Page:James Ramsay MacDonald - The Socialist Movement.pdf/197

 Rh distributing markets and profits. The organisation of the best trade unions, particularly the German organisation, also throws light upon this subject.

Then the question which I have already put to myself may be considered: How are all these grades to be fed? The workers will be provided from the schools. In the great majority of cases youths have their own bent. The Socialist child must work, and he will, as a rule, choose his own calling. Should he desire to follow some profession, and there are more applicants than vacancies, a well-devised examination of selected students will provide the desired "equality of opportunity." Should he desire to follow a technical line, the schools will be in the closest touch with the workshops, and the best advice will be given him regarding openings and demand. The coercion about which we hear so much will rarely be experienced, all the more so as a large part of our unpleasant work will have disappeared, owing to mechanical and other invention and discovery. It will certainly be no prominent feature in the Socialist state.

What of the selection of managers? Two schools of co-operative thought dispute this point between them, and are experimenting with it, and until the contest and the experiments have gone on a little longer we may regard it as unsettled. There is, in the first place, the school which believes in the self-governing workshop. It believes that the