ndustry would be conducted in
the light of day. Its costs, necessary or unnecessary, the
distribution of the return to it, reasonable or capricious, would be a
matter of common knowledge. It would be held to its purpose by the
mere impossibility of persuading those who make its products or those
who consume them to acquiesce, as they acquiesce now, in expenditure
which is meaningless because it has contributed nothing to the service
which the industry exists to perform.

The organization of industry as a profession does not involve only the
abolition of functionless property, and the maintenance of publicity as
the indispensable condition of a standard of professional honor. It
implies also that those who perform its work should undertake that its
work is performed effectively. It means that they should not merely be
held to the service of the public by fear of personal inconvenience or
penalties, but that they should treat the discharge of professional
{127} responsibilities as an obligation attaching not only to a small
_elite_ of intellectuals, managers or "bosses," who perform the
technical work of "business management," but as implied by the mere
entry into the industry and as resting on the corporate consent and
initiative of the rank and file of workers. It is precisely, indeed,
in the degree to which that obligation is interpreted as attaching to
all workers, and not merely to a select class, that the difference
between the existing industrial order, collectivism and the
organization of industry as a profession resides. The first involves
the utilization of human beings for the purpose of private gain; the
second their utilization for the purpose of public service; the third
the association in the service of the public of their professional
pride, solidarity and organization.

The difference in administrative machinery between the second and third
might not be considerable. Both involve the drastic limitation or
transference to the public of the proprietary rights of the existing
owners of industrial capital. Both would necessitate machinery for
bringing the opinion of the consumers to bear upon the service supplied
them by the industry. The difference consists in the manner in which
the obligations of the producer to the public are conceived. He may
either be the executant of orders transmitted to him by its agents; or
he may, through his organization, himself take a positive part in
determining wha