State, to hear manufacturers
and merchants say that they have a 'right to a good profit'. The
President of the Board of Trade remarked openly in the House of Commons
after many months of war that it was more than one could expect of human
nature for coal-owners not to get the highest price they could. Such a
standpoint is not merely indecent: it is hopelessly out-of-date. Looked
at from the political point of view it is a pure anachronism. There used
to be times when men made large fortunes out of the service of
government, as men still make them out of the service of the community
in trade and industry to-day. In the days of St. Matthew, when
tax-gathering was let out by contract, the apostle's partners would
probably have declared, as Mr. Runciman does to-day, that it was more
than one could expect of human nature that a publican who had a
government contract for the collection of the taxes should not get all
he could out of the tax-payer. It is, indeed, little more than a century
ago since it was a matter of course in this country to look upon oversea
colonies merely as plantations--that is, as business investments rather
than as communities of human beings. The existence of Chartered Company
government marks a survival of this habit of mind. The old colonial
system, which embodied this point of view, proved demoralizing not only
to the home government but to the colonists, as a similar view is to the
working class, and it led to the loss of the American colonies as surely
as a similar attitude on the part of employers leads to unrest and
rebellion among workpeople to-day.

We have thus a long way to travel before the ideals of politics have
been assimilated into the industrial life of the community and have
found fitting embodiment in its kindred and more complex problems. But
at least we have reached a point where we can see what the problem of
industrial government is. We can say with assurance that a system which
treats human beings purely as instruments or as passive servants, and
atrophies their self-determination and their sense of individual and
corporate responsibility, is as far from perfection in industry as the
Roman Empire was in politics. Renan's words about 'the intolerable
sadness' incidental to such a method of organization apply with
redoubled force to occupations which take up the best part of the day of
the mass of the working population. The bleak and loveless buildings,
with their belching chim