for reasons of public convenience and profit. Another group of services is passing under public control for reasons of general health and well-being. The erection of working-class dwellings and the supply of milk by municipalities are typical of this kind of service, and the medical inspection of school children lies in the same category. In this movement towards municipalisation we have a proof that the community, as an organised whole, is to control in its own interests those forms of capital, the use of which is vital to its own well-being, and is making itself responsible for services, the qualities of which must be kept high, but which competition and private interests lower. Control by inspectors is the first stage, but in the end responsibility for direct service is being accepted by the more enlightened and progressive municipalities of the world.
"This is not Socialism," reply many critics. It is not, but it is the earnest of Socialism. For the Socialist sees that many forms of capital and many public services are assuming, with time, the characteristics of those which with an all but common consent are passing under public management. In Great Britain, the very same reasons which justified the municipalisation of trams exist to justify the nationalisation of canals and railways; we are on the verge of a great revolution in the care of public health, which will bring us near to some form of nationalisation of the medical service; in countries like America where the trust has firmly established itself and has
