t those orders should be. In the former case he is
responsible for his own work, but not for anything else. If he hews
his stint of coal, it is no business of his whether the pit is a {128}
failure; if he puts in the normal number of rivets, he disclaims all
further interest in the price or the sea-worthiness of the ship. In
the latter his function embraces something more than the performance of
the specialized piece of work allotted to him. It includes also a
responsibility for the success of the undertaking as a whole. And
since responsibility is impossible without power, his position would
involve at least so much power as is needed to secure that he can
affect in practice the conduct of the industry. It is this collective
liability for the maintenance of a certain quality of service which is,
indeed, the distinguishing feature of a profession. It is compatible
with several different kinds of government, or indeed, when the unit of
production is not a group, but an individual, with hardly any
government at all. What it does involve is that the individual, merely
by entering the profession should have committed himself to certain
obligations in respect of its conduct, and that the professional
organization, whatever it may be, should have sufficient power to
enable it to maintain them.

The demand for the participation of the workers in the control of
industry is usually advanced in the name of the producer, as a plea for
economic freedom or industrial democracy. "Political freedom," writes
the Final Report of the United States Commission of Industrial
Relations, which was presented in 1916, "can exist only where there is
industrial freedom.... There are now within the body of our Republic
industrial communities which are virtually Principalities, oppressive
to those dependent upon them for a livelihood {129} and a dreadful
menace to the peace and welfare of the nation." The vanity of
Englishmen may soften the shadows and heighten the lights. But the
concentration of authority is too deeply rooted in the very essence of
Capitalism for differences in the degree of the arbitrariness with
which it is exercised to be other than trivial. The control of a large
works does, in fact, confer a kind of private jurisdiction in matters
concerning the life and livelihood of the workers, which, as the United
States' Commission suggests, may properly be described as "industrial
feudalism." It is not easy to understand