The house of Industry : a new estate of the realm

FACTORS OF VICTORY 93

policy, Crown Colony policy, particularly our responsibilities towards our subject or backward taces, Public Health, Education. Does it not strike any Doubting Thomas that the House of Commons has quite enough to do with this wide and vitally important range of political problems without wishing to see them muddled, thwarted, and finally frustrated by the intrusion of economic difficulties ?

If, however, it could be shown that the House of Commons, by reason of its experience, its personnel, its authority, its contact with industry, was the best body to deal with industrial maladjustment, my argument, in existing circumstances, is largely academic. But no Labour Members can take that ground, because Labour both in its political and industrial organisation, is committed beyond recall to the democratic control of industry. And I repeat, what has already been argued here, that any concessions, on the score of urgency, to autocratic control would set back industrial labour by a generation. There is a type of Labour faintheart who, at any critical moment, is ready to fall back upon Capitalist methods. His attitude seems to be willingness to trust Labour when it can be done safely; but in times of danger better stand by the old ways. If this man hadn’t the brains of a chicken, he would know without being told that the economic mess in which we find ourselves is due to Capitalism and nothing but Capitalism. The so-called world depression, which some people regard as an Act of God, is nothing more and