go down to history as the date of the birth of the new world." That this prediction is in process of fulfillment appears from the progress already made in organizing and getting under way the machinery for a League of Nations. An organization committee formed to work out a plan for the functioning of the League recommended the formation of the following sections, a number of which were soon organized and ready to begin work: 1. Political. 2. Legal. 3. Economic and Financial. 4. Administrative Commissions and Minority Questions. 6. Information. 7. Mandates. 8. International Bureaus. 9. Regulation of Treaties. 10. Social Questions and Health. The Council of the League has carried out a number of the duties allotted to it under the covenant and has undertaken others such as the repatriation and resupplying of prisoners of war in Siberia and the adoption of measures to prevent the spread of typhus and cholera in eastern and central Europe. Among the most important steps taken was the appointment of a committee to prepare a plan for a Permanent Court of International Justice to be submitted to the Council and Assembly and then to the member nations. The Council has been participating in the settlement of many matters in the reconstruction of Europe, and the Assembly at its first meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, in November, 1920, discussed and passed upon numerous projects to aid co-operation among nations and to dispel international misunderstandings.1 1 See Reports on a League of Nations by the World Peace Foundation, 40 Mt. Vernon St., Boston; Arthur Sweetser, The League of Nations at Work (The Macmillan Company, 1920); also Official Journal of the League of Nations. Whether the steps thus far taken in the establishment of the League of Nations will serve as a basis for a permanent international organization remains to be decided. But whatever the verdict may be in this regard, a series of precedents have been inaugurated which will render easier and more effective some permanent form of organization for greater co-operation among nations.1 THE POLITICAL STATE AND THE PROBLEM OF INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY Coincident with the development of the national state and progress in the direction of an international state has come the growth of the democratic ideal in the management of public affairs in the individual nations. Government, which was originally conceived for and by a small class in society, has come to be a matter of general public interest and concern. The development of this interest has centered very largely in the emergence of representative bodies and in the strengthening of their powers. When the nobles and wealthy landowners of England combined to humiliate King John, and when Simon de Montfort called the first parliament in 1265, the basis was established for the representatives of various classes to consult with and advise those who were charged with the responsibilities of governing. Parliament at first merely served as a body to petition the king to redress grievances or to protest against some royal order. But these advisory functions were greatly extended under weak kings, and even the public acts of strong kings were rendered less effective through the exercise by Parliament of two positive duties, each of which resulted in adding materially to the authority and prestige of representative bodies. These were the right to pass upon and approve or disapprove new taxes and the right to criticize and eventually to force the removal of the king's min 1 Report on the present status of the League of Nations and the prospects of a real world state. isters. These rights, when contested by the Stuart kings, led to revolution and to the recognition of the ultimate control of government by the representatives of the people in Parliament. When, soon afterward, the king acceded to the practice of dismissing Ministers not in harmony with the lower chamber, or House of Commons, a representative body in control of an executive committee known as the Cabinet became the governing authority of the English nation. The representatives of various classes in the government came to be regarded as a necessary requirement for popular participation in public affairs. The French Revolution in Europe and the American Revolution tended to spread the representative idea, and it took firm hold in the written constitutions of the United States, and has been made a feature of every constitution since adopted. A representative body of one or two houses (and with but few exceptions the bicameral system of England has been followed) is now an important feature of all of the leading governments of the world. With the emergence of the representative idea, and coincident with it, has come a gradual widening of the basis on which representatives have been selected. Representative bodies at first were comprised only of members selected from the higher nobility. When the lesser nobles were added, the former classes withdrew to themselves and formed the upper chamber, or House of Lords. But members of both chambers were selected by and represented a very small percentage of the population. In England, the number who participated in this selection was astonishingly small prior to 1832. By a series of acts, the electorate was extended until now, with few exceptions, every man and woman above a legal age limit is permitted to participate in the selection of representatives to Parliament. Similar extensions of the electorate have taken place in practically all countries where democratic ideas have prevailed. Not only has there been an almost universal acceptance of the representative idea in government and the correla tive expansion of the electoral basis of selection, but a new development promises to affect profoundly the former concept of representative government and to place increasing duties and responsibilities upon the greatly expanded electorate. This new movement is known as direct government. Chief examples of it are to be found in governments such as Switzerland and many American states where laws, rules, and regulations are referred directly to the voters and public control may be exercised without participation in the act by an intermediate representative body. Direct government is illustrated also in countries with Cabinet government, where an increasing number of public issues are referred to the electorate. Though direct government does not mean that legislative bodies will be either abolished or seriously weakened, it does mean that, on fundamental questions of policy, legislative bodies will more and more fall back upon and aim to carry into effect publicly expressed convictions determined by voters on specific issues referred for public approval or disapproval. The growth of political democracy as developed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries has depended largely upon the ability of different classes to control the government. To the aristocracy based upon birth and education was added an aristocracy of wealth as an outgrowth of the industrial revolution and the consequent expansion of commercial interests. And the government, despite the principle of representation and the extension of the suffrage, remains to a large extent under the control and direction of special groups and interests. As each group of society has gained in numbers and cohesive power, a desire has been manifested by those governed for a share in the control and management of government. One of the most recently organized and increasingly self-conscious groups is that comprised in the various divisions and branches of organized labor. In all countries there has been developing a class consciousness on the part of the laboring classes to secure an increasing control of the government, and to seek its protection in industries and in the improvement of the general living conditions of the workmen. The World War, with its demands on labor and with the concessions made to labor in order to speed up war machinery and to assure a successful outcome, has aided the struggle for the democratization of industries and for an actual share in their management as well as in the government itself. Though in the League of Nations and in the Treaty of Peace an effort has been made to solve some of the problems of the national political state; and though the world is being reconstructed on the principles of statehood and nationalism, this important issue-the problem of industrial democracy is also presenting itself to the people of all countries. It seriously affects the status of the national political state and the institution of private property, on which, to a large extent, the political state is constructed. Democracy in government, as it is coming to be understood to-day, seems to mean more than political democracy. It is being interpreted to include as well the idea of industrial democracy. Just how far this movement will be carried during the period of reconstruction in the various nations time alone will tell. European countries have begun to define democracy in terms not only of political participation in the government, but in terms of how far that political participation will enable the electorate to control the various phases of their industrial life, including the means of production, distribution, and exchange. There can be little doubt, according to a close student of the process of governmental evolution, that "the world is about to enter upon a struggle on the part of the common people for industrial democracy comparable in all essential respects to the struggle for political democracy that characterized the nineteenth century." Chief among the problems of modern governments are, then, the development of the methods and agencies of control, which have been the outgrowth of the progress toward political democracy, and provisions |