autonomy. Centralization for the getting of raw materials and the disposal of products as well as for laying down general standards and condition! The national guilds will be united in a Guild Congress which will be the supreme authority on the side of the producers as the state will be on that of the consumers. For there will not only be a state governmental body aside from the guilds, but an entirely changed political structure, radically different from the present one, and run by the same persons as those who run the guilds but with different functions. The state and the local authorities would represent demand; the guilds would represent supply. The state would own the means of production as trustee for the community; the guilds would manage them, also as trustees for the community.

In a guild society an organization based on political grouping by locality will therefore be necessary. The political organi zation would, of course, be largely decentralized and a great part of its functions would be exercised locally. We would adjust financial questions between guilds, some of which would have to be maintained by levies on other guilds. A national revenue would have to be raised by levies on certain guilds. For the guilds would necessarily belong mainly to two types - civil and industrial. The public service of health and education would be in the civil category and would require subsidies.

This system would eliminate profiteering, and all profit making and all competition and artificial price making.

A very practical application of the guild idea is now being tried out in Manchester, England, and if successful it may quite revolutionize labor, at least in certain industries. Manchester is in desperate need of houses, up to 50,000 new houses. Building was slow and expensive. Members of the trade unions are prevented from engaging in trade in their capacity of members, but they can for other associations and enter into con tracts in that new capacity. This was very recently done by workers in the various building and painting unions. They formed a building guild which offered to build 2,000 houses quickly and cheaply for the city corporation, without the intervention of private contractors or corporations. The workers supply not only the manual labor but the technical experts and business administrators. The city authorities advance the money and take over the houses when finished. The rate of payment by the city council is the plain cost of the labor at standard rates

lus 10 per cent. The usual method of work is changed. Labor arranges to do all outside work in fair weather, and all inside work in foul weather, saving time and money and preventing aying off. The worker's status is also changed from a mere wage earning employee to a salaried member of the guild, through what is called the full week system. Part of the 10 per cent. goes into this sytem and part of it into the purchase of necessary plant and cost of transportation. Materials, however, are bought by the city council and supplied to the guild. The guild is run by a small committee formed of representatives of each trade and of both administrative and technical experts. Men in good trade union standing are to direct the whole labor force. The guild is not required to give financial guarantees ; only to pledge itself to furnish the necessary labor. The conditions of the scheme ensure efficient work on the part of the men. There are a number of towns in Lancashire ready to follow Manchester's lead and the plan is to form a Northwestern Building Guild that will do business not only with towns but with the national government.

The plan provides that disputes shall be referred to the Trade Cnions Congress and the Minister of Labor, because of the guild theory that all material and assets should belong to the state which is to hold them in trust both for the community as a whole and for the guilds, the guilds having control of it.

A prominent writer on the guild system, G. Dox Cole, says of this new movement: "If the building workers can win industrial freedom and eliminate employers and private profit in this way, will they not be setting a fashion which other industries will be able to follow?"

At all events it might prove to be a good partial solution of our present tremendously difficult housing problem, especially in New York city. It would prevent such appalling situations as that when union labor recently refused to complete certain New York skyscrapers because non-union labor or material had been used in putting up the steel framework. The demand was made that the entire skeleton of these buildings should be torn down and scrapped. With the members of the unions as guildsmen in full charge such situations would not occur.

There is a big historical record back of the guild idea, a record of practical achievement and political as well as economic power

during many centuries. The Romans perfected the system of guild organization. It has been part of the original scheme of division of the Roman people in the legendary days of King Numa. With the development of the bureaucratic system in the later empire the guilds, which in some cases had been considered, as they were by the Emperor Trajan, to be possible centers of sedition, were made to enter more and more into the imperial treadmill. They came to be absolutely controlled by the state. No worker could carry on his work unless he were a member of a guild. It was an absolutely closed shop. An occupation was made hereditary. The father was obliged by law to teach his son his own trade or occupation. There was no freedom of choice. Eventually, also, the worker had no choice of his place of work. He could not move from place to place, but was assigned to a certain place and could be brought back in case he should leave. The guilds, in return for the monopoly granted by the state, were obliged to give certain stated service to the state either in work or in material. The brickmakers were to furnish so many million bricks free each year; the waggoners were to furnish so many days' service for transportation; the ship owners, so many ship-trips; the stonecutters, masons, bricklayers, carpenters, painters, interior finishers and all other workers were obliged to give so many days' work free to the government. This is the explanation of the tremendous and splendid public works carried out by Roman administration throughout the civilized world. Even the Roman army became part of the building organization. It ended by the unions or guilds having their books open to government inspection, having a maximum price set on their work, having a regular rate for the purchase of all raw materials fixed by the government. This eventually brought about the ruin of art, industry and business, through the destruc tion of individual ambition, initiative and genius, and the rule of the bureaucracy of state control. All this developed during the third and fourth centuries of our era, between the Emperors Caracalla and Constantine. The attempt of Diocletian in about 300 A. D., a general price fixing, was a failure, owing to the riots it provoked.

With the downfall of Rome and of civilization the guilds were among the few survivals in a modest and modified form, and came to be composed of rather unskilled workmen. Still they

vere to form the nucleus or model of the organization of some of the earliest communities in the new Western world of the early Middle Ages. There was now no great central authority over them. They consisted of the plain people who were coming at last into their own. Gradually their members grew in skill and Lumbers until they became, in many cases, the backbone of the Lew republican communities in Italy, in Central and Northern Europe, during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It is interesting and suggestive to note that in such cities as Bologna in Italy the city government was run by representatives elected by the various guilds of the city from whom the city officials were chosen. The lawyers, merchants and bankers had their guilds as well as the masons, the butchers and the painters.

It is an extraordinary fact, then, that the lineal descendants of the slave guilds of Rome became the free guilds of the Middle Ages. In other Italian and Flemish cities and every German city an almost equally important role was played by the guilds. in local politics. They exerted a dominant or important political role. It is a part of history that makes interesting reading for those who believe that such conditions can return in so far as such things can happen in fundamentally different civilizations.

CHAPTER XV

The Plumb Plan

In view of the nation-wide interest in the Plumb Plan for the nationalization of the railroads which was promulgated in 1919 and received the endorsement of some American Federation of Labor officials as well as that of radical leaders, we give here the text of a manifesto issued by the Plumb Plan League. Ever since the return of the railroads to private ownership the agitation for the plan has continued.

The Committee feels it necessary to point out that this plan is largely the result of radical Socialist propaganda upon more conservative elements. It is an example of the extremely dangerous tendency even among those who are not conscious opponents of our institutions to take over certain elements of the revolutionary program so modified as not to show clearly their

obnoxious character.

THE A, B, C OF THE PLUMB PLAN

What is the Plumb Plan?

It is a plan for the public ownership and the democracy (sic) in the control of the railroads.

Who has endorsed it?

The two million organized railroad employees of America; and the American Federation of Labor, approving the principle of government ownership, has instructed its executive committee to co-operate with the officers of the railroad internationals in their efforts. It has also been endorsed by several farmers' organizations.

How does it propose to buy the roads?

By issuing government bonds with which to pay for the legiti mate private interests in the railroad industry.

How does it propose to operate the roads?

By a board of fifteen directors, five named by the President, to represent the public; five elected by the operating officers; five elected by the classified employees.

Does this mean government operation?

No; it is operation by a board in which those having the responsibility have also the authority. ment operation because it prevents

It is superior to governcontrol by an inefficient