Other conditions, affecting the employment of children and women, are proper subjects of restriction by law; for these also involve the consideration of general welfare in the elevation of the physical, mental and moral characteristics of the race. Upon the same plane must be put all legal restrictions upon methods and machinery, reducing the dangers from accident and promoting the comfort of employés. All restrictions serve their purpose only so long as they are appreciated as having their reason for existence in general welfare. The rights of an employer, under contract with his employé, like the rights of a parent in control of his child, are subject to the law of good will; and the world will yet find a way to make its restrictions felt wherever recklessness or carelessness or greed destroys good will.
_Nationalization of industry._--A somewhat popular suggestion in solution of labor difficulties is the so-called nationalization of industry. This, in general terms, is a proposition to equalize compensation and avoid fluctuation in both wages and employment by public control of all industries under official management. While this involves some principles of socialism, more properly discussed in connection with consumption of wealth, its relations to productive industry may be briefly presented here. The plans proposed are as yet expressed only in most general terms. Even the method of bringing about such a revolution of thought, feeling and action has not been devised. Still less ready is anyone to point out the details of a plan for the actual production. The nearest associated ideas are found in governmental services through a post office department or the management of a system of transportation. Most advocates of the method overlook the fact that in such government administration of partial industries the law of competition is still operative between these enterprises and the universal industry of the people.
The difficulties in governmental management under present conditions are anything but small, especially under popular rule, where the dominion of party and the influence of position are all-powerful. Under monarchial rule the organization of such industries becomes like that of an army, in which arbitrary power predominates. It seems easy to see that any effort to solve the problems of labor employment by national control involves finally the arbitrary decision of power, in adjustment of both duties and compensation. The management by officials, however those officials are appointed, is not necessarily wiser, more efficient or more benevolent than the management by interested men, whose life is in natural contact, through business relations, with employés. Those who have had experience with official control under popular government are not likely to expect a readjustment of all interests from the standpoint of politicians to be marked by either universal good will or universal common sense. It is reasonable to suppose that wherever general welfare in actual use of wealth can be best promoted by public control, such control will come through the free exercise of individual judgment with reference to the work in hand. While there ought to be no objection on the part of any to a government enterprise which can be shown to serve in that way the greatest good of all, nobody ought to assume that the nationalization of industries is for the greatest good. Each great undertaking will require its own proof, not only of the welfare to be expected, but of the practical means by which that end can be secured.