in the character of ownership would have three
advantages. It would abolish the government of industry by property.
It would end the payment of profits to functionless shareholders by
turning them into creditors paid a fixed rate of interest. It would
lay the only possible foundations for industrial peace by making it
possible to convert industry into a profession carried on by all grades
of workers for the service of the public, not for the gain of those who
own capital. The organization which it would produce will be
described, of course, as impracticable. It is interesting, therefore,
to find it is that which experience has led practical men to suggest as
a remedy for the disorders of one of the most important of national
industries, that of building. The question before the Committee of
employers and workmen, which issued last August a Report upon the
Building Trade, was "Scientific Management and the Reduction of
Costs."[1] These are not phrases which suggest an economic revolution;
but it is something little short of a revolution that the signatories
of the report propose. For, as soon as they came to grips with the
problem, they found that it was impossible to handle it effectively
without reconstituting the general fabric of industrial relationships
which is its setting. Why is the service supplied by the industry
ineffective? Partly because the workers do not give their full
energies to the performance of their part in production. {107} Why do
they not give their best energies? Because of "the fear of
unemployment, the disinclination of the operatives to make unlimited
profit for private employers, the lack of interest evinced by
operatives owing to their non-participation in control, inefficiency
both managerial and operative." How are these psychological obstacles
to efficiency to be counteracted? By increased supervision and
speeding up, by the allurements of a premium bonus system, or the other
devices by which men who are too ingenious to have imagination or moral
insight would bully or cajole poor human nature into doing what--if
only the systems they invent would let it!--it desires to do, simple
duties and honest work? Not at all. By turning the building of houses
into what teaching now is, and Mr. Squeers thought it could never be,
an honorable profession.

"We believe," they write, "that the great task of our Industrial
Council is to develop an entirely new system of industrial control