neys, which arrest the eye of the thoughtful
traveller in the industrial districts of England are not prisons or
workhouses. But they often look as if they were, and they resemble them
in this--that they too often stand for similarly authoritarian ideas of
government and direction. Industry is still an autocracy, as politics
was in the days before the supremacy of Parliament. Power still descends
from above instead of springing from below. It is a power limited no
doubt by trade union action and parliamentary and administrative
control: but it is in essence as autocratic as the government of England
used to be before the transference of sovereignty from the monarch to
the representatives of his subjects. It was recently announced in the
press that Lord Rhondda had bought a group of Welsh collieries for 2
millions, and that as a result 'Lord Rhondda now controls over 3-1/2
millions of capital, pays 2-1/2 millions in wages every year, and is
virtually the dictator of the economic destiny of a quarter of a million
miners. Rumours are also current', the extract continues, 'that Lord
Rhondda is extending his control over the press of Wales'.[78] The
existence of such power in this twentieth century in the hands of single
individuals, not selected from the mass for their special wisdom or
humanity, is a stupendous fact which must give pause to any one who is
inclined to feel complacent about modern industrial progress. In days
gone by political power was as irresponsible as the economic power
wielded to-day by Lord Rhondda; and it descended from father to son by
hereditary right in the same way as the control over the lives of
countless American workers descends to-day as a matter of course from
John D. Rockefeller senior to John D. Rockefeller junior. If there is
any reality at all in our political faith we must believe that a similar
development towards self-government can and must take place in
industry. It may be that generations will elapse before the problems of
industrial government find a final and satisfactory constitutional
solution. But at least we can say that there is only one basis for that
solution which is compatible with a sound ideal of government, or indeed
with any reasoned view of morality or religion--the basis of individual
and corporate freedom with its corresponding obligations of
responsibility and self-respect. No nation, as Abraham Lincoln said, can
remain half-slave and half-free: and it was a great