his workmates. We must see
industry not simply as a process of production but as a form of
association; and we must realize that the association of human beings
for the purpose of industrial work involves what is just as much a
problem of government as their association in the great political
community which we call the State.

It is difficult to see the record of the progress of industrial
government in clear perspective for the simple reason that the world is
still so backward as regards the organization of this side of its common
life. The theory and practice of industrial government is generations,
even centuries, behind the theory and practice of politics. We are still
accustomed in industry to attitudes of mind and methods of management
which the political thought of the Western World has long since
discarded as incompatible with its ideals. Two instances must suffice to
illustrate this. It is constantly being said, both by employers and by
politicians, and even by writers in sympathy with working-class
aspirations, that all that the workman needs in his life is security.
Give him work under decent conditions, runs the argument, with
reasonable security of tenure and adequate guarantees against sickness,
disablement and unemployment, and all will be well. This theory of what
constitutes industrial welfare is, of course, when one thinks it out,
some six centuries out of date. It embodies the ideal of the old feudal
system, but without the personal tie between master and man which
humanized the feudal relationship. Feudalism, as we saw in our study of
political government, was a system of contract between the lord and the
labourer by which the lord and master ran the risks, set on foot the
enterprises (chiefly military), and enjoyed the spoils, incidental to
mediaeval life, while the labourer stuck to his work and received
security and protection in exchange. Feudalism broke down because it
involved too irksome a dependence, because it was found to be
incompatible with the personal independence which is the birthright of a
modern man. So it is idle to expect that the ideal of security will
carry us very far by itself towards the perfect industrial commonwealth.

Take a second example of the wide gulf that still subsists between men's
ideas of politics and men's ideas of industry. It is quite common, even
in these latter days, and among those who have freely sacrificed their
nearest and dearest to the claims of the