by that table. At the time they never believed that that state could be altered. The dignities, the authority, the dependence of the management upon capital were, they thought, essential to production. They emphasized that they were always most friendly with the men, and that what friction there was between them arose purely from industrial conflicts. Then the change came and the relations were revolutionized. They met the men round a table and not across it, they had to discuss with the men the whole problem of management, the men made suggestions to them, which, when settled, all took a part in carrying out, men and managers became co-operators interested in everything that concerned the work, and the tail that remained indifferent had to conform to the standards set by the interested ones. They would never dream of going back to the old bad relationship. The managers themselves were happier in their work and found far more heartiness in it. The men had abandoned of their own free will the most provocative restrictions which they had enforced -or tried to enforce-as a protection against Capitalism, and which undoubtedly hampered production. They had indeed, discovered the true motive in industry. A man will work with his muscles in order to live and will drudge to maintain a roof over his head and some food in his cupboard, but he will work with his heart as well when he has an interest in his work and when it appeals to what is free in him as well as to what chains him to necessity. The Socialist view of the enfranchised and responsible workman is the only view which supplies a true answer to the dominant question of the time: How can we supply a motive for work which will enlist the whole man and not only part of the man?

I must note in passing the recent experiment in Building Guilds, where workmen who have been specially attacked for slacking and dishonest work have organized themselves into self-governing groups, taken contracts for building houses, done better work than the private builder, in shorter time, at lower costs, and yet have paid higher wages and have given better conditions of employment. The secret is in enlisting the heart. But I shall deal with other and more difficult forms of labour control. Two organizations of workmen whose leaders are inspired by these ideas have produced schemes applying them to their own industry, and a reference to them will enable us to visualize the proposal with some definiteness.

The first is the proposal made by the Miners' Federation of Great Britain for the working of nationalized mines; the second is that proposed by the Railwaymen's Union for the working of nationalized railways.

The Miners' Federation proposes that a National Mining Council consisting of a President and ten members appointed by the government,* and ten appointed by the Federation, shall be set up, and that the property and plant of mining and the supreme control of the industry shall be vested in this body. The contact between this council and the government is to be the Minister of Mines. The council will divide the national coalfield into districts and constitute District Mining Councils, consisting of ten members appointed half and half like the national council, to be responsible for the working and development of the district. Within the dis

* Commenting upon this in his book on the Nationalization of the Mines," Mr. Frank Hodges assumes that this means by Parliament.

trict will be set up for pits, or groups of pits, Pit Committees, also of ten, five representing the men and five the district councils. The non-manual representatives on each of these bodies will represent technical and managerial skill and experience. Upon this point the Federation is very definite, and its Secretary writes: "The whole success of any scheme of workers' control is dependent upon the accord and understanding between the technical and the manual workers." Here we have a framework where the bureaucrat has no place, where intimate knowledge and experience rule from top to bottom, a scheme which allows a living interest to run throughout, and which encourages intelligence and industry by providing honourable recognition for them. Its subordinate authorities will have enough power to prevent their being mere tools in the hands of the superior authorities, and yet to the latter will be reserved an ample power to control the efficient development of the industry as a whole.

The National Union of Railwaymen's proposal for the railways runs on similar lines. A Ministry of Transport is to be created, and under it a National Board of Control for Railways is to be established. Half of this board is to be elected by the House of Commons and half by a ballot of the organized workers. "All applications for changes in general conditions of service," says a memorandum on the proposal issued by the National Union of Railwaymen, "shall be made by the Executive of the Employees' Trade Union to the Board of Control." The idea here is that on the one side there is to be the Board of Control and on the other the Union Executives, and between the two, outstanding diffiNationalization of the Mines," p. 124.

*

culties as regards labour conditions are to be discussed and settled. Matters that affect localities are to be dealt with by Local Committees, half the membership of which is to be chosen by the Board of Control, and half by the employees of the area. For the purposes of election, the employees are to be grouped into locomotive, traffic, goods and permanent way sections. There are to be two secretaries representing each side. Either of these may call a meeting of the Local Committee, and if difficulties cannot be settled by it, they must be referred to the Board of Control. Shop Committees are also provided for to deal with matters concerning the shops. The final clause is: "The functions of both the National Board of Control and the Local Committees shall include the determination of questions affecting management and discipline upon railways in addition to general conditions of labour."

This scheme lacks in the breadth of vision of the miners' one, and is perhaps too much infused with the spirit of Trade Unionism fighting employers. But the general intention is evident, and if the last clause had been taken as the foundation of the document and the various details worked out from it, that intention would have been still more clear.

The feature of these schemes is that bureaucracy is eliminated, and that the administration of industry, whilst not brought outside the ultimate responsibility of the civic State, is to be a task conducted by a specialized organization built up not from officials appointed from outside, but from officials and functionaries drawn from the working organization itself and belonging to it. There is organization, a better organization than that of Capitalism, there is centralized knowledge radiating

downwards, but the whole scheme is the very antithesis of bureaucracy because it depends for its success upon the co-operation of every person and group of persons employed, and is conscious and responsible right from bottom to top. Orders are executed and a mechanism is worked, but the orders come from the system itself and the mechanism belongs to the whole thing as a going co-operative concern.

As intelligence increases amongst the labouring section of the community the question will become more pressing as to how to give the workman an interest in his work. Only when intelligence is low can task work be done, and can men be mere burden bearers. When intelligence is high, men's hearts and minds will insist upon a partnership with their muscle. If democratic education means anything at all, it is the preparation of men who will not be efficient parts of a productive mechanism only, but will belong to the higher type of managing workmen. No scheme can secure this better than one of the type I have been discussing. The whole man, and not merely the physical part of man, will thus be enlisted in production.

THE COMPLETE ORGANIZATION OF INDUSTRY

I now proceed to consequences, for this is only the beginning of the Socialist reconstruction of the mechanism of production. The mistake of the Co-operators of the individualistic co-partnership school was that they assumed that reconstruction could come from the independent workshop. The Socialist falls into no such error. Production must be organized; the producing centres must be related to each other; failing an organized industrial