Wage and the Minimum Standard of Life, already discussed in the third
of these papers, controlling it from below. Limited in this way,
property will resemble a river that once swamped a whole country-side,
but has now been banked within its channel. Even when these expedients
have been exhaustively worked out, they will fall far short of that
"abolition of property" which is the crude expression of Socialism.
There is a certain measure of property in a state which involves the
maximum of individual freedom. Either above or below that Optimum one
passes towards slavery. The New Republican is a New Republican, and he
tests all things by their effect upon the evolution of man; he is a
Socialist or an Individualist, a Free Trader or a Protectionist, a
Republican or a Democrat just so far, and only so far, as these various
principles of public policy subserve his greater end.

This crude sketch of a possible scheme of honour and privilege, and of
an approximation towards the socialization of property will, at any
rate, show that in this matter, as in the matter of political control,
the alternative of the British system or the American system does not
exhaust human possibilities. There is also the Twentieth Century
System, which we New Republicans have to discover and discuss and bring
to the test of experience. And for the sake of the education of our
children, which is the cardinal business of our lives, we must refuse
all convenient legal fictions and underhand ways, and see to it that
the system is as true to the reality of life and to right and justice
as we can, in our light and generation, make it. The child must learn
not only from preacher and parent and book, but from the whole frame
and order of life about it, that truth and sound living and service are
the only trustworthy ways to either honour or power, and that, save for
the unavoidable accidents of life, they are very certain ways. And then
he will have a fair chance to grow up neither a smart and hustling