it to all comers by weight at the very reasonable price of three-
and-threepence a copy.


HOW NOT TO DO IT

It was pointed out by Charles Dickens in Little Dorrit, which
remains the most accurate and penetrating study of the genteel
littleness of our class governments in the English language, that
whenever an abuse becomes oppressive enough to persuade our party
parliamentarians that something must be done, they immediately
set to work to face the situation and discover How Not To Do It.
Since Dickens's day the exposures effected by the Socialists have
so shattered the self-satisfaction of modern commercial
civilization that it is no longer difficult to convince our
governments that something must be done, even to the extent of
attempts at a reconstruction of civilization on a thoroughly
uncommercial basis. Consequently, the first part of the process
described by Dickens: that in which the reformers were
snubbed by front bench demonstrations that the administrative
departments were consuming miles of red tape in the correctest
forms of activity, and that everything was for the best in the
best of all possible worlds, is out of fashion; and we are in
that other phase, familiarized by the history of the French
Revolution, in which the primary assumption is that the country
is in danger, and that the first duty of all parties,
politicians, and governments is to save it. But as the effect of
this is to give governments a great many more things to do, it
also gives a powerful stimulus to the art of How Not To Do Them:
that is to say, the art of contriving methods of reform which