LABOR’S NEW STATUS 307 
dustry so far as possible shall be autonomous and shall have 
the friendly cooperation of the government, but that the 
government, in the sense of public policy, is superior to 
industry. Industry must always be subordinated to demo- 
cratic institutions and ideals; or, expressed reversely, the 
subordination of democratic institutions and ideals to in- 
dustry cannot be tolerated in a self-governing republic. 
Unless we can have proper autonomy of industry and de- 
mocracy in industry, as well as democratic control of indus- 
try, our political institutions, which have been developed 
with so much bloodshed and suffering, will be futile and 
ineffective. 
No enlightened industrial leader or financier, however, 
wishes a subordination of government to industry to occur. 
Entirely aside from consideration of democracy and hu- 
manity, the wise observer knows that it would be short- 
sighted and inevitably destructive of both industry and 
democracy. It is for this reason that in the modern day, 
while it is properly claimed that the stimulus of profit in 
industry should be retained, and that the rights of in- 
vestors, management and employees should be protected, 
the conception has rapidly gained ground that industrial 
promotion, expansion and operation should primarily be a 
social function and service. Probably the most astounding 
outgrowth of the extraordinary industrial development 
through which the country has recently passed, has been 
the discovery that the profitableness of industrial under- 
takings really depends upon the extent to which they con- 
form to this new conception of industrial policy. 
During the first half-century of our national life, po- 
litical affairs revolved around abstract questions of govern- 
ment. The constitutional questions as to the relation be- 
tween the States and the Federal Government, other con- 
stitutional interpretations. and the rights of personal and