Responsible people in Australia realize that all is not well with industrial conditions: but there would be wide divergences of opinion both in diagnosing the trouble and in suggesting remedies. To-night I am concerned rather with diagnosis than with remedies. I think it may be useful to take a glance backward to at any rate one of the systems of the past – to assess the good features and the bad – and particularly to determine whether such a survey suggests some line of action for our own troubles.

The Guilds of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries achieved an extraordinary success: a success merited and explained by the fine characteristics underlying their activities. Later on world conditions began to alter with everincreasing rapidity: the Guilds were too inelastic, too jealous of their privileges, to adjust to the change, and in a century or so they passed away. That is the epitomized tale of their rise and fall In their best days they were animated by excellent ideals and they were admirably suited to the conditions of those times; but, like most institutions operated by fallible men, there were less desirable features, gradually these lea to the decay, and finally the obliteration, of the Guilds.

This is neither the place nor the time for any very extended description of the Guilds, nor for my purposes is anything of that kind necessary.