CHAPTER XXI 
PERSONAL AND SOCIAL EFFICIENCY 
§ 1. What light does our human valuation of economic pro- 
cesses throw upon the conditions of individual and social pro- 
gress? Our examination of industry has shown us the ways in 
which the actual production and consumption of wealth affect 
the personal efficiency and welfare of individuals. The organic 
law of distribution clearly indicates personal efficiency, alike for 
purposes of economic productivity and for the wider art of life, to 
depend primarily upon the maintenance of sound relations be- 
tween the output of economic activities and the income of eco- 
nomic satisfactions. A healthy system of industry will demand 
from each producer an amount and kind of ‘costly’ labour accom- 
modated to his natural and acquired powers. By such a distribu- 
tion of the socially useful work which is not in itself agreeable to 
its performers, the common economic needs of society are supplied 
with the smallest aggregate amount of human cost. Similarly, we 
see how, by a distribution of wealth according to the needs of each 
member, i. e. according to his ‘power’ as consumer, the largest 
aggregate amount of human utility is got out of the wealth dis- 
tributed. 
But this burden of ‘costly’ work, required of the producer and 
adjusted to his powers, is not the only work that he can do. The 
main object of the shorter work-day and the better .apportion- 
ment of ‘costly’ labour, as we have already recognised, is to lib- 
erate the individual so that he has time and energy for the volun- 
tary performance of ‘productive’ activities that are ‘costless,’ 
interesting and beneficial to his personal life. Some of these 
voluntary activities will be ‘economic’ in the sense that they may 
produce goods or services which have an exchange value. Such 
is the gardening or the wood-carving which a man may do in his 
spare time. Though it may bring him a direct return of per- 
sonal gain and satisfaction that is non-economic, it may also be 
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