are paid out of the public purse. Much
also is made of the fact that most of such functions which governments
have hitherto undertaken are directly associated with pressing needs,
such as street-car and railroad service, water and lighting supplies,
and the same line of reasoning will apply, perhaps in even a higher
degree, to future publicly owned and controlled enterprises. This
helps yet further to strengthen the idea that rebellion, however
sorely provoked, is on the part of public employes a sort of
high treason, the reasons for which neither deserve nor admit of
discussion. The greatest confusion of thought prevails, and no
distinction is drawn between the government as the expression and
embodiment of the forces of law, order and protection to all, as truly
the voice of the people, and the government, through its departments,
whether legislative, judicial or administrative, as just a plain
common employer, needing checks and control like all other employers.

The problem of the public ownership of industries in relation to
employes might well be regarded in a far different light. It holds
indeed a proud and honorable position in social evolution. It is the
latest and most complex development of industry, and as such the heads
of such enterprises should be eager to study the development of
the earlier and simpler forms of industry in relation to the labor
problem, and to study them just as conscientiously and gladly as
they study and adopt scientific and mechanical improvements in their
various departments.

But no. We are all of us just drifting. Every now and then the
question comes before us, unfortunately rarely as a matter for cool
and sane discussion, but usually arising out of some dispute. Both
sides are then in an embittered mood. There may be a strike on. The
employes may be in the wrong, but any points on which they may yield
are merely concessions wrung from them by force of superior strength,
for the employing body unfailingly assumes rights and privileges
beyond those of the ordinary employer. In particular, discontented
employes are invariably charged with disloyalty, and lectured upon
their duty to the public. As if the public owed nothing to them!

More democratic methods of expressing the popular will, giving us
legislation, and in consequence administration more in harmony with
the interests of the workers as a whole, and therefore in the end
reacting for the advantage of the community at lar