This is not the proper place to discuss either socialism or communism. This one observation may be made, however, that the performance by the state of non-essential duties is not, in very many cases, a step toward socialism. The es sential aim of socialism is to suppress competi tion. When there is assumed by the state a function which otherwise would certainly, or in all probability, not be performed at all, it can hardly be said that the field of private initiative is thereby lessened. Under the head of these non-essential, non-socialistic duties, may be grouped all those state activities that are edu cative rather than coercive, informative rather than controlling. Of this character, for in stance, is almost all of the work done in the Departments of Labor and Commerce, and of Agriculture, the Bureau of Education, the Fish Commission and other scientific bureaus of the United States government.
As to what the actual sphere of government in America and Europe is destined to become within the next few years we, of course, can only speculate. The probabilities, however, would seem to be that we are to see a consider able extension of state activities in the sphere of these non-essential, non-socialistic functions. The movement in this direction has for some time been very pronounced and is certainly one not to be deprecated. In the field of socialistic
activities, namely, those the exercise of which by the state almost necessarily involves a corre sponding diminution of the field of possible private enterprise, the greatest extension of public control within the immediate future will in all probability be seen in the assumption of the ownership and control by central and local governments of the so-called natural monop olies, and in the regulation by law of privately owned and managed industries in which the interests of the general public have become pro nounced. Whether the movement toward in creased governmental control in this last respect will proceed as rapidly as it has done during recent years one cannot say. The observation may be made, however, that, together with those forces, which, born of the increasing com plexity of our social and economic life, tend to make necessary an extension of the activities of the state, there are other agencies the in fluence of which may be in the opposite di rection. Out of an increased intellectual en lightenment and a more widely diffused spirit of altruism may easily arise both an increased ability and a stronger disposition to solve social and economic problems without a resort to the coercion of law. See STATL