Labour has started from the wrong end—not to ascertain what are the defects in the present industrial system and the manner in which they can best be remedied—but how to get rid most easily of the private employer under the honest but uncritical and irrational belief that unless he is removed the defects cannot be remedied. This was the notion of Labour in the days when first it embraced State Socialism. Nationalization of industries, under which the Government would replace the private employer, was described in radiant language as “the charter of salvation of the working-classes.” Then Labour acquired some experience of the State as a “model employer”—in the Post Office, in the Royal Dockyards, in Woolwich Arsenal, and in other Government factories. With the disappearance of the private employer the workers in such nationalized industries found to their surprise and clamant regret that their conditions were not better, but were worse. The State, they discovered, was not so considerate a master as the private employer—not so disposed to recognize Trade Unions, or introduce Trade Union conditions, or pay standard rates of wages. Was ever a complacently cherished conviction so rudely shattered! Any critical inquirer would have stopped to consider whether after all it was right, with this practical experience, to assume that the only way to improve industrial conditions was to put an end to the private employer. Some prominent Trade Unionists did pause to think, and more than one has told me of his consequent renunciation of Socialism. So the old doctrine died, and some other doctrine was urgently needed—a fitting opportunity for the intellectuals. A new ship had to be constructed on the old keel of the abolition of private ownership, and this time it had to float. And after all, was anything easier? It had become fashionable, during the war, to talk of the rigidity of bureaucracy, and the inelasticity of bureaucratic direction—precisely the same thing might have been said with equal justice about the Trade Unions, for they are bureaucracy _in excelsis_—but no one thought of it. On the other hand, men’s ears were dinned with the mobile excellencies of democracy, its extraordinary versatility in adjusting men to their environment, and in modulating the qualities of the latter to its human content, and the air vibrated with theories of political self-determination. Democratic Government was being hailed as the balm for Europe, and what was more natural than that industrial self-determination under the name of “democratic control” should be acclaimed by Labour as the restorative of industry. So the new ship was built and called “Nationalization and Democratic Control.” Put into the water in 1918, it still lies a mere hull, unengined, unfinished and unclassed.