The house of Industry : a new estate of the realm

CONSUMPTION AND CO-OPERATION 59

In regard to the first, it would be found that the great mass of the wage-earners would willingly acquire and accept ultimate responsibility for a multitude of goods now lying idle in warehouses or waiting prompt manufacture against guaranteed credit. But ultimate payment must depend upon an advance in the standard of living at least equivalent to the expanded credit. In the case of the cotton goods, cited in another chapter, it is, I hope, rendered clear that payment depends upon a rise in wages resulting from the increased flow of credit into industry. And it is also emphasised that to make this credit of exchange value, it must be by aggregated and not dispersed credit. The only way to do this would be by the several industries each offering their combined guarantees, or definite purchases, to the producers. These credits or guarantees would be valuable or valueless precisely to the extent that each industry can tender formal, organised acceptance of the responsibility by the workers in each industry concerned. We are not without precedent for this apparently revolutionary procedure, since in times of depression, strikes or lock-outs, various trade unions have guaranteed local traders against loss for the supply of foodstuffs for their members. If this can be done in time of stress and in a local and limited way, how much easier when the guarantee is forthcoming from a well organised and integrated national industry? But it is evident, is it not, how impossible it is to expand consumption by combined and organised credit, except