The house of Industry : a new estate of the realm

END OF HISTORIC MANDATE 7

are careful to leave it to the Lords to maintain the traditional distinction between industrial power and political life. In a sense, the House of Lords is a representative body. Most of the modern Lords are the creation of a kind of vertical or industrial vote as compared with the more definite horizontal or political vote. To be sure, they have not been elected by counting noses; they have been selected by powerful interests who have always known how to tap the Fountain of Honour. The Capitalist leaders also know that the House of Lords has still some shots in its locker. It still possesses a remnant of political power, enabling it to retard or restrict legislation. This power it now unscrupulously uses to blackmail the Government. It is also common knowledge that unless Labour boldly seizes the opportunity to supersede the existing House of Lords by a House of Industry, representative of all the Industrial factors, in which Labour must have a permanent majority, the possessing classes, through their own political party, intend to strengthen the Lords’ power to blackmail. Labour has not a moment to lose.

DIGNIFIED PICKINGS

PLEASE do not infer from this argument that our noble Peers personally concerned themselves with trade, commerce or industry. That would have been beneath their dignity. They employed more or less scrupulous agents to attend to vulgar business affairs. Huckstering, rack-renting,