a society supposedly emancipated, as an element in the servant question and the labour problem. As for the first, I will not be so rash as to suggest that the need of personal or household service, for many persons a truly vital need, can very easily be reduced to a "business proposition". It is none the less the question of status, the question of a "proper respect", that presents the greatest difficulty. Mrs. Brown, a lady of liberal tendencies, and a matter-offact person, will have you believe perhaps that all that interests her is so much work for so much money. But she addresses her cook as "Mary", and she would be stunned if the cook should address her as "Emily". She is also slow to abandon her traditional prerogative of supervising, on behalf of morality, the cook's goings-out and her comings-in, and especially her relations with young men. And when in consequence Mary the cook prefers a place in a shop or a factory, probably a more grinding task and on the whole less lucrative, Mrs. Brown will begin to wonder whether these persons know what is good for them.

It is true that Mrs. Brown and her friends, finding themselves in the position of Mary (which, however, cannot politely be suggested), would feel in honour bound to prefer the shop or even the factory to menial service, or possibly to starve on something lower than shop wages in an occupation conventionally more genteel; and those hardships which make it a foolish choice for Mary would for them make it heroic. But their case, they would explain, if brought to the point, is different. And if you ask, How different? the answer, I fancy, would boil down to this: that God in his wisdom has created different sorts of persons for different stations in life; to most of whom, appropriately, a servile occupation is not really objectionable. Mrs. Brown and her friends would probably claim to be Christian women. They would be dismayed to learn that they are following Aristotle, the heathen philosopher, who taught that some men are by nature slaves.

It may be supposed that the husbands of these ladies

business men, captains of industry, and employers of labour-are untroubled by any of this nonsense about the proprieties. As men of hard fact, their imagination is supposed never to be deflected by sentiment from the line marked by the arithmetical balance of profit and loss. And Mr. Brown would tell you perhaps that as long as he receives a sufficient return for wages paid, moral considerations have no interest for him. But he has probably failed to grasp the full connotation of the term "moral". In England, I believe, the employers are still known as "masters", the distinction being that of "masters" and "men". In the United States we prefer the politer "employer" and "employee". But the tradition is the same; the tradition, namely, of respect for authority. The employee is supposed to remove his hat in the presence of the employer. The employer keeps his hat on, and his cigar in his mouth, and it is he who is supposed to fix the conditions of employment. Since the business belongs to him the relation is in no sense a partnership.

Until recently labour disputes referred mainly to wages. Now, however, it seems that the question of wages is overshadowed by the demand of labour for a share, amounting possibly to the lion's share, in the management of industry. At the same time, the editorial columns of the daily press have begun to issue solemn warnings to the labour world of its obligations to "the public". Formerly it was assumed that responsibility to the public, if any, was assumed by employers alone. Yet it seems that "the public" is as little disposed as the employers to favour the participation of labour in the direction of industry. Apparently it does not occur to these journalistic moralists that moral responsibility and moral obligation imply a power of direction. Obligation without choice, the precise negative of moral obligation, is indeed the principle of authoritarian morality generally.

Now if I were a stock-holder, say, in a railway enterprise, I am not sure that I should be eager for a partnership with labour; nor should I be in a hurry to advocate this

from the standpoint of the public. But this attitude I should call utilitarian rather than moral. And what it means is substantially this: I know from experience that the employers can in some fashion run the railways, provide transportation, and earn dividends; and I prefer to get things done, or to collect dividends, with as little discussion as possible. I may have before me the vision of a much more humane and intelligent situation, which eventually may also be more profitable from the utilitarian standpoint. But the process of realizing this situation will involve mental and moral effort, including much thought, perplexity, and doubt. In brief, it is an invitation to a higher degree of moral responsibility than, in this direction at least, I care now to assume.

On the other hand, as a representative of railway labour, I should certainly refuse to recognise any responsibility to the public until the public co-operated in securing for me the commensurate power of supervision. If asked to accept a reduction of wages on the ground that rates are too high for the public to bear, I should wish to be shown whether rates might not be lowered through greater economy of management. And the employers, Mr. Brown and his friends, if placed in the same position, would call this a plain business proposition. Nay, more—a moral proposition. For it is precisely their argument when they point to the Labour Board and the Interstate Commerce Commission as preventing them from fulfilling a moral obligation to the public.

From the terms in which the discussion of labour problems is commonly conducted moral considerations of any intelligent kind seem rather speculatively remote. Yet it is worth asking what the moral issue might be. The cruder form of the labour argument, which is suspicious of the value or productiveness of any work not done with the hands, prefers to ban the whole class of employers and capitalists as "parasites", at least to the extent of receiving much more than their services warrant. On the other hand the employer claims for himself the dignity and

the authority of intelligence. He represents the traditional "intelligent classes". And in vindication of his intelligence he claims further that it is by virtue of his organizing ability that industry exists. One wonders, then, why so little attempt is made by either side to test this claim by experiment. Labour seems as little disposed to assume responsibility as capital is to grant it. My suspicion is that each fears the other may be right.

Meanwhile some light may be thrown upon the superior rights and dignities of the employer by considering the relation of employer and employee as a relation of exchange. The labourer gives work in exchange for money; the employer gives money in exchange for labour. In a fair exchange the values are presumably equal. Why, then, is the employer entitled to deference? Because he provides the intelligence or because he provides the money? There are curious superstitions connected with money. The neighbour who borrows my lawnmower without asking my permission is perhaps somewhat impudent but nothing worse. But what if he borrowed the price of the lawnmower out of my pocket-book? When I pay for the hat that I have just bought, the salesman says, "Thank you"; if I should thank him for letting me have the hat he would be very much amused. I have observed a substantial shopkeeper still obsequiously polite to his customer though a negro servant who was probably parting with nearly her last dollar-and she, in turn, was exercising upon him all of the dignity that goes with the disbursement of money. Though there is no reason underlying the dignity of money, there is a simple cause. Money is a liquid asset. If you have only goods to barter with, you are at the mercy of the relatively few who happen to need your special goods. But everybody wants your money. Thus money is power. Under present conditions it is the most conspicuous and characteristic form of power, and power is "the basis of authority". Among those who reverence authority one rarely observes any long-sustained reverence for persons who are powerless.

§ 21

Turning, then, to the moral quality of the ordered society I need only repeat here with a difference of application what was said in the last chapter: the ordered society is not so much a moral ideal as an ideal of convenience. The motive underlying it is not reverence, but utility, and yet, more exactly, not so much utility, in any more comprehensive sense, as business efficiency. For the two things are by no means the same. One may seriously doubt whether our modern business organization stands for a very high grade of utility, even from its own ostensible point of view of productiveness. Employers themselves see clearly enough that productiveness is not enhanced when most of the army of workers have little personal interest and no personal voice in the process of production; and while productiveness is being constantly increased by labour-saving machinery, it seems that the skilled artisan is becoming steadily and deliberately less productive. Meanwhile, however, the present form of business organization does "get things done". This is the true meaning of "efficiency"; a motive by no means contemptible indeed, but in no large sense moral or suggestive of reverence. Efficiency is short-time utility. Its aim is to get things done, not with a large and artistic completeness-so as to satisfy indefinitely-but first of all promptly, so that the business may be disposed of and the world may go on.

For purposes of efficiency the hierarchical order is perhaps ideal. In any emergency-and the housewife who knows that dinner must be provided whatever happens, will tell us that emergency confronts us day by day-in the case of a fire or a flood, however, what we need first of all is a leader whose instructions all will obey; and any leader, any organization, is better than none. Hence the hierarchical order is not merely "mediaeval". The finest and most logical embodiments of the ordered society are extremely modern and up-to-date; as illustrated in our large industrial organizations, but best of all in the organization