The house of Industry : a new estate of the realm

66 THE HOUSE OF INDUSTRY

and other manceuvres calculated to lower the standard of life.

The reply to Rationalisation is the democratic control of industry—the only means now possible of expanding credit and so increasing our wealth, and more equitably distributing wealth.

How remote do these problems seem to the traditional methods of the House of Commons! How hopeless are they without a national economic authority to deal with them! How impossible are they of solution without full powers of control and co-ordination !

Therefore, now is the appointed time for the House of Industry.

THE STRATEGIC POSITION OF THE CO-OPERATIVE MOVEMENT

WE can to a marked degree gauge the value of social criticism by its reactions from the Cooperative Movement.

There are critics who pride themselves upon their pure economics, critics who fondly think they are in the classic tradition, who simply ignore it. They write themselves down as academic nonentities.

There are critics who airily dismiss Co-operation as a clumsy method of saving money. They tell us that the working costs of Co-operation are the same as the retailers and that the dividend comes out of enhanced prices. Somehow they omit from their reckoning the thousands of retailers who