itself has been an economic miracle in its revelation
of the extent to which state action can secure vastly
productive economic results -- that will be consid-
ered in this chapter.

For three generations or so before the war, col-
lectivism --"the ownership or control by the com-
munity of the means of production, distribution and
exchange"-- had been a theory advocated by con-
siderable parties in every civilized country of the
western world. There had been certain timid and
piecemeal application of it: gas, water-works, street-
car lines had become state or municipal enterprises in
many parts of Europe. In certain countries rail-
roads had become State concerns; in Australia and
New Zealand state control of public utilities had been
pushed further than elsewhere and become generally
accepted as a principle. But there had been no gen-
eral application of the principle that profits, and the
disposal of the surplus above the accepted standard
of life, belong first to the community and not to the
individual. Nor had the tentative approaches to
collectivism in Australia and elsewhere converted the
world generally to any very lively faith in socialism,
or any very general recognition of the social principle
underlying it. Scepticism as to its feasibility was
predominant. The power of capital and the insti-
tution of private property were virtually unshaken.
Years of agitation in England failed to secure the
expenditure by the State of a hundred million dollars
for a national scheme of rehousing for the rural pop-
ulation, the need for which was crying. A pre-war

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