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work, and security of employment, for the workers, it will ultimately make for a fairer division of the profits of industry, now so absurdly apportioned. Our present concentration of wealth results in large measure from our present concentration of power. The distribution of the profits of the great industries that employ thousands of workers ought to be decided not by a handful of men but by the community as a whole. The few "owners" now usually take an exorbitant share for themselves. This exorbitant share is partly squandered in luxurious living, partly used to increase, by investment, the wealth of the already wealthy, and partly used to maintain the political bosses in existence and through them to push or strangle legislation. It is safe to predict that we shall never have a diffusion of wealth consonant with our ideal of Equality, or a political system free from organized large-scale graft, until we have a considerable measure of democracy applied to industry.

This is what is meant, or should be meant, by the dictum that the cure for the ills of democracy is more democracy. The money that makes political “corruption" a profitable game comes chiefly from the rich owners of industry, and the owners of our natural resources to a large extent the same set of people. These men, we must repeat, are not usually dishonest in intent. They think of themselves as protecting their legitimate interests. But the thwarting of the popular will that results, and the fortifying of the privileges of the rich, put off by so much the realization of the American ideal. A valuable remedy for political corruption may be found in a Short Ballot, with concentration of responsibility and delegated government. That reform would enable the people to wage a more successful war against the bosses who

are in politics for their personal profit. But there will always be a war between the vigilant among the people and the bosses so long as a class of owners are free to take as much as they can grab of the profits of industry and to use a large slice of that wealth for the direct and indirect subsidizing of legislation.

The main motive for the opposition to democracy in industry is, of course, the natural desire of those who enjoy the power and the profits to keep them. Democracy will mean a limitation of power, and, in the case of the profiteers, a limitation of profit; because neither the irresponsible power nor the congestion of wealth is socially justifiable. Concentration of power there must be, for efficiency, and for the location of responsibility. But it must be responsible power, power exercised in the interests of the industry as a whole, the interests of the workers and of the public, as well as the interests of the owners. Workers will still be discharged for incompetence or laziness, managers will still have pride in their departments and strive for efficiency. But the value of the results attained will be measured by the well-being secured for the workers and the low price secured for the public rather than by the profits secured for the owners. As it is now, we worship the god of Business Prosperity. But Business Prosperity means big profits for the owners; it may coincide with starvation wages or cruel tyranny for the workers and high prices for the consumer. Democratic control would not tolerate the worship of such a god.

But would not democratic control, by limiting the profits of the owners, lessen their interest in the business and slacken their energy? Would managers bound by a democratically determined code of procedure have the same incentive for striving for effi

ciency? Would the workers, if freed from the arbitrary despotism of owners and managers, work as hard as they do now? It is a matter of psychology; the results would certainly be complex. We lack experience of a thoroughly democratized society. As it is, the brainiest men keep clear, in general, of the various attempts at democratic enterprise-producers' co-operative societies, and the like-because they can make far higher profits for themselves in the scramble of private business. If all the Big Business of the country were democratized, the men of brains would be forced to find their field of activity within it. And there is no real reason to suppose that their energy and ingenuity would be lessened because they were on salary instead of facing an uncertain but unlimited profit.

If it is true that salaried men, or men whose possibility of profits is limited to the approximate level of a high salary, and whose power is constitutional rather than autocratic, will not work, as a class, so hard as those who have unfettered opportunity of power and profits, then we must put up with that loss of energy. To this subject we shall return in discussing our American ideal of Efficiency. It may be enough at this point to suggest that this possible loss of interest on the part of the present entrepreneur class would probably be insignificant as compared with the increase of interest on the part of millions of workers who would gain a stake in their life-work. It would become their business as well as their employers'. The gravest problem in industry today is how to get the workers to put their heart into their work, how to develop their morale. It is safe to say that the only ultimately successful way of reviving our waning industrial morale is through the admis

sion of the workers to participation in the control of the industry.

The big industries are at present the seat of a continuous class-conflict. Simmering beneath the surface there is always agitation and unrest. The small owner-class are the legal "insiders" in industry, the great mass of workers are simply hirelings, with no security of tenure, no personal stake in the business. No wonder the sight of big profits going to the owners awakens resentment; no wonder that decisions and policies that affect the lives of the workers adversely engender bitterness. There is no need of "Bolshevist" propaganda to explain this ever-latent hostility. The interests of owners and workers are obviously opposed. So long as this is the case, we shall have strikes and sabotage and soldiering on the job. The only escape is to diminish the separateness of function between the two classes, to merge their interests. Peace may exist in an ignorant and convention-ridden society between autocrats and their hirelings; not in a democracy. The old idea was that laborers should be docile, tame, submissive; the American spirit makes them independent in thought, eager to find scope for initiative and personality, determined to have their share of profits and power. It is too late to hope to stabilize the autocratic ideal; we must put our backs into making the democratic ideal work.

It is not the extension of bureaucratic government control that we need; government undertakings have not often been truly democratic. What we need is more self-determination, more individualism, more participation by everybody in the decisions in the field of his particular work. Industry must be conceived as a communal affair instead of as a private enterprise hiring multitudes of servile workers. Only in

this way can we give dignity to the average man's life, a far horizon, and zest in his work. This is what we all really want, or would want if we thought about it enough to be members of a self-governing community of workers. It is what Mr. Gerald Stanley Lee means when he says, "The people have decided to be parts of We-Machines. We have been cogs in other people's I-Machines long enough."

It is certain that a more democratic management of industry will lead to many blunders, and to much "graft." Whether to more blunders and more graft than our existing system, no one can say. Our present system is probably not on the whole more than ten per cent efficient; its striking successes are few and its failures many. But however that may be, progress has to proceed by trial and error. Political democracy has blundered so much, and been so honeycombed with corruption, that its enemies have deemed it far worse than autocracy. Yet it has spread and spread, until it is obviously to be the universal policy. The adventures of democratized industry will be many. But it is surely coming; because the masses are learning to want it, and learning that they can have it. The ballot is the camel's nose in the tent; nothing can prevent the camel from coming all the way in now. To dam the current will be but to make its eventual coming more tempestuous and destructive. That energy is wasted that opposes it; only that energy and thought are fruitfully spent which go to the working out of concrete plans and to the education of the people to use wisely their coming power.

Business men will, of course, resist the transition; not only those who profit by their power, but millions of others who have grown up to think in their terms. With their warnings of the danger of costly blunders,

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