DIFFICULTIES OF INDIIDUALISM 375 altarsstill ?eigns, almost unchecked, in the factory and the mine. The 'captains of industry,' like the kings of yo?e, a?e indeed honestly unable to imagine how the business of the wo?ld can eve? go on without the continuance of thei? existing rights and powers. And truly, upon any possible development of Ino dividualist principles, it is not easy to see how the wo?ke? can eve? escape from their beneficent rule. But ?ep?esentative goverament has taught the people how to gain collectively that powe? which they could neve? again indivio dually possess. The p?esent century has accordingly witnessed a growing demand fo? the legal ?egulation of the conditions of industry which ?ep?esents a ma?ked advance on p?evious con- ceptions of the sphere of legislation. It has also seen a p?oo gress in the public management of industrial undertakings which
ep?esents an equal advance in the field of government adminiso
t?ation. Such an extension of collective action is, it may safely be asserted, an inevitable ?esult of political democracy. When the Commons of England had secured the right to vote supplies, it must have seemed an unwarrantable extension that they should claim also to ?ed?ess grievances. When they passed from legis- lation to the exercise of control ove? the executive, the constituo tional jurists were aghast at the p?esumption. The attempt of Parliament to seize the command of the military forces led to a civil wa?. Its control ove? foreign policy is scarcely two hundred years old. Every one of these developments of the collective authority of the nation ove? the conditions of its own life was denounced as an illegitimate usurpation foredoomed to failure. Every one of them is still being ?esisted in countries less advanced in political development. In Russia it is the right to vote supplies that is denied; in Mecklenburg the right freely to legislate; in Denmark, it is the control ove? the executive; in Germany, it is the command of the army; in Austria, it is the foreign policy of that composite Empire. In England, where all these rights a?e admitted, each of them inconsistent with the ' complete personal liberty' of the minority, the Individualists of to-day deny the competence of the people to ?egulate, through their ?ep?esentative committees, national or local, the conditions unde? which they work and live. Although the t?anny which keeps the t?amcar conducto? away f?om his home fo? seventeen hours a day is not the tyranny of king o? priest o? noble, he feels that it is tyranny all the same, and seeks to curb it in the way his fathers took. The captains of wa? have been ?educed to the position of salaried o?ce?s acting for public ends unde? public control; and
