Page:The Evolution of Industrial Democracy (Woodruff).pdf/42

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
40
THE EVOLUTION OF

best powers must manifest themselves in the highest degree.

Responsibility for the efficiency of the various industries would, at first, devolve upon the collectivities which operated them, but, since the lines of "co-operation in production" cross several (sometimes many) industries, there must, with the perfection of machinery, be a rapid growth towards the classification of all industries as portions of "public service," and when this merger shall be complete, responsibility for industry will be universal or social. "Government," as now understood, will disappear—there being no servile class to be held in subjection—but in its place will be an "administration of affairs" based upon universal economic and social equality. The present territorial representatives (industrially ignorant politicians) who are a necessary part of master class government, will also disappear, being replaced by industrial representatives (engineers, chemists, educators, technical men, etc.), who will constitute an advisory council and direct the gathering of those industrial statistics that will be necessary in maintaining the economic adjustment of the new society.

Universal participation in production and in the benefits of industry—equality within the industries and equality of the industries—must necessarily result in a free and fluid society. Machine production, the social consciousness of humanity, and the industrial form of social organization; these are the bases of the new society. These are the guarantees of the Industrial Democracy—an harmonious civilization, from which must spring a truly cultured race; and this, from the viewpoint of the proletariat, is the eminent purpose of the existence of man upon the planet Earth.

Abner E. Woodruff, C. E.

FINIS