ABSTRACT
The central weakness of any attempt to abolish the wage system by taking the citadel of capitalism by storm is that it is precisely those trades and occupations that suffer most from the evils of the wage system which are least able to offer effective resistance to it. Railwaymen, it is true, get wages, but their work is so regular that in most cases they may be almost said to be in receipt of pay. A common source of the confusion is that in the schemes for the reorganization of society people fail to distinguish clearly between two fundamentally different types of Industry which might be termed respectively the “constants” and the “variables.” The Statute of Apprentices passed in 1563, which sought to establish by law Trade Guild custom, enacted that journeymen must be retained in service at least one year, and must receive three months’ notice of a coming dismissal.
