“And the men of labour spent their strength in daily struggling for breath to maintain the vital strength they laboured with. So living in a daily circulation of sorrow, living but to work, and working but to live, as if daily bread were the only end of a wearisome life, and a wearisome life the only occasion of daily bread.”—Daniel Defoe.

“And perfect the day shall be, when it is of all men understood that the beauty of holiness must be in labour as well as in rest. Nay! more, if it may be, in labour; in our strength rather than in our weakness; and in the choice of what we shall work for through the six days and may know to be good at their evening time, than in the choice of what we pray for on the seventh, of reward and repose. With the multitude that keep holiday we may perhaps sometimes vainly have gone up to the House of the Lord and vainly there have asked for what we fancied would be mercy; but for the few who labour as their Lord would have them, the mercy needs no seeking, and their wide home no hallowing. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow them all the days of their life, and they shall dwell in the House of the Lord for ever.”—John Ruskin.

THE clue to the approaching change in the social order is to be found in the mind of organised labour. What organised labour is resolved to achieve, that it will achieve soon or late. Hitherto we have been concerned in these pages with an enquiry, more or less speculative, into the conditions and measures required for a wholesome social evolution. How far does the present tendency of organised labour correspond with the general lines of progress which our enquiry has so far constrained us to define? It will not be necessary, in order to answer this question, to survey the whole field of labour policy. For our present purpose we may neglect on the one hand the conservative element in the labour movement, and the extreme revolutionary element on the other. This does not imply a judgment on either; it simply means that we shall reach a safer judgment upon the direction in which labour is minded to go by considering the central mass of the movement; and of this central mass it may be affirmed with some assurance that its best mind has received a more coherent and detailed interpretation in Great Britain than elsewhere. We shall, therefore, consider the general tendency of the progressive elements in the British Labour Movement. It will not be necessary to raise the question of ways and means at this point. It is a question upon which strong views are held on both sides—whether labour is to attain its goal by political or industrial action, by gradual approach or by some catastrophic method such as the general strike. But the question of method does not arise at this point; our present object is to examine so far as we may the goal which organised labour is pursuing.

I

The Trade Union movement originated in the necessity to provide some remedy for “the helplessness in which since the industrial revolution, the individual workman stood in relation to the capitalist employer and still more in relation to the joint-stock company and the national combine or trust.” In this initial stage it was governed by what Mr. Sidney Webb has called the “Doctrine of Vested Interests,” and it was chiefly concerned with securing those concessions and safe-guards which constitute the “Trade Union Conditions” to the suspension of which British Labour consented for the period of the war. These conditions affected the rate of wages, the length of working day, overtime, night work, Sunday duty, mealtimes, holidays, and included a countless multitude of details affecting processes, machines, the employment of boys and girls, the limitation of output, and other related subjects—the whole being an inconceivably intricate patchwork of concessions and advantages gained as the result of innumerable local skirmishes and negotiations. The policy at this stage may be properly described as one of “nibbling” at the enemies’ lines, of raiding his trenches as opportunity offered or need required; and it is a commonplace what large and substantial advantages these operations have yielded to the workers as a whole, whether unionists or not. But it was not possible that these piece-meal tactics should continue to be the chief weapon of a growing, highly organised movement which was gaining a kind of self-consciousness and a common mind; and gradually out of the experience of the Unions grew the “Doctrine of the Common Rule.” The main emphasis has now shifted from the local and sectional problem to that of establishing and maintaining a Standard Rate of Wages and a normal Working Day. This change is naturally marked by the appearance of a large scale strategy in place of the local and occasional tactics of the earlier stage; and the earlier type of labour leader is rapidly disappearing in favour of persons who are able to bring some gifts of statesmanship to the problems of labour. This is not to say that the earlier doctrine has been abandoned; rather it has been supplemented and overshadowed by the new orientation.

But a situation has recently arisen which will probably bring about the permanent and general supremacy of the Common Rule doctrine. The urgencies of war-production made it desirable and necessary that the achievements of the earlier unionism should be suspended; and all the intricate machinery of safeguards and restrictions was willingly laid on one side for the period of the war. But it is now evident that even with the best will in the world, this restoration, as it was originally guaranteed, has become impracticable. Events in industry have moved so rapidly that it is impossible to retrace our steps to the ante-bellum period and to pick up the lines of life where we dropped them in 1914. At first sight it would appear that this result proved that the whole achievement of the earlier union activity had been of a peculiarly fragile and slender kind. Yet, despite this circumstance, the British Trade Unions have grown considerably during the war, this growth being doubtless due to the increasing sense that only a strong corporate movement of the workers will be able to establish for them the necessary conditions of a secure and independent life, and in particular such improvements in their position, in respect of wages and other matters, as they have been able to gain during the war. It now seems likely that the outcome of the situation created by the impossibility of restoring the status quo ante, and the increase of Trade Union strength, will be the general acceptance of the Doctrine of the Common Rule and a programme based upon it; and the demand for the Restoration of Trade Union Conditions may take the form of a demand for certain general standards of life and labour. Already, it is fairly evident that the least that labour will demand will be what Mr. Sidney Webb calls “the New Industrial Charter” in which there are five articles: (i.) the prevention of unemployment; (ii.) the maintenance of standard rates of wages; (iii.) a “constitution” for factory and industry, i.e. the introduction of a measure of democratic control over the conditions of work; (iv.) no limitation of output; (v.) freedom for every worker.^[15] The “charter” as it stands, represents a minimum demand; it certainly does not run to revolutionary excess and contemplates no organic change in the existing framework of the industrial order. With its probable economic effects we are not now concerned, but it is important to notice the emphasis which it lays upon the standing of the worker. The charter aims to give him security against unemployment, a share in the control of the conditions under which he works, and freedom from the autocratic dictation of employer or foreman, and from the coercion of necessity. Even this moderate measure would undoubtedly bring a great accession of independence to the ordinary worker. Further, this charter applies to all workers, not to unionists alone; for once the Standard Rate and the Normal Day are conceded, the old invidious necessity of making war upon non-unionists disappears; and with it, to the great good of all concerned, the demoralising custom of imposing restrictions upon output.

II

This “charter” will not be granted without a struggle. The greed and amour propre of some employers, and the stupidity of others, will interpose great obstacles to its institution. The great growing strength of organised labour, however, guarantees a comparatively early capitulation of the intransigent employers.^[16] But it would be a mistake to suppose that this is all that is implied in the present temper of labour. A good deal of what labour is looking to has not yet reached the stage of articulation, but it is impossible to misapprehend the general direction in which it is moving. The socialist propaganda, even if it has not always been as prolific of conversions as its promoters desired, has been a singularly potent instrument of education, and if the workers as a whole have not accepted the conclusions of the socialist, it is most certain that they have been profoundly moved by his premises. Probably more than any other influence it has stimulated the spirit of revolt against a permanent division of society by a line of economic privilege; and it has encouraged a very real insurgency against the idea, so comforting to the fortunate classes, that it is the duty of all persons to be content in that station of life into which Providence has been pleased to call them. While the rich believed that their duty to their less fortunate neighbours was an affair of charity, the Socialist had taught the poor to cry for justice. The chief achievement of the Socialist movement up to this time lies less in the acceptance of its doctrines than in the new sense of right which it has succeeded in awakening, even in many to whom the very term socialism still represents a dangerous and forbidding spectre. And it is this sense of right, the refusal to accept as permanent and just a state of exploitation, with the demand for economic freedom and independence, which is working as an irresistible leaven in the mind of the worker-mass of our time; often indeed, inarticulately enough, but in the minds of the better educated and most thoughtful workers, beginning to express itself in specific requirements which far outstrip Mr. Sidney Webb’s conservative interpretation of the present need.

The Socialism popularly advocated during the last half-century, is, however, not likely to capture the working-class of to-day. The movement for the nationalisation of the means of production and distribution—especially of the primary necessities of life—has indeed gained strength during the war; and the public ownership doctrine of orthodox socialism is in no danger of being discarded, though it may be modified in the extent of its application. But the orthodox socialist plan of vesting economic and industrial control in the state will not survive the war. The modern doctrine of the state reached its apogee during the war; it is already in process of rapid discredit. This is chiefly due to the revelation of the logic of state-absolutism, which the German performance in the war has yielded; and we are likely to witness a strong reaction from the doctrine of the sovereign omni-competent state in the coming generation. Moreover, in England the working of the Munitions Act has proved that the state may be as harsh and troublesome an employer as a private individual or a corporation; and the workers are not minded to emancipate themselves from the plutocracy to hand themselves over to a bureaucracy.

But how is public ownership to be made practicable without slate control? The experiences of war-time have revealed a possible solution of the difficulty. The Garton Foundation and the Whitley Committee, the former a private, the latter a parliamentary body, and neither committed to “labour” views, have been led by the study of industrial conditions in war-time to advocate introduction of democratic control into industry, and experiments in democratic control which have been made, have plainly demonstrated its practicability and its economic value. In the woollen trades that centre upon Bradford, in Yorkshire, various troubles interfered with the output of cloth. Early in 1916 the War Office requisitioned the output of the factories for the production of khaki, blankets, and other war-material; and a little later the Government purchased all the available wool on the market. The distribution of this wool to the factories was left by the Army Contracts Department to a Board of Control which it established for the whole industry. “The allocation,” says a recent account of the matter, “is carried out by means of a series of rationing committees. There are district rationing committees of spinners, of manufacturers, and a joint rationing committee on which the Trade Unions are represented. These committees ascertain all the facts about an individual firm’s consumption of wool, and the kind and quality of machinery that has been used. From these data the rations are arranged for the several mills of the district, while the Government committee settles the rations for the several districts. It is an extraordinarily interesting example of an industry regulating its life on a principle of equity instead of leaving the fortune of different mills and the fortunes of thousands of workmen’s homes to the blind scramble of the market.” It is of interest further to observe concerning this experiment that when the Government requisitioned the mills, it established a method of payment which eliminated profit-making, and the spinner and the manufacturer became virtually government servants. This is worth remembering when it is urged that the incentive of profit is essential to industrial development, especially in view of the conspicuous success of the experiment. More to our immediate point, however, is that this is a definite experiment in democratic control, for the organisation in which the ultimate control of the woollen industry was vested is composed of thirty-three members, eleven each being appointed by the Government, the Employers’ Associations, and by the Trade Unions.

The experiment in the woollen trades goes farther than the measure of democratic control suggested by Mr. Sidney Webb in his charter. For he contemplates no more than a democratic control of the actual conditions of work, while the control of raw material is vested in the Board of Control of the woollen industries. Mr. Webb’s suggestion is for “workshop committees or shop stewards” in every establishment having more than twenty operators, to whom the employer should be required to communicate at least one week prior to their adoption any proposed new rules, and also any proposed changes in wage-rates, piece-work prices, allowances, deductions, hours of labour, meal-times, methods of working and conditions affecting the comfort of the workshop.^[17] Mr. Webb himself would probably like a good deal more than this; but in his brochure, he frankly writes as one who believes that “the most hopeful evolution of society ... lies always in making the best rather than the worst out of what we find at the moment to hand.” But in point of fact, very considerable extensions of the principle are already being canvassed; and it is unlikely that organised labour will be long content with the timid bid for a share of industrial control which Mr. Webb’s proposal represents. It is symptomatic of the present tendency that in the Building Trades a movement initiated by Mr. Malcolm Sparkes, a London Master Builder, looking toward the formation of an Industrial Parliament for the building trades, has already been the subject of serious discussion both by the employers’ associations, and the trade unions concerned. Mr. Sparkes suggests that the Parliament should be composed of twenty members appointed by the National Association Building Trades Council, and twenty appointed by the Federation of Building Trades Employers, and that it should meet regularly for constructive, and not at all for arbitral or conciliatory purposes. To this parliament would be remitted such matters as the regularisation of wages, unemployment, technical training and apprenticeship, publicity, and the investigation of possible lines of trade improvement. But obviously such a parliament as Mr. Sparkes suggests could have vitality and authority only as it stood at the top of a hierarchy of analogous bodies all the way up, through provincial and district councils, from the committee of the single shop.

The principle of democratic control in industry has come to stay; together with the doctrine of public ownership it will probably fix the accepted social policy of progressive labour. Already, indeed, this combination is to be found in the British Labour Party’s memorandum on “Labour and the Social Order.” The Party “demands the progressive elimination from the control of industry of the private capitalist, individual or joint-stock.” It stands “unhesitatingly for the national ownership and administration of the Railways and Canals, and their union, along with Harbours and Roads, and the Posts and Telegraphs ... in a united national service of Communication and Transport, to be worked, unhampered by capitalist, private and purely local interests, and with a steadily increasing participation of the organised workers in the management, both central and local, exclusively for the common good.” And again, the Party “demands the immediate nationalisation of mines, the extraction of coal and iron being worked as a public service, with a steadily increasing participation in the management, both central and local, of the various grades of persons employed.” It is no exaggeration to say that the principle of democratic control in industry, especially under the conditions within which the British Labour Party contemplates it, carries with it an entire change in the status of the worker. For when we remember that with democratic control in industry, the British Labour Party demands a universal application of the policy “of the National Minimum, affording complete security against destitution, in sickness and in health, in good times and bad alike, to every member of the community of whatever age or sex,” it is evident that we have the two requirements of that necessary revolution in the worker’s standing which is the corner-stone of a worthy social order. The worker is no longer dependent, a pawn in the game of production, an employed wage-earner, a “hand;” he has become a partner, possessing both the freedom and the responsibility of partnership. And it is no less evident that a great stride has been taken in the direction of separating work from the means of subsistence and abolishing “wagery.”

III

There can be little doubt that the principle of public ownership with democratic control has received a great impulse from the able advocacy of what has come to be known as Guild-Socialism. The work guild in this connection is something more than a reminiscence of the mediÆval institution; the present movement has quite definite affinities with its historical precursor, notably in the principle of combining all the members of a craft in co-operation. But the “national” guild goes beyond its forbear in two respects—in the fact of being national where the older institution was local, and in the account it necessarily takes of the more complex and specialised character of modern industry. “A national guild,” says Mr. S. G. Hobson, “is a combination of all the labour of every kind, administrative, executive, productive, in any particular industry. It includes those who work with their brains and those who contribute labour power. Administration, skilled and unskilled labour—every one who can work—are all entitled to membership.” This body of people will lease from the community the right and the means to carry on the industry with which it is concerned, always providing that it shall be under conditions which safeguard the interests of all the people in respect of the products of the industry.

In the eyes of the guildsman, the “original sin” of the existing industrial system is production for profit. In his Guild Principles in Peace and War, Mr. S. G. Hobson puts side by side (inter alia) the following figures, (the particular year to which they belong is not given):

Here are revealed two facts of great interest. The first is that in railway construction, which is chiefly for need and use, the disparity between the average output and the average wage per person is only four pounds, whereas the iron and steel industries, where production is for profit, the disparity is as high as fifty-one pounds. Railway construction represents output in locomotives, rolling-stock and so forth which the railway companies make for their own use; whereas the products of the iron and steel industries are destined for the market. Where product is for profit, the excess of average output over the average wage is more than twelve times as great as where the production is for use. This is connected with the fact that the iron and steel industries are chiefly concerned with the provision of dividends, whereas in railway construction there is no such direct necessity.

The second fact of importance is that in both cases the average wage is the same. This is the result of two circumstances—first, the commodity-theory of labour, according to which labour-power is regarded as a measureable marketable affair, subject to the law of supply and demand and separate from the personality of the worker; and second, that reserve of labour commonly called unemployment, the existence of which tends to moderate the fluctuations of the labour market. It is in the interests of capital that there should be a permanent margin of unemployment in order that the price of labour should not become excessive at any time by reason of its scarcity.

In the past, the maintenance of the unemployed was, so far as their own members were affected, assumed altogether by the Trade Unions; but by the provisions of the National Insurance Act this has partly been laid upon the employer and upon the community as a whole. But, says the guildsman, since the existence of a reserve of labour seems under present conditions inseparable from the conduct of the industry; and since further, it is impossible to secure that under no conditions there will not be some margin of unemployment, the charge for the maintenance of the reserve of labour should be made to fall on the industry itself. This, however, immediately destroys the commodity-theory of labour. Under such an arrangement, the worker will be regarded not as a potential vendor of so much labour-power, subject to the law of supply and demand, and liable to lose his subsistence and that of his family by the chances of the market, but as a regular member of a society which provides a financial reserve for the purpose of maintaining him when he falls into the labour reserve. So once more, we see the status of the worker transformed. He ceases to be a “hand,” and becomes a partner.

The “national guild” is really no more than the systematic development of this idea of partnership; and because it insists that this partnership shall be real and not fictitious, it rejects all schemes of democratic control in industry which (like the Garton Foundation and the Whitley schemes) still retain the commodity-theory of labour, and all schemes of profit-sharing which is the voluntary bounty of the employer. The guildsman holds that the worker has a direct interest in the thing produced apart from his hire, and that his contribution in the way of labour entitles him to a partnership in the industry as real as that of his employer, and much more real than that of the investor who does no more than rake in his dividends. To this principle of partnership, there is, of course, no logical end but the elimination of the private employer, whether an individual or a company, and the combination of the administrative, executive and productive labour in a given industry in some such way as is contemplated in the “national guild.”

Under these conditions, production for profit will be subordinated increasingly to production for need and use. Industry will be organised no longer in the interests of capital, but in those of the community; and the profits that may accrue will go to the community. The conduct of the industry will be vested in a hierarchy of representative bodies which will consist of persons chosen to act on behalf of the various departments of production and administration; and these bodies will range all the way up from the small shop council to the national council. The guildsmen extend their vision further to a combination of national councils, which will become the economic parliament of the nation, empowered to handle its commercial and industrial affairs and leaving the legislature to occupy itself with those aspects of public life such as education, health, art, local government and so forth which are now so grievously neglected and subordinated to the exigencies of the commercial life of the nation.^[18]

That roughly is the guild theory. Its great advantage is that while it eliminates competitive profit-making, it also avoids through its emphasis upon democratic control, the danger of excessive centralisation and bureaucratic control inherent in state socialism. On the other hand it does not fall into the syndicalist error of antagonism to the state. It is not without interest to point out here (in anticipation of later discussion) that the national guild reflects on the economic side the current tendency in political philosophy towards a doctrine of the state which regards it as multi-cellular in nature, and would make it federalistic in practice, in contrast with the emphasis of the last generation upon its unitary and absolutist character. It would appear that sovereignty is destined to be distributed among a series of democratic functional controls.

The pressure of events has already validated many of the contentions of the guildsman. We have seen how in the case of the woollen industries the Government has initiated the practice of treating employers as its own paid servants, has recognised the principle of democratic control, has assumed the purchase and control of raw materials, and has superseded production for profit by production for use; we have here all the essentials of a national guild save one; and that one thing needful is the short step from government control to public ownership. Naturally the end of the war will bring some reaction from the position thus achieved; yet it is impossible not to believe that the need to increase the aggregate normal productivity of the nation, imposed by the financial burdens of the war, will ultimately compel a further development of these wartime tendencies. Certainly we have in the British Labour Party some guarantee that this movement will continue. Its memorandum on reconstruction virtually presupposes where it does not explicitly affirm the underlying principles of the guild-movement. “Standing as it does for the Democratic Control of Industry, the Labour Party would think twice before it sanctioned any abandonment of the present profitable centralisation of purchase of raw materials; of the present carefully organised ‘rationing,’ by joint committees of the trades concerned, of the several establishments with the materials they require; of the present elaborate system of ‘costing’ and public audit of manufacturers’ accounts, so as to stop the waste heretofore caused by the mechanical inefficiency of the more backward firms, of the present salutary publicity of manufacturing processes and expenses thus ensured; and on the information thus obtained (in order never again to revert to the old-time profiteering) of the present rigid fixing, for standardised products, of maximum prices at the factory, at the warehouse of the wholesale trader, and in the retail shop.”

IV

“The question,” the Memorandum continues, “of the retail prices of household commodities is emphatically the most practical of all political issues to the woman elector. The male politicians have too long neglected the grievances of the small household, which is the prey of every profiteering combination.” And this brings us to the answer to our question how far the present orientation of labour satisfies the conditions we have laid down as necessary to worthy social progress. The rigid fixing of the retail prices of household commodities,—the primary necessities of life—plainly substitutes the principle of production for need and use for that of production for profit; and while this of itself does not eliminate the profiteer altogether, it tends so to limit the area of exploitation as to bring the small household, which is after all the unit of society, within reasonable distance of a healthy security of material circumstance. Moreover, the principle of the National Minimum virtually dissolves the connection between work and the means of subsistence, so that the worker gains security of maintenance and a large accession of freedom and independence. Still further, the principle of democratic control brings to every worker complete immunity from exploitation by those upon whom an antecedent economic advantage has conferred power and enables him to graduate to the dignity and responsibility of partnership.

But what then? Having achieved this new status, it is certain that he will not be satisfied. For the thing that is stirring in the mind and heart of organised labour to-day is something much deeper than a desire for a more satisfactory physical life or for economic independence. Labour is indeed unable to make articulate more than the margin of the new desire of which it is aware; but the phenomenon which we have called “labour unrest” properly understood, is the result of a craving, imperious and not to be denied, for a larger life. Of this larger life the worker instinctively feels that economic security and independence are the indispensable pre-requisites. According to the measure of his intelligence and insight, he is aiming for these things. That is the inwardness of the present stirrings of organised labour. The worker knows that while he is compelled to hire himself out at a price in order to provide himself and his children with bread, under conditions which make a sufficiency of bread permanently uncertain, and which virtually deny him the opportunity of being anything more—from his first working day to his last—than the tool of interests from which he is powerless to detach himself, he can never become the man he might be or experience the joy of life which his intuitions declare to be his rightful inheritance. The greater part of life, and especially of the worker’s life, is an unredeemed and unexplored tract; and the possibilities hidden in those regions beyond, eye hath not seen neither hath ear heard. But dimly and indistinctly the worker has caught glimpses of this promised land and he has set his face that way. But he has justly perceived that between him and the promised land lies the “great divide” of economic disinheritance with all that it entails of insecurity and bondage. To-day he has come so far as to be in the very act of crossing this divide. That he does not discern clearly what manner of life awaits him in his promised land is no wonder; for none of us know, since as yet none of us have tasted save only in brief and transitory moments the rare quality of the fellowship and the creative urge which belong to the life of spiritual freedom. The British Labour Party speaks of “the promotion of music, literature, fine art, which have been under capitalism so grossly neglected, and upon which, so the Labour Party holds, any real development of civilisation fundamentally depends.” This is a hint of the “milk and honey” of the promised land, and it is only in hints we can speak until we have entered upon our inheritance of spiritual life, and have begun to explore its untold riches. But the road into that land is the road of economic freedom and independence; and that is the road which organised labour is making to-day. It has discovered that “society, like the individual, does not live by bread alone,—does not exist only for perpetual wealth production.” If it makes bread and produces wealth, it is only that men may live, and living may together strive to achieve the glorious liberty of the sons of God.

It is a fair conjecture concerning the results of this general movement, that it will ultimately assign to the economic interests of life their own proper secondary place. With the gradual disappearance of private profit and wages will pass the present ascendancy of the economic motive over the whole of life. It is significant of the intrinsic impulse of this movement that the promoters of the national guild movement should contemplate the separation of the conduct and control of the commercial and industrial elements of national life from the business of the national legislature, so that that body may attend to things other and greater than bread. This does not mean that the economic aspects of life will lose their proper importance; it simply means that they will be deprived of their present paramountcy; and how much that means for the right kind of social progress, for the development of a completely human order of life, it is impossible to do more than fancy. But it will be a great day when men awaken to the fact that the centre of gravity of life is not in the body but in the mind.

V

To have transformed the status of the worker is, however, only a part of the problem of work. An industrial democracy may conceivably be no better than a glorified capitalist, a national profit-making concern. But this keeps us still within the vicious circle of economic domination, with the dangers of degeneration greatly increased. For in place of individuals exploiting individuals, we should have nations endeavouring to exploit nations—with two certain consequences, war and a reaction to competitive individualism; and our last state would be worse than the first. Our complete emancipation from the economic motive requires not only a new status for the worker but a new doctrine of work. Industry must no more be conceived as a means of national wealth than of individual wealth.

The true doctrine of work is present in germ in the British Labour Party’s formula of “workers whether by hand or by brain.” The inclusion in one category of the industrial and professional classes should exert a very profound influence upon the popular attitude to manual labour. Much of the traditional habit of looking upon manual labour as being intrinsically inferior to brain work is due to a stupid lack of discrimination. For skilled labour often requires as nice a co-ordination of mind and hand, and as sensitive a nervous organisation as the most recondite surgery. The competent engineer is in no sense the mental inferior of the accountant; probably the engineer has on the whole the more highly organised mind; yet the engineer is popularly assigned to a relatively lower social rating. The conventional social divisions of those who work are entirely absurd and seem chiefly to depend upon the clothes one wears. That toil is regarded as inferior which cannot be performed without soiling clothes of a more or less ceremonial cut.

But when once it is realised that the work of the physician or the clergyman is different only in kind and not in social worth from the work of the machinist or the farm-labourer, we shall have a more reasonable basis for classification; and though it is true that the minister (being no more immune from the pressure of social atmosphere than other men) has not been unmindful of his stipend or the doctor of his fee, yet both callings have preserved enough of the ideal of disinterested social service to pass on something of the same impulse into occupations which the common mind regards solely as means of livelihood. This indeed, must be the first element in our doctrine of work. It must be regarded primarily as a social service. John Ruskin long ago tried to teach us that in every nation there were four great intellectual professions: the soldier’s, to defend it; the pastor’s, to teach it; the lawyer’s, to establish justice in it; and the merchant’s, to provide for it; and it was, he added, the duty of each of these on due occasion to die for it. What was novel in Ruskin’s doctrine was that there was a due occasion on which a merchant should die for his country. But why should we stop at the merchant? There is no reason why this principle should not be extended to every kind of labour essential to the life of the nation. At least there should be nothing inconceivable in the idea that every member of the community should develop the same degree and quality of social devotion. And (let it be repeated once more) the industrial records of this time of war do make this expectation into something more than a chimÆra. The splendid social devotion which the emergency of war has discovered and released should and could be made a permanent asset. It is entirely a question of the right kind of education.

If the impending revolution in the worker’s status brings with it (as it should) a sense of genuine partnership, its natural sequel should be a growing consciousness of participation in a great social task. Every man would come to look upon his job as an integral and indispensable part of the common service. This would add a new interest and worth even to the purely mechanical tasks which the growth of large-scale production has so greatly multiplied. It would be no more than a partial solution of the entire problem involved in routine mechanical toil; but it would go a great way towards mitigating its inevitable dreariness, and it would certainly bring with it a quality of personal satisfaction in work which working for a living at a job in which one’s sole interest is one’s hire cannot possibly afford.

VI

Yet neither the habit of regarding work as participation in a social task nor the element of comradeship which we may reasonably expect to grow out of such a way of conceiving work, nor yet the amelioration of the purely external conditions of modern industrial production, can possibly be accepted as furnishing a final solution of the problem of work. It is probable that under existing conditions, some such changes as these are all we can hope for over large areas of industrial life; perhaps, indeed, without a general recognition of the real social significance of large scale production, the best we can ever do will consist of further modification of industrial conditions along these lines. Yet all this does virtually nothing to make work a means of worthy self-expression.

The high degree of specialisation which has followed the introduction and improvement of industrial machinery, confines large multitudes of people to occupations which consist of repeating the same small routine operation all day and every day; and the mentally benumbing and demoralising consequences of this type of work is one of the commonplaces of social observation. Not the least of the social services of Trade Unionism is that it has furnished to men occupied in purely mechanical work an interest which has helped to keep their minds alive. It is rarely recognised how inevitably certain of our graver social evils are connected with the devitalising influences of modern industrial conditions. Undoubtedly one of the most powerful causes of the deadly grip of the drink traffic upon society is the opportunity it provides of reaction from the depressing and deadening round of the shop. The saloon strikes a kind of psychological balance with the factory. The well-meaning persons who suppose that open spaces, museums, art galleries, and the like will furnish effectual off-sets to the public house, overlook the fact that the peculiar depression to which the factory worker is subjected demands a relief more vivid and more violent than these more refined avenues of diversion offer. Temperance reformers have greatly neglected this aspect of their problem; and prohibition without any accompanying provision for the healthy equilibration of human energies is likely to have consequences that may astonish and perhaps confound its advocates.

But the remedy for this and the other penalties which society has to pay for its industrial system is not to be found in the abandonment of large-scale processes and reversion to an earlier fashion of production. Machinery certainly supplanted a more human, kindlier way of life; and not even the extensive factory legislation which has tempered the worst excesses of the new way, has compensated for the passing of the amenities of the older system. We have, however, to count upon the permanence and the still further extension of large-scale processes. Obviously it is not intrinsically an evil thing, potentially it is an asset of incalculable value to society. Even its monotonies have their uses; for a certain amount of routine work is good for every man. It is only evil when it is excessive. The disadvantages which belong to large-scale production are on the whole incidental, and owe their origin chiefly to laissez faire and the economic motive. Once this vicious connection is dissolved and production for need and use becomes the general rule, the very proficiency of our large-scale processes will liberate a great volume of human energy for the pursuit of the spiritual ends of life.

For the elimination of the profit-interest, and the regulation of production on the basis of calculated demand, will at once lead to a very considerable diminution in the number of working hours. It is questionable whether, with industrial processes properly organised, it would be necessary for any man to spend more than four hours a day in the actual production of necessities. This refers, of course, to the strictly mechanical departments of production. In agriculture, which depends upon seasons and weather conditions, it is obvious that a standardised day is impracticable. Moreover, agriculture is an avocation which has its own peculiar compensations. It is carried on in the open-air and has elements of variety and change to which the industrial worker is a stranger. Yet, even in agriculture the great extension of mechanical and labour-saving instruments should go far to mitigate the acknowledged disadvantages of the life. The evils attaching to the work of the farmer and his labourer are, however, largely extrinsic. It is the dullness and monotony of his spare hours that weigh most heavily upon him.^[19] With the industrial, it is different. He does not lack opportunity of social life in so much as he lives normally in large populous centres; but the atonic condition to which he is reduced by the circumstances of his work, renders him incapable of creating and enjoying the best kind of fellowship. He is either too weary for any kind of fellowship and sits at home reading the newspaper, and then to bed; or he turns in his need of compensating excitement to the questionable atmosphere of the public-house. A small minority of tougher mental and nervous fibre will cultivate an allotment or seek diversion in books or sport; but the majority have neither inclination nor energy for any active pursuits. The remedy for this trouble lies in the drastic shortening of the working day for all men who are engaged in the mechanical process of production. With the increasing application of science to industry, under conditions of production for use, it is impossible to say how short the necessary working day may become. And if it became the rule, as it probably should, that no member of society should be exempt from a share in the work of maintaining its natural life and so take his part in mechanical production, there is no reason why the indispensable mechanical toil expected of the individual should not be reduced to a very low point indeed.

If in addition men are trained from childhood to take the view that this toil is a necessary social task, and therefore, intrinsically noble and honourable, the whole atmosphere in which it is discharged would be organically changed. To-day, the prevailing note of speed and competition reduces the place and sense of comradeship to very narrow limits. The general attitude of antagonism between capital and labour infects the air, and not only makes co-operation between the administrative and productive functions impossible, but introduces a subtle poison of disintegration into the mutual relations of the operatives. The only comradeship which appears to exist is that which is created by the need under present conditions of safeguarding class interests. When men of all classes have been brought up to regard a certain amount of mechanical toil as an honourable obligation to the society to which they belong, they will naturally accept their share in the common task and bring themselves to it in a spirit of comradeship.

VII

But it is useless to suppose that we have done all that is needed when we have thus relieved the irksomeness of the day’s work. Indeed, we have (if we leave it at that) only created a great peril—the peril of deterioration which always attends unused or ill-used leisure. “Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do;” and the antidote to idleness lies in providing things to do that unoccupied hands will turn to do with readiness. Yet it were fatal to regard this as a problem of utilising spare time. We have indeed a greater and worthier task on hand; and the drastic shortening of the statutory working day provides us with our opportunity.

Genuine social progress and content is, as we have seen, to be achieved only under conditions where men have the opportunity, and are trained in the exercise of the instinct of creativeness. For the great majority of men, the means of this self-expression must be found in some sort of manual activity. It must take the form of work. Perhaps the solution lies in the principle of “one man, two trades”; of which one shall be some part of the mechanical toil involved in social upkeep, and the other a craft in which a man may exercise and express something of his own independent mind. Possibly we may distinguish the two types of occupation as utility-trades and vocations, the one necessary quality of the latter being that men should be able to put their whole souls into their tasks; and in so far as these tasks are of a direct productive kind, since they are not tasks of mere utility, they may fitly be tasks of beauty as well. We require something of the nature of a revival of the older type of craftsmanship in which the Æsthetic faculties found room for expression; and in the matter of clothing and house-furniture and decoration there is ample room for the development of a revived craftsmanship where use will go hand in hand with beauty. It should plainly be an organic part of educational policy to provide for the early laying of the foundations of original and creative craftsmanship. In any wise system of education, the period of adolescence should be marked by a very definite differentiation of vocational training (without neglecting the other elements of a generous education). Aptitudes should be watched for; and the growth of the youth should be stimulated along the lines of his natural inclinations. Especially should any signs of independent and original creative power be encouraged. Change of this sort can, of course be brought about only gradually; but it should be faced seriously if society is ever to be emancipated from its baleful subjection to the economic motive.

That we find it difficult to believe that any change along these lines is possible is due chiefly to a lack of acquaintance with any other conditions than those which exist to-day. But William Morris and John Ruskin found no difficulty in believing that men would work “for the joy of the working,” provided that they had work to do which had in it the elements of joy. It was so that they worked themselves; and the substance of their teaching was a plea that work should be made once more a delight by being raised to the plane of art—that is to say, that it might become the avenue of independent creative self-expression. It would doubtless take several generations before this doctrine could be established as a habit of mind and society organised conformably to it, but it is no cheap speculation which foresees, arising out of a progressive liberation and discipline of the creative instincts of a community, a new birth of art. The creative urge would, like the sun, shoot out coronas of flaming achievement; art itself might climb to a plane it has never hitherto known and break out in directions which we in our present state of spiritual purblindness cannot anticipate. At least, it is something to be remembered that those days in England in which industry was alive with a fine craftsmanship and a generous comradeship, were also the days which produced the finest monuments of English art.

VIII

The organisation of society upon lines of this kind would be a protracted and difficult task; and here one is concerned more with the definition of a tendency rather than the precise measures necessary to make it effective. Obviously there must be large exceptions to any rule of life in any vital and developing social order. But the reduction of mechanical toil to the lowest practicable point, and a generous development of the idea and practice of the vocational life seem to be essential. And the general principle which we desire for mechanical tasks of production should be applied in other regions, as for instance in the distributive trades and in those occupations which are concerned with the disposal of waste. The increasing emphasis on hygiene has led to the multiplication of a number of “waste-occupations,” the street-cleaner, the drain-man, the garbage-man and so forth. Within this region we have every right to expect so large an extension of scientific and mechanical methods of dealing with the waste products of life as to make some at least of these occupations wholly superfluous. This type of occupation has meantime, the very undesirable and injurious effect of relegating those who are engaged in it to a condition of much social inferiority; and this is the more unjust, insomuch as the health of the community depends so greatly upon its being faithfully performed. It was a happy inspiration to clothe the New York street-cleaners in white; and it should have a sacramental suggestion for their fellow citizens. For we are familiar with a word which describes a multitude “arrayed in white garments.” The innovation established a point of contact between urban cleanliness and holiness; and it is within this cycle of social judgment that the waste occupations should be placed. We should then take more kindly to the only equitable solution of the problem presented by this class of work, namely that it should be shared out and that all the members of the community should be liable to be called out in companies, as they are now for jury service, to do their part of this indispensable work. This brings the waste occupations into the same category as the productive trades; in point of fact, it is there they really belong. There can be no intrinsic difference of worth between the work of providing for the needs of society and the work of disposing of its waste. For without either of these, society cannot live.

The only class for which there should be no room in a healthy social order is the social parasite. It is to this class that the “idle rich” belong, the people who neither toil nor spin yet fare sumptuously every day at the expense of the labour of others. To this class also belongs the large “flunkey” class—butlers, footmen, door-openers, and other uniformed persons who are arrayed in fine apparel doing little things for us that we ought to do for ourselves. It is just neither to these persons nor to society that they should be allowed to continue in careers of such complete uselessness. So far as Europe is concerned this class has already largely disappeared, for the Army or industry has swallowed it up; and it is not likely ever to re-emerge on the pre-war scale. We must add also to this parasitic class those who are engaged in luxury trades—with the caveat that it is exceedingly difficult to draw a strict frontier line between necessity and luxury on the one hand, and on the other, between luxury and the thing that may minister to the legitimate comfort, the health, the beauty and the general enrichment of life. But there are some things so palpably on the wrong side of the line that there should be no difficulty in identifying them. It is a subject worth some reflection here that the war is teaching us to do without many things which we had come to regard as necessities. It is a sad commentary upon the civilisation we had produced, that it left us with a hunger which we endeavoured to appease by an elaboration of the fringes of life. We had gradually accumulated a range of comforts and conveniences, and not a few superfluities, which had come to be regarded as indispensable. But the war has taught us how few things are after all needful. We have all the materials of joyful life when we have food to eat, a home to live in, freedom and congenial work, comradeship and love. And unless these become more and more the sure possession of all, our social progress is no more than a laborious sham.