In the long run there will be compensation. The agriculturists will eventually benefit by the diversification of the national life. But “in the long run” means that the next generation will benefit, not the present agriculturists, a distinction sometimes somewhat cavalierly ignored. The present generation will be called upon to make a sacrifice, precisely as in the family some of the members may have to sacrifice a part of their income to provide for a weaker member. But the circumstance that the sacrifice is recognized as a sacrifice will serve to put an end to the protection when the special need for it has ceased. Under the present system, on the other hand, the state is supposed to have no concern with the special interests of any group. All the same, there are the special interests, and in consequence that which is for the interest of one group has to be advocated as if it were for the general interest of the entire community. And since general interest is easily mistaken for perpetual interest, the protection is apt to be continued long after its particular usefulness has ceased.[90] I am earnestly concerned that vocational representation shall not be regarded as a mere device in the mechanism of politics, like the substitution of the long for the short ballot, or the initiative and referendum. Innovations of the latter kind leave the prevalent conception of democracy untouched, they are merely intended to improve the machinery by which that conception is to be worked out in practice; they are mechanical contrivances, not fundamental reconstructions. Vocational representation, in my view of it, is the appropriate expression of the organic idea of the state. The state is the soul. The soul must have a body. Vocational representation is that body.