y wants them. The manager's term of employment is
longer, but the professional pieceworker, such as I am when I write
this article, has usually no contracted term, and is only paid for
actual work done. I also have no control over the organisation of the
production of _Sperling's Journal_ or any other paper for which I do
piecework. I am very glad that it is so, for organising production is
a very difficult and complicated and risky business, and from all
the risks of it the wage-earner is saved. The salary-earner or the
professional, when once his product is turned out and paid for, also
surrenders all claim upon the product. What else could any reasonable
wage-earner or professional expect or desire? The brickmaker or the
doctor cannot, after being paid for making bricks or mending a broken
leg, expect still to have the bricks or the leg for his very own. And
how much use would they be to him if he could? Unless he were to be
allowed to sell them again to somebody else, which, after being once
paid for them, would merely be absurd.

But when we come to the remedies that Mr. Cole suggests for these
"marks of degraded status," we find in the forefront of them that the
worker must be secured "payment as a human being, and not merely as a
mortal tenement of so much labour power for which an efficient demand
exists." This, especially to an incurably lazy person like myself, is
an extremely attractive programme. To be paid, and paid well, merely
in return for having "taken the trouble to be born," is an ideal
towards which my happiest dreams have ever struggled in vain. But
would it work as a practical scheme? Speaking for myself, I can
guarantee that under such circumstances I should potter about with
many activities that would amuse my delicious leisure, but I doubt
whether any of them would be regarded by society as a fit return for
the pleasant livelihood that it gave me. And human society can only be
supplied with the things that it needs if its members turn out, not
what it amuses them to make or produce, but what other people want.
And It is here that the National Guildsmen's idea of freedom seems, in
my humble judgment, to be entirely unsocial As things are, nobody can
make money unless he produces what somebody wants and will pay for.
Even the capitalist, if he puts his capital into producing an article
for which there is no demand, will get no return on it. In other
words, we can only earn economic freedom by doin