Whilst, therefore, the enlargement of the functions of government, involved in the task of adjusting to one another the propensitv to consume and the inducement to invest, would seem to a nineteenthcentury publicist or to a contemporary American financier to be a terrific encroachment on individualism, I defend it, on the contrary, both as the only practicable means of avoiding the destruction of existing economic forms in their entirety and as the condition of the successful functioning of individual initiative.