Functional socialism

WHO CAN SHALL 163

they are and not as they are presented to us in the strictly official reports of the Scribes or in the smug optimism of our unctuous Pharisees. For, not even in the days of the hungry ’forties, have we experienced such widespread unemployment—unemployment moreover involving the final severance of the worker from his craft or trade. It is no exaggeration to affirm that possibly one half of the present unemployed, if the existing industrial system should continue, will never again return to the trade they have learnt and to which they have given their best years. ‘They have become industrial Ishmaels, doomed to the desert when our pastures are lush with food. If we could say, as has perhaps been possible in thin days that have passed, that after all things could be worse, there might be some excuse to wait for the clouds to roll by; but we know now of a certainty that we cannot return even to the comparative prosperity of the pre-War days. There is an agonized cry in our land for immediate and fundamental change. So catastrophic is our situation that no class, no group, no individual must be permitted to consign their fellow men and women to poverty and nakedness. The control of industry must be given to our functional associations; we cannot leave it to the mercy of the private profiteer and financier. Just as the child could see that the prince had nothing on, so to-day our industrial system stands naked before us. All its pretences are shattered; it can no longer maintain its workers nor provide that he who can work shall.

L*