For the principle of function, for which we have pleaded as the basis
of industrial organization, supplies the only intelligible standard by
which the powers and duties of the different groups engaged in industry
can be determined. At the present time no such standard exists. The
social order of the pre-industrial era, of which faint traces have
survived in the forms of academic organization, was marked by a careful
grading of the successive stages in the progress from apprentice to
master, each of which was distinguished by clearly defined rights and
duties, varying from grade to grade and together forming a hierarchy of
functions. The industrial system which developed in the course of the
nineteenth century did not admit any principle of organization other
than the convenience of the individual, who by enterprise, skill, good
fortune, unscrupulous energy or mere nepotism, happened at any moment
to be in a position to wield economic authority. His powers were what
he could exercise; his rights were what at any time he could assert.
The Lancashire mill-owner of the fifties was, like the Cyclops, a law
unto himself. Hence, since subordination and discipline are
indispensable in any complex undertaking, the subordination which
emerged in industry was that of servant to master, and the discipline
such as economic strength could impose upon economic weakness.

The alternative to the allocation of power by the struggle of
individuals for self-aggrandizement is its {164} allocation according
to function, that each group in the complex process of production
should wield so much authority as, and no more authority than, is
needed to enable it to perform the special duties for which it is
responsible. An organization of industry based on this principle does
not imply the merging of specialized economic functions in an
undifferentiated industrial democracy, or the obliteration of the brain
workers beneath the sheer mass of artisans and laborers. But it is
incompatible with the unlimited exercise of economic power by any class
or individual. It would have as its fundamental rule that the only
powers which a man can exercise are those conferred upon him in virtue
of his office. There would be subordination. But it would be
profoundly different from that which exists to-day. For it would not
be the subordination of one man to another, but of all men to the
purpose for which industry is carried on. There would be authority