Chapter 12

or other establishment, there would be a plant committee made up of the chairmen of all shop committees in the plant.

e. Where plant committees were organized, it would be their duty to designate one of their members as chairman. This plant committee chairman would therefore be what, under present conditions, is the general manager of the plant, with his fellow committeemen as his executive committee or board of managers.

f. Each economic unit, whether shop or plant, would have its engineers or experts, picked, like other workers, by the shop committee or the plant committee, and responsible to that committee for the particular tasks assigned to them.

All participation in the activities of this basic economic unit--hiring and firing as it is called--would be determined by the shop committees and by the plant committee, each with final local jurisdiction, subject, of course, to a referendum of the workers in the department or the plant concerned. By this means, the members of each basic economic group would be made the sole judges as to those with whom they should work. Each group would therefore have an opportunity to set its own group standards and to build up its own group spirit.

The individual worker, in order to secure a job, or work place, must therefore subject himself to the scrutiny of his prospective shop-mates, perhaps even to work for a time on probation, and this to prove his fitness to join the group and thus to participate in its activities.

Such a plan would provide a self-governing and self-directing economic unit, capable of adaptation to the various phases of economic life, and at the same time capable of generating its own social steam, and thus driving itself forward on the path of its own activities.

Farming, hand-craft industries, and other occupations in which the worker owns his own tools, and is worker, manager and business-man combined, would be forced to organize a local unit more nearly approximating the medieval guild or some of the modern organizations for producers' co-operation. The general principles of organization would be the same in the one case as in the other, power and control being held locally by self-directing, autonomous groups.

This plan for the organization of a local self-governing economic unit represents an attempt to apply the best principles of economic and political science to the working out of an intelligently directed society.

2. SUGGESTIONS FOR THE ORGANIZATION OF AN ECONOMIC DISTRICT IN A GIVEN INDUSTRY.

a. The district would consist of a number of economic units in the same or in an immediately related field of industry. For example, it might be formed of steel mills alone, or of machine shops and steel mills, or of machine shops, steel mills, and foundries. The decision on the matter of membership in the district would rest, first with the local economic units that united to form the district, and second, with the industries immediately concerned. The purpose of the organization would be to link together those economic units that were most dependent upon one another, and that therefore had the most interests in common.

b. When formed, the organization would apply for recognition to the divisional organization of its particular industry. If the district comprised manufacturing industries, it would apply to the divisional organization of the manufacturing industries; if the district comprised coal mines, it would apply to the divisional organization of the extractive industries. It would be to the interest of the divisional organization to recognize only such district organizations as did not involve the divisional organization in jurisdictional disputes.