The effect of this upon production is direct. Labour considers that it produces for capital not for Society. It organizes to protect itself against Capitalism; it trusts to legislation to secure the human consideration which Capitalism will never give of its own free will, or from its own sense of justice, or by a use of its power as a trustee rather than as a Shylock who exacts the uttermost farthing. When the national need is clear as during the war, labour produces heartily and throws away its safeguards against Capitalism; only when it finds that capital is less disinterested in its service, when it meets the profiteer at its threshold and sees mountainous fortunes piled up from its needs, does it slacken in well doing. When the nation called, labour responded with alacrity; when through the voice of the nation it heard the Jacob pantings of Capitalism hastening to make rich, labour paused in its service and thought of looking after itself. Now we are at peace, the old bad relations return, one side stronger by its gains and the other more embittered because it has been cheated. If the community suffers who can wonder? But why blame one side ?

LABOUR AND CAPITAL IN ANTAGONISM

At the time when this is being written every thoughtful person is disturbed by the prospects of continued ill-will at the worst, and lack of confidence at the best, between these two agents in production. The industrial strongholds which we held before the war have gone and, handicapped in every way, we look out into the future. A series of disagreements in our main industries will prevent us from reclimbing the high pinnacles which we held, and our industrial

future will then be almost as insignificant as though we had not been victorious on the field of battle. The smallness and tricky resourcefulness of mind which is trying to guide us is appalling. Patchings here and there, insignificant compromises, unprincipled manipulations, may put on the brake, but do not turn the coach from its downward course. The policy of waiting for the most opportune moment to have a spillfor the industrial der Tag which many capitalists are now toasting-is madness. Safety lies in views which recognize the depths and the heights of the problems which the country is called upon to solve, views which penetrate into the facts and which reach the causes of the unrest and the reasons of the antagonism, views, moreover, that are not bounded by the conflicts of the moment and the unpleasant ways in which they may show themselves, but which see them in their historical growth and relate them to the problems of expanding individual and social life. In any event, it is not a negative peace that we need but a hearty cooperation in securing communal well-being.

To see where we are, we must take a backward glance which, however, will be very cursory and summary. Before the war the discords of the system were only too apparent. Labour had combined to protect itself against the working of Capitalism and had formed Trade Unions, the practices of which, just like those of Capitalism, could not always be defended from the point of view of Society, but could be explained as a natural part of a conflict with Capitalism itself. After a generation or so of this, Trade Unionists were beginning to widen their outlook and were considering the social obligations of labour and the conditions under which those obligations could be fulfilled. Following this quest, they

were coming to the conclusion that the whole system of Capitalism was unfitted for that peace and wholeheartedness in production which everyone saw was essential for communal prosperity. The fixing of wages as a mere price for labour power and skill sold on a market, the frequent recurrence of unemployment, the poor return for unstinted effort, the baffling of labour's legitimate ambition to secure something better than the poverty-stricken conditions of the vast masses of the workers, the utter irrationality of the purely servile state of the workmen and the deadening effect of a toil that was always mechanical without being lightened by the incentive of responsibility, the irritating hopelessness which came when labour saw every substantial industrial gain grabbed at, and too frequently secured, by capital and every depression of trade used to thrust the wage-earner down again into the ruts of poverty from which he was beginning to rise these things, combined with the new appreciation of what the position of the workman might be in a well-organized industrial society, were producing a discontent which was challenging the practicability and the justice of the capitalist system.

To this discontent the education of the young workman had contributed largely. For a generation education had concerned itself with little more than teaching how to read, write and count. A few specially favoured, specially lucky or specially clever, children of the working classes had passed through the higher educational institutions and had found places in the professional-especially the teaching classes. They lost their sense of unity with the people amidst whom they were born, and the process tended to impoverish the mass rather than to enrich and raise it. At the same time, workmen, including not a few of

the leaders of organized labour, rising into positions of comparative ease and security moved in their minds into the lower middle class and yielded to its ideals, its comforts, and its attractions. A process of skimming the cream and taking the heart out was going on. By the loss of its best brains and the lack of complete identification between itself and many of its official leaders, the mass seemed to be becoming a reservoir for the recruitment of middle and professional classes, and was not retaining within itself the qualities and forces which alone could transform it by giving it a greater intelligence and spirit. Obviously, however, this was only a transition period, and the process of education proceeded. Secondary schools were multiplied and became filled by the children of workmen. There intelligence was awakened to such a wide extent that it could not all be drafted off into the service of other classes but remained in an increasing volume to guide and enliven the minds of the mass itself.

The first result of this was an educational movement from within the working masses. Socialist and Labour propaganda had aroused interest in social and economic subjects, and indirectly had also created interest in general culture. Whilst the mass was using its ability to read by buying great quantities of the cheapest and most worthless-often degradingstuff turned out day by day and week by week by the popular press, a movement of a totally different kind was spreading, especially amongst the younger men and women. The young workman was buying good books on science, economics, sociology and politics. Itinerant teachers appeared and considerable numbers of workmen attended their lectures, read the textbooks prescribed, and wrote papers on the work done.

The teaching was by no means always sound. Much of it was frankly propagandist and dogmatic, but at the very worst, it made the students independent and indocile; it occupied their minds and exercised their intelligence, and its effect was very soon seen in the general Labour movement. No longer was Trade Union propaganda confined to defensive work against Capitalism as regards wages, hours and such superficial things that, when gained, often meant nothing of substance. The structure of the capitalist system was studied and understood, the relationship between capital and labour was grasped, the historical evolution of industry was known, the forces within it working for its transformation were calculated and explored. Labour was retaining its own intelligence, was, in consequence, making new claims to importance, responsibility and respect, was developing a spirit of democratic aristocracy, was declining to accept any further a position of mechanical subordination in industry.

From the point of view of Capitalism all that this meant was that labour was becoming more prone to strike, to quarrel with employers, was less tractable and more touchy, and the whole condition was described as " Labour Unrest." Capitalism was shocked and injured to find that labour not only understood the ways of Capitalism, but imitated them— scamped work for profit, used every opportunity for exploitation, drove hard bargains on wages' markets; and the general public, working on the axioms of capitalist habit, could not detect in the "errors and the "tyrannies" of Labour policy the very methods which Capitalism had always practised with impunity both against the public as consumers and users, and against labour itself. The experiences of