A contributing cause to industrial discontent of growing moment is what the worker describes as the denial to him of a human status in industry. He complains, especially in the matter of being taken on or discharged or put on overtime or night-work, indeed, with respect to the whole conditions of his employment, that little or no regard is paid to him as a human being. He is content to accept the theory of the Labour intellectuals—it is certainly not his own conception—that he is a wage-slave taken on and discharged just as it suits his employer’s interests, and that his labour is bought and sold on the same principles as any other raw material in industry. The old paternal relation of employer and employed, unfortunately much weakened by the introduction of the factory system, has undoubtedly disappeared with the conversion of family businesses into vast joint-stock company concerns; personal touch between the master and his men no longer exists. There is, however, no ground for suggesting—as Socialists are fond of instilling into the minds of the workers—that this is still another inevitable result of the capitalistic organization of industry. In some of the largest and greatest of capitalistic works, workers can be, and to my knowledge are, treated with consideration and sympathy. Their human values can always be respected and full human status accorded to them if only the right spirit prevails between employers and employed, and proper machinery exists for its infusion into workshop life. Belief in Agitation Discontent, expressed in constant agitation, has unfortunately been of practical value; that is one reason why it is so rife in industry to-day. No substantial increases in wages or improvement in working conditions have, in the past, been conceded voluntarily by employers, but only after pressure by the Unions, subject, of course, to considerable qualifications in special cases. It is more or less inevitable that it should be so, having regard to the way in which the machinery of collective bargaining has been operated by both sides. Every time, when an increase of wages, or an improvement in conditions is demanded and refused, and then ultimately given under threat of a strike, it feeds the springs of future discontent and confirms in the workers’ minds the efficacy of agitation. In the latter days of the war the unsettled condition of industry was largely due to the fact that in the earlier days wage-increases had been refused and then conceded by the Government under pressure of strikes and threats of stoppages by the workers. Each time such capitulations took place it seriously ministered to the spirit of discontent. Desire for Improvement