<h2><SPAN name="CHAPTER_LXX" id="CHAPTER_LXX"></SPAN>CHAPTER LXX<br/><br/> THE CONTROL OF INDUSTRY</h2>
<div class="blockquot"><p>(Discusses various programs for the change from industrial
autocracy to industrial democracy.)</p>
</div>
<p>The program of the railway workers for the democratic management of
their industry is embodied in the Plumb plan. You may learn about it by
addressing the weekly paper of the railway brotherhoods, which is called
"Labor," and is published in Washington, D. C. It appears that our
transportation industry can be at once socialized, because of a clause
in the constitution which gives the national government power over
"roads and communications." Through decades of mismanagement under the
system of private greed, the railroads have been brought to such a
financial condition that they will be forced into nationalization,
whenever we stop them from dipping their fingers into the public
treasury.</p>
<p>Under the Plumb plan the government is to purchase the roads from their
present owners, paying with government bonds. The management is to be
under the control of a board consisting in part of representatives of
the government, and in part of the workers—this being a combination of
the methods of Socialism and Syndicalism. The same program can be
applied constitutionally to telegraphs and telephones, to interstate
trolley systems, express companies, oil pipe lines, and all other means
of interstate communication and distribution.</p>
<p>The Plumb plan also deals with coal and steel and other great
industries. These could not be nationalized without a constitutional
amendment, but it appears that in the majority of the constitutions of
the states are provisions that all corporate charters are held subject
to the power of the legislature to amend, modify, or revoke the same.
That gives us a right to take over these corporations through state
action. The only preliminary is to elect state administrations which
will represent us, instead of representing the corporations. Also, most
state constitutions contain the provision that "no corporation shall<SPAN name="vol_ii_page_199" id="vol_ii_page_199"></SPAN>
issue its stocks or bonds, except for money, labor, or property actually
received." The word "labor" gives the opening wedge for the Plumb plan.
The state can purchase these industries, giving bonds in exchange, and
can issue to the workers labor stock, which stock will carry part
control of the industry.</p>
<p>Also, the railroad brotherhoods have started their own bank, in
Cleveland, Ohio, and it is proving an enormous success. Make note of
this point; every large labor union can have its own bank, to finance
its industries and its propaganda. Stop and consider how preposterous it
is that the five million organized workers of the United States should
deposit their hundreds of millions of savings in capitalist banks, to be
used to finance private undertakings which crush unions and hold labor
in bondage. Let every big labor union have its own building, its own
banking and insurance business, its own vacation camp in the country,
its own school for training its future leaders. Also, let every labor
council in every big city start a labor daily, to tell the workers the
truth and point the way to freedom. Let every farmers' organization
follow suit; and let these groups get together, to exchange their
products upon a co-operative basis. Already the railway men are
arranging with the farmers, to buy the farm products and distribute them
co-operatively; they are getting together with the clothing workers, to
have the latter make clothing for them, and with the shoe-workers to
make shoes.</p>
<p>This is the co-operative movement, which has become the largest single
industry in Great Britain, and is the backbone of industrial democracy
and sound radicalism. It is spreading rapidly in America now. It is
taking the money of the people out of the control of the profit system,
and diverting it into channels of public service. It is training men to
believe in brotherhood instead of in greed. It is giving them business
experience, so that when the time comes the taking over of our
industrial machine will not have to be done by amateurs, but by men who
know what co-operation is, and how to make a success of it.</p>
<p>This work will go on more rapidly yet when the workers have united
politically, and brought into power a government which will assist them
instead of assisting the bankers. A most interesting program for the
development of working-class financial credit is known as the "Douglas
plan," which is advocated by a London weekly, the "New Age," and is
explained in<SPAN name="vol_ii_page_200" id="vol_ii_page_200"></SPAN> two books, called "Economic Democracy" and "Credit Power
and Democracy," by Douglas and Orage. This program is in brief that the
furnishing of credit shall become a function of organized labor, based
upon the fact that the true and ultimate basis of all credit is the
power of hand and brain labor to produce wealth. The labor unions, or
"guilds," shall pay the management of industry and pay capital for the
use of the industrial plant, and shall finance production and new
industrial development out of their "credit power," their ability to
promise production and to keep their promises.</p>
<p>This "Douglas plan" seeks to break the Money Trust by the method of
Syndicalism. Another method of breaking it, through state regulation of
bank loans, you will find most completely set forth in an extremely able
book, "The Strangle Hold," by H. C. Cutting, an American business man,
whom you may address at San Lorenzo, California. Another method,
utilizing the third factor in industry, the consumer, is the method of
banking by consumers' unions. Such are the Raffeisen banks, widely known
in Germany, and a specimen of which exists in the single tax colony at
Arden, Delaware. Those who wish to know about the co-operative bank, or
other forms of co-operation, may apply to the Co-operative League of
America, 2 West 13th Street, New York, whose president is Dr. James P.
Warbasse. Information concerning public ownership may be had from the
Public Ownership League, 127 N. Dearborn Street, Chicago; also from the
Socialist party, 220 South Ashland Boulevard, Chicago, and from the
Bureau of Social Research of the Rand School of Social Science, New
York.</p>
<p>Also, I ought to mention the very interesting plan for social
reconstruction set forth by Mr. King C. Gillette, inventor of the safety
razor. This plan you may find in your public library in two encyclopedic
volumes, "Gillette's Social Redemption," and "Gillette's World
Solution." The politician seeks to solve the industrial problem by means
of the state, and the labor leader seeks to solve it by the unions; it
is to be expected that Mr. Gillette, a capitalist, should seek to solve
it by means of the corporation. He points out that the modern "trust" is
the greatest instrument of production yet invented by man; and he asks
why the people should not form their own "trust," to handle their own
affairs, and to purchase and take over the industries from their present
private masters. It is interesting to note that Mr. Gillette's solution
is fully as radical and thorough-going as those<SPAN name="vol_ii_page_201" id="vol_ii_page_201"></SPAN> of the State Socialists
or the Syndicalists. The "People's Corporation" which he projects and
plans some day to launch upon the world would be a gigantic "consumers'
union," whose "credit power" would speedily dominate and absorb all
other powers in modern society; it would make us all stockholders, and
give us our share of the benefits of social productivity.<SPAN name="vol_ii_page_202" id="vol_ii_page_202"></SPAN></p>
<h2><SPAN name="CHAPTER_LXXI" id="CHAPTER_LXXI"></SPAN>CHAPTER LXXI<br/><br/> THE NEW WORLD</h2>
<div class="blockquot"><p>(Describes the co-operative commonwealth, beginning with its money
aspects; the standard wage and its variations.)</p>
</div>
<p>It has been indicated that the new society will be different in
different countries and in different parts of the same country, in
different industries and at different times. No one can predict exactly
what it will be, and anyone who tries to predict is unscientific. But
every man can work out his own ideas of the most economical and sensible
arrangements for a co-operative society, and in these final chapters I
set forth my ideas.</p>
<p>One of the first things people ask is, "Will there be money in the new
society, or how will labor be rewarded and goods paid for?" I answer
that there will be money, and the business methods of the new society
will be so nearly the same as at present that in this respect you would
hardly realize there had been any change. The only difference will be
that in the new society you will be paid several times as much for your
labor; or, if you prefer to put it the other way, you will be able to
buy several times as much with your money. Why should we waste our time
working out systems of "credit-cards," when we already have a system in
the form of gold and silver coins and paper currency? Why should we
bother with "labor checks," when we have a banking and clearing-house
system, understood by everyone but the illiterate? The only difference
we shall make is that nobody can get gold and silver coins or paper
currency, except by performing labor to pay for them; nobody can have
money in the bank and draw checks against it, until he has rendered to
society an equivalent amount of service.</p>
<p>When you have earned your money in the new world, you will spend it
wherever you please, and for whatever you please; the only difference
being that the price you pay will be the exact labor-cost of producing
that article, with no deduction for any form of exploitation. As I wrote
sixteen years ago in "The Industrial Republic," you will be able to get,
if you insist upon it, a seven-legged spider made of diamonds, and the
only<SPAN name="vol_ii_page_203" id="vol_ii_page_203"></SPAN> question society will ask is, Have you performed services
equivalent to the material and labor necessary to the creating of that
unusual article of commerce? Of course, society won't put it to you in
that complicated formula; it will simply ask, "Have you got the price?"
Which, you observe, is exactly the question society asks you at present.</p>
<p>The next thing that everybody wants to know is, "Shall we all be paid
the same wages?" I answer, yes and no, because there will be three
systems of payment. There will be a basic wage, which everybody will get
for every kind of useful service necessary to production; this will be,
as it were, the foundation of our economic structure. On top of this
will be built a system of special payments for special services, which
are of an intellectual nature, and cannot be standardized and dealt with
wholesale. In addition, there will be for a time a third arrangement,
applying to agricultural work, which is in a different stage of
development, and to which different conditions apply.</p>
<p>Let us take, first, our standard wage. The census of our Utopian
commonwealth reveals that we have ten million able-bodied workers
engaged in mining, manufacturing, and transportation; this including, of
course, office-work and management—everything that enters into these
industries. By scientific management, the best machinery, and the
elimination of all possible waste, we find that they produce eighty
million dollars worth of goods an hour. A portion of this we have to set
aside to pay for the raw materials which they do not produce, and for
the upkeep of the plant, and for margin of error—what our great
corporations call a surplus. We find that we have fifty million dollars
per hour left, and that means that we can pay for labor five dollars per
hour, or twenty dollars for the regular four-hour day. This is our
standard wage, received by all able-bodied workers.</p>
<p>But quickly we find that our industries are not properly balanced. A
great many men want to work at the jobs which are clean and pleasant,
such as delivering mail, and very few want to work at washing dishes in
restaurants and cleaning the sewers. There is no way we can adjust this,
except by paying a higher wage, or by reducing the number of hours in
the working day, which is the same thing. The only other method would be
to have the state assign men to their work, and that would be
bureaucracy and slavery, the essence of everything we wish to get away
from in our co-operative commonwealth.<SPAN name="vol_ii_page_204" id="vol_ii_page_204"></SPAN></p>
<p>What we shall have, so far as concerns our basic industries, is a
government department, registering with mathematical accuracy the
condition of supply and demand in all the industries of the country. Our
demand for shoes is increasing, for some reason or other; a thousand
more shoe-workers are needed, therefore the price of labor in the shoe
industry is increased five cents per day—or whatever amount will draw
that number of workers from other occupations. On the other hand, there
are too many people applying for the job of driving trucks, therefore we
reduce slightly the compensation for this work. There are more men who
want jobs in Southern California than in Alaska, therefore the payment
for the same grade of work in Alaska has to be higher. All this is not
merely speculation, it is not a matter of anybody's choice; it is an
automatic, self-adjusting system, subject to precise calculations. The
only change from our present system is from guesswork to exact
measurement. At present we do not know how many shoes our country will
require next season, neither do we know how many shoes are going to be
made, neither do we know how many people can make shoes, nor how many
would like to learn, nor how many would like to quit that job and take
to farming. It would be the simplest matter in the world to find out
these things—far simpler that it was to register all our possible
soldiers, and examine them physically and mentally, and train them and
feed them and ship them overseas to "can the Kaiser."</p>
<p>Of course, we drafted the men for this war job; but in the new world
nobody is drafted for anything. It is any man's privilege to starve if
he feels like it; it is his privilege to go out into the mountains and
live on nuts and berries if he can find them. Nobody makes him go
anywhere, or makes him work at anything—unless, of course, he is a
convicted criminal. To the free citizen all that society has to say is,
if he buys any products, he must pay for those products with his own
labor, and not with some other man's labor. Of course, he may steal, or
cheat, as under capitalism; our new world has laws against stealing and
cheating, and does its best to enforce them. The difference between the
capitalist world and our world is merely that we make it impossible for
any man to get money <i>legally</i> without working.</p>
<p>Under these conditions the average man wishes to work, and the only
question remaining is, how shall he work? If he wants to work by
himself, and in his own way, nobody objects<SPAN name="vol_ii_page_205" id="vol_ii_page_205"></SPAN> to it. He is able to buy
anything he pleases, whether raw materials or finished products. If he
wants to buy leather and make shoes after his own pattern, no one stops
him, and if he can find anyone to buy these shoes, he can earn his
living in that way. He is able to get land for as long a time as he
wants it, by paying to the state the full rental value of that land, and
if he wants to farm the land, he can do so, and sell his products. As a
matter of theory, he is perfectly free to hire others to farm the land
for him, or with him. There is no law to prevent it, neither is there
any law to prevent his renting a factory and buying machinery, and
hiring labor to make shoes.</p>
<p>But, as a matter of practical fact, it is impossible for him to do this,
because the community is in the business of making shoes, and on an
enormous scale, with great factories run democratically by the workers,
and there is very small chance of any private business man being able to
draw the workers away from these factories. The community factories have
all the latest machinery; they apply the latest methods of scientific
management, and they turn out standard shoes at such a rate that private
competition is unthinkable. Of course, there may be some special kind of
shoes, involving an intellectual element, in which there can be private
competition. This kind of manufacture is covered in our second method of
payment; but before we discuss it, let us settle the problem of our most
important basic industry, which is agriculture.<SPAN name="vol_ii_page_206" id="vol_ii_page_206"></SPAN></p>
<h2><SPAN name="CHAPTER_LXXII" id="CHAPTER_LXXII"></SPAN>CHAPTER LXXII<br/><br/> AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION</h2>
<div class="blockquot"><p>(Discusses the land in the new world, and how we foster
co-operative farming and co-operative homes.)</p>
</div>
<p>Farming the land is a very ancient industry, and while its tools have
been improved, its social forms have been the same for a long time. The
worker on the land is conservative, and the Russian Bolsheviks, who
tried to rush their peasants into Communism, found that they had only
succeeded in stopping the production of food. We make no such blunder in
our new society. We have found a way to abolish speculation in land, and
exploitation based on land-ownership, while leaving the farmer free to
run his business in the old way if he wants to.</p>
<p>In our new society we take the full rental value of all land which is
not occupied and used by the state. The farmer and the city dweller
alike "own" their land, in the sense that they have the use of it for as
long as they please, but they pay to the state the rental value of the
land, minus the improvements. So they cannot speculate in the land or
rent it out to others; they can only use it, and they only pay for what
they actually use. They may put improvements on the land, with full
assurance of having the use and benefit thereof, and they may sell the
improvements, and the new owner enters into possession, with no
obligation but to pay the rental value of the unimproved land to the
state.</p>
<p>The farmer goes on raising his products, and if he wants to drive to
town and deliver them to his customers, he may do so; but he finds it
cheaper to market them through the great labor co-operatives and state
markets. As there is no longer any private interest involved in these
activities, no one has any interest in cheating him, and he gets the
full value of the products, less the cost of marketing. If the farmer
wishes to continue all his life in his old style individualistic method
of working the land, he is free to do so. But here is what he sees going
on within a few miles of his place:</p>
<p>The state has bought a square mile of land, and has taken down the
fences and established an agricultural co-operative for<SPAN name="vol_ii_page_207" id="vol_ii_page_207"></SPAN> purposes of
experiment and demonstration. The farm is run under the direction of
experts; the soils are treated with exactly the right fertilizers for
each crop, the best paying crops are raised, the best seed is used, and
the best machinery. The workers of this new agricultural co-operative
receive the standard wage, and they live in homes specially built for
them, with all the conveniences made possible by wholesale production.
Also, these co-operators live in a democratic community; they determine
their own conditions of labor, being represented on the governing board,
along with the experts appointed by the state.</p>
<p>The farmer watches this experiment, at first with suspicion; but he
finds that his sons have less suspicion than he has, and his sons keep
pointing out to him that their little farm is not making the standard
wage or anything like it; and, moreover, the standard wage is constantly
increasing, whereas, the price of farm-products is dropping. And here is
the state, ready to direct new co-operative ventures, inviting a score
of farmers in the community to combine and buy out the unwilling ones,
and establish a new co-operative. Sooner or later the old farmer gives
way; or he dies, and his sons belong to the new world.</p>
<p>So ultimately we have our national agricultural system, in which all the
requirements of our people are studied, and all the possibilities of our
soil and climate, and the job of raising the exact quantities of food
that we need, both for our own use and for export, is worked out as one
problem. We know how much lumber we need, and we raise it on all our
hillsides and mountain slopes, and so protect ourselves from floods and
the denuding of our continent. We know where best to raise our wheat,
and where best to raise our potatoes and our cabbages, and we do not do
this by crude hand-labor, nor by the labor of women and children from
daybreak till dark. We have special machines that plant each crop, and
other machines that reap it or dig it out of the ground and prepare it
for market.</p>
<p>A few days ago I read a discussion in the Chamber of Commerce of
Calcutta. Some one called attention to the wastes involved in the
current method of handling rubber. One consignment of rubber had been
sold more than three hundred separate times, and the cost of these
transactions amounted to three times the value of the rubber. This is
only one illustration, and I might quote a thousand. If you doubt my
figures as to the possibility of production in the new society, remind
yourself that a large percentage of the things you use<SPAN name="vol_ii_page_208" id="vol_ii_page_208"></SPAN> have been bought
and sold many scores of times before you get them. Consider the cabbage,
for which you pay six or eight cents a pound in the grocery store, and
for which the farmer gets, say, half a cent a pound.</p>
<p>In this new world the state has an enormous income, derived from its tax
on land values. It no longer has to send around men once a year to ask
you how many diamond rings your wife has, and to tax you on your
honesty, if you have any. It no longer has to make its money by such
lying devices as a tariff, therefore its moral being is no longer
poisoned by a tariff-lobby. It taxes every citizen for the right to use
that which nature created, and leaves free from taxation that which the
citizens' own labor created; this kind of taxation is honest, and fair
to all, because no one can evade it. The state uses the proceeds of this
land tax in the public services, the libraries and research laboratories
and information bureaus; in free insurance against fire and flood and
tempest; and in a pension to every member of society above the working
age of fifty-five, or below the working age of eighteen. Of course, the
state might leave it to every man to save up for his old age, but not
all men are this wise, and the state cannot afford to let the unwise
ones starve. It is more convenient for the state to figure that all men,
or nearly all, are going to be old, and to hold back some of their money
while they are young and strong, in the certainty that when they are
old, they will appreciate this service. Also the state takes care of the
sick and incapacitated, and the mentally or physically defective. But we
do not leave these latter loose in the world to reproduce their defects;
we have in our new world some sense of responsibility to the future, and
there is nothing to which we devote more effort than making certain that
nothing unsound or abnormal is allowed entrance into life.</p>
<p>The problem of the care of children is a complicated one, and our new
society is in process of solving it. We look back on the old world in
which the having of children was heavily taxed, in the form of an
obligation to care for these children until they were old enough to
work. Then the parents were allowed to exploit the labor of the
children, so that among the very poor the raising of children was a
business speculation, like the raising of slaves or poultry. But in our
new world we consider the interest of the child, and of the society in
which that child is to be a citizen. We decide that this society must
have citizens, and that the raising of the future citizens is a<SPAN name="vol_ii_page_209" id="vol_ii_page_209"></SPAN> work
just exactly as necessary and useful as the raising of a crop of
cabbages. Therefore, we pay a pension to all mothers while they are
raising and caring for children. At the same time we assert the right to
see that this money is wisely spent, and that the child is really cared
for. If it is neglected, we are quick to take it away from its parents,
and put it in one of our twenty-four-hour-a-day schools.</p>
<p>We realize that the home is an ancient industry, even more ancient than
agriculture, and we do not try to socialize it all at once. But just as
we demonstrate to farmers that the individual farm does not pay, so we
demonstrate to mothers the wastefulness of the single laundry, the
single kitchen, the single nursery. We establish community laundries,
community kitchens, community nurseries, and invite our women to help in
these activities, and to learn there, under expert guidance, the
advantages of domestic co-operation. We convince them by showing better
results in the health and happiness of the children, and in the time and
strength of the mothers. So, little by little, we widen the field of
co-operative endeavor, and increase the total product of human labor and
the total enjoyment of human life.<SPAN name="vol_ii_page_210" id="vol_ii_page_210"></SPAN></p>
<div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />