In industry, monarchy and the aristocracy rule, and there are those who, calling themselves democratic, believe that democracy can never enter here.  Industry, they maintain, is a matter of technical knowledge and ability, and, therefore, is the eternal heritage of the few.  They point to the failure of attempts at democratic control in industry, just as we used to point to Spanish-American governments, and they expose, not simply the failures of Russian Soviets,—­they fly to arms to prevent that greatest experiment in industrial democracy which the world has yet seen.  These are the ones who say:  We must control labor or civilization will fail; we must control white labor in Europe and America; above all, we must control yellow labor in Asia and black labor in Africa and the South, else we shall have no tea, or rubber, or cotton.  And yet,—­and yet is it so easy to give up the dream of democracy?  Must industry rule men or may men rule even industry?  And unless men rule industry, can they ever hope really to make laws or educate children or create beauty?

That the problem of the democratization of industry is tremendous, let no man deny.  We must spread that sympathy and intelligence which tolerates the widest individual freedom despite the necessary public control; we must learn to select for public office ability rather than mere affability.  We must stand ready to defer to knowledge and science and judge by result rather than by method; and finally we must face the fact that the final distribution of goods—­the question of wages and income is an ethical and not a mere mechanical problem and calls for grave public human judgment and not secrecy and closed doors.  All this means time and development.  It comes not complete by instant revolution of a day, nor yet by the deferred evolution of a thousand years—­it comes daily, bit by bit and step by step, as men and women learn and grow and as children are trained in Truth.

These steps are in many cases clear:  the careful, steady increase of public democratic ownership of industry, beginning with the simplest type of public utilities and monopolies, and extending gradually as we learn the way; the use of taxation to limit inheritance and to take the unearned increment for public use beginning (but not ending) with a “single tax” on monopolized land values; the training of the public in business technique by co-operation in buying and selling, and in industrial technique by the shop committee and manufacturing guild.

But beyond all this must come the Spirit—­the Will to Human Brotherhood of all Colors, Races, and Creeds; the Wanting of the Wants of All.  Perhaps the finest contribution of current Socialism to the world is neither its light nor its dogma, but the idea back of its one mighty word—­Comrade!

The Call