206 NATIONAL GUILDS

work done. I also have no control over the organisa-
tion of the production of Sperling's Journal or any
other paper for which I do piecework. I am very
glad that it is so, for organising production is a very
difficult and complicated and risky business, and
from all the risks of it the wage-earner is saved.
The salary-earner or the professional, when once
his product is turned out and paid for, also surrenders
all claim upon the product. What else could any
reasonable wage-earner or professional expect or
desire ? The brickmaker or the doctor cannot,
after being paid for making bricks or mending a
broken leg, expect still to have the bricks or the leg
for his very own. And how much, use would they
be to him if he could ? Unless he were to be
allowed to sell them again to somebody else, which,
after being once paid for them, would merely be
absurd.

But when we come to the remedies that Mr Cole
suggests for these " marks of degraded status/' we
iind in the forefront of them that the worker must be
secured " payment as a human being, and not merely
as a mortal tenement of so much labour power for
which an efficient demand exists/' This, especially
to an incurably lazy person like myself, is an ex-
tremely attractive programme. To be paid, and
paid well, merely in return for having " taken the
trouble to be born/' is an ideal towards which my
happiest dreams have ever struggled in vain. But
would it work as a practical scheme ? Speaking for
myself, I can guarantee that under such circum-
stances I should potter about with many activities