nt service, but, in the long run, a
condition of it. The course of wisdom for the consumer would be to
hasten, so far as he can, the transition. For, as at present
conducted, industry is working against the grain. It is compassing sea
and land in its efforts to overcome, by ingenious financial and
technical expedients, obstacles which should never have existed. It is
trying to produce its results by conquering professional feeling
instead of using it. It is carrying not only its inevitable economic
burdens, but an ever increasing {147} load of ill will and skepticism.
It has in fact "shot the bird which caused the wind to blow" and goes
about its business with the corpse round its neck. Compared with that
psychological incubus, the technical deficiencies of industry, serious
though they often are, are a bagatelle, and the business men who preach
the gospel of production without offering any plan for dealing with
what is now the central fact in the economic situation, resemble a
Christian apologist who should avoid disturbing the equanimity of his
audience by carefully omitting all reference either to the fall of man
or the scheme of salvation. If it is desired to increase the output of
wealth, it is not a paradox, but the statement of an elementary
economic truism to say that active and constructive co-operation on the
part of the rank and file of workers would do more to contribute to
that result than the discovery of a new coal-field or a generation of
scientific invention.

The first condition of enlisting on the side of constructive work the
professional feeling which is now apathetic, or even hostile to it, is
to secure that when it is given its results accrue to the public, not
to the owner of property in capital, in land, or in other resources.
For this reason the attenuation of the rights at present involved in
the private ownership of industrial capital, or their complete
abolition, is not the demand of idealogues, but an indispensable
element in a policy of economic efficiency, since it is the condition
of the most effective functioning of the human beings upon whom,
though, like other truisms, it is often forgotten, {148} economic
efficiency ultimately depends. But it is only one element.
Co-operation may range from mere acquiescence to a vigilant and zealous
initiative. The criterion of an effective system of administration is
that it should succeed in enlisting in the conduct of industry the
lat