c. This chairman of the shop committee would be called the shop chairman. His duties would correspond roughly with those of the present-day foreman, or with those of the shop-steward or shop chairman in some of the more advanced of the British industries. In reality this shop chairman would be the shop executive, holding office while he could retain the good will of his shop-mates, and while he could give a satisfactory account of his shop in the way of production and discipline.
d. Where there were a number of departments in a large factory, store or other establishment, there would be a plant committee made up of the chairmen of all shop committees in the plant.
e. Where plant committees were organized, it would be their duty to designate one of their members as chairman. This plant committee chairman would therefore be what, under present conditions, is the general manager of the plant, with his fellow committeemen as his executive committee or board of managers.
f. Each economic unit, whether shop or plant, would have its engineers or experts, picked, like other workers, by the shop committee or the plant committee, and responsible to that committee for the particular tasks assigned to them.
All participation in the activities of this basic economic unit—hiring and firing as it is called—would be determined by the shop committees and by the plant committee, each with final local jurisdiction, subject, of course, to a referendum of the workers in the department or the plant concerned. By this means, the members of each basic economic group would be made the sole judges as to those with whom they should work. Each group would therefore have an opportunity to set its own group standards and to build up its own group spirit.
The individual worker, in order to secure a job, or work place, must therefore subject himself to the scrutiny of his prospective shop-mates, perhaps even to work for a time on probation, and this to prove his fitness to join the group and thus to participate in its activities.
Such a plan would provide a self-governing and self-directing economic unit, capable of adaptation to the various phases of economic life, and at the same time capable of generating its own social steam, and thus driving itself forward on the path of its own activities.
Farming, hand-craft industries, and other occupations in which the worker owns his own tools, and is worker, manager and business-man combined, would be forced to organize a local unit more nearly approximating the medieval guild or some of the modern organizations for producers' co-operation. The general principles of organization would be the same in the one case as in the other, power and control being held locally by self-directing, autonomous groups.
This plan for the organization of a local self-governing economic unit represents an attempt to apply the best principles of economic and political science to the working out of an intelligently directed society.
2. Suggestions for the organization of an economic district in a given industry.