productivity of the latter will in this case go on decreasing, and since the revenue of each dose will be proportionate to its productivity, any surplus left over will be of the nature of rent due to labour. There are other ingenious discussions which cannot be referred to in a note of this kind. But in our opinion the theory of economic equilibrium affords a simpler explanation of distribution, and the kind of optimism to which Clark’s theory gives rise seems hardly justified. His attempt to combine the idea of marginal productivity with the law of diminishing returns is a further proof of the persistent influence exerted by Ricardian ideas upon English-speaking economists.

[1187] Proudhon, Qu’est-ce que la Propriété, p. 74.

[1188] Pollock, The Land Laws, p. 12.

[1189] Agrarian Justice opposed to Agrarian Law and Agrarian Monopoly.

[1190] The Theory of Human Progression and Natural Probability of a Reign of Justice. For further information concerning Spence, Ogilvie, Dove, Paine, etc., see Escarra’s Nationalisation du Sol et Socialisme (Paris, 1904). We have drawn upon his book for the views here put forward, the works of these writers not being easily accessible.

[1191] Justice, p. 92.

[1192] “The land is the original heritage of the whole human race,” says Mill in his Dissertations and Discussions. In the Principles, Book II, chap. 2, § 5, he expresses his views thus: “The essential principle of property being to assure to all persons what they have produced by their labour and accumulated by their abstinence, this principle cannot apply to what is not the produce of labour, the raw material of the earth.” Walras, in his Théorie de la Propriété, in the Études d’Économie sociale, p. 218, says that the land by a kind of natural right is the property of the State. Henry George, in Progress and Poverty, Book VII, chap. 1, maintains that “the equal right of all men to the use of the land is as clear as their equal right to breathe the air—it is a right proclaimed by the fact of their existence.”

[1193] Principles, Book V, chap. 2, § 5.

[1194] “This continual increase arising from the circumstances of the community and from nothing in which the landholders themselves have any peculiar share, does seem a fund no less peculiarly fitted for appropriation to the purposes of the State than the whole of the rent in a country where land has never been appropriated.” (Elements of Political Economy, chap. 4, § 5.)

[1195] Cf. supra, chapter on Saint-Simon.

[1196] Principles, Book V, chap. 2, § 5. Cf. also chap. 3, §§ 2 and 6. For the programme of the League see Dissertations and Discussions, vol. iv.

[1197] Mill thought it impossible to distinguish in individual cases between the surplus value which is due to general circumstances and the surplus that results from the expenditure undertaken by the proprietor. Hence his conclusion that a general tax was the most equitable method of procedure with a view to effecting confiscation.

[1198] Dissertations and Discussions, vol. iv, p. 256.

[1199] Progress and Poverty was not his first effort, however. In 1871 Our Land and Land Policy had appeared, and in 1874 The Land Question. Later still he published Protection or Free Trade (1886), in which he puts forward a strong case for Free Trade, and in 1891 An Open Letter to Pope Leo XIII on the condition of the workers.

[1200] Clark in his Distribution of Wealth states that the method by which he tries to determine the exact productivity of each factor of production is one that he borrowed from Henry George.

[1201] “Twenty men working together will, where nature is niggardly, produce more than twenty times the wealth that one man can produce where nature is most bountiful.” Cf. also the whole of Book II, which is a disproof of the Malthusian theory.

[1202] “Labour and capital are but different forms of the same thing—human exertion. Capital is produced by labour; it is, in fact, but labour impressed upon matter.… The use of capital in production is, therefore, but a mode of labour.… Hence the principle that, under circumstances which permit free competition, operates to bring wages to a common standard and profits to a substantial equality—the principle that men will seek to gratify their desires with the least exertion—operates to establish and maintain this equilibrium between wages and interest.… And this relation fixed, it is evident that interest and wages must rise and fall together, and that interest cannot be increased without increasing wages, nor wages be lowered without depressing interest.” (Progress and Poverty, Book III, chap. 5.) It is hardly necessary to point out how very much simplified this doctrine concerning the relation between wages and interest really is.

[1203] A résumé of this theory of distribution, whose very simplicity must make it suspect, may be found in Book V, chap. 2: “In every direction, the direct tendency of advancing civilisation is to increase the power of human labour to satisfy human desires—to extirpate poverty and to banish want and the fear of want.… But labour cannot reap the benefits which advancing civilisation thus brings, because they are intercepted. Land being necessary to labour, and being reduced to private ownership, every increase in the productive power of labour but increases rent—the price that labour must pay for the opportunity to utilise its power; and thus all the advantages gained by the march of progress go to the owners of land, and wages do not increase.” George, however, does not claim that real wages have fallen because technical improvements enable production to be carried on where it was formerly impossible. At most this will only enable capital and labour to preserve their old scale of remuneration; it will not give them any share in the progress that has been made, so that, relatively speaking, it is true to say that wages and interest have both fallen in comparison with rent. “When I say that wages fall as rent rises, I do not mean that the quantity of wealth obtained by labourers as wages is necessarily less, but that the proportion which it bears to the whole produce is necessarily less. The proportion may diminish while the quantity remains the same, or even increases.” (Book VI, chap. 6. Cf. also Book IV, chap. 3.) George, like Ricardo and a good many socialists, confuses two different problems, namely, the price of productive services and the proportional distribution of the product between the different agents of production (Book V). He adds, however, that scientific discovery, by pushing the margin of cultivation back to that point where the law of diminishing returns is more than counterbalanced by increased productive efficiency, may even sometimes reduce the worker’s real wages, and so impair his position not only relatively, but also absolutely. (Book IV, chap. 4.)

[1204] Ibid., Book V, chap. 2.

[1205] That portion of their revenue which represented the capital sunk in the land would still be the property of the landowners.

[1206] Mill points out that the answer to this objection is that the right of selling the land at a price which depends upon two contrary conditions (gain or loss) establishes a kind of equilibrium. The State would not lose anything by this, for a fall in value in one place, unless it be accompanied by a general want of prosperity, implies a corresponding increase somewhere else, of which the State will get the benefit. (Dissertations and Discussions, vol. iv.)

[1207] M. Einaudi, however, in his excellent Studi sugli effetti delle imposte, p. 125 (Turin, 1902), remarks that this principle of indemnifying losses leads directly to a State guarantee of values—the expediency of which is at least problematic. He makes the further observation that the compensation would often be paid to a person other than the one who paid the tax when it was levied—the property in the meantime having changed hands.

[1208] For the distinction between the legality of movable and immovable property see Mill, Principles, Book II, chap. 2, § 1, and Henry George, Progress and Poverty, Book VII, chap. 1. “The institution of private property,” says Mill in the above passage, “when limited to its essential elements, consists in the recognition, in each person, of a right to the exclusive disposal of what he or she have produced by their own efforts, or received either by gift or by fair agreement without force or fraud from those who produced it.” Such a definition at least implies that landed property is illegal. A house is distinguished from the land upon which it is built; whereas the former is legally held the latter is not.

[1209] Mill, Dissertations and Discussions, vol. iv, p. 298.

[1210] Especially in England, where various schemes have been propounded and investigated by Royal Commissions in the course of the last ten years. Such schemes are discussed in a very thorough fashion in Einaudi’s book already mentioned, and in an article entitled Recent Schemes for Rating Urban Land Values contributed by Edgeworth to the Economic Journal in 1906.

[1211] Article 30 of the Act of September 16, 1807, runs as follows: “If as the result of the improvements already mentioned in this Act—through the making of new roads or the laying out of new squares, through the construction of quays or other public works—any private property acquires a notable increase in value, such property shall be made to pay an indemnity which may be equal to half the value of the advantage which has thus accrued to it.” The principle was rarely applied, however. M. Berthélemy (Traité élémentaire de Droit administratif, 1908, p. 624) states that he can only find twenty occasions on which the law was brought into operation in the whole course of the nineteenth century.

[1212] Professor Seligman (Essays in Taxation, 5th ed., p. 341) quotes an English law of 1672 relating to the widening of certain streets in Westminster in which the principle is neatly stated. But when it was proposed to apply it to certain public works undertaken in London in 1890 it was energetically opposed. It was admitted afresh in the Tower Bridge Act of 1895. A similar system is frequently adopted in America under the name of “special assessment” or “betterment.”

[1213] No notice whatever was taken of it then, and even in the second edition of the great Handwörterbuch der Staatswissenschaften, published in 1900, no mention is made of Gossen’s name, although the third edition of that work has made ample reparation. The book was reprinted in 1889. On the relation between the ideas of Gossen and those of Jevons and Walras see Walras’s interesting article, Un Économiste inconnu, Hermann Henri Gossen, published in the Journal des Économistes in 1885 and reproduced in his Études d’Économie sociale, pp. 351 et seq.

[1214] Entwickelung der Gesetze, p. 250.

[1215] Gossen sees other advantages that would follow such reform. He enumerates them thus: (1) The confiscation of rent would reduce the possibility of living without working, and this would increase the industrial activity of the class under consideration. (2) The legal transference of property would be greatly simplified. (3) Producers would be exempted from buying land and from keeping capital for this purpose. (4) Rent would take the place of taxation to a very considerable extent, and would free the collection of it from every trace of vexation or injustice. (Ibid., p. 273.)

[1216] Cf. the fragment entitled Méthode de Conciliation ou de Synthèse, in the Études d’Économie sociale. Henry George in his preface to Progress and Poverty writes thus: “What I have done in this book … is to unite the truth perceived by the school of Smith and Ricardo to the truth perceived by the school of Proudhon and Lassalle; to show that laissez-faire (in its full, true meaning) opens the way to a realisation of the noble dream of socialism.”

[1217] Études d’Économie sociale, p. 239.

[1218] See the charming sixth lesson of the Théorie générale de la Société in the Études d’Économie sociale.

[1219] “In order to justify a measure involving a slight diminution in the rent of landed proprietors, it is hardly necessary to invoke the fact that rents have a faculty of growing continuously without the co-operation of the proprietor. We need scarcely point out that this increase in rent over a certain period cannot enter into the price of land simply because it cannot be calculated. Consequently, when a buyer buys under the system of guarantee afforded by the State he has at the same time undoubtedly bought a claim to all the variations of rent which may ensue.… Even if the landed proprietor is indemnified by being paid a perpetual rent equal to the rent of his land at the time of confiscation, as is done to-day in the case of compulsory purchase, the injustice will not be as great as it otherwise would be, but it will not be removed altogether.” (Gossen, Entwickelung der Gesetze, pp. 257-258.)

[1220] Gossen gives reasons for thinking that the State, owing to its superior position as compared with individuals, might offer better terms to the proprietors than ordinary buyers could—among others, that the State can borrow cheaply and could consequently offer a better price.

[1221] A similar idea underlies Gide’s proposal in an article contributed to the Journal des Économistes for July 1883. “The State would offer to buy the land and pay for it on the basis of ninety-nine years’ purchase. There is reason to think that hardly a buyer would be found who would refuse such an offer coupled with a slight compensation, for ninety-nine years is the equivalent of perpetuity as far as the individual is concerned. There would be nothing mean about such a price; really it would be more of a gift to the proprietor.”

[1222] Walras, Études d’Économie sociale, p. 368. A mathematical discussion of the theory is contained in the Théorie mathématique du Prix des Terres. The same argument expressed in ordinary language may be found in the article entitled Un Économiste inconnu (Études d’Économie sociale, pp. 365 et seq.), and it is still more simply summed up in the Problème fiscal, pp. 446-449.

[1223] “The same considerations would apply in the case of mines, railways, monopolies of every kind, natural and otherwise, where the principle of free competition is in operation or where any surplus value exists.” (Études d’Économie sociale, p. 347, note. Cf. also pp. 237 et seq.)

[1224] Cf. Escarra, loc. cit., p. 224. See also Laveleye, Le Socialisme contemporain, 8th ed., Appendix I.

[1225] Métin, Le Socialisme en Angleterre, p. 179 (1897).

[1226] “The possession of a piece of land frees the workman from dependence upon the masters, which is one cause of poverty. The worker who possesses land is free. He has always something he can turn his hand to when out of work.” Elsewhere: “If a certain quantity of land is given to the workers their wages will surely rise, for no one will work for another unless he can get more than he gets when working for himself.” (Quoted by Escarra, p. 224, note.) The same idea occurs in Henry George, but not as a part of the general argument.

[1227] If we had not decided against the inclusion of the Italian economists, this would have been the place to devote a few words to the writings of Achille Loria. No one excels him as a writer on political economy. An elaborate superstructure of great economic, political, social, and even religious significance has been built upon the foundation of free land, which at least denotes a powerful imagination. A résumé of this thesis is contained in La Terra ed il Sistema sociale, translated for the Revue d’Économie politique in 1892. We cannot examine Loria’s system here. Suffice it to say that in his Costituzione economica odierna (1900) he demands that the law should recognise each man’s right to the land: either to a unit of land (i.e. a quantity of land such as would enable a man to live and set up as an independent producer) or, failing that, to a fraction of such a unit.

Such is the theoretical solution, but the practical suggestion is somewhat milder, a kind of territorial wage being suggested. Every master would be obliged to give to his workmen, in addition to a minimum wage, a certain amount of land at the end of a given number of years. If during that period the workman has been employed by several masters, each master should contribute in proportion to the length of time he has been in his service.

At the end of a certain period every worker would thus become a proprietor. These would thus be in the same position as their primitive ancestors were as far as natural economy is concerned, and would be able to join with the older proprietors in a kind of association of capital and labour on a footing of absolute equality, which Signor Loria thought would be a most fruitful type of organisation. During the intervening years a certain amount of pressure would have to be put upon the proprietors.

[1228] The Social Democratic Federation was founded by Hyndman in 1881. See Métin, Le Socialisme en Angleterre, chap. 6 (1897).

[1229] Bernard Shaw, The Fabian Society, what it has done and how it has done it (1892; Fabian Tract, No. 41).

[1230] Report on Fabian Policy (Fabian Tract, No. 70).

[1231] “For it was at this period that we contracted the invaluable habit of freely laughing at ourselves which has always distinguished us, and which has saved us from becoming hampered by the gushing enthusiasts who mistake their own emotions for public movements.” (Bernard Shaw, loc. cit.)

[1232] Report on Fabian Policy.

[1233] Socialism, as understood by the Fabian Society, means the organisation and conduct of the necessary industries of the country, and the appropriation of all forms of economic rent of land and capital by the nation as a whole, through the most suitable public authorities, municipal, provincial, or central. The socialism advocated by the Fabian Society is State socialism exclusively (the term is used to distinguish it from anarchist socialism). On the other hand, it “steadfastly discountenances all schemes for securing to any person, or any group of persons, the entire product of their labour. It recognises that wealth is social in its origin and must be social in its distribution, since the evolution of industry has made it impossible to distinguish the particular contribution that each person makes to the common product, or to ascertain its value.” (Report on Fabian Policy.)

[1234] Ibid.

[1235] In addition to the Fabian Essays, the principal publications containing an exposition of Fabian ideas are the Fabian Tracts, a collection containing a great number of pamphlets on various subjects; The History of Trade Unionism, by Mr. and Mrs. Webb; Industrial Democracy, particularly chaps. 1 and 2 of the third part, by the same authors; and, finally, Problems of Modern Industry (1898), a collection of lectures and articles, also by Mr. and Mrs. Webb.

[1236] Mr. and Mrs. Webb in their History of Trade Unionism reject “that confident sciolism and prejudice which has led generations of socialists to borrow from Adam Smith and the ‘classic’ economists the erroneous theory that labour is by itself the creator of value without going on to master that impregnable and more difficult law of economic rent which is the very corner-stone of collectivist economy.”

[1237] “The interest with which we are concerned must clearly be a definable quantity of produce.” (The National Dividend and its Distribution, in Problems of Modern Industry, p. 227. We are indebted to this article for the exposition which we have given of the Fabian doctrine.)

[1238] An exposition of the same theory is given in Tract No. 15, English Progress towards Social Democracy: “The individuals or classes who possess social power have at all times, consciously or unconsciously, made use of that power in such a way as to leave to the great majority of their fellows practically nothing beyond the means of subsistence according to the current local standard. The additional product, determined by the relative differences in productive efficiency of the different sites, soils, capitals, and forms of skill above the margin of cultivation, has gone to those exercising control over these valuable but scarce productive factors. This struggle to secure the surplus or ‘economic rent’ is the key to the confused history of European progress, and an underlying, unconscious motive of all revolutions.” Cf. also The Difficulties of Individualism, in Problems of Modern Industry, pp. 237-239.

[1239] Bernard Shaw in his Economic Basis of Socialism, published in the Fabian Essays, makes a very neat distinction between interest properly so called and economic rent.

[1240] Fabian Essays, p. 35.

[1241] Socialism True and False (Tract No. 51).

[1242] What Socialism is (Tract No. 13).

[1243] In his preface to Kurella’s German book, Sozialismus in England (1898), he mentions the fact that the English working class is divided into a number of corporations who are either jealous of or misunderstand one another, but have not what we may properly call a class consciousness (p. 10).

[1244] Report on Fabian Policy, p. 7.

[1245] Fabian Essays, pp. 47-49.

[1246] Ibid., p. 31.

[1247] Sidney Webb, The Difficulties of Individualism, in Problems of Modern Industry, p. 231. Also in the Fabian Essays, p. 35, he declares: “Socialists as well as individualists realise that important organic changes can only be (1) democratic …; (2) gradual …; (3) not regarded as immoral by the mass of the people; and (4) in this country, at any rate, constitutional and peaceful.”

[1248] B. Potter (Mrs. Sidney Webb), The Co-operative Movement, p. 16.

[1249] Etymologically “solidarity” is a corruption of solidum, which was employed by the Roman jurists to signify the obligation incurred by debtors who were each held responsible for the whole amount of a debt. One would naturally expect the French derivative to be solidité, which was the term used by the jurists under the old régime, especially by Pothier. Solidarité was substituted for it by the editors of the Civil Code.

[1250] We should never come to an end if we began to quote passages in which the merits of solidarity are set forth. We must content ourselves with the following, chosen at random:

M. Millerand, at the time Minister of Commerce, in a speech delivered at the opening of the Exposition Universelle in 1900, said: “Science teaches men the true secret of material greatness and of social morality; and all its teaching, in a word, points to solidarity.”

M. Deherme, the founder of the People’s University movement, says: “The folly of solidarity should be the source of our inspiration, just as the martyrs of old were inspired by the folly of the Cross. The thing that wants doing is to organise democracy.” (La Co-operation des Idées, June 16, 1900.)

[1251] “For as we have many members in one body, and all members have not the same office; so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another.” (Romans xii, 4 and 5.)

“As in physical organisms the unity is made up of separate limbs, so among reasoning things the reason is distributed among individuals constituted for unity of co-operation.” (Marcus Aurelius, vii, 13; Rendall’s translation.)

[1252] Discours sur l’Esprit positif. In the Cours de Philosophie he frankly pays it this well-deserved compliment: “It is a truly capital idea, and thoroughly modern too.”

[1253] Social biology dates from the publication of Professor Schäffle’s great work Bau und Leben des sozialen Körpers (1875-78); possibly from the publication of Rodbertus’s work—at any rate, Rodbertus accuses Schäffle of plagiarism. See also Spencer’s Principles of Sociology. Aristotle had already ventured to say that “an animal is just like a well-ordered city,” a proposition that might well be inverted.

[1254] There are still a few adherents left. See M. Worms’s book, Organisme et Société, and Lilienfeld’s Pathologie sociale.

Herbert Spencer, who was the pioneer of the analogy, had abandoned it; and Auguste Comte, the godfather of sociology, took good care to put sociologists on their guard against the method, which he considered irrational.

[1255] “The enormous development of steam communication and the spread of the telegraph over the whole globe have caused modern industry to develop from a gigantic starfish, any of whose members might be destroyed without affecting the rest, into a μέγα ζῶον which is convulsed in agony by a slight injury in one part.” (Nicholson, Effects of Machinery on Wages, p. 117.)

[1256] It was in 1889, if we mistake not, that the term “solidarity” was proposed as the title of a new economic school in a lecture entitled L’École nouvelle. This lecture was published, along with others, in a small volume entitled Quatre Écoles d’Économie sociale (1890, Geneva) (L’École libérale, by Frédéric Passy; L’École catholique, by Claudio Jannet; L’École socialiste by M. Stiegler; and L’École nouvelle, by M. Gide). The characteristics of the various schools are summed up as follows: The one is the school of liberty, the other of authority, while the third is the school of equality. Gide then proceeds: “Were I asked to define what I understand by the New School in a single word, I should call it the Solidarity School. Unlike liberty, equality, and fraternity, solidarity is not a very high-sounding word, nor is it a mere ideal. It is just a fact, one of the best-established facts of history and experience, and the most important discovery of our time, and this fact of solidarity is becoming better established every day.”

It would have been better, perhaps, to have spoken of a new movement rather than of a new school, seeing the variety of schools, some of them actually opposed to one another, such as the school of Biological Naturalism and the Christian school, the Anarchist school and the State Socialist school, that have adopted solidarity as a part of their creed.