about by the war, that our organization of industry
was happy-go-lucky, inefficient and wasteful, and that a more scientific
and economical organization is imperative. Under such a new system it
may well be, as modern economists claim, that, we shall have an ample
surplus for the Common Good.

The chief objection to a National or Democratic Control of Industry has
been that it would tend to create vast political machines and thus give
the politicians in office a nefarious power. It is not intended here to
attempt a refutation of this contention. The remedy lies in a changed
attitude of the employee and the citizen toward government, and the
fact that such an attitude is now developing is not subject to absolute
proof. It may be said, however, that no greater menace to democracy
could have arisen than the one we seem barely to have escaped--the
control of politics and government by the capitalistic interests of the
nation. What seems very clear is that an evolutionary drift toward the
national control of industry has for many years been going on, and that
the war has tremendously speeded up the tendency. Government has stepped
in to protect the consumer of necessities from the profiteer, and
is beginning to set a limit upon profits; has regulated exports and
imports; established a national shipping corporation and merchant
marine, and entered into other industries; it has taken over the
railroads at least for the duration of the war, and may take over coal
mines, and metal resources, as well as the forests and water power; it
now contemplates the regulation of wages.

The exigency caused by the war, moreover, has transformed the former
practice of international intercourse. Co-operation has replaced
competition. We are reorganizing and regulating our industries, our
business, making sacrifices and preparing to make more sacrifices in
order to meet the needs of our Allies, now that they are sore beset. For
a considerable period after the war is ended, they will require our aid.
We shall be better off than any other of the belligerent nations, and
we shall therefore be called upon to practice, during the years of
reconstruction, a continuation of the same policy of helpfulness.
Indeed, for the nations of the world to spring, commercially speaking,
at one another's throats would be suicidal even if it were possible. Mr.
Sidney Webb has thrown a flood of light upon the conditions likely to
prevail. For example, speculative