of individuals
who get a living for themselves by the same kind of work. Nor is it
merely a group which is organized exclusively for the economic
protection of its members, though that is normally among its purposes.
It is a body of men who carry on their work in accordance with rules
designed to enforce certain standards both for the better protection of
its members and for the better service of the public. The standards
which it maintains may be high or low: all professions have some rules
which protect the interests {93} of the community and others which are
an imposition on it. Its essence is that it assumes certain
responsibilities for the competence of its members or the quality of
its wares, and that it deliberately prohibits certain kinds of conduct
on the ground that, though they may be profitable to the individual,
they are calculated to bring into disrepute the organization to which
he belongs. While some of its rules are trade union regulations
designed primarily to prevent the economic standards of the profession
being lowered by unscrupulous competition, others have as their main
object to secure that no member of the profession shall have any but a
purely professional interest in his work, by excluding the incentive of
speculative profit.

The conception implied in the words "unprofessional conduct" is,
therefore, the exact opposite of the theory and practice which assume
that the service of the public is best secured by the unrestricted
pursuit on the part of rival traders of their pecuniary self-interest,
within such limits as the law allows. It is significant that at the
time when the professional classes had deified free competition as the
arbiter of commerce and industry, they did not dream of applying it to
the occupations in which they themselves were primarily interested, but
maintained, and indeed, elaborated machinery through which a
professional conscience might find expression. The rules themselves
may sometimes appear to the layman arbitrary and ill-conceived. But
their object is clear. It is to impose on the profession itself the
obligation of maintaining the quality of the service, and to prevent
its common purpose being frustrated through {94} the undue influence of
the motive of pecuniary gain upon the necessities or cupidity of the
individual.

The difference between industry as it exists to-day and a profession
is, then, simple and unmistakable. The essence of the former is