The house of Industry : a new estate of the realm

38 THE HOUSE OF INDUSTRY

alternative of confiscation or compensation for disturbance. Clearly, if the House of Industry should have full powers of control and coordination, there must be considerable disturbance. And so what shall we do?

The cardinal fact is that hitherto control and co-ordination have definitely been the monopoly of the possessing classes. Out of this monopoly has grown the vast mass of small proprietors, the rentier class, the speculative investor, and a whole army of industrial tadpoles and tapers. Now if they had exercised those powers prudently, humanely, with vision and foresight, we should not be in the tragic muddle in which we find ourselves. Therefore, there can be no question of compensation in transferring control to a representative House of Industry. That is to say that useless boards of directors, sinecures, parasitic occupations, when swept away, can have no claim for compensation. The House of Industry will be bound to find them useful work—that and no more. But the great body of men and women who have invested their money in good faith, what of them? Have they a claim in equity or only in mercy or policy ?

The Capitalist leaders, however public-spirited, kindly, liberal, in their private lives, have always been remorseless in maintaining their system. They resisted even the humanitarian laws pressed upon them by Shaftesbury, Oastler, and others; they have deliberately insisted upon a permanent surplus of unemployed to regulate wages; they