March i, 1917 
LAND & WATER 
15 
I have evidence — that many of those who have used 
this night class system with seeming ad\antage have 
suffered permanently in health." 
" I have evidence tot). One ol my best friends is one 
who has worked his way up from the bottom to a pretty 
good high rung and has paid for it ever since. He con- 
demns the system root and branch as useless to most, 
as discouraging to all, and as knocking out the best." 
" I think broadly I would accept that." 
"Equal Opportunity" 
" You are not one of those who plume themselves on 
the fact that there is what • is known as ' equal oppor- 
tunity ' for everyone to rise in Great Britain ? " 
" I am not. I suppose there will never be such a thing 
as equality of opportunity. But I am sure we can go a 
good deal farther towards making it a possibility." 
" You don't think that what we call down South the 
Scottish system of education gives a better chance ? " 
" But there is not now any distinct Scottish system 
of education, except perhaps some sort of sur\'ival owing 
to exceptional conditions in the Highlands. The old 
Scottish system under which each parish was required to 
provide its own schoolmaster gave much better 
results in my opinion than the present system of 
School Boards acting under a central authority. The 
old schoolmasters were generally of a high type, who had 
gi-aduated at the Scottish Universities and who had a 
love of teaching. They were free from the interference of 
a central authority with its cast iron code and they took a 
close jJersonal interest in the " lad o' pairts " so that he 
received a really good education and was encouraged to 
proceed to the University. In my opinion the remedy for 
the present state of things is to give the schoolmasters 
more freedom of action and certainly to encourage a 
better class of teacher by paying more, ^^'hat I ad\-ocate 
is a better general education for all, including training in 
the duties of citizenship, and a technical training for 
those who have the natural capacity to profit by it. 
" And I want to make it clear that 1 am not merely 
talking about the democratic justice of an improved 
system — you know my general sympathies. I'm keeping 
strictly to the business point. I mean that there are not 
enough directive or inventive brains to manage the in- 
dustry of this country, and what there are are taken from 
much too small a class of men. We cannot afford to miss 
a single man of initiative and intelligence among the 
children of the poorer classes ; and our system seems 
designed to miss as many as possible. Directive talent 
and initiative are not common in any class. But it is 
not a class thing at all. The type emerges in any en- 
vironment you like to take : school, sport, war, trade, 
manufacturing. We have got to have a system which 
enables a good man to get right through with the best 
that is in him without putting every possible obstacle 
in his way. No doubt as I have said, an occasional 
man does slip through and may be the better for the 
struggle. But that obviously cannot be a right system 
or we should all put our sons into the worst possible 
schools and take them away at the earliest possible age, 
so as to stimulate them by making everything as difficult 
as possible ! The business of national education seems 
about the most wasteful that caii be devised ; and if our 
engineering shops were run on the same plan we should 
soon be in bankruptcy." 
" What do you make of the claim that is voicing itself 
now among thoughtful and perhaps extremist working 
men and their 'intellectual'- allies for 'workshop 
control ' ?" 
" Well, if j-ou put it without qualification like that, 
I should say that workshop control by the workers 
IS simply a contradication in terms. There cannot be 
two controls 'of the same operation, and engineering at 
any rate is a job in which the difference between success 
and failure, that is between efficient production and waste- 
ful production, is so slight that any uncertaintv of method 
or direction means disaster. Claims to the direction of 
industry can only be justified by results. There is not 
the slightest doubt in mv mind" that there aie men now 
working at the lathes or in the official ranks of labour 
who with better chances would have been and should have 
been directors of industry. I am for anything which will 
make them so ; but to "tell me that a committee of my 
men could run the shop as well as I can docs not just 
seem to me to be the truth. But don't misunderstand 
me. I think there is a great deal more that could be done, 
;uul done at once, by way of (le\eloping opportunity 
and by way of harmonising the relations of enqjloyees and 
management. There is also a good deal done in many 
firms with a greater or less measure of success even now. 
The extension of representativ-e shop committees in 
regular conference with the management is a most hope- 
ful experiment . . . Our friends must not be in too 
much of a hurry. It is not just stodginess or reaction 
that makes us not welcome these schemes of joint con- 
trol. We suffer a good deal from people who write and 
talk about production from the outside." 
" People like me, in fact ! " 
" Well, yes, perhaps ; but the method of asking questions 
is not open to so much objection. The employer or 
manager can only see this thing as a practical question. 
How can so much pig iron be turned into so many cranes 
or boilers in sucli a way as to provide a li\ing for the 
workers, a reward for the responsibilities of manage- 
ment and a sufficient return to capital to preserve that 
capital and attract other capital to the industry." 
" You don't think, then, that the big job will ever be 
its own sufficient reward ? " 
" Well, I am not going to prophesy ; but taking things 
as they are, I am not ashamed to say that I should not 
have worked so hard, should not have taken upon myself 
such responsibilities, if I had not been well paid for it. 
I am afraid it seems very gross, but I think there is that 
fundamental self-regardingness in men as they are, 
and we ha\e got to clcal with men as they are." 
"Sympathy" 
" But that is not to say that you are not in sympathy 
\vith labour aspirations ? You have betrayed sympathy 
often enough in our conversation." 
" I don't want to talk about sympathy ; sympathy 
is cheap enough. I want labour "to get all that it is 
possible to get out of an improved state of things. 
I am only facing the fact that the improvement is a 
slow affair. I am by no means satisfied that we are doing 
the best for them, or they for themselves. And e\-en from 
the point of view of policy, the friction and the bitterness 
are the worst things we have to face in the near future ; 
and it. will be worth a great deal in hard cash to every- 
body to do away with them. Unquestionably a great 
deal of the bitterness has been caused by that funda- 
mental mistake of the employers in cutting down piece 
rates whenever labour seemed to begetting too much out 
of them. W'e are learning sense now, but the employers 
who were responsible for that bad business seemed to have 
the idea that a workman ought not to earn more than a 
certain exceedingly modest sum of money ; whereas the 
truth was that with a fair piece rate to" start with, the 
more a man can earn, the cheaper the cost of production 
to the employer. If the worker thinks that the price 
per piece will be reduced should he increase his output, 
naturally he will limit that output to just such a quantity 
as will avoid the reduction, and the employer has, in 
order to get the output he wants, to provide more ma- 
chines, more buildings to house them, more power to 
drive them, more artiiicial light, more foremen and clerks, 
and more of all the large number of items of expense 
which go to make up what are known as ' establishment 
charges.' It is much cheaper to encourage the worker 
to turn out all he can, no matter what wages he earns 
in doing so. This of course involves more care in fi.xing 
piece rates which shall be fair to both employer and 
employed, but that can be done." 
" I suppose it is a deUcate question to ask about your 
own relations with Trade Unions ? " 
" Well, no. You are aslving a convinced Trade Unionist. 
I have never been able to understand how any workman 
is short-sighted enough to stay out of his Trade Union, 
and I realise the excuses of those unionists who wish 
even to force men into the Union. A better organised 
Trade Union means smoother relations between capital 
and labour ; that certainly might go down as a general 
truth. As to the Union leaders, of course they differ ; 
but on the whole I have nothing to complain about. It 
is misunderstanding, not malice that's at the back of most 
cpiarrels. ' 
