SOCIALISM IN ENGLAND. 
309 
rents, as there could not be an unlimited supply of houses in 
the most desirable situations, but probably Professor Symes 
means that the improved houses should be built in as suitable 
positions as may be in numbers proportional to the poor in 
each district The competition rents would no doubt be 
lowered as the supply of houses increased, but it is certain that 
the transaction would result in a huge pecuniary loss to the 
State. Perhaps this is not a fatal objection in Professor Symes’ 
eyes, for he further believes that “ it would be desirable to incur 
some pecuniary loss in establishing government workshops 
which should partly mitigate the uncertainties of modern 
industrialism.” How State workshops would have this result 
is not made clear. Of course, if the State undertook to provide 
work for those out of employment, much of the uncertainty of 
finding employment would, for a time at least, disappear. But 
at what cost and with what ulterior consequences? At the 
immediate cost of the tax-payers, and ultimately at that of the 
nation as well, for, as Professor Symes admits, “ the expense 
would, on the average, be greater than the waste involved in 
the existing industrialism.” But this is not all or nearly all. 
Just at the moment when, owing to a glut in the market, manu 
facturers would be lessening their production, labourers, thrown 
out of employment, would be demanding work at the hands of 
the State in increasing numbers. The State would be obliged 
to extend its operations to meet, not a demand for commodities, 
but the excessive supply of labour ; and the period of equili 
brium would be indefinitely postponed. Indeed, to remedy the 
confusion worse confounded, the cry of the Collectivists, that 
the State should take into its possession and management all 
the land, capital, machinery, and credit of the country, would 
become irresistible. 
It is impossible to estimate with any approach to accuracy 
the influence of this movement among the clergy of the Church 
of England. Mr. Headlam tells me that it is certainly spreading 
among them, though he admits that he could not name fifty 
who would call themselves “Christian Socialists.” The roll of 
the Guild of St Matthew now contains 119 names, of which 
forty-five are those of clerical members. The increasing atten-