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THE LIBRARY
OF

THE UNIVERSITY

OF CALIFORNIA

LOS ANGELES

^ Jtpa

Old Worlds for New

A Study of the Post-Industrial State

Arthur J. Penty

Author of "The Restoration of the Guild System'

KEW YORK: SUNWISE TURN, Txc. 2 EAST 3isr ST.
LONDON: GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD.
RUSKIN HOUSE 40 MUSEUM STREET, W.C. i

First published in /y/7

Bus. Admin.
Library

TO
E. T.

970554

PREFACE

THE scope of this volume is suggested by its
title : Old Worlds for New; a Study of the
Post-Industrial State, for it suggests at once the
paradox which lies at the centre of our social
life — that in order to go forward it is necessary
to look back. This truth, which was apparent
to many in the period before the war, is more
apparent to-day. It needs little insight into social
and political questions to realize that the war
marks the close of an era in our civilization,
and that the task of social reconstruction can no
longer be delayed. After the war, when the
artificial and unnatural prosperity which we now
enjoy is over, all the glaring contradictions of
our civilization will stand out before us, naked
in their ugliness, and woe betide us if in that
supreme crisis the mind of the nation is still un-
prepared. For no despot alone, however great,
can save society. The success of any measures
which he might initiate for the public good is
conditioned and limited in every direction by the
general level of thought and intelligence of the
community .

Recognizing, then, the extreme gravity of the

8 PREFACE

situation and the importance of meeting the im-
pending crisis with well ascertained and clearly
defined principles, I am seeking now, by the
publication in book form of a series of articles
written for the Daily Herald in the months
immediately preceding the outbreak of war, to
secure a wider recognition for certain fundamental
principles of social organization which in our day
have fallen into desuetude. Their revival, I am
convinced, must precede the task of social recon-
struction. The experience of the war has not
shaken, but has confirmed, my belief in their truth ;
indeed, the war itself I cannot but regard as
evidence in support of them. It is the inevitable
catastrophic ending of a society which has chosen
to deny the law of its own being.

Though the text of the articles has been revised
for publication in a more permanent form, it
remains substantially unaltered. Owing to the
outbreak of the war the series came to a pre-
mature end ; and in consequence the last four now
appear for the first time. As the reader will
gather from the first article, they were written as
an attempt to formulate a new policy for that
section of the Socialist movement which was losing
its faith in the all-sufficiency of the gospel of
Collectivism. As such they failed in their more
immediate purpose. By general consent a system
of Local Guilds which I advocated was deemed
not immediately practicable. With that decision
I am in full accord. Nowadays I can see only
too clearly that the gulf which separates such a

PREFACE 9

system from practical politics is, at the moment,
too wide to be bridged, and that the National
Guild policy, with its demand for the abolition
of the Wage System, is the one for to-day. But
National Guilds can have no finality about them.
Once the workers find themselves in the pos-
session of industry the fundamental contradic-
tions which underlie industrialism will demand
a solution, and that demand will set us on
the road to Local Guilds. " The old ideas," once
said Mr. Chesterton, " are coming in again ; but
they are coming in walking backwards." That
is the way in which the Guild idea advances to-
day. Under the guise of National Guilds, a step
backward is being taken by men who for the
most part fail to realize that industrialism is
doomed to dissolution and decay.

For my changed attitude on this issue the war
is responsible. Hitherto I had supposed that
society was to be reconstructed by peaceable means
— at any rate under the normal conditions which
peace presupposes— r-for though I recognized the
possibility of revolution, it did not appear to me
to be in any way imminent. Under such con-
ditions the National Guild proposal, to carry the
citadel of capitalism by assault, appeared to me
to be rather impracticable. Capitalism, I thought,
would have to be undermined ; it would never
yield to a frontal attack. But the war has altered
the factors of the problem. Capitalism no longer
appears impregnable. Indeed, I feel the war by
its reactions will break it up, and in all proba-

10 PREFACE

bility precipitate a revolution. In this light the
National Guild propaganda acquires a new sig-
nificance. The fact of the war has brought it
within the range of practical politics, for what
was impossible in times of peace may be possible
in a time of revolution.

Meanwhile political development tends to con-
firm my belief in the truth of the old principles of
social organization. Considering that these prin-
ciples are antipathetic to those of Collectivism,
and that the State is to be seen everywhere in-
creasing its hold — that railways, shipping, endless
factories and coalfields have come under Govern-
ment control, and that it is more than probable
that circumstances after the war will increasingly
compel the State to interfere in the management
of industry, it may not unreasonably be asked
what grounds I have for 'such confidence. To this
I answer that, apart from the coalfields, which may
eventually be nationalized, and to State ownership
of natural monopolies, to which there can be no
objection, it will be seen as the present scheme
of things unfolds that this State activity does not
tend towards the collectivization of industry, but
towards a revival of the Guilds. That confusion
should exist on this point is due to the fact that
all State action in relation to industry has quite
unreasonably come to be regarded as Collectivist.
Such, however, is far from being the case.
Whether Governmental interference with industry
is to be regarded as Collectivist or not, all depends
upon the nature of the interference itself. If its

PREFACE 11

aim be to take the direction of industry out of
private hands and to place it in the hands of
officials, then it is Collectivist ; but if, on the
contrary, its aim be to protect the public or the
workers against capitalist abuses, then the State
is merely resuming the functions which in the
Middle Ages were performed by the Guilds, and
which in the future will be performed by the
revived Guilds. Once embarked upon a policy
of regulating prices the State will, as the system
extends, find itself compelled to seek the re-
creation of the Guilds in order to give practical
effect to its intentions.

Fixed prices, then, is a path to the Guilds.
This is a certainty, for in this connection history
is repeating itself. It was to guard society against
the evils of an unregulated currency that the
Guilds were instituted in the past. The Guild
legislators realized that a currency, when unregu-
lated, lent itself to manipulation for profit, and
being determined to restrict currency to its legiti-
mate use as a medium of exchange, they sought
a remedy in fixed prices. Once grasp the
economic necessity of fixed prices and the whole
range of Guild regulations becomes intelligible.
In order to fix prices, it becomes necessary to
maintain a standard of quality. As a standard of
quality cannot be defined finally in the terms of
law, it is necessary, in order to uphold a standard,
to place authority in the hands of craft masters —
a consensus of opinion among whom constitutes the
final Court of Appeal. In order to ensure a

12 PREFACE

supply of masters it is necessary to train appren-
tices, to regulate the size of the workshop, hours
of labour, the volume of production, and the like.
The first link in this chain of economic necessity
has already been forged, the rest is only a matter
of time.

The force which is driving things in this direc-
tion is, at the moment, "- rising prices." After
the war other forces will make themselves felt.
The tendency to-day towards servile conditions
of labour has its counterpart in the growth of
" industrial unrest," and it needs but the unem-
ployed problem which will follow the war, if
not immediately, then in a year or two, to open
wide the floodgates of anarchy and revolution.
Confronted with this, our statesmen will be help-
less, for they lack any comprehension of the
problem of our society as a whole. Politicians
have for so long been concerned with secondary
things in society, while discussions of primary
and fundamental principles were at such a dis-
count, that they are without the mental equipment
which a great crisis demands. Evidence of their
lack of grip on reality is forthcoming on every
hand. Though they realize that the demobili-
zation of the forces and the closing down of the
munition factories will bring upon us an unem-
ployed problem on an unprecedented scale, and
though they are proposing certain measures for
coping with it, they yet remain for the most
part unconscious of the real peril that confronts
them, consoling themselves with the comforting

PREFACE 13

thought that, bad as things are likely to be, the
dislocation of industry will only be temporary,
and that the unemployed problem will tend to
disappear before the anticipated revival of trade.
That there are real grounds for any such
optimism is to be doubted. That trade will not
revive after the war may perhaps be difficult to
prove, but there are many reasons for believing
that such will be the case. It would appear that
the limits of industrial expansion (a further in-
crease of which is essential to a revival of trade,
if industry is to remain on its present basis)
was reached before the war ; and that the war
itself was the direct consequence of the economic
impasse which had been created. Professor
Hauser ' tells us in this connection that in Ger-
many the ratio of productivity, due to never-
slackening energy, technique, and scientific de-
velopment, was before the war far outstripping
the ratio of demand. Production was no longer
controlled by demand, but by plant. What the
Americans call overhead expenses had increased
to such an enormous extent that no furnace could
be damped down and no machine stopped ; for
the overhead expenses would then eat up the
profits, and the whole industrial organization come
crashing down, bringing with it national bank-
ruptcy. To avert this impending catastrophe, the
Germans chose to resort to war. .We miss the
lesson which this war should teach us, If we think

1 Germany's Commercial Grip of the World, by Professor
Hauser (Eveleigh Nash).

14 PREFACE

that their watchword, " World power or down-
fall," was merely the product of a 'diseased
imagination. The truth is, it had become for
them an economic necessity. It was a desperate
effort to escape from the consequences of un-
regulated machine production.

I insist upon a frank recognition of this fact,
for our natural and justifiable disgust at the
arrogance of Prussian militarism appears to have
entirely blinded us to the ugly economic facts
which lay behind the war. The anti -climax in
which unregulated production in Germany had
ended would, apart from the war, not only before
long have overtaken us, but the whole of .Western
civilization. For industrialism was everywhere
travelling along the same road, and I do not
exaggerate when I say that so far as our welfare
and happiness are concerned, it is a matter of life
and death with us that this fact should be publicly
recognized. If discussion to-day is to be taken
as any indication of the policy which we are to
pursue after the war, we appear to be heading
blindfold to disaster. Nowhere do I see any
recognition of the ugly fact that the industrial
system has reached its limit of expansion. On
the contrary, our policy for after the war, a cynic
might say, is to make bad worse — to reproduce,
in fact, in an intensified form, the very conditions
which have brought the war about.

The economic isolation of Germany, on which
our faith for the future is based, is to be recom-
mended just to the extent that it is in the interests

PREFACE 15

of every country to be as self-contained as pos-
sible. But such a policy fails to touch the central
issue of over-production, which will be staring
us in the face after the war.1 It is admitted that
we shall have to face a decreased purchasing
power among all the belligerent nations. This
of itself is sufficient to precipitate catastrophe,
when we remember that our industries can only
be made to pay on the assumption that we can
dispose of our goods in ever increasing quantities.
But where shall we be if the advance guards of
industrialism get their own way with their policy
of still further extending the volume of production
by increased specialization? Clearly it can only
make matters worse. Such a policy, instead of
helping us to solve our unemployed problem, can
only intensify it. For the organization of industry
on a basis of " scientific management " will not
increase, but decrease the demand for labour.2
The old Manchester School doctrine that a reduc-
tion of prices (at which this policy aims) will
be followed by an increase of demand will not
hold good after the war, because it presupposes,
among other things, that the major part of the
nation is already in employment.

1 This problem will be aggravated by the shortage of
shipping which is resulting from the submarine campaign
and will popularly be entirely ascribed to it.

3 In the Minority Report of the Poor Law Commission Mr.
and Mrs. Webb say : " There is no denying that nowadays
machinery is displacing labour." If this was true before the
war, how much more so will it be after it, quite apart from
" scientific management."

16 PREFACE

Such, then, is the dilemma which will confront
us, and I should imagine that the only conclusion
to which any rational person could come would
be that, if going forward can only lead us to
further disasters, we must make up our minds
to go back. How long it will take us to
swallow our pride and come to that decision
I do not know ; but come to it finally we
must, for there is no alternative. What I fear,
however, is that instead of courageously facing
the issue in a bold and constructive way, such as
a frank recognition of the fact that the days of
unregulated production are over might beget, we
shall stupidly pursue a dual policy of seeking on
the one hand by labour-saving machinery and
" scientific management " to reduce the wage bill,
and on the other to deal with ;the consequent
unemployment by means of State subsidies and
private philanthropy. The result will be that we
shall get nowhere in particular, or, what is more
than probable, that we shall embark on new mili-
tary enterprises in a vain endeavour to restore to
society some of the apparent prosperity which
accompanies the war to-day.

I said that if further disasters are 'to be averted,
we shall have to make up our minds to go back.
But, comes the question, how? The answer is
simplicity itself — by the reversal of our economic
policy. To the popular mind such a reversal
connotes nothing more than the abandonment of
the principles of Free Trade in favour of Pro-
tection. But the issue of Free Trade and Protec-

PREFACE 17

tion is not the central issue. Like all the issues
in current politics, it is on the circumference of
things. Free Trade or Protection will not of
itself effect a fundamental change. The rich will
still continue to invest their surplus wealth for
further increase on the assumption not only that
their private fortunes will be thereby enlarged,
but that such investment gives employment. One
hundred and fifty years ago, when this doctrine
was 'first enunciated, there was perhaps something
in it. But it certainly is not true to-day, when
the investment of surplus wealth for further in-
crease in most cases has the very opposite effect.
It decreases employment, and it decreases it
because the aim of most new business 'enterprises
to-day is to supplant the man by the machine.
It does not to-day increase the national wealth,
but the overhead expenses of industry, which, by
making our industrial system more and more top-
heavy, renders it still more unstable.

Viewed in this light the reversal of our economic
policy means that, instead of concentrating our
energies on the increase of supply while leaving
demand to take care of itself, we should aim at
maintaining a balance between demand and
supply ; and the way to adjust this balance to-
day is to advise people not to re -in vest surplus
wealth, but to spend it in the way it was the
custom to spend it before the introduction of
machinery and the limited liability company made
possible constant reinvestment. To advise rich
people to use their money in this way will doubtless

18 PREFACE

appear to many to be a counsel of perfection
which will not be listened to. But I am no
pessimist in the matter. In the first place, because
I believe a great proportion of the rich to-day
reinvest rather than spend their money, not from
any particular motive of gain, but because it
is the custom ; and in the next, because the
remainder will find after the war that the only
way to secure themselves against personal violence
is to use their money for the direct purpose of
giving employment.

In the past surplus wealth was spent, among
other things, upon the crafts and architecture,
for building was never expected to pay. In
this connection it may be interesting to quote
the words of Pericles, who, in answer to some who
complained that Athens was over-adorned like a
woman wearing too many jewels, replied that
surplus wealth was best spent upon such works
as would bring eternal glory to the city and at
the same time employ her artificers. I might
add that many of the Greek Temples were built
to find a solution to unemployed problems.

kWhile at one end of the industrial scale our
policy should be to get money spent freely on
architecture and the crafts, thinking of architecture
in the broadest sense as including all good build-
ing, at the other end agriculture should be revived.
I feel little disposition to enlarge upon this issue,
because I feel that it is going to be done, though
perhaps from a different motive. Suffice it, how-
ever, to say that it is vital for the solution of our

PREFACE 19

problems that the agricultural worker should be
paid a wage equivalent to that of the industrial
worker. Let us break for ever with the com-
mercial tradition that useful work should be badly
paid, for there is no more fruitful source of corrup-
tion in our midst than the knowledge that it is
only by humbug and pretence that a man can
escape from poverty.

It remains for me to thank the Editor of the
Daily Herald for permission to reprint such of
the articles as appeared in his journal, and the
Editor of the New Age for permission to reprint
part of this preface.

A. J. P.

66, STRAND ON GREEN, W 4

January 1917

CONTENTS

PAGE

PREFACE . . . . . .7

I. THE FABIAN COMPROMISE . . . .23

II. ON REASONING FROM FACT . . . .30

III. THE ECONOMIC, MORAL, AND POLITICAL CONTRA-
DICTIONS OF COLLECTIVISM . . -37

IV. THE MEDIAEVAL GUILD SYSTEM . . .44

V. NATIONAL GUILDS AND THE GENERAL STRIKE . 50

VI. THE ABOLITION OF THE WAGE SYSTEM . . 58

VII. THE EVIL OF LARGE ORGANIZATIONS . . 65

VIII. THE DIVISION OF LABOUR . . . .74

IX. MACHINERY AND INDUSTRY . . . .82

X. MACHINERY AND SOCIETY . . . .89

XI. THE ULTIMATE BASE OF INDUSTRIALISM . . 96

XII. THE PLACE OF HANDICRAFT . . .103

XIII. THE ETHICS OF CONSUMPTION . . ,110

22 CONTENTS

PACK

XIV. THE TYRANNY OF THE MIDDLEMAN . .117

XV. THE STRIKE FOR QUALITY . . . .123

XVI. THE ELIMINATION OF THE MIDDLEMAN . . 130

XVII. THE DECENTRALIZATION OF INDUSTRY . 135

XVIII. THE REDISTRIBUTION OF POPULATION . . 140

XIX. THE REABSORPTION OF THE PROFESSIONS . 145

XX. THE TRADE DESIGNER . . . .152

XXI. THE PROFESSION OF ARCHITECTURE . . 157

XXII. THE DESTRUCTIVE CONSUMPTION OF SURPLUS

WEALTH ...... 163

XXIII. ON PROPERTY ..... 169

XXIV. THE LEISURE AND WORK STATES . . . 175

XXV. CONCLUSION , . . l8l

OLD WORLDS FOR NEW

THE FABIAN COMPROMISE

To one who is accustomed to view political
activity from the somewhat detached and isolated
standpoint of the social philosopher, there is
something pathetic, not to say tragic, about the
way Socialists are quarrelling among themselves
to-day. And this not merely because capitalism
is secure so long as they are content to con-
sume their energies in mutual recrimination, but
because Socialists themselves fail for the most
part to discern clearly the root of the mischief.
Abuse was at the beginning poured upon the
Labour Party for its lack of courage and its
inability to shape out an independent line of
action. Nowadays,1 those who acted more
courageously are being made to suffer. It looks
as if the experience of the French Revolution,
when each group of reformers and enthusiasts
was in turn supplanted by a group holding still
more extreme views, is about to be repeated

1 March 1914.
33

24 THE FABIAN COMPROMISE

in miniature within the ranks of the Socialist
movement. And it is possible that the reform
movement to-day, like the French Revolution,
may suffer a reaction.

Meanwhile, the most extraordinary thing in
the whole situation is that few appear to have
connectefl these quarrels with certain fundamental
contradictions involved in Socialist theory. It
is possible for a man to be consistent and
courageous if he has behind him a consistent
theory, but impossible if the theory be a bundle
of contradictions. A man may not perceive such
inconsistencies in theory, but he will, nevertheless,
not escape being involved in them when he
attempts to reduce them to practice. Such in-
consistencies will paralyse his will, and a man
who acted courageously at one time of his life
will, to all appearances, tend to act like a coward
at another. For when he is called upon to
reduce such theories to practice, his policy will
become involved in contradictions.

Such, it appears to me, has been the un-
fortunate fate of all our Socialist politicians, and
I think we ought to be more generous in our
criticisms of them. One and all find themselves
in a false position to-day, and this not because
of any particular moral delinquency, such as in
our moments of disgust we are apt to ascribe
to them, but because they have been committed
to a theory which, to use an Americanism, " does
not pan out." It will be my object in this
and the succeeding articles to explain the nature

THE FABIAN COMPROMISE 25

of these contradictions of the Collectivist theory
as a preliminary towards the formulation of a'
new Socialist policy.

On all sides we are being told to-day that
Collectivism is dead. Superficially considered,
in one sense that is true. The impossibility
of creating a new social order purely by means
of political action is widely realized. Economic
power precedes political power is the new dogma
to which nowadays we are asked to subscribe.
Bureaucracy has been discovered to be a potential
instrument of class oppression. Syndicalism and
National Guilds are united in demanding the
right of the producer to a share in the control
of industry as opposed to control by the con-
sumer, which was the faith of Collectivism. But
that is as far as things have rgone. Funda-
mentally most Socialists are Collectivists still.
They have not yet thrown overboard its philo-
sophy, and not until it is repudiated root and
branch can there be any hope of the growth
of Socialist unity. In a word, Collectivism as
an immediate policy is now fortunately dis-
credited, but as a philosophy it survives sub-
consciously in thought, and for that reason it
still controls the destinies of the movement.

To understand any such theory as Collectivism
it is necessary in the first place to understand
exactly the circumstances which brought it into
existence. We have moved so far away from
the thoughts of the 'eighties that it is difficult
for us to realize what ideas it 'sought to supplant.

26 THE FABIAN COMPROMISE

In those days almost everybody believed in
competition as the only safeguard against
monopoly. The rights of the individual and of
property took precedence of the rights of the
community. In fact, the idea that the com-
munity might have a corporate life was non-
existent. The Collectivist theory was gradually
evolved from, the necessity of combating such
ways of thinking rather than from the funda-
mental needs of social reconstruction. In the
early days of the Socialist movement there was
a great struggle between William Morris and
Mr. Sidney Webb 'and their supporters in respect
to the policy to be pursued. Morris was un-
doubtedly right in the position he took up, because
he went back 'to the fundamental needs of human
nature. Mr. Webb, however, triumphed within
the movement because he was more practical
in the immediate sense, though, as I shall show
later, he was fundamentally unsound. He per-
ceived more clearly than Morris the immediate
work which might be done. He compromised
with things as they are, and he could do this
because he was blind to certain defects of the
present system. Morris saw in industrialism a
great ugly fact which produced shoddy goods
and sweated the workers, and he knew that these
things had a common cause. Mr. Webb, on
the other hand, without the fine aesthetic per-
ceptions of Morris, saw only the sweated workers.
He thought he could find a remedy for sweating
as a separate and detached issue and accepted

THE FABIAN COMPROMISE 27

industrialism as an established fact in th'e belief
that it might be humanized. He was successful
within the movement because the majority had
not then begun to suspect industrialism, for the
gulf which separated Morris from the masses
was in his day too wide to 'be bridged.
Before that was possible much spade-work had
to be done, and the theory of Collectivism as
evolved by Mr. Webb proved to be the only
available instrument for the purpose.

What we are witnessing to-day in the con-
fusion in which the Socialist movement is
involved is the break-up of this compromise,
first in regard to policy, and second in regard
to theory. When the Labour Party arrived at
the House of Commons, great things were
expected from it. Disappointment followed. The
reason is, as I have already pointed out, that
they were in a false position and committed to
an impossible theory. That theory in turn is
now being exploded. I will not refer to the
Syndicalist and National Guilds propaganda,
which have assailed it from without, for we now
have evidence that it has utterly broken down
from within. The last two years the Fabian
Society has been engaged in collecting data for
a report on the control of industry. 'Last month1
the New Statesman published the draft of the
first part of the report written for the Research
Committee by Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb, as

1 The Control of Industry, New Statesman Special Supple-
ment, February 14, 1914.

28 THE FABIAN COMPROMISE

a special supplement. We find there what many
of us expected — a proposal to reorganize
industry on a basis of " speeding-up." Of
course it is not called " speeding-up." Mr. and
Mrs. Webb are more diplomatic than that. They
call it " efficiency " and " discipline," but there
is no mistaking their meaning. Criticizing the
Nelson Self-Help Manufacturing Society, they
say, in respect to the comparatively low output
of the society, that " in private factories, failure
to produce the average is followed by dismissal.
In this society the workers, feeling assured that
no such course will be followed, work easily,
pay no regard to the possibility of a division
of profits if greater effort were to be put forth,
regard themselves as having a job for life, and
take their work in a leisurely fashion."

Reading this, we are not surprised to find that
their sympathies are entirely with the Co-opera-
tive Productive Societies, where " speeding-up "
evidently obtains. For, they tell us, " these
societies, having become attached as subordinate
adjuncts to Co-operative Societies of Consumers,
are not subject to the special drawbacks of
Associations of Producers, inasmuch as the Co-
operative Societies of Consumers furnish all the
capital required and supply a Committee of
Management who do not work in the workshops.
They govern, and thus the manager finds in
the committee the support he needs for the
maintenance of discipline." There is no more
to be said 1 Collectivism is bankrupt. It never

THE FABIAN COMPROMISE 29

presumed to be an artistic ideal. It has ended
in not even daring to be a human one. The
Anti-Socialist who told us that Socialism left
human nature out of account stands justified.
Mr. and Mrs. >Webb evidently support him. If
this report is to become the democratic pro-
gramme of the future, the movement will have
to take down its banner on which is inscribed
" Government of the people, by the people, for
the people," and put in its place " Exploitation
of the people, by the people, for the people."
For this, in substance, is what the report
recommends.

II
ON REASONING FROM FACT

I HAVE drawn attention to the bankruptcy in
which Collectivist theory finds itself nowadays,
and showed how, commencing with a compromise
with industrialism, it has ended in a shameless
advocacy of the reorganization of industry on
a basis of " speeding-up." There are certain
interesting questions which arise immediately out
of this miscarriage, which I now propose to
discuss.

Now it is in the first place to be observed that
although Mr. and Mrs. Webb endorse "speeding-
up " in their report on the control of industry,
if rumour is to be credited, there is little chance
of the report being adopted by the Fabian
Society. Whatever the faults of the Fabian may
be, he is, generally speaking, a humane person,
and when a clear and definite issue presents
itself, as it does in this case, as to whether
Socialists should or should not approve of
" speeding-up " in industry, there can be little
doubt as to which way his opinion will go. I
do not believe that the gentle persuasiveness of
Mr. Webb will prevail against the sentiment of

ON REASONING FROM FACT 31

the society on this occasion. All the same,
Mr. Webb has reason on his side. What he
recommends may be inhuman, but it is the
logical deduction from Collectivist doctrine, and
the Fabian Society must find itself in the position
of either adopting this report or repudiating
the theory of Collectivism. This is, of course,
if logic is to prevail ; for if it be true, as
Collectivists affirm, that the evolution which is
taking place in industry is from a lower to a
higher plane of perfection, then it follows
logically that the phenomenon which accompanies
such a transition is justifiable. I can see no
escape from this dilemma for such as accept
the Collectivist position. To quote a popular
phrase, " You can't eat jyour cake and
have it."

It is not necessary for me to review all the
arguments by which Mr. Belloc showed that the
trend of modern legislation, based upon Col-
lectivist ideas, is towards the establishment of
the Servile State. Only Servile Socialists, who
are destitute alike of the sense of liberty and
human dignity, will be found to deny it. The
point which I wish to make here is that we shall
not escape from this fate merely by protesting
against it. If we are to ward off the Servile
State, it will be necessary for us to understand
exactly the nature of the forces which are
alluring us to our enslavement. To grapple with
these forces we shall have to relinquish many
prejudices, for it is upon our prejudices that

32 ON REASONING FROM FACT

the Servile State is being built. Foremost
among them is the prejudice of the modern
intellectual against all reasoning which is not
based upon material facts. It is a stupid
prejudice, because it has this important defect
— that it is impossible with this mental attitude
to be wise before the event ; for it is not until
after the event that the facts are available to
reason upon. People who are wise before the
event reason from a metaphysical position and
a knowledge of human nature. This is natural,
because it is the spirit of man which is the
creative force in society and is the cause of
things. Phenomena are the manifestation of the
spirit in the material universe. To base our
reasoning on social questions entirely upon
phenomena, which alone in these days are
recognized as facts, is to leave out of our
calculations the most important facts of life. The
facts of human nature are not to be weighed
and measured by Fabian investigators, and yet
they are ultimately the only facts that matter,
for the good will of men is necessary to the
smooth working of any social system. By
reasoning based exclusively upon industrial
phenomena, it is possible for Mr. Webb to arrive
at the conclusion that " speeding-up " is a
necessary stage of economic development. He
reckons, however, without human nature when he
expects men to submit to such a tyranny without
protest ; for a point is reached in the develop-
ment of tyranny when men will remain quiescent

ON REASONING PROM FACT 33

no longer. A spirit of restlessness is engendered
which at any moment may break loose in open
rebellion and upset purely economic calculations.
For man has a soul which craves satisfaction,
and refuses obedience to a system whose only
aim is to make cotton and buttons as cheaply
as possible. ;

Of course it is easy to understand why
Fabianism should have degenerated in this way.
In its anxiety to find an immediate remedy for
the problems of poverty it ignored the claims
of art and philosophy, not understanding that
every practical problem has a metaphysical
problem behind it, and that the needs of art in
industry are identical with the needs of human
nature. Further, it is to some extent to be
explained by the artificial lives which members
of the Fabian Society lead. Mr. Webb is
typical. At first as a Civil servant, and then
as a man of private means, he has lived a
sheltered life far removed from the storm and
stress of things, while his legal training was
the very worst imaginable for intensifying in
him sympathies which were never too strong.
And so with respect to the Fabian Society as
a whole ; it is far too intellectual and too little
human ever to get at grips with the realities
of life, while the occupations of its members
are for the most part of too artificial a nature
to give them a fund of first-hand experience.
To be candid, the Fabians are the last people
in this world to find a remedy for the evils which

34 ON REASONING FROM PACT

afflict society. They are too much a part of the
same disease.

Now it is to be observed that whether a man
understands human nature or not, he cannot with
safety leave it outside his calculations. The
difference between the Fabian and the mystic
is not that the Fabian has an eye on facts, and
the mystic has not, but that the Fabian sees
only the material fact while the mystic sees its
spiritual significance. In other words, the mystic
sees the exact relation each separate fact bears
to the moral as well as to the material universe.
This arises, of course, from the circumstance that
the mystic is not only intensely human himself,
but knows the science of human nature, which
is what we understand by a metaphysical position.
The mystic, because of this knowledge, inter-
prets facts in a different light — in the light of
that higher unity which alone can reconcile
apparent contradictions. In practice he will differ
from the Fabian in this way — that he will not
seek to establish principles by the mere aggrega-
tion of facts. He knows that really fundamental
principles are not to be discovered in this way.
On the other hand, he perceives in every fact
the workings of a universal principle. Like
Blake, he feels—

A dog starved at its master's gate
Predicts the ruin of the State.

The reason why he knows this is because at
the back of his mind there is a conception of

ON REASONING FROM PACT 35

order, which enables him to distinguish clearly
between what is an accidental and what is a
permanent factor in human affairs. The Fabian,
on the other hand, not finding this order within
himself, and yet at the same time feeling the
need of order, seeks to discover certainty in the
external order of phenomena. Being without
exact standards of truth, goodness, and beauty,
he comes to accept as standards such things
as speed, bigness, 'quantity, and success, which
henceforth he regards as the touchstones of
" efficiency." The mystic knows all this to be
pure illusion and the Fabian finds it out too ;
for he tends daily to become more and more of
an opportunist, and to settle each question as
it arises without regard to wider issues ; only
to find his predictions falsified at a later date.

In The Comments of Bagshot are some obser-
vations on the influence of statistics, which are
interesting to quote in this connection.

Statistics are the clinical thermometers of the modern
world. There is an incessant taking of temperatures, followed
by jealous comparison of the resulting records, and every
patient examines not only his own but every other patient's
fever chart. This is a chronic source of jealousy and unrest
in the modern world. It tends at times to an almost insane
hypochondria, in which the patient declares himself ill
beyond recovery, though his appetite is enormous and his
growth increasing.

The habit encouraged by statisticians of weighing quanti-
ties, instead of measuring qualities, is most debasing to ideals
in a modern State. It is habitually taken for granted that a

36 ON REASONING FROM FACT

nation must be inferior to its rivals if it falls short of them in
population, territory, or volume of trade. ... Of what use is
it to cry out on the vulgarity of worshipping wealth, when all
the great nations and their statesmen and spokesmen de-
liberately preach to us that the richest among them is the
greatest ? The chief need of Europe to-day is to recover
the thought that a country may hold the primacy of the
world by leading it in ideas and the art of living. But we
shall not do that till we have shut half the Government
departments and killed all the statisticians.1

1 Comments of Bagshol, by J. A. Spender.

Ill

THE ECONOMIC, MORAL, AND

POLITICAL CONTRADICTIONS

OF COLLECTIVISM

CONSIDERING the confusion of thought in which,
at the latter end of the nineteenth century, art and
philosophy were enveloped, there was certainly
some excuse for the Fabian Society in disregard-
ing their claims. But it is different with regard
to morals. Wihen we remember that twenty years
before the Fabian Essays were written, Ruskin
had exposed the fallacies inherent in the divorce
of economics from morals, it is difficult to absolve
Fabians from the charge of stupidity in imagining
that they could afford to ignore his teachings.
Yet, strange as this may seem, it is stranger
still that they should have to this day continued
in the error, when we remember that from the
very start it has been behind the frequent quarrels
and splits in the Socialist movement. The split
over the Boer War provides a convenient illustra-
tion.

It will be remembered that the Boer War led
to serious divisions within the ranks of the Socialist

38 ECONOMIC, MORAL, AND POLITICAL

movement. The Independent Labour Party and
Social Democratic Federation were resolute in their
opposition to it. But the Fabian Society tem-
porized for a long time, and after a split, when
many resigned their membership, the Executive
issued a manifesto in the form of a booklet by
Mr. Bernard Shaw entitled Fabianism and the
Empire. la it the divorce between Collectivist
economics and Socialist morals first saw the clear
light of day. In this manifesto Mr. Shaw did
not discuss the moral aspects of the war. The
right and wrong of the question did not concern
him. He accepted the war as an established
fact or a necessary evil. Small nationalities were
a nuisance, and had always been a source of
trouble and difficulty. A United South Africa
under the British Flag, he told us, was the only
possible policy to support. That such a union
should be brought about by the sinister power
of capitalism did not concern him, as he imagined
it would be a stepping-stone to the Socialist
millennium.

iWe know to-day that such is not the case. A
United South African Government is now an
established fact, but the racial troubles have not
been moderated.1 Indeed, they seem to be only
just beginning. What the upshot will be of all

1 It will be remembered that in February 1914 there was a
great strike in the Rand, which was terminated by the action
of General Smuts, who deported the labour leaders and
brought the Boer farmers into the towns to fire upon the,
miners,

CONTRADICTIONS OF COLLECTIVISM 39

that is taking place there nowadays God alone
knows. Of one thing, however, we may be sure
—that the war has not simplified the problem,
and that with the triumph of capitalism the
Socialist millennium is not any nearer. All the
same, according to Collectivist economics, Mr.
Bernard Shaw and the Fabians who supported
him were in the right, and the Independent Labour
Party and Social Democratic Federation abanr
doned their claims to be Collectivist bodies in
opposing the war. For Collectivism is an economic
theory, and we are told economics have nothing
to do with morals. Yet, strange to say, Socialists
who saw the Boer IWlar as a capitalist war, and
as something inimical to the interests of Labour,
nevertheless failed to see the evil inherent in the
growth of capitalism when war was not in question.
I remember at the time listening to the conversa-
tion of a leading member pf the Independent
Labour Party, deploring the war in one breath
and in the other rejoicing in the doings of the
late Mr. Pierpont Morgan, who at the time had
just organized the Steel Trust of America and
was attempting the trustification of transatlantic
shipping. Mr. Morgan, he said, was paving1 the
way to the Socialist State. Of course, in one
sense that is true. The growth of capitalism is
making men think and is creating the spirit of
rebellion ; but, needless to say, that is not the
sense in which our Independent Labour Party
member meant it.

I sa,id that Collectivism is an economic theory

40 ECONOMIC, MORAL, AND POLITICAL

divorced from morals. This is its central weak-
ness, because in practice it is impossible to dis-
regard moral issues without feeling a bit of a
cad. The ordinary decent man will always
decline to pursue a course of action which is
morally culpable. And the ordinary man is right.
In so far as economic considerations have become
divorced from morals, they are only an encum-
brance to right action. Two men in the Socialist
movement, and two only— Mr. Sidney Webb and
Mr. Bernard Shaw — have sufficiently transcended
ordinary human limitations, and have been able
to base their actions upon economic theory in an
entirely disinterested way. The ordinary mortal,
when he bases his action upon economic theory,
is apt to be on the make. Hence it is that a
social theory deduced entirely from a study of
economic phenomena can in practice only exist
to confuse the issue. Here we have the source
of the confusion which has followed on the trail
of the Labour Party ever since it entered Parlia-
ment. No issue which has ever come along has
been for it a clear issue between right and wrong.
The economic theory to which it subscribes has
always blinded it to the rights and wrongs of
the issues which confronted it. The triumph of
Collectivist theory placed Socialists entirely in the
hands of capitalists. They agreed with the big
capitalists because on economic theory they had
no reason to disagree. The capitalist finds in
Collectivist doctrine justification for his actions.
What theory could be more acceptable to him

CONTRADICTIONS OF COLLECTIVISM 41

than one which tells him that sweating is not his
concern and can only be remedied by the State ;
and that in so far as he can succeed in ruining
his competitor, he is but the natural agent of an
economic evolution which is leading to the millen-
nium? Can we wonder that he should seek to
shuffle his responsibility on to the shoulders of
the State, when we remember that Collectivism
seeks to exonerate him from all personal responsi-
bility?

The Collectivist idea of holding the State
responsible for all the ills of society has been
another source of confusion. For it is apparent
that the State cannot, in the long run, be better
than the citizens who compose it. To hold the
State responsible is finally to hold no one respon-
sible, because the politicians themselves, who at
any time form the Government, are only in
possession of a delegated authority. In a far
higher degree than capitalists they are the
creatures of circumstances. They do not control
the State, but the State controls them. By this
I mean that they are at the mercy of the bureau-
cratic departments and their permanent officials,
for, as Sir John Gorst said, by the 'time a Minister
has got the hang of things in his department
his term of office is nearing its close. In the
State departments no one feels any particular sense
of personal responsibility, because of the divided
responsibility which obtains there, which has come
into existence for the very purpose of preventing
any particular individual from exercising too much

42 ECONOMIC, MORAL, AND POLITICAL

authority. If politicians are to act at all, they
can only do so to-day by availing themselves
of the services of this unwieldy and impersonal
machinery, which proceeds automatically, accord-
ing to the laws of its own growth, and which
bears no particular relationship to the thoughts
and feelings of those who form a part of it.

The Insurance Act will for all time remain the
classical example of the failure necessarily follow-
ing any attempt at reform by wholesale measures.
Mr. Lloyd George is in these days a much -abused
man.1 But Collectivists have no right to criticize
him, for all that he did was to attempt to give
practical application to principles which they had
popularized. iWith the Socialist agitation at one
side of him demanding that something should
be done, and capitalism at the other as determined
as ever to exploit men, it is not surprising that he
failed, for failure must be the inevitable desti-
nation of reformers who imagine they can find
a remedy for the evils of poverty by compro-
mising with things as they are. I do not believe
that the Act was framed by Mr. George for
the oppression of the poor, but that such is its
result in practice admits of no question.

The underlying cause of all this confusion, in
the words of a French Syndicalist, is that " you
cannot at the same time fight the enemy and co-
operate with him." It is a mistake for reformers
to have any dealings with the State until such

1 Needless to say, this was written before the war.

CONTRADICTIONS OF COLLECTIVISM 43

time arrives as they are capable of bargaining
with it on equal terms. Meanwhile the best policy
to pursue is so to consolidate our forces, so to
clarify our minds, that when we do act we shall
be able to do so with certainty and precision ;
and the first step towards this consummation is
such a thorough overhauling of Socialist theory
as will banish for ever the contradictions involved
in its moral, economic, and political theories.

IV
THE MEDIAEVAL GUILD SYSTEM

AFTER explaining the nature of the economic,
moral, and political confusion which followed the
acceptance by Socialists of Collectivist economics,
I concluded the last article by saying that our
immediate need is such a thorough overhauling
of Socialist theory as will banish for ever these
contradictions. tWith an understanding of the
underlying principles of the Mediaeval Guild
System, we shall be in a better position to face
the modern problems. All clear thinking pre-
supposes some clear and definable standards of
thought. Just in the same way that definite
conceptions of the nature of truth, goodness, and
beauty are necessary to clear reasoning, so the
Guilds serve the purpose of a standard to guide
us in our elucidation of the problems of social
reorganization .

IWhat, then, is the Guild System? It is the
system under which industry at all times was
organized, wherever men were free to co-operate
together. In Western Europe the Guilds existed
until the close of the Middle Ages. They fell

THE MEDIEVAL GUILD SYSTEM 45

before the economic and political upheavals which
accompanied the discovery of America and the
sea route to Asia, which involved as a natural
consequence the change of trade routes and the
growth of capitalism. In Asia the Guilds have
continued down to this day, though they are
suffering from European competition. In India
they are in a state of disintegration ; their in-
tegrity having been undermined by the British
Government, which deprived them of their
privileges in the interests of Lancashire manu-
facturers.

The idea which underlay the Guild System was
that men should be organized in groups, and
that the State existed to facilitate their co-opera-
tion. In the sphere of industry the natural division
was that of trades . Each trade had its own Guild,
and every craftsman was obliged to become a
member of it. The Guild had a monopoly of
its trade, and exercised a jurisdiction over its
members, which was delegated to it by State
and municipality. The Guild was a centre of
mutual aid ; it gave assistance to the sick and
unfortunate ; it regulated wages and hours of
labour ; fixed prices and the quality of work
done ; fixed the training of apprentices and
limited the number of men any master might
employ. The Cloth Weavers Guild of Flanders,
which was typical of many, only allowed three
journeymen to each master.

There is an interesting description of Guilds
in the building trade given by Professor Lethaby

46 THE MEDIEVAL GUILD SYSTEM

in a lecture on " Technical Education in the
Building Trades." It runs :—

In the Middle Ages, the Masons' and Carpenters' Guilds
were faculties or colleges of education in those arts, and
every town was, so to say, a craft university. Corporations
of Masons, Carpenters, and the like were established in the
towns ; each craft aspired to have a college hall. The
universities themselves have been well named by a recent
historian "Scholars' Guilds." The Guild, which recognized
all the customs of its trade, guaranteed the relations of the
apprentice and master craftsman with whom he was placed ;
but he was really apprenticed to the craft as a whole, and
ultimately to the city, whose freedom he engaged to take up.
He was, in fact, a graduate of his craft college and wore its
robes. At a later stage the apprentice became a companion
or bachelor of his art, or by producing a master-work, the
thesis of his craft, he was admitted a master. Only then was
he permitted to become an employer of labour, or was ad-
mitted as one of the governing body of his college. As a
citizen, city dignities were open to him. He might become
the master in building some abbey or cathedral, or, as King's
mason, become a member of the royal household, the ac-
knowledged great master of his time in mason-craft. With
such a system, was it so very wonderful that the buildings of
the Middle Ages, which were indeed wonderful, should have
been produced ?

Considerations of space will not allow me to
enter more into the details of the Guilds, and there
is no reason why I should. \V«hat I have already
said is sufficient for the purpose of familiarizing
the reader with the idea of the Guilds. If he
is interested in the subject he can read up about
them for himself, and, in this connection, there
are two books which I would particularly recom-

mend. One of them is Mutual Aid, by Prince
Kropotkin, and the other is The Indian Crafts-
man, by Dr. Ananda K. Coomaraswamy. Both
of them are extremely able. Dr. Coomaraswamy's
book is especially interesting, as he describes the
Indian Guilds which are still in existence, though,
as I have already said, they are in a state of
decline. It is satisfactory, however, to learn that
of late years a movement has arisen in India to
preserve them. Prince Kropotkin's book is,
fortunately, well known to Socialists, and needs
no words of recommendation from me.

Two functions engaged the activities of the
Guilds. One of them was that of mutual aid ;
the other was the safeguarding of the standard
of production against commercial abuses. The
first of these functions is nowadays undertaken
by the Trades Unions, though the Guilds, being
wealthy bodies, were able to be much more
generous in the assistance they gave to their
members. In fact, the Guilds fulfilled for their
members those functions which are now under-
taken by the Poor Law, only they were under-
taken in a different spirit. This was notably the
case in the treatment of widows and orphans, who
were provided for out of the funds of the Guild,
and that in a manner befitting their station in
life, not in the despicably niggardly way which
is customary with Boards of Guardians. This
came about naturally, it is to be supposed, because
when men are organized in localized groups they
are held together by personal and human ties,

48 THE MEDIAEVAL GUILD SYSTEM

which are real bonds ; whereas the Poor Law
is, at the best, a piece of impersonal machinery
for assisting those who have no personal claim
upon us, but only on the community ; and it is
not easy for the average person to act as generously
towards strangers as towards his own kith and
kin.

The other function of the Guilds was the pro-
tection of the standard in production. With that
fine instinct for sociological truth which is charac-
teristic of all early societies, the Mediasvalists
recognized that the best way to protect the
standard of life of the craftsman was ultimately
to protect the standard of quality in craftsmanship.
This is the vitalizing principle of the Guilds as
industrial organizations, and it is only by relating
all their regulations to this central idea that they
can be properly understood. To protect the
standard of craftsmanship, it was necessary, before
everything else, that the craftsman should be privi-
leged ; for privilege not only protected him from
the competition of unscrupulous rivals, but it also
secured him leisure in his work. Both of these
conditions are necessary for the production of good
work. Unless a man can work leisurely, it is
impossible for him to put his best thought into
his work, and unless a man is protected from
the competition of unscrupulous rivals, who under-
cut him in price and jerry their work in the
unseen parts, it is impossible for him to remain
a conscientious producer. Experience has proved
that the public, as consumers, cannot be relied

THE MEDIAEVAL GUILD SYSTEM 49

upon to check that gradual deterioration in the
quality of wares which is the inevitable accom-
paniment of unfettered individual competition.
Privilege and protection are the corner-stones of
production for use and beauty, just as much as
commercialism and competition are the corner-
stones of production for profit. The fundamental
difference between the Mediaeval and modern
polity is that, whereas the modern aims at the
abolition of all privilege, the Mediaevalist sought
to secure privileges for all. It is the difference
between pulling down and building up.

Finally, it is necessary for me to 'controvert
one objection which is often made to the restora-
tion of the Guilds. In order to justify the present
age, it has been the custom of modernists to mis-
represent the past. The consequence is that in
the popular mind the Middle Ages has become
synonymous with Feudalism, and even then, not
Feudalism as it really existed-^-for in contrast
with capitalism, Feudalism was a comparatively
humane institution^-but misrepresented out of all
resemblance to the original. It is not my purpose
to defend Feudalism, but merely to point out
that Feudalism was all along at enmity with the
Guilds and Mediaeval cities, and in the struggle
the Guilds were worsted. Their 'destruction was
the destruction of real democracy. And the best
testimony I can bring in support of this conten-
tion is that of Kropotkin, who says that " most
of what the Socialist aims at existed in the
Mediaeval city.'1

NATIONAL GUILDS AND THE
GENERAL STRIKE

THE brief account I have given of the Mediaeval
Guild System will help us in a consideration of
the proposals of the New Age for its restoration.
The articles of the Guild writers were originally
advanced under the name of Guild Socialism.
Latterly their scheme has been re - named
" National Guilds," which, I think, is a pity.
Guild Socialism is a better rallying cry.

The New Age proposals are shortly as follows :
The workers are advised to fuse all the Unions
connected with each separate industry into huge
national organizations ; and then, after getting1
all the workers, including the salariat, to become
members of these Unions, they should create
Labour monopolies within each industry. When
any Union has by this means become blackleg-
proof, the workers are urged to demand not merely
higher wages, but superior status ; by which is
meant, that the workers would cease to sell their
labour as a commodity in the market, and become
partners in the direction and control of industry.

Should the capitalists refuse this demand, then
a strike would be declared. The Unions being
thus in a position to hold up industry, and with
the intelligent public on their side, the State would
find it necessary to step in. It would buy out
the capitalists by offering them a reasonable
sum or by guaranteeing them an income for a
period of years, retain nominal possession of the
so -acquired capital, charter the Union (now be-
come a Guild by the inclusion of the salariat),
which would henceforth carry on the industry on
terms mutually fair and favourable. The Guild,
in return for this charter guaranteeing it privileges
of national monopoly and self-government, would
undertake certain responsibilities relating to the
quality and quantity of goods produced — and also
on behalf of its own members, other Guilds, the
public at large, and the State itself. This pro-
posal is supported by an economic theory called
" The Abolition of the Wage System," which I
shall consider later.

Needless to say, I am in perfect accord with
the general idea of restoring the Guilds. The
thanks of the Socialist movement are due to the
New Age for the valuable work it has done in
securing recognition for the Guild principle as
the basis of political, social, and industrial re-
organization. If democracy is ever to achieve
self-expression, it can only be by men organizing
themselves into groups. Parliamentary democracy
as it exists to-day has no organic structure. It
is merely an aggregation of people who unite

52 NATIONAL GUILDS AND

for some one to represent them in respect to
issues which are not of their making. The issues
are so confused that it is almost impossible for
the ordinary man, who is not in possession of
inside knowledge, to get the hang of them ; while,
if he could, he would not be much better off,
because they are not the real issues. In order,
therefore, to create the real issues, it becomes
necessary to break up this aggregation by orga-
nizing men into groups. The natural divisions
of such groupings of men are by trades. Though
the average man is apt to talk nonsense about
national politics, he can generally talk sense about
his own trade or occupation. The reason for this
is because the issues are fewer and he is quite
familiar with them. Hence, the re-organization
of democracy on the Mediaeval basis can be fruit-
ful only of good results. Guild democracy, I airx
persuaded, is the only real democracy, and if
ever democracy is to reflect the general will of
the community and to free itself from the
machinations of politicians, it will need to revive
the Guilds.

So far so good. It is when we pass on from
a consideration of the end to be attained to the
means of bringing that end about that I am
inclined to question the wisdom of the New Age
proposals. Working upon their lines, I do not
think it will be possible for the 'State to secure
possession of the capital in industry, apart from
the will of the capitalists. For the State is the
capitalists, I fear that if the State should take

over the railways, and should take the workers
into partnership, which is extremely improbable,
that it would be on terms favourable to the
capitalists, and because it suited 'their convenience.
The wealthy would receive their dividends as
hitherto, but guaranteed by the State ; while the
control given to the workers would only be
nominal. They would not be allowed a say in
the things that really mattered. So again with
respect to the policy of strikes, which are relied
upon to bring capitalism to its knees, I doubt
the possibility of getting the workers, under normal
circumstances, to strike for superior status, and
it appears to be the opinion also of men who have
had practical experience of organizing strikes.
Men can be induced to strike for higher wages,
for shorter hours, against some tyranny, or to
see justice done to a pal, but not for status.
That is one of the results of the wage-system.
The average working man to-day is too down-
trodden to believe he might be successful in de-
manding such a change. His immediate need
is for higher wages and shorter hours. These
are things which, to him, are definite and tangible.
And, in striking for them, he feels he has a
sporting chance of success. But superior status
is a different matter. It is a remote issue, and,
under normal circumstances, it is to be feared
he would not entertain the idea of claiming it.
Before it would be possible for the workers to
make such a demand, their spirits would have
to be raised. They would need to be drunk

54 NATIONAL GUILDS AND

with enthusiasm, such as might possibly be the
case in the event of a general strike, when the
spirits of the individual worker would be sus-
tained by the spirit of enthusiasm and rebellion
which pervaded the whole community. I feel
justified, therefore, in associating the New Age
policy of restoring the Guilds with the idea of the
general strike.

iWhat, then, are the prospects of changing the
basis of society, and restoring the Guilds by means
of a general strike? My opinion is that our
chances of success are not great. The failure
of the general strike in Sweden is not encouraging.
Moreover, the difficulty of controlling any policy
based upon strikes is very great. When men
are successful in a strike, they are apt to over-
estimate their power and to bring about reac-
tion. The success of the Dock Strike of 1911
was due to the fact that the masters were unpre-
pared, the failure of the one in 1912 because they
were ready. How much greater would be this
difficulty after a general upheaval it is impos-
sible to say. Men, when they are flushed with
success, are not inclined to listen to the counsels
of moderation, and without moderation they would
certainly be finally beaten. There is also a
further difficulty. The workers are not to-day
united by a common economic bond. There is
the same division of interests between them as
there was between the serfs and retainers of the
Feudal Lords. In our society, probably half of
the working class are parasitic upon the rich,

THE GENERAL STRIKE 55

in the sense that they are employed by them, either
in personal service or in the manufacture of articles
which only the rich can afford to buy. Mr.
Bernard Shaw discussed the problem which this
class of workers presented some years ago in a
series of articles entitled " The Parasitic Pro-
letariat " which he contributed to the New Age.
He could find no solution, though he sought by
economic abstractions to show that the interests
of the parasitic proletariat and the proletariat
proper are ultimately identical. But such abstrac-
tions are of no assistance to us when dealing with
concrete issues ; for in times of crisis it is the
immediate interest, rather than the ultimate one,
which decides things. If the workers did succeed
in a general strike, their success could only be
temporary. To make it permanent they would
need to deal promptly with this parasitic pro-
letariat, whose market would be gone with the
disappearance of the rich. This, I feel, would
be impossible amid the general confusion which
would certainly obtain. Revolution would be
followed by a counter-revolution. The parasitic
proletariat would rally to the support of the
wealthy in order to recover a market for their
work.

Yet I believe a revolution will come. Sooner
or later it will be forced upon us by the problem
of over-production. When machinery was first
introduced, England had the whole world in which
to dispose of its surplus products. But no nation
can afford to be a consumer of machine-pro-

56 iNATlONAL GUILDS AND

duced goods permanently. The suction would
drain its economic resources. Hence it has
happened that one after another of the nations
which were once our customers have been drawn
into the vicious circle of commercial production,
and have become our competitors for markets.
iWe are rapidly approaching a time when there
will be no new markets left to exploit. .What
is going to happen when that limit is reached?
Surely it can only be economic collapse. Karl
Marx was right in foreseeing this catastrophic
ending of quantitative machine-production. .Where
he was wrong was in supposing that out of the
unemployed a revolutionary force could be created.
Unemployed men cannot rebel, for they have no
economic, political, military, or moral power. They
are simply demoralized men, who are thankful
for a meal. It is dangerous to prophesy, but
it is my opinion, and I give it for what it is
worth, that when a revolution does come, it will
come from above and not from below. It may
come as a result of war, as was the case with the
Russian Revolution, which followed the war with
Japan, or by a division in the governing class,
as was the case in the French Revolution, or
by a combination of both circumstances. War
seems to me the more probable because, when
new markets are exhausted, the governing class
will be driven into it in order to safeguard their
own position. But they will probably fail.1

1 Looking at this issue from the standpoint of to-day, there
is a sense in which Karl Marx may be said to have been right.

THE GENERAL STRIKE 57

Meanwhile it is well to remember that revolu-
tion is a purely destructive force. Just as the
French Revolution broke the power of Feudalism,
and liberated the bourgeois, so the coming; revo-
lution will break the power of capitalism and
liberate forces which are germinating in our midst.
It is for us to educate these forces ; to see that
the people know which are the real Issues and
can distinguish between the true and the false.
If they are able to do so, then reconstruction
will be rapid ; if not, a period of anarchy may
ensue.

The prodigious dimensions of the unemployed problem after
the war may be such as to precipitate not only revolution but
the end of capitalist domination. For it is not to be expected
that a class which to-day fails to appreciate the economic
significance of the war even to the extent of realizing that the
limits of industrial expansion have been reached, will be able
to cope successfully with after-the-war problems.

THE ABOLITION OF THE WAGE
SYSTEM

IN the last chapter I considered the New Age
proposal which has been advanced under the
name of " National Guilds " in its relation to
the general strike. In this one I propose to
discuss the theory of " The Abolition of the
Wage System," by which the Guild writers seek
to give economic justification for their proposals.
It is not a new theory, as it finds a place in
the economic analysis of Karl Marx, but by
its association with the idea of restoring the
Guilds it has acquired a new significance. In
bringing together the two ideas the Guild
writers have strengthened the case for each : they
are, indeed, related as the body and the soul.
What, then, is meant by the demand for the
abolition of the wage system? It is that in
the future labour shall not be treated as a
commodity to be bought by capitalists at the
current market rale in the same way that goods
and raw materials are bought ; that the income
of the workers shall not be dependent upon the

ABOLITION OF THE WAGE SYSTEM 59

variations of supply and demand ; and that men
are not to be only employed when it suits the con-
venience of capitalists, and turned adrift to starve
when he can make no profit out of their labour.
Also, it is a demand that the workers shall have
status and receive pay instead of wages, the
difference between pay and wages being that
men who receive pay, as do soldiers or civil
servants, receive a fixed income, whereas wages
as paid to the labourer are not continuous in
this way, but subject to breaks during un-
employment.

Now, just in the same way that I find myself
in agreement with the Guild writers, in respect
to the general idea of restoring the Guilds, and
yet differ from them in regard to policy, so
I find similar grounds of agreement and dis-
agreement when I consider the economic theory
of the abolition of the wage system. The reason
for my disagreement is this : That they seem
to regard the institution of wages as an absolute
evil, whereas, in my opinion, it is only relative.
Under the Mediaeval Guild system the journey-
men and apprentices received what were,
technically speaking, wages ; but they did not
suffer from the evils which we associate with
the wage system to-day, because masters and
men were alike members of the same Guilds,
and were bound together by personal and human
ties. Though wages existed under the Guild
system, they did not imply the brutal and inhuman
relationship which they do to-day. For labour

60 ABOLITION OP THE WAGE SYSTEM

was not then a commodity, the price of which
was determined by the competition of the market,
but was paid for at a fixed rate, determined
by the Guilds. Moreover, the journeyman only
remained a wage-earner during the earlier part
of his life. He could look forward to setting
up in business on his own account, as a matter
of course, for as there was a limit placed to
the number of assistants that any man could
employ, opportunities for advancement were
opened to all who desired to use them. The
wage system, therefore, did not in those days
present itself as an evil in the way it does
to-day.1 It is the growth of large organiza-
tions, the system of the division of labour, and
the ever-extending use of machinery that has
created the evils which we associate with the
wage system, for under a system of large
organizations those personal relationships which
humanize life tend to disappear, and their place
is taken by a cash-nexus divorced from all
sentiment and personal regard. It is this which
makes the wage system to-day so brutal, and
why we must raise our voices in protest against
it. But I am persuaded that our efforts will be
misdirected and fruitless if we merely demand
its abolition. We shall miss our central aim,
which is to humanize the relations of society ;

1 The Statute of Apprentices passed in 1563, which sought to
establish by law Trade Guild custom, enacted that journeymen
must be retained in service at least one year, and must receive
three months' notice of a coming dismissal.

ABOLITION OF THE WAGE SYSTEM 61

for pay may be substituted for wages, and yet
the relations of men may be anything but human.

There is another reason why we should work
along these lines. The central weakness of any
attempt to abolish the wage system by taking
the citadel of capitalism by storm is that it is
precisely those trades and occupations that suffer
most from the evils of the wage system which
are least able to offer effective resistance to it.
Railwaymen, it is true, get wages, but their work
is so regular that in most cases they may be
almost said to be in receipt of pay. But with
the workers in the building trades it is different.
Their work is intermittent, and it is difficult
to see how it could be otherwise. All building
jobs come to an end sooner or later. It would
be futile, therefore, for the workers in the
building trades to demand pay instead of wages,
for they would be demanding something which
the employers would be powerless to give. The
building trade employers are not like the railway
companies, in a secure position and able to levy
tribute on the people, but are dependent for their
work on a demand which is erratic and impossible
to gauge. To some extent they are in exactly
the same position as the 'men, inasmuch as, like
them, they are constantly in the position of
having to look around for new sources of work.
In a word, the employers of the building trades
could not give the workers status, because they
have not got status themselves.

Looking, then, at the problem of the building

62 ABOLITION OF THE WAGE SYSTEM

trades — and from this point of view it is, indeed,
typical Lf an enormous number of other trades —
it is apparent that before the workers could
possibly find themselves in a position to demand
status it will be necessary to take measures to
regularize demand. In the Minority Report of
the Poor Law Commission, Mr. and Mrs. Webb
ran up against this problem, and recommended
the establishment of a Central Bureau to attempt
the regularization of demand for public works.
In this limited sphere such an arrangement
might do good, but it is obviously impossible
to give application to such arrangements on a
national scale, because the factors underlying in-
dustrial instability are too many to be controlled
from without. If this problem is to be solved
at all, it will only be by attacking it at its
roots, which we find to be in the instability of
our tastes, the uncertainty of our aims and the
confusion of our thoughts. These are the things
which give rise to irregularity of employment,
in so far as it is not due to changing climatic
conditions and other natural causes. It will be
by seeking to bring order into them that we
shall gradually bring order into our social
arrangements ; which problem, I would add in-
cidentally, we shall never solve until we learn
to respect the wisdom of the artist and the
philosopher : it is the key to the whole situation.
A common source of our confusion is that in
our schemes for the reorganization of society
we fail to distinguish clearly between two

ABOLITION OF THE WAGE SYSTEM 63

fundamentally different types of industry which
might be termed respectively the " constants "
and the " variables." The distinction has
always, to some extent, existed, but in modern
industry the " constants " have become more
constant and the " variables " more variable.
Latter-day schemes of reform would accentuate
these differences. They always assume that it
is possible to make the variables constant by
means of external arrangements. To my way
of thinking this is impossible, as it is not in
the nature of things, and every effort to make
one section of industry more constant by regula-
tions can only result in increasing the variability
of what remains.

If I have questioned the wisdom of the New
Age proposals, it has not been without a deep
sense of obligation to them for the issues they
have raised. As a generalization there is this
to be said for the New Age theory : that it has
focussed attention on the central evils of modern
society. Collectivism insisted too much on the
relation of man to his environment : it forgot
the relationship in which man stands to man.
The theory of " the abolition of the wage system "
has raised this central issue. In a perfect
society every man would be in the right place,
for men can only co-operate successfully together
when each man performs the function for which
by Nature he is the most perfectly fitted. It
is the eternal problem of society to find ways
and means of getting the right men into the

right places. It is this necessity which at
different times has been the justification of
different forms of government : monarchy,
aristocracy, and democracy are each in turn to
be justified according to the circumstances of
their age and their constancy to this ideal. In
our day each of these has a common enemy —
capitalism ; which, as Mr. Chesterton has said,
44 stands out in history in many curious ways.
For the most curious fact about it is that no man
has loved it ; and no man has died for it,"
and yet to-day most men serve it, because it
is rare in our society to find a man fulfilling
his proper function. The source of this cor-
ruption is the growth of the wage system, which,
treating labour as a commodity to be bought
and sold in the market, denies to men the right
and opportunity to use their talents in the way
that Nature ordained.

VII

THE EVIL OF LARGE ORGANIZA-
TIONS

IN the last chapter I insisted that the evils
which we associate with the wage system to-day
are not to be found in the institution of wages
as such, but in the dehumanization of the wage
relationship which had followed the growth of
large organizations, the division of labour, and
the misapplication of machinery. I propose now
to show that the 'assumption of Collectivists that
large capitalist organizations are more efficient
than smaller ones, that they have come to stay,
and that they may one day pass into the hands
of the workers,1 are generalizations entirely with-
out foundation in fact, and could only have been
conceived by men destitute alike of practical
industrial experience and a metaphysical position,
defects which, as I have previously pointed out,
are characteristic of the Fabian essayists.

Of course, I am quite ready to admit there
are certain kinds of modern industrial activities
which must in the nature of things be organized
on a large scale. It is evident, for instance,
that mining, railways, and engineering do not

1 See Preface, p, 9.

5 65

66 EVIL OF LARGE ORGANIZATIONS

admit of small-scale organization ; and in so
far as these are to exist in the society of the
future, large-scale organization becomes inevit-
able. Such an admission, however, does not in-
validate my general position, which is, that in so
far as the element of choice enters, the small
organization is to be preferred to the larger
one, and that small units must be the basis of
industrial reorganization : just as the admission
that certain work is perhaps inevitably disagree-
able does not invalidate the proposition that it is
desirable to make work as pleasurable as possible.

With this truth — that the smaller organization
is always to be preferred — .firmly planted in our
minds, we shall be able to minimize the evils
which are inherent in large-scale organization
by insisting that every large organization should
consist of a multitude of smaller ones which
co-operate together. It is evident, moreover, that
industry which must be organized on a large
scale bulks very much larger to-day than would
be the case in a properly ordered society, and it
may be that in proportion as society attains, to its
ideal, large organizations will tend to disappear.

It 'is to be observed that when the Fabian
recommends large organizations as the ideal upon
which industry should be modelled in the future,
he does not analyse the structure of industry nor
deduce the principles of organization from it ;
and this for a very simple reason, he is incapable
of such analysis. The Fabian Society, as I have
said before, is mainly a legal, literary, and

EVIL OF LARGE ORGANIZATIONS 67

medical society, with very few members who
have had any industrial experience. The con-
sequence is, that as they do not understand the
structure of industry they have become the
apologists of the large organization, imagining
in their childish ignorance that what is for the
moment financially successful is necessarily the
best. What the Fabian does is to make use of
sophistry and bluff. He tells us that large
industries are destined to supplant small ones,
because they are more 1| efficient." Now
efficient is an adjective to which no definite
meaning can be attached. The French have an
excellent word to describe reasoning of this kind.
They call it flou. Mr. Belloc has translated
it for us as wobble-stuff, and when the Fabian
talks about large organizations being more
efficient than smaller ones he makes use of
wobble-stuff, since before it is possible to say
whether anything is efficient or not it is necessary
to know the purpose or end which it is to serve.
On this issue the Fabian has nothing to say. He
leaves us entirely in the dark as to the ends for
which large organizations are efficient. It is
necessary, therefore, that 'I should explain them.
Large organizations are not more efficient for
the making of things either useful or beautiful,
but they are more efficient for the purpose of
making profits, because it is easier for them
to make a corner in the market and to speed
up the workers, and the simplest proof I can
bring in support of this contention is the historical

68 EVIL OF LARGE ORGANIZATIONS

argument that the growth of large organizations
in industry has coincided with the substitution
of production for use by production for profit.
That fact is not only undeniable, but it is equally
undeniable that it is the desire for profits which
is the reason for their continued growth to-day.
But I shall be told that the large organization
is an established fact, and that though it be
true that production for profit is the animating
principle to-day, production for use will be
substituted for production for profit when these
organizations pass into the hands of the people.
This, again, is a piece of Fabian "bluff. It is
a pure assumption. The wish is father to the
thought. No reasons have ever been given in
support of such a contention. And nowadays,
when the theory of the nationalization of industry
has broken down, it is less plausible than it
was, since so long as large organizations obtain,
it is difficult to see how industry can ever pass
into the hands of the workers, for the simple
reason that, apart from the capitalist's activities,
industry to-day has no organic structure. When
the capitalist affirms that It is his enterprise that
keeps things going, I regret to say he is telling
the truth. Herein lies the condemnation of the
large industry. So rotten have things become,
that industry to-day has no life springing from
its own roots, but has come to depend entirely
upon an external and artificial stimulus to
galvanize it into activity from above. Remove
this artificial stimulus, due to the desire for

EVIL OF LARGE ORGANIZATIONS 69

profits, and stagnation would speedily result ; for
the greater part of our industrial activities have
no validity apart from 'the desire for profits.
Exclude the motive of profit from such activities,
and they would cease to exist.

The large industry necessarily produces for
profit because it involves the control of industry
by the financier ; and there is no test of a
financier's skill except his capacity to produce
profits. With the craftsman it is different. He
has a natural pride and interest in what he pro-
duces, which is possible to a man who actually
makes things with his own hands, but which is
impossible for a man who can only juggle with
figures. Such interest is only possible for the
craftsman if he is in business as a small master
or is under the direct control of a master crafts-
man who sympathizes with his aims. This in-
volves small-scale production in small workshops,
because it is impossible for a man to manage a
large organization and at the same time to work
with his hands. The organization of industry
on a large scale involves class division,1 and this

1 In order to avoid confusion, it is necessary for me to
explain that I am not condemning the class divisions which a
guild hierarchy implies, but such divisions as involve the
existence of a class of men without craft traditions who
specialize in finance, for the existence of such a class will
always be a peril to society. This peril consists in the domi-
nation of society by men who think primarily in terms of
figures rather than of things ; of prices instead of values ; of
quantities rather than qualities. The Collectivist idea of
nationalizing industry does not abolish this evil ; it white-
washes it.

70 EVIL OF LARGE ORGANIZATIONS

is the forerunner of trouble. The financial men
are incapable of understanding the needs of crafts-
manship. They come to look upon themselves
as superior beings because they do not soil their
hands and can dress smartly. This is the secret
of those feelings of class antagonism which exist
in industry to-day, and it is out of these feelings
of class antagonism that there arises the determi-
nation of the controlling class to drive the men
in their employ. Hence speeding-up and pro-
duction for profit. These things are inseparable
from one another. The sooner Socialists recognize
the interdependence of large organizations, speed-
ing-up, and production for profit, the sooner we
shall find salvation.

Great as are the evils of large organizations
already enumerated, there is yet a greater than all
these. It is this : they tend to destroy liberty,
and their growth is a peril to personal independ-
ence. The liberty of a people depends ultimately
upon the liberty of the individual, and the liberty
of the individual depends in the last resort upon
his ability to set up in business on his own account.
I am assured that it is because this possibility is
becoming daily more difficult of realization that
the spirit of liberty is declining in modern society.
The reformer who lives in constant fear of losing
his job if he attacks capitalism will, in most
cases, only be half hearted in hi, attack. A man's
effectiveness as a reformer is relative to his
personal independence, and personal independence
disappears as the large organization holds sway.

EVIL OF LARGE ORGANIZATIONS 71

It happens in this way. A man's prospects in
life come to depend less and less upon himself—
upon his own powers of industry, intelligence, and
manliness — and 'more and more upon his capacity
to curry favour with those who are his immediate
superiors, whilst against injustice there is no re-
dress. That is why in large organizations the
toady is encouraged, and why men of worth and
character are apt to be at a disadvantage. WJien
men of character are found in authority they are
apt to owe their position to the accidents of the
system rather than to the system itself.

It is often said that we are becoming a nation
of opportunists, and apart from the working class,
this is largely true. The cause is the growth of
large organizations. It matters little whether their
ownership be vested in a private capitalist com-
pany, in the State, or even in a co-operative
society. So long as an organization is large,
a man's future will depend entirely on the favour
of a single individual who, unless he be a man
of insight, will inevitably fall into the hands of
men who, to secure promotion, play up to him
and bully their subordinates.

There is but one remedy for this state of affairs
— to get the small holder back into industry, as
we are seeking to g*et him back on to the land,
and to limit the use of machinery in a way which
makes this possible. We are not justified in
looking upon large organizations as we know
them to-day as being in any sense of the word
permanent institutions. Most of them are rickety,

72 EVIL OF LARGE ORGANIZATIONS

as is natural when we understand the vices
inherent in them, for such vices bring about a
steady demoralization and 'make them increas-
ingly costly to run.1 I believe the growth of
speeding-up is in no small degree attributable
to the wastage which goes on in these organizations
and the necessity of keeping pace with it. Yet
large organizations will never yield to a frontal
attack until we undermine their intellectual and
moral sanction. So long as we worship success,
bigness, and cheapness as ends in themselves, we
shall continue to be enslaved by them, while in
so far as they owe their existence to the posses-
sion of natural monopolies and legal privileges
there can be no remedy but revolution.

Finally, I would observe that if ever we are
to emancipate ourselves from the tyranny of large
organizations we shall have to be very clear in
regard to our principles. Evil would never come
into existence if it did not confer some immediate
benefit. It is necessary to resist such temptations ;
and the only terms on which it is finally possible
to resist them is to be in possession of fixed
principles. A study of the degeneration of
organizations reveals the fact that every change,

' Mr. Raymond Rudely fl'e, (lie City Keillor of (lie New
Witness, in reviewing the share market of the past year (1916)
says : " I cannot help thinking that the big shop has seen its
best days. There was a time when these enterprises were
the best investments possible, but nearly all of them have
grown too big, and the management expenses are eating them
up" (New Witness, January 4, 1917).

EVIL OF LARGE ORGANIZATIONS 73

which has led eventually to stagnation and decay,
has been justified on the grounds of expediency.
There is invariably some immediate financial
advantage in centralization. This is tangible and
definite, and so-called practical men can always
point to it. The loss is spiritual, and is not so
easily proved, but it can be felt by all men of
imagination at the time it occurs. Only at a
later date, when the material results are manifested,
does this loss become apparent to the many. But
it is then too late.

VIII
THE DIVISION OF LABOUR

THE underlying cause of the incompatibility of
large organizations with human liberty and happi-
ness is to be found in the system of the division
of labour which lies at their base and upon which
they are built. In this chapter I propose to
examine this system.

Now it goes without saying that in any civilized
community labour to some extent must be divided.
It is obvious that a man cannot supply all his
own needs. To some extent he is inevitably
dependent upon others. No sooner did civilization
begin to develop than this necessity brought about
the specialization of men into different trades.
One man became a weaver, another a carpenter,
and so forth. In this sense the division of labour
may be said to have existed since the earliest
times. What, however, in economic language we
understand by the system of the division of labour
are measures undertaken to increase the output
and reduce the cost of production of certain
articles of general use by subdividing a trade into
a great number of separate branches. This system
came into existence during the early part of the

THE DIVISION OF LABOUR 75

eighteenth century, the classical example being
that eulogized by Adam Smith in The Wealth
of Nations, namely pin making, in which industry
it takes twenty men to make a pin, each man
being specialized for a lifetime on a single process.

Now it is apparent that the value which we
place upon such a system as this must depend,
as does our opinion of everything else in this
universe, upon our point of view. Whether we
believe this system to be a blessing or a curse
depends ultimately upon what we conceive to be
the object of industry. If the object of industry
is to cheapen wares as much as possible, then
the system of the division of labour is a real
blessing ; but if, on the other hand, its object is
to produce men and human happiness, then it
must be pronounced the greatest curse that
has ever befallen mankind. The Fabian, reason-
ing upon fact, and leaving human nature out of
account, regards it as a blessing because it pro-
duces goods in a great quantity and cheaply.
I, on the other hand — and I think most workers
will agree with me — believe that it is an unmiti-
gated curse, and that the cheapness which it makes
possible is no compensation for the degradation
of the lives of the producers, which is its inevit-
able accompaniment. It begins by cheapening
goods ; it ends by cheapening men.

Now, lest any of my readers should imagine
that this system is necessary if the mass of the
workers are to enjoy the comforts of life, I would
point out that without it there would be plenty

76 THE DIVISION OF LABOUR

for all and to spare if all did their share of the
work to be done in the world. In the Middle
Ages there was an eight -hours day, and there
were sixty saints' days on which the people had
holiday, and yet they had sufficient leisure to
build our cathedrals and to decorate the most
utilitarian objects. Sir Thomas More in his
Utopia, which was written in the sixteenth century,
estimated that if all did their share of work a
six -hours day would suffice to do all which needed
doing ; and this estimate, I imagine, would take
for granted a certain amount of elaborate craft
work which, strictly speaking, is a luxury, for
to the Medievalist mind beauty was a necessity.
It would appear therefore from this that if the
aim of social reform is to reduce the hours of
labour as much as possible, then if industry were
strictly utilitarian, it would be possible to do
what is required by hand labour and without
the division of labour in a four- or five-hours
day.

I said that the cheapness which results from
the division of labour is no compensation for
the degradation of the lives of the producers. It
is impossible for a man to be happy who is
compelled to spend his whole working life in
the repetition of a single mechanical operation.
If it be true, as Aristotle asserts, thai happiness
is the result of complete activity or its complement
(according to the Hindus) of complete inactivity,
then the division of labour must be at the root
of endless misery. For what can be worse for

THE DIVISION OF LABOUR 77

a man than to spend his whole life in a narrow
and artificial activity, which precludes alike the
possibility of spontaneity and rest? For both
activity and inactivity must be voluntary if they
are to lead to happiness.

.We often hear it said nowadays that there is
a slump in happiness ; and for the majority I
think it is true. It is the effect of this system
on our lives. Commencing with such simple
things as pins and needles, the principle has been
applied 'first to this and then to that, until in one
way or another nearly all of us are enslaved,
and everywhere we find that men tend to become
increasingly specialized along the lines of one
single groove. The corruption has reached the
professions, which is the beginning of the end,
for when specialization is complete the co-ordi-
nating mind, which is essential to join the
specialists together, will no longer be available.

Again, specialization not only leads to confused
thinking, for no man can think clearly whose
experience of life is confined to a narrow area,
but it puts too great a strain upon one aspect
of a man's nature. A man can only be really
happy when every side of his nature is given
opportunity for expression. To force him into
a groove is, so far as his soul is concerned,
to put him into prison.

The Fabian Essays lead off with the significant
dogma that " All economic analysis begins with
the cultivation of the earth." This may perhaps
be true within certain limits. With equal truth

78 THE DIVISION OF LABOUR

it may be affirmed that " all social analysis begins
with the nature of man," and for the purposes
of social reconstruction it is the real starting-point,
because, as it is necessary to act through men
if we are going to change things, a theory of
social reconstruction which makes the nature of
man the starting-point in its analysis will have
a very direct bearing upon human possibilities.
It will not be necessary for me to answer
the question : What is man, and what are his
possibilities? It will be sufficient for our
immediate purpose to affirm that it is natural
for man to take pleasure in his work ; and if
he is unable to take it, then there is something
radically wrong with the conditions of his labour.
His instincts will be thwarted and his life will
be corrupted at its roots. He will cease to be a
normal man, and a feeling of restlessness will
overcome him, which feeling, in its reaction upon
society, will vitiate all healthy human relation-
ships. Thus, hating work, he will desire to
accumulate money that he may be relieved of its
necessity, whilst he will be unable to find delight
in the normal pleasures of life. He will crave
excitement. I am assured that the spirit of
gambling and speculation, which is such a peril
to modern society, has its roots in the monotonous
nature of the work to which most men have
been condemned by the division of labour and
its social implications. False social standards are
exalted, and in a thousand and one ways evil
influences are set in motion. In a word, " every-

THE DIVISION OF LABOUR 79

thing is turned upside down," which common
phrase is the most perfect definition of the social
problem ever enunciated. Things are upside
down ; that is the matter with modern society.

Now, it is to be observed that though the
system of the division of labour cheapens pro-
duction, it does not allow the workers to take
advantage "of the resulting cheapness. The skill
of the craftsman is an asset like property. It
gives him an effective bargaining power in the
market, and so enables him to get a decent
wage. But the system of the division of labour
demands little or no skill of the individual worker,
and the capitalist finds it easy to exploit the
unskilled worker. Deprived of his skill, the
worker can offer no effective resistance to the
tyranny of the capitalist, who can bring in the
competition of boy and woman labour to drag
down his wages to mere subsistence level. And
there can be no remedy so long as this diabolical
system is allowed to endure. Fabianism supports
it, as it does every instrument of oppression.
Speeding-up is nothing new in industry. It is
merely the application to skilled trades of a
tyranny under which the unskilled have suffered
for nearly two hundred years.

I will conclude this chapter with a quotation
from Ruskin, in which he directed public atten-
tion to this evil sixty years ago. The world
would have been much happier would it only
have listened to him. It is from The Stones of
Venice.

80 THE DIVISION OF LABOUR

We have much studied and much perfected of late the
great civilized invention of the division of labour ; only we
give it a false name. It is not, truly speaking, the labour that
is divided, but the men — divided into mere segments of men
— broken into small fragments and crumbs of life; so that all
the little piece of intelligence that is left in a man is not
enough to make a pin or a nail, but exhausts itself in making
the point of a pin or the head of a nail. Now, it is a good and
desirable thing, truly, to make many pins a day ; but if we
could only see with what crystal sand their 'points were
polished — sand of human soul, much to be magnified before
it can be discerned for what it is — we should think that there
might be some loss in it also. And the great cry that rises
from all our manufacturing cities, louder than their furnace
blast, is all in very deed for this — that we manufacture every-
thing there except men ; we blanch cotton, and strengthen
steel, and refine sugar, and shape pottery ; but to brighten, to
strengthen, to refine, or to form a single living spirit never
enters into our estimate of advantages. And all the evil to
which that cry is urging our myriads can be met only in one
way : not by teaching nor preaching, for to teach them is but
to show them their misery, and to preach to them, if we do
nothing more than preach, is to mock at it. It can be met
only by a right understanding on the part of all classes, of
what kinds of labour are good for men, raising them, and
making them happy ; by a determined sacrifice of such
convenience, or beauty, or cheapness as is to be got only by
the degradation of the workman, and by equally determined
demand for the products and results of healthy and ennobling
labour.

There is one comment it is necessary for me
to make on this eloquent passage, and it lies
at the root of Ruskin's failure. He disdained
to preach to the people, not understanding that
reform from above can only be successful on
the assumption that it is met by an impulse from

THE DIVISION OF LABOUR 81

below. .We know better than this to-day. This
nightmare out of Bedlam will never come to an
end until the people rebel against it and claim
their right to be treated as responsible and human
beings. So long as they are content to work
as the mere cogs in a machine, neither economic
nor spiritual emancipation is possjble.

IX
MACHINERY AND INDUSTRY

CLOSELY allied with the problems connected with
the system of the division of labour is that of
machine production. If we decide that the
division of labour is a curse, and is the cause
alike of the modern unhappiness and the economic
servitude of the workers, then it follows that in
so far as the use of machinery necessitates this
subdivision of function, it can only have evil
results. If, also, it be true that the happiness and
independence of the workers is the only basis
upon which a reasonable and stable society can
be built, the use of machinery will need to be
limited in such a way as to make this possible.
Socialists are very fond of using the phrase—
" Machinery must be the slave of man, and not
his master." I wonder how many of those who
have expressed their opinions in this way under-
stand the implications of their words, for they
are accustomed to suppose that machinery would,
of necessity, become the slave of man if its profits
or its products were divided among the workers.
But is this so? Granted, for the purposes of
argument, that the control of machinery might

MACHINERY AND INDUSTRY 83

pass into the hands of the workers organized
in Guilds, it would be possible for the workers
to share its profits or products and to suppress
adulteration and jerry work ; but that would not
make machinery the slave of man. I am per-
suaded that there is more in the problem than
that — that, indeed, machinery might be owned by
the Guilds and its more flagrant abuses abolished,
and yet might be the master instead of the slave
of man. I contend that the man who spends
his whole life in repeating some simple mechanical
process is the slave of machinery, though he
should be a millionaire.

Such a man might be well -clothed, housed,
and fed, and yet the machine would be using
him, and not he the machine. If we think more
about this matter we shall see that whether
machinery is the slave of man or his master is
not primarily a question of ownership, but is re-
lative to the size of the machine. In the same
way, when we say that " fire is a good servant,
but a bad master," we are thinking of its size.
A fire that we can control is one whose boundaries
are clearly defined — one that we can isolate. The
same truth holds good with respect to the control
of machinery. To control it we must be in a
position to isolate it. And this problem, so far
as production is concerned, resolves itself finally
into a question of size. ,We can isolate a small
machine because we can turn it off or on at will,
as is the case with the sewing machine. Such
a machine can be used to reduce the amount of

S4 MACHINERY AND INDUSTRY

drudgery that requires to be done, and enable
us to pursue more interesting work. But when
machinery is used on a large scale it is different.
Those who make use of it must keep it in com-
mission. It must be fed ; and to feed it a
man must sacrifice himself mentally and morally
to-day. Hence it happens that among all those
who are connected with faiachine production there
is an absolute indifference to the interests of every-
thing except the one all-absorbing interest and
aim of keeping it going.1 That is why the
tendency of machine production is to place the
control of industry entirely into the hands of a
hard and narrow type of man — the financial men,
who are undoubtedly the least imaginative section
of the community, or, to be more correct, are
imaginative only on the lower and selfish plane
of thought.

The control of industry by men of this type
is inevitable with the extensive use of machinery,
because only men of such temperament aspire
to its control under these conditions. Modern
society finds itself at the mercy of such men
because men with broader and more humane
sympathies naturally shrink from the narrow and
sordid life which the control of machinery and
the administration of finance involves. It is to
be observed that though Fabians and such-like

1 There are certain kinds of large machines against which
this objection could not always be urged, as, for instance,
machinery for pumping or lifting. Against the use of such
machinery there can be no objection.

MACHINERY AND INDUSTRY 85

people profess to believe in a glorious future for
machinery, they nevertheless prefer to follow occu-
pations not directly connected with it. And so
does everybody else who is able to choose, because
machine tending is so monotonous and deadening.
The only interesting work connected with it lies
with the inventor, and with such hand work as
still requires to be done. Machine tending is
a different matter. It means putting oneself for
life into a narrow groove, and every man with
imagination seeks to escape from such a fate,
as from death. There was some wisdom in that
old regulation of the Laws of Manu which forbade
the use of all but small machines, it being held
that the use of large ones was inimical to society
as tending to foster the growth of the commercial
spirit. The Laws of Manu, I might add, are
the code of laws which underlie the Hindu caste
system.

Considerations of this kind suggest the desira-
bility of looking at the problem from all points
of view. The final question which we must
always ask in considering such issues is not how
much more cheaply can goods be produced by
extending the use of machinery, but how are
such innovations likely to affect the character of
men, and how do they affect the position of the
young? iWe shall never be able to secure a
more equitable distribution of wealth in the com-
munity so long as we lend our approval to methods
of production which assist the advancement in
society of its most selfish men, Some day,

86 MACHINERY AND INDUSTRY

perhaps, we may come to understand that pro-
duction ; and distribution are not two separate
problems, as economists hitherto have been
accustomed to suppose, but are indissolubly linked
together in the nature and character of men, and
that our failure to solve the problem of distri-
bution is largely to be accounted for by our
prejudices regarding methods of production.

I said that in considering this problem we
must have regard to the position of the young.
In every craft there is much work which, from
,the standpoint of the skilled craftsman, may be
ranked as drudgery, and yet it may not be advis-
able to do it by machinery, as such work is often
very valuable for the purpose of training appren-
tices. Nowadays, when machinery has absorbed
most of this work, the apprentices cannot get
proper training. iWe attempt to remedy this defect
by the provision of Technical Schools. .We spend
a great deal of money on them, and yet we only
deal with a small minority of the boys. There
is no chance of the principle being given a wider
application, not only because of its great cost,
but because the growth of machinery has so under-
mined the demand for skilled labour that there
would be no market for these boys if a greater
number were trained. Most of this money is sheer
waste, and more than counterbalances what is
saved by using machinery, while the training which
these schools afford is at the best nothing like so
good as that provided by the old apprenticeship
system. The training has a tendency to become

MACHINERY AND INDUSTRY 87

unrelated to practical work. There is something
in the atmosphere of a workshop, with its patri-
archal spirit, which allows the apprentice to learn
a trade in what we may call an organic way.
Dr. Coomaraswamy tells us that it is still thought
in India that the master's secret may best be
learnt by the apprentice in devoted personal
service. Needless to say, such relationships are
impossible in a technical school. The whole
system is too impersonal. Boys who are taught
in them are apt to be deficient in the power of
adaptability. The reason for this is, as a technical
school teacher once explained to me, that as in
a workshop there are several men to one boy,
the boy gradually becomes a part of a continuous
tradition ; whereas, in a technical school, there
are many boys to one man, and this sense of tradi-
tion is lost. The proper attitude towards technical
schools is to regard them at the best as a stopgap.
They can never become a substitute for appren-
ticeship .

Modern industry makes no provision for the
young. Large-scale machine production, by creat-
ing impersonal relationships, has destroyed our
sense of responsibility. Commercialism does not
look upon the rising generation as something for
which we are responsible, but as material for
exploitation. It is impossible to separate the
problem of boy labour from those of the division
of labour and unregulated machine production. It
is only the intellectual cowardice of Collectivists,
who felt that to connect them struck at the very

88 MACHINERY AND INDUSTRY

centre of their theory of social evolution, that has
hitherto prevented its recognition. The remedy
presented by Mr. and Mrs. Webb in the Minority
Report of the Poor Law Commission is the last
word in timidity and futility. Instead of finding
the root of the problem in unregulated machine
production, they proposed to give everybody a
technical training. .What is to be the nature of
this training I am entirely at a loss to make out,
for they admit the skilled trades are overcrowded,
and that in the unskilled trades are to be found
many who once followed skilled occupations and
have lost their footing owing to the spread of
machinery. So that, finally, it comes to this —
that Mr. and Mrs. Webb hope to solve the problem
of boy labour by teaching boys trades for skill
in which they admit there is no demand. This
is typical of the contradictions in which Collec-
tivists have in these days become involved, and
the fundamental cause of it all is that they have
never dared to face this question of machinery.
If the reform movement is going to follow such
leadership as this, then clearly our social and in-
dustrial system can have only one ending. There
will some day be no competence left to run it.

X
MACHINERY AND SOCIETY

IN the last chapter I stated the principles which
I am persuaded should govern the application
of machinery to production. In this one I propose
to explain the nature of the evils which have
followed the neglect or 'disregard of them.

Foremost amongst these is the growth of
economic instability in our society, which is directly
attributable to the misapplication of machinery.
A nation to be stable must be so at its base.
The workers must neither be insecure nor suffer
from a sense of insecurity. They should be able
to take their work in a leisurely fashion, and
regard themselves as having a job for life ; or,
in other words, they must be rooted. If they go
from one job to another it should be from choice,
and not out of necessity. This, I contend, is
the only basis of a stable society ; and if such
conditions do not obtain, and uncertainty comes
to prevail in people's lives, then it will tend
gradually to undermine all the cardinal virtues
upon which national stability finally rests. The
workers will lose their courage and independence,
a.nd will become demoralized, having, indeed, no

00 MACHINERY AND SOCIETY

higher aim than that of keeping going from
day to day.

Now, extensive machine production denies
security to those engaged in it. It places them
at the mercy of forces over which they have no
control, nor, I am persuaded, ever can have. The
workers are to-day dependent on a new inven-
tion, a prospector's luck, a change of tariffs in
some foreign land, a change of fashion, and a
thousand and one other things ; and though some
of these things do not immediately arise from the
employment of machinery, but have existed from
the earliest times, their evil has become enormously
intensified since its introduction. Extensive
machine production means quantitative production,
and if goods are produced in such quantities
that they cannot be consumed for the most part
locally, then the element of uncertainty begins
to increase. Within certain limits uncertainty is,
of course, inevitable. But there is a fundamental
difference between the uncertainty which, in an
agricultural community, is due to a bad harvest,
and the artificial uncertainty caused by overpro-
duction, a change of fashion, or a new invention.
The former is inevitable, and as a rule is only
temporary ; the latter is purely artificial, and is
apt to be much more serious. In America, where
industry is more developed, and machinery more
misapplied, the changes are often violent. A
factory works at full pressure for several months,
and then it closes down until it can dispose of
its surplus stock. Meanwhile the workers are

MACHINERY AND SOCIETY 91

left to starve. This tendency is inevitable, and
will continue to increase so long as we worship
machinery in the utterly irrational way we do to-
day. To use machinery as a slave is impossible
for a people who treat it as a divinity.

Evidence is not wanting that unregulated
machine production is carrying us along this path
of destruction. Mr. Chesterton once said that
modern society was getting top-heavy, and the
danger was that it would turn turtle. The Census
of Production appears to support this contention,
for, according to an article which recently appeared
in the New. Statesman, by Sir Leo Chiozza Money,1
whose authority on this matter I am prepared to
accept, " a surprisingly small proportion of men,
women, and children, engaged in occupations for
gain, are actual and direct producers of material
commodities, whether minerals, agricultural pro-
ducts, or manufactured articles," while there is
a " monstrous disproportion of distributors, traf-
fickers, and hangers-on of various kinds, whose
work is of little or no economic value, and who
serve to attenuate the thin stream of commodities
— many of them consisting of rubbish — deliber-
ately and knowingly produced as rubbish — which
flows from the places where the real work of the
nation is done." Sir Leo does not give us the
exact proportions which the useful and useless
labour bear to each other ; nor is it necessary.
It is sufficient that we know that there exists this

1 " Delimitation and Transmutation of Industries," by Sir
Leo Chiozza Money, M.P. (New Statesman, March 14, 1914).

92 MACHINERY AND SOCIETY

monstrous disproportion. Any one with eyes to
see knows this to be true, quite apart from the
corroborative testimony of the Census of Produc-
tion. Sir Leo offers no explanation of its cause.
He merely states it as a fact, the inference being
that it is to be ascribed entirely to the unequal
distribution of wealth.

Needless to say, to a certain extent this is true ;
but it is not the whole of the truth by any means,
for it is demonstrable that in a far higher degree
the disproportion of useless to useful labour is
due to our excessive use of machinery. Every
time a machine is invented to do useful and
necessary work, which hitherto was done by hand,
it transfers a certain number of men from useful
to useless occupations. It increases the number
of distributors, traffickers, and hangers-on of
various kinds, or, in other words, it turns the
craftsman into a commercial traveller l or a maker
of useless commodities. This process will con-
tinue until we make up our minds to limit the
use of machinery. It is no use arguing, as Sir
Leo does, that it would be possible, with a strong
central authority, to remedy this defect by re-
distributing the work of the community in such
a way as to transfer men back from useless
to useful work, because it so happens that, as
industry becomes more complex, the establish-
ment of a strong central authority becomes increas-

1 According to Advertising and Progress, by E. S. Hole and
John Hart, the capital invested in distribution to-day is about
three times as great as that invested in actual production,

MACHINERY AND SOCIETY 93

ingly difficult. Even if one could be established
we should be no better off, for the number of
adjustments required would be legion, and there
is no man living; — nor is there ever likely to be
one — who will have sufficient knowledge and ex-
perience to get a grip of the endless details
necessary to effect such a delimitation and trans-
mutation of occupations. If there were one, too,
he would be powerless, because he would be con-
fronted with the problem of vested interests. The
truth is, this is not the way things are done.
There is a limit to the successful application of
the principle of control from without, and that
limit has long since been reached. The only
way to grapple with this problem is by giving
application to the principle of control from within,
such as would follow the restoration of the Guilds.
Sir Leo Chiozza Money is a believer in the
extended use of machinery, but he does not believe
in Guilds. He is consistent in his point of view,
for it is almost a certainty that if the Guilds were
restored efforts would be made to regulate
machinery. That is, indeed, one of the reasons
why we want to see them restored. Sir Leo sees
a danger in this, for he says that : "We have to
beware lest we stereotype forms and institutions
which frustrate the proper use of great ideas,"
as the groups or Guilds " would seek to perpetuate
their functions, whether they were useful or not."
If this were true it would be a valid objection,
but I am assured there is no such danger possible.
I deny the possibility of superimposing Guild

94 MACHINERY AND SOCIETY

organization over latter-day parasitic and useless
occupations. Guild organization could only be
applied to industries which had a basis in real
human needs, and commencing' with these, the
surplus labour which nowadays is compelled to
follow useless occupations would be absorbed as
it became possible to regulate machinery. It is
strange that Sir Leo should object to Guild organi-
zation for these reasons, for it was the realization
of the danger of stereotyping men which first
opened my eyes to the evils of Collectivism, and
led me to place my hopes for the future in the
restoration of the Guilds. This stereotyping is
now more than a danger ; it is an established
fact.

Finally, I would suggest the wisdom of not
accepting scientists at their own valuation. tWe
have fallen into a fatal habit of assuming that
a thing which is new is in some mysterious way
beneficial to society. A new device has only
to call itself scientific and it is assumed, without
further question, that it is superior in every way
to the thing which it seeks to supplant. Such,
however, is rarely the case. .What scientific men
invariably do is to seek the remedy for one evil
by creating another, and, generally speaking, a
worse. Our memories are very short, or we would
be very sceptical about the predictions of scientific
men. Their promises are rarely fulfilled, and
most of them show no signs of ever being ful-
filled. They prophesied that the application of
machinery to industry would give the people

MACHINERY AND SOCIETY 95

leisure by reducing the amount of drudgery to
be done in the world. Are there any signs of it?
Has not precisely the opposite state of things
come about? They told us that money-making
would make the many rich. Are there any signs
of it? Has not again precisely the opposite come
about, and have not the masses been precipitated
into the most abject poverty the world has ever
seen? They told us that Free Trade and universal
markets would inaugurate an era of peace and
good will amongst nations ! Again, I say, are
there any signs of it, and are we not exhausting
our resources to-day in a competition for arma-
ments? Why should we listen seriously to a
point of view with such a record of failure behind
it, or to men who make promises which they have
no idea how to fulfil ; whose only remedy, indeed,
for every evil is to take measures to increase it.

THE ULTIMATE BASE OF INDUS-
TRIALISM

THE final answer to Socialists, who imagine that
it is possible to remedy the evils of poverty by
compromising with Industrialism, is that, if they
could be successful in their efforts, Industrialism
itself would immediately collapse, for no one could
be found to do the objectionable and dangerous
work which lies at its base.

Socialists who talk glibly about the blessings
of Industrialism are invariably members of the
middle class, who profit at the expense of their
fellows. Industrialism has brought them many
conveniences, and it has also given them oppor-
tunities for travel. They dream of a day when
the mass of the workers will enjoy the same
opportunities, not realizing it is an utterly impos-
sible dream. It is merely a middle-class illusion,
for these conveniences are only made possible by
the existence in our society of a class of workers
who are not so fortunately placed.

In a new country like South Africa it has
only hitherto been possible to get such work done

ULTIMATE BASE OF INDUSTRIALISM 97

by tempting the cupidity of workers who were
anxious to make a pile in a short space of time
and to return home. In this country the capitalist
finds himself to-day under no such necessity. His
policy is to sweat the workers. He aims at the
deliberate creation of a class of workers so de-
graded, and with an outlook in life so hopeless,
that they will have little option but to do the
horrible and dangerous work which lies at the
base of industrialism. This he has been able
to do because he found such a slave class ready
to his hand, which had come into existence as
a result of the appropriation of the land by the
few and the economic uncertainties which had
followed the growth of quantitative production.
Apart from the use which is made of machinery,
the most important difference between the present
day processes of manufacture and those that ob-
tained in the past is due to the use of chemicals.
Nearly all the newer developments of industry
which Mr. H. G. 3A5ells, Sir Leo Chiozza Money,
and their friends are so anxious to praise have
been made possible by the discoveries of our
chemists. And what do we find comes about
as a result of these discoveries, but an 'utterly
ruthless disregard for the claims of human life,
which is unparalleled in history? By comparison,
the slavery of the Pagan world appears as a
quite humane institution. The slave of the past
had no personal liberty, but he was generally
properly fed, and in other respects his life was
tolerable, except in the darkest periods. He was

98 ULTIMATE BASE OF INDUSTRIALISM

not submitted to that slow physical torture which
is the fate, not only of our chemical workers, but
of those in a great many other industries which,
strictly speaking, may not be classed as chemical
ones. Workers engaged in the manufacture of
alkalis, rubber, Portland cement, white lead,
aniline dyes, artificial manures, to mention only a
few, come from a degraded class, and are slowly
poisoned and done to death in order that our
industrial system may continue and production
be placed on a scientific basis.

There is nothing new in all this. Facts of
this kind were revealed seventeen years ago by
Mr. Robert W;. Sherard in The White Staves of
England, which, prior to its publication as a book,
appeared in serial form in Pearson's Magazine.
A more scathing indictment of Industrialism has
never been written, Mr. Sherard was a member
of the Fabian Society, and it might have been
expected that when this society found itself in
the possession of such information it would have
begun to look upon industrialism and the dis-
coveries of science in a new light — that it would
have come to the conclusion, not merely that
industrialism sweated the workers, but that its
whole aim and purpose was at fault. Such,
unfortunately, was not the case. The glamour
of science blinded them to the truth. Mr.
Sherard's book has formed the subject of lectures
and articles all over the world. But official
Fabianism allowed the matter quietly to drop,
and nowadays there are few Fabians who realize

ULTIMATE BASE OF INDUSTRIALISM 99

the existence of these horrors. Those who do, tell
us that the remedy is to be found in the shortening
of the hours of labour and the introduction of
safety regulations, etc., which would render such
evils, where they were not actually preventable,
comparatively harmless.

To me, however, this proposed solution has
never been convincing, and for a long time it
puzzled me to account for the Fabian attitude
towards this problem. Fabians were not without
sympathy for suffering, and it is unthinkable that
they should regard physical torture as of less
importance than poverty. The conclusion at which
I eventually arrived was that this attitude was
attributable to their materialistic philosophy. It
becomes apparent, therefore, that if our ideal of
the future is ultimately translatable into the terms
of the present, we shall find ourselves in the end
committed to the support of the present system.
Mr. and Mrs. Webb's acquiescence in speeding-
up as their endorsement of the Servile State is
ultimately to be accounted for by the fact that
with such a limited vision they can see no alterna-
tive. And it is the same, I imagine, with respect
to their attitude towards our chemical industries.
They accept as inevitable, evils whose existence
they deplore, because they lack the requisite imagi-
nation to see their way to abolish them.

Looking, then, at our chemical industries and
dangerous trades from this point of view, the
failure of the leaders of the Fabian Society to
handle the problem: which they present may be

100 ULTIMATE BASE OF INDUSTRIALISM

traced to their lack of aesthetic insight. The
official Fabians thought such evils inevitable,
because the products of such industries were de-
sirable. But a man of taste knows better. He
looks at things in a different way, and knows
that if the taste of the community could be raised,
most of these evils would automatically disappear.
I should not like to be so rash as to say they
would all do so, for there are certain evils which
are not to be eradicated entirely in this way.
But, in any case, they would be reduced to more
manageable dimensions.

To prove exactly how far such a statement
is true, it would be necessary to conduct a
very wide inquiry into industrial processes ; but
it is certainly true, up to a certain point. So
far as my investigations have carried me, I have
discovered that innumerable things which the artist
abominates give rise to dangerous industries.
Take the case of lead poisoning, so well known
in the Potteries. It is not inevitable. The lead-
less glaze made with felspar is not dangerous.
iWhy, then, is it not in general use? The answer
is because, as the modern public has a debased
taste, it demands a high glaze.

And so again with respect to the manufacture
of aniline dyes and the bleaching of fabrics, which
are dangerous trades. The artist likes dull glazes,
broken colour, and a feeling of texture in materials,
but the public to-day, destitute of any aesthetic
perception and mechanical in its taste, likes an
appearance of smartness. It is this smartness,

ULTIMATE BASE OF INDUSTRIALISM 101

or trade finish, which Mr. Bernard Shaw is so
anxious to praise, that has created one of the
main sources of demand for chemicals to-day.
Another reason for their use is the growth of
adulteration. It would not be untrue to say that,
as art and the pride of craftsmanship went out
of industry, chemistry came in. Such are the
benefits which science has brought to mankind.1
It looks, indeed, as if there were some truth after
all in the old Eastern proverb that " knowledge
is evil."

It is necessary for me to point out that many
of the evils connected with production are in-
creased by the specialization involved in the great
industry. In the old days of small industries and
small workshops, to which the craftsman hopes
to return, many of these dangerous trades formed
part of other trades, and so the evil was not
felt. But as industry has become more and more
specialized, each separate process has tended to
become a trade in itself, and certain men become
specialized on the dangerous part. The Collectivist
is very fond of saying that in the future everybody

1 "For long to come, if not for ever, science will be the
remorseless enemy of mankind. I see it destroying all
simplicity and gentleness of life, all beauty of the world ; I
see it restoring barbarism under a mask of civilization ; I see
it darkening men's minds and hardening their hearts ; I see it
bringing a time of vast conflicts, which will pale into in-
significance 'the thousand wars of old' and, as likely as not,
will whelm all the laborious advances of mankind in blood-
drenched chaos" (The Private Papers of Henry Ryecrofl,
by George Gissing).

102 ULTIMATE BASE OF INDUSTRIALISM

will have to take his share of the dangerous
work of the world. But he has no idea how he
is going to do it. In these circumstances it is
necessary to tell him. It is by restoring the
small industry. There is no other way.

Xll
THE PLACE OF HANDICRAFT

THE conclusion to be drawn from our analysis
of the structure of industry is that it is impossible
to superimpose Guild organization upon its
existing activities. The desire for profits, the
division of labour, and the misapplication of
machinery, have introduced such a measure of
confusion, and created such a host of parasitic
trades, that as it exists to-day, industry is in-
capable of organization except upon a capitalist
basis. So long as it remains as it is, the capitalist
will inevitably remain master of the position,
because industry to-day has no organic structure
apart from his activities. As I pointed out in
an earlier chapter, it has no life springing from
its own roots, but has come to depend upon an
external and artificial stimulus to galvanize it
into activity from above.

In these circumstances it will be necessary,
before taking measures to restore the Guilds, to
bring industry back to a healthy and normal
state. We must pursue a policy which will
enable us to rid ourselves of the incubus of
the parasitic trades by, the gradual absorption
of the workers into the useful ones. The way

103

104 THE PLACE OF HANDICRAFT

to do this, in so far as it is an urban problem,
is to effect a general revival of handicraft.
Such a revival would restore to industry the
base which the misapplication of machinery has
destroyed. Upon this base we could build. The
immediate economic effect of a revival of 'handi-
craft would be to relieve the pressure of com-
petition by giving employment to a greater
number of workers. The reaction of this upon
the position of the workers would be to bring
into their lives a greater element of choice,
which would enable them to regulate machinery
and to transfer their labour where desirable rfrom
useless to useful occupations.

Fortunately for us, the pioneer work of such
a revival has already been done. Its foundations
have been well and securely laid by the Arts
and Crafts Movement, which came into existence
thirty years ago as a result of the influence of
William Morris. There is no way of finding
out the truth like that of doing things, and the
Arts and Crafts Movement, by attempting to raise
the standard of quality in production, has brought
into the light of day economic knowledge for
which we have much reason to be grateful.
The experience of the movement has made an
economic analysis of production for quality
possible. Its successes and failures each have
their lessons to teach, but from the economic
point of view we learn more from the failures.

What is the nature of this failure of the Arts
and Crafts Movement? It is that it has not

THE PLACE OF HANDICRAFT 105

attained its real object of stemming the tide of
that industrialism which produces shoddy wares,
the cheapness of which is paid for by the lives
of their producers and the degradation of their
users. Nor has it succeeded in bringing beauty
back into the lives and homes of the workers,
or in freeing art from its dependence on luxury.
That the movement has failed in this high en-
deavour, and exists to-day to produce articles
of luxury for the rich, is not its fault. It is its
misfortune. Craftsmanship is impossible without
intelligent patronage, and it has been the mis-
guided patronage of the public, who failed to
appreciate the significance of the movement, and
therefore to support it in the way it desired to be
supported, that has 'diverted its energies into the
wrong channels. There was certainly some excuse
for the public, for the movement was largely
experimental, and it was unfortunately not
accompanied by a propagandist movement which
would have explained its aims. The consequence
is that the public have failed to understand that
the kind of work produced has been too often
a matter of necessity rather than of deliberate
choice.

The layman to-day, having observed that the
craftsmen connected with the movement are
mostly concerned with the production of works
of a decorative and ornate character, and realizing
their superiority over machine-made articles, has
conceded the case for craftsmanship in this
sphere of work. It is rare nowadays to meet

106 THE PLACE OF HANDICRAFT

a man of education who would deny it. We may
conclude, therefore, that within the sphere of
aesthetics the battle has been won. But this is
as far as we have gone. The implications of
this admission are not understood by sociologists
generally, who imagine that it is possible for
the more highly skilled crafts to be organized
on a basis of hand production, while the more
roufine kinds are given over to the machine.
This is the issue which has hitherto divided
Socialists and craftsmen. It is fundamental, for
experience has proved to the craftsmen that to
compromise is to be lost.

It is not, then, out of mere pig-headedness
that the craftsman demands that the use of
machinery shall be limited to the extent which
I suggested in an earlier chapter. In practice,
craftsmen are too often compelled to compromise
to-day. But those who are clear-headed know
that they are making terms with the devil for
permission to live ; for it is finally impossible
to have a body of cream without a body of milk
underneath it. If the milk is there, then the
cream will rise to the top ; but if instead of
milk we only get chalk and water, then no cream
will be forthcoming. The highly skilled crafts-
man knows only too well that in modern industry
he lives by suffrance. He knows that he is part
of an old order which is fast disappearing ; that
the ground is rapidly slipping away from under
his feet, and that unless the tide of machine
production can be stemmed the present genera-

THE PLACE OF HANDICRAFT 107

tion of craftsmen will have no successors. It
will be impossible to train a small group of
highly skilled men to succeed them, because it
will be impossible to select them for the purpose
of training. The young apprentice is an un-
known quantity ; and it is only by providing
opportunities for training and work for the many
that the great craftsmen become possible. The
well-known craftsmen connected with the Arts
and Crafts Movement are the few among a great
mass of inferior craftsmen who have survived
because of their superior gifts and opportunities.
Doubtless there are many among our machine
workers who might have attained to the same
prominence and distinction had they enjoyed
similar advantages and opportunities, for it is
opportunity that makes the man. The powers
within us lie dormant until the chance comes
along which quickens them into life. Hence it
is, when I hear a man talk about the need of
equality of opportunity, I invariably ask his
opinion of machine production. His answer to
that question tells me finally exactly where he
stands, for machinery has been the great destroyer
of this equality. It has created the most effective
class barrier ever devised. A quotation from
Dr. Coomaraswamy's Mediceval Sinnalese Art
will drive my point home. Speaking of the
relationship existing between machinery and
industry, he says :-=

Not merely is the workman through the division of labour
no longer able to make any whole thing, but it is impossible

108 THE PLACE OF HANDICRAFT

for him to improve his position or to win reward for excellence
in the craft itself. Under Guild conditions it was possible
and usual for the apprentice to rise through all grades of
knowledge and experience to the position of a master crafts-
man. But take any such trade as carpet-making by power-
loom under modern conditions. The operator has no longer
to design or weave in and out the threads with his own
fingers or to throw the shuttle with his own hand. He is
employed, in reality, not as a weaver, but as the tender of a
machine. . . . That craft is for him destroyed as a means of
culture, and the community has lost one more man's intelli-
gence, for it is obviously futile to attempt to build up by
evening classes and free libraries what the day's work is for
ever breaking down. It is no longer possible for culture and
refinement to come to the craftsman through his work ; they
must be won, if won at all, in spite of his work ; he must
seek them in a brief hour snatched from rest and sleep, at
the expense of life itself. . . . There can be no quality of
leisure in his work. In short, machine production absolutely
forbids a union of art with labour.

The reason we do not readily recognize this
is because we have come to connect the idea
of culture with book-learning. But craft culture
is a far better base to build upon. The real
education comes by doing things. To do a piece
of honest work and to try to place it on the
market will teach a man ultimately more about
sociology than reading a thousand books on the
subject, because it gives him a firm grip of the
basic facts. The man who never has had this
practical experience cannot be quite sure of his
fundamentals, and so tends to find himself at
the mercy of intellectual fashions. The instability
of the modern mind is due ultimately to the

THE PLACE OF HANDICRAFT 109

separation of the mass of the people from actual
work. Machinery, in separating them from it,
has destroyed the base of their culture, and in-
tellectual stability will never return until this
base is restored. It is interesting in this con-
nection to know that in China, where the people
reverence above all things literature and learning,
the idea of literature pursued as a separate pro*
fession is not favoured. Every literary man is
supposed to be more or less of a craftsman —
a painter or a musician. And I think the
Chinese are right, for literature divorced from
its base in actual work is apt to lead to super-
ficiality.

XIII
THE ETHICS OF CONSUMPTION

IF there is one thing more than another which
the experience of the Arts and Crafts Move-
ment has proved conclusively, it is the impossi-
bility of any 'group of craftsmen, however gifted
—and in this connection it is well to remember
that the movement 'secured the active support
of the cleverest architects and artists of its day—
to effect any widespread reform, apart from' the
organized support of the public. Without a
propaganda movement to teach the public, the
craftsman found himself very much at the mercy
of the existing demand. A German poet has said
that " against stupidity even the gods fight in
vain," and on the aesthetic side of things the
British public is peculiarly stupid. It utterly
fails, for the most part, to understand the meaning
and purpose of art. It fails to realize that
beauty and sweetness are essential elements of
any human perfection, and that art, when it is
vital, enters into every operation of industry, from
the making of bricks to the highest flights of
the imagination. It conceives of art as a veneer

or decoration superimposed upon, or added to

THE ETHICS OF CONSUMPTION 111

something which would otherwise be ugly. The
idea that art is organic and inherent in the
nature of a thing from the moment of its in-
ception has never so much as entered the public
mind. And yet it is precisely the perception
of this truth which is the essence of the artist.
He recognizes that there is 'a right way of doing
everything, and that right way is art.

The ordinary British philistine will not admit
this. Being without the finer aesthetic per-
ceptions, which alone can enable a man to
determine which is the right way of doing things,
and lacking that spirit of humility which in
the ages of 'great traditions made him conscious
of his ignorance, he seeks to evade the problem
by affirming that everything is a matter of taste.
In one sense this is true, but not in the sense
in which he means it. Every great artist has
a personal bias. It is this bias that constitutes
his individuality, and we are justified in respecting
such differences as arise from the individuality
of great artists. These, however, are funda-
mentally different from the differences which arise
from the idle fancies of undisciplined tastes, for
the great artist submits his taste to a stern
discipline. His spontaneity is the flower of that
discipline, and it is just in proportion as a man
can submit himself to this discipline that he
takes his rank as an artist. I cannot insist too
strongly upon the need of recognizing this truth.
It is fundamental, and it will remain impossible
to restore a tradition of 'art and handicraft until

112 THE ETHICS OF CONSUMPTION

it is realized. The absence of any such tradition
or common language of design is at the root
of our difficulties to-day, for when every one
is, as it were, speaking a different language,
artists have little chance of being understood.
Now, a tradition bears the same relation to art
as the command of language does to speech.
Without a language it would be possible for a
man to make noises, but words are necessary to
enable him to express himself, and he must
possess a good vocabulary if he wishes to convey
his ideas and to make his meaning clear to
others. So in respect to a tradition of art ; with-
out it, it is simply impossible for any man to
design or express himself intelligently. The only
way to recover such a medium of expression for
the use of all is by the exercise of a rigid
discipline in matters of taste.

When we realize how utterly false is the
popular idea of art to-day, it is not surprising
that it is neglected. Truth to tell, in so far
as the art of to-day does approximate to the
popular notion there is no purpose in supporting
it. The sooner it dies a natural death the better.
But real art is a different matter. No nation
neglects its claims without being made to suffer
for it, and this not only in the hideousness and
rawness of its external life, but in a decline of
general intelligence and in the growth of economic
difficulties. For all these things are related to
each other in subtle ways, and the great thinkers
of every "age have recognized it. Could we see

•

THE ETHICS OF CONSUMPTION 113

that terrible monster, modern European material-,
istic civilization in its true light, we should realize
that it owes its existence in no small degree
to our neglect of the arts and their sweetening
and refining influence. The best proof I can
bring of this is that art and our civilization are
antipathetic, not merely in the material, but in
the spiritual sense. It is impossible to produce
beautiful things for people who think like the
moderns do when they are determined to have
their own way. In this respect Socialists as
a body are no better than other people. Indeed,
I often incline to think they are worse ; for
their fatal habit of relating every evil in society
to the growth of the economic problem is apt
to blind them, to aspects of truth, the recognition
of which is not only indispensable to the solution
of the problems of art, but of the economic
problem itself.

I said that the popular idea of art was that
it is a veneer or decoration added to something
which would otherwise be ugly. This fallacy
ultimately accounts for the neglect of the Arts
and Crafts, because it leads the public to suppose
that beauty is necessarily expensive. That, of
course, is true, in so far as it depends upon
honest workmanship and the use of good material,
but that is all the truth there is in it. A table
may be in good or bad proportion, it may be
of a pleasing or offensive colour, but neither pro-
portion nor colour has anything particularly to
do with the cost. In each case what makes the

114 THE ETHICS OF CONSUMPTION

difference is whether tke designer has an eye for
these things. Many artistic products are cheap,
as the peasant arts of all countries which have
not been exploited by commercialism bear wit-
ness. But the public neglect them. With their
fixed idea that art is something added, a'nd there-
fore costly, they refuse to buy such thing's. They
prefer shoddy made imitations of more expensive
forms of design. The consequence is that
beautiful things which are inexpensive tend to
go off the market. This stupid attitude of mind
makes it difficult for the artist to be perfectly
straightforward in his dealings with the public.
He never knows what to charge. In many cases,
if he charges a fair price and the price is low,
they refuse to buy, on the assumption that it is
not good work. If, knowing this, he prices his
work high, as likely as not they will say that
they cannot afford it. In a word, the artist
in his dealings with the public to-day not in-
frequently finds himself between the devil and
the deep blue sea. The public become the prey
of sharks of all kinds, because it is almost
impossible for honest men to handle them. They
have only themselves to blame. It is this kind
of nonsense that defeated the Arts an.d Crafts
movement in its original intention, and it is
this kind of nonsense that the capitalist knows
how to exploit. It is the secret of half of his
power.

There is another reason for the neglect of the
Arts and Crafts. It is a spiritual failure. It

THE ETHICS OF CONSUMPTION 115

is one of the paradoxes of our age that the public
do not appear to mind how much they spend
upon things of a temporary nature, but they
grudge every penny spent upon things of per-
manent value. The proprietor of a West-End
gallery where works of handicraft are sold, told
me recently that ladies who would not mind giving
fifteen or twenty guineas for a hat which only
lasts a few months and which probably only costs
as many shillings to make, yet will consider
an article of craftsmanship at a similar price,
which represents real value in labour quite apart
from its aesthetic qualities, as outside their reach.
It is perfectly extraordinary, when you get behind
the scenes, to witness the vagaries of the public
or to account for their motives in expenditure.
No matter how huge a person's income may
be nowadays, he rarely thinks he can afford
to buy anything of permanent 'value. The vast
mass of people fritter away their incomes in
all kinds of senseless extravagance. They know
no limit to personal expenditure, and are mean
and contemptible in every other direction. And
this spirit is not only confined to the rich. It
is spreading to every class of society, down to
the lowest. Have we not heard what the factory
girl spends on dress?

Ruskin spent most of his life in trying to
convince people that political economy is a moral
science. He went to the root of the problem
when he said : " The vital question for individual
and for nation is not, How much do they make?

116 THE ETHICS OF CONSUMPTION

but, To what purpose do they spend? " It is a
fruitful idea, and it receives ample corroborative
testimony from the writings of the Chinese philo-
sopher, Ku Hung Ming. He says : —

The financial distress of China and the economic sickness
of the world to-day are not due to insufficiency of productive
power, to want of manufactures and railways, but to ignoble
and wasteful consumption. Ignoble and wasteful consump-
tion in communities, as in nations, means the want of nobility
of character in the community or nation to direct the power
of industry of the people to noble purposes. When there is
nobility of character in a community or nation, people will
know how to spend their money for noble purposes. When
people know how to spend their money for noble purposes,
they will not care for the what, but for the how — not for the
bigness, grandeur, or showiness, but for the taste, for the
beauty of their life surroundings. When people in a nation
or community have sufficient nobility of character to care
only for the tastefulness and beauty of their life surroundings,
they will want little to satisfy them, and in that way they will
not waste the power of industry of the people, such as in
building big, ugly houses and making long, useless roads.
When the power of industry of the people in a community or
nation is nobly directed and not wasted, then the community
or nation is truly rich, not in money or possession of big, ugly
houses, but rich in the health of the body and the beauty of
the soul of its people. . . . Ignoble and wasteful consumption
not only wastes the power of industry of the people, but it
makes a just distribution of the fruit of that industry difficult.

XIV

THE TYRANNY OF THE
MIDDLEMAN

THE idiosyncrasies of the purchasing public, by
making it difficult for honest men to deal with
them, result in placing power in the hands of
sharks of various kinds. It goes without saying
that such men do not lose the opportunity thus
presented to them of strengthening their hold on
the public. By means of a device in all respects
analogous to the confidence trick of ill repute,
the middleman has rendered his position, for the
time being, impregnable.

Now the confidence trick, as is well known,
is a dodge for imposing on simple-minded people
by securing their confidence in the first instance,
and then using it later for the purpose of swindling
them. There are, of course, commercial possi-
bilities in the idea, and our large distributing
houses have not been backward in discovering
them. It has become the chief corner-stone of
their monopolies. The modus operandi is as
follows : The custom and confidence of the public
are secured in the first place by tempting their
cupidity, and then advantage is taken of the repu-

118 TYRANNY OF THE MIDDLEMAN

tation for cheapness thus created to sell them
something at an exorbitant price. In the furni-
ture trade, for instance, certain things in general
demand, such as chests of drawers, bureaus, chairs,
small tables, etc., are not only invariably sweated
and jerried, but as often as not are sold without
profit, while larger pieces, such as dining-tables,
sideboards, bookcases, etc., carry good profits.
Again, the simpler kinds of furniture are sold at
cost price, and the more elaborate pieces at an
exorbitant one. Facts of this kind are well known
to everybody, but the social and economic impli-
cations of the practice are little understood.

'Now, although this system of manipulated prices
is to the advantage of large firms, it is not in
the interests of the public, who are made to pay,
on the whole, more for what they have to buy
than would be the case with straightforward deal-
ing. But what is worse than this is that it is
utterly fatal to the small man, and defeats the
ends of those who are working for industrial
reform. The reason is simple. In a state of
things in which the selling price of any particular
article bears little or no relation to the actual
cost of production, it is apparent that it is only
possible to make a business pay by dealing in
a large variety of goods. The small man cannot
do this, and the craftsman finds not only that it
limits the range of his activities, but that it
destroys public confidence in him.

The craftsman, like all persons of taste, hates
the meretricious ornament with which commercial

TYRANNY OF THE MIDDLEMAN 119

firms spoil their products, and he desires to pro-
mote a taste for simple, straightforward design
of good proportion. But he finds that if he
knocks off five shillingsworth of cheap ornament
he knocks five pounds off the selling price of the
piece, for the public compares his price with the
goods that are sold without profit for the purpose
of creating a market for the sham ornamental
ones, and this destroys public confidence in him.
Even when a person can afford to pay, he imagines
the craftsman is asking a fancy price. Machinery,
it is true, is the enemy of craftsmanship, but a
far greater enemy in the immediate sense is this
system of manipulated prices, which checkmates
the craftsman absolutely while it secures the
market for commercial firms. The paradox about
this commercial confidence trick is that it operates
to destroy public confidence in honest men.

Exactly to what extent this system obtains it
•would only be possible to say after long and
careful investigation. It certainly does so in all
trades in which the element of taste enters, and
which are subject to the control of the middleman.
This is natural, for such trades lend themselves
so perfectly to bluff and humbug when handled
for commercial purposes. Generally speaking, the
middleman in these trades is an interloper. In a
healthy society he would not exist, but the crafts-
man would work direct for the public, for in the
long run it is only possible for him to produce
beautiful things if he works in this way. In
catering for a definite and known public the crafts-

120 TYRANNY OF THE MIDDLEMAN

man finds himself. But when he is separated from
it, as is too often the case to-day, he suffers from
an inability to focus his ideas, and his work
rapidly degenerates.

A consideration of such issues testifies to the
distance we have wandered from the path of
righteousness in our economic (arrangements. The
true function of the middleman is to bring together
the producer and consumer for their mutual
benefit, and in certain departments of trade he is
indispensable. But in trades like the furniture
trade he is an intruder, and has usurped functions
which do not properly belong to him. The best
proof of this is that in such a trade his whole
aim and purpose is not to bring the producer and
consumer together for their mutual benefit, but
to keep them apart for his own.

The growth of the power of the middleman
is one of the most alarming symptoms of the
age, for it means finally the passing of the control
of industry out of the hands of the actual makers
and producers of things into the hands of
financiers pure and simple, who have no interest
in things apart from considerations of profit and
loss. This is an unmixed evil, not merely because
such men will lack that sense of honour in respect
to the tradition of a trade which is the birthright
of every craftsman, but because this change lies
at the root of the intellectual rot which has over-
taken the modern world.

Of course, it is easy to understand why the
middleman has become so powerful in modern

TYRANNY OF THE MIDDLEMAN 121

society. It is one of the results 'of quantitative
production. In the old days of qualitative pro-
duction local markets obtained, and the producer
and consumer were in direct relations with each
other. The middleman confined his attention to
such things as could not be produced locally.
But with the introduction of the system of the
division of labour and the invention of machinery
goods of every kind became too numerous to
be disposed of locally. It became necessary to
go further and further afield in search of markets,
so little by little the middleman grew in im-
portance. Still, for a long time he remained the
middleman. He did not aspire to the control of
production, which was still regarded as the func-
tion of the man with technical training. The
change which is increasingly transferring the con-
trol of industry into the hands of men without any
such training is due to the pressure of competition.
So long as demand exceeded supply, the technical
man came to his position as the controller of
industry as a matter of course. But with the
growth of large organizations and the increase
of the pressure of competition, a time came when
the technical man could no longer set up in busi-
ness on his own account, for it was necessary
to make sure of the market before starting ; and
the only man who could do this was the commercial
traveller or the man possessed of capital, who
was in a position to spend huge sums on adver-
tising. Hence it has come about that the middle-
man^ in his capacity as financier, has succeeded to

122 TYRANNY OF THE MIDDLEMAN

the technical man in the control of industry. The
consequence is, not only that technical competence
has ceased to command its proper remuneration,
but that it has ceased to be respected. And
ceasing to be respected, it is suffering a decline.
" ,Why should I fag to make myself competent,
when nowadays incompetent men succeed best? "
was the reply I got recently from an apprentice
whom I had criticized for his indolence. And
I found it difficult to answer, for what he said
was only too true.

I said the growth of the power of the middleman
is one of the most alarming symptoms of the age.
How 'to destroy this power is the problem of
industrial reformers. Economists who neglect it
and discourse about the relations of the producer
and the consumer are really living in the eighteenth
century, since neither of them has any real power
to-day. They have both been enslaved by the
middleman in his capacity as financier.

XV
THE STRIKE FOR QUALITY

PASSING on to consider ways and means of
emancipating the producer and consumer from
their enslavement by the middleman, two possible
and complementary lines of action present them-
selves. One is to attack the problem from the
position of the producer, the other is to attack
it from that of the consumer. Let us consider it
in the first place from the position of the former.
Now, from the point of view of the producer
in his capacity of wage-slave, the term middle-
man may be taken to connote anybody who lives
by the exploitation of labour, whether he be
merchant, shopkeeper, or actual employer. The
employer to-day is a middleman in the sense
that he treats labour as a commodity to be bought
in the cheapest market. He has succeeded in
depressing wages by taking advantage of the
economic weakness of the wage-earner, and the
workers have failed for the most part to resist his
encroachments. The reason for this is, I think,
that the workers have hitherto failed to perceive
exactly where the weakness of the employers

really is to be found.

123

124 THE STRIKE FOR QUALITY

Instead of choosing their own ground and
fighting for the maintenance of a standard in
production, where they would be tactically strong,
they have allowed the employers to fight them on
economic grounds, where they are the weaker.
To strike for quality would indeed hit the em-
ployers in a very tender place. They would
find an attack of such a kind difficult to meet.
No firm could afford to have all the little tricks
and dodges by which it seeks to cheapen pro-
duction brought to the public notice. The
workers ought to play this card for all it is
worth, and they would find themselves in a posi-
tion not only to get recognition, but higher wages.
Moreover, it would secure public sympathy and
support for the Unions. They would gain in
prestige.

So long as the Unions fight only for higher
wages and shorter hours, the public not un-
naturally suppose that they have no other interest
in life except to get as much for doing as little
as possible. But a strike for quality would
raise the plane of the struggle. The capitalists
for once would be seen in their true colours as
rogues and tricksters. They would no longer
be able to hide their baseness by making a scape-
goat of the British working man. The truth
would be out, and capitalism would lose its last
moral support.

I feel well advised in recommending this line
of action, not only because of the immediate
benefits which would accrue from, it, but because

THE STRIKE FOR QUALITY 125

it is an indispensable step> which must be taken
before the Guilds can be restored. Let us always
remember that a Guild is a privileged body,
and privileges are impossible without respon-
sibilities. It is not to be expected that the
public could be persuaded to grant privileges
to men unless they could be assured that they
would not be abused. Sooner or later this issue
is bound to be raised. And we shall be in
a much better position to face it if we can
bring evidence to show that the workers are
actively interested in the maintenance of a
standard of quality in production. Trade
Unionists should take to heart the lesson which
the regulation of the Mediaeval Guild system
teaches us — that the best way to protect the
standard of life of the craftsman is ultimately
to protect the standard of quality in crafts-
manship .

In the affirmation of this truth is to be found
the most fundamental divergence from Collec-
tivist opinion. Collectivists always talk as if
the social problem was entirely a matter of
detailed arrangement. They seem to be quite
unconscious of the fact that in society there is
a constant struggle between right and wrong,
and that that struggle can never be eliminated.
It is inherent, and in the very constitution of
things. What, however, we may do is to raise
the plane of the struggle. When we talk about
the need of a redistribution of the wealth
of the community, we are apt to forget that the

126 THE STRIKE FOR QUALITY

existing struggle for wealth is the result of
emptying life of its content, and that it can
only be by bringing back! into life the things
which filled it in the past that the economic
motive may be brought again into subjection.
The only way of finally combating the evils
consequent upon the pursuit of a low motive
is by exalting the claims of a higher one. So
long as this emptiness is allowed to continue,
avarice will remain to fill the vacuum, and I
think that so long as the battle is fought
primarily according to the dictates of avarice
the capitalists will continue to triumph, for with
them it is the dominating motive, whereas with
the workers it is a regrettable necessity. .When
I say this, I am not unmindful of the fact that
the appeal to the avarice of the many has served
a certain immediate purpose in creating that
spirit of unrest which is necessary to the solu-
tion of the social problem, and that the motive
of the Socialist movement has been idealism
rather than avarice. Avarice is a powerful
weapon for destructive purposes, and in so far
as it is necessary to work for the destruction
of the present order of society we have perhaps
no option but to use it. But we must not forget
that it is useless for the purposes of recon-
struction. The spirit of co-operation is anti-
pathetic to it. Self-sacrifice rather than self-
interest must be its corner-stone.

Looked at from this point of view, the present
situation is paradoxical, and its contradictions

THE STRIKE FOft QUALITY 12?

are, perhaps, only to be reconciled on the basis
of the old idea of co-operation within the group
and warfare outside of it. Any way, we can
be sure that at the present juncture we are
right in advoeating the strike for quality, for
in it both motives will come into play. The
higher the workers can raise the standard of
production, the easier it will be for them to
get control of industry, because the financier is
ultimately incapable of organizing industry on
a basis of quality. Only the craftsman can do
that. The preference of the financier for quantity
rather than quality is easily understood. If he
produces for quality he is dependent upon
the actual workers in a far higher degree than
if he produces for quantity. In the former case
he must give great attention to detail, and must
choose his men carefully with regard to their
special aptitudes. But in the latter one man
is as good as another. All he wants is unskilled
men whom he can sweat and bully, and this
more accords with his temperament and intelli-
gence. Hence it is the more the workers can
raise the standard of quality in production, the
more they will limit the range of the capitalists'
activities, and will finally succeed in exorcising
him to the nether regions from whence he arose
in response to the incantations of our orthodox
economists.

The protection of a standard of excellence
in craftsmanship was, as I observed in an earlier
chapter, the vitalizing principle of the Guilds.

128 THE STRIKE FOR QUALITY

The nearer we approach this ideal, the more we
shall see the necessity for a revival of Guilds in
their old form. A criticism which has often
been hurled at Trade Unions is that by insisting
upon equality of payment they offered no induce-
ment to the workman to become expert in his
craft. It has generally been made by the oppo-
nents of Trade Unionism, and when used to
account for the decline of quality in production
it is, as an explanation, beneath contempt.

But it contains an element of truth all the
same. The Mediaeval Guilds had two rates of
pay, one for the masters and another for the
journeymen of the craft. It is a natural division,
and one which I think it will be desirable to
revive in the future. Wages must not be allowed
to be settled by competition, but it is desirable
that excellence be 'rewarded. Some day, perhaps,
such a principle might be reduced to practice.
But the Unions will need to secure recognition
first.

Finally, I must answer a possible objection to
this strike for quality. It will be said that the
poor cannot afford wares of a good quality. To
this I can only answer that it is not finally true.
Our cheap wares to-day are really very costly,
because they do not last long. Further, it is
necessary to add that the best firms would
welcome strikes for quality, as such a policy
would protect them against the competition of
unscrupulous rivals who undercut their prices and
do dishonest work. This competition reacts also

THE STRIKE FOR QUALITY 129

against the interests of the working class, for
the lowering of the standard of production ends
finally in a lowering of the wages and the
standard of life of workers, for it places the
control of industry in the hands of a less
scrupulous class of employer.

XVI

THE ELIMINATION OF THE
MIDDLEMAN

THE basis of the workers' revolt against the
tyranny of the middleman and financier must
be the strike for quality. But strikes at the
best are negative measures, and if the middle-
man is to be eliminated, it can only be by means
of action of a positive kind.

The true function of the middleman, as I
have already pointed out, is to bring the pro-
ducer and consumer together for their mutual
benefit, and in so far as he fulfils that function
he performs a necessary service to society. Un-
fortunately, to-day he is not content to confine
his actions to his legitimate sphere. In invading
the crafts he has usurped functions which do
not properly belong to him, for craftsmanship
is only possible when the public and the crafts-
man are known to each other. Otherwise the
craftsman comes to be dictated to by the sales-
man, which with men who have an interest in
their work is an intolerable tyranny. In these
circumstances it will be necessary for us to
differentiate between the two types of industry

130

ELIMINATION OF THE MIDDLEMAN 131

which nowadays are controlled by the middle-
man, namely those in which he performs a
legitimate function and those in which he is
an intruder. (

In the Middle Ages the distribution of wares
was in the hands of the Guild merchants. Yet,
though I advocate the revival of the Guilds in
the sphere of production, I do not think it is
desirable to revive them in the sphere of dis-
tribution. We are safe in leaving the produc-
tion of craftsmanship in private hands when con-
trolled by Guilds, for, as the craftsman comes
to have a pride in the work of his hands, he
naturally retains a high sense of honour in his
trade relationship. But with occupations con-^
nected with buying and selling it is different.
The temptations of gain are there too strong
to be resisted by the average human being, and
so it is not desirable to leave them in private
hands. In so far, therefore, as the middleman
is inevitable, we shall, I think, be well advised
to support the Co-operative Movement l in its
efforts to supplant him, but with this proviso,
that it is desirable to place a limit to the size
of each separate society, as there is no other
way of safeguarding the movement against the
vices of bureaucracy.

1 While we support the Co-operative Movement, let us
remember its limitations. "Economic co-operation runs to
quantity, because quantity is something that can be proved to
everybody's satisfaction ; meanwhile, quality, which is in-
capable of proof, is apt to suffer " (From the Human End, by
L. P. Jacks).

132 ELIMINATION OF THE MIDDLEMAN

So far, so good. We may safely look to
the Co-operative Movement to eliminate the
middleman where hitherto he has been indis-
pensable. But, as I have already pointed out,
in certain fields of industry the middleman is
an intruder, and we are not justified in allowing
even the Co-operative Societies to trespass on
the domains of the craftsman, for the problem
here is not how to capture the trade of the
middleman, but how to dispense with his services
altogether. This problem is not to be solved by
the ordinary operations of demand and supply.
Before it will be possible to bring the crafts-
man and the public into mutual and reciprocal
relationships with each other it will be necessary
to restore public confidence in the integrity of
the craftsman and to expose the tricks of the
middleman by means of an active propaganda
movement on the craftsman's behalf. In con-
nection with such a movement there might be
established what I might call " introduction
agencies," which would aim at bringing the
public and craftsmen into direct contact with
each other. Such agencies would need to be
subsidized in some way if they were to be effec-
tive. It would be impossible for an agency
which lived by commissions to expose the system
of manipulated prices by which the middleman
has established his monopoly, for if it did it
would not be believed. Moreover, if it lived
by commissions it would be compelled to keep
the craftsman and the public apart as the middle-

man does. This has always been the difficulty
connected with galleries which exhibit arts and
crafts. The reason why such galleries have in-
variably departed from their original purpose
is that their financial basis can only be maintained
by keeping the craftsmen in the background.

At first an agency of this kind would have
to make use of such craftsmen as it found at
its hand. But as its position became more secure
and it came to promote the interests of new men,
it would be able to facilitate a transition towards
a revival of Guilds. At a later date, when
the machinations of the middlemen had been
thoroughly exposed, such agencies could be
financed by the Guilds until such time as local
markets were restored, when they would become
unnecessary.

To what extent organization on this basis is
possible it is difficult to say ; but production in
small workshops is very much more general than
is usually supposed. London and Birmingham
are full of small workshops. An enormous per-
centage of the goods which are sold in the West
End are still made in small workshops, and
these workshops are likely to continue, for factory
conditions do not lend themselves to the pro-
duction of goods which require taste and dis-
crimination on the part of the workers. Some
of the goods so produced carry enormous retail
profits, and it would be expedient to make a
start with them, as by taking away from the
middleman the most profitable part of his trade

134 ELIMINATION OF THE MIDDLEMAN

he would be compelled in self-defence to raise
his prices for those things which are sold at
less than their real value. This raising of prices
would enable us to lift certain trades out of
the sweated condition in which they find them-
selves to-day.

XVII

THE DECENTRALIZATION OF
INDUSTRY

HITHERTO in my analysis I have treated the
social problem, as a purely industrial affair,
leaving out agriculture. This order was inevit-
able, because, as we mostly live in towns nowa-
days, we are accustomed to view things primarily
from the industrial standpoint. There is no harm
in this so long as we clearly recognize that the
industrial problem is in its ultimate analysis
inseparable from the agricultural one. I must
insist upon this, for though Collectivists view
an agricultural revival with a certain sympathy,
they nevertheless utterly fail to recognize its
fundamental importance. They are inclined to
accept the fact that we are an industrial com-
munity and to seek a solution of industrial
problems as separate and detached issues.

This, however, is impossible. The fact that
we have to such a large extent become an indus-
trial community is precisely what makes the social
problem so difficult to handle. " A society/' says
Mr. Lowes Dickinson, •" that is to be politically
stable must be economically independent." That

135

136 DECENTRALIZATION OF INDUSTRY

opinion receives ample torroboration from the
testimony of history. Communities which have
been more or less self-contained have persisted
for thousands of years, but no community which
has once become dependent upon an extensive
foreign trade has retained its prosperity for over
a limited period. The history of Carthage and
Athens, as of Venice and Genoa, demonstrate the
fleeting nature of such prosperity. The explana-
tion is simple. The more a nation becomes
dependent upon foreign trade, the more it tends
to find itself at the mercy of forces which it is
powerless to control.

It is impossible to resist the conclusion that
so long as industry is dependent upon foreign
markets so long will the workers continue to
be exploited, because an extensive foreign trade
is dependent ultimately upon capitalist adven-
turers. The workers become parasitic upon the
capitalist, because he alone can find the market.
It is all very well to talk about abolishing the
capitalist, but so long as industry is dependent
upon foreign markets he remains indispensable,
because only a man whose control of labour is
absolute can act with the promptness and decision
necessary to adjust the labour of the workers
to the uncertainty and fluctuations of distant
markets. In other words, so long as industry
is dependent upon foreign markets production
will be very much of a gamble, and such a
condition, I am persuaded, is incompatible with
the democratic organization of industry.

DECENTRALIZATION OF INDUSTRY 137

Once the fact is grasped that the economic
dependence of the workers is bound up with
an extensive foreign trade, as it is with large
industries and the division of labour, it follows
that their emancipation is bound up with small
industries and local markets. Only under such
conditions have the workers a chance. The
master of a small workshop can only maintain
his foothold amid stable economic circumstances,
such as obtain with local markets. If his market
is thousands of miles away he inevitably falls
under the control of the financier or middleman.
The same thing would happen if the workers
were organized into Guilds. They would come
to be dependent upon a financial class of men
who organized the market for them, and, like
capitalists, they would be compelled to resort
to the same tricks to hold it. But if agricul-
ture were revived the home market would become
available. The workers would have their feet
on a solid economic foundation. If they were
sure of the home market they could engage in
foreign trade to a limited extent, and no harm
would come to them, because the home market
would guarantee their independence. But to be
absolutely dependent upon foreign markets is
a different matter. It is to place themselves at
the mercy of economic forces which they are
powerless to control.

Looking at our industrial system from this
point of view, it is evident that the large industry,
though perhaps here and there inevitable, will

138 DECENTRALIZATION OF INDUSTRY

not, to anything like the same extent, bulk so
largely in the future as it does to-day. It
is evident, for instance, that we shall need fewer
railways, their present abnormal development
being due to the growth of cross distribution
and the aggregation bf population into towns.
With a more reasonable distribution of popu-
lation between urban and rural areas, and the
revival of small workshops and local markets,
which we may safely anticipate in the future, rail-
ways will shrink into comparative insignificance.
I cannot endorse Mr. H. G. Wells 's prediction
that we shall travel more and more in the future
— though we doubtless will in the immediate
future — because this tendency is necessarily
accompanied by a growth of social instability
which sooner or later must provoke a reaction.
After all, the excessive travelling of to-day is
largely a reaction against the ugliness of our
overgrown towns. But when beauty once more
finds a place in our life surroundings, we may
expect that the present restlessness will tend to
disappear.

It is evident that if ever we are to realize
such a state of society as I have sketched, trade
relationships will need to be very carefully regu-
lated. We shall not be able to leave ourselves
at the mercy of the whimsicalities of Free Trade,
for economic stability is impossible in a com-
munity which places the workers at the mercy
of fluctuations of prices or subjects them to
the danger of the importation of sweated goods
from other lands. On the contrary, while we

DECENTRALIZATION OF INDUSTRY 139

approve of the principle of Protection — for the
principle of Protection is identical with that of
privilege which underlies the Guild System — and
must give it our support, we must see to it
that it is administered in the interests of society
as a whole, and not merely in the interests of
such capitalists as find themselves in a position
to bring pressure to bear upon the Government
to secure privileges for themselves. Our policy
must be the protection of the standard of life
of the workers and of quality in craftsmanship,
which, as I have before explained, go together.
But this involves a revival of the Mediaeval prin-
ciples of fixed prices. Protection without fixed
prices and without Guild control opens wide the
gate of corruption. There are political possi-
bilities, I think, in this idea. The workers might
secure privileges for themselves by supporting
Protectionists. But they would need to be very
careful to see that they came out right. It is
not practical politics to-day, but it might be
to-morrow.

Lest any of my readers should imagine a
system of fixed prices is impracticable, I might
say that building contracts to-day are largely
based on such a system. In a builder's estimate
most of the prices will be taken direct from
Laxton's Builders' Price Book. The variations
are confined to a few items, where the builder
exercises his own judgment. In Lancashire also
the cotton operatives have a most elaborate
system of piece-work rates, which are arranged
between the Trade Unions and the employers.

XVIII

THE REDISTRIBUTION OF
POPULATION

A FRANK recognition of the fleeting nature of
the national prosperity which is based upon an
extensive foreign trade would carry us a long
way towards the formulation of a true social
policy. But I fear such a recognition will be
difficult to get : "a reformer is a person who
wants to reform other people, but not himself,"
Mr. Dooley once cynically remarked ; and I
regret to say it contains a large element of truth,
for the difficulty which stands in the way of social
reform is finally that we are not open to consider
any scheme which seriously interferes with the
Jives to which each one of us seems irrevocably
committed. tWe are town bred, and we don't
particularly care for ideas of reform which would
turn a great percentage of us into agricultural
workers .

I can sympathize with such feelings. I know
how difficult it would be for me to abandon
town life and to work in the country. And yet
intellectual honesty compels me to affirm that,
apart from a change in the nature of the activities

which make up our lives, there is no solution for

REDISTRIBUTION OF POPULATION 141

our problems. In a really healthy society there
would exist a certain ratio between the rural and
urban populations. .What that ratio should be I
am not prepared to say. But that there exists
a gross disproportion between the two to-day,
few will be found to deny. The present depres-
sion in agriculture reacts to aggravate the in-
dustrial problem by driving the countryman into
the towns to compete with the town worker for
a living, and thus, where it does not actually
depress the standard rate of wages, prevents
the town worker from improving his conditions.

The New Age has repeatedly urged the im-
portance of the Trade Unions spending money on
organizing the agricultural workers. This is im-
portant ; but I would go further than this. I
think the Unions would be well advised in finan-.
cing " back to the land " schemes. They should
buy land and use it for the purpose of transferring
such of their members as could not find employ-
ment in their own trades to agricultural occu-
pations. But the formation of such colonies would
need to be preceded by the organization of the
agricultural workers in order to diminish the dis-
crepancy in wages.

It will be impossible for me to enter into the
details of such a scheme, because with the agri-
cultural problem, as such, I am incompetent to
deal. Suffice it to say, however, that I recognize
it as the most fundamental of all. Those, however,
who are interested in it should study the work of
the Irish Agricultural Organization Society. So

142 REDISTRIBUTION OF POPULATION

far as I gather from its literature, the economic
problem which confronts the revival of agriculture
is parallel to that which confronts the revival of
craftsmanship. In each case the middleman stands
in the way. The Irish peasant remained poor
because the middleman, by standing between him
and his market, was in a position to rob him of
his earnings, just in the same way as he does
the craftsman.

The revival of agriculture would certainly re-
lieve the pressure of competition in our towns.
But whether by this means alone a proper ratio
between urban and rural areas could be estab-
lished is very much open to question. I am
inclined to think that there are too many of us
in this country, and that emigration is necessary
to the solution of our problems. In this sense
we have a population problem. The Lords of
Statistics with their motto : " The more the
merrier," refuse to recognize it. But that is be-
cause they regard society as an aggregation of
individual or atomic units which arc as inter-
changeable as coins, and are utterly destitute of
any conception of society as an organism.

To minds so constituted I can quite understand
that the population problem has no existence.
But it is otherwise with those who, having more
insight into the nature of 'men, realize on what
terms it is possible for them to co-operate. Like
Aristotle, they perceive that the 'problems of
Government increase with an excess of population.
The Greeks boldly faced this situation, and when

REDISTRIBUTION OF POPULATION 143

the population of their cities became too big
to be manageable, sent out their citizens to
establish new colonies. iWith us emigration is
largely left to individual initiative, and the result
is not only that we do not emigrate in sufficient
numbers, but we emigrate in a wrong spirit. The
man who emigrates alone separates from his
friends, and rarely settles down in the land of his
adoption in the way that Italians and Eastern
Europeans do, who always emigrate in groups.
He cherishes the hope of making a pile and return-
ing home. It is this spirit that has corrupted
colonial life and has brought into existence social
problems like our own. There are no cities in
the world which suffer more from overcrowding
than the Canadian towns. Speculation has raised
land values so high that it is only by crowding
houses together that building schemes can be made
to pay.

The opinion of Aristotle that the problem of
government is largely the problem of numbers
receives ample support from the writings of Mr.
E. L. Godkin. In Unforeseen Tendencies of
Democracy, Mr. Godkin shows how the decline
of the ideal of American Democracy is to be
traced ultimately to the increase in the numbers
of voters. In the early days of American Demo-
cracy, when the voters were few, men of character
were personally well known in the community,
and such men became public representatives, be-
cause of their prominence. But with the rapid
increase of emigration the members of society

144 REDISTRIBUTION OP POPULATION

ceased to be well known to each other, and
then the trouble began. A capacity for public
speaking rather than personal character became
the primary qualification for public life, because
only good speakers could 'become sufficiently well
known to the electorate. With this change there
came a deterioration in the type of public repre-
sentative, for a capacity for public speaking pro-
vides no guarantee for either wisdom or character.
Following this decline of the calibre of the
public representative came the growth of the power
of the " machine," which could automatically pro-
duce majorities in favour of any candidate which
it chose to support. With this came political
corruption and jobbery. The same kind of thing
is happening here. The party system has gradu-
ally destroyed the independence of the private
member, and can automatically produce majorities ;
but we have not sunk so low as America, and
it is quite possible that we never shall, for the
tradition of public life is much stronger here,
and the Englishman is not so single-hearted as
is the American in the pursuit of the dollar. But
we are travelling in the same direction, and it is
necessary for us to pause and think. The evil
in each case is the same, namely that the units
of organization are too large, so that men can
no longer be well known to each other. A healthy
public life is impossible when a man ceases to
be known to his next-door neighbour, and this
phenomenon is the inevitable accompaniment of
large cities and large organizations.

XIX

THE REABSORPTION OF THE
PROFESSIONS

IT is evident that if the reform of society is to
proceed in the direction I have indicated, and
small industries and local markets are to take
the place of large industries and universal markets,
the professions will shrink into comparative in-
significance.

In Civilization: Its Cause and Cure, Mr.
Edward Carpenter contrasts the health, vigour,
and immunity from disease of the barbarian with
the unhealthiness of civilized man, pointing out,
incidentally, that the growth of the number of
doctors in our society is not indicative of the
increase of health, but of disease. The same
principle may be applied to all the professions.
Their growth in every case is symptomatic of the
growth of disease in one form or another. The
growth of the number of lawyers is a sign of
the growth of disease in the body politic, while
the growth of the number of architects is indi-
cative of the growth of disease in architecture
and the building trades. Further, the professions
to-day are overcrowded. In every one of them

10 1«

146 REABSORPTION OF PROFESSIONS

there are many more attempting to earn a living
at them than is warranted by the amount of work
which requires to be done ; from which fact it
appears that the abnormal growth of the pro-
fessions is itself indicative of a still more serious
disease in the community as a whole.

ftV2ien we seek for an explanation of this
phenomenon, we find it in the misapplication of
machinery. It is evident that as machine produc-
tion extends its area, and handicraft is destroyed,
it obliges almost everybody, who is under the
necessity of earning a living, to attempt to get a
footing in the class higher than the one in which
he was born. The immediate effect of machine
production was to increase enormously the number
of commercial travellers, shopkeepers, and middle-
men of various kinds. Throughout the nineteenth
century such people who constituted the middle
class became very prosperous, for a large pro-
portion of the increased wealth of the community
found its way into their hands. But a point came
at last when the limit of expansion of this class
was reached, and from that time forward the
increase of the middle class has been accompanied
by an increase in the pressure of competition. As
the rising generation of the middle class could
not go back to handicraft, owing to the spread
of machine production, it has pressed itself forward
into the professions. It is true that other influences
have been at work, such as the desire of the
more prosperous members of the middle class to
secure social prestige by educating their sons for

REABSORPTION OF PROFESSIONS 147

the professions ; but the economic pressure which'
followed the misapplication of machinery has in-
creasingly driven them in this upward direction
by forcing upon the rising generation the choice
between struggling for a living in the profes-
sions or being enslaved as a clerk, or shop
assistant, by some large organization which had
come about as a result of the increase of competi-
tion in the middle class. Needless to say, every
member of the class who was in a position to
do so chose to fight in the professions.

The fact that the growth of the number of
doctors is indicative of the growth of disease is
self-evident, and as Mr. Carpenter has dealt with
this issue at some length, I will not do more than
mention it. But the application of the same
principle is not so apparent in the case of lawyers
and architects.

Everybody knows that the law to-day does not
secure justice. Yet it is only the philosopher who
understands that a codified law is incompatible
with justice. In England to-day, as in Rome,
the idea is that if the law is to be administered
impartially it must be administered impersonally.
It is supposed that if the judge is personally
known to the accused he will be influenced one
way or another, and that this will defeat the ends
of justice. We have become so accustomed to
this way of thinking that we accept it as a dogma.
And yet nothing can be further from the truth,
for we can only be just to a man when we know
his personal character and can enter into the

148 REABSORPTION OF PROFESSIONS

difficulties and circumstances of his life. The
member of a class which has command of
circumstances, and who enjoys freedom of choice
in most of his actions, is rarely able to sympathize
with the man who is at the mercy of circumstances.
Hence the class prejudice which disgraces the
English Bench. The Greeks who worked out
the basis of Law — for Greek law underlies the
Roman Law — realized the personal nature of
justice. Aristotle affirms that justice is only pos-
sible in small communities. "- The magistrates,"
he says, " can neither determine causes with justice
nor issue their orders with propriety unless they
know the character of their fellow-citizens ; so
that whenever this happens not to be the case
the State must of necessity be badly managed ;
for it is not right to determine too hastily and
without proper knowledge, as is more or less in-
evitable if the citizens are too many." Further,
he gives us some idea as to the size of such a
community. " Ten men," he says, " are too few
for a city ; a hundred thousand are too many."
And in this connection we should know that by
City is implied "• State," for the Greek States
were City States.

In the village communities, under which agri-
culture was everywhere organized prior to the
growth of Feudalism, such conditions obtained.
In them the administration of justice was a
personal affair, governed by custom and tradition.
According to Kropotkin, " every dispute was
brought first before mediators and arbiters, and

REABSORPTION OF PROFESSIONS 149

it mostly ended with them, the arbiters playing
a very important part in barbarian society. But
if the case was too grave to be settled in this
way, it came before the folkmote, which was
bound ' to find the sentence ' and pronounce it
in a conditional form ; that is, ' such compensation
was due if the wrong be proved,' and the wrong
had to be proved or disclaimed by six or twelve
persons confirming or denying the fact by oath ;
ordeal being resorted to in case of contradiction
between the two sets of jurors."

Justice to-day has become an aspiration or in-
tellectual concept ; it can only be realized objec-
tively amid primitive conditions of society. The
reason for this is that it is only under such con-
ditions that law, morality, and fact are inseparable
from each other. The trouble appears to begin
when one people is conquered and becomes sub-
ject to the domination of another, and the idea
of justice gives place to the idea of how the
conquering race can best organize its military
superiority for the purposes of orderly government .
A people who were actuated primarily by the
motive of justice would never seek to become
a large State. Unfortunately for the happiness
of the world, this motive has rarely been the
dominant one. The love of conquest and pow_er
has always exercised a fascination for people whose
character and circumstances enabled them to
gratify it. And so conditions have come into
existence under which justice has become a dream
rather than a reality, and recourse has been made

150 REABSORPTION OF PROFESSIONS

to law, not with the idea of administering justice,
but as a rough-and-ready instrument for the
purpose of maintaining order in the external affairs
of life. The enforcement of order tends to make
law more and more impersonal, and to widen
the gulf which separates it from justice.

Such is the reason or basis of the legal pro-
fession. The attainment of order rather than
justice is the object of its ambition. As such,
its existence is symptomatic of the disease of
society. In the Greek City States the lawgiver
was the philosopher, and it is only on such terms
that justice is possible, because alone among men
the philosopher sees the reason of things and
can relate the idea of justice to human possibili-
ties. The lawyer makes no such pretensions.
His love of hair-splitting technicalities, which has
made the law a lottery, is itself evidence of a
lack of breadth of vision. He follows the line
of least resistance, and the line of least resistance
in each case is to give legal sanction to what is
established, no matter how it has been established.
The abandonment of the ideal of justice has been
followed by the growth of social confusion, and
the growth of confusion involves the extension
of legalism. The spread of legalism tends to
reduce to impotence every limb of the body politic.
It is a vicious circle from which there is no
escape apart from a return to first principles.

Any attempt to give application to such first
principles in modern society necessarily appears
Utopian and impracticable. It would be easy

REABSORPTION OF PROFESSIONS 151

to lay down the principte that every man has a
right to be judged by his peers — that such bodies,
for instance, as Trade Unions should exercise the
rights of jurisdiction over their own members as
the Guilds did in the Middle Ages. But the
spirit of the age blocks the way. Not until
the spirit of competition and mutual suspicion
can be replaced by one of co-operation and mutual
confidence is such a change to be thought of.
In the meantime the evil inherent in the existing
legal system should be reduced to a minimum1
by limiting the fees of the advocate while de-
priving him of his monopoly of the Bench. Only
in the United States of America and this country
does the advocate enjoy this monopoly. The pro-
motion of laymen to the Bench would bring a
breath of common sense into our fusty legal
atmosphere.

IT will be convenient for us, before considering
the profession of the architect, to consider the
position of the trade designer. I do not call
it a profession, because the trade designer has
not the status of the professional man, though
the function he is supposed to fulfil is sufficiently
important to warrant it.

When we consider that the trade designer
is responsible equally with the architect for the
design of all those things which combine to make
the environment of our lives, it is a strange com-
ment on our social and 'industrial arrangements
that he enjoys no status. 'He is not recognized
as an artist, and yet the abilities needed to per-
form his function properly are far greater than
those required by the average painter, for paint-
ing in these days is for the most part an imitative
art, whilst design is a creative one, and as such
is entitled to take a higher rank. It is, in fact,
the very essence of art ; for, strictly speaking,
painting only becomes an art when it is used
as a medium of expression by men who arc con-
versant with the arts of design.

152

THE TRADE DESIGNER 153

Yet we gratuitously bestow the title of artist
on every imitative dabbler in paint, and not only
withhold it from those who pursue a vocation
which demands really creative gifts, but are con-
tent 'to condemn them to a lifelong servitude ta
salesmen and bagmen, who, by dictating to them
how things shall be done, have assumed the func-
tion of censors of public taste. Nearly all trade
designers are in this position. They have become
the unwilling slaves of commercial organizations,
and the degradation of the products of indus-
trialism bears witness to their servitude. The
absence of status of the trade designer has re-
acted upon himself ; and, generally 'speaking, he
is to-day no better than "his position. He has
never in his life been given the opportunity of
using his gifts in a rational way, and his faculties
have become atrophied in consequence.

When Socialists talk about reforming indus-
trialism, I always think of the trade designer,
for the possibilities of reform depend finally upon
a change in his status, and, if we accept in-
dustrialism, I cannot think of any scheme which
could possibly alter it for the better. His present
subordination is involved in the whole structure
of industrialism. Under the old mediaeval system
of qualitative production the designer, craftsman,
and salesman were for the most part one and the
same person, and where they were not actually
identical they were in such close contact with
each other as to work harmoniously together.

The consequence was that the mediaeval crafts-

154 THE TRADE DESIGNER

man was independent ; he had some control over
the circumstances of his industry. But when
quantitative was substituted for qualitative pro-
duction the designer lost his independence. Class
divisions came into industry, and so he, separated
from the craftsman, became subject to the control
of the salesman, who in turn was controlled by
the financier. In this position he will remain
so long as quantitative production obtains, because
with such an ideal it is natural that those who are
primarily concerned with quantitative output will
be in a stronger economic position and take pre-
cedence over those whose concern is with the
quality of the wares produced. So long as the
trade designer remains in this position production
will flounder for the lack of any clear direction ;
for there is, finally, only one man who can direct
the power of industry into its proper channels,
namely the artist, and quantitative production
denies the designer this status.

This is the "dilemma in which modern industry
finds itself. Literally the tail wags the dog. A
system of organization which subordinates the
primary functions of designing and making things
to the secondary ones of buying and selling is
clearly on a false basis. It is fundamentally
unsound, and no sophistry can make it otherwise.
Socialists who imagine that a solution of industrial
problems is possible on a basis of quantitative
productiop would be required to show how the
four classes of men involved in production to-day
—the financiers, salesmen, designers, and work-

THE TRADE DESIGNER 155

men — could be made to co-operate together. This
they can only do by ignoring the psychological
problem involved. You cannot have two Caesars
in the same camp, and for the same reason the
artist and the financier can never co-operate
together except on terms which make them
mutually independent of each other. .Work to-
gether in the same organization they cannot. One
of them must rule, and under a system of quanti-
tative production it will be the financier who
will do so, as under qualitative production it will
be the artist and philosopher. It is the privilege
of democracy to decide between them. If it
allows its cupidity to be tempted and supports
quantitative production, the financier remains to
exploit it for its folly. But if on the other hand
it supports qualitative production, then power will
gradually pass into the hands of the artist and
philosopher, and democracy will be rewarded with
liberty. For the ideal of the artist is ultimately
democratic, though immediately his action is auto-
cratic ; whereas the financier is immediately
democratic and ultimately autocratic.

I say, then, that the artist's ideal is democratic.
He knows only too well that he cannot save
his soul alone. A democratic aim is thrust upon
him by the needs of self -existence. He knows
that the only terms on which it is finally possible
to revive the arts are identical with those which
will emancipate the workers from the tyranny
of Industrialism. Quantitative production, by
destroying craftsmanship, has taken away the

156 THE TRADE DESIGNER

ground from under the artist's feet. It has
enabled the financier to enslave the designer,
and now the evil result is being felt. With-
out the direction which the artist alone can give,
production finds itself to-day at the mercy of
every fashion. There is but one remedy for
this state of things : to return to the old ways.
Economic stability finally rests upon intellectual
and aesthetic stability, and these are impossible
under a system of production which denies
everything fundamental, both in art and in life.
•But things are turning in this direction. The
tremendous growth of the antique trade is one
of the significant developments of the age. It
is the answer of the public to the impotence
and futility of industrialism. It says in so many
words that the present methods of industry are
wrong, and that if scientific machinery produces
such deplorable results, then, judging by results,
the only sensible thing to do is to seek to revive
the past. It foreshadows that reaction against
the deadlock of modernism which in the sphere
of politics finds its immediate expression in the
growth of revolutionary feeling, as it will ulti-
mately seek it in a conscious revival of the
traditions of the past.

XXI

THE PROFESSION OF ARCHITEC-
TURE

THAT the growth of professionalism is coinci-
dent with the growth of social disease in the case
of the architectural profession as well as in law
and medicine is an opinion that has been held
by the highest authorities. In the year 1892 a
collection of essays by (different architects, edited
by Mr. R. Norman Shaw, R.A., and Mr. F. G.
Jackson, R.A., appeared under the provocative
title, Architecture: A Profession or an Art? The
object of this book was to affirm the principle
that the only solution of the problems of archi-
tecture was to be found in a return to the Mediaeval
method of building ; and to prove that the archi-
tectural profession should pursue a policy which
in the long run would eventuate in the resumption
by the architect of the position which he occupied
in the Middle Ages as Master of the Works, co-
ordinating the work of a group of craftsmen,
each capable of supplying the details and
ornaments of their own crafts, much in the
same way that the conductor of an orchestra

157

158 PROFESSION OF ARCHITECTURE

brings into harmony the efforts of the various
musicians . i

Any one who is vitally interested in architecture
as an art, and is familiar with the economics of
the profession, will find it impossible to resist
this conclusion, for as it exists to-day the archi-
tectural profession has not within itself the elements
of permanence. It is manifestly in a state of
transition, and must either pursue a policy which
will 'aim at the removal of the existing class
division between the architect and the building
trades, as in the Middle Ages, or the architect
must consent to be enslaved by the surveyor.
It is probable that at the worst there will be
some architects who will be able to escape this
fate, owing to exceptional influence. But there
is no denying' that the general tendency to-day is
in this direction, and that just as the architect
enslaved the craftsman, so he, in turn, is being
enslaved by the surveyor.

Architects, as they existed during Renaissance
times, were mainly the exceptional men of the
building trades who had become specialized in
design because of their superior gifts. They were
few in number, and were only employed on the
most monumental work ; ordinary buildings were
still designed by the master builders. But this
is no longer the case. The architectural pro-
fession in its present proportions has not come
into existence in response to a demand for archi-
tecture, but in response to a demand for com-
mercial building. The immediate cause of the

PROFESSION OP ARCHITECTURE 159

rapid expansion was the growth of the contract
system in building, which brought into existence
a man to enforce the contracts. This man,
originally a surveyor or builders' clerk, who knew
something about the finance of building, but was
without any pretensions to architectural know-
ledge, began to call himself an architect because
he found it commercially advantageous to do so.
Important work came to be placed in his hands,
but as he was without the knowledge which would
have enabled him to make a proper use of his
opportunities, he made a terrible mess of things.
The problem to-day is how can the minority of
real architects leaven this mass of ignorance, which
owes its existence to the creation of a class of
practitioners who are qualified to fulfil one func-
tion, but are entrusted by the public with another
for which they are unqualified and which can
only be performed successfully by men of quite a
different type of mind. This tendency of the pro-
fession to draw its recruits from non-architectural
sources is the economic problem in architecture.
The profession is flooded with men who are
not in the architectural tradition, but come in
from the estate agency end of things. In the
city and in the suburb, generally speaking, the
man who can control the site can control the job.
Hence it is that men who are really surveyors
and estate agents come to handle great archi-
tectural opportunities, while men whose whole
training and ability are for architecture often find
themselves unable to get near the work at all.

160 PROFESSION OF ARCHITECTURE

Again, men who have graduated in the building
trade never to-day rise to the position of archi-
tects at all.

The same tendency is observable in public
architects' offices. The head positions are in-
variably occupied by surveyors masquerading as
architects, and if architects are ever to be found
there, they ate always in inferior, positions. The
reason for this anomaly is easily understood. The
surveyor comes first. He is required by public
bodies for road-making, sewering, and other such
work. The more utilitarian type of buildings
comes to be placed in his hands, and thus he
continues until important work comes within his
grasp. It is owing to the action of such forces
that the surveyor is supplanting the architect
to-day.

Little more need be said to demonstrate that
the profession of architecture as it exists to-day
is on a false basis, and is symptomatic of social
disease. There was certainly a case for archi-
tects in the past of the type of John Thorpe and
Inigo Jones, who were trained as craftsmen, and
became specialized in later life as architects, be-
cause of their superior gifts of design. But the
profession to-day is clearly on a wrong basis,
when it would entirely deny opportunities to such
men, had they lived to-day and worked in the
building trade, whilst offering many opportunities
to surveyors and estate agents, and would place
men who have been trained as architects, and
who do not happen to be men of means and good

PROFESSION OF ARCHITECTURE 161

social position, at the mercy of sheer chance.
Obviously there is something wrong, and though
within certain limits a remedy for this confusion
may be found by the exercise of a wise and
discriminating patronage, yet it is apparent that
so long as the class division between the architect
and the building trades remains, a complete solu-
tion is impossible.1

The cause of the enslavement of the building
trades by the architect was aesthetic, inasmuch
as the profession owed its existence to the desire
to revive Roman architecture, of which the crafts-
men of the building trades were ignorant, and
naturally brought into existence a type of man
who was conversant with Roman work. The
latter-day development which spells the enslave-
ment of the architect by the surveyor and estate
agent is economic, and owes its existence finally
to the growth of big towns, large organizations,
and the contract system. It is the natural and
inevitable ending of a false ideal of architecture
which has separated the architect from the crafts-
man. The estate agent has come to stand in
the same relation to the architect without social
position as the salesman or middleman does to the
trade designer. The enslavement of the trade
designer came first, because he only designed small
things ; the enslavement of the architect is pro-

1 I hope nobody will accuse me of advocating the abolition
of the architectural profession. Such would only make
matters worse. The transition from the architect to the
master builder is necessarily gradual.

162 PROFESSION OF ARCHITECTURE

ceeding to-day. There is no remedy apart from
a return to former conditions. Architecture is
incompatible with industrialism1, and all efforts
to graft it on to it must fail in the end.

THROUGHOUT this book I have repeatedly urged
the importance of social reformers paying more
regard to the claims of art, and have drawn
attention to the economic implications of its
neglect. It is difficult to overestimate the
economic confusion which has its origin in the
change of fashions consequent upon our national
indifference to all questions appertaining to taste.
If I have failed to drive this point home I have
written in vain, for it is the key to one half
of the problems I have discussed. To me, art
and economics are as bound together as the
soul and the body, which are only to be separated
at death. It is no exaggeration to say that the
welfare of art is in the end of more importance
than morality, for morality is a negative thing,
and can only tell us what not to do, whilst art
is positive and can tell us what to do. A
nation which disregards its claims lacks the
means of expression not only in art but in
politics as well. It pays for its neglect in a
thwarted national and social life and in economic
confusion, for it finds itself at the mercy of

163

164 THE DESTRUCTIVE CONSUMPTION

forces which it can neither control nor under-
stand. Life which is thwarted returns upon itself
and seeks by underground and illicit means a
way of escape. It is not without significance
that, whilst the greatest achievements of the
Middle Ages were to be found in the temples
for worship, our greatest ones are to be found
in engines of destruction. For the Dreadnought
bears the same relation to the thought and
impulse of this age as the cathedral did to the
Middle Ages — the one is built for the protection
of the body, the other for the protection of the
soul. And it all comes about because as a
nation we are occupied exclusively with material
considerations. We concentrate all our attention
on the means of civilization, to the utter neglect
and disregard of the ends which such means
are to serve. So, instead of public and spiritual
ends, we serve secret and private ones, which
stand in the way of any restoration of a
communal life.

Let no one think that the contrasts I have
drawn are mere idle speculations. They are
only too painfully demonstrable in the terms of
economics. After immediate physical wants are
satisfied, a time comes in the history of every
nation when it finds itself in the possession of
surplus wealth. Its future history and happiness
largely depend upon the use it makes of it. In
the past that surplus was always spent upon
art, and particularly upon architecture. Pericles,
who was perhaps the wisest man who ever held

OF SURPLUS WEALTH 165

the reins of power, sought to spend it in this
way. In answer to some who complained that
Athens was over-adorned, like a woman wearing
too many jewels, he replied that surplus wealth
was best spent in such works as would bring
eternal glory to the city, and at the same time
employ her artificers. In the Middle Ages
surplus wealth was spent upon building
cathedrals, and the custom, of spending it
on the arts obtained in history until modern
times. Following the triumph of Protestantism
and the plundering of the Church lands, there
came a relaxation of the mediaeval laws against
usury in order to accommodate morals to the
practice of the rich, and along with it came
an increased private and a decreased public
expenditure upon architecture. Still the surplus
continued to be spent mainly in this way, and
it was not until the introduction of machinery
that a change gradually took place. From that
time forward surplus wealth came to be spent
less and less upon building and more and more
upon new productive enterprises ; or, in other
words, it ceased to be consumed, but was re-
invested for the purposes of a further increase,
until in our day the proper expenditure of
surplus wealth has been entirely lost sight of.
When people build nowadays they no longer
regard it as a means of consuming a surplus,
but as a speculation by which they hope to
increase their riches, and this applies not only
to building, but to pictures, which are bought

166 THE DESTRUCTIVE CONSUMPTION

to-day as investments. This changed attitude
is really the financial difficulty connected with
the housing problem, for it is only in modern
times that houses were ever expected to pay.
But the evil does not end here. As few
people nowadays have any disposition to spend
their surplus in the right way, and as almost
everybody seeks to use it as a means of further
increase, the balance which in former times
existed between demand and supply has been
utterly destroyed, and the pressure of competi-
tion has increased. Indirectly this results in
an increase of personal expenditure, for such
increase among the well-to-do is necessitated by
the need of the individual holding his own in
the competitive social world, which in turn is
necessitated by the need of securing opportunities
for the making of more wealth, and in the
professional classes of a living. Hence the
general meanness of people in regard to ex-
penditure upon things of permanent value, and
hence again our ever-increasing national expen-
diture upon armaments, which is due to the
pressure of competition among nations. It is
a vicious circle from which there is no escape
so long as people misuse their surplus wealth.
They decline to spend it on the arts because it
is unremunerative, and in the end they are com-
pelled to spend it on armaments, which arc not
only unremunerative but a peril to their own
existence. To such a pass have we been brought
by our faith in a political economy which teaches

OP SURPLUS WEALTH 167

that greed and usury are the pillars of the State !
It is the judgment of God, and who can deny
its justice?

Our misuse of surplus wealth accounts for
our excessive use of machinery. Had we never
lost sight of the ends which production sub-
serves we should have had need of very little
machinery. If we had continued to look upon
architecture and craftsmanship as a means of
consuming surplus wealth we should have realized
the utter absurdity of allowing machinery to
trespass on its domains from the economic as
well as from the aesthetic point of view. As it
is, our surplus wealth is spent less and less
upon the production of those things which in
the past were regarded as among the ends of
civilization, and more and more upon the
machinery of production. Nay, we have gone
farther ; the more recent development is
machinery for the purpose of making machinery.
This I can only call the destructive consumption
of surplus wealth. We have lost the art of con-
suming it and have developed the art of destroy-
ing it ; for that, indeed, is the task upon which
we are engaged to-day. Hence it is, when men
like Mr. H. G. Wells and Sir Leo Chiozza
Money imagine that the way to remedy the evils
of poverty is to increase the use of machinery,
they exhibit themselves as the mere slaves of
circumstance, as is natural with men who con-
centrate all their attention on the means of
civilization and disregard the ends.

168 CONSUMPTION OP WEALTH

Fortunately for me, I am able to point to two
modern economists who have held the same idea,
though they have expressed themselves differ-
ently. Mr. J. A. Hobson, in his analysis of
the unemployed problem, came to the conclusion
that the solution was to be found in raising the
standard of production, which amounts to much
the same thing ; whilst Mr. J. M. Robertson
held a similar idea, as readers of his Fallacy
of Saving will know. Unfortunately, neither of
them was familiar with the economics of the
arts, and so failed to reduce their conclusions
to concrete terms. But their testimony is
valuable as showing that, from whatever point
of view the modern problem is approached,
careful analysis brings us to the same conclusion.

XXIII
ON PROPERTY

THERE are two ways of analysing the structure
of society. We may begin with the nature of
man and reason to his environment, or we may
reverse the process. The former is the method
of the Guildsman, the latter of the Collec-
tivist. But just as the Collectivism reasoning
from environment, must come, in the end, to
definite conclusions about the nature of man,
so the Guildsman will finally have something
to say about property, and, as may be expected,
he will come to different conclusions.

It goes without saying that the present-day
distribution of property is absolutely indefen-
sible ; but that admission does not mean that
we must accept the Collectivist solution of the
problem. We may agree that, in an ideal state
of society, goods would be held in common, and
that in the distant future such an ideal may be
realized, and yet recognize that it is altogether
incompatible with a highly complex state of
society. Any attempt to give practical appli-
cation to such a principle would, at the present
time, lead to greater evils than those from which
we now suffer ; for in practical affairs we must

169

170 ON PROPERTY

reckon with men as they are, and with the
problem as it exists, both in regard to the evils
to be eradicated and the forces at our disposal
for the purpose of reform. We musi recognize
that the spirit of avarice pervades our society ;
that those in possession of property are powerful ;
and that as most of those who desire a different
state of affairs live under constant economic
pressure it is exceedingly difficult for them,
with the best intentions, to act in an entirely
disinterested way. These are the factors in the
present situation, and they are sufficient to make
any transition to Collectivism impracticable, even
if it were desirable, which in this connection I
am persuaded it is not.

I insist upon a frank recognition of these
facts because it is only on such terms that it
will be possible for us to handle the present
situation with any measure of success. Though
we may recognize that communism is not imme-
diately practicable, let us not lose sight of the
fact that it is our goal ; for we may test the
value of any idea based upon the necessity of
compromise by reference to it. If it strengthens
personal and human ties, then it is making for
communism, for communism is only possible when
men and women are bound together in such
ways. But if it ignore this necessity, and seek
to substitute for such ties the impersonal activity
of the State, then it is a certainty that such ideas
will, in their ultimate workings, prove to be
anti-communal. This is my objection to the

ON PROPERTY 171

nationalization of property. It involves bureau-
cracy, and as bureaucracy is the impersonal
instrument of the State, it stands condemned as
an anti-communal form of organization.

Recognizing then on the one hand that the
nationalization of property is not only impractic-
able but undesirable, and on the other that we
have become too individualistic in temperament
to render organization on a communist basis
practicable for the time being, common sense
suggests the desirability of reviving the Mediaeval
attitude towards property, which steers a safe
middle course between the impracticable and the
undesirable. The Mediaeval economists, who
appear to have debated the question of property
very thoroughly, finally threw over Plato's idea
of common property and private use in favour
of Aristotle's idea of private property and
common use, which they considered more suitable
to this workaday world. They thought that
common property was suitable for a religious
community each member of which accepted a
discipline, but not for those who were unprepared
to do so. St. Thomas Aquinas held that
private property was necessary for three reasons.
" Firstly, because every one is more solicitous
about procuring what belongs to himself alone
than that which is common to all or many, since
each, shunning labour, leaves to another what is
the common burden of all, as happens with a
multitude of servants. Secondly, because human
affairs are conducted in a more orderly fashion

172 ON PROPERTY

if each has his own duty of procuring a certain
thing, while there would be confusion if each
should procure things haphazard. Thirdly,
because in this way the peace of men is better
preserved, for each is content with his own.
Whence we see that strife more frequently arises
among those that hold a thing in common and
undividedly. The other office which is a man's
concerning exterior things is the use of them ;
and with regard to this a man ought not to
hold exterior things as his own, but common
to all, that he may portion them out to others
readily in time of need."

Mediaeval economists accepted private pro-
perty as a convenient arrangement for managing
human affairs. But they did not consider
possession as absolute. A man held property
in trust for the commonweal.1 To succour the
needy was enjoined upon them, and to with-
hold alms under certain circumstances was to
commit mortal sin. St. Thomas Aquinas, along
with others, held that in case of urgent necessity
a man might take the property of another either
openly or secretly, and it was not to be con-
sidered as theft. St. Ambrose says, " More
than is sufficient for one's need is wrongfully
held " : while St. Antonino insisted that should
the need arise the State might take over the
common ownership of all the forms of wealth,

1 Since these words were written this principle has been
defined as the principle of function by Mr. de Maeztu 'in
Authority, Liberty, and Function in the Light of the War.

ON PROPERTY 173

but he regards such a State as violent and im-
practicable, though not contrary to justice.

The opinions of the Medievalists in this con-
nection are interesting. If St. Antonino con-
sidered that State ownership was impracticable,
and mediaeval thinkers were all agreed that
average human nature was not then sufficiently
noble to render possible the common ownership
of wealth, are we justified in considering it more
practicable to-day, when the spirit of avarice
reigns supreme, and when experience has proved
it impossible to provide by checks and counter-
checks against the abuses of dishonest men?
Obviously, before common ownership is practic-
able a change would need to come over the spirit
of society, and if such a change came about the
need would no longer be felt. Looked at from
this point of view, the proposal to nationalize
property seems to partake more of the nature
of a protest against the monstrous injustice of
present-day economic arrangements than a prac-
tical administrative proposition. The experience
of history appears to prove that the common
ownership of land is possible within the limits
of a village community ; and I think it would
be possible for small local Guilds to own property
in the form of houses, etc., and no harm would
come. But if the Guilds were large, I feel sure
common ownership would destroy the liberty of
the individual. Common property ceases to be
desirable at that point when a community
becomes too large for the individuals who com-

174 ON PROPERTY

pose it to be personally well known to each other.
Moreover, it is not desirable to forbid private
property for another reason. Society is largely
dependent for its vitality upon the public-spirited
action of individuals who are in a position of
comparative independence. Men may circulate
new ideas though they have no property, but
their reduction to practice depends ultimately
upon the action of men who are economically
independent. It is necessary to have a sure
footing in the material world if a man is to
affect material results. To what extent this will
be necessary in the future it is impossible to
say ; but there is no denying that it holds good
to-day, and will do so for a considerable time
to come.

THE final test as to whether a man is a Collec-
tivist or a Guildsman is to be found in his
partiality for the Leisure or the Work State.
If he favours the Leisure State, then he will be
found to be at heart a Collectivist, while if he
is a Guildsman he will have nothing to do
with it.

It is easy, of course, to understand why the
Leisure State should have the more popular
appeal of the two conceptions. It appeals to
the immediate needs of the majority. More
leisure connotes less toil, and for the majority
who are slave-driven it appears to offer them
immediate relief from the oppression they suffer.
Nevertheless, I am persuaded that it is an utterly
impossible dream so far as the majority are
concerned, and that their salvation is not to
be found in a policy which, accepting present
conditions of labour, aims at reducing working
hours to a minimum — the ideal of the advocates
of the Leisure State — but rather in the humaniza-
tion of labour which we associate with the Work
State.

1T5

176 THE LEISURE AND WORK STATES

I have associated the idea of the Leisure
State with Collectivist ways of thinking because
it seems to me to involve another state — the
Servile State. To me the Leisure State and
the Servile State are complementary — the one
involves the other. I cannot conceive of a state
of society in which everybody lived a life of
idleness and pleasure, because the pursuit of
pleasure inevitably leads to selfishness. " It is
fitting," says St. Thomas Aquinas, " that there
should be some pleasure in human intercourse,
as it were a condiment, so that the soul of man
may be refreshed." But this is a fundamentally
different thing from the organization of society
on a basis of pleasure, for pleasure, if it is to
be really enjoyed, must not be pursued as an
end in itself, but must come as a by-product,
as it were, of virtuous activity. The pursuit
of pleasure defeats its own purpose, for in the
long run it destroys the possibility of further
pleasure. It leads to boredom and finally to
selfishness because, softened by delights, men
become lazy. The very thought of work becomes
irksome to them, and in that frame of mind
they have neither the will nor the inclination to
do their share of the work of the community.
They would seek to evade their responsibilities,
and to transfer on to the shoulders of others
burdens which are disagreeable to them. Thus
the Leisure State would only intensify present
social evils, by giving permanence to a state
of things in which the work of the community is

THE LEISURE AND WORK STATES 177

not distributed equally among1 its members, but is
done by those whose economic necessity leaves
them no option in the matter — or, in other words,
it leads to the Servile State. Nay, is not pre-
cisely the pursuit of pleasure to-day the instru-
ment which is bringing into existence the Servile
State? The desire for wealth is, so far as the
majority are concerned, the des'ire for pleasure
and luxury. For a century or more the reward
held out to labour has been its release from the
necessity of work, and nowadays, when this spirit
has come to pervade the whole community,
labour is treated with a measure of callous-
ness and brutality such as civilization never
witnessed before.

The civilization of ancient Greece, which
approximated in some degree to the Leisure
State, was based upon slavery. The Greeks
were a logically minded people. Their ideal, in
so far as it was formulated, was that of the
perfect soul in the perfect body. But realizing
that the perfection of the body was incompatible
with manual labour, they preferred to compro-
mise with the demands of the soul, and so they
frankly accepted the institution of slavery, while
they sought to justify this compromise by assert-
ing that some men were slaves by nature. With
them excellence was for the few, not for the
many. The modern man is incapable of such
cold-blooded logic. He always thinks he can
have things both ways. He thinks it is possible
for every one to enjoy a life of leisure and have

178 THE LEISURE AND WORK STATES

servile conditions of labour abolished at the same
time, and the reason he can entertain this idea
is because he thinks the introduction of machinery,
has, by increasing the possibilities o'f quantitative
output, removed the only limitation which made
the Greek ideal incompatible with democracy.

But in this he is mistaken. Machinery can
never alter the laws of morality. It is all very
well to argue in the abstract that with the proper
application of machinery labour might be reduced
to three or two hours a day. But in the concrete
things work out differently. However much in
theory we may divorce economics from morals,
in practice they are never so divorced. The
two go hand in hand, and it is only by frankly
recognizing this fact that it is possible to calcu-
late with any degree of precision in human
affairs. The fact that servile labour tends to
produce servile men — that it debases the cur-
rency of labour — cannot be altered. Reasonable
pleasure has its basis in reasonable work, and
if men are turned into machines, or are engaged
in mechanical occupations which bring them no
pleasure, then their life is corrupted at its roots.
It matters little if that work be reduced to four
or even two hours a day, the corruption will
be there all the same, and it will corrupt the
leisure which accompanies it. For at the centre
of life there will be a vacuum which requires
to be filled, and the demon of selfishness will
enter in, for men who are not happy in their
work will be incapable of resistance. Their

whole thought will be fixed on the pleasures
outside, and to secure that pleasure they will be
found ready to sacrifice the lives of those who
are not so fortunately placed.

I said that the Greek States were Leisure
States. This statement needs qualification. We
must not forget that the Greek States were also
military States. The practice of military exer-
cises occupied much of their leisure, while the
ever-constant fear of foreign invasion imposed
on them a discipline. It was this which held
them together. No sooner was this fear of
invasion dispelled and the Leisure State definitely
inaugurated than the Greek States immediately,
fell to pieces. The final defeat of the Persian
army at Platasa marks the beginning of the
decline of Greek civilization. Prior to that battle
the Greeks had lived in fear of a Persian inva-
sion, and their whole life had been ordered to
meet the needs of warfare. But when at last
the Persians had been defeated the whole atmo-
sphere changed. The growth of foreign trade
and the luxuries which followed it everywhere
undermined their military virtues. Relieved from
the necessity of manual labour and without a
.religion which, by appealing to their hearts and
consciences, might exalt the ideal of self-restraint,
there was no power to check them once they
were fairly embarked on the pursuit of pleasure.
Indeed, the history of Greece, as of Rome, demon-
strates clearly that the Pagan ideal of self-
sufficiency and self-assertiveness on a basis of

sensuous enjoyment is not an ideal by which
society can live. It could not save its followers
from moral enervation, dissatisfaction with life,
and corruption. Such was the end of the Leisure
State in the past, and such, I am persuaded,
will be the fate of the Leisure State at which
so-called social reformers are aiming. It will
fall to pieces from lack of any stability of
character, for every society needs a discipline
if it is to be stable. If it is not imposed from
within, it will need to be imposed from without.
But the Modernist hates the very thought of
discipline, as, indeed, every other reality. He
will have his deserts.

XXV
CONCLUSION

IN bringing this analysis to a close, my immediate
purpose will have been served if I succeed in
impressing upon Socialists the fact that the solu-
tion of the social problem is not quite so simple
a matter as probably the majority have been
accustomed to suppose — that the confusion which
has followed attempts to give practical applica-
tion to their principles is for the most part due
to the fact that they do not finally touch reality.
For though it may be admitted that the present
distribution of wealth, involving extremes of riches
and 'poverty, is an evil of the first magnitude,
such maldistribution is yet only the outward and
visible sign of an inward and spiritual disease.
Any political activity which would treat the social
problem as a purely materialist issue is doomed
from its first inception.

But will come the objection : Granted that
the social problem is as complex as I have shown
it to be, it is, nevertheless, necessary for the
practical purposes of reform to make a selection
from the many problems which our society pre-
sents, and to concentrate upon them, if anything

181

182 CONCLUSION

is to be accomplished. To this I answer that
there is no objection to such a selection being
made, providing that attempts are not made to
effect by political effort changes which can only
follow success in other spheres of activity, and
that the importance of other forms of activity
be not underrated, especially such as aim at
the stimulation of thought. The crystallization
of the thought and practical activities of the
movement around purely material issues is to be
traced back to the struggle between iWilliam
Morris and Mr. Sidney Webb and their supporters
in the 'eighties, which decided the subsequent
history of the movement. The issue which brought
that struggle to a head was whether or no the
movement should organize itself for political
action. Morris and his supporters opposed this
new development, insisting that, for some time to
come, not politics but education should be the
order of the day. But they were defeated, and
from that day forward it became increasingly
the policy of the movement to suppress within
itself all forms of intellectual activity which were
subversive to the political propaganda. Consider-
ing the many crazy notions which in those days
masqueraded under the cloak of Socialism, there
may perhaps have been some justification for the
political propagandists, and no harm might have
come of the suppression had it been merely
an expedient for effecting certain temporary pur-
poses. But once the movement was fairly em-
barked on political activity, it seemed to have

CONCLUSION 183

no further use for ideas as such, with the result
that it became first intellectually sterile and then
politically impotent. Embarking on political
activity before a firm foundation of clear thinking
had been laid, compromise became inevitable.
The demand for great and fundamental changes
receded more and more into the background, while
the advocacy of palliatives became increasingly
the order of the day. To correct this tendency
there is but one thing to be done. The movement
must for the present abandon its political aspira-
tions, and seek to fortify itself by a return to
fundamentals, since, until a basis of clear thinking
has been well and securely laid, it is impossible
with safety to advocate practical measures at all,
because it is certain they will be misapplied.
Nay, until such a foundation is laid, practical
measures remain impracticable, because their
significance will not be understood by the
people. Quack remedies will be more acceptable
to them.

Among the ideas the suppression of which
has led to the present intellectual sterility of
the movement is the doctrine of catastrophism.
It is easy to understand why the Fabian Society
sought to discredit it. If the Socialist movement
was to enter the political arena, it could only do
so on the assumption that existing society could
be reformed. Catastrophism denied such a possi-
bility. It affirmed that the disease of our society
had proceeded so far that a cure apart from the
total destruction of the existing social order was

184 CONCLUSION

out of the question. Accordingly, it happened
that the Fabian Society substituted evolution for
revolution as the watchword of reform. They
thought it a fine thing to do, but experience has
proved the contrary. The denial of catastrophism
not only so emasculated Socialist doctrine as to
rob it of all virility, but strangled all new thought
within the movement. This was just what might
have been expected. Deny the possibility of a
catastrophic ending of modern tendency, and the
revolutionary spirit goes with it. The reformer
must take existing society in its main essentials
for granted. All that is left for him to do is
to devise schemes for the amelioration of social
conditions ; he cannot attack the disease at its
source because he is no longer permitted to ques-
tion things fundamental to the existing social
order.

Sufficient has perhaps been said to drive home
the fact that if the movement is to recover its
old time virility, it must, before all things, re-
affirm the catastrophic doctrine. But it must
reaffirm it with a difference, for the Marxian
theory was only partly true. As I explained in the
article on National Guilds and the General Strike,
Marx was right in predicting the catastrophic end-
ing of the industrial system, but he was wrong
in assuming that out of the unemployed a force
for revolution could be created.1 Marx's error
of judgment had a most unfortunate influence
upon the policy of his followers, for it led them
1 See footnote to page 56.

CONCLUSION 185

to oppose all measures for the temporary allevia-
tion of existing distress, on the assumption that
palliatives would tend to delay the coming of
revolution. Such a policy was inhuman, and it
is not surprising that the majority of Socialists
shrank from giving unqualified support to a
doctrine so incompatible with their better feel-
ings. But with us it will be different. For being
of the opinion that when the revolution does come
it will follow an impact from without, in reviv-
ing the doctrine of catastrophism we shall
not feel ourselves committed to such a policy,
for palliatives would be unable to prevent its
coming.

Such, then, is the parting of the ways. The
choice which we have to make is whether we
accept existing society in its main essentials in
the belief that the evils which it has brought
into existence may be abolished ; or whether,
convinced that the evils are organic with the very
structure of society, we seek to replace existing
society by a society based upon the civilization
of the past. If the latter be our choice, we
shall become stronger. We shall gain in clarity
of vision and certainty of aim. But if such be
not the case, and we still keep on saying " We
cannot go back," then all I can say is that we
must go forward to increasing misery, to in-
creasing confusion, to increasing despair ; and
finally to that recrudescence of barbarism which
science is to-day restoring under the mask of civi-
lization. For no pretence that things are other-

186 CONCLUSION

wise, no compromise with things as they are,
can save us from that great and universal
catastrophe in which the civilization of indus-
trialism will find its inevitable ending.

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The Framework of a Lasting
Peace

Demy 81/0. EDITED BY LEONARD S. WOOLF 4/. 6</.

This work contains a collection of all the more important schemes
which have been put forward in America, Britain, and on the Continent
for a League of Nations which shall have as its object the reconstruction
of international society and the prevention of war. Mr. Woolf, in an
Introduction, subjects the different proposals to a critical examination,
and shows that upon the most important points they are in substantial
agreement, and thus indicate the lines of international agreement which
practical statesmanship ought to follow after the war.

Practical Pacifism and its
Adversaries: "is it Peace, Jehu?"

BY DR. SEVERIN NORDENTOFT
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY G. K. CHESTERTON

Crown Svo. 4/. 6d. net. Postage ^d.

In addition to making definite suggestions as to the lines on which the
Peace Movement should go to work after the war — suggestions which are
both obvious and practical — the book contains a reprint of a pamphlet
written by an upper-class native of Schleswig, with footnote criticisms by a
Prussian scholar of unbiassed views, which renders very sensational and
personal testimony to the terrible discontent and bitter rage which a
conquered nation feels in its humiliating position of subjection — thus
proving beyond all doubt that the chief obstacle that the Peace Movement
has to face is this unnatural denial to the conquered people of the Rights
of Peace.

The Choice Before Us

BY G. LOWES DICKINSON
Demy %vo. 6s. net. Postage 6d.

This book describes briefly the prospect before the world, if the armed
international anarchy is to continue, and to be extended and exasperated,
after the war. It analyses and discusses the presuppositions which
underlie Militarism. And having argued both that international war as
it will be conducted in the future implies the ruin of civilization, and
that it is not " inevitable," sketches the kind of reorganization that is
both possible and essential if war is not to destroy mankind.

Principles of Social
Reconstruction 3RD IMPRESSION

By BERTRAND RUSSELL, F.R.S.

Demy 8vo, 65. net Postage 6rf.
" Mr. Russell has written a big and living book." — Tht Nation.

Professionalism & Originality

With Some Suggestions for National Reconstruction
BY F. H. HAYWARD, D.Lirr., B.Sc.

Inspector of Schools, Author of " Educational Administration and Criticism,"
Demy 8ve. 6s. net. Postage $d.

This work is an attempt to ascertain and tabulate the signs or stigmata
of the conventional (" professional ") man and the contrasted stigmata of
the creative (" original ") man. Various suggestions bearing on pro-
fessional and national efficiency are appended. In view of the privileged
and almost irresponsible positions occupied by the legal, medical, and
other professions, and of tlie obscurity in which questions of professional
superintendence and criticism are involved, the work is likely to prove of
considerable importance. Ample quotations are made from contemporary
events and literature.

LONDON: GEORGE ALLEN & UNVV1N LIMITED

University of California

SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY

305 De Neve Drive - Parking Lot 17 • Box 951388

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 90095-1388

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