ionships and intervenes to adjust incidental
disputes upon the assumption that their equity is recognized and their
permanence desired. In industry, however, the equity of existing
relationships is precisely the point at issue. A League of Nations
which adjusted between a subject race and its oppressors, between Slavs
and Magyars, or the inhabitants of what was once Prussian Poland and
the Prussian Government, on the assumption that the subordination of
Slavs to Magyars and Poles to Prussians was part of an unchangeable
order, would rightly be resisted by all those who think liberty more
precious than peace. A State which, in the {102} name of peace, should
make the concerted cessation of work a legal offense would be guilty of
a similar betrayal of freedom. It would be solving the conflict of
rights between those who own and those who work by abolishing the
rights of those who work.

So here again, unless we are prepared to re-establish some form of
forced labor, we reach an impasse. But it is an impasse only in so
long as we regard the proprietary rights of those who own the capital
used in industry as absolute and an end in themselves. If, instead of
assuming that all property, merely because it is property, is equally
sacred, we ask what is the _purpose_ for which capital is used, what is
its _function_, we shall realize that it is not an end but a means to
an end, and that its function is to serve and assist (as the economists
tell us) the labor of human beings, not the function of human beings to
serve those who happen to own it. And from this truth two consequences
follow. The first is that since capital is a thing, which ought to be
used to help industry as a man may use a bicycle to get more quickly to
his work, it ought, when it is employed, to be employed on the cheapest
terms possible. The second is that those who own it should no more
control production than a man who lets a house controls the meals which
shall be cooked in the kitchen, or the man who lets a boat the speed at
which the rowers shall pull. In other words, capital should always be
got at cost price, which means, unless the State finds it wise, as it
very well may, to own the capital used in certain industries, it should
be paid the lowest interest {103} for which it can be obtained, but
should carry no right either to residuary dividends or to the control
of industry.

There are, in theory, five ways by which the control of indust