stem has not the qualifications for the cooerdination of
industrial life. As the needs of the nations under the pressure of war
have brought out the inefficiencies of the economic institution, it
has become sufficiently clear to those responsible for the conduct of
the war and to large sections of the civil population, that wealth
exploitation and wealth creation are not synonymous; that the
production of wealth must rest on other motives than the desire of
individuals to get as much and give as little as particular situations
will stand.

In England and in the United States, where the individualistic
conception of the industrial life has been an inherent part of our
national philosophy, the governments, with cautious reservations, have
assumed responsibilities which had been carried in normal times by
business. Because business administration had been dependent for its
existence on a scheme of profiteering it is not in the position where
it can appeal to labor to contribute its productive power in the
spirit of patriotic abandon. But governments as they have taken over
certain industrial responsibilities are in a better position to make
such appeals to capital as well as to labor.

The calculable effect of the appeal to capital to assume the
responsibility is in the long run of passing importance, as under the
present business arrangement that is the position capital occupies. In
other words, the appeal will mark no change in capitalist psychology
as it promises to do in the case of labor.

The calculable effect on labor psychology may have revolutionary
significance. It is quite another sort of appeal in its effect from
the stereotyped and familiar one of employers to labor to _feel_ their
responsibility. That appeal never reached the consciousness of working
men for the reason that it is impossible to feel responsible or to be
responsible where there is no chance of bearing the responsibility.
Experiencing responsibility in industry means nothing more nor less
than sharing in the decisions, the determination of procedure, as well
as suffering from the failure of those decisions and participating in
their successful eventuation. As the governments in the present case
have made their appeals to labor they have carried the suggestion of
partnership in responsibility because the government is presumably the
people's voice and its needs also presumably are the common needs and
not the special interests of individuals.