but existing throughout the commonwealth, will be concentrated within the circuit of one central administration and will explode it.
The alternative proposal is that these industries are to be appropriated by the workers themselves, and that wages are to be abolished. But that would be incompatible with England's chief want—the application of an ever wider intelligence to industry. In these days the highest knowledge and the utmost foresight, and the most vigorous mental training, and the boldest initiative are needed increasingly among our commercial organisers in order to meet hostile attack. Our artisans, excellent and eminent as they are in their own line, are not as yet in the line of such qualities.
Putting aside, then, such schemes, let us establish the proposition that our industrial system, though of high excellence, needs some amendments to enable it to hold good in the coming time.
There are six specific adjustments required in that system, and I shall proceed to recite what I believe them to be.
The first of these has reference to the relative want of creative capacity in our industries.
If we look even at the strongest and best of them, this want can be observed.
For instance, the cotton trade, which furnishes one-third of our entire export of manufactured goods, is without any possibility of doubt the most highly organised and the most efficient of any that the world has ever seen. Just as in one of its
