Page:The Case for Capitalism (1920).djvu/234

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good work and of the competent manager. Undistracted by irrelevant political notions, his mind centred upon the practical affairs of his trade, the workman may be trusted to elect to higher grades the best men available. In the appointment of their check-weighmen, for example, the miners almost never make a mistake. Doubtless injustices will from time to time be perpetrated; but they will be few compared with the million injustices done to-day to capable men who are habitually ignored in the interests of capitalist cadets." This pleasant trusting faith, which imagines that because workmen can elect capable check-weighmen, they will also be able, without any further education or experience, to choose the right people to manage the whole organization of industry, is a pleasing spectacle in these cynical, sceptical days, and one would be sorry to disturb it. But it must be observed that the higher rates of pay to be granted to this "hierarchy," and also to "inventive organizing capacity, statistical aptitude, or what not" will make a big hole in the whole of the produce. If, as quoted above, labour's emancipation can only become possible when it has absorbed every shilling of surplus value, its emancipation will still be remote, when all these highly paid