Page:Raymond Augustine McGowan - Bolshevism in Russia and America (1920).pdf/40

 40 directors of the work of others, who do not own any of the industry. The third class embraces industries based upon a public grant, special privilege or monopoly, such as public service corporations and industries engaged in exploiting natural resources. The fourth class is composed of railroads and commercial transportation facilities. For the last class, the railroads, etc., he proposes the Plumb Plan. For industries based on grants, privileges, monopolies, and those engaged in exploiting natural resources, there is a double choice, government ownership or private ownership. If government ownership is adopted, the general features of the Plumb Plan are to be applied. If private ownership is retained, he proposes a new system. In the new system there would be an equal partnership, in control and direction, by the public, the owners of the capital employed, and the workers in the industry. Capital would receive a guaranteed rate of dividends high enough to keep the securities at par. All over that sum would be divided in two parts. One-half would go to the public, and the other half would be given to capital and labor, according to the proportion of interest and wages. The individualist industries are to be left as now. Those industries formerly individualistic should be required, he proposes, to recognize the right of labor to share with the management in the control, management, and profits of the corporation on equal terms with the owners of the capital. All this is to be set in motion through legislation within the limits of our kind of Government.

Under this plan, though public ownership is widely extended, it is to be obtained by purchase through political legislation, and it leaves still a very wide area for private ownership. For these reasons it is not Bolshevism nor even Socialism. Neither is it the Soviet idea, since it proposes an industrial plan and not a political system. That it calls for a great change in