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to some extent the legitimate claims of the various classes were from time to time recognised. If the ruling class forbade workmen to combine with one another to raise the rate of wages, it was because it assessed wages at what was considered a just rate. The weakness of the system was that paternalism easily degenerates into repression. The Industrial Revolution changed all this. The reaction against all regulation and restriction led to a triumph for individualism in economic and political thinking. Instead of regarding society as made up of classes it was considered as an aggre- gate of individuals, each seeking his own interest and each the best judge of the conduct that interest dictated. By following out the principles, it was argued, the interest of all would be promoted and the greatest happiness of the greatest number attained. So as the old system of industry and agriculture was breaking down, the old theory which had given stability to society was dissolving. Could the new individualistic theory give unity and stability to the new society which was emerging ? Contemporaries, who were driven to extremes by the absurdities and anomalies of regulation thought that the abolition of restriction would attain this end. But their theory was vitiated by their con- ception of the individual. He is a mere abstraction. To assume his existence in the world of reality and base your theory of society on the assumption is to build on the sand. Individualism would possibly be tolerable in a society of equals. It offered no solution to the problems of the new industrialism because the recent changes had accentuated economic inequality. What were the main elements of the problem ? The invention of machines and the application to them of un-human motive power crushed out the old domestic industries. Large scale produc- tion for a world market concentrated an industrial community in urban areas. In the highly organised factory system the individual workman, who had no alternative means of subsistence, had to find a place in which he performed from day to day some fractional part in the production of a commodity. He was bound to his employer (often a company) by what Carlyle called the cash-nexus, i.e., he received a wage in return for labour. Such a system, absolutely unregulated, would be unstable it could not endure. By what means was the industrial system given a degree of stability in the nineteenth century ? I Adam Smith in the Wealth of Nations," exposes the follies of the old regulations and Jeremy Bentham, whose influence on political thought can hardly be exaggerated. ridicules their absurdities, particularly in the sphere of law. The answer is a twofold one. The wage-earners, in the first place, gradually secured the right to combine with one another to defend their interests. Between 1799 and 1824 all combinations or trade unions were illegal; but in the latter year, mainly through the exertions of Francis Place, the Com- bination Laws were repealed. It is impossible to follow here the phases of the Trade Union Move- ment. By the end of the century skilled workers were strongly organised, and some beginning had been made in the organisation of unskilled men and women workers. What I want particularly to stress is that stability was given to the industrial system by the organisation of producers. Parallel with this development went a growing State inter- vention with the industrial system. The regula- tion of the factory by legislative enactment gradually defined the conditions of labour in order that the health and strength of the workers should not be impaired. This was to re-introduce regulation and restriction, and it was strongly opposed by the strict individualists. At first factory legislation applied to children only. It was extended to cover young persons (1833) women (1844), but no enact- ment protected men until the regulations regarding the fencing of machinery were made general (1856). The conclusion to which I wish to lead this brief survey is that, either by State action or by strong associations of producers, or by a combination of both, the standard of life of the workers must be protected under a fully developed industrial system. If the stress be laid on association of producers we arrive at some form of what is loosely called Syn- dicalism, and are involved in the difficulties of reconciling this control with the existence of the State. Contrary to the general impression this solution is not new. Robert Owen, early in the nineteenth century, had no faith in State action. and enunciated a scheme of what he called national companies or trade unions, possessing the means of production and each directing and controlling its own industry. But in Great Britian, while trade unionism has made steady progress, it has rarely professed revolutionary principles of this kind. The reconstruction of society has largely been in the direction of collectivism. The inter- vention of the State, resisted in the first part of the nineteenth century by individualists, became normal in the second half of the century. In the next article I shall give some account of the collec- tivist solution of the industrial problem as pre- liminary to the examination of what is called the Servile State, R.