tendency towards a more democratic inclusion of the larger number of professional men in the various professional societies, and by the formation of such bodies as the "Congress of the Building and Construction Industry," in which it is sought to bring together in all of the larger communities, not only architects and engineers, but all of those that are functionally connected with building, including contractors, sub-contractors, material manufacturers and dealers, skilled and unskilled labor, building loan and real estate men. There has been, then, a tendency on the part of the professional men to realize that they must become coöperators with the other elements of the total function of which they are a part, rather then one directing element. One item in the final report of the Post-War Committee on Architectural Practice said in effect, "The architect by himself cannot cure the deficiencies in his service, or the problems with which his profession is faced; he can only improve his service and make it more adequate to the public need as he realizes his functional relationship to the other parts of the building industry, and through cooperation makes these other elements realize each its distinctive functional responsibility."

In other fields, apparently, there have been similar drawings together of technician with worker and of technician with management, as in the experiments of the English Building Guilds. Whatever may be their measure of success or failure, these, like the Congress of the Building Industry in this country, are efforts towards democracy. The opportunity for the professions to lead in such moves is of immense value.

All of the post-war stirrings within the professions (of which there are legion) are interesting because it ap

pears most important that the professional ideal be now clarified and democratized. Everywhere we see signs that the motive that has inspired industry and commerce is being questioned; a realization is growing that the old motives are inadequate. People say, "If it was possible to conduct the major operations of the great World War without the prime impulse of money getting, is it not possible gradually to increase the number of normal activities inspired by other than money getting?" The commonplace reply is that the necessary patriotic enthusiasm would be lacking. But the professions in the finest sense do actually get their inspiration from a motive other than the money-getting motive. Why, then, is the professional impulse limited in its scope? The earning of a livelihood is naturally the result of competent practice of a profession. But that is not its prime purpose in the best sense. The prime purpose is the perfection of a service, and the most important reward of that perfection is, not the extent to which it is paid, but the extent to which the service is appreciated by those best competent to judge it, by those who practise the same profession.

The whole argument with regard to the validity of (and the extensibility of) the professional motive is remarkably demonstrated by R. H. Tawney of Oxford in his admirable Acquisitive Society. He says in part:

A profession may be defined most simply as a trade which is organized, incompletely, no doubt, but genuinely for the performance of function. It is not simply a collection of individuals who get a living for themselves by the same kind of work. Nor is it merely a group which is organized exclusively for the economic protection of its

1 The Acquisitive Society, by R. H. Tawney, Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford. Harcourt Brace & Howe, 1920.

members, though that is normally among its purposes. It is a body of men who carry on their work in accordance with rules designed to enforce certain standards both for the better protection of its members and for the better service of the public. The standards which it maintains may be high or low; all professions have some rules which protect the interests of the community and others which are an imposition on it. Its essence is that it assumes certain responsibilities for the competence of its members or the quality of its wares, and that it deliberately prohibits certain kinds of conduct on the ground that, though they may be profitable to the individual, they are calculated to bring into disrepute the organization to which he belongs. While some of its rules are trade union regulations designed primarily to prevent the economic standards of the profession being lowered by unscrupulous competition, others have as their main object to secure that no member of the profession shall have any but a purely professional interest in his work, by excluding the incentive of speculative profit.

The conception implied in the words "unprofessional conduct" is, therefore, the exact opposite of the theory and practice which assume that the service of the public is best secured by the unrestricted pursuit on the part of rival traders of their pecuniary self-interest, within such limits as the law allows. The rules themselves

may sometimes appear to the layman arbitrary and ill-conceived. But their object is clear. It is to impose on the profession itself the obligation of maintaining the quality of the service, and to prevent its common purpose being frustrated through the undue influence of the motive of pecuniary gain upon the necessities or cupidity of the individual.

The difference between industry as it exists to-day and a profession is, then, simple and unmistakable. The essence of the former is that its only criterion is the financial return which it offers to its shareholders. The essence of the latter is that, though men enter it for the sake of livelihood, the measure of their success is the service which they perform, not the gains which

they amass. They may, as in the case of a successful doctor, grow rich; but the meaning of their profession, both for themselves and for the public, is not that they make money but that they make health, or safety, or knowledge, or good law. They depend on it for their income, but they do not consider that any conduct which increases their income is on that account good. And while a boot-manufacturer who retires with half a million is counted to have achieved success, whether the boots which he made were of leather or brown paper, a civil servant who did the same would be impeached.

The idea that there is some mysterious difference between building schools and teaching in them when built, between providing food and providing health, which makes it at once inevitable and laudable that the former should be carried on with a single eye to pecuniary gain, while the latter are conducted by professional men who expect to be paid for service but who neither watch for windfalls nor raise their fees merely because there are more sick to be cured, more children to be taught, is an illusion only less astonishing than that the leaders of industry should welcome the insult as an honor and wear their humiliation as a kind of halo. The work of making boots or building a house is in itself no more degrading than that of curing the sick or teaching the ignorant. It is as necessary and therefore as honorable. It should be at least equally bound by rules which have as their object to maintain the standards of professional service. It should be at least equally free from the vulgar subordination of moral standards to financial interests.

If any of these ideas are to be brought into effect in the interrelations of society; if the professional ideal is to be to any extent carried over into other fields, it behooves the professional man to perfect his ideals. It would be absurd to ignore the fact that these ideals are far from perfection; that professional standards are uncertain and purposes vague. The principles of professional practice have only too