guarantee does he hold out that, even if and when the proletariat can be persuaded to give the Guilds a trial, with the object of eventually getting rid of the private employer and syndicalising industry, the relations between the producers and the consumers of goods will be any more harmonious than they are at present?

Further, what assurance have we that the workmen themselves will accept the rulings of the Guilds with any better grace, and observe them with any greater fidelity, than many of them have shown in recent years in regard to the rulings of their own Trade Unions? Over and over again we hear that the soulless State or Corporation has turned out to be no better as an employer than the private capitalist. Would the Industrial Guild introduce that 'human' element into its dealings with the craftsmen, the absence of which is still, in many quarters, judged to be the worst evil of all? Perhaps it would. Perhaps it would be 'human, all-too-human,' in its treatment of its own members and managers, and correspondingly callous to the interests of those outside the ring-the buyers of its productions, that is. Under Guild Socialism the State, as we have seen, is to have an equal mandate with the Guilds' Congress for adjusting differences between the two nations of producers and consumers. It seems highly probable that it would find ample opportunities for exercising its privilege in this respect, and might not, in fact, ever have time for anything else.

Mr Cole's faith in machinery is pathetic. He appears to place as much trust in the machinery of 'self-determination in industry' as some other people do in the machinery of self-determination' for nationalities. He looks forward to that perfect day when we shall have a form of social organisation which will afford to the individual the fullest and freest power of self-government in an organised community.'

It is organisation' all through-and 'organisation' for what? Individual freedom? Widely different notions of what constitutes 'freedom' can be found in any two people in any one room. One man's 'freedom' is often another man's fetters; the fullest and freest' autonomy of a Labour group might strike the labourers and citizens in other groups as merely another form of brigandage.

Then their groups would organise for retaliation or self-protection; we should be back again in social chaos; and many of the most ardent 'freedom '-mongers would no doubt be calling loudly for the re-emergence of some despotic authority-King or State or Constitution-to restore order and reduce the warring factions to their rightful proportions in the realm. Mr Cole blandly and unquestioningly assumes that, when the 'machinery of organisation' is renovated and renamed, human nature will undergo a radical change for the better, and that, lirectly the workman has got his Guild, sloth, greed and dishonesty will fly away.

But, if it may be said that Mr Cole and his coadjutors n the advanced Labour movement tend to leave out of ccount the dynamic element of human perversity, there s another class of writer in our group who goes on rguing about the problems of Capital and Labour as hough the theories and proposals of the Socialist school ad never been made. This will never do. The critic ay legitimately doubt if the workman is much imressed by the Morris-dance of men like Messrs Russell nd Cole. But the capitalist must not ignore the act that their teachings have to be met and countercted.

In Miss M. D. Petre's little volume entitled Democracy the Cross-Roads,' we find a recognition of the factor nown as human character, so lamentably missing from e work of the extreme Socialists and anti-Socialists ike. Miss Petre realises that the worker is neither gel nor machine, but shares good and bad qualities th every other class in the community. Her book ould, indeed, prove a salutary medicine for hot-headed d narrow-minded 'Labour' rebels if they would only ke it-which we can very heartily recommend them do.'

Miss Petre starts by insisting that, if 'the world is to made safe for Democracy, Democracy must be made fe for the world'—a remark originally made by Mr G. L. er in criticising certain supporters of the League of tions in the United States. But it is not long before e is really cutting the ice with something more to the int; and rebuking both forcefully and wittily the facile logisers of Labour.

...

'Human nature is not in itself the noblest creation imaginable, and it is a false idealism that would find its finest moral flower in its most trampled and neglected regions. We are all of us weak and lazy and cowardly . . . the poor are no whit better than the rich in these respects, for material poverty has no essential connexion with poverty of spirit.... Some who have lived amongst children, and managed, nevertheless, to love them, are often moved to laughter by the poetical presentation of child-life set forth by those who have never wiped a dirty nose or spent an afternoon with a nursery full of children recovering from influenza. So, too, those who have worked among the poor are moved to mirth by the onesided romance of others who have not frequented city slums or rural back lanes.'

The author sees, and says very plainly, that what Labour needs more than anything else just now is a strong application of self-criticism. Far too long, no doubt, did it receive little but the kicks and cuffs of its superiors. Now it is in danger of languishing under the flattery of sycophantic courtiers. Having established its claims, the flower of democracy should possess itself of a stout belting of cynicism regarding its virtues, for in truth, they are but frail and fallible.

'Can any one honestly maintain that the working classes, o the people in general, are at present manifesting more dis interestedness than the privileged classes against whom they are tilting? . . . What we want to hear from the representa tives of the working classes is, coupled with their claims for higher wages or less work, a demand on their own party to make high use of these advantages. The campaign against poverty should be joined with a campaign against vice and disease and waste and idleness and incompetence.'

Emerson said that, when a man ceased to worry about whether his neighbour cheated him, and concentrated all his attention on not cheating his neighbour, he ex changed his market-cart for a chariot of the sun. This is the spirit in which Miss Petre has approached the feud between those two quarrelsome neighbours, the employer and the workman; and the debate loses nothing in interest by being a little emotionalised.

For Mr B. Seebohm Rowntree the question is largely

ne of a minimum wage, and the amount of food, clothng, furniture and 'sundries' that can be bought with

He represents the quantity of food per man per day ecessary for average muscular work as 115 grams of rotein and 3500 calories of fuel energy. For very light work (such, we gather, as lounging about town) his llowance is 90 of the former and 2500 of the latter. Zet, whereas he found in one of his Labour investigaions that the wages of a large number of workers were not sufficient to provide this minimum, he discovered a West End Club in which the average daily dietary per person contained 202 grams of protein and 5148 calories of fuel energy. Mr Rowntree estimates that, allowing for the probability of prices not getting lower for many years than 25 per cent. above the pre-war level, a mininum wage of 44s. weekly would be necessary for a Family of man, wife and three children, and 25s. for single women. Can industry afford to bear this cost? Mr Rowntree makes four suggestions under this head. The minimum wage may come from:

1. A decrease in the cost of raw material.

2. An increase in selling prices.

3. A reduction of profits, but not below the level required to attract the necessary capital.

4. An increase in the productivity of industry, whether due to better organisation and machinery, greater efficiency on the part of the workers or management, or any other factor.

'The Human Needs of Labour' throws a practical searchlight on the physical aspect of the workers' necessities, and should be studied by all concerned in drawing up any future charter for this class.

Of yet another kind is Mr Hartley Withers's contribution to the all-absorbing theme. With one foot in Lombard Street and the other in the Temple of the Humanities, Mr Withers comes forward as an intelligent meliorist, believing more in goodwill than in Acts of Parliament, and proclaiming that productive spending and persistent saving on the part of the rich would do more than any amount of dividing up' to get rid of the worst evils of poverty. Mankind 'is surprised and sore ' to-day at the discovery that, in spite of all its wonderful

and successful enterprise in the fields of industry, it still has to work harder than ever for its living.

'One of the causes of the disillusionment is the dawn of a belief that no industrial victory can be complete, no material achievement can have reached its goal, as long as those who do the hardest work get so mean a share of the good things of the world, that they have no chance of life in the fullest sense of the term.'

The panacea advocated in 'Poverty and Waste' is a cessation of luxurious living in well-to-do circles, and a widespread storing-up of capital for the purposes of useful production. Stimulating as a good part of this book is, we hardly think the author's suggested remedy goes to the root of the subject. Even if it does, he is at pains to re-assure any who might be terrified by it, by telling them 'it is not likely to happen hurriedly.' He prophesies good things as a result of the curtailment of national and personal extravagance. But

'before these can happen there must be a radical change of taste, and breakdown of ostentatious display; and also a realisation of the fact that every luxury is stiffening the price of commodities for the poor. Need we fear that these two things will happen with any alarming celerity?'

...

'Fear'! If Mr Withers's gospel is a genuine one, and offered in good faith with a desire for its acceptance, we confess we do not quite follow his final comfortable interrogation.

Utopia only comes in by a side-wind in Mr Hearnshaw's 'Democracy at the Crossways.' It is not unlike that of some others-'a cordial co-operation' between 'masters and men, combined to conduct industry so as to obtain the maximum of efficiency on the one side, and the maximum of liberty on the other.' Thus we box the compass of ideals for the coming commonwealth, touching the capitalist ideal on the 'efficiency' side, and the communist ideal on the 'liberty' side. Mr Hearnshaw is 'like that.' He gets a bit from one and a bit from the other, stitches the lot together and presents what he apparently considers is a coherent social state. Occasionally he gives us a touch of Mr Sapsea, as when he