text: Lucian (Collins)/Chapter 2

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title: Lucian (Collins)/Chapter 2


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we turn to the National Guilds; an Enquiry into the Wage System, and the Way Out, by A. R. Orage, or by S. G. Hobson, edited by A. R. Orage, we find very much the same point of view as Mr. Cole's, but a different method of approach. It deals with the problem of reforming our economic system with the jovial cheerfulness of a Newfoundland puppy worrying a door-mat. It starts with the assumption which we have found to be common to so many of the people who want to turn society upside down, that labour at present produces everything that is produced and is robbed of a large part of its product by buccaneers who exploit it, and that it is therefore labour's duty to deal with the robbers as robbers should be dealt with. Here is an example both of the style of this book and of the methods which it advocates (page 5): "Labour must realize that its emancipation can only become possible when it has absorbed every shilling of surplus value. The way to do this is by tireless and


text: Talk:The Valley of the Wind

title: Talk:The Valley of the Wind


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 unrelenting inroads upon rent and interest. The daily and weekly Socialist bulletins should tell, not of some trivial success at a municipal election, or of some unusually flowery flow of poppy-cock in Parliament, but of wages so raised that rent-mongers and profiteers find their incomes pro tanto reduced. And there is no other way. Profits are in substance nothing but rent. Rent, whatever its form, reduced to its elements, is nothing more and nothing less than the economic power which one man exercises more or less oppressively over another man or body of men. Destroy the power to exact rent and ipso facto rent is destroyed. This is the only way of salvation, of emancipation—the only possible release from bondage." Here we find the assumption that surplus value is produced by labour and absorbed by somebody else. In fact, as we have seen in our analysis of the previous chapters, labour produces surplus value with the assistance of management, materials and tools, which are supplied to it by other people, and takes a large part of that surplus value for itself, since its own product, if it had not this assistance, would be nothing but what it could gather in the woods or scrape out of the ground with its finger-nails.


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 In their contempt for the State Socialists, the present writers are just as earnest as Mr. Cole, and express themselves still more vigorously: "Is it any wonder," they ask (page 16), "that politics now stink in the workman's nostrils and that he has turned firmly to 'direct action'? Had a living Socialist Party found itself in Parliament, instead of the present inert Labour Party, led by charlatans and supported by Tadpoles and Tapers, the energies of Labour might possibly for a slightly longer period have been fruitfully employed in the political sphere." And on page 20 we find that "the Independent Labour Party exemplifies these good and bad qualities. . . . Not an idea of the slightest vitality has sprung from it, its literature is the most appalling nonsense, its members live on Dead Sea fruit. The joyous fellowship which was its early stock-in-trade has long since been dissipated; the party is now being bled to death by internal bickerings, dissensions and jealousies. It is the happy hunting-ground of cheap and nasty party hacks and organizers, who have contrived to make it, not an instrument for the triumph of Socialism, but a vested interest to procure a political career for voluble inefficients."

Such is the spirit in which the Guild cham-


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 Never fear me—I ken how to turn this far better than ye do—for ye're bleezing awa' about marriage, and the job is how we are to win by hanging."

So saying, he extricated himself out of his mother's embraces, and requested the soldiers who took him in charge to conduct him to the place of examination without delay. He had been already preceded by Claverhouse and Morton.


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 pions deal with the work of those who have gone before them in the effort to improve the lot of the wage-earner. Does it promise well for harmony and team-work on the part of the Guilds, if they should be established?

Like Mr. Cole, the writers attach great importance to the distinction between wages and pay. It is really very difficult for the uninstructed outsider to understand this fine metaphysical distinction. It would seem at first sight that as long as a man receives money, to be exchanged into goods and services, for work which he renders to the community, no very far-reaching revolution can be achieved by calling it pay instead of wages. However, there evidently is some really essential distinction since the high-priests of the National Guilds lay so much stress upon the matter. Let us quote these writers again (page 80):—

"The bulwark which protects surplus value from the wage-earner, which secures it to the entrepreneur, is the wage system. That is why it must be abolished. Now let us suppose that the work of the London docks were done, not by more or less casual wage slaves, but by a properly organized and regimented labour army, penetrated by a military spirit attuned to industry."


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 It may be observed by the way that after Mr. Cole's vigorous protest against the "regimentation" involved by State Socialism, it is rather sad to find these authorities on National Guilds striving after a properly organized and regimented Labour army. "Do soldiers receive wages?" they continue (page 81): "No, they receive pay. 'But,' cries the practical man (and possibly even Mr. Sidney Webb), 'what earthly difference is there between wages and pay?' Let us see. The soldier receives pay whether he is busy or idle, whether in peace or war. No employer pays him. A sum of money is voted annually by Parliament to maintain the Army, and the amount is paid in such gradations as may be agreed upon. Every soldier, officer or private, becomes a living integral part of that Army. He is protected by military law and regulations. He cannot be casualized, nor can his work, such as it is, be capitalized. The spirit that pervades the Army is, in consequence, different from the spirit that dominates wage slavery."

Here then we find the real difference between wages and pay. The pay is voted by Parliament and granted to the worker, whether he is busy or idle. This is the same view as was expressed by Mr. Cole when he spoke of


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 "recognition and payment as a human being, and not merely as the mortal tenement of so much labour power for which an efficient demand exists." Once more we have to ask, would such a system of payment produce good work? I once heard this question raised before an audience that knows more than anybody else about the answer. It was when I was lecturing at the back of the front in Belgium in March 1918. My subject was National Finance, but in the discussion which followed, this point about wages and pay was introduced by a private who appeared to be a disciple of the Guildsmen. Why, he asked in effect, cannot wage-earners be paid just as soldiers are paid? I answered that it was not quite evident that in ordinary life we should get good work by this system. "Everybody knows," I said, "how you soldiers work when you are fighting, but when you go out to do fatigue work"—and a roar of laughter from the rest of the audience made the roof of the big hut ring, and left no more for me to say.

As it happened I had been reading Mr. Orage at home not long before, and had pointed out his remarks about the spirit of the Army to an officer just back from the front; he observed that anybody who had seen soldiers


text:
The Belled Ghost

SMALLISH and very old town, down in the heart of the Cotton Belt. Sandy streets lined with moss-hung, and stately white houses retiring modestly behind screens of magnolias and jasmines and honeysuckle-vines. At the center of everything, a weatherbeaten courthouse, with a squat red-brick jail just back of it. In a basement cell that had one barred window set even with the ground level, the Cincinnati Kid waited for his share of the jail's midday meal to be slipped under the door of riveted strap-iron that stood between him and the corridor.

Already he had draped half of the blanket from the cot's outer edge to the floor, in order to hide from view a very small, brown dog of no particular breed, which was tied short underneath. The little mongrel, starved and pitifully lean, had come whining to the window a week before, and Kid Maloney had squeezed it between two of the rusted bars. He looked upon it now as his one real friend, and with it religiously split his meals fifty-fifty. They would take the dog from him if they knew, he feared; therefore he kept it hidden.

Footsteps rang in the dank corridor. Maloney had expected the poky old jailer. Sheriff Mayland Bright appeared at the door.

“Cressy will be away for a week, Kid,” Bright said. Cressy was the poky old jailer. “I'm putting Deputy Spot Higdon in his place, and Spot will be here with your grub before a great while.”

“Aw right,” the Kid replied dully.

The dog lay still behind the blanket. Maloney had been patiently training it to that. Bright tossed a package of cigarettes and a small box of matches into the cell, and was gone before the prisoner could thank him.

“One white guy,” the Cincinnati Kid observed, when the soothing smoke was flowing through his nostrils. “One white guy, sure.”

He never would have said that of Spotswood Higdon—a poor-white name for an aristocratic old colonel—because it had been Higdon that had arrested him. True, the deputy appeared to be intensely sorry for him now, but that didn't help a great deal.

Once more Maloney cursed fate for the scurvy trick she had played with him as the victim. Then he reached under his narrow bed and caressed the dog, which whined its appreciation; then he straightened, and went to the barred window.

They were thoughtful enough to build the new gallows where he couldn't see the work going on. But he could see the shadow of the thing on the high, jailyard fence, late of an afternoon, and that was worse!

Spot Higdon came, at last, and he brought a very good dinner with him. Instead of shoving it under the door, as Cressy had always done, he opened the door and came in with it. The prisoner noted that he wore his six-gun at the point most convenient for making a quick draw.

Without a word, Maloney divided the food into equal parts on the two tin plates, and ate one half without any noticeable relish of it. Then he drank the cup of black coffee. Higdon stood and watched it through soberly. The deputy didn't look well; he was ashen sallow, and there were new lines in his lean face.

Under the cot, the dog whined hungrily!

“What's that?” said Higdon. “You got a dawg in here, Kid?”

“Yep,” Maloney confessed promptly. Why deny it? He thrust the dog's half of the meal under the cot, and the mongrel fell to in noisy gulps. “I sure hope you don't mind, Spot, eh? He's only a little mutt, and lots o' comp'ny; you wouldn't believe it.”

“I guess I don't mind,” drawled Higdon. “Better not let Bright know it, though. Bright's fond o' dawgs, foolish fond, but he's first, last, and all the time a high sheriff, and he'd consider it was ag'inst the jail rules. You see, we had a prisoner here with a dawg once, and it goes out and comes back later with a hack-saw pasted in the thick fur o' its back. The prisoner's wife done it—and that night he sawed out.”

After a little period of silence, the deputy went on. “Well, Kid, you got only three days left now. Anything I can do for you? Any kin-folks you want notified, or anything?”

“I ain't got any relatives, and I sure wouldn't let 'em know about—about this disgrace if I had!” cried Kid Maloney in sudden desperation. “You can do this for me—find the gink that croaked Polk Jennison, and save me!”

A shadow crossed Spot Higdon's face, deepening its new lines, making it seem oddly haggard.

“Son, we've done all we could do. The evidence”

“Damn the evidence!” half wept the Cincinnati Kid. It was not cowardice. It was youth, to which death in any guise is so insufferable a thing. “I didn't kill Polk Jennison, Spot; I'm tellin' you, I sure didn't do it! Listen to me, Spot

“You've heard it before, but I want you to hear it again, and you'll notice I tell the same thing all the time. I'm a batam [sic]-weight prizefighter up in Cincy, and they call me a wonder; I has hopes for a try at the championship; see? But I get a trimmin' from bein' too cock-sure, and it busts me all up, breaks my heart in small pieces. I can't even look at the friends who've lost every cent they had because o' their faith that I'd plaster k. o. all over the little Memphis pug, and I run away, headin' for New Orleens to begin life all over again; see?

“Well, pretty soon I'm stone broke, and it's the freight trains for little Tommy Maloney—truss-rods and side-door sleepers, you know. A shack with a heart in him as big as a pin-head ditches me here in this hick town o' yours; see? It's rain'in [sic], and I'm lookin' for a place to bunk up in, when I hear a spat from a gat, and then another. One o'clock in the mornin' it is then; get that. I turn a corner at a street lamp, and this Polk Jennison comes tearin' into me. Jennison looks wild; he's got a gat in his hand, and it seems he's about to crack me one with it. I snatch the gun from his hand, and then I notice red on his shirt's front. Next thing I know, there's a crowd o half-dressed people, and I'm arrested for killin' Polk Jennison in attempted highway robbery. Jennison has crumpled up` like a wet rag and died before he could turn in any dope as to who had shot him. That's the truth, the same as I've told all along; now get out o' here and do something for me, quick!”

“Nobody but the Gov'nor can help you, son,” Higdon said, and his voice was weak.

“But he won't interfere, Bright told me!”

Slowly Spot Higdon shook his head. “Everybody thinks it's a clear-cut case, Kid.”

Maloney, his throat tight and his eyes dim, stretched himself out on the narrow bed. Higdon left the cell.

The afternoon dragged on. The shadow would soon begin to creep up the jailyard fence. Maloney went to the window, and stood there watching for the shadow, oddly and terribly fascinated. The dog whined under the cot, strained at the short leash. Then, footsteps in the corridor again. It was so quiet that they rang like blows. Higdon was coming back, the youthful prisoner knew. The deputy was very pale now. He pressed his face against four of the door's iron cross-straps.

“Listen, Kid,” he said, holding up a tremulous finger. “What do you hear?”

Maloney listened for some three seconds, “Nothin' at all,” he answered; “I don't hear nothin' at all.”

“A bell,” half whispered Spotswood Higdon, “a little bell. Don't you hear it, son? Ting-a-ling, ting-aling; don't you hear it?”

“I don't hear nothin',” reiterated the Cincinnati Kid.

“You—you'll be the second man to be hung in this country since I settled here ten years ago,” the deputy ran on. “The other one was a fellow named Spicer. He kept hearin' bells, he said, for three days before the execution; little, tiny bells. It's strange, son, don't you think?”

“Spot, you're goin' bughouse,” declared Maloney.

“No, I'm not. I hear bells, Spicer's bells.” Higdon sought a new grip on himself. “The pity of it was, Spicer was not guilty. It was proved afterward that he wasn't.”

The deputy turned and left the cell door. His walk was not quite steady.

An hour later, while Maloney stood at the barred window and watched the shadow of the gallows as it crawled upward on the fence, Sheriff Mayland Bright came.

“You feeling all right, buddy?” the sheriff asked.

“Elegant!” sneered Maloney, wheeling. “Beautiful! Lovely! Put yourself in my place, and see how you'd feel about it! But Aw, say, I don't mean to be sour to you, honest. You're a square shooter, Sheriff. But it—it's awful to be hung when I ain't any guiltier o' killin' Polk Jennison than you are.”

“I'm sorry, buddy. You don't know how sorry I am. I worked for you, Kid. I did everything possible to find a trail leading toward somebody else. You understand that it's not me that's to—to execute you, that it's the law, don't you?”

“I know, I know.” Maloney shrugged. “Say, Spot Higdon is sure goin' bugs. Hears bells, he says, the same as that fellow Spicer heard. What's wrong with Spot?”

Mayland Bright frowned. “Spot isn't well. Comes of a nervous family, anyway. He's just given up his job, and wanted to leave now, but I couldn't spare him before Creesy gets back.”

“Say—” explosively—“I heard that this Polk Jennison was somethin' of a gambler; right?”

“Yes. A good deal of a gambler, Polk was.”

“Is Spot Higdon?” asked Maloney.

“No,” readily answered Bright. “But he used to be. You thinking Spot killed Polk, son? Get that out of your mind. They were the closest of friends, my boy.”

The Cincinnati Kid narrowed an eye wisely. “All the same, somethin's gnawin' the insides out o' Spot. And I'm wonderin' to beat everything how it happened that he was so close to the place where I met Polk Jennison, that night.”

“He lives near there, and he was awake with an aching tooth when the shots were fired. Anything special that you want, son?”

“Nope. Thanks.”

The echoes of Mayland Bright's departing footsteps died away. Maloney sat down on the floor beside his narrow bed, lifted the draped blanket, and put an arm around the small, brown dog.

“They're bound to string me up, boy,” he said gloomily. “They're bound to do it. Then what'll become o' you? Poor little m-m-m-mutt!”

HE day that the state had set for the execution of Thomas Maloney was a day that the sleepy old Southern town will be slow to forget. Matters at the courthouse and jail seemed queerly out of tune, somehow, and the name of unfortunate Hensley Spicer was mentioned more than once. Spotswood Higdon had a cadaverous look now, and Mayland Bright's suspicions were as yet not aroused—Higdon had an abominable liver, and he was full of malaria, and he'd come of a nervous family.

Higdon went early, that Friday, to the basement cell.

“Bells, bells, bells, all night long,” he said. “Didn't you hear 'em? Honest now, tell the truth.”

“You nut!” cried Kid Maloney. Then suddenly, “Say, Spot, listen; don't you think you better confess, and save me? It'll soon be too late, y'know.”

“Me confess?” At once Higdon bucked up. He pretended that he didn't understand, pretended exceedingly well. “What on earth are you talkin' about, Kid, anyhow? Confess what?”

“The murder o' Polk Jennison, that's what!” flared Maloney. “If you don't them bells will get you; they'll ring you down into your grave—

The two lines of iron song had burst from the inner vaults of his memory and through his lips as though of their own volition. It had no apparent effect upon the deputy. He merely shrugged, and walked off. Maloney, a picture of utter hopelessness, stood there staring at the cell door after Higdon had gone.

Hours, eternal hours. Chains of leaden minutes, linked by sodden seconds. Time should have flown; instead, even the machinery of the universe seemed to have almost stopped. Then benefit of clergy, with Thomas Maloney still protesting his innocence and flatly refusing to pray. He hadn't been a praying man in life, and he wouldn't be in death.

Then Thomas Maloney stood  on the scaffold, ankles and wrists  bound, with the black hood on, with the noose about his neck and the hangman's knot caressing one ear like a beguiling wanton with a dagger in the other hand. Only a few persons had been permitted to enter the jailyard, but morbid and curious people watched from windows and house tops. There was silence so deep that it was well nigh terrifying in itself, as Mayland Bright, white in the face, put forth an unsteady hand to spring the trap.

“I'm sorry, my boy,” murmured the man inside the sheriff. “Good-by, and God love you.”

“God love you, too,” came strongly from the black hood. It was the acid test for the heart of Cincinnati Kid. “You're one white guy. I'll put in a good word for you, where I'm goin', if I can.”

High in the ether above, a bird sang. Then the awful stillness again, but it was soon broken by a quick, soft pattering, and the little mongrel dog raced up the scaffold steps and sat down on the trap at the feet of the Cincinnati Kid—smiling a canine smile of victory and joy, looking at Bright, looking worshipfully back to its new master, at Bright, back to its new master, and its tail beat a low tattoo on the rough boards. Once more the song of the bird above; again the gravelike silence. The high sheriff could not yet force his hand to do the will of his brain.

Then there came the sound of a bell, clear and distinct, as a peripatetic rogue cow halted to browse along the grassy edge of a sandy street. The commonplace thing became important, in that it provided a dramatic climax for the reign of the belled ghost in Spotswood Higdon's conscience—his voice rang out, shattered and shattering:

“Wait, Mayland—I killed Polk Jennison myself!”

The deafening, jarring crash of Higdon's own six-gun followed, and the deputy had cheated the rope.

Bright saw it all quickly now. He rushed to Thomas Maloney, snatched off the noose, fairly tore away the sombre hood, cut the small ropes that had bound ankle and wrist. Maloney blinked in the blessed sunlight. It occurred to him that it had all been a horrible dream. Mayland Bright was speaking joyously.

“The bell did it, son, but the dog helped; the dog made the minute's delay for the bell, the minute's delay that Spot must have found bitter hard.

“And then,” he added, with a narrowed eye, “it's Polk Jennison's dog.”

title: The Belled Ghost


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 doing any fatigue job would know that at least three times as much work would be done by wage-earners under civilian conditions. If then the workers worked with the fatigue spirit of the Army instead of the battle spirit, there would be an awkward dwindling in the funds out of which their pay could be annually voted by Parliament. Parliament might vote the money, but unless goods and services were turned out, that money would be worth only scraps of paper. Moreover, the soldier is not only "protected by military law and regulations," he is also bound by them and liable to very severe penalties if he breaks them. Is industrial militarism really the ideal of Messrs. Hobson and Orage?

They go into more detail than Mr. Cole in reference to the arrangements under which the workers would be paid. On page 146 we find that "once a member of his Guild, no man need again fear the rigours of unemployment or the slow starvation of a competitive wage. Thus every transport worker, providing he honestly completes the task assigned him, will be entitled to maintenance—a maintenance equal to his present wage, plus the amount now lost by unemployment, plus a proportion of existing surplus value—that is, plus his


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 present individual contribution to rent and interest; and, finally, plus whatever savings are effected by more efficient organization. He will not, therefore, receive wages (as we now know them), because he will receive something much greater—possibly three times greater than the existing wage standard."

Here we find two difficulties. "Once a member of his Guild"—one is brought up by the question, how will membership of these Guilds be arranged? At present people do have more or less choice of the kind of occupation in which they will spend the working part of their lives. In the case of most of us, it is true, economic fate or hazard marks out some course for us, and in most cases the choice, such as it is, is made long before we can be said to have minds to make up on the subject, and still longer before we have sufficient experience and knowledge to exercise the choice well. Nevertheless, some choice there is, and it is possible and does happen, that people who have made a wrong choice, or think so, can later in life change from one occupation to another. But how much freedom would these organized and regimented Guilds allow to any aspiring youth who wanted to become a member, and by what methods and


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 by whose decision would the difficult question be solved as to the entry of the young workers into the different lines of occupation?

These questions clearly involve endless possibilities of friction. They are faced in a book called The Meaning of National Guilds by C. E. Bechhofer and M. B. Reckitt who show more capacity than other Guild champions for seeing practical details and trying to deal with them. On page 310 they say that "each man will be free to choose his Guild, and actual entrance will depend on the demand for Labour. In fact the principle will be that of first come, first served. In the event of there being no vacancy, it will be open for the applicant either to apply for entrance to another Guild, or during his period of waiting to take up some occupation of a temporary character. . . . Labour in 'dirty industries'—scavenging, etc.—will probably be in the main of a temporary character, and will be undertaken by those who are for the time unable to obtain an entry elsewhere."

This is all very sensible and practical, but it is not a very comfortable prospect for the aspiring Guildsman. If he has to wait till he is wanted, where is his freedom to choose his Guild? He will be no better off in this


text: Talk:The Belled Ghost

title: Talk:The Belled Ghost


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 respect than he is now under capitalist tyranny, and will find himself in the meantime relegated to a drain-cleaning job. Moreover, the same authorities tell him that in extreme circumstances, a Guildsman will be liable to expulsion. And what will become of him after that?

Again we find that according to Messrs. Hobson and Orage every worker would be entitled to maintenance, "providing he honestly completes the task assigned to him." Who is to decide concerning the honesty of the completion of the task? Presumably the decision will be arrived at by the Guild officers elected by the workers. And here again we see the possibility that those Guild foremen will be most popular, and therefore most likely to be elected, who will take the most lenient views concerning the honesty of the work done by the Guildsmen. Whether this system will be conducive to brisk production can only be very seriously doubted, and we are left wondering what is going to happen to the unfortunate worker, who justly or unjustly is condemned as not having honestly completed the task assigned to him. Apparently in this case he will not be entitled to maintenance. If so, what becomes of that most attractive arrangement under which the National Guilds are


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 to assure to the worker recognition and payment as a human being, and not merely as the mortal tenement of so much labour power for which an effective demand exists? Such, combined with the right "to make well or ill," was Mr. Cole's ideal, but Messrs. Hobson-Orage are only going to assure the worker payment, not even as the tenement of labour power, but as an honest and efficient producer of it. But they go on to strike a loftier note and to say that (page 147) "after all maintenance is not the only consideration in life." This is very true, but without a certain amount of it life is impossible. In fact they seem to expect that, under the Guild system, hard times may have to be faced and that nobody will mind. On page 111 we read: "Nobody doubts that the majority of wage-earners would be willing, any one of them at any moment, to exchange their position as wage-earners for the position of economic independence, even if this latter involved a permanent reduction of financial income;" and on page 113: "We may find ourselves, in fact, if we abolish wage slavery, worse off than we are now."

If the wage-earners got real freedom, probably many of them might be willing to be worse off. But it has been shown that


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 under the Guilds their freedom would still be qualified by the limits that are imposed on that of all of us who work for others, who work for us. And if a lower standard all round is to be the result of the Guild system, it clearly will not lead us to the better world that can only be won by hard and efficient work, and a greater output of material goods, giving us a chance of winning goods that are more important.

Moreover, from page 136 of the same book: "Even if the process of wage approximation goes much further than we now foresee, it is nevertheless inevitable that graduations of position and pay will be found necessary to efficient Guild administration. We do not shrink from graduated pay; we are not certain that it is not desirable. There will be no inequitable distribution of Guild resources, we may rest assured; democratically controlled organizations seldom err on the side of generosity. But experience will speedily teach the Guilds that they must encourage technical skill by freely offering whatever inducements may at the time most powerfully attract competent men. There are many ways by which invention, organizing capacity, statistical aptitude or what not may be suitably rewarded. It is certain that rewarded


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Privy Council of Scotland, in whom the practice since the union of the crowns vested great judicial powers, as well as the general superintendance of the executive department, was met in the ancient, dark, Gothic room, adjoining to the House of Parliament in Edinburgh, when General Grahame entered and took his place amongst them at the council table.

"You have brought us a leash of game to-day, General," said a nobleman of high place amongst them. "Here is a craven to confess—a cock of the game to stand at bay—and what shall I call the third, General?"

"Without further metaphor, I will en-


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 these qualities must be." So that even under the Guilds there are to be considerable differences in the rates of the reward given to various kinds of workers. This admission is of course entirely sensible and encouraging for the future efficiency of the Guilds if ever they come into being. At the same time it opens the door to a good deal of possible friction and jealousy, seeing that the rates of pay will have to be decided by officers elected by those who are going to receive the payment. And further, is it not an abandonment of the whole ideal under which the labourer is supposed to receive the whole of what he produces? If "organization, invention, statistical aptitude or what not" are to be suitably rewarded, are not the Guilds, as private capitalists are alleged to do now, going to compel the worker to produce surplus value, which he will not be allowed to consume?

However, such is the robust belief of these writers in the perfection of the natures of everybody who belongs to a Guild, that they remark on page 148: "Nor need we shrink from the further conclusion that the appointment of a hierarchy involves a suitable form of graduated pay. . . . In this connection, we pin our faith to the democratic idea without reserve. We believe the workman is the shrewdest judge of


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166 his books, “The Law of Man,” Nachmanides writes of suffering and death. He offers an antidote to pessimism, for he boldly asserts that pain and suffering in themselves are “a service of God, leading man to ponder on his end and reflect about his destiny.” Nachmanides believed in the bodily resurrection, but held that the soul was in a special sense a direct emanation from God. He was not a philosopher strictly so-called; he was a mystic more than a thinker, one to whom God was an intuition, not a concept of reason.

The greatest work of Nachmanides was his “Commentary on the Pentateuch.” He reveals his whole character in it. In composing his work he had, he tells us, three motives, an intellectual, a theological, and an emotional motive. First, he would “satisfy the minds of students, and draw their heart out by a critical examination of the text.” His exposition is, indeed, based on true philology and on deep


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 good work and of the competent manager. Undistracted by irrelevant political notions, his mind centred upon the practical affairs of his trade, the workman may be trusted to elect to higher grades the best men available. In the appointment of their check-weighmen, for example, the miners almost never make a mistake. Doubtless injustices will from time to time be perpetrated; but they will be few compared with the million injustices done to-day to capable men who are habitually ignored in the interests of capitalist cadets." This pleasant trusting faith, which imagines that because workmen can elect capable check-weighmen, they will also be able, without any further education or experience, to choose the right people to manage the whole organization of industry, is a pleasing spectacle in these cynical, sceptical days, and one would be sorry to disturb it. But it must be observed that the higher rates of pay to be granted to this "hierarchy," and also to "inventive organizing capacity, statistical aptitude, or what not" will make a big hole in the whole of the produce. If, as quoted above, labour's emancipation can only become possible when it has absorbed every shilling of surplus value, its emancipation will still be remote, when all these highly paid


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 statisticians and hierarchs are exacting what will look very much like rent, as defined by our authors in the same passage. If the capitalistic manager's salary is only to be replaced by the Guild hierarch's higher pay, will the difference be really essential? Every one who has read Dumas remembers how Chicot the Jester induced Frère Gorenflot to eat a fowl on Friday by making him christen it a carp. But Gorenflot wanted to eat the fowl and was quite ready to be humbugged. Will that very shrewd person, the British wage-earner, be equally ready to be duped by a change of name, when he is asked to hand over "surplus value "to hierarchs instead of managers?

Messrs. Hobson-Orage admit frankly the likelihood of strife between the various Guilds. "We may expect," they say (page 228), "dissatisfaction among the weaker Guilds when the stronger from time to time impose their wills, that is, in the last resort, exercise their 'pull.' In what direction, then, can we reasonably anticipate dissatisfaction, followed by strenuous agitation for rectification? Primarily, we imagine in the value each Guild sets upon its own labour, which may be disputed by the other Guilds. In our chapter 'The Finance of the Guilds,' we remarked that in the earlier


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 treat your Grace to call him a person in whom I am specially interested," replied Claverhouse.

"And a whig into the bargain," said the nobleman, lolling out a tongue which was at all times too big for his mouth, and accommodating his coarse features to a sneer, to which they seemed to be familiar.

"Yes, please your Grace, a whig, as your Grace was in 1641," replied Claverhouse, with his usual appearance of imperturbable civility.

"He has you there, I think, my Lord Duke," said one of the Privy Counsellors. "Ay, ay," returned the Duke, laughing, "there's no speaking to him since Drumclog—but come bring in the prisoners—and do you, Mr Clerk, read the record."

The clerk read forth a bond, in which General Grahame of Claverhouse and Lord Evandale entered themselves securities, that Henry Morton, younger, of Milnwood, should go abroad and remain in foreign


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 stages the more highly-skilled industries would insist upon a higher value being attached to their labour than to the labour of the so-called 'unskilled' groups. . . . This struggle, too, will be waged inside the several Guilds as, for example, between the fitter and his labourer, both members of the same Guild, or the mason and his labourer, also members of another Guild. But the domestic arrangements of the Guild do not concern us here; it is when the Guilds, as such, come to grips with other Guilds to establish the general value of their respective work and functions that the main battle will be joined. Thus, agriculture is now poorly paid. . . . But the agricultural Guild" [as arranged by the writers in the imaginary group of Guilds which they have produced] "is numerically the strongest of them all. May we not then expect strong action by that Guild for a revaluation of agricultural work and products? . . . Will the claim for a higher valuation of agriculture, both in its actual products and as a supremely important element in our national life, be met by the other Guilds in a niggling or in a generous spirit? In this connection it is well to remember that even during the past decade, extremely acrimonious disputes have arisen between existing trade unions, notably as to


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 delimitation of work, and if such large questions were to be settled in the same spirit, it would prove of ill-omen to the future greatness of the Guilds. But the Guilds, as we have pictured them, are not the existing unions, but the unions plus the practical intellectuals, the labour and brains of each Guild naturally evolving a hierarchy to which large issues of industrial policy might with confidence be referred."

If the practical intellectuals are to include such exponents of Guild doctrine as Messrs. Cole and Hobson-Orage, the specimens which have already been quoted of their dialectical methods and their controversial geniality seem to promise that the world of the National Guilds will have a pleasant resemblance to Donnybrook Fair. Messrs. Reckitt and Bechhofer in their book already referred to dealt with the question of inter-Guild strife as follows (page 325). "A query often brought to confound National Guildsmen is this: What would happen to a National Guild that began to work wholly according to its own pleasure, without regard to the other Guilds and the rest of the community? We may reply, first, that this spirit would be as unnatural among the Guilds as it is natural nowadays with the present anti-communal capitalist system of industry;" [but


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 it may be observed that any anti-communal capitalist who nowadays worked wholly according to his pleasure without regard to the rest of the community would very soon be bankrupt, because the rest of the community would not buy his goods]. "Secondly, if it did arise in any Guild, this contempt for the rest of the community would be met by the concerted action of the other Guilds. . . . A Guild, however, that thought itself ill-used by its fellows would be able to signify its displeasure by the threat of a strike; but it is to be hoped that there will be sufficient machinery for the successful settlement of inter-Guild dealings that occasion for this would seldom arise."

But a still more serious source of inter-Guild friction is suggested by the latest book on the subject, The Guild State by G. R. Stirling Taylor, which appeared in the autumn of 1919. This writer actually suggests competition between the Guilds. This seems to be quite contrary to the doctrines of the earlier champions who, unless I have altogether misunderstood them, intended the Guilds to cover the whole of the industry concerned. "The Guild," said Messrs. Hobson-Orage on page 132, "means the regimentation into a single fellowship of all those who are employed in any given industry."


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Rh averaging 300 lbs. per man. The dogs, working five to a team, haul 5 to 6 cwt. and of course they travel much faster than either ponies or men.

In this way we transported a large quantity of miscellaneous stores; first about 3 tons of coal for present use, then 2½ tons of carbide, all the many stores, chimney and ventilators for the hut, all the biologists' gear—a big pile, the remainder of the physicists' gear and medical stores, and many old cases; in fact a general clear up of everything except the two heavy items of forage and fuel. Later in the day we made a start on the first of these, and got 7 tons ashore before ceasing work. We close with a good day to our credit, marred by an unfortunate incident—one of the dogs, a good puller, was seen to cough after a journey; he was evidently trying to bring something up—two minutes later he was dead. Nobody seems to know the reason, but a post-mortem is being held by Atkinson and I suppose the cause of death will be found. We can't afford to lose animals of any sort.

All the ponies except three have now brought loads from the ship. Oates thinks these three are too nervous to work over this slippery surface. However, he tried one of the hardest cases to-night, a very fine pony, and got him in successfully with a big load.

To-morrow we ought to be running some twelve or thirteen of these animals.

Griffith Taylor's bolted on three occasions, the first two times more or less due to his own fault, but the third owing to the stupidity of one of the sailors. Nevertheless a third occasion couldn't be overlooked by his messmates,


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 Mr. Cole told us (page 132) that "only an Industrial Union, embracing the whole personnel of an industry, can assume control over that industry." This seems to be an essential part of the whole scheme. But now comes Mr. Stirling Taylor and observes (page 95) that: "Surely there will be many advantages, if just a healthy competition—and not more than healthy, remember—can be maintained in a town between, for example, a—reasonable number of competing bakers' Guilds."

There certainly will be many advantages to the consumer, but this new element in the Guild State seems to upset the whole structure that has been built up by its former advocates. What becomes of the control of production and its product that Mr. Cole believes to be necessary to the worker if he is to be set free from his "degraded status," if the Guilds have to compete for the custom of the consumer by producing what he wants in competition? What becomes of the workers' right of choosing "whether they will make well or ill"? Under competition the consumer prefers things that are made well, if he is able to distinguish them. Once more we are left wondering what it all means.

Finally let us see how the Guildsmen pro-


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original than the Olympian Dialogues,—for their idea must be allowed to he borrowed from Homer, while the inclination to moralise upon the vanity of earthly riches, and honours, and beauty, and the work of that great leveller Death, is common enough,—these have perhaps been even more popular. An imitation in great measure themselves, they have found imitators amongst the moderns, in their turn, who have shown considerable ability. The "Dialogues of the Dead" of Fontenelle and of Lord Lyttelton still find readers, and these imitations have charmed many to whom the original was unknown in any other way than by name. The Dialogues of Fenelon, composed for the instruction of his pupil the Duke of Burgundy, were, again, an imitation of those of Fontenelle, but are somewhat more didactic, as we should expect, and less lively. But perhaps the most striking modern work for the


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 pose to deal with the capitalist, the man who owns the plant and takes the risk of productive failure. He is just to be relieved of his property, and Messrs. Hobson-Orage call attention to the great advantage of this plan over that of the State Socialists, whom they credit with the intention of buying him out. On page 179 of their book they set out the advantage in the form of an equation as follows:—

"Cost of production under State Socialism = raw material + standing charges + rent + interest + profits + increased wages. Cost of production under Guild Socialism = raw material + standing charges + pay."

And on page 240 they develop Mr. Cole's suggestion of "catastrophic action or general strike" in detail in the form of a dialogue between a Guild deputation and the Chairman and General Manager of a large industrial enterprise that divides £100,000 a year amongst its shareholders. The deputation admits that the company pays standard rates of wages, but says it has decided that the men shall no longer work on a wage basis. In the first place, the men now on the pay-rolls must continue there whether there is work for them or not. The Guild is going to "assume partner-


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 ship" in the business, supplying the labour and taking half the profits. In five years' time, it intends to take another slice of the profits. It asks whether the shareholders would rather have £50,000 or nothing? When the General Manager raises the question of the future supply of capital, the deputation airily observes: "Come to us and we will arrange it. You will find us as partners, always glad to co-operate," and ends the discussion, which goes on for some pages, by saying: "By all means call together your shareholders, but you, of course, understand that we are quite indifferent what they say or do. Unless our proposals are accepted in a month, we shall close down your works."

At the end of this passage the writers remark, with perhaps pardonable pride, that "Samuel Johnson always 'gave the Whig dogs the worst of it,' and perhaps in this discussion we have given the exploiters the worst of it." By the exploiters they presumably mean the Chairman and General Manager representing the owners of the factory. What the deputation practically says is that they mean to take from the owners of the factory the interest and profit to which they are entitled in return for its use in production. One wonders what would happen if the Chairman and General Manager


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 parts, until his Majesty's pleasure was further known in respect of the said Henry Morton's accession to the late rebellion, and that under penalty of life and limb to the said Henry Morton, and of ten thousand marks to each of his securities.

"Do you accept of the King's mercy upon these terms, Mr Morten?" said the Duke of Lauderdale, who presided in the council.

"I have no other choice, my Lord," replied Morton.

"Then subscribe your name in the record."

Morton did so without reply, conscious that, in the circumstances of his case, it was impossible for him to have escaped more easily. Macbriar, who was at the same instant brought to the foot of the council table, bound upon a chair, for his weakness prevented him from standing, beheld Morton in the act of what he accounted apostacy.

"He hath summed his defection by own-


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 were to answer, as they most probably would: "Very well, you are going to make terms on which it is impossible for our shareholders to receive any interest or dividends on their undertaking; we cannot accept these terms, and we will dispense with the services of those whom you represent until they are ready to work at the union rates which we have always paid." Would the capitalist be altogether helpless? It might not be safe to be quite certain that he would. On a later page (282) the writers ask: "Falling back upon their undoubted legal rights to the instruments of production and distribution, what could they (the profiteers) do?" But with astonishing inconsistency they suggest that: "In exchange for their present possession of land and machinery, the State might give them, as rough-and-ready justice, an equitable income either for a fixed period of years or for two generations." Then what becomes of that beautiful "equation" showing the advantage of Guild over State Socialism? And in any case, when the existing capitalist has been dealt with, the Guilds will have to provide fresh capital, and will have to pay for it. The capital goods—machinery, etc.—needed by the Guilds will have to be made by somebody who will have to be supported and sup-


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 plied with material out of "surplus value." And, if there is to be any progress, risks will have to be taken with experiments, and some one will have to pay for failures. Capital, as always, will have to be paid its wage—or receive its pay.

Such is the tissue of inconsistencies and difficulties that is involved by the system of National Guilds as so far expounded. The evident sincerity and earnestness of its advocates cannot blind us to the fact that their scheme has not yet been thought out in a workable shape, and that, as they themselves acknowledge, it might lead to a lowering of the workers' standard of comfort, while it is hard to see that they would gain any real increase of freedom. That it might also result in serious disputes and disagreements, both within and between the Guilds, is admitted by its advocates; and the temper in which they flout the work and efforts of the older Socialists and others who are trying to improve the lot of the wage-earners by other methods makes one doubt whether they have it in them to put forward a great and sound reform. Such work is not often done in such a spirit.


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putting the case for Capitalism in the foregoing chapters, I have by no means meant to argue that it is the best possible economic system, only that it has worked wonders, and can work still better wonders in the future and that we cannot be sure that any other system that has yet been suggested will do as well. I have tried to show that under it the capitalist—the man who owns the plant and material and takes the risk of enterprise—does not rob the wage-earner of "surplus value" created by the latter, because the surplus value is due to the existence of the plant, and is shared by the wage-earner through the far better standard of life that the equipment of industry has enabled him to secure. Without the plant, the labourer could only supply himself with a bare subsistence, if that. It is true that most of the plant has been made or put where it is wanted by the manual


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 effort of wage-earners, but this was only possible because wage-earners were paid to do so, under direction supplied by capitalists, by capitalists who thereby, instead of spending their incomes on immediate enjoyment, invested part of it, always with more or less risk, in furnishing industry with equipment for an everexpanding output, so creating surplus value not only for themselves, but for the whole nation, and for the whole economically civilized world.

By making this investment and taking this risk, and applying labour under expert direction to the task of providing industry with plant in the widest sense of the word, Capitalism has made an enormous increase in population possible, and has put control over the forces of Nature into the hands of active enterprising venturers who certainly might have made better use of it, but have this excuse, that they were bound, in their search for profit, to work to meet the demand of the average consumer, whose quaint foibles in the matter of demand have resulted in the production of a great deal of ugliness and rubbish. But in spite of all that the fastidious may urge, on artistic, moral and common-sense grounds, against the use that has been made under


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 Capitalism of the new powers which the Industrial Revolution has given to man, there is plenty to be said on the other side of the account. We have done things worth doing under Capitalism. Sir Leo Chiozza Money in an article in the Observer of November 23, 1919, told us that: "With coal we create an export surplus of manufactures; with that export surplus we purchase food and materials to feed our population and our factories, and thus obtain the means to create a further export surplus to import more food and materials. This process, continued during a period of five generations, changed the poor and backward agricultural Britain of 1750 into the comparatively wealthy State which found, at the opening of the nineteenth century, the means to fight Napoleon, and, a century later, the means to destroy German militarism."

It is only fair to Sir Leo to observe that he, being a convinced and earnest Socialist, doubtless believes that economic progress would have been much greater and better under some form of Collectivist management than it has been under Capitalism. And he may be right. But, as Aristotle says, "the fact is the starting line," and the fact is that these things were done under Capitalism, and that under it, as


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 shown on a previous page, many millions of people were born and lived a life that had a good deal of comfort and jollity, and a certain amount of real nobility mixed up in its queer salad-bowl, who never would have seen the light without the industrial development that was in fact worked out under Capitalism. Far from robbing anybody of surplus value, Capitalism is like a benevolent ancestor who, instead of consuming all the port that he could get—as some ancestors did—laid down an enormous cellar of it for the use of future generations. And every one who is now alive in this country, and millions abroad likewise, are now able to help themselves to bottles of the grand old vintage then laid down and now ready for us, crusted, fruity, full of ripe flavour and rich bouquet. For none of us could have been so well off, and many of us could not have been born at all, if Capitalism had not done this deed, and done it judiciously and well. We all thus drink of the bottles laid down by those who went before us, those of us who work, because our work could not have been so well rewarded if we had not been members of a productively efficient community, those who cannot, will not, or do not work,


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 because it would not have been possible for our needs to be provided as well as they are now. That some people have access to some of the bottles as a matter of legal right, is only because this privilege has been handed on to them by those who laid down the cellar. If we took their right away, there would be a few more bottles for the rest of us while the cellar lasted, but would the process of laying down for those who come after us be likely to continue on this voluntary basis? It would most probably have to be done by officials or Committees. Their efforts might appear at first sight to be cheaper than those of the private benefactor, who took a consideration for his forethought when he could earn it, but might cost the community dear in the long run if they laid down the wrong vintage or were too timid to try new brands.

Such is the debt that all of us owe to the capitalists of the past. But when we have taken off our hats to them and acknowledged it, we have to give our minds to reforming and improving the Capitalism of the present.

In our studies of the schemes that have been put forward for improving the economic system, we have found many aspirations that were highly desirable if they could be made into


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72 in the Babylonian cities Sura and Pumbeditha, enjoyed far more than local authority. The Jews of Persia were practically independent of external control. Their official heads were the Exilarchs, who reigned over the Jews as viceroys of the caliphs. The Gaonim were the religious heads of an emancipated community. The Exilarchs possessed a princely revenue, which they devoted in part to the schools over which the Gaonim presided. This position of authority, added to the world-wide repute of the two schools, gave the Gaonim an influence which extended beyond their own neighborhood. From all parts of the Jewish world their guidance was sought and their opinions solicited on a vast variety of subjects, mainly, but not exclusively, religious and literary. Amid the growing complications of ritual law, a desire was felt for terse prescriptions, clear-cut decisions, and rules of conduct. The imperfections of study outside of Persia,


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 practical facts, but did not seem likely to be carried out by the proposed reforms, or only at the cost of loss of efficiency in output. First among these comes the desire for economic freedom. Most of us will admit that freedom is the most precious jewel that we can gain, and that without a certain amount of it no one's mind and character can achieve real growth, any more than his legs can grow if they are encased in plaster of Paris. Economic freedom means to most of us freedom to work or not to work, or if we do work, freedom to work to please ourselves and not at the bidding of anybody else. In this sense it is not possible to the great majority of mankind because we all have to work unless we can induce somebody else to keep us alive, and the work that we do has to be pleasing to somebody in order to make him give us in return for it the money with which, by our choice of the goods that we buy, we exercise control over the work of others and make them turn out things that we want. In other words, we sacrifice freedom as producers in order to increase our freedom as consumers.

A few can induce others to keep them alive, and in some cases exceedingly comfortable, by the claims that they exercise as hereditary


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 ing the carnal power of the tyrant!" he exclaimed, with a deep groan—"A fallen star!—a fallen star!"

"Hold your peace, sir," said the Duke, "and keep your ain breath to cool your ain porridge—ye'll find them scalding hot, I promise you.—Call in the other fellow, who has some common sense. One sheep will leap the ditch when another goes first."

Cuddie was introduced unbound, but under the guard of two halberdiers, and placed beside Macbriar at the bottom of the table. The poor fellow cast a piteous look around him, in which were mingled awe, for the great men in whose presence he stood, and compassion for his fellow-sufferers, with no small fear of the personal consequences which impended over him. He made his clownish obeisances with a double portion of reverence, and then awaited the opening of the awful scene.

"Were you at the battle of Bothwell Brigg" was the first question which was thundered in his ears.


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 owners of the equipment of industry in the widest sense of the phrase, including land. A few others can do it by appealing to the community's sympathy owing to physical and other inability to work. Most of us have to work, and to please others by so doing. If we lived in a wilderness and worked only for ourselves, we should still have to work, but only to please ourselves. Our control of goods would thereby be very greatly lessened, and would economic freedom, so gained, be really good for us? Is it not better that we should be forced to co-operate in order to enjoy, and to secure a good life for ourselves by helping to provide what others want? Those of us who take this democratic view must be ready to be bludgeoned with examples of the great artist prostituting his brush to boil his pot, and of the poet who starves because an ignorant public does not want the sonnets that the Muses bid him sing. These are special cases of special gifts, and one cannot feel sure that the artist or the poet would fare better at the hands of a Socialist Treasury Committee or of an Academy appointed by the Guildsmen. But for the ordinary goods of life, there seems to be something pleasant and really "social" and sociable in this dependence on


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 the judgment of others on our work; and a restriction of economic freedom that makes everybody work to please others, is very similar to the restriction on social freedom, which only allows people to do as they please as long as they obey the laws of the community, and do not allow their liberty to be a nuisance to others and a restriction on theirs.

If the decision about ahat is to be produced, and whether it is well produced, is left to the producers, it seems unlikely that the goods turned out will maintain so high a standard as when they have to pass muster before the consumer before they can earn any reward. And yet such seems to be the ideal of economic freedom aimed at by some at least of the Guildsmen, for we saw that Mr. Cole maintained that the workers must be free "to choose whether they will make well or ill."

To this extent, then, it seems that economic freedom must be limited, if we are to secure efficiency in production and freedom for the consumer to choose what goods he will enjoy. And since, as has already been pointed out, we most of us produce only one, or only a fraction of only one, thing, and consume thousands of things, our freedom as consumers seems to be much more precious than our


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 freedom as makers, doers and growers of goods and services.

But when the need for this limitation is granted, there is a great range of economic freedom left, in respect of which Capitalism can contend that it confers at least as much as any other possible system that has yet been suggested.

With regard to the consumer's freedom, it beats State Socialism and Guild Socialism so hollow that they are hardly to be seen on the course. Under State Socialism, carried to its logical conclusion, the consumer's freedom, and the producer's likewise, does not even "Also Run." Bureaucrats will decide who is to produce what; and the consumer will take what is produced, on a rationing system with all its exasperating apparatus, or leave it. Mr. Cole paints too flattering a picture with his naughty but amusing jeer, when he says (Self-Government in Industry, page 122), "the greatest of all dangers is the 'Selfridge' State, so loudly heralded these twenty years by Mr. 'Callisthenes' Webb." Mr. Selfridge gives his customers plenty of choice, and with the help of the adroit Callisthenes invites them to come and choose. Mr. Sidney Webb, with scientific and kindly benevolence, would order our lives


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 for us much better than we could, but they would lose all their zest because they would no longer be ours.

Under Guild Socialism either, according to Mr. Cole, the producers are to have the choice whether they will "make well or ill," or according to others the interests of the consumers are to be represented by apparently elected bodies which will leave little chance to those with eccentric tastes, or according to Mr. Stirling Taylor there is to be inter-Guild competition, which will give the consumer a chance, but seems to wreck the whole Guild fabric, which appears to be frankly based on monopoly.

Under Capitalism, as long as there is free competition, the average consumer decides what is to be produced, and the wishes of minorities are readily met as long as their demand is great enough to stimulate production to meet them. But is not the consumer's freedom to some extent threatened under Capitalism by monopoly, or at least by attempts in its direction on the part of trusts, "combines," amalgamations, rings, and "gentlemen's agreements"? If Capitalism plays this game, it will simply weave for itself a rope with which it will be hanged, and rightly, as high as Haman.


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 Monopoly has stunk in English nostrils since the days of Elizabeth, and if Capitalism tries to impose it now, it is committing suicide and asking for State Socialism. It is true that under State Socialism monopoly would be more tyrannous than under private enterprise, because since the Government would itself be the monopolist, the helpless consumer would have no official stick to lay across the back of it. But if there is to be monopoly, it will be easy for Socialists to persuade the public that in the hands of the State the monopoly would create profits, not for a profiteering octopus, but for the general good. Already Mr. Sidney Webb has made the recent bank amalgamations, though they are far from having set up any real approach to monopoly, a text for an adroit and ingenious sermon on the need for State banking, in an article on "How to Prevent Banking Monopoly," in the Contemporary Review of July 1918.

In fact, if the movement in favour of nationalization triumphs and proceeds to its logical conclusion, the end of the system of private Capitalism, it will be an interesting inquiry for the economist of the future to consider, how much was done by private capitalists and the property owning classes to kill a system


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 which might, if more sensibly developed, have enjoyed a much longer life. The stupid financial policy of belligerent governments during the late war has given a great opportunity to the enemies of Capitalism by debauching the currency, pouring fortunes into the pockets of shareholders and adventurers through the consequent rise in prices, and so stirring up unrest and suspicions of "profiteering." Mr. Keynes, who develops this theme with brilliant lucidity in his book The Economic Consequences of the Peace, observes (page 222) that "perhaps it is historically true that no order of society ever perishes save by its own hand." But for this breach in the walls of Capitalism, private capitalists, as such, are not alone responsible; it was made rather by the politicians of their class whom the wealth that they created enabled to serve their country according to their lights, with results that are now plainly to be seen.

In other corners of the economic field, however, capitalists have themselves worked hard to weaken their own position. By continually resisting the claims of the wage-earners for higher wages on the ground that industry could not stand them, when subsequent experience proved that it could, they have


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 done much to embitter the mind of the workers, and to teach them to believe that they could only get what was their due from the State. By their action in the matter of piece-rates they have helped to increase the prejudice among the workers against being paid on this system, and so have done much to produce that deadly view, so fatal to efficient production, that the best workers should limit their pace to that of the average or of the worst.

It was no inherent wickedness that led them to make these mistakes. They were quite ordinary human beings doing their best according to their lights. But they looked to the interest of the moment, and their mental horizon was bounded by the date of their next balance sheet. If they had looked further ahead they would have seen that it would pay them well in the long run to pay, not the lowest wage at which they could get their work done, but the highest that their business could stand; and that if a man earned much at piece-work that was not a reason for cutting down the piece-rate, but for encouraging him to make more. They have been very conscious of the fact that they risk their money. Have they always remembered that some of the worst-paid wage-earners risk their lives?


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 Cuddie meditated a denial, but had sense enough, upon reflection, to discover that the truth would be too strong for him; so he replied with true Caledonian indirectness of response,

"I'll no say but it may be possible that I might hae been there."

"Answer directly, you knave—yes or no?—You know you were there."

"It's no for me to contradict your Lordship's grace's honour," said Cuddie.

"Once more, sir, were you there?—yes or no?" said the Duke, impatiently.

"Dear stir," again replied Cuddie, "how can ane mind preceesely where they hae been a' the days o' their life?"

"Speak out, you scoundrel," said General Dalzell, "or I'll dash your teeth out with my dudgeon-haft—Do you think we can stand here all day to be turning and dodging with you, like greyhounds after a hare?"

"Aweel, then," said Cuddie, "since


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 Again, there has been unnecessary reluctance on the part of the capitalist in publishing full and candid statements of the financial position of his business. The accounts issued by public companies often seem to be arranged to give as little information as possible. There is much excuse for this attitude owing to the desire to limit the power of possible competitors to pry into matters that it is more pleasant to conceal. On the other hand, it would be an immeasurable advantage if the workers in an industry could be shown more clearly how it is faring on the financial side, and if the problems that its managers have to deal with were put before them in a way that they can understand. By this system it is possible that very practical suggestions of great value might be made by the wage-earners. With regard to the control of the conditions under which they work, reform is now generally admitted to be due, but here again capitalist employers have been, in the past, much too ready to resent what they have regarded as interference with matters that concern them only.

To bring about improvement on these lines, no revolutionary change in human nature is required such as would be necessary for the smooth running of industry by State or Guild


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 Socialism. We should not all have to be suddenly fired by zeal to work for others with no consideration for ourselves. Capitalists would still be working, as they have to now, to earn profit for themselves by providing the needs of the community. They would only have to recognize, as the best of them do already, that to earn larger profits for the moment by paying their workers less than they can afford to pay is bad policy in the long run; bad for themselves, and bad for the community on whose prosperity and stability they depend. If they would only reflect that if they earn the hostility of consumers by attempts at monopoly, and of the wage-earners by an abuse of the strength that their wealth gives them, they are weaving a rope for their own economic necks, they would be learning a lesson that would be of great benefit to themselves and to everybody else.

Besides their attitude to those who work for them, capitalists have done much to undermine their own position in the eyes of detached observers by the use that they have made of the wealth that they have gained. Much of the academic Socialism that is rife among what are called the educated classes is due to the spectacle presented by the rich


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 bounder spending money in vulgar ostentation. All who earn or own wealth have to remember how much of it they owe to the existence of a busy and prosperous community as part of their raw material, and how little they could have done apart from that environment, and consequently how much of it has been earned for them by the community which has given them their chance. By bad spending they ask industry to produce bad stuff. By good spend ing on worthy public objects they might transform the appearance of most of the ugly and depressing towns in England, and give us an educational system that could really afford to grant every citizen that is born to us a chance of growing up into a good and healthy man or woman, fully developed in mind and body. Here perhaps we are demanding too great and rapid a change of outlook. But it is surely not too much to hope that the capitalist may learn that, when he wastes money on luxury, he not only exasperates public opinion, but raises the price of necessaries, and so emphasizes the inequalities which are so dangerous to the social stability on which his existence depends.


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 These inequalities would be lessened rapidly if the attitude of capitalist employers towards those who worked for them were modified as suggested above. But we want to see them attacked at the other end at the same time, by the wage-earners recognizing that Capitalism is not an evil monster that robs them, but a system that has improved their lot and given life to millions who could not have been born without the industrial development that has taken place under it. Owing to the shortsightedness of the capitalist employer, they have had to fight hard for the improvement gained, but if they want to emancipate themselves from dependence on him, is it not easier and safer to do so by becoming capitalists themselves, and providing for themselves the management, organization and plant without which labour is powerless to produce?

To this end again no great revolution in human nature is needed, but only a development of a process which has already in the Co-operative Movement produced astonishing results. The War Savings Campaign has taught millions who never saved money before to save it in order to save their country when threatened by a foreign enemy. All that is


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 needed is that this process should be continued to save the country from the internal enemy that sets class against class. We want a financial organization by which wage-earners' savings, that now go into Government securities, can go into industry without having to face the risk that is attached to investments in any particular industry or company. This is a problem that financial ingenuity should surely be able to solve. The workers have already shown that they can become capitalists, but what is wanted is that more of them, and ultimately all of them, should be capitalists. Then, if the wealthy continue to perceive in a widening circle that it is not good for their younglings to bring them up to idleness, we shall begin to be within sight of a state of things in which every worker is a capitalist and every capitalist a worker.

In the meantime improvements in education should give to all a better chance of material success in life, and open the chance of a career to all who have the necessary gifts of courage, honesty, initiative and readiness to take responsibility. Though, owing to the weaknesses of Capitalism, baser qualities too often earn big rewards, these are the gifts that most surely


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Rh idea of which we are indebted to the Greek satirist is the 'Imaginary Conversations' of Walter Savage Landor.

Some three or four of the most striking of this series must content our readers here. The following, although it does not stand first in the common order of arrangement, seems to form the best introduction to the series.

Charon. Now listen to me, good people—I'll tell you how it is. The boat is but small, as you see, and somewhat rotten and leaky withal: and if the weight gets to one side, over we go: and here you are crowding in all at once, and with lots of luggage, every one of you. If you come on board here with all that lumber, I suspect you'll repent of it afterwards—especially those who can't swim.

Mercury. What's best for us to do then, to get safe across?

Cha. I'll tell you. You must all strip before you get in, and leave all those encumbrances on shore: and even then the boat will scarce hold you all. And you take care, Mercury, that no soul is admitted that is not in light marching order, and who has not left all his encumbrances, as I say, behind. Just stand at the gangway and overhaul them, and don't let them get in till they've stripped.

Merc. Quite right; I'll see to it.—Now, who comes first here?

Menippus. I—Menippus. Look—I've pitched my


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 bring success under it, and they are also the qualities that makea great nation. With these qualities fully developed and given free play, we might produce a country in which all would be competing vigorously in order to supply the needs of the consumer, and, wealth being well distributed, great profits would only be earned by those who served the whole community best. Great profits when earned would be spent sparingly on personal enjoyment, lavishly on worthy public objects, or put back into industry, thereby quickening production and increasing the demand for labour, and material success would be the prize of energy, initiative and courage, wherever found, and so would stimulate the best powers of active, bold and enterprising men and women. Such a system is surely more attractive to those who love freedom than that of State Socialism under bureaucratic control, or Guild Socialism based on monopoly and a society grouped according to function. It would stimulate output to a degree that we can hardly now conceive, and having solved the problem of the supply and distribution of material goods would enable those who lived under it to address themselves to the task of building up a real civilization,


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 and producing a world that should be not only rich, but also beautiful and noble, full of wise and beautiful and noble men and women, competing and co-operating for the common good.


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Rh attained fame similar to that which Athens and Alexandria had once reached. In Moorish Spain, there was room both for earnest piety and the sensuous delights of music and art; and the keen exercise of the intellect in science or philosophy did not debar the possession of practical statesmanship and skill in affairs. In the service of the caliphs were politicians who were also doctors, poets, philosophers, men of science. Possession of culture was, indeed, a sure credential for employment by the state. It was to Moorish Spain that the centre of Judaism shifted after the death of Saadiah. It was in Spain that the finest fruit of Jewish literature in the post-Biblical period grew. Here the Jewish genius expanded beneath the sunshine of Moorish culture. To Moses, the son of Chanoch, an envoy from Babylonia, belongs the honor of founding a new school in Cordova. In this he had the support of the scholar-statesman Chasdai, the first of a long line


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96 ing. But he might safely endeavor to prove, independently of revelation, the truths which revelation had given. Faith, said Saadiah again, is the soul’s absorption of the essence of a truth, which thus becomes part of itself, and will be the motive of conduct whenever the occasion arises. Thus Saadiah identified reason with faith. He ridiculed the fear that philosophy leads to scepticism. You might as well, he argued, identify astronomy with superstition, because some deluded people believe that an eclipse of the moon is caused by a dragon’s making a meal of it.

For the last few years of his life Saadiah was reinstated in the Gaonate at Sura. The school enjoyed a new lease of fame under the brilliant direction of the author of the great work just described. After his death the inevitable decay made itself felt. Under the Moorish caliphs, Spain had become a centre of Arabic science, art, and poetry. In the tenth century, Cordova


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title: The Case for Capitalism


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title: The Case for Capitalism/Chapter 3


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title: The Case for Capitalism/Chapter 4


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title: The Case for Capitalism/Chapter 5


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title: The Case for Capitalism/Chapter 6


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Rh age at the time. He settled in Palestine, where he died in about 1270, amid a band of devoted friends and disciples, who did not, however, reconcile him to the separation from his Spanish home. “I left my family,” he wrote, “I forsook my house. There, with my sons and daughters, the sweet, dear children whom I brought up on my knees, I left also my soul. My heart and my eyes will dwell with them forever.”

The Halachic, or Talmudical, works of Nachmanides have already been mentioned. His homiletical, or exegetical, writings are of more literary importance. In “The Sacred Letter” he contended that man’s earthly nature is divine no less than his soul, and he vindicates the “flesh” from the attacks made on human character by certain forms of Christianity. The body, according to Nachmanides, is, with all its functions, the work of God, and therefore perfect. “It is only sin and neglect that disfigure God’s creatures.” In another of


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Rh again, made it essential to apply to the Gaonim for authoritative expositions of difficult passages in the Bible and the Talmud. To all such enquiries the Gaonim sent responses in the form of letters, sometimes addressed to individual correspondents, sometimes to communities or groups of communities. These Letters and other compilations containing Halachic (or practical) decisions were afterwards collected into treatises, such as the “Great Rules” (Halachoth Gedoloth), originally compiled in the eighth century, but subsequently re-edited. Mostly, however, the Letters were left in loose form, and were collected in much later times.

The Letters of the Gaonim have little pretence to literary form. They are the earliest specimens of what became a very characteristic branch of Jewish literature. “Questions and Answers” (Shāaloth u-Teshuboth) abound in later times in all Jewish circles, and there is no real parallel


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 . state of suspense, tike Mahomet’s coffin, midway between hope and fear, and he will then be ever a true and devoted worshipper at their shrine.

It was but a short period after the acceptance by Florence of Moulton’s suit, that a change unheeded at first, seemed gradually coming over his conduct; until it at length became so remarkable as to contrast somewhat strangely with the previous ardent and devoted fondness of his manner toward her. Still he remained the lover—attentive and constant; but, oh! how altered in tone and appearance! From the anxious watcher of her smiles—the humble suppliant after favors at her adored hand—the willing and devoted slave of her most extravagant pleasure; he became, as it were, suddenly transformed into the arbiter of her wishes and desires; and, under covert pretences and measures, sought to influence and govern the hitherto artless frankness of her actions. He wished to control the most true and enchanting of her qualities—the very ingenuousness of manner which aided to the sweetness and amiability of her disposition, but from the first led him on to his success. He was also avaricious of her every smile and blandishment, but miser-like, wished them hoarded; while he seemed to have forgotten the lively relish that he once felt for her society and fascinations. Like the “dog in the manger,” though indifferent himself, he grudged their enjoyment by others, and would fain have wished her to become, in a degree, even an unsocial being to all save himself alone.

Florence could hardly believe the reality of this strange metamorphose at first; but, gradually assuming a more decided character, it became too mortifying and convincingly apparent. She was deeply grieved—not so much, however, at its vexatious aspect, as by the inferences plainly deducible therefrom in regard to future prospects. Yet woman-like, she ever strove to balance the better attributes of his nature against his faults, that thus they might appear to lose much of their real deformity; and even when the latter predominated in the scales, she endeavored to supply the deficit through the resources of much enduring charity, and by imagining those virtues which he might hereafter evince, when the charms and enjoyments of the domestic circle had thrown their enchantments over his heart.

Still these things could not but sink deep into her heart, and what wonder if they served to weaken and wean from him the fervor of her affections. She felt the sad reality of this change, although she evinced it not. Her joys were clouded and interrupted, and ber fond, bright hopes began to hesitate and tremble for their safety. The devotedness with which she loved him only caused her to feel the unkindness of his cold and imperious manner the more keenly; even while she strove to excuse it, and weigh such with the love she knew he really cherished for her, in despite of the fault of his actions—of which she fondly hoped he would ere long become sensible and repentant.

And thus was passed an interval which should have been a season of perfect happiness—the green spring of requited affections. Sorrow lowered upon the sensitive heart of the hitherto gladsome maiden, and chilled all its most joyous aspirations. If such was the spring, what a sad promise did it hold forth of coming seasons! If such was Moulton’s conduct as a lover, what might it be as a husband, when she should remain irrevocably in his power—the unresisting and bonded slave of his caprice! She needed but little assistance to resolve this question, for marriage is ever more intolerable than Moorish slavery, where the husband is disposed to enact the tyrant. And truly she had reason to congratulate herself that such was not yet her situation—that she still possessed the power to withdraw from so unpromising an alliance; or, at least, to exercise prudence and discretion with regard to future movements.

With all her grievances, however, she could not overcome the dread she felt of being thought fickle in ber character. The reproach of inconstancy and faithlessness is held up to timid women to frighten them into submission, and, however they may have been deceived in their first choice, few have the hardihood to venture an exchange, even where there appears sufficient evidence that such might revert to their unbounded profit.

"Man to man so oft unjust is always so to woman!” and even in affairs of the heart, where she is worshipped as the sole and presiding deity, her wishes are scorned and contemned, her feelings trifled with and injured, and her rights and privileges basely trampled upon, while every means of redress are withheld from her power, and she is of necessity compelled to submission.

True, loving, and devoted woman! Would that man might fully appreciate thee as thou art! He would then learn to estimate his own poor worth by the favor found in thy approving eyes, and consider such as the standard of praiseworthy ambition. But it is written that the fool worketh his own evil, and Moulton at length began to realize the truth of the proverb.

It is the last drop which causes the full cap to run over, and it is the last act of oppression which arouses resistance, and incites rebellion against long and submissively endured grievances. At least, it seems thus to the thoughtless and superficial observer, for that which went before is less prominently revealed until the crisis is decided. Therefore we describe more minutely the event which induced Florence to throw off the chain that bound her, or rather to improve the freedom tauntingly given her by the circumstance of Moulton’s breaking the tie himself, in the haughty supposition that like a long imprisoned bird she would return again to its bondage.

They attended an assembly a few evenings before

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74 to them in any other literature. More will be said later on as to these curious works. So far as the Gaonic period is concerned, the characteristics of these thousands of letters are lucidity of thought and terseness of expression. The Gaonim never waste a word. They are rarely overbearing in manner, but mostly use a tone which is persuasive rather than disciplinary. The Gaonim were, in this real sense, therefore, princes of letter-writing. Moreover, though their Letters deal almost entirely with contemporary affairs, they now constitute as fresh and vivid reading as when first penned. Subjected to the severe test of time, the Letters of the Gaonim emerge triumphant.

 * Graetz.—III, 4-8.
 * Steinschneider.—Jewish Literature, p. 25.


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 "Now I began to reproach myself for having plunged into the gulph of destruction not only myself, but also him who had been entrusted to my care. The apprehension of being famished in that infernal abode, thrilled my soul with horror, and black despair; at first I heard the Baron and the Lieutenant still groping about, neither of them uttered a word; the hollow sound of their footsteps re-echoed horribly through the vault—at length the sound of the Baron's footsteps died away at a distance, and only one of my companions in destruction remained with me."

"Where are you?" exclaimed the Lieutenant.

"Here I am," replied I, "but where is the Baron?"

"The Lieutenant called him, and I did the same, but we received no answer: At once a sudden hollow noise struck our ears, and at the same time a faint glimmering of


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 light darted from a remote corner of our dungeon: I started up, half frantic with joy, and we pursued the gladdening ray of light; it seemed to come from an opening in the wall. No words can express the rapture we felt when we beheld one of the iron doors half open; we went through it with hasty steps and entered a long vaulted passage: A faint dawn of light hailed our joyful looks at a great distance, from below. We descended declivity, the farther we went the more the light increased, at length we reached the end of the avenue, and perceived some steps leading into a spacious apartment, at the entrance of which some boards on the floor had given way: We descended the steps, and, who can paint the horror which rushed upon us, when we beheld the Baron lying lifeless in the deep vault, upon some mouldering straw? I leaped down without a moment's hesitation, the Lieutenant did the same, and now we began to shake the Baron 'till we at length perceived signs of returning life. We continued our endeavours to recall his senses, he breath-