Economic Statesmanship

put on them to do so.

Opportunities should be furnished

for their putting money into shares.

The British industries suffer from lack of modern outfit, from an insufficiency of capital invested in them. In 1907-1909 the capital invested in industry per worker was £483 in the United States, and only £212 in the United Kingdom. The necessary additions to the plant might be made largely by the workers themselves out of savings. It would be all to the good if their share in the undertaking would be increased far beyond the collective share allotted to them, if half the capital and more would be owned by the workers themselves. No one restricts output or hours who is working for himself. The motto of the workers should become "Shareholders all, managers all, capitalists all." The most successful undertakings would probably be those in which the workers themselves held the larger portion of the shares, and those in which the dividends paid to the workers were particularly great. It is conceivable that in some cases speeding up would cause the workers' dividends to exceed their wages.

It is frequently asserted that the workers are so poor that they cannot own industrial undertakings, such as factories. That belief is quite erroneous. In 1907, the year in which the British Census of Production was taken, the capital invested in the British industries came to £212 per worker. In some industries the amount was higher and in some it was lower. That sum should be within reach of many wage-earners. The future might see factories arise owned exclusively by the men employed, and they ought to be among the most successful.

The plan of profit-sharing outlined has the great advantage of being easily applicable to the large and the very large undertakings in which labour troubles are particularly frequent. It can as readily be applied to railways, shipping companies, docks, warehouses, coal

mines, etc., as to factories, if there is a large margin of prospective profit owing to the possibility of increasing efficiency in production. The plan is, of course, particularly advisable in those numerous cases in which output is unduly low owing to the unwillingness of the workers to increase it. In those industries in which production per worker is extremely high, the introduction of profitsharing might not be advantageous to the original shareholders. Hence the project seems more suitable for a country of low and deliberately restricted individual production, such as Great Britain, than for a land where high individual production is general, such as the United States.

At present many factories suffer because the unions. insist upon uniformity of wages regardless of the financial position and profits of the various undertakings. If the profit-sharing system described should be introduced, and if it should catch on and become general, the trade union wages rate would still be uniform, but there would be a great variety of earnings owing to the bonus-dividends added, the amount of which would depend partly on the ability of the management, but chiefly on the intelligent co-operation of the workers themselves.

The introduction of general profit-sharing in the industries would profoundly alter the character of the trade unions. They were created to fight capital. They were engines of war. Henceforth their attitude would change, for their war would be won. The Socialists would no longer try to permeate and to dominate them. They would become peaceful institutions engaged exclusively in promoting the social welfare of the workers and the prosperity of the industry in which their members are engaged. In character and in scope they would resemble the Manufacturers' Associations, Employers' Associations, and Chambers of Commerce, with which they would work

hand in hand. Socialism, Nationalisation, Syndicalism, and Bolshevism, would lose their attractiveness. The business of those agitators who live by creating strife between capital and labour would be gone for ever.

The introduction of practically universal profit-sharing would at last realise the hope that employers and employed, rich and poor, would cordially and fraternally co-operate, which has been expressed by the greatest statesmen and thinkers from Plato and Aristotle to Abraham Lincoln and Roosevelt. A new industrial era would begin.

I have put forward the ideas expressed in the foregoing in the hope that the plan proposed will solve the industrial problem, establish permanent harmony between capital and labour, and introduce all the benefits claimed by the advocates of Socialism without leading to robbery and confusion, and all the benefits claimed by the champions of Nationalisation without introducing the blight of bureaucracy. I have put forward these ideas in the hope that the plan proposed will make capital and labour, the two forces which seem eternally divided and irreconcilable, one and indivisible, and that it will greatly strengthen the beneficent power of individualism while divesting it of the stigma of greed and injustice which its enemies have striven to fasten upon it. I hope that the arrangement outlined will be found to be practical, workable, and logical.

ANALYTICAL INDEX

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