The Roadtown corporation will have machines for suitable Roadtown
industries made of certain standard sizes to fit the workroom
described. These machines will be for sale or to rent to the tenant.
Under the old system of industry, men, constantly fraught with the
fear of losing their jobs, are always anxious to buy and own the tools
of production. In Roadtown practice there will be nothing to gain by
private ownership over publicly owned machines. The corporation will
charge just enough rental to maintain and repair the machinery and
replace with new ones when the old are out of commission. The operator
of the machine will find it more profitable to invest his savings in
the bonds of the corporation than to make his own repairs or to replace
his own machines. Another advantage of renting your machine is the
option you have at all times, that of exchanging it for some other kind
of machine.
Whether the factory is brought into the home, or the man induced to go
to the factory will, of course, depend upon the nature of his work.
Sometimes it will be cheaper to move the product, sometimes cheaper to
move the man. In either case the perfected system of transportation is
of equal importance.
The selling of farm products coöperatively is practical, as is being
abundantly proven in the United States and to a greater extent abroad.
There is no valid argument that can be put up against coöperative
buying of the raw material and selling of the finished product of the
Roadtown workers. Such coöperative buying and selling should not for
a moment be classed with the graft tempting work of the municipal or
government buyer. In the case of the government the money which is
used to buy cavalry horses, for instance, is raised by revenues upon
diamonds or cigars. There is here no relation whatsoever between the
man who pays the taxes and the buyer of the goods. In coöperative
buying the connection between the man who pays and the price that is
paid will be close indeed. The buyer of leather for Roadtown glove
makers would be held even more closely responsible for honest buying
by the consumers of the leather than by the stockholders of a present
corporate glove factory, for in the corporation factory there is a
chance to hide poor buying behind good selling in the final report
to the stockholders. Every move of the buyer and seller of Roadtown
workers is then and there made known to the Roadtown workman or group
of workmen who has the immediate right to recall the blundering
representative. The trouble with government officials is that they are
too far removed from the people who supply the money which they spend.
In Roadtown that connection will be close and quick in action. It will
be corporate industry with interest to small or large investors, but
control and profits for and by the workers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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