appointment in the Established Church. It is generally held that saloon keepers in England have a vested interest in their business, so that they must be indemnified if their licenses are taken from them. Workingmen have frequently claimed that they have a vested interest in the advantages which their acquired skill gives them, and consequently that if through industrial changes this skill ceases to be of as great value as formerly, they ought to be indemnified and in some way their former income continued. This claim of the workingmen, however, unlike many other claims put forward in the name of vested interests, has not received recognition, either by Parliament or the courts. Vested interests, apart from property and contract, are of less significance in the United States than in most countries, but they may become of more significance in the future.

Freedom. -The words "liberty" and "freedom" have given rise to some of the deepest philosophical discussions, but we may avoid confusion if we say that the freedom to do certain things is legally guaranteed at the present time, such as moving from one part of the country to another, choosing one's own occupation, and acquiring property. These, together with the absence of chattel slavery and imprisonment for debt, are characteristic features of the present economic order as distinguished from past conditions. The right to manufacture and sell what and when one pleases is a comparatively recent one. It has often been greatly limited by despotic governments, and the right has been made a matter of sale for the purpose of raising revenue. Most such limitations have been of the nature of abuses, and our own time has seen the abolition of an immense number of hampering and vexatious restrictions designed for plunder rather than for the promotion of private enterprise. So far as the absence of legal restrictions on the actions of individuals is concerned, the past century has been distinctively an age of liberty.

Restrictive laws, however, are not the only limitations on our freedom of action. The system of private property itself means that certain individuals in the community have power to command other people to work, and the lack of an income under our present régime implies the lack of the real freedom to do things. The

cost of a railway ticket may be quite as effective as a legal barrier would be in preventing movement from one state to another. It is said that we are free to acquire unlimited property. True, the law does not expressly prohibit such acquisition, but as a matter of fact many persons do not acquire much property. Again, we say involuntary servitude, except as punishment for crime, has been abolished, yet men are compelled to work by the threat of economic distress, in most cases quite as effectively as by means of the slave-driver's whip, for the counterpart of legal freedom is the economic responsibility of the individual. "Sink or swim," says the State to the millions struggling for worldly goods. That is the end of the matter according to the laissez-faire theory. The modern State helps men to learn to swim. Again, the choice of an occupation is free according to the law, but we may find that a long and expensive course of training is necessary, or we may be compelled to conform to trades-union regulations, and always it is necessary to find some one who deems our services valuable. The right to establish enterprises is granted to all alike according to the law, but to-day it would be difficult and hazardous to embark upon the refining of oil or the manufacture of steel. Practically, the freedom to establish new enterprises has been growing less and less in this era of large-scale production.

Competition and Markets. As a result of the legal conditions. that have been mentioned, we find men engaged in many kinds of rivalry. Our economic society is often called "competitive" for this reason. But when this term is used, not all forms of rivalry are meant, for even if private property and free contract were abolished, some form of struggle might still persist. There might still be conflicts between races and nations, and the men of any single nation might still vie with one another to prove their superiority in the eyes of womankind or to gain positions of public honor and power. The kind of competition which is distinctive of the present economic order is the all-pervading endeavor to obtain the largest possible amount of wealth in exchange for commodities produced or services rendered. If we except the idlers, the parasites, and the cheaters, men are everywhere endeavoring to discover what other people want urgently, and then

to satisfy that want in the most efficient manner possible. On the other hand, they attempt to give as little as possible of their own products in exchange for the things they themselves desire. Business competition thus has two sides: rivalry in rendering a service, and alertness in exacting a return. Each individual takes part in the competitive contest in two ways: first, as a seller of goods or services, in which case he finds that others are anxious to render the same service; and second, as a buyer of the things he wants, in which case he finds that these same things are sought after by other people.

The intensity of the competitive struggle is subject to a good deal of variation. At times it may be characterized as cut-throat, where the slashing of prices has for its object the elimination of one or more of the contestants. But the rivalry is not necessarily so fierce. In some lines of business many competitors may continue to exist side by side indefinitely, each competitor being confronted by the ever present threat that if his service becomes very poor, some other man will outstrip him. Various as may be the character of competition, now predatory, now a friendly rivalry, there is no resting place in the contest unless one secures some special privilege as a shelter. He who is energetic, and wins success in a certain line of business, must continue to defend himself from a host of imitators who are anxious to snatch his gains from him. Most of the competitors are successful in getting something, some more than others, but many fail altogether. These last, the inefficient, whether made so by sickness, by inherited weakness, or by lack of proper training, fall by the wayside and must be cared for by private charity or by the State. The process is cruel in many of its details, but there is also a beneficent aspect in the sifting out of the incompetent and in the encouragement of the strong.

Here, again, reference may be made to the automatic character of the present industrial system. It is through competition and bargaining in the market that a price is fixed, and it is to the variations in this price that business men look for indications as to what people want rather than to the reports of some government official, although such reports are of some assistance. Price is

the universal barometer that indicates changes in the demand for goods of all kinds.

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Competition has been spoken of as a struggle, a contest, accompanied by success and failure, elation and disappointment. But the State sets limits to the rivalry - it makes regulations and acts as an umpire to compel fair play. It attempts to eliminate fraud and brute force; it trains the rising generations for an entrance into the struggle by a system of free edu tion; it insists that no person shall sacrifice the life and lir of another in the rush for wealth; and it protects children and women when they seem compelled to labor under unhealthful conditions. Those who fail entirely in the struggle it tries to rescue from suffering. In short, the State, as will be explained more fully in a later chapter, aims to raise the plane of competition, changing it from brutal warfare into a contest in which there are prizes for all, but in which the prizes are graded according to the energy and ability of the contestants.

Coöperation. The statement that our age is one of competition is misleading if it gives the impression that every individual is continually struggling against all of his fellows. On the contrary, the achievements of modern industrial civilization would be impossible without a far-reaching coöperation between individuals. Employers and employees may quarrel and bargain about the wage contract, but when they have settled their relations for a week or a year, they become coöperators during that period in the conduct of the business enterprise in which they are engaged. Again, there is an unconscious coöperation between those who work upon a commodity in the different stages of the process from raw material to finished product. The division of labor itself necessarily implies coöperation. Competition merely determines the conditions on which the coöperation takes place. If these conditions could be determined in some other manner, it would be possible to conceive of the elimination of competition from our industrial system, but coöperation is so vital and fundamental that its elimination would mean a return to barbarism.

Monopoly. Everywhere in the industrial field the tendency toward monopoly is present. Business men endeavor so far as

possible to shelter themselves from the effects of the competitive struggle by means of some privilege, but if none is to be found, and if competition becomes very keen, they endeavor to combine with other business men. But while this attempt to escape competition is universal, it is only under certain conditions that it is at all likely to succeed. The success is least in agriculture and in the mercantile business, where new enterprises are started rather easily becaus special privileges stand in the way and because no very large capita is required to work efficiently. It is greatest in mining and transportation, where special privileges are present and where large capital is required. Scarcely anywhere is it possible wholly to escape competition, and we are still warranted in speaking of the present era as a competitive rather than a monopolistic age.

Side by side with the growth of monopoly there is an increase in government interference in industry. The desire of the business man is to be uncontrolled, but wherever he succeeds in throwing off the control exercised by his competitors, he inevitably substitutes that of the government official.

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Custom. - Custom plays an important part in our economic activity as well as in every other department of social life, although sway is not so marked as in former ages or among primitive peoples. The custom of giving gratuities, or tips, to servants is in many places so strong as to have almost the force of law. Again, to-day much of our personal expenditure is controlled by what custom has declared to be proper rather than by any act of our own individual reason. Any attempt to lower wages which would make impossible the maintenance of a customary standard of living would be stubbornly resisted. Custom is the result of habit, and is continually broken into by our tendency to imitate a leader who proposes a new line of action. Recent events in the spelling reform movement afford an illustration. While custom may have its beneficent aspect in preventing hasty and impulsive changes, it frequently retards progress and causes our legislation and judicial decisions to lag behind industrial development.

Authority and Benevolence. In the preceding pages frequent reference was made to the limitations upon the rights of private