THE GUILD COMPANY
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] Sin —I have read the article on the Guild Company by Mr. Stirling Taylor, which appears to be offered as a new scheme to restore the ,harmony between the worker and the employer in industry. Apart from the extraordinary sug- gestion of dispensing with the shareholders' control of a company and placing that control in the hands of the workers, of whom only a selected few may vote, the suggestion is merely the old_ panacea to industrial ills known as profit- sharing. The name is the only new idea in it. The chief criticism which the writer of the article anticipates is on the question of management, where he assumes that the old management has served well, and, as no better can be found, it must stay. This is scarcely logical as a generalization, but let us analyze the position further.
It is suggested that the shareholder should relinquish his control of the finances of the company because the worker, under this scheme, having the best interests of the company at heart, will not do anything to prejudice the capital of the business, as it would militate against his own interests to do so. I am afraid that the shareholder would not feel so confident about it. With a fixed rate of interest on the various denominations of shares the shareholder would never participate in the prosperity of the company, except at the will of the worker, and might have to forgo his " fixed " interest in the lean times.
Undoubtedly every business man will agree that the labour or social ideal of Collectivism would not solve the difficulty of industrial discontent, and the experience of the past ten years has proved that profit-sharing is not a satisfactory remedy. The scheme does not make provision for the bad times when losses occur and have to be met. The depression from which we are slowly emerging is due to economic influences beyond • the control of either worker or employer ; and the scheme under con.sideration will not restore the necessary confidence between them. The events of recent years prove that the worker is not contented with his lot and desires a larger share of the product of industry together with a certain measure of control in it. Further, he feels that he ought to be paid according to his individual effort ; some Trades' Unions support this view, others do not.
It would be fatal to give the worker control of any business in 'which he had no financial stake—a real responsibility. To give him a share in the business is the fundamental basis of co-partnership, a principle which has not been given a real chance, although it has been very successful when a fair trial has been given, viz., T. and T. Taylor's, of Batley, and Lever Bros., Ltd. Profit-sharing is the distributing of a share of the profits of a business to the worker by agree- ment between the employer and the worker ; but co-partner- ship is profit-sharing based on shares gradually acquired by the worker, assisted by the employer, with limited control over the company's affairs through a co-partnership com- mittee. It supplements, not supplants, the control of the shareholders. There is no reason why the worker. should not nominate some suitable representative to the board of his company, as and when he becomes more versed in financial and technical affairs.
The only way to bring the difficulties of industry home to the worker is to enable him to take a financial interest in his business, wherever practicable, and make him a shareholder and a capitalist, with its measure of control, not give him control with nothing to lose as your contributor seems to
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