Page:Raymond Augustine McGowan - Bolshevism in Russia and America (1920).pdf/39

 Rh trict railway councils. The Board of Directors would be composed of fifteen members, five appointed by the President of the United States, five elected by the railroad executives, and five elected by the "classified employees." The subordinate District Councils are chosen in a similar manner, save that the executives and employees within the district vote on their representatives, while the Board of Directors appoints the remaining one-third of the Council. A system of profit-sharing is also a part of the plan. The net earnings of the railroads are to be divided equally between the Government and the body of the railroad workers. The latter half of the profits will be divided among the railroad workers according to their wages and salaries. The executives, however, will get double the rate of dividend of the "classified employees."

Here we have public ownership and a new kind of management in which the Government and those who work in the industry cooperate. Because of these two elements, the Plumb Plan has been frequently called Bolshevik, and more frequently, an attempt to set up a railroad Soviet. But it is not Bolshevik, because it aims at obtaining the public ownership of only one industry through political victory at the polls. Neither can it be called a proposal to establish a railroad Soviet, for the Soviet is a political unit—a constituency of the State—the basis of a new kind of government, while the Plumb Plan looks to the partnership of one class of workers with the political State in the operation of the railroads.

Mr. Plumb has outlined an extension of his plan to the rest of industry. He divides the industrial fields into four sections. The first class embraces industries owned by individuals and managed and worked by them, such as small farms. The second class embraces industries which were formerly of the first class, but are now so owned and organized as to make the owners