of foreseeing the industrial situation after the War, but it seems to be our duty to endeavour to foresee various contingencies, so as to be prepared to meet them. It seems likely, owing to the greater and more varied use of women's labour, that labour will be plentiful and somewhat disorganised. On the other hand, a higher standard of living has become prevalent among the working classes, owing to the war conditions, and, unless the length of the War and difficulties of supply reverses this state of things, this should tend to prevent general reductions in wages. Further, capital has been very largely invested in factories turning out war material, which presumably are capable of being transferred to peaceful industry, and which it will certainly be the interest of that capital so to transfer, therefore we can look forward to a large demand for labour. On the whole, therefore, the prospect is one of industrial struggle of a somewhat pronounced kind between the various interests involved, since this is our traditional way of settling these matters.

As regards (1) (c), the question appears to embody what is, under the present condition of things, the protectionist fallacy that the nation is a single commercial entity. Under our competitive system, however, if we make this assumption, we shall soon find that we are handing over not only the consumers but the bulk of the producers (i.e., the working men concerned in industry) to rings of capitalists continuing to put up prices and put down wages for the increase of profits. An instance of this is the small ring that would have profited had the Government confined the purchase of the enemy estates in Nigeria to British subjects. This would have assumed that the nation was a commercial

entity, but the profit would, as a matter of fact, have gone to the ring, who were putting up prices against the native producer and the public at home. We should not treat the nation as a commercial unit until we have made it a commercial entity, and we should first consider very carefully what would be the advantages and drawbacks of such a state of things which would certainly be very different from the present.

(2) This question is an invitation to the making of Utopias, an exercise far too much disregarded in this country, in spite of the noble example of Mr. Wells. We do not realise enough what kind of society we wish to aim at, or what kind we are tending to produce. Even Mr. Belloc could not rouse us to see the danger of the development of the "Servile State," but I rather think the War has done it, and that we shall have a considerable "anti-Statist" reaction after the War. But we need not only an anti-Statist reaction, but the positive ideal of co-operation instead of competition. The trade unions should determine that they will unite, not to fight capital, but to control it. With this object in view, they should insist on a general opportunity of industrial training, for boys or girls entering a factory or workshop, in all sides of the work, including some insight into the book-keeping and office-work, and a similar training for clerks and office-workers, so that all the workers in their different branches would realise their real unity and develop the guild spirit and something of the guild organisation. Then, if the trade unions, instead of looking askance upon the sharing of profits and the right to invest, insist upon the general adoption of such a system, it will be

possible for the control of industry to pass into the hands of the body of workers in each industry, and they can ultimately organise National Guilds when and as they will. For such, an industrial education, if of a sufficiently broad kind and combined with some continuation of general education beyond its present age limits, would enable the workers (using labour copartnership to become owners of capital and credit) to pass to the control of industry and to the form of the guild system which they might prefer or find most practicable.

The capitalist is now typically (1) an investor whose interest is in safe returns on which he can count; (2) a gambler in stocks and shares looking for increased increment. He hands over the management to a board of directors and a paid manager, who look on themselves as in the position of trustees for the shareholders-i.e., they are bound to act in their interests alone. The management of British industry, therefore, is in the hands of the "economic man" of the older economists. We are cheerfully told now that he does not exist, and this is true of any set of persons, but as trustee for shareholders he does exist and controls industry. What is wanted is to reverse the situation and let Labour control Capital instead of Capital controlling Labour, for life is more than raiment, and its interests should be supreme. Or if we go back rather to Kantian ethics, each man should be treated as an end and not as a means. It is the deliberate reversal of this maxim which is the characteristic of capitalism, no less than of slave industry. The central fortress of capitalism is the banking system, but to discuss its overthrow would need more

space than can be spared, but we should note that a system of "people's banks" is both possible (as Italy shows us) and highly desirable, for the development of labour co-partnership and for all forms of co-operation in agriculture as well as in industry.

(2) (c) The State has been essentially the descendant of the conquering tyrant who demands tribute, rather than the development of the village commonwealth or free city.

The wars of Europe, since the development of the modern State during the Renaissance period, are the best proof of this assertion. Whether the leopard can change his spots and the State its tendencies remains to be proved (probably as a human institution it is ultimately capable of such change, though not easily so), but in the meantime it would seem the wiser course to diminish the functions of the State and to substitute for the ideal of a gradually increasing bureaucracy with gradually enlarging powers of keeping us all in order, inspecting and regulating us on the Prussian model, that of an educated people increasingly able to regulate their own affairs by co-operation in various directions, not led away by politicians to scorn the politics of the parish pump," but full of interest in the problems of their own towns, villages, and districts.

66

Miss B. L. HUTCHINS

(1) (a) Labour will undoubtedly suffer much, as will the country as a whole, from the loss of a large proportion of its young men. Organisation will thus be gravely weakened and prejudiced at the moment when it is most urgently needed. Industrial evolution has

been going ahead by leaps and bounds, and the lessskilled labour, aided by machinery, is being increasingly substituted for the craftsman's skill. As the woman and the semi-skilled man have either no standard, or a much more indefinite standard, of life than have the old craft unions, the position is full of danger. On the other hand, Labour will in one respect enjoy a stronger position than before the War. Reaction can at least respect the fighting man. The comfortably unthinking people, who have no idea that industrial workers do anything useful in peace time, suddenly discovered that the "British workman," the object of so many gibes, could stand between them and the German guns. If this point is pressed well home, there is no reason why Labour should not take a different, much better, and more dignified position after the War.

(1) (b) Capital will be necessary for reconstruction purposes when peace comes and trade returns to its ordinary channels, and will probably be scarce; but the last two years have shown how amazingly production can be hastened and fixed capital created when need is.

(1) (c) I doubt if any nation can stand as "single commercial entities" after the War. International relations will be closer and more highly developed, either under some system of inter- or super-national government (as I hope), or with our Allies, or some of them, in a definite league for national support.

(2) (a) The only policy for Labour is to organise and to educate the semi-skilled, the unskilled, the women, the crafts.

(2) (b) The question is not clear to me. Capital consists of money and other things used in production.