On Everything
These two fell at once to a discussion upon that matter which absorbs the best of modern minds. I mean the organisation of Production in the modern world. It was their favourite theme. Their drink was Port, which, carelessly enough, they continued to order in small glasses instead of beginning boldly with the bottle. The Port was bad, or rather it was not Port, yet had they bought one bottle of it they would have saved the earnings of many days.
It was their favourite theme. . . . Each was possessed of an intellectual scorn for the mere ritual of an older time; neither descended to an affirmation nor even condescended to a denial of private property. Both clearly saw that no organised scheme of production could exist under modern conditions unless its organisation were to be controlled by the community. Yet the two friends differed in one most material point, which was the possibility, men being what they were, of settling thus the control of machinery. Upon land they were agreed. The land must necessarily be made a national thing, and the conception of ownership in it, however limited, was, as a man whom they both revered had put it, "unthinkable." Indeed, they recognised that the first steps towards so obvious a reform were now actually taken, and they confidently expected the final processes in it to be the work of quite the next few years; but whereas the Economist, with his profound knowledge of external detail, could see no obstacle to the collective con-
56
