Functional socialism

GENIUS 87

to meet the demand and to stimulate it. It is still true to affirm that supply creates demand.

The probable development of craftsmanship, under function, will be to train good craftsmen up to the point where the worker shows skill combined with originality and initiative. He may then elect to chance his luck as a free-lance or he may prefer to leave the sale of his work to the selling department. Take the case of a carver in a joinery works. He may show both skill and genius. His work will be talked about, first amongst those around him, and gradually in an ever-widening circle. He is obviously an artist. The task of function is to train him in all the essentials of his occupation and subsequently to encourage him when he is recognized for what he is and what he may be.

The cases here cited are two out of as many thousand. There are over one thousand separate crafts, or specialized occupations, in the East End of London; over a thousand in Birmingham and its environs; over a thousand ig Yorkshire and Lancashire. And we have Bristol and the West Country, Wales and Scotland. Great Britain is rich beyond dreams in craftsmanship and technical experience. It is an army of skilled workers who might, with justice and pride, find their motto in Ecclesiastes:

They shall maintain the fabric of the world, And in the handiwork of their craft is their prayer.

In the present posture of our national economy, these men, who are veritably the saviours of their