To offset this, however, there will be the
undoubted scarcity of male help due to battle or disease, and the
inevitable emigration of the soldier, desirous of a free and open life,
to the Colonies.
On the other hand, there is the conviction that unrestricted output,
having registered its golden returns, will be the rule, not the
exception, among the English artisans. England's frenzied desire for
economic authority proclaims a job for everybody.
I asked a member of the British Cabinet, a man perhaps better qualified
than any other in England to speak on this subject, to sum up the whole
after-war labour situation, as he saw it, and his epigrammatic reply
was:
"After the war capital will be ungrudging in its remuneration to labour;
and labour, in turn, must be ungrudging in its output."
No one doubts that after the war the British worker will have his full
share of profits. As one large manufacturer told me: "We have so gotten
into the habit of turning our profits over to the government that it
will be easy to divide with our employees." Here may be the panacea for
the whole English labour ill.
But, whatever may be the readjustment of this labour problem, one thing
is certain: Peace will find a disciplined England. The five million men,
trained to military service, will dominate the new English life; and
this means that it will be orderly and productive.
With this discipline will come a democracy--social and industrial--such
as England has never known.
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