Page:The Case for Capitalism (1920).djvu/211

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become, as producer and consumer, part of a great myriad-handed economic body in which all co-operate and contribute bits of themselves to the common good.

This system has infinite possibilities of harmonious development, but the modern fashion in thought seems to have decided that there is something radically wrong about it. Mr. Arthur Henderson, M.P., in a speech at an International Brotherhood Congress at the City Temple on September 16, 1919, stated that the workers wanted "a new method which would be based on the recognition of fundamental principles hitherto disregarded. Firstly, that human labour was not a commodity or article of commerce to be dealt with by the law of supply and demand as we now dealt with coal, or cotton, or iron ore, but it was that into which personality entered and through which personality was expressed." Can one with the best will in the world find any real meaning in this sounding phrase? Of course we all express our personality in our work just as in anything else that we do; but is that any reason why we should not exchange it for the work of others by selling it, and have it valued according to the extent to which others like it and want it, just as our other actions get social value from