There is, in the first place, a genuine need for, and a real social advantage in giving recognition to, the contemporary transformation in the status of the manual working wage-earners, on the one hand, and of the technicians on the other, as compared with that of the manager or mere “captain of industry.” This change of status, which is, perhaps, the most important feature of the industrial history of the past quarter of a century, will be most easily accorded its legitimate recognition in those industries and services in which the profit-making capitalist proprietor is dispensed with in favour of public ownership, whether national, municipal, or co-operative. This is, incidentally, an important reason for what is called “nationalisation.” It is a real social gain that the General Secretary of the Swiss Railwaymen’s Trade Union should sit as one of the five members of the supreme governing board of the Swiss railway administration. We ourselves look for the admission of nominees of the manual workers, as well as of the technicians, upon the executive boards and committees, on terms of complete equality with the other members, in all publicly owned industries and services; not merely, or even mainly, for the sake of the advantages of the counsel and criticism that the newcomers may bring from new standpoints, but principally for the sake of both inspiring and satisfying the increasing sense of corporate self-consciousness and public spirit among all those employed in these enterprises.

In the second place we should lay stress on the change that is taking place in the nature (and in the conception) of authority itself. In our analysis of 1897 we confined ourselves unduly to a separation of spheres of authority. Whilst still regarding that analytic separation of “management” into three classes of judgements or decisions as fundamentally valid, we should nowadays attach even more importance to the ways in which authority itself, in industry as well as in the rest of government, is being rapidly transformed, alike in substance and in methods of expression. The need for final decisions will remain, not merely in emergencies, but also as to policy; and it is of high importance to vest the responsibility for decision, according to the nature of the case, in the right hands. But we suggest that a great deed of the old autocracy in industry and services, once deemed to be indispensable, is ceasing to be necessary to efficiency, and will accordingly, as Democracy becomes more genuinely accepted, gradually be dispensed with. A steadily increasing sphere will, except in matters of emergency, be found for consultation among all grades and sections concerned, out of which will emerge judgements and decisions arrived at, very largely, by common consent. This will, we believe, produce actually a higher standard of industrial efficiency than mere autocracy could ever hope for. Where knowledge is a common possession the facts themselves will often decide; and though decisions may be short, sharp, and necessarily formulated by the appropriate person, they will not inevitably bear the impress of (or be resented as) the dictates of irresponsible autocracy. We may instance two large classes of considerations which will, we think, with great social advantage, come to be matters for mutual consultation in those committees and councils which already characterise the administration of all industry on a large scale, whether under private or public ownership, and which will, in the future, be increasingly representative of all grades of workers by hand or by brain. To such committees and councils there will come, as a matter of course, a stream of reports from the disinterested outside costing experts, which will carry with them no coercive authority, but which will graphically reveal the efficiency results, so far as regards cost and output, of each part of the enterprise, in comparison both with its own past, and with the corresponding results of other analogous enterprises. Similarly, there will come a stream of financial and merely statistical reports from equally disinterested outside auditors and statisticians, making graphic revelations as to the progress of the enterprise, in comparison with its own previous experience and with the progress of like enterprises elsewhere. Further, there will be a stream of what we may call scientific reports, also from disinterested outside experts, not only describing new inventions and discoveries in the technique of the particular enterprise, but suggesting, in the light of recent surveys of the work, how they could be practically applied to its peculiar circumstances. These three classes of reports, all of them by disinterested experts, engaged in keeping under review all analogous enterprises at home or abroad, and having neither interest in, nor authority over, any of them, will, we suggest, be discussed by the members of the committees and councils on terms of equality; the decisions being taken, according to the nature of the case, by those in whom the responsibility for decision may be vested.

But there will be a second extensive class of reports of a different character, conveying not statements of fact but views of policy. There will, we must assume, be reports from those responsible, not merely or mainly for satisfying the existing generation of consumers, producers, or citizens, but for safeguarding the interests of the community as a whole, in the future as well as in the present. There will be the reports from the organs of the consumers or users of the particular commodity or service (such as the District Committees representing telephone users set up by the Postmaster-General as organs of, criticism and suggestion for his telephone administration). Finally there will be reports conveying criticisms and suggestions from committees or councils representing other enterprises, or other sections of producers (whether technicians or manual workers), which may have something to communicate that they deem important. These reports will, none of them, come with coercive authority, but merely as conveying information, to be considered in the consultations out of which the necessary decisions will emerge.

Opinions may differ as to the competence to take part in such consultations of the selected representatives of the manual workers and the technicians respectively. We are ourselves of opinion that, taking the business as a whole, such representatives will be found to compare, in competence, quite favourably with the average member of a Board of Directors. But whether or not the counsels and decisions of great industrial enterprises are likely to be much improved by such consultations—and we confidently expect that they will be—we suggest that it is predominantly in this form that the principles of Democracy may, in practice, be applied to industrial administration; and that it will be for the Professional Associations of the technicians and the Trade Unions of the manual workers to prove themselves equal to the transformation in their status that this or any other application of Democracy involves.

But here we must pause. In a future work on the achievements, policy, and immediate controversies of the British Labour and Socialist Movement we shall give the historical and the psychological analysis, in the light of the experience of the past few decades, upon which we base our present conclusions.

INDEX

THE END

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OTHER WORKS BY
SIDNEY AND BEATRICE WEBB.