The most conservative thinkers recognize that the present organization of industry is intolerable in the sacrifice of liberty which it entails upon the producer. But each effort which he makes to emancipate himself is met by a protest that if the existing system is incompatible with freedom, it at least secures efficient service, and that efficient service is threatened by movements which aim at placing a greater measure of industrial control in the hands of the workers. The attempt to drive a wedge between the producer and the consumer is obviously the cue of all the interests which are conscious that by themselves they are unable to hold back {130} the flood. It is natural, therefore, that during the last few months they should have concentrated their efforts upon representing that every advance in the demands and in the power of any particular group of workers is a new imposition upon the general body of the public. Eminent persons, who are not obviously producing more than they consume, explain to the working classes that unless they produce more they must consume less. Highly syndicated combinations warn the public against the menace of predatory syndicalism. The owners of mines and minerals, in their new role as protectors of the poor, lament the "selfishness" of the miners, as though nothing but pure philanthropy had hitherto caused profits and royalties to be reluctantly accepted by themselves. The assumption upon which this body of argument rests is simple. It is that the existing organization of industry is the safeguard of productive efficiency, and that from every attempt to alter it the workers themselves lose more as consumers than they can gain as producers. The world has been drained of its wealth and demands abundance of goods. The workers demand a larger income, greater leisure, and a more secure and dignified status. These two demands, it is argued, are contradictory. For how can the consumer be supplied with cheap goods, if, as a worker, he insists on higher wages and shorter hours? And how can the worker secure these conditions, if as a consumer, he demands cheap goods? So industry, it is thought, moves in a vicious circle of shorter hours and higher wages and less production, which in time must mean {131} longer hours and lower wages; and every one receives less, because every one demands more.