Principles of western civilisation

I THE CLOSE OF AN ERA 25

clear that the one fact which weights its meaning is that it is primarily a conflict in which society is confronted with the ascendency of the present in the economic process. It is a struggle in which we see labour setting out in the modern period able, even in its collective expression, to wield only the weapon of the right to reduce profits, against the power of capital to refuse the right to live. It has been a struggle, therefore, in which society has found itself oppressed with the barbarous and disorganising methods of strikes and lock-outs on a growing scale; in which, even where labour has succeeded, it has often been successful only in conditions in which neither its own higher interests nor those of society are tending to be ultimately realised ; and in which, as through the long process of modern labourlegislation the primary conceptions of the Manchester school have become challenged by an increasing social instinct, the outlines of an immensely larger problem behind, towards which we are moving, have slowly become visible.

In the wider phases of the industrial process it is the same fact of the ascendency of the present with which society is becoming more and more consciously envisaged. As under the ruling spirit of the conceptions of the Manchester school, unrestricted competition in industry has tended to become essentially a free struggle for gain, divorced from all sense of responsibility, we see how the process has, by inherent necessity, tended to eliminate from it all qualities and principles save those contributing to success and survival in a conflict waged under such conditions. The resulting tendency of industry and commerce to pass gradually