As against this incentive of private profit the Syndicalists would substitute the imaginary incentive that each worker would work for the good of his own group of workers; the National Guildist that each worker would work for the benefit of his Guild of workers, and the State Socialist that each worker would work for the State. Reduced to its elements, it means that each worker would, in the end, work for what he could get out of it, or if he found that he got the same advantage without working so hard, then he would not work so energetically. The suggestion that workers would work more vigorously for the community or State is so absolutely contrary to my own experience that I find it difficult to treat the suggestion with respect. It was never so during the war—in Government factories, dockyards, arsenals, there was just as much restriction of production as in the works of private employers, and considerably more strikes. In none of our municipal services is it found to be a fact. The railway strike of September 1919, while the railways were under Government control, is only another illustration of the falsity of the suggestion. It is said that Labour under the capitalistic system is bought and sold as a commodity. That is one of those phrases which expresses more than is meant. The lawyer sells his legal advice, the surgeon his operative skill, the musician his powers of technique, taste and expression just as a person who owns a commodity sells it. I cannot see any moral degradation whatever in the worker accepting wages any more than a private lawyer accepting his salary in a financial house, or a house-surgeon accepting his in a hospital or an organist his in a parish church. All of them are subject to notice terminating their engagements, just as a manual worker—not probably a week’s notice, but some longer period. The accusation is put even higher and the capitalist is called a thief, in other words, that he is appropriating in the shape of his own profit something which ought to belong to Labour. This proposition, palpably untrue, is so generally accepted by the workers that it deserves some examination. If a Trade Unionist, say a foreman plater, in one of our large ship repairing centres, works hard and makes, as he does in normal times, a big income, he may do one or two things with it; he may spend it on his own amusements or in wasteful extravagance; on the other hand, he may save and invest it, as I have known many do, in a small industrial concern in his own district. In the first case he is by common consent an honourable, if a foolish, man, in the second he certainly will not be called a thief. He has used by investment a part of his wealth for the purpose of producing more wealth, and his resultant increase of wealth is not robbery of the workers in the concern in which his money is invested. But then he is a member of the Labour movement. Between such a case and the case of the financial house which makes a business