Since these paragraphs were written, a National Industrial Conference convened by the British Government, and composed of equal numbers of employers’ and workers’ representatives, has reported unanimously in favour of a universal minimum wage and a universal maximum week. The Socialism popularly advocated during the last half-century, is, however, not likely to capture the working-class of to-day. The movement for the nationalisation of the means of production and distribution—especially of the primary necessities of life—has indeed gained strength during the war; and the public ownership doctrine of orthodox socialism is in no danger of being discarded, though it may be modified in the extent of its application. But the orthodox socialist plan of vesting economic and industrial control in the state will not survive the war. The modern doctrine of the state reached its apogee during the war; it is already in process of rapid discredit. This is chiefly due to the revelation of the logic of state-absolutism, which the German performance in the war has yielded; and we are likely to witness a strong reaction from the doctrine of the sovereign omni-competent state in the coming generation. Moreover, in England the working of the Munitions Act has proved that the state may be as harsh and troublesome an employer as a private individual or a corporation; and the workers are not minded to emancipate themselves from the plutocracy to hand themselves over to a bureaucracy. But how is public ownership to be made practicable without slate control? The experiences of war-time have revealed a possible solution of the difficulty. The Garton Foundation and the Whitley Committee, the former a private, the latter a parliamentary body, and neither committed to “labour” views, have been led by the study of industrial conditions in war-time to advocate introduction of democratic control into industry, and experiments in democratic control which have been made, have plainly demonstrated its practicability and its economic value. In the woollen trades that centre upon Bradford, in Yorkshire, various troubles interfered with the output of cloth. Early in 1916 the War Office requisitioned the output of the factories for the production of khaki, blankets, and other war-material; and a little later the Government purchased all the available wool on the market. The distribution of this wool to the factories was left by the Army Contracts Department to a Board of Control which it established for the whole industry. “The allocation,” says a recent account of the matter, “is carried out by means of a series of rationing committees. There are district rationing committees of spinners, of manufacturers, and a joint rationing committee on which the Trade Unions are represented. These committees ascertain all the facts about an individual firm’s consumption of wool, and the kind and quality of machinery that has been used.