by the shareholders. But it is more and
more evident to-day that the crux of the economic situation is not
{160} the technical deficiencies of industrial organization, but the
growing inability of those who direct industry to command the active
good will of the _personnel_. Their co-operation is promised by the
conversion of industry into a profession serving the public, and
promised, as far as can be judged, by that alone.

Nor is the assumption of the new and often disagreeable obligations of
internal discipline and public responsibility one which trade unionism
can afford, once the change is accomplished, to shirk, however alien
they may be to its present traditions. For ultimately, if by slow
degrees, power follows the ability to wield it; authority goes with
function. The workers cannot have it both ways. They must choose
whether to assume the responsibility for industrial discipline and
become free, or to repudiate it and continue to be serfs. If,
organized as professional bodies, they can provide a more effective
service than that which is now, with increasing difficulty, extorted by
the agents of capital, they will have made good their hold upon the
future. If they cannot, they will remain among the less calculable
instruments of production which many of them are to-day. The instinct
of mankind warns it against accepting at their face value spiritual
demands which cannot justify themselves by practical achievements. And
the road along which the organized workers, like any other class, must
climb to power, starts from the provision of a more effective economic
service than their masters, as their grip upon industry becomes
increasingly vacillating and uncertain, are able to supply.

{161}

X

THE POSITION OF THE BRAIN WORKER

The conversion of industry into a profession will involve at least as
great a change in the position of the management as in that of the
manual workers. As each industry is organized for the performance of
function, the employer will cease to be a profit maker and become what,
in so far as he holds his position by a reputable title, he already is,
one workman among others. In some industries, where the manager is a
capitalist as well, the alteration may take place through such a
limitation of his interest as a capitalist as it has been proposed by
employers and workers to introduce into the building industry. In
others, where the whole work of administration rests on