explaining the Socialist standpoint and outlook; the war has so revolutionized people's minds and still more their methods (force, violence and short cuts, for the moment at any rate, entering far more than formerly into our thoughts), that the Socialist has now to prepare far more details to meet the expectation of rapid change than was necessary before 1914. Moreover, Socialism or no Socialism, labour is demanding authority in management and will not be placid until it gets it.

WORKSHOP CONTROL

The problems of the workshop are in the main as follows: the supply of labour, the conditions -i.e. hours, etc.-under which it is to work, its discipline and organization, its wages, the total output over an economic period which must vary with the nature of the specific production, its equipment in machinery, etc. (or, what may be regarded as its capital efficiency), its relation to other workshops upon which it depends for supplies, or with which it co-operates to produce the total product required. What ought to be the interests and responsibilities of labour in that? How can these responsibilities be recognized and be made effective? Obviously the steps taken must vary with the various industries. The capitalist organization of some is highly developed, of others is still in somewhat primitive forms; some are ready for a highly organized labour and communal control, others are not. The practical problems of mining control are different from those of railway control; one class of engineering production offers industrial problems quite different from other classes. some, the labour employed is ready for great responsibility, in others, it is not so ready; in some, the change

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can be made with comparative ease, in others, it is not to be so easy. That means that each industry has its own method and opportunity for development, but all are obedient to the same tendencies and imperatives which will fix certain common features. The Socialist, therefore, contents himself by laying down the more important general rules which each industry in its own way will have to follow and apply to its own circumstances.

Socialism is opposed in principle to all attempts at accommodation which mean that by concessions here and there, really of the nature of bribes given by Capitalism to labour (either to workmen individually or to labour in the mass), strengthen the present system of production, by patching up some of its obvious defects and enable it to toddle along. These solve no problems but only postpone their treatment until times of critical breakdown, or until the increase of general intelligence raises revolutionary conditions. This only banks up the revolutionary and cataclysmic forces of industry and is no way to deal with the problem. The recognition of labour responsibility must not proceed, therefore, by giving labour minority or even equal representation on this Committee or Board, or on that; it should proceed by handing over to labour full control in this function and in that, beginning with those that are obviously the easiest to exercise on account of the simplicity and completeness of their handling. For instance, it is a much greater gain in the long run for railway workers to have control of station staffs than to be represented by one or two of themselves upon Boards of Directors or Traffic Committees, though, if railway workers are alive to the other and more essential things they ought not to refuse such representation,

as it is a power which is capable of effective and extended use. Labour control beginning at the top, e.g. Boards of Directors, still leaves the mass of labour without the interest that comes from responsibility. It must, therefore, begin at the bottom.

As a beginning in responsibility, workshop employees should organize themselves either into workshop bodies, or, if the workshop is so complicated that it is a federation of processes, into bodies of each group of workers, and from these should be elected a workshop committee. This organization should at once make itself responsible for the taking on and the dismissal of labour and for the discipline of workmen employed, and should have power to appoint officials of foremen rank. It should co-operate with the management, regarding itself as an ally with managers and not hostile to them, in seeing that the necessary volume of production is maintained and that the workshop is run in an efficient way, and its relations to that management, even when the latter retains the right of final decision, should not be that of a workmen's deputation received by employers, but of a recognized part of the management organization. This representative body would also deal with wages-e.g. the basis on which they should be paid and their varying amounts-indeed in time, it might act as a sort of contracting body delivering the required product and receiving for distribution, on scales and ratios which it itself settles, an agreed return. This will be a critical change with great

*If it be objected to this that hand and muscle labour will demand a disproportionate share to itself as against the labour of management, the reply is twofold. First, there will not be much managerial wages in this pool, and second, the opposition to higher pay for management has almost disappeared from the mind of labour, as witness recent salaries voted to Trade Union secretaries and officials.

possibilities of its own. The workshop organization will keep in touch with the trade union, and so will not become separate from the general movement of labour in the whole industry or set up special workshop interests apart from general wage-earning interests; it will inevitably be widened into district organizations, where broader trade concerns than the individual workshop can show will be discussed-like the waste or the economy of the group of workshops in the district, their organization and equipment, their relative output, their profits, and so on. Another stage will very soon be reached, if the scheme is supported with intelligence. The organization will be in a position to take over responsibility for the use of capital in production. It will know as well as a Board of Directors what capital is wanted in relation to the amount of production required; it will meet the managers not only in deputation putting grievances before them, threatening strikes and making demands against capital, but to discuss with them suggestions in management and ways and means for carrying out their ideas, and to co-operate with them in their work. Management decisions will be labour decisions as well, and be binding as such. Thus the relation in a factory of capital, management and labour will be regrouped. Capital will sink into its natural position of an instrument in use, management and labour will join together as the living, thinking and acting agents in production. Decisive control will pass from the profit-making interests to the producing interests, and social organization and aims will be in command of production. As a preliminary the management should show a responsive move away from being the tool of Capitalism to being the co-operator with labour, and this is being done.

Groups of technical, administrative and supervisory workers have already been formed in many industries with these aims in view.

I write in no Utopian spirit. This change is not to be made in a day, nor is it to be made by organization only. I state it as an aim that must be consciously pursued and prepared for. The new powers may be at first abused but they will make the higher appeal intelligent and not unintelligent as it now is. The organization I sketch is necessary for the release of the social spirit upon which the successful working of Socialism will depend. Moreover, one experimental stage must be proved to be satisfactory before the next is possible.

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I had the good fortune once to meet a body of managers in a State that had nationalized the industry with which they were connected, and had given the labour in it a status of a kind comparable to that which I have in mind. The managers had served under both the capitalist system and nationalization, at the same place and with the same workmen. was curious to know what their experience was, and this is, in substance, what the managers, with whom I had a conference, told me. Under the old system their relations with their men were those of a superior power to an inferior servitude. They were quite friendly, personally, but both sides felt that they were master and servant and, to that extent, hostile. The responsibility of management was concentrated in themselves; the workmen took no interest in it except when it came up against them, and were encouraged to take no interest in it. When the managers met the men it was upon some grievance ; they listened from the opposite side of a table and the minds as well as the persons of both were separated