THE THEORY OF MODERN WELFARE
Before business principles came to dominate everyday life the common welfare, when it was not a question of peace and war, turned on the ease and certainty with which enough of the means of life could be supplied. Since business has become the central and controlling interest, the question of welfare has become a question of price. Under the old regime of handicraft and petty trade, dearth (high prices) meant privation and might mean famine and pestilence ; under the new regime low prices commonly mean privation and may on occasion mean famine. Under the old regime the question was whether the community's work was adequate to supply the community's needs ; under the new regime that question is not seriously entertained.
But the common welfare is in no less precarious a case. The productive efficiency of modem industry has not done away with the recurrence of hard times, or of privation for those classes whose assured pecuniary position does not place them above the chances of hard times. Distress may
not be so extreme in modern induatrial communitiea, it does not readily reach the famine mark ; but such a degree of privation as is implied in the term " hard times " recurs quite as freely in modern civilized countries as among the industrially less efficient peoples on a lower level of culture. The oscillation between good times and bad is as wide and as frequent as ever, although the average level of material well-being nms at a higher mark than was the case before the machine industry came in.