counterpart of exclusion of the laborer from control over work conditions and work processes. "The spiritual subjection," "the debased status" of the workers, would continue, say our authors, under collectivism. "Putting industry into the hands of the politicians" is far different from "putting it into the hands of the people." In their position as thus outlined, the guildsmen walk with the syndicalists, but their paths diverge here; the latter wish to abolish the political state and erect in its stead an Industrial Council while the former "are united in affirming absolutely their faith in the State as a legitimate and essential organ of society" although they would not entrust it "with the administration of production" nor allow it "to interfere in the self-government of the Guilds." "For industry to attempt to take over the control of the State is as intolerable as the attempt of the Collectivists to make the State the sole authority in industry. The Syndicalist State would be 'simply the Collectivist State standing on its head, and just as tyrannical in that position as it would be right end up'." More in detail, the guild idea as here outlined, calls for the organization of national guilds in the various industries, each guild to have a monopoly control over its particular industry, and the various guilds to be represented in a guild congress. This congress is necessarily to have considerable power. It will have final authority as to the amount and kind of goods that each guild will undertake to produce and will determine the amount of capital that shall be provided yearly for the various guilds. "Disputes between Guilds must in the last resort be brought before the Guild Congress for settlement"; and also it is to be the repository of all money incomes derived by the various guilds from the sale of their products. This last provision is, by the way, designed to prevent any individual guild from "deliberately increasing its prices in order to increase its income" since the congress is to apportion the consumable income among the guilds on the basis of their numerical membership. Our authors seek to minimize the power of the congress by insisting that the local and district guild councils "by reason of their close contact with local industry, will tend to be the recognized centers of Guild life and authority," but from their discussion one is led to question how much less powerful such a congress would be than the Industrial Council of the Syndicalists. To say that "the State (through its Parliament) is to be the final authority in all purely political affairs" does not take us far from the condemned position of the syndicalists. While the guild system as outlined in this book is very impracticable, the guildsmen, in centering attention upon the rights and privileges of the producer, are a priori on much firmer ground than the socialists have been in their emphasis of the rights of consumers. Practically, too, the day seems to be with the guildsmen, as against the socialists, for although it is a far cry from the present industrial order to one of exclusive guild control, yet the organization of joint industrial councils in many industries in England and the steps taken toward the formation of a national industrial council, the rather extensive movement in management sharing here, and the general growth of trade unionism are all in line with the principal thesis of the guild advocates, while the experience during the war has seemingly told against rather than for government ownership and operation. It is interesting to note in this connection that the one urgent demand for the extension of government ownership in America is the demand of the trade unionists that the railroads be taken over-however, not to be operated by the government but by the railway workers. It is perhaps safe to predict that revolutionary thought will proceed along the line of control by the workers rather than of ownership by the state. Yale University. H. GORDON HAYES. An Introduction to Trade Unionism. By G. D. H. COLE. (London: George Allen and Unwin, Ltd. 1918. Pp. 128. 6s.) The Payment of Wages, A Study in Payment by Results Under the Wage System. By G. D. H. COLE. (London: George Allen and Unwin, Ltd. 1918. Pp. 155. 6s.) These monographs are numbers four and five respectively of the Trade Union Series of the publications of The Fabian Research Department. In both the field is restricted to Great Britain, and in both the author frankly approaches all controverted questions of trade-union structure and policy from the standpoint of the National Guildsman. These books are written in the clear and interesting style that we have come to expect from Mr. Cole. Each contains valuable appendices. The Introduction to Trade Unionism is an admirable survey in summary form of the British labor movement as it stood in June, 1918, on the side of structure and membership. The description is confined almost entirely to the external side of trade unionism, to such matters as the basis of organization, machinery of government, extent and distribution of membership and inter-union relations. Very little space is given to trade policies, and nearly all of this to methods of payment. There is nothing on apprenticeship or the closed shop, for example, and working rules are treated but incidentally. Collective bargaining is given three pages. The crying need of British labor at this time, as the author sees it, is to get all the workers organized on a proper basis. Naturally, then, his discussion runs to craft unionism, overlapping of organizations, jurisdictional disputes, the extension of organization among the unskilled and the supervisory and professional workers, and the lack of a single, all-inclusive organization that can speak for all unionists in the country. What Mr. Cole has set out to do he has done remarkably well. No student of British Trade Unionism-or of American Trade Unionism, for that matter-should pass this little book by. To be sure, one who picks it up as an easy introduction to the literature on trade unionism is liable to emerge from the first fortyfive pages on structure and government in the British trade-union world in some confusion of mind, but those who are prepared for the medley of organizations that characterizes the British labor movement, will find this a very helpful bulletin on the situation in 1918. The Payment of Wages, is, as the author states, the first general book on the question of methods of wage-payment published in England since Schloss' Methods of Industrial Remuneration. Moreover, it is twenty years since the Webbs wrote, in Industrial Democracy, of the attitude of the British trade unions toward piece work. The author has not attempted a numerical estimate of the proportion of trade unionists working under the piece system, willingly and unwillingly, as the Webbs did, but he goes through the main occupational groups and gives us the systems under which they work and the attitude of their unions toward piece work and the various premium and bonus systems of payment. He finds that there has been a tendency toward a more widespread use of payment by results in the last two decades, particularly in the engineering trades. Payment by output rather than by time gained ground, of course, during the war. The description of the systems of payment and the arguments for and against them run for the most part along lines familiar to students of these questions in America. Mr. Cole is in full sympathy with the objections usually put forward by trade unionists against premium and bonus systems and allied features of scientific management. He has, however, other objections to scientific management which he presents with freshness and vigor. Most important is the objection that "scientific management tends to make more impassable the gulf between labour and management." To a National Guildsman this is a capital charge. He also opposes flatly the notion that there is merit in a man's receiving wages proportional to his output. The only kind of piece or bonus system of payment which he looks upon with favor is that of "collective contract by the whole workshop for all jobs." Under this system all the workers in a shop bargain as a group with the employer for a price for each lot of work, accepting as a group the responsibility for the performance of the work, and attending themselves to the payment of individual wages. This plan of payment is acceptable because it is believed to be a step toward the control of industry by the workers, the goal on which Mr. Cole's eye is always fixed. D. A. MCCABE. Princeton University. NEW BOOKS BAUER, S. Arbeiterschutz und Völkergemeinschaft. (Zurich: Art. Institut Orell Füssli. 1918. Pp. 160. 7 fr.) BLOOMFIELD, D. Selected articles on employment management. (New York: H. W. Wilson Co. 1919. Pp. 475. $1.80.) BRISSENDEN, P. F. The I. W. W. A study of American syndicalism. Columbia University studies in political science, vol. LXXXIII. (New York: Longmans. 1919. Pp. 432. $4.00.) COLVIN, F. H. Labor turnover, loyalty and output. (New York: McGraw-Hill. 1919. Pp. x, 152. $1.50.) COOKE, M. L. An all-American basis for industry. (New York: Taylor Society. 1919. Pp. 16.) FAY, A. H. Quarry accidents in the United States during the calendar year 1917. (Washington: Bureau of Mines. 1919. Pp. 62.) FINDLAY, J. J. The young wage earner and the problem of his education. (London: Sedgwick & Jackson. 1918. Pp. 211.) GOMPERS, S. American labor and the war. (New York: Doran. 1919. Pp. x, 377. $1.75.) HALL, H. J. Bedside and wheel-chair occupations. (New York: Red HOBSON, S. G. Guild principles in war and peace. (London: G. Bell British labor and the war. Recon(New York: Boni & Liveright. 1919. British Labor and the Last Year of the War would be a more accurate title for this book, since unfortunately it devotes little space to the events occuring before Arthur Henderson's fateful trip to Russia in the summer of 1917. The interest which the book arouses is due to the story it tells rather than to any inherent merit of the work itself. It describes the resolute yet temperate way in which British labor has turned its back upon its old economic and political timidities and has resolved to create a new world. The chief function of the book is to give the basic documents in this development and to report in graphic fashion the conferences and congresses at which they were debated and adopted. The authors show that the aims of British labor are both national and international in scope. The international program is best outlined in the well known document "Labor and the New Social Order" with its four pillars: (1) the creation and enforcement of a series of national minimums, (2) the democratic control of industry (largely through collectivism, though on this point there is likely to be a decided swing towards guild socialism), (3) the revolution in national finance, and (4) the socialization of the surplus wealth for the common good. To attain these ends, British labor has been pressing forward from the three wings of the labor movement; from the coöperative societies representing the organized consumers, from the trade unions, and from the Labour party itself. The international program was conceived in the midst of the war in the same spirit as that of President Wilson's fourteen points and was indeed more thoroughly worked out. The authors perform a real service in pointing out, what few Americans realize, that the chief support to the Wilsonian program in England and in allied countries came not from the upper classes but from organized labor. PAUL H. DOUGLAS. KUNHARDT, G. E. Lawrence. A manufacturer's view. (Lawrence. Mass.: George E. Kunhardt Corporation. 1919. Pp. 16.) LAUCHHEIMER, M. H. The labor law of Maryland. Johns Hopkins University studies in historical and political science, series XXXVII, no. 2. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press. 1919. Pp. 166.) A local study which connects, however, the development of labor law in Maryland with the evolution of opinion in England and makes frequent comparisons with development of such legislation in other states of this country. The author associates this with the undercurrent of speculative political theory. Successive chapters. |