The interests here discussed are of an economic kind, but they are vital and essential. It is to be observed, however, that these particular associations are not confined either to the worker or to interests purely economic. Reference has already been made to the Bank Clearing House. This is an instance of the formation of a powerful group to promote the common interests of its members, though in this case its formation was less due to the neglect of those interests by the state than to the fact that the interests concerned have become so extensive in range and so complex in character that the state was palpably incompetent to handle them profitably. In certain cases where the state has assumed liabilities of this kind (as in railway control) experience has not in the long run endorsed the competency of the state for the job. That, however, is less to the point than that we should observe the tendency to form voluntary associations for the protection and promotion of presumably necessary interests, and in some cases assuming (as in the case of the Bank Clearing House) a kind of police authority within its own field. Besides these economic and financial associations, there are also large and powerful professional associations which exist likewise to promote certain special interests. The British Medical Association affords an instance of such association; and here again we have an association which in the exercise of its office also assumes a function of discipline. Just as the Bank Clearing House can put a recalcitrant bank out of business, so the British Medical Association can “unfrock” a doctor who has offended against the professional code. It is true that the excommunicated culprit may in either case appeal to the civil courts for redress; but the rarity of such appeals shows how nearly complete is the authority exercised by these professional associations within their own province. With certain modifications the same general rule obtains in Teachers’ Unions, the Bar, the Co-operative Societies, Churches and other voluntary associations of persons, that gather around the nucleus of a special interest. The case is not so plain in regard to societies of a specially cultural character which do not so directly abut upon the general conduct of life, though the place of the Universities, Academies of Art, Author’s Associations and the like, in the total scheme of social life, makes it impossible to exclude them from consideration in any discussion which looks to the integration of all the legitimate interests of life in an organic full-growing social whole.