Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/397

 DIFFICULTIES OF INDIIDUALISM 375 altarsstill eigns, almost unchecked, in the factory and the mine. The 'captains of industry,' like the kings of yoe, ae indeed honestly unable to imagine how the business of the wold can eve go on without the continuance of thei existing rights and powers. And truly, upon any possible development of Ino dividualist principles, it is not easy to see how the woke can eve escape from their beneficent rule. But epesentative goverament has taught the people how to gain collectively that powe which they could neve again indivio dually possess. The pesent century has accordingly witnessed a growing demand fo the legal egulation of the conditions of industry which epesents a maked advance on pevious con- ceptions of the sphere of legislation. It has also seen a poo gress in the public management of industrial undertakings which epesents an equal advance in the field of government adminiso tation. Such an extension of collective action is, it may safely be asserted, an inevitable esult of political democracy. When the Commons of England had secured the right to vote supplies, it must have seemed an unwarrantable extension that they should claim also to edess grievances. When they passed from legis- lation to the exercise of control ove the executive, the constituo tional jurists were aghast at the pesumption. The attempt of Parliament to seize the command of the military forces led to a civil wa. Its control ove foreign policy is scarcely two hundred years old. Every one of these developments of the collective authority of the nation ove the conditions of its own life was denounced as an illegitimate usurpation foredoomed to failure. Every one of them is still being esisted in countries less advanced in political development. In Russia it is the right to vote supplies that is denied; in Mecklenburg the right freely to legislate; in Denmark, it is the control ove the executive; in Germany, it is the command of the army; in Austria, it is the foreign policy of that composite Empire. In England, where all these rights ae admitted, each of them inconsistent with the ' complete personal liberty' of the minority, the Individualists of to-day deny the competence of the people to egulate, through their epesentative committees, national or local, the conditions unde which they work and live. Although the tanny which keeps the tamcar conducto away fom his home fo seventeen hours a day is not the tyranny of king o priest o noble, he feels that it is tyranny all the same, and seeks to curb it in the way his fathers took. The captains of wa have been educed to the position of salaried oces acting for public ends unde public control; and