War-time financial problems

THE GUILD IDEAL 205

National Guilds, then, must assure to the worker,
at least, the following things :—

" i. Recognition and payment as a human being,
and not merely as a mortal tenement^ of so much
labour power for which an efficient demand
exists.

"2. Consequently, payment in employment and
in unemployment, in sickness and in health alike.

" 3. Control of the organisation of production in
co-operation with his fellows.

" 4. A claim upon the product of his work, also
exercised in co-operation with his fellows/'

Now, looking with a most dispassionate eye and
an eager desire to find out what it is that Labour and
its spokesmen are grouping after, can one find in
these " marks of degraded status " any serious evil,
or anything thq£ is capable of remedy under any
conceivable economic system ? In all of them the
wage-earner is on exactly the same footing as the
salary-earner or the professional piece-worker. The
labour of the manager of the works can also be
abstracted from the manager, and can be bought and
sold apart from him. One would have thought that
this fact is rather in favour of the manager and of
the wage-earner—or would Mr Cole prefer that the
latter should be bought and sold himself ? The
salary-earner and the professional arc only employed
when somebody wants them. The manager's term
of employment is longer, but the professional piece-
worker, such as I am when I write this article, has
usually no contracted term, and is only paid for actual