On the question of remuneration there is really, if the matter be closely examined, no difference whatever in principle. Most employers agree with the unions that the worker is entitled to a fair share of the product; they disagree as to what proportion of the product constitutes a fair share—a dispute not as to principle but as to quantum. No employer, so far as my experience goes, would contend that he was entitled in good times to pay his workers nothing more than a bare subsistence wage, and appropriate for himself as profit all the balance of revenue after payment of working expenses and the market rate on capital. What usually happens in bad times is that the workers in employment get, as a first charge on the product, wages much higher than subsistence rates, and the shareholders go without return, which results in great deprivation to many whose meagre incomes consist of such dividends. The more critically one examines the three fundamentals the more one is irresistibly driven to the conclusion that there are no issues between employers and the workers in regard to any of them which cannot form the subject of fair collective bargaining. But that is what is denied by the intellectuals of the Labour Party, entirely on their own a priori reasons. Happily their doctrinaire conclusions meet with scant respect from the general body of workers. The Vagueness of Labour’s Scheme of Reconstruction There are only two possible courses for the future—either to reconstruct industry on some entirely new basis, or to maintain the present system of organization and introduce reforms which will cover the three fundamentals as a first beginning. That really is the question on which a decision must sooner or later be taken by the nation, and far-reaching national consequences will turn upon it. Labour says: “Destroy the present industrial system, and replace it by something based on public, and not private, ownership of the means of production.” Did we know exactly what Labour’s scheme of reconstruction is, it could be critically examined in detail, and its practical effect on the prosperity of industry, the welfare of the worker and the good of the community dispassionately considered. But Labour with prudent reticence has not provided us with any official scheme. Different sections of Labour have tabled all kinds of variant and in many cases discordant schemes which agree in one respect only—the elimination of the private employer. All that the Labour Party tender in the way of constructive reorganization is the vague formula of “nationalization and democratic control,” Nor will the Party undertake to say what is the method and kind of industrial control—a matter on which depend the whole efficiency and success of industry—which it has in mind. The truth is, the Party has not succeeded in devising any scheme of industrial control on which it can agree, and the Executive Committee, though instructed to report on that