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belled against the conditions of their wage-slavery, and there have been strikes and riots, usually without conscious purpose or final success. In the civilized countries, the workers have gradually organized in Trade Unions, and as they have grown stronger the gulf between theory and practice has widened. The recalcitrance of labor has become more marked and more frequent, and employers have been compelled to bargain collectively with their workers, and to admit their possession not merely of certain human rights, but even of a certain title to a small share in industrial control usually in the form of certain restrictions imposed by the Trade Unions on the way in which the factories are run. This has meant a growing difficulty in administering industry under the existing system, until unrest has risen to such proportions as to threaten the stability of the system itself. We are not far off the position when the workers will refuse any longer to be treated as labor power, and when the refusal will compel a complete reconsideration of the principles and the practice of the industrial system.

The growing divergence of theory and practice can have only one end. It is impossible, in view of the present strength and consciousness of labor, that our industrial practice should ever again be harmonized with the old theory. It remains, therefore, that we should remodel our theory, and make our practice consistent with that new theory.

What is this new theory? It is here that the medieval guild can teach us useful lessons. For the only way out of our present impasse is to get back to a position in which every workman can feel that he has a real share in controlling the conditions of his life and work. We must reconstruct our industry on a democratic

basis, and that basis can be only the control of industry by the whole body of persons who are engaged in it, whether they work by hand or by brain. In short, the solution lies in industrial democracy.

This democracy must be in many ways very different from the democracy which existed in the mediæval guilds, until the rise of inequalities in wealth made them plunge into oligarchy and finally chaos and dissolution. The mediæval guilds were local, confined to a particular town and its environs: our modern guilds must be national and even, in many respects, international and world-wide. While preserving the local freedom and local initiative, we must coördinate them on the same scale as the market must be coördinated. The epoch of worldcommerce calls for national and international guilds.

There will be a second difference hardly less important. The mediæval guilds were made up of master-craftsmen, with their journeymen and apprentices who could hope one day to be masters, working in independence in separate workshops under conditions laid down by the guild. The modern guild will be made up, in our time at least, of huge factories in which democratic control will have to be established and safeguarded by far more formal methods than were necessary in the small workshop of the Middle Ages. Moreover, our modern industries are so inter-connected and so bound up one with another, and economics and political considerations are so intertwined, that modern guilds will have to be far more closely related to the State than were the mediæval guilds, which, it is true, were often most intimately related to the mediæval municipality.

But, with all these points of difference, the resemblance will be far more

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essential. Modern, like mediæval guilds, will be dominated by the idea of social service an idea which has almost vanished from the organization of industry in modern times. They will bring back the direct control of the producer over his work, and will give him the sense, which hardly anyone can have in industry nowadays, of working for the community. That, Guildsmen believe, is the secret of getting good work well and truly done. If we set this ideal of National Guilds before us, how can we set about its realization? It is made necessary and possible by the emergence and power of Trade Unionism, and Trade Unionism is the principal instrument by means of which it must be brought about. The growing strength of Trade Unionism is beginning to make impossible the continuance of industry under the old conditions; there is no remedy but in making Trade Unionism itself the nucleus of a new industrial order. Our problem, then, is that of turning Trade Unions into National Guilds.

Trade Unions to-day consist principally, though not exclusively, of manual workers. But, clearly, a National Guild must include all workers, whether they work with their hands or with their heads, who are essential to the efficient conduct of industry. Trade Unionism must, therefore, be widened so as to include the salariat. This is already coming about. On the railways, in the shipyards and engineering shops, and in other industries the salariat is already organizing, and is showing an increasing tendency to link up with the manual workers. As the power of Trade Unionism grows still greater, this tendency will become more and more manifest. One part of the building of National Guilds is the absorption of the salariat into the Trade Union movement. Another

part, on which I have no space to dwell, is the reorganization of Trade Unionism on industrial lines.

As these processes go on, the Trade Unions will continue their steady encroachment in the sphere of industrial control. The divergence between the theory and practice of capitalist industry will become wider and wider, and it may be that we shall find ourselves at last with a practice fitting the new theory achieved without any abrupt or violent transition at all.

What form will the gradual encroachment take? First, I think, the form which it is now manifestly taking in some of the principal industries. The workers will create strong organizations of their own in the workshops and factories (shop stewards' committees, works committees and so on) and will then demand for these organizations positive functions and powers in the control of industry. At the same time, especially in services which are state-owned and administered, the Trade Unions will demand a share in control, nationally as well as locally. In every direction, the workers through their organizations will gradually demand and secure as much control as they are at present able to exercise. And not merely will the appetite for control grow as it feeds; the competence and the power to control will grow with it, till by a series of stages the functions of industrial management are gradually transferred to the workers' organizations, which will by that time have come to include the whole effective personnel of industry.

This is one side, and the most important side, of the development. But at the same time, the democratization of industry will be accompanied by a similar gradual democratization of politics and of the State. The State will be driven more and more to assume the ownership and control of

industry, and every step which it takes in this direction will make more important the existence of real and effective democratic control over the State. The National Guildsman believes that industry ought to be controlled by the workers engaged in it: but he believes also that the State ought to own industry, and that popular control must be established over the machinery of State. I have not left myself space to deal with this side of the problem fully: I can only say that Guildsmen believe that it is impossible to have a really democratic political system while the economic system remains undemocratic, and continues to be based on the denial of the Humanity of Labor. And, on the other hand, the democratization of the industrial system will make possible a parallel democratization of the political machine. The way to political and individual as well as to industrial freedom lies in the control of industry, and it is for this reason that the industrial problem occupies its paramount position among social questions. The Guild system, I believe, furnishes the best possible solution of the social problem, because it carries with it the best reconciliation for our time of the principles of freedom and orderprinciples apparently in conflict, which must be reconciled in any system which is to satisfy our moral striving after personal freedom and coöperation one with another. Reconstruction

THE INARTICULATE ENGLISHMAN: A CHARACTER SKETCH

BY JAMES F. MUIRHEAD

EMERSON long ago noted that England is a fusion of distant and antagonistic elements, and that nothing can be praised in it without damning ex

ceptions, or blamed without salvos of cordial praise. However that may be, we were certainly never entitled to be prouder of our countrymen than at the present moment; never was there less occasion to cavil at their faults and foibles; and yet, in any attempt to sum up the English character, one has to note the shadows as well as the lights. Both its weakness and its strength may spring from the same soil; and a recognition of the fact that the weaknesses are often merely the defects of the qualities may help us to understand and so perhaps to pardon them.

Twenty years ago (if I may venture to quote myself), I wrote the following passage in a little book I perpetrated on America:

One of the most conspicuous differences between the American and the Briton is that the former, take him for all in all, is distinctly the more articulate animal of the two. The Englishman seems to have learned through countless generations that he can express himself better and more surely in deeds than in words, and has come to distrust in others a fatal fluency of expressiveness which he feels would be exaggerated and even false in himself. A man often has to wait for his own death to find out what his English friend thinks of him; and

'Wad some pow'r the giftie gie us To see oursels as ithers see us,' we might often be surprised to discover what a wealth of real affection and esteem

lies hid under the glacier of Anglican indifference. The American poet who found his song in the heart of a friend could have done so, were the friend English, only by the aid of a post-mortem examination. The American, on the other hand, has the most open and genial way of expressing his interest in you; and when you have readjusted the scale of the moral thermometer so as to allow for the change of temperament, you will find this frankmost delightfully stimulating. It requires, however, an intimate knowledge of both countries to understand that when an Englishman congratulates you on a success by exclaiming, 'Hallo, old chap, I

ness

did n't know you had it in you,' he means just as much as your American friend, whose phrase is: 'Bravo, Billy! I always

knew you could do something fine.'

The difference indicated by these words is one that often leads to misunderstanding. The Englishman, for good or evil, is probably the most selfcontained, the most self-sufficient, the most self-possessed of mortals. On the credit side this means sturdy independence, courage, honesty, loyalty, resolution; on the debit side it shows a certain disregard of others, an inability to put one's self in the place of others, a limitation of view, an emotional gap. I have heard the Englishman described as the worst-mannered man in the world, simply because his indifference to others is so unconscious, so innocent of any intention to offend, You can bear it, if you know the other fellow thinks you worth powder and shot; but the unkindest cut of all is to be ignored, to be treated as if you were n't there! If you make an amusing remark during the entr'acte, the smile may spread to the faces of your unknown American neighbors; an Englishman in the same circumstances would rather die than betray the fact that he had overheard. a remark not addressed to him. Many a sensitive American has been wounded by the unresponsive exterior of an Engishman, who at the worst was merely uninterested, at the best was revolving in the deeps behind his expressionless mask how he could most effectively serve his interlocutor's aims.

One ees here at once how much room there is for both praise and blame. Surely, says the American, it is only human to show your feelings, to try to make your temporary neighbor comfortable; it is all very well that your word should be as good as your bond, but why be as parsimonious of pleasant words (which are cheap) as

of bonds (which are dear); a moment's geniality need not tie you down to a friendship for life. No, says the Englishman, I don't want to say a word more than I feel; if I am not interested, I am not interested; I. don't much care what you think of me, and I assume you don't much care what I think of you; if you have anything worth saying or doing, you ought to say or do it irrespective of its reception.

The Englishman of the best type is seldom equaled and probably never excelled in any other country. The highest points of the curve soar into the empyrean. It does, however, sometimes seem as if the general average of the curve were a little higher elsewhere. In a letter to the Times a few weeks ago, the eloquent Bishop of Hereford asked how it was that England was almost unrepresented by Englishmen in the great Conference at Paris, and had to see her interests dealt with by Welshmen, Scots, Jews, Dutchmen, and Colonials. He might have noted also that neither Sir Douglas Haig, nor Sir David Beatty, nor Admiral Wemyss, nor General French, represents the Predominant Partner. 'What,' says the bishop, 'is the key to the problem of the failure of Englishmen to hold their own in the friendly rivalry of nationalities within. the Empire?' Perhaps part of the answer may be found in the inarticulateness we have just been considering. This inexpressiveness has become 'good form'; it has been encouraged by the stereotyped training of the public school and university; it has come to be looked on as almost the necessary stamp of the ruling class. It breeds, or is at any rate closely allied with, a lack of imaginative power to realize that a different type of man may be as good or better; and this again involves a certain diffi

culty in adapt'ng one's self quickly to new conditions.

In a great crisis like the war, startlingly new conditions are one of the most marked features; and in the absence of the Englishman of real genius, like a Pitt or a Nelson, it hardly seems surprising that the leaders are drawn from the more elastic and adaptable races. Pace Carlyle even the talker has his uses; and the man who can expound eloquently and persuasively the exigencies of the occasion is at times more important than the costive and tongue-tied doer of deeds. For to arouse may be more vital than to act, to secure the sympathy of others may bring into the field a force far stronger than one's own resources can possibly afford. The speaker reaches the masses. Even the strong cannot always do without the help of the weak. The mouse deals more effectively than the lion with the meshes. of a net. The bull-dog (a strangely perfect symbol for the English character) must remember that he cannot run as fast as the greyhound, and that he has not so good a nose as the pointer. The strong, silent man may sometimes be too silent.

So far as inarticulateness is associated with modesty and self-reliance, it is to be commended; where it rather means self-satisfaction and distrust of extraneous help, it is to be deprecated. The great crisis through which we have been passing has certainly revealed the essential nobility of the Englishman in a very striking way; but it may be hoped that it has also taught him that even England needs allies. It is not perhaps too much to say that English character has been the chief factor in the winning of the war; but if that character had been better backed by quick-witted and imaginative brains, the war would have been won the sooner. Disciplined character is the

one thing needed for the rank and file, but the leaders must have that and something more. And a little more expressiveness to others, a little less of hiding one's light under a bushel, a little more consideration for the superficial feelings of others as well as for their substantial interests, would certainly have good effect as a lubricant of the machinery of life. Shakespeare has sung the praises of the fair, the chaste, and unexpressive she'; but perhaps in this ordinary work-a-day world the Englishman would be more effective-he would certainly be more popular if he were not quite so much of an 'Unexpressive He.'

The Landmark

THE INVASION OF BALLYMULLEN

BY E. S. G.

BALLYMULLEN had become suddenly famous. A policeman had been shot (fortunately not fatally).

The Lord Lieutenant had sent a wire expressing his indignation at the outrage. The Irish T mes, in a leading article on it, had called (for the twentysixth time that month) on the government for firm and just administration of the law. A prominent member of the Southern Unionist Alliance had subjected the Chief Secretary to a searching cross-examination in the House of Commons on the state of affairs in Ballymullen. The Chief Secretary, in reply, had no information from Ballymullen or apparently from any other part of Ireland.

No arrest had been made. According to the newspapers a diligent (but fruitless) search was being made for the assailant. The policeman was recovering and sitting up, and public interest in the affair subsiding, when suddenly, without any warning whatsoever, Bal

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