Noyes says that the most fundamental change that has occurred during the war has been the world-wide assertion of public control of industry by the government. Perkins says that centralization is the order of the day, and that the government now properly takes on many functions that once belonged to the states, and that this process of centralization naturally extends to international relations. Smith speaks of the growing interdependence of government and industry which will especially give security to investment in productive enterprises. Hesse says that there must be national team work in all industries, and that in a democracy everything that autocracy can accomplish must be repeated, but upon a basis of voluntary coöperation. In France it has been proposed by Alfassa that there shall be established a department of national economy, to bring about a closer coöperation than there has been in the past among private interests, and to centralize industry. Wehle thinks that in America, even before the war, industrial concentration was leading to political concentration and that the states were losing their relative political importance. The grappling of states individually with large industrial problems is now, he says, at an end. Dillon has expressed the view that England ought to adopt industrial compulsion. Clementel, the French minister of commerce, thinks France ought to substitute for liberty without restraint in the industrial field, liberty organized and restricted.
There can be no doubt that the world is thoroughly awake to the need of more effectual coöperation in industry, and it is natural that the first thoughts should turn to government control as the simplest and readiest method of securing it. When we examine these suggestions about the coördination and centralization of industries it becomes evident that most writers have been strongly influenced by Germany's remarkable success, both in peace and war, under the system of governmental control of industries. The manner in which the German government turned all the country into one great industrial plant has appealed to the imagination, and many writers see in centralization under the control of government the means of curing most of the evils of industrialism. There are many proposals, all the way from the plan to introduce cabinet ministers with limited power to have oversight over industry to the total abolishment of the capitalistic system and all the rights of property. Many of course, while still believing in concentration and coöperation, cling to the system of private and individual ownership, and believe that the best results will be obtained in the end without any radical change in the relations between government and industry, and without resorting to any socialistic reform.