The pressure of events has already validated many of the contentions of the guildsman. We have seen how in the case of the woollen industries the Government has initiated the practice of treating employers as its own paid servants, has recognised the principle of democratic control, has assumed the purchase and control of raw materials, and has superseded production for profit by production for use; we have here all the essentials of a national guild save one; and that one thing needful is the short step from government control to public ownership. Naturally the end of the war will bring some reaction from the position thus achieved; yet it is impossible not to believe that the need to increase the aggregate normal productivity of the nation, imposed by the financial burdens of the war, will ultimately compel a further development of these wartime tendencies. Certainly we have in the British Labour Party some guarantee that this movement will continue. Its memorandum on reconstruction virtually presupposes where it does not explicitly affirm the underlying principles of the guild-movement. “Standing as it does for the Democratic Control of Industry, the Labour Party would think twice before it sanctioned any abandonment of the present profitable centralisation of purchase of raw materials; of the present carefully organised ‘rationing,’ by joint committees of the trades concerned, of the several establishments with the materials they require; of the present elaborate system of ‘costing’ and public audit of manufacturers’ accounts, so as to stop the waste heretofore caused by the mechanical inefficiency of the more backward firms, of the present salutary publicity of manufacturing processes and expenses thus ensured; and on the information thus obtained (in order never again to revert to the old-time profiteering) of the present rigid fixing, for standardised products, of maximum prices at the factory, at the warehouse of the wholesale trader, and in the retail shop.” IV