Page:EB1922 - Volume 31.djvu/358

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.
324
GUILD SOCIALISM

1910

1920

1921 (est.)

Expenditures Local revenues Subvention

555,899 479,786

76,113

425,040

296,753 128,287

691,067 261,560 174,125

In 1920 there was only one railway, extending from Paramaribo to Macami, about 90 m. in length. At that time, in addition to papers published in Dutch, there was an English weekly, The New Paramaribo Times. The Dutch force in the country averages some 250 officers and men.

FRENCH GUIANA (see 12.681). The pop. of French Guiana, excluding Indians and negroes, was, in 1911, 49,009; in 1918 it was only 26,325. In addition the country has many convicts deported from France; those in 1918 in the penal settlement numbered about 9,000. Cayenne, the chief city, had, in 1911, 13,527 inhabitants; in 1919 the population was 13,609. The prevailing religion was Roman Catholic.

In 1910 there were 24 primary schools with 2,230 pupils; in 1918 there were the same number of primary schools but with 2,003 pupils. In the latter year there were also in the penal settlement 4 schools with 163 pupils. The country produced few agricultural products, the total cultivated area being in 1919 only about 8,800 acres. Sugar, coffee, cacao, maize, potatoes and bananas were produced in small quantities. Rosewood extract and balata were among the exports. The most important industry was gold-mining, for which concessions are granted by the Government. In 1910 there were produced 123,16802., and in 1918, 80,477 ounces. Of exports France takes the largest part, averaging 66%, Switzerland 30%, Great Britain 2 %, and the United States I %. Of imports France and her colonies send about 70%, Great Britain and her colonies 17%, and the United States 7%. Of exports gold averages 90%. The value of exports and imports was as follows:

Exports .... Imports ....

1910 11,567,168 fr. 12,213,420 fr.

1918 15,32 1, 697 fr. 15,308,526 fr.

The local revenues do not as a rule equal expenditures and the home country makes up the deficit. In 1911 France's expenditure on the colony was 6,497,394 f r -, including 5,884,000 fr. for the penal settlement. In 1920 the chief towns were connected by telephone and telegraph line between Cayenne and the Maroni, and the Compagnie Francaise des Cables Telegraphiques owned lines to Paramaribo, the Antilles and Para. In 1920, besides small railway lines to the gold-mines, there was a line from St. Laurent du Maroni to St. Jean. In 1919 the French military force in the country con- sisted of 150 officers and men.

GUILD SOCIALISM, the name given to a school of socialist thought which originated in England early in the 20th century, and has since spread to other parts of the world, particularly to the English-speaking countries the United States, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa and to Japan. As its name implies, it had, in the minds of those who originated it, a definite relation to the forms of industrial organization which existed throughout the mediaeval world, and it was an attempt to apply to the solution of modern industrial problems certain of the principles which were in active operation in the economic organization of mediaeval society. This does not mean that Guild Socialism is an attempt to restore the mediaeval guild system, or that it has any necessary relation to the restoration of a system of hand craft in place of the modern system of machine production. In harking back to the mediaeval organiza- tion of industry, Guild Sociah'sts for the most part have in mind not the forms of production which prevailed in the Middle Ages, but the mediaeval principle of industrial self-government.

The origin of the Guild Socialist movement is to be found in The Restoration of the Gild System (1906), a book written by A. J. Penty, the well-known architect and craftsman, and in an article published at about the same time in the Contemporary Review by A. R. Orage, editor of the New Age, which was, dur- ing the following decade, very closely associated with the guild propaganda. In both these articles Guild Socialism appeared in an essentially preliminary form, and the emphasis was laid, far more than by the more recent guild writers, on an actual restoration of the mediaeval system. Mr. A. J. Penty, who has perhaps the best claim to be regarded as the originator of the modern guild movement in this form, took the craftsman's point of view and set himself in direct hostility to the modern systems of large-scale production and trading.

From 1906 to 1912 the guild idea developed gradually and almost unnoticed in the columns of the New Age; but during this period a gradual transformation of the theory was taking place, and the emphasis was coming to lie, not upon the return to craft organization or the restoration of a system closely similar to that of the Middle Ages, but upon the utilization of the modern trade-union and working-class movement as the basis for a system of industrial self-government, directly related to modern conditions and to large-scale production. During this stage the propaganda for the " restoration of the gild system " was developing into the propaganda of National Guilds, the em- phasis on the word " National " indicating the necessity for a different kind of guild system corresponding to the " National Economy " of modern times.

This transition was made definite, and the first attempt to expound the new guild theory as a complete system of social- ism began to be made in the New Age in 1912, when a series of articles, subsequently reprinted in the volume, National Guilds, which was written by S. G. Hobson, and edited by A. R. Orage, was published week by week. It was with the publication of these articles that the guild theory first became a definite force in the British socialist movement.

While this process of theoretical development was going on the situation in the British industrial world was rapidly changing. The earlier years of the 2oth century were years of comparative industrial tranquillity, during which the main attention of the working-class movement was concentrated on political questions and on the building-up of the Labour party. From 1909 and 1910 onwards, however, a big wave of industrial unrest passed over the country. Big strikes broke out in a number of the most important industries, and a great stimulus was given to the movement for wider industrial combination. This in- dustrial ferment also served to arouse a corresponding ferment in the realm of ideas. New socialist theories, based mainly on the working-class industrial organizations, sprang rapidly into prominence, and in particular the " Industrial Unionist " ideas, which had entered Great Britain from America a few years earlier, and the syndicalist ideas derived from contemporary developments in the French labour movement, gained for a time a large number of adherents and excited vigorous controversy. It was in the midst of this controversy and of this industrial ferment that the guild idea developed from a " Utopian " plan for the restoration of mediaeval conditions into the outline of a practical policy of industrial self-government, appealing particularly to the British organized working-class movement. The transition, however, was not fully completed with the publication of the " National Guilds " series of articles in the New Age; for the influence of the New Age, although it was during these years steadily growing, reached only a com- paratively narrow circle of intellectuals in the middle and working classes. It was when a group of the younger men took up, from 1913 onwards, the wider dissemination of these ideas, particularly through the then newly founded Labour paper, the Daily Herald, that the movement began to exercise an influence over larger circles. This wide appeal, moreover, also resulted to some extent in a transformation of the Guild Socialist theory itself. The theory became steadily less Utopian and remote; and its advocates applied themselves more and more to a study of actual, pressing trade-union problems, and to the working-out of proposals for the " next steps " to be taken.

Up to this point the guild movement had remained entirely unorganized, save for the small degree of cohesion secured through the medium of the New Age. It was in 1914 that the idea of creating an organization for the propaganda and study of Guild Socialism in England first took shape at a private conference of the younger Guild Socialists. This led, at Easter 1915, to the formation of the National Guilds League, which immediately set on foot an active propaganda in the working- class and professional movement. There is no doubt that this propaganda was largely helped by the conditions of war-time industry. Workshop problems were constantly arising owing to the operation of dilution and to war-time changes in the