this condition of industrial autonomy, with all its hardships, its scant results, and its unceasing toil, or would submit their labour to the guidance of a minority more capable than themselves.  Such being the case, then, if by submitting themselves to the guidance of others they were to get nothing more than they could produce when left to their own devices, they would, in surrendering their autonomy, be giving something for nothing—­a transaction which could not be voluntary, and would be not the less unjust because, as all history shows us, they would be ultimately unable to resist it.  Justice demands that a surrender of one kind, made by one party, should be paid for by a corresponding surrender of another kind, made by the other party; which last can only take the form of a concession to labour, as a right, of some portion of a product which labour does not produce.  Labour can, on grounds of general moral justice, claim this as compensation for acquiescence, even though the acquiescence may, as a matter of fact, be involuntary.

Human nature, however, being what it is, these purely moral considerations would probably have little significance if they were not reinforced by others of a more immediately practical kind.  Let us now turn to these.  The motive which prompts labour to demand more than it produces is itself primarily not moral, but practical, and is so obvious as to need no comment.  What concerns us here is the practical, as distinct from any moral, motive, which must, when the situation is understood, make ability anxious to concede it.  For argument’s sake we must assume that the great producers of wealth are men who have no other motive ultimately than ambition for themselves and their families, and would allow nothing of what they produce to be taken from them by any other human being except under the pressure of some incidental necessity.  There is one broad feature, however, which even men such as these understand—­the fact, namely, that for successful wealth production one of the most essential conditions is a condition of social stability, or a general acquiescence, at all events, in the broad features of the industrial system, by means of which the production in question takes place.  But if the labourers have no stake in the surplus for the production of which such a system is requisite, it may be perfectly true that by escaping from it they would on the whole be no better off than they are, yet there is no reason which can be brought home to their own minds why they should not seek to disturb it as often and as recklessly as they can.  There is, at best, no structural connection, but only a fractional one, between their own welfare and the welfare of those who direct them; and a structural connection between the two—­a dovetailing of the one into the other—­is what ability, no matter how selfish, is in its own interests concerned before all things to secure.  In other words, it is concerned in its own interests so to arrange