ist propaganda has imported ideas
of public service into private employment. Labour in Britain has been
growing increasingly impatient of bad or selfish industrial leadership.
Labour trouble in Great Britain turns wholly upon the idea crystallised
in the one word "profiteer." Legislation and regulation of hours of
labour, high wages, nothing will keep labour quiet in Great Britain if
labour thinks it is being exploited for private gain.

Labour feels very suspicious of private gain. For that suspicion a
certain rather common type of employer is mainly to blame. Labour
believes that employers is mainly to blame. Labour believes that
employers as a class cheat workmen as a class, plan to cheat them of
their full share in the common output, and drive hard bargains. It
believes that private employers are equally ready to sacrifice the
welfare of the nation and the welfare of the workers for mere personal
advantage. It has a traditional experience to support these suspicions.

In no department of morals have ideas changed so completely during the
last eight years as in relation to "profits". Eighty years ago everyone
believed in the divine right of property to do what it pleased its
advantages, a doctrine more disastrous socially than the divine right
of kings. There was no such sense of the immorality of "holding up" as
pervades the public conscience to-day. The worker was expected not only
to work, but to be grateful for employment. The property owner held his
property and handed it out for use and development or not, just as he
thought fit. These ideas are not altogether extinct today. Only a few
days ago I met a magnificent old lady of seventy nine or eighty, who
discoursed upon the wickedness of her gardener in demanding another
shilling a week because of war prices.

She was a valiant and handsome personage. A face that had still a
healthy natural pinkness looked out from under blond curls, and an
elegant and carefully tended hand tossed back some fine old lace to
gesticulate more freely. She had previously charmed her hearers by
sweeping aside certain rumours that were drifting about.

"Germans invade _Us!_" she cried. "Who'd _let_ 'em, I'd like to know?
Who'd _let_ 'em?"

And then she reverted to her grievance about the gardener.

"I told him that after the war he'd be glad enough to get anything.
Grateful! They'll all be coming back after the war--all of 'em, glad
enough to get anything. Asking for another shi