Moreover, the war-time emphasis upon the idea of democracy has greatly stimulated the demand for its extension into the field of industry. This demand was assuming definite shape before the war; but what was at that time the propaganda of a comparatively small group has now become the faith of a multitude; and this faith is becoming more and more articulate as a demand for a socially intensive as well as geographically extensive application of the democratic principle. The argument runs in some such fashion as this. Broadly speaking, the democratic idea has three notes; first, the institution of those conditions of equal opportunity which are within human control; second, the participation of the community as a whole in the creation of these conditions, which means a universal franchise and equal ungraded partnership in affairs; and third, the absence of any privileged class which is able to impose its will upon the rest or any part of the rest. Some rough approximation to this state of things has been made in the political region; there it is accounted good and right. Why, then should not the same process be good and right in other regions of life? For instance, the greater part of a man’s life gathers around and is governed by his work; yet this democratic principle which is so estimable in politics is taboo in industry. To begin with, there is no such thing as a condition of equal opportunity in the industrial region. Certain antecedent advantages of birth, possession, and education have created a privileged class; and the rest are under a corresponding handicap. There was a time when the ranker could rise out of the ranks and make a field for himself; but in these days of trusts, combines, chain-stores and the like, the opportunity of the ranker to quit the ranks has dwindled almost to vanishing point. In the second place, industry is under class government. The persons engaged in it are divided into masters and servants, employers and employees; and the hired man has hardly a word to say in determining the conditions of his work. The only freedom he possesses lies in the choice of a master; and even this, under the régime of large corporations, is steadily disappearing. For the rest, he is confined to a choice between working under conditions imposed by the employer and not working at all, which means starvation. In industry there is a rule of privilege as real as that of the old territorial aristocracy; and the modern practice of investment has served to perpetuate this privilege within the bounds of a single class by the simple operation of the accident of birth, just as feudal landownership in another age became the foundation of aristocratic power. The one qualification which requires to be made here is that the concentration of large multitudes of workers in urban centres, as the result of the machine industry, has enabled the workers to join together in self-defence; and the Trade Union has to some extent