the amendability of the Constitution by
majority vote is a demand so revolutionary that it is exclusively
Socialist property. Within the limitations of a very brief journalistic
article I believe this statement was justified. It holds for the United
States to-day. It does not hold for agrarian countries like Australia,
Canada, or South Africa, for backward countries like Russia, or
dependent countries like Switzerland or Denmark, where there is no
danger of Socialism. And before it can be put into effect, which may
take a decade or more, the increased proportion in the population of
well-paid government employees and of agricultural lessees of government
lands and similar classes, may make a democratic constitution a safe
capitalistic policy, for a while, even in the United States.

[44] Lloyd George, _op. cit._, pp. 33, 34.

[45] Lloyd George, _op. cit._, p. 35.

CHAPTER IV

"STATE SOCIALISM" AND LABOR

State Capitalism has a very definite principle and program of labor
reform. It capitalizes labor, views it as the principal resource and
asset of each community (or of the class that controls the community),
and undertakes every measure that is not too costly for its
conservation, utilization, and development--_i.e._ its development to
fill those positions ordinarily known as _labor_, but not such
development as might enable the laborers or their children to compete
for higher social functions on equal terms with the children of the
upper classes.

On the one hand is the tendency, not very advanced, but unmistakable and
almost universal, to invest larger and larger sums for the scientific
development of industrial efficiency--healthy surroundings in childhood,
good food and healthy living conditions, industrial education, model
factories, reasonable hours, time and opportunity for recreation and
rest, and on the other a rapidly increasing difficulty for either the
laborer or his children to advance to other social positions and
functions--and a restriction of the liberty of laborers and of labor
organizations, lest they should attempt to establish equality of
opportunity or to take the first step in that direction by assuming
control over industry and government. From the moment it approaches the
labor question the "Socialist" part of "State Socialism" completely
falls away, and nothing but the purest collectivist capitalism remains.
Even the plausible contention that it will result in the maximum
effici