e, for what function
does such an owner perform? The provision of capital? Then pay him
the sum needed to secure the use of his capital, but neither pay him
more nor admit him to a position of authority over production for which
merely as an owner he is not qualified. For this reason, while an
equilibrium between worker and manager is possible, because both are
workers, that which it is sought to establish between worker and owner
is not. It is like the proposal of the Germans to negotiate with
Belgium from Brussels. Their proposals may be excellent: but it is not
evident why they are where they are, or how, since they do not
contribute to production, they come to be putting forward proposals at
all. As long as they are in territory where they have no business to
be, their excellence as individuals will be overlooked in annoyance at
the system which puts them where they are.

It is fortunate indeed, if nothing worse than this happens. For one
way of solving the problem of the conflict of rights in industry is not
to base rights on functions, as we propose, but to base them on force.
It is to re-establish in some veiled and decorous form the institution
of slavery, by making labor compulsory. In nearly all countries a
concerted refusal to work has been made at one time or another a
criminal offense. There are to-day parts of the world in which
European capitalists, unchecked by any public opinion or authority
{101} independent of themselves, are free to impose almost what terms
they please upon workmen of ignorant and helpless races. In those
districts of America where capitalism still retains its primitive
lawlessness, the same result appears to be produced upon immigrant
workmen by the threat of violence.

In such circumstances the conflict of rights which finds expression in
industrial warfare does not arise, because the rights of one party have
been extinguished. The simplicity of the remedy is so attractive that
it is not surprising that the Governments of industrial nations should
coquet from time to time with the policy of compulsory arbitration.
After all, it is pleaded, it is only analogous to the action of a
supernational authority which should use its common force to prevent
the outbreak of war. In reality, compulsory arbitration is the
opposite of any policy which such an authority could pursue either with
justice or with hope of success. For it takes for granted the
stability of existing relat