The contrast in outlook between the mild evolutionism of the American
Federation of Labor and the social radicalism of British labor stood out
nowhere so strongly as in their respective programs for Reconstruction
after the War. The chief claim of the British Labor party for
recognition at the hands of the voter at the General Election in
December 1918, was its well-thought-out reconstruction program put forth
under the telling title of "Labour and the New Social Order." This
program was above all a legislative program. It called for a
thoroughgoing governmental control of industry by means of a control of
private finance, natural resources, transportation, and international
trade. To the workingmen such control would mean the right to steady
employment, the right to a living wage, and the appropriation of
economic surpluses by the state for the common good--be they in the form
of rent, excessive profits, or overlarge personal incomes. Beyond this
minimum program loomed the cooperative commonwealth with the private
capitalist totally eliminated.
Such was the program of British labor.
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