INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 ^ 
 
 PRACTICAL SOLUTION 
 
 THE REPORT OF THE 
 UNIONIST SOCIAL REFORM COMMITTEE 
 
 BY J. W. HILLS, M.P. ; PROF. W. J. ASHLEY ; 
 AND MAURICE WOODS 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 
 
 THE RIGHT HON. F. E. SMITH, K.G., M.P. 
 
 LONDON 
 
 JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W. 
 
 1914 
 
 FRIOC 6d. NET 
 
INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 A PRACTICAL SOLUTION 
 
 THE REPORT OF THE 
 UNIONIST SOCIAL REFORM COMMITTEE 
 
 BY J. W. HILLS, M.P.; PROF. W. J. ASHLEY; 
 AND MAURICE WOODS 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 
 THE RIGHT HON. F. E. SMITH, K.C., M.P. 
 
 LONDON 
 
 JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W. 
 
 1914 
 
PREFACE 
 
 THE Chairman and Secretary of the Industrial Unrest 
 Committee are responsible for the precise form in which 
 this Report appears. The matter of the Report, however, 
 is the work of the Committee on Industrial Unrest, and 
 has been submitted in the usual course of procedure to 
 the Unionist Social Reform Committee as a whole. Mr. 
 Stanley Baldwin and Mr. Leslie Scott have acted as 
 Chairmen of Sub-Committees on special subjects. The 
 full Committee consisted of: Professor W. J. Ashley, Mr. 
 Waldorf Astor, M.P., Mr. Stanley Baldwin, M.P., Mr. 
 Montague Barlow, M.P., Mr. Charles Bathurst, M.P., 
 Mr. Shirley Benn, M.P., Lord Henry Bentinck, M.P., Mr. 
 J. W. Hills, M.P. (Chairman), Mr. Harold Hodge, Mr. P. 
 Lloyd Greame, Mr. G. Locker-Lampson, M.P., Mr. L. T. 
 Maunder, Mr. Leslie Scott, K.C., M.P., Sir Mark Sykes, 
 Bart., M.P., Lord Alexander Thynne, M.P., Mr. Christo- 
 pher Turnor, and Mr. Maurice Woods as Secretary. 
 
 The Committee is, in addition, particularly indebted to 
 Professor Ashley, without whose continued assistance, 
 both in discussion and in writing, the Report would 
 never have reached its present form and shape, and we 
 have therefore obtained his permission to add his name 
 as joint-author. 
 
 There has been an unpardonable delay in the pub- 
 lication of the Report of a Committee which has now 
 been sitting for nearly two years. The only excuse is 
 that we have been watching with close attention the 
 
 iii 
 
 387741 
 
iv PREFACE 
 
 development of industrial and political affairs during that 
 period, that with increasing knowledge we have modified 
 our views, and that we believe it better to be right in the 
 long run than wrong in the short one. 
 
 J. W. HILLS, 
 
 Chairman. 
 
 MAURICE WOODS, 
 
 Secretary. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 BY THE RIGHT HON. F. E. SMITH 
 
 THE problem of industrial unrest occupies more and 
 more in every succeeding decade the attention of the 
 people of this country. The troubles of 1911, 1912, and 
 191 3, are now seen to have been no isolated outbreak, but 
 a particularly violent explosion of forces, which may at 
 any moment discharge themselves again. This fact is 
 brought home to us every month by sectional strikes 
 which show a tendency to spread, or by the threats of 
 general strikes to be embarked upon in the summer or 
 autumn. The community as a whole has to make up its 
 mind on the problem, a thing best done in quiet times, 
 and to determine the spirit in which it will approach the 
 difficulty, and decide on the remedies by which the evil 
 may be exorcised or cured. The case is not a simple 
 one, and no single panacea is sufficient to meet every 
 industrial trouble. The Report of the Unionist Social 
 Reform Committee can be commended precisely on this 
 ground. It recognizes the variety of conditions and the 
 multiplicity of details and endeavours to fit its scheme to 
 meet the cases instead of forcing the cases into a bed of 
 Procrustes in order to meet a pre-ordained theory. In 
 this course of procedure it is following the precedents of 
 previous reports on Poor Law, Education, and Housing. 
 The duty of Conservatism has been and always is to 
 produce practical solutions which can be carried into 
 effect to-morrow, and not ideal conceptions which have 
 no relation to political or industrial reality. The report 
 therefore is eminently practical, as the names of its 
 authors and backers would alone prove. Mr. Hills, 
 
vi INTRODUCTION 
 
 Professor Ashley, Mr. Astor, Mr. Stanley Baldwin, Mr. 
 Leslie Scott, and their associates do not speak without 
 their book, and are not authorities who can be dis- 
 regarded in the world of industrial economy. Indeed, 
 if I had any criticism to make of this report it would be 
 that it is almost too sane, and too nearly allied to ideas 
 which are immediately practicable to attract the support 
 of the stern enthusiast of any school or party. There is 
 a reason for this. The Sub-Committee was appointed 
 as a result of the grave industrial crisis of 1911 and 1912, 
 when the Railway Strike and the Coal Strike appeared to 
 threaten the basis of our civic existence. The feeling of 
 self-preservation innate in any community was then 
 aroused by an imminent danger. Many of us thought 
 that some drastic system of compulsory arbitration at 
 least in the necessary services was the only method of 
 salvation, and had the Sub-Committee issued its report 
 in 1912 it would possibly have made some such 
 recommendation. Time, however, has brought both 
 reflection and experience to all parties in the industrial 
 struggle. Syndicalism has proved as complete a failure 
 in the hands of Mr. Larkin and his friends as it was in 
 the hands of Mr. Owen eighty years ago, and Trade 
 Unionism has refused to recognize it. Compulsory 
 arbitration as a cure for industrial difficulties has been 
 admitted by the Committee to be no real and practical 
 way of dealing with industrial disputes under existing 
 conditions and in the present state of public opinion. 
 If the Labour world is therefore no longer under the 
 influence of irrational passion, the Conservative Party is 
 no longer labouring under the stress of exaggerated 
 panic. The saner Trade Unionism and the wiser Con- 
 servatism are not very far apart, and this report, matured 
 by nearly two years of experience and reflection, ought 
 to bridge the gulf between the two schools of thought. 
 Why, indeed, should there be any opposition? The 
 Conservative Party is the parent of Trade Unionism, 
 just as it is the author of the Factory Acts. At every 
 stage in the history of the nineteenth century it is to 
 
INTRODUCTION vii 
 
 Toryism that Trade Unionism has looked for help and 
 support against the oppressions of the Manchester school 
 of Liberalism, which cared nothing for the interests of 
 the State, and regarded men as brute beasts whose 
 labour could be bought and sold at the cheapest price 
 irrespective of all other considerations. The view of 
 modern as of ancient Toryism is that the interests of the 
 State and of the community must at all costs be safe- 
 guarded, but that the interests of the worker must not be 
 sacrificed in the process, for the worker is an integral 
 portion of the State. 
 
 I apprehend that this is the spirit of the Committee's 
 Report. It gives a fuller recognition of the rights of the 
 community to exercise, through the pressure of public 
 opinion, its power of bringing employer and employee to 
 a rational frame of mind. At the same time it recognizes 
 that an agreed wage of an adequate character ought also 
 to be made the avowed and explicit object of modern 
 statesmanship. We are, in fact, to have consent and not 
 force and revolution in adjusting the interests of the 
 employers and the employed to suit the convenience of 
 the community as a whole. This surely is the doctrine 
 of a wise conservatism, and while the lesson of 1911, 1912, 
 and 1913 is still in our minds and before the panics of the 
 future, which may await us, can supervene to disturb 
 judgment, it will be better to take a calm decision and 
 support the recommendations of the Committee. 
 
 It is no part of my duty, as the writer of an introduction, 
 to discuss those recommendations in detail. They appear 
 to me, as I have suggested already, to have been beaten 
 out like fine gold under a hammer until they fit all the 
 existing conditions of our industrial life, as armour fits 
 the living body. They represent, therefore, less a pro- 
 posal than a Bill, and Bills are, or ought to be, subject to 
 modification. But it is precisely in this particular respect 
 that these proposals are most conservative. Conservatism 
 bases itself on the facts of existence, and on the history of 
 the past ; it seizes on present opportunities and improves 
 on them ; it studies the conditions of the people as a fact 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 and not as a theory, and possesses in consequence bo, 
 practicality and idealism. If this Report possesses, as * 
 think it does, both these qualities, it will not be unworthy 
 of the attention both of the Conservative Party and of the 
 British nation. 
 
 -MITH. 
 
 
 

 INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 CRITICISM 
 
 THE reasons which led the Unionist Social Reform C'oni- 
 mittoc to undertake an investigation of liulnstnal Ihr 
 
 ot far to seek, ^Must few years have been marked 
 by widespread and d op-seated labour disturbances in 
 the United Kingdom, nor does the particular trouble 
 show any sign of coming to an end. These disturbances 
 have borne a different character from those of the 
 preceding period, for they have not been in the mam 
 struggles simply between orgam/ed labour on the one 
 Side and employers on the other. They have been 
 risings of labour, organized and unor, alike, not 
 
 so much against particular employers a ist the pre- 
 
 vailing conditions of life. Thev have aimed at so dis- 
 turbing the community in general .1 lire the coercion 
 of employers by th pressure of public alarm. And tin \ 
 have been accompanied, and in part caused, by a new 
 feeling both of iy and of community of in ton 
 between the various sections and -grades of the xvork ing- 
 population. % 
 
 But while facts like these may properly cause dis- 
 quietude, other conditions are fortunately present \\liuli 
 
 .courage us to take a more hopeful view ol 1 he sit uai i< >n 
 ^lt disturbances of labour conditions have been 
 ely associated with wha^B generally known as 
 Syndicalism. This movement in all it', various forms 
 and branches, both on the Continent and in Kuj-Jand, 
 aims in effect at bringing about a sympathetic strike 
 which obviously may become a general one even when 
 the cause of dispute is a small one and eonlined tn a 
 
3 ' CRITICISM 
 
 particular industry. There is, however, nothing very 
 new in this method of attempting to bring society as a 
 whole to its knees by a combination of workers. The 
 Owenite movement, with its Trade Union of all in- 
 dustries, which from 1825 right up to 1834 occupied, in 
 spite of its many failures, the predominant position in the 
 labour world and in the public mind, was nothing but a 
 crude attempt anticipating by eighty years the modern 
 Syndicalist programme. In spite of the excellence of its 
 ideals it collapsed, as all such movements must collapse, 
 by the faulty character of its economic calculations. It 
 was constantly found by Robert Owen (i) that it was im- 
 possible to limit the area or control the operation of the 
 sympathetic strike, as has been found to-day by the 
 Labour leaders ; and (2) that anything like a general 
 national stoppage places Trade Unionism in an impossible 
 financial position. This fact was brought out very 
 prominently in the Coal Strike of 1911, which for special 
 reasons connected with the industry came nearer to being 
 a successful general strike than any of its predecessors. 
 Industry was checked throughout the country, and the 
 funds of the great Trade Unions were in consequence 
 enormously depleted in the effort to sustain members 
 thrown out of work. Now society can never be overcome 
 by the weapon of a general strike, because society obvi- 
 ously has more financial resources to fall back on than 
 those elements in it which are commonly known as the 
 working classes. The collapse of social organization 
 falls with greatest effect first on the poorer elements of 
 the community, and in consequence a general strike must 
 fail because the poorest members of the community will 
 naturally be starved out first. This truth was recognized 
 in the early 'twenties and 'thirties by the few great Trade 
 Unions of skilled workers, like the Engineers', which then 
 existed, and these bodies held themselves steadily aloof 
 from the Owenite movement just as the big Trade Unions 
 of to-day, either in the Dublin strike or in the greater part 
 of England during the disturbance in South Wales, have 
 kept themselves apart from the Syndicalist movement. 
 
THE PROBLEM STATED 3 
 
 These great bodies of skilled artisans have always seen 
 (i) that in their own interests it is essential for them to 
 keep a large campaign fund in hand to enable them to 
 strike if necessary for an improvement in their pay and 
 working conditions ; and (2) that they can better support 
 a sectional strike in another industry by staying at work 
 and turning a portion of their wages, in subscriptions, 
 over to their friends who have come out for better condi- 
 tions. In pointing out, then, that it is possible for us to 
 take a hopeful view of the industrial situation, we are 
 fortified by the examples and history of the past, and by 
 the utter failure of the Syndicalism of the earlier nine- 
 teenth century to bring about an industrial revolution, or 
 even to convince the intelligent members of the old- 
 established Trade Unions. A precisely similar influence 
 is at work to-day, and the results of the Coal Strike were 
 undoubtedly one of the main reasons which prevented 
 the long-headed secretaries of the great Unions in Dublin 
 and England from proclaiming a general strike even under 
 the pressure brought to bear upon them by Mr. Larkin's 
 " fiery cross " crusade. 
 
 There has been, in addition, undoubtedly a great change 
 in the attitude of almost all thoughtful observers with 
 regard to the relations between the individual and the 
 State. We have in this country now outlived that curious 
 philosophic conception of the relations between the State 
 and the individual which finds its origin in Rousseau, 
 and its most powerful exponents on this side of the 
 Channel in Bentham, the two Mills, Herbert Spencer, 
 and Cobden. This Liberal school of ideas was of opinion, 
 in the first place, that the duty of the State was limited 
 to the action of the policeman. Society, in other words, 
 was in industrial disputes, as in other matters, bound to 
 do nothing but to keep the ring and let the strongest 
 party win, so long as there was no public disturbance. 
 As long as the organization of industry and society was 
 not of a highly complex character, such a view might 
 be so far tenable as that its application would not 
 produce a complete breakdown of the functions of 
 
4 CRITICISM 
 
 government and of the means of subsistence of the 
 nation. Recent events have, however, taught the com- 
 munity that under the complex conditions of modern life 
 and industry, the community itself is one of the most 
 interested parties in differences between employers and 
 men. It is, then, no longer possible for the consumer, as 
 representing the State, to remain indifferent. He is in 
 his own interests bound to intervene, and to intervene as 
 effectively and drastically as industrial conditions will 
 permit. 
 
 In the second place, the old Cobdenite and laissez faire 
 view that the conditions of wages, health, housing, and 
 labour among the vast majority of the population of this 
 country was the concern of private individuals and of 
 private contract has long since been abandoned. The 
 Conservative Party from 1802 to 1906 never accepted this 
 particular principle and constantly legislated against it, 
 while since that date Radicalism itself has thrown over 
 its chosen prophets, and has embarked on a course of 
 policy completely at variance with the doctrines of philo- 
 sophic Liberalism. Conservatism, therefore, possesses 
 in matters of industrial legislation one enormous advan- 
 tage. Its future legislation in these matters will be in 
 consonance with its historic past, while its opponents, so 
 long as they adhere to Free Trade, will have to confess 
 themselves as unwilling converts over two-thirds of the 
 field of industry, while on the remaining fiscal third they 
 will be compelled to admit that they dare not apply their 
 principles. The spread of the views of modern econom- 
 ists has justified the intellectual standpoint of the Con- 
 servative Party, and few economists now believe that bad 
 wages spell good work or cheap and efficient production. 
 The practical experience of most modern employers 
 reinforces the view of the economists, and cheap labour 
 is no longer regarded as an essential to cheap production. 
 
 Our object is to find some practical means of promoting 
 industrial peace, while at the same time promoting 
 national well-being. Without examining in detail the 
 industrial development of the last few years, it is sufficient 
 
THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE STATE 5 
 
 for our purpose to point out certain general tendencies 
 which, though obvious to anyone looking below the 
 surface, are sometimes disregarded, and to endeavour to 
 see the conclusion to which their existence compels us. 
 In order to do this it will clear the ground if we state 
 certain propositions in a dogmatic form. 
 
 It is incontestably the right and duty of statesmanship 
 to supervise and control the conditions of employment in 
 the interests of the State as a whole. Secondly, it is the 
 right and duty of statesmanship to intervene between 
 employer and employed in the case of industrial dispute 
 to protect the interests of the community, and especially 
 those of its weaker members, who, though not them- 
 selves directly involved in the dispute, are the heaviest 
 sufferers by it. Thirdly, we accept in principle what is 
 known as the " minimum wage." We mean by saying 
 this that it is the duty of statesmanship to work con- 
 sciously and as rapidly as possible towards that end ; we 
 do not mean that we recognize any right whatever on 
 the part of any particular individual to be provided 
 immediately with such a wage without regard to the 
 interests of other work-people or of the community in 
 general, or of the strain which industry can bear ; nor, 
 of course, do we support the fantastic suggestion to give 
 everyone thirty shillings a week by Act of Parliament. 
 And, fourthly, it follows from the above that we consider 
 it necessary that employers should frankly abandon the 
 principle of buying labour in the cheapest market, in the 
 supposed interest either of the consumer or of the tax- 
 payer, without regard to that of the producer. Finally, 
 we consider that any system of industrial legislation and 
 wage regulation ought to apply to industry as a whole, 
 and that no fundamental distinction of treatment can 
 with advantage be drawn between what are commonly 
 known as public utility services and ordinary industry. 
 In the course of time the principles and methods which 
 are valid in one case will prove valid in the other, while 
 the difficulties of defining a public utility service will 
 set a trap for the feet of the unwary legislator. But 
 
6 CRITICISM 
 
 since the regulation of wages will certainly, and legis- 
 lation for avoiding strikes will probably, only be accom- 
 plished by the slow process of time and in the light of 
 experimental effort, what we may roughly call the public 
 utility services must have the first claim on public atten- 
 tion. In the first place, they are services untouched by 
 foreign competition, and for this reason they present far 
 less difficulties to the setting up of a minimum standard 
 of wage for those employed in them. In the second 
 place, they are largely services which must be carried 
 on if the State is not to collapse altogether. This latter 
 fact in itself must so depress the chances of a successful 
 strike by the employees that it leaves it incumbent on 
 the Legislature to make immediate provision for the 
 interests of workers, whose main weapon of defence the 
 State is bound to shatter. For these reasons we should 
 advocate the first application of the minimum wage to 
 services such! as we have mentioned with the idea of 
 being able to extend it later on to the whole field of 
 industry. 
 
 The Elizabethan Code, which in the matter of wages 
 dates from 1563, and was put into practice as a matter of 
 course well into the eighteenth century, and on occasion 
 as late as 1756, allowed to local Justices the power of 
 fixing wages and conditions of labour, and both the 
 Crown and Parliament constantly intervened when 
 petitioned to redress a grievance or settle a dispute. 
 When the industrial revolution and the abandonment of 
 State protection for the workers had reduced the poorer 
 classes to a state of intolerable distress, it was the Tory 
 Party which came to the rescue with the principles of 
 State regulation of industry, and of giving to combina- 
 tions of workmen the power to attempt to raise wages 
 by the method of collective bargaining. This reassertion 
 of the old ideas put forward by Robert Southey and 
 William Wordsworth was carried out tentatively in the 
 sphere of legislative practice by Peel, Huskinson, and 
 Lord Liverpool during the long Tory tenure of power 
 from 1807 to 1830, and in the continuance of their efforts 
 
TORYISM VERSUS LAISSEZ FAIRE 7 
 
 our Factory Code owes its existence to the powerful 
 advocacy of those great Tories, Michael Sadler, Richard 
 Oastler, Lord Shaftesbury, and Benjamin Disraeli from 
 1830 till the final passage of the Ten Hours Bill in 1847 
 and the Normal Day Bill in 1853. At a time when 
 triumphant Liberalism boasted of being the party of 
 enlightened selfishness though there was indeed more 
 selfishness than enlightenment about the creed of Cobden 
 Disraeli in successive Tory Governments held up the 
 standard of social legislation in industrial matters. In 
 1859 he further extended the liberty of combination ; in 
 1867 he equalized the position of employers and employed 
 before the law ; whilst in the same year he made the 
 first attempt to set up a system of Conciliation Boards. 
 This last process was carried further by the Conservative 
 Government of 1896. Nor were the people unaware 
 of the view of the Tory Party and its chief. We have 
 it on the evidence of Mr. Sidney Webb, an unimpeachable 
 witness from our standpoint, that the Liberal reverse of 
 1874 was largely due to disgust of the working-class 
 voters Mr. Disraeli had done so much to enfranchise in 
 1867 against Mr. Gladstone's indifference to social prob- 
 lems, and to their belief that they would obtain more 
 sympathetic treatment from the other side. Their con- 
 fidence was amply justified by Lord Cross's Act of 1875, 
 which has been well described as the " Charter of Trade 
 Unionism." Nor did the activity of Conservatism in this 
 sphere cease with Disraeli's death. On the contrary, 
 Lord Salisbury and Mr. Chamberlain carried, in the 
 seventeen years in which they held office between 1886 
 and 1906, a great variety of measures dealing with 
 industrial questions. They extended and consolidated 
 the Factory Acts, the Mines Acts, and the Truck Acts, 
 in all directions, while Mr. Chamberlain's Workman's 
 Compensation Act of 1897, an Act which first gave 
 effective recognition to the principle that the risks of 
 manufacture are to be reckoned among the costs of 
 production, and to be a first charge on the industry, is 
 among the most successful and beneficent of recent social 
 
8 CRITICISM 
 
 reforms. With these facts before us we cannot but come 
 to the conclusion that the sphere of industrial legislation 
 is the natural field of Conservatism, and that it is in a 
 position to deal with these problems more successfully, 
 sympathetically, and firmly than Radicalism ever has 
 been or ever will be. 
 
 i. THE PROMOTION OF INDUSTRIAL PEACE. 
 
 From the point of view of the community, industrial 
 peace is the highest national interest. This statement, of 
 course, is subject to the qualification that such peace is 
 not bought at too high a price. Peace in industry, as in 
 external affairs, can be bought too dear. It would be 
 bought too dear if the price paid were either the cramping 
 of our productive capacity or the enslavement of our 
 working population ; but, subject to these conditions, 
 which will be admitted by everyone, the advantages of 
 industrial peace are too obvious to require statement. 
 How is it to be secured ? 
 
 Many methods have been suggested. At one time it 
 was hoped that collective bargaining when fully developed 
 would effect this object by covering the whole industrial 
 world with a network of agreements which would of 
 themselves make strikes impossible ; but experience has 
 shown that in spite of the extension of collective bargain- 
 ing, labour disputes arise of unexampled extent and 
 gravity. Bargaining cannot abolish strikes and lock-outs 
 any more than diplomacy can abolish war. This is no 
 argument against negotiation, whether international or 
 industrial ; and it will be seen later that we propose to 
 extend and facilitate corporate action, but it can be con- 
 clusively proved that no absolute reliance can be placed 
 on its unaided operation. 
 
 It is believed by some that a system of interesting 
 workers directly in the profits of the particular concern 
 by which they are employed will secure industrial peace. 
 But unfortunately further consideration will show that 
 this is not invariably the case. We do not underrate the 
 significance and sincerity of the profit-sharing movement. 
 
BARGAINING AND PROFIT-SHARING 9 
 
 but it will not of itself bring peace. Let us take a con- 
 crete case, and assume that a railway company agrees 
 with its employees that a fixed minimum wage shall be 
 paid, that the dividend on the company's ordinary stock 
 shall be fixed at, say, 4 per cent., and that any additional 
 profits shall be divided equally between the shareholders 
 and the men. What is to prevent either party from seek- 
 ing to tear up the bargain ? The men may in the future 
 say that the cost of living has increased to such an extent 
 that the base wage is too low, or their share of additional 
 profits too small ; the shareholders may think, on the 
 contrary, that the arrangement starves the service by 
 preventing it from obtaining the necessary fresh capital. 
 It is highly probable, moreover, that other differences of 
 opinion will arise ; for instance, as to the proper calcula- 
 tion of the profits available for division, or as to the 
 remuneration of management. Profit-sharing in itself 
 affords no solution of these differences. It is only one of 
 many methods of apportioning profits between Capital, 
 Management, and Labour; it never can prevent any of the 
 parties from disputing the justice of the several quotas. 
 
 There are further objections to it merely as a method 
 of distribution. To make the income of working people 
 depend to any large extent on the fluctuating fortunes of 
 their particular employer is to add gravely to the un- 
 certainty of their lives. 
 
 The same observations apply with added force to the 
 more recent form of profit-sharing known as " co-partner- 
 ship "the arrangement by which the whole or part of 
 the worker's share of profit is invested in the capital of 
 the undertaking to which they are attached. It is by no 
 means all undertakings that constitute suitable invest- 
 ments for the workers' savings ; nor all undertakings that 
 can easily make use of a constant stream of fresh capital ; 
 and in any case it is difficult in practice to combine 
 such investment with perfect freedom on the part of the 
 workers to change their employment. 
 
 It is far from our intention to disparage profit-sharing 
 or the public spirit and enterprise of those employers who 
 
io CRITICISM 
 
 have introduced it. We are well aware of successful 
 instances of its operation, and of the hopeful future before 
 it in certain directions. Its general introduction in the 
 gas industry indicates that it is most likely to meet with 
 success where the concern involved enjoys something of 
 a monopoly, where profits are restricted by statute and 
 made to depend upon the charges to the consumer, and 
 where the labour is relatively unskilled. But this is to 
 say that it is unlikely to furnish a remedy for unrest over 
 the larger field of competitive industry. 
 
 A real co-partnership in the proceeds of industry is no 
 doubt the ideal before all serious social thinkers. But 
 the dominant tendencies of the time seem to be clearly 
 away from the realization of this ideal in the narrow field 
 of the separate industrial concern. It must be reached, 
 if reached at all, through some wider grouping of the 
 employers and employed involved in the industry. 
 
 Hitherto we have dealt with suggestions for preventing 
 disputes from occurring; arbitration, compulsory or 
 otherwise, only comes into play when a dispute exists 
 or is threatened. It is a method of cure, while the others 
 are methods of prevention. 
 
 By compulsory arbitration is generally meant an 
 arbitration which the State insists should be held, and 
 the decision of which the State enforces. 
 
 The argument for stopping disputes by compulsion is 
 this: Certain services, such as the railways or the coal 
 mines, are so necessary that the State cannot allow their 
 stoppage. In the last resort it should possess the right 
 to compel work to continue in the interest of the com- 
 munity. At the same time it is not right that either 
 masters or men should work under impossible conditions, 
 and therefore the dispute is referred to an impartial 
 tribunal, having the confidence of both sides. Both parties 
 are to be compelled to keep the work going whilst the 
 tribunal is sitting, and to accept its decision when pro- 
 nounced. There is no serious suggestion to extend com- 
 pulsory arbitration beyond the "public utility" services. 
 
 It is a preliminary objection to compulsion that the 
 
COMPULSORY ARBITRATION 11 
 
 feeling of the Labour world as instanced at the Trade 
 Union Congress of 1912, when a very tentative proposal 
 in this direction was rejected by an overwhelming vote of 
 five to one is undoubtedly hostile. This fact might con- 
 ceivably be disregarded if compulsory arbitration could 
 possibly be enforced but that is not the case and the 
 objection to all such schemes is that you cannot carry 
 them into practical effect. No doubt if an employer 
 refuses to obey the arbitrator's award, you can fine or 
 imprison him ; but you cannot fine or imprison large 
 bodies of work-people : the thing breaks down. This is 
 generally admitted. But it is said that though punishing 
 individuals is impossible, you can penalize them through 
 their Trade Unions ; you can make their funds liable in 
 damage. But first of all, only one man in six belongs to 
 a Union ; and then men may strike, and as we have fre- 
 quently seen, do strike, against the orders and without 
 the support of their Union, and yet the Union would be 
 penalized ; and lastly, the politician who sets out to carry 
 so drastic a repeal of the Trade Disputes Act would find 
 popular support difficult to obtain. Altogether it is im- 
 possible to make the men responsible, and impracticable 
 to make the Unions responsible and this is the rock on 
 which compulsion splits. 
 
 The Committee have not arrived at this conclusion 
 without careful study of the Australian precedents. The 
 conditions in England and in Australia are not, of course, 
 precisely the same, but they bear a sufficient resemblance 
 to one another to make the working of compulsory arbi- 
 tration in the one case of no small value in drawing 
 conclusions in the other. It will be simplest to take the 
 case of New South Wales, where the principle of com- 
 pulsory arbitration has been applied in the clearest and 
 most drastic manner. The Industrial Court, under the 
 Act of 1901, or the Arbitration Courts to which, under 
 later Acts, it delegates its functions while still retaining 
 the right of appeal, possess the most complete powers of 
 compulsion. The Court can interfere without any appli- 
 cation of either interested party, can appoint its own 
 
12 CRITICISM 
 
 Board of Arbitration if either or both parties refuse to 
 nominate members, or by pecuniary fine or actual im- 
 prisonment can enforce the award of the Court. 
 
 The Wise Act, which was in operation from 1901 to 
 1908, attempted to employ the sanction for the awards of 
 the Court by the method of the pecuniary fine, which 
 could be levied, not by the Court itself, but by its giving 
 leave to either party in the dispute to prosecute the other 
 for the damages awarded in the ordinary Courts of Law. 
 Mr. Wise, however, was clearly aware of the difficulty 
 which has just been mentioned namely, that of applying 
 pecuniary penalties to an industry which is not highly 
 organized, and in which the bulk of the men are outside 
 the Unions. He, therefore, inserted a clause by which 
 the masters were compelled to give a preference to the 
 employment of Trade llnionists, his idea clearly being to 
 lure, in the long run, all workers into Trade Unions, and 
 so secure that a fine levied on the Union would be a just 
 one, and would represent a penalty on all workers striking 
 in defiance of an Order of the Court. It was thus hoped 
 to avoid the difficulty referred to namely, that the 
 employer alone can be fined with success and certainty, 
 so that nothing is achieved except a system of "unilateral 
 compulsion." The Wise Act enjoyed a somewhat stormy 
 life, but cannot be written down as an utter failure. It 
 lapsed automatically in 1908, when Mr. Wade introduced 
 a far more drastic measure, which made it possible to 
 imprison recalcitrant parties in default of the fines being 
 paid, and in some cases to imprison them without giving 
 them the option of a pecuniary penalty. It is not too 
 much to say that this Act and the amending Act of 1909 
 have proved complete failures. Its main clauses are as 
 follows : 
 
 i. If any person does any act or thing in the nature of 
 a lock-out or strike, or takes part in a lock-out or strike, 
 or suspends or discontinues employment or work in any 
 industry, he shall be liable to a penalty not exceeding 
 one thousand pounds, or in default to imprisonment not 
 exceeding two months. 
 
FAILURE IN AUSTRALIA 13 
 
 2. If any person instigates or aids in any of the above- 
 mentioned acts he shall be liable to imprisonment for a 
 period of twelve months. 
 
 3. Where any person convicted of an offence against 
 the provisions of Section 42 (Combination in Restraint of 
 Trade) was, at the time of his committing such offence, a 
 member of a Trade or Industrial Union, the Industrial 
 Court may order the Trustees of the Trade Union, or of 
 a branch thereof, or may order the Industrial Union to 
 pay out of the funds of the Union or branch any amount 
 not exceeding 20 of the penalty imposed. 
 
 59. The Board or the Industrial Court may at any time 
 after the conclusion of the evidence, and before or after 
 the making of an award, require from any person or 
 Union making application to the Board or the Court in 
 respect of any dispute security to its satisfaction for the 
 performance of the award. . . . 
 
 These clauses spell, then, compulsory arbitration and a 
 statutory rate of wages which can be enforced either by 
 fine or imprisonment, while the Trade Union funds and 
 the Employers' Federations are both made liable for the 
 action of their members up to a certain point. It will be 
 observed in passing that, as nothing in the nature of 
 the Trades Disputes Act exists in New South Wales, 
 Australian statesmen have not the initial difficulty which 
 confronts industrial reformers here of having to amend 
 that Act before they can make a Trade Union in any 
 sense pecuniarily responsible for the acts of its members. 
 
 Still, the general results of all these enactments is 
 disappointing to the advocates of compulsory arbitration. 
 During the seven years in which the Wise Act was 
 enforced there were 186 strikes, and in thirteen cases the 
 law was openly set at naught by the strikers. Mr. Ernest 
 Aves, in his well-known and impartial Report, states that 
 " in two cases only, although leave to prosecute has been 
 much more often granted by the Court, have prosecutions 
 been instituted. There has been one conviction followed 
 by the imposition of a fine." 
 
 The real moral appears to be that in an enormous 
 number of cases the awards and decisions of the Court, 
 
14 CRITICISM 
 
 backed by public opinion, have succeeded in bringing 
 both parties to reason and to a fair compromise, but 
 that when it has become necessary to put the law into 
 operation it has broken down in a manner which can only 
 be described as ludicrous. Public opinion, in fact, would 
 not support its rigid enforcement. If this was true of 
 the Wise Act it has proved even more true of that passed 
 by Mr. Wade, who abolished the inducement to employees 
 to join the Unions, and relied on a more stringent system 
 of fines and imprisonment. The attempt has proved 
 quite futile, and we are even faced with the absurd fact 
 that employers actually paid the fines of their own strikers 
 to prevent the labour leaders getting the advertisement 
 of a cheap martyrdom, and so encouraging the rest of the 
 men to prolong the contest. The whole position has 
 been summed up with great fair-mindedness by Mr. 
 Justice Heydon, President of the Arbitration Court, who 
 obviously speaks with authority and experience : 
 
 There is a good deal of confusion of thought in the 
 public mind as to the objects to be obtained by the 
 introduction of compulsory arbitration in industrial 
 matters. . . . Properly speaking, however, the objects 
 aimed at are (i) the prevention of sweating, and (2) the 
 prevention of limitation of strikes and lock-outs. . . . 
 
 The second object of compulsory industrial arbitra- 
 tion is much more difficult of attainment. To forbid 
 strikes, and compel industrial disputants to come to a 
 Court, and to clothe that Court with power to regulate, 
 by a compulsory decree, the conditions that prevail in 
 every industry in which the parties are unable to agree 
 of themselves, is to intrude into a totally different sphere. 
 If there are weak classes likely to be imposed upon, and, 
 in the ordinary sense of the term, sweated, and to whom 
 it is in the highest degree just that a fair living wage 
 should be awarded, there are also strong Unions able, 
 without the assistance of any tribunal, to win for them- 
 selves terms which rise as far above a fair living wage as 
 those of the sweated classes fall below it. To take away 
 from those men the weapon of the strike, and to impose 
 upon them the compulsion of a peaceful award, is to enter 
 at once upon difficulties of the gravest character. 
 
CONCILIATION 15 
 
 The argument in this matter, then, is not that the 
 Australian precedent, or indeed any precedent outside 
 these Islands, can give a conclusive proof that compulsory 
 arbitration is impossible, but simply that the experiment 
 when and where made reinforces the views which the 
 Committee after mature reflection have adopted as a 
 result of their observations of the tendencies of industrial 
 disturbance and of public opinion in this country. In a 
 word, compulsory arbitration can only be attempted if 
 the difficulties suggested by experience can be eliminated 
 and if a further stride in advance is made by the opinion 
 of the community as a whole. 
 
 There is one further suggestion to consider. It is 
 sometimes said that arbitration could be enforced by a 
 system of forfeits, both the Union and the employer being 
 compelled to make pecuniary deposits which would be 
 forfeited in the event of strike or lock-out. This sugges- 
 tion receives some support from the fact that a system 
 of this kind is working in the Leicester boot trade, and 
 that some of the men's leaders in the Transport Workers' 
 strike in London offered to submit to it. 
 
 The difficulty of this method is that in a large number 
 of the most difficult cases industry is not sufficiently well 
 organized to make it effective in practice. None the less 
 as the organization both of masters and men becomes 
 more complete the plan becomes more feasible, and is 
 likely in the future to deserve more attention as a means 
 of enforcing agreements. 
 
 OUR PROPOSALS 
 
 IT remains to consider, however, whether more use 
 might not advantageously be made of a form of arbitra- 
 tion procedure which, without being compulsory, shall 
 yet be of wider application and carry with it more 
 authority than the limited practice of voluntary arbitra- 
 tion at present in operation. Under the statute now in 
 force, the Conciliation (Trade Disputes) Act of 1896, the 
 
16 OUR PROPOSALS 
 
 Board of Trade has the power to appoint an Arbitrator 
 on the application of both parties to an industrial dispute. 
 By administrative action of the Board of Trade in 1908 
 (without fresh statutory authority), regulations were 
 issued by which, instead of a single Arbitrator, the two 
 parties can apply for the appointment of a Court of 
 Arbitration, consisting of three or four members. More- 
 over, under the rules of many of the existing voluntary 
 Conciliation Boards, the Board of Trade is called upon 
 by such Conciliation Boards from time to time to appoint 
 Umpires. In all such cases, the joint applications are 
 made by organized bodies of employers and employed : 
 the very application implies a readiness to abide by the 
 decision for an agreed period ; the existence of strong- 
 organizations on both sides usually renders it easy to 
 enforce the decision ; and there is, as a fact, usually little 
 difficulty in securing the observance of the Award. 
 There has been in many trades an encouraging develop- 
 ment of a spirit of conciliation ; and the assistance of the 
 Board of Trade is now frequently invoked, with satis- 
 factory results. But it is notorious that the machinery 
 of the present Act has proved altogether inapplicable in 
 most of the more widespread of recent labour troubles. 
 For reasons into which it is not necessary to enter, the 
 parties to such disputes have shown no readiness to agree 
 upon arbitration. The Board of Trade has therefore 
 been compelled, in such cases, to fall back on its vaguer 
 power under the Act to " take such steps as it may deem 
 expedient for the purpose of enabling the parties to meet 
 together . . . with a view to the amicable settlement of 
 the difference " a power which, it need hardly be said, 
 has failed to be efficacious in some of the gravest of 
 emergencies. 
 
 The Dominion of Canada is now experimenting with a 
 form of arbitration which is compulsory only in its early 
 stages ; and this has met with so large a measure of 
 success that the example is worthy of careful attention. 
 By the Industrial Disputes Investigation Act of Canada, 
 1907, better known as the Lemieux Act, certain occupa- 
 
THE LEMIEUX ACT 17 
 
 tions were classified together as " services of public 
 utility " or " public service utilities." The classification 
 is contained in the interpretation of " employer," which 
 runs as follows : " Employer means any person, company 
 or corporation employing ten or more persons and own- 
 ing or operating any mining property, agency of trans- 
 portation or communication, or public service utility, 
 including, except as hereinafter provided, railways, 
 whether operated by steam, electricity, or other motive 
 power, steamships, telegraphs and telephone lines, gas, 
 electric light, water and power works." In all these 
 industries a strike or lock-out is made unlawful prior to, 
 or pending, reference to a Board of Conciliation and In- 
 vestigation, to be constituted by the Minister of Labour 
 in accordance with the Act ; and any such strike or lock- 
 out may be punished by substantial fines. The Board 
 endeavours to effect a settlement. If it fails it makes " a 
 full Report " to the Minister, " which Report shall set 
 forth ... all the facts and circumstances, and its findings 
 therefrom, including the cause of the dispute and the 
 Board's recommendation for the settlement of the dispute 
 according to the merits and substantial justice of the 
 case." But this recommendation carries with it no legal 
 compulsion ; it depends for its efficacy entirely upon the 
 support it may receive from public opinion ; and, as soon 
 as it has been presented, the parties are set free, if they 
 so choose, to go on with the threatened strike or lock- 
 out. At any subsequent time also they may take the 
 recommendation as a basis for voluntary negotiation. 
 The advantages of the system are that the parties are 
 brought together where often they have not met before, 
 the quarrel is investigated and a report made by a skilled 
 and impartial tribunal, and delay is enforced during 
 which time is allowed for tempers to cool and calmer 
 feelings get their chance. 
 
 The Act has been remarkably successful. But this 
 success has been due to the explicit and frank appeal 
 which it makes to the good sense of both the parties 
 immediately concerned, and of the general public which 
 
i8 OUR PROPOSALS 
 
 is so vitally interested in industrial peace ; and not to the 
 preliminary legal restriction upon the right to strike. It 
 is unnecessary to consider how far the State is justified 
 in demanding under penalties the continuance of" funda- 
 mentally important services until judgment can be 
 secured on questions at issue from a State-created tri- 
 bunal. It is sufficient to say that the penal clauses 
 cannot possibly be enforced even in Canada against con- 
 siderable bodies of men. Even there the threat of 
 penalties has not prevented illegal strikes (i.e., strikes 
 begun before or pending investigation). Between March, 
 1907, and December, 1911, though the Boards were able 
 to effect no fewer than eighty-four settlements without 
 strikes, and there were only nine strikes after the Boards 
 had reported, there were eleven illegal strikes, some of 
 them of some magnitude, and one in 1911 in which as 
 many as 6,000 miners took part. The Government does 
 not, it must be observed, itself undertake, under the Act, 
 to exact the statutory penalties, as under the Wise Act. 
 This it leaves to the parties immediately concerned. But 
 it is very evident that any attempt on the part of em- 
 ployers to take action, even if it cculd be expected actually 
 to secure the payment of the penalties incurred and this, 
 of course, is highly improbable would increase the 
 already existing ill-feeling and make conciliation more 
 difficult in subsequent disputes. The attempt to render 
 Trade Union officials responsible must have equally mis- 
 chievous results. From the evidence collected by the most 
 competent inquirers, such as Dr. Victor Clark on behalf 
 of the United States Department of Commerce and Labor 
 in 1908 and in 1910 (Bulletin 76 and 86 of the United States 
 Bureau of Labor), and in 1912 by Sir George Askwith on 
 behalf of the British Board of Trade (Cd. 6603, 1913), it 
 seems clear that the penal clauses have thrown unneces- 
 sary difficulties in the way of industrial peace by creating 
 a strong feeling of resentment in large sections of the 
 working population by the mere threat of their enforce- 
 ment, and that, in fact, the violation of the law has passed 
 unpunished. We are convinced that this would be 
 
CRITICISM OF THE LEMIEUX ACT 19 
 
 equally the case in this country. The prohibition of 
 striking, even for the shortest possible period, would be 
 looked upon, whether justly or not, as imposing a handi- 
 cap upon the workers by depriving them of the advantages 
 of sudden and rapid action. This feeling would create an 
 opposition to the Act such as would be practically in- 
 superable. With the omission of the penal clauses, how- 
 ever, we are of opinion that legislation is now desirable 
 in this country on the general lines of the Canadian Act. 
 We see no sufficient reason why the English Act should 
 be restricted to " public utility services." The line be- 
 tween these and other occupations is one which cannot 
 be drawn with precision ; and, were such classification 
 attempted, it might easily happen that the public interests 
 were gravely threatened by the suspension of labour in 
 an occupation which fell outside the circle thus drawn. 
 We would make the Act include all disputes of any con- 
 siderable magnitude. And we would guard against one 
 real defect in the Canadian Act, and make each Board 
 the authority (within a reasonable period) for the inter- 
 pretation of its own recommendations, should any dispute 
 arise as to the meaning of the terms. 
 
 Therefore the scheme suggested for this country would 
 be somewhat as follows : 
 
 In the first place, a Labour Department of the Board 
 of Trade would be constituted. At the present moment 
 the functions of the Board of Trade in industrial matters 
 are divided into three sections, all independent of one 
 another : 
 
 1. The work of the Industrial Commissioner in settling- 
 disputes. 
 
 2. Unemployment Insurance and Labour Exchanges. 
 
 3. Statistical. 
 
 In future all these functions ought to be co-ordinated 
 and placed in a single Labour Department of the Board 
 of Trade under the Industrial Commissioner, who in turn 
 will be responsible to the President of the Board of 
 Trade. In the event of a strike occurring, which, in 
 the judgment of the Chief Industrial Commissioner, is 
 
20 OUR PROPOSALS 
 
 of sufficient importance, he will be given statutory 
 authority by Parliament to interfere, and to appoint, 
 without reference to the President of the Board of Trade, 
 a Board of Conciliation and Investigation. This Board 
 shall consist of three members, one appointed on the 
 recommendation of the employers, one on that of the 
 employed, and a third chosen as chairman by the other 
 two ; or, if the two parties fail to agree, by the Chief 
 Industrial Commissioner, who shall, of course, in this 
 event, have power to act in this special capacity as 
 chairman. This Board would have power to summon 
 witnesses, and it would be its duty to endeavour to bring 
 about an agreement by conciliation, and, if this failed, to 
 make a public recommendation for the settlement of the 
 dispute. Special pains should be taken by extensive 
 publication in the Press and otherwise to give the 
 recommendation the widest publicity. The recommenda- 
 tion would not be enforced on either party, but its accep- 
 tance would be left to depend entirely upon the good 
 sense of the parties concerned, and upon the pressure of 
 public opinion. The Board, in the case of a dispute 
 arising as to the meaning of its award, would be the 
 authority to interpret it. 
 
 This special machinery must be fitted into the case 
 where there is already existing a voluntary Wages Board. 
 Should such Board be superseded by the special Board ? 
 or should the voluntary Board be given the first chance 
 of settling the dispute? The question is of some import- 
 ance in view of the extensive existence of voluntary 
 Boards, especially in the highly organized trades, and 
 requires some consideration. Probably the best course 
 is to allow the existing machinery the first opportunity 
 of settling the dispute, and only to call in the special 
 Board in the event of failure. Experience has shown 
 that the voluntary Board cannot be relied on altogether 
 even where it exists, for in some cases the Boards are 
 without a chairman or umpire who can give a casting 
 vote ; and it is on the weight attached by the public to 
 the published opinion of an impartial chairman that the 
 
ARBITRATION WITHOUT COMPULSION 21 
 
 acceptance of his recommendation depends. As in the 
 case of the Canadian Act, our object is to give a formal 
 and effective recognition to the position which the public, 
 as a third party, occupies in any Labour dispute. In 
 reality the duties of the new Boards will be of a threefold 
 character. In the first place, they will bring balanced 
 and unprejudiced minds into the superheated and 
 suspicious atmosphere of a trade dispute. Secondly, 
 they will make, on behalf of the community, a reasonable 
 suggestion for settlement. And, thirdly, they will give 
 to the public in concise form and simple language the 
 real facts of the case and the grounds for the settlement 
 advocated, and thus they will enable public opinion to 
 act with full knowledge, and therefore effectively. Ever}'- 
 one who has had any experience in trade disputes knows 
 that half the difficulty consists in bringing the parties 
 together, and, when they are met, in removing the feeling 
 of hostility and suspicion which is so fatal a bar to a 
 settlement. Employers and employed alike are power- 
 fully affected by the existence of a clearly expressed 
 public opinion. But the questions at issue are often so 
 entangled in obscurities and contradictions that there 
 needs to be a distinct lead given by persons on whose 
 judgment the community is likely to rely. 
 
 The advance on the present procedure of the Board 
 of Trade which is involved in our proposals has perhaps 
 been already sufficiently indicated. But the several 
 points may be recapitulated in order to prevent mis- 
 understanding. 
 
 First and most important, we propose that the Boards 
 to be appointed shall be distinctly instructed to make 
 definite recommendations, in a public Report, for the 
 settlement of the disputes (and not merely in private 
 conversation with the parties concerned). No such 
 power is explicitly given by the present statute governing 
 the procedure of the Board of Trade. By the Act of 
 1896 the Board of Trade (unless both parties apply for an 
 arbitrator) can only " appoint a person or persons to act 
 as conciliator or as a Board of Conciliation," and that on 
 
22 OUR PROPOSALS 
 
 the application of one of the parties. In default of such 
 application, all it can do is to " inquire into the causes 
 and circumstances of the difference" [Section 2 (i) ()], 
 " and take such steps as ... may seem expedient for the 
 purpose of enabling the parties ... to meet together . . . 
 with a view to . . . settlement" [Section 2 (i) ()]. By 
 another section [Section 4] it is given power to appoint 
 a person or persons " to inquire into the conditions of the 
 district or trade and to confer with the employers and 
 employed ... as to the expediency of establishing a 
 Conciliation Board for the district or trade." 
 
 In two cases still very fresh in the public memory the 
 Government has gone to the edge of its powers under the 
 Act. In the case of the strike of Transport Workers on 
 the Thames in May, 1912, Sir Edward Clarke was ap- 
 pointed merely "to inquire into and report upon the facts 
 and circumstances of the disputes." His report confined 
 itself to an expression of the opinion that "much of the 
 difficulty " had arisen from the breach or neglect of the 
 provision in certain agreements for an appeal to the Board 
 of Trade ; and all that he ventured upon by way of a 
 recommendation was the cautious remark : " That clause 
 is still in force, and I see no reason why the method pre- 
 scribed should not now be used." In the case of the 
 Dublin strike in October, 1913, the Court of Inquiry was 
 appointed "to inquire into the facts and the circumstances 
 of the dispute . . . and to take such steps as may seem 
 desirable, with a view to arriving at a settlement." In its 
 Report it confined itself to criticizing on grounds of expe- 
 diency the recent policy of both the parties, and argued 
 that this policy should be modified. Even this, however, 
 it did not put in the form of an explicit recommendation. 
 For the rest it contented itself (apparently under Section 4 
 of the Act) with suggesting a scheme for the creation of 
 Conciliation Committees, and refrained from entering into 
 any one of the alleged grievances. It is not impossible 
 that if a more substantial inquiry could have been made 
 into the real difficulties of the situation, and if the Court, 
 instead of throwing upon machinery still to be created 
 
HOW THE SCHEME WOULD WORK 23 
 
 the onus of their solution, had felt itself authorized to 
 make actual recommendations for that purpose, the out- 
 come would have been decidedly more satisfactory. 
 
 Secondly, we propose to give to the parties concerned 
 the right to nominate their own representatives on the 
 Board, and to these representatives to nominate their 
 chairman. The Chief Industrial Commissioner would, of 
 course, have the right to decline to appoint nominees 
 whom he deemed obviously unsuitable, and to call for a 
 second or even a third nomination. In case no suitable 
 nomination were made, he should have the right to 
 nominate, as at present, from an appropriate panel. It is 
 worth while considering, however, whether the Employer 
 and Labour Panels, for purposes of conciliation and arbi- 
 tration, might not advantageously be nominated by the 
 Association of Chambers of Commerce and the great 
 Employers' Federations on the one side, and by the Trade 
 Union Congress and the Federation of Trade Unions on 
 the other. 
 
 Subject to these necessary restrictions, we would follow 
 the Canadian precedent and leave the choice of the mem- 
 bers of the Board to "the parties to the dispute." In 
 Canada the workmen's representative has been in practice 
 one of the officials of the Trade Union affected. In the 
 Erdman Act in the United States, nomination by Trade 
 Union is expressly ordered, with a special provision for 
 cases where more than one Union is involved, or "where 
 the majority of employees are not members of any labour 
 organization." The Erdman Act, which deals exclusively 
 with railways, has been remarkably successful. For 
 reasons into which we need not here enter, it does not 
 furnish us with any useful suggestion on the policy, as a 
 whole, which we are here recommending; but on this par- 
 ticular point its example is significant and encouraging. 
 We are of opinion that, in the stage now reached by labour 
 organization in this country, the path to peace will usually 
 be found through using to the fullest extent the influence 
 of such working-men's Unions as really represent the 
 bulk of the employees in a given trade. 
 
24 OUR PROPOSALS 
 
 Thirdly, we recommend that much more trouble should 
 be taken to give rapid and wide publicity to the recom- 
 mendations than has hitherto been the practice with 
 documents of this nature. They should be printed imme- 
 diately, and copies at once despatched, in adequate num- 
 bers, not only to the contending parties and each of their 
 officers and committee men, and to every journal of any 
 importance, but to every single association of employers 
 and work-people, and to every public reading-room in the 
 kingdom. 
 
 No doubt it will be objected that our proposals do not 
 go far enough. It will be urged that the State has an 
 absolute right not only to intervene in, but to compel the 
 settlement of some trade disputes ; and the above scheme 
 will be criticized on the ground that it leaves off at this 
 essential point. It may be answered that the ultimate 
 duty of the State, as guardian of public order and cus- 
 todian of the national welfare, is untouched by our pro- 
 posals. In the future, as in the past, a Government can 
 take whatever steps are expedient and legal to secure the 
 public interest when services are interrupted which are 
 of vital concern to the nation ; and undoubtedly, under 
 these circumstances, its action will be supported by public 
 sentiment. In some cases, for instance, it may even be 
 justifiable and feasible for the State itself to undertake 
 the services in question. But most disputes are not of 
 this exceedingly perilous character ; and it would be quite 
 impracticable for the State to force a settlement in every 
 case upon unwilling parties. Nor are the difficulties 
 greatly lessened if compulsion is confined to " public 
 utility " concerns, a class, as we have already remarked, 
 which it is difficult to define. We place great reliance on 
 the effect of public opinion, provided that public opinion 
 is properly instructed. In the past it has had to rely on 
 the coloured statements of partisans, and it has been 
 bewildered by the conflict of testimony. When an im- 
 partial tribunal has fairly stated the facts and conclusions, 
 public opinion can, in the vast majority of cases, be trusted 
 to do the rest. 
 
THE AGREED WAGE 25 
 
 At any rate, we are not prepared at present to go 
 further than this. Up to this point we have no doubt 
 that the scheme will enjoy a large volume of support 
 both from masters and from men; and under these cir- 
 cumstances it will have the tremendous initial advantage 
 of a fair trial. Beyond this point the general sense of the 
 community is not at present prepared to move. Whether 
 compulsion is or is not a possibility of the future when 
 the grouping of industrial forces, and the mechanism of 
 production and transportation have further developed, it 
 is impossible at present to say. The plan outlined above 
 will be a real step towards a more reasonable attitude in 
 trade differences inasmuch as it proclaims, as never 
 before, the right and the duty of the State in relation 
 to industrial warfare, and it does not close the road to 
 further measures of a more mandatory nature if they 
 should ever seem to be both necessary and practicable, 
 and to be likely to obtain the required amount of public 
 support. 
 
 2. A MINIMUM WAGE, 
 
 So much for the duty of the State in trade disputes. 
 We come to the second and third points mentioned on 
 p. 5 which are concerned with the duty of the State to 
 intervene for the purpose of helping its weaker members, 
 and for raising the standard of wages to subsistence level. 
 
 By a minimum wage we understand a wage fixed, as 
 minimum remuneration for a particular period or piece of 
 service, by some authority, whether voluntarily consti- 
 tuted or created by the State, after due consideration by 
 Boards on which employers and employed are equally 
 represented. This description is intended to cover a 
 wide range of possibilities : from the case where a volun- 
 tary Board or Conference composed exclusively of repre- 
 sentatives of employers and employed is itself able to 
 reach a decision, without outside assistance ; through the 
 intermediate cases where the decision, though in form 
 that of a voluntary Board, is, in fact, that of an indepen- 
 dent chairman or umpire, deriving his authority from the 
 agreement constituting the Board; to the cases where 
 
 5 
 
26 OUR PROPOSALS 
 
 the Board is a statutory one, with several independent 
 "Appointed Members," so as to make possible a sub- 
 stantial majority in favour of a proposed decision ; and 
 the case where the Board, being still a statutory one, and 
 yet representing only the two sides under an independent 
 chairman, the chairman has the statutory duty cast upon 
 him of making a decision, in default of agreement. In 
 every such case, however, the fixing of the wage must be 
 preceded by joint consideration, in a formal Board or 
 Conference, of the contentions of the two sides. 
 
 The establishment of a minimum wage, thus defined, 
 means the withdrawal from employers, for a determined 
 period, of the right to buy their labour in what may be at 
 the moment the cheapest market, since they are com- 
 pelled, if they employ labour at all, to pay it at least 
 a certain predetermined amount. We look forward, it 
 need hardly be said, not to anything of the nature of a 
 uniform rate imposed on all labour by Parliament or any 
 other authority. Such a uniform rate would be most 
 unwise, and if it were wise in itself the House of Commons 
 is incompetent to fix it, and would be demoralized by the 
 attempt. What we look forward to is the gradual exten- 
 sion from industry to industry of the recognition of the 
 principle that minimum rates should be fixed for different 
 kinds of service, and the determination of these minima 
 in each industry by the machinery most effective for the 
 purpose. The means of approach to the ultimate goal 
 must, accordingly, be sought for along more than one 
 line of approach. 
 
 (a) Existing Voluntary Agreements. 
 
 Before detailing the extent to which voluntary wage 
 agreements already exist in the strongly organized trades, 
 it will be advisable to point out that it is not with these 
 that our proposals are concerned in the first instance. 
 In normal times these agreements in the trades mentioned 
 work well ; the only action which we contemplate when 
 they break down is that proposed on p. 21 namely, 
 the Board of Enquiry in cases of strikes. It is with the 
 
EXISTING WAGE AGREEMENTS 27 
 
 weakly organized trades where no effective wage agree- 
 ments can be brought into existence that the following 
 proposals are chiefly concerned ; but that would not pre- 
 clude any body asking for recognition if it were of opinion 
 that such a proposal would be to its advantage. 
 
 Few people realize the extent to which the minimum 
 wage, as above defined, already prevails. The Trade 
 Boards Act, 1909, and the Coal Mines (Minimum Wage) 
 Act, 1912, are examples of its provision by statute; the 
 Conciliation Boards which regulate the remuneration on 
 railways are an example of its provision by Government 
 action without recourse to statute. In the latter instance 
 it may be remembered that the Government prevailed 
 upon the parties concerned to agree to the establishment 
 of Boards by among other things permitting the Board 
 of Trade to undertake the supervision of the election of 
 the men's representatives ; and that it obtained the acqui- 
 escence of the Companies subsequently to a modification 
 of the arrangement by giving them an assurance of legis- 
 lation on railway charges. The creation of these Railway 
 Boards, although they are in form voluntary Boards, is 
 due to intervention on the part of the State of a very 
 special character, and the Boards in consequence occupy 
 an intermediate position between voluntary and statutory 
 organizations. 
 
 It is, however, not generally known that the minimum 
 wage prevails to a far larger extent by completely 
 voluntary agreement, independent of statutory or execu- 
 tive support. The Report on Collective Agreements 
 between Employers and Work-people (Cd. 5366 of 1910) 
 estimates the numbers covered by Collective Agreements 
 as 2,400,000. These figures include some 700,000 miners 
 who are now also subject (as mentioned above) to statu- 
 tory Boards, as far as individual daily minima are con- 
 cerned; as well as some 120,000 railway servants. But 
 as the Report goes on to state, there are a large number 
 of other work-people whose wages, hours of labour, and 
 other industrial conditions follow and are in effect 
 governed by the collective agreements enforced in the 
 
28 OUR PROPOSALS 
 
 trades concerned. It may probably be safely estimated 
 that the wages of some 2,000,000 workers are now 
 controlled, directly or indirectly, by voluntary Boards 
 (reckoning herein the Railway Boards), and that well 
 over another million are subject to statutory Boards 
 (adding, that is, to the miners the 200,000 persons under 
 the Trade Boards Act, even before its recent extension). 
 It will thus be seen that the minimum wage (i.e., agreed 
 or arbitrated wage) has arrived of itself by ordinary 
 process of evolution ; it is not a creature of Parliament, 
 but a spontaneous product of our industrial conditions 
 and national temperament. It is, therefore, clearly on 
 these lines that the solution of wage difficulties is to be 
 sought. 
 
 Voluntary agreements have on the whole been well 
 kept ; and in spite of recent events, we are hopeful that 
 the area covered by such agreements will extend and 
 that they will obtain even more than their present large 
 measure of support from those whom they concern. 
 Disputes, however, sometimes arise as to the interpreta- 
 tion of agreements, as well as (though this is usually an 
 interpretation question also) whether a breach of agree- 
 ment has actually taken place. It is, therefore, very 
 desirable that when agreements are made or renewed, 
 provision should be inserted for the determination of 
 such questions. The Board of Trade might properly call 
 the attention of those concerned to the absence of such 
 provision ; but this is a matter with which legislation is 
 not competent to deal, unless the parties chose to accept 
 the statutory sanction of the agreement to which we shall 
 refer in the next paragraph. 
 
 Perhaps more grave is the absence in some of the 
 Boards or Conferences of any independent chairman or 
 umpire with casting vote. Here also the good offices of 
 the Board of Trade may well be employed to obtain the 
 consent of both parties to the appointment of such an 
 umpire, so as to secure finality in their deliberations. 
 But again there is no scope for legislation in the absence 
 of statutory sanction of the agreement; and should a 
 
LEGISLATION PROPOSED 29 
 
 strong feeling make itself apparent on either side that 
 such a final decision is incompatible with the right to 
 "appeal ultimately to the arbitrament of the strike or 
 lock-out," the Board of Trade will naturally abstain from 
 any further suggestions in this direction. Similarly both 
 parties must be left free to terminate agreements when 
 the agreed period has elapsed, and to fall back on the 
 weapons of industrial warfare ; and all that can be done 
 under the same conditions is for the Board of Trade to 
 suggest when there is no strong feeling to the contrary 
 the insertion of a clause providing for adequate notice, 
 so that there may be some opportunity for negotiation 
 before the agreement lapses. 
 
 The State, on granting legal recognition, would justly 
 impose certain conditions, already indicated in the pre- 
 ceding paragraph and explicitly set forth below. But if 
 the Unions and Associations concerned saw no practical 
 advantage in securing legal recognition, they would 
 remain as free as before as to the terms of their voluntary 
 agreements. 
 
 (b) Legislation. 
 
 We propose that Legislation should be passed giving 
 the force of law to wage agreements voluntarily entered 
 into by bodies effectively representing employers and 
 employed. Penalties would be imposed on employers 
 who paid less than the standard, and these penalties 
 would be enforced not by the workmen aggrieved, but 
 by Government Factory Inspectors. In any legal pro- 
 ceedings to enforce penalties, the balance of wages due 
 but unpaid would be recoverable. The recognized 
 standard would become an implied term in every contract 
 of employment. Careful provision must be made for 
 reasonable efficiency and regularity on the worker's part 
 and lower rates provided for young, old and infirm 
 workers. 
 
 It will be necessary before granting legal recognition 
 to be reasonably sure that the agreement represents the 
 real desires of a substantial majority of each of the parties. 
 We recommend that before the necessary joint application 
 
 6 
 
30 OUR PROPOSALS 
 
 is made, a majority in support thereof should be ascer- 
 tained by ballot, which shall be sufficient to render 
 probable a substantial and continuous preponderance 
 of approval (of course only during the currency of the 
 agreement), as well as to enlist public sympathy and so 
 bring outside public opinion to bear upon the dissentients. 
 How large that majority should be is a question for con- 
 sideration. A bare majority of each side would probably 
 be insufficient for the purpose ; a two-thirds majority 
 would seem a fair arrangement and probably an effective 
 one. The calculation should be based, on the one side 
 on the number of work-people ordinarily employed, and 
 on the other side on the ordinary output ; and the Chief 
 Industrial Commissioner should be entrusted with the 
 supervision of the ballot and the acceptance of the results. 
 In order that the agreement should represent not a hastily 
 patched up peace, but a settled intention, we propose 
 that no agreement secured by the intervention of the 
 Chief Industrial Commissioner after a strike should be 
 legally recognized until it had been in operation at least 
 three months. 
 
 In return for recognition it would be proper for the 
 State to insist that provision should be made in every 
 agreement : 
 
 1. That due notice during the currency of the agree- 
 ment should be given by either party of proposed changes 
 in terms of employment under the agreement. 
 
 2. That due notice should be given by either party of 
 an intention to terminate the agreement. 
 
 3. That work should not be suspended by strike or 
 lock-out, until disputes had been presented to a joint 
 tribunal. 
 
 4. That means should be arranged to decide questions 
 of interpretation. 
 
 5. That the joint tribunal should be so constituted as 
 to reach finality by a majority vote. 
 
 It may be urged that disputes may arise involving- 
 questions of principle on which the parties may be 
 unwilling to surrender their right of strike or lock-out. 
 
EXTENSION OF TRADE BOARDS ACT 31 
 
 But it must be pointed out that agreements under the 
 proposed measure will be made only for definite periods, 
 seldom more than three years and often not so long; and 
 that at the termination of the agreements the parties will 
 be free to use all the means at present at their disposal 
 to secure such changes as they may desire. 
 
 It must not be supposed that such a measure as we 
 propose will of itself prevent strikes. Unfortunately, 
 experience shows that men will sometimes strike against 
 wage agreements even whilst they are running. It has, 
 therefore, to be considered what the attitude of the State 
 should be in such an event. We suggest that if any 
 considerable proportion choose to go on strike, during 
 the currency of a wage agreement, it should be the duty 
 of the Chief Industrial Commissioner immediately to 
 withdraw the recognition of the minimum wage and to 
 do so in the most public manner possible, and that no 
 further recognition should be given within a substantial 
 period of the breach of the agreement. We would suggest 
 that if it be agreed that two-thirds is a sufficient proportion 
 to secure recognition, that recognition should not be with- 
 drawn as long as two-thirds of the workers abided by its 
 terms. 
 
 (c) Extension of Trade Boards Act. 
 
 This Act has recently been applied to certain trades 
 not in the original schedule, and we recommend its still 
 further cautious extension. In the first instance it should 
 be applied to small and localized industries where it is 
 possible to create and focus public opinion, and where 
 the conditions facilitate inspection ; and where, also, 
 organization is either non-existent or likely, for an in- 
 definite time, to be ineffective unless reinforced by public 
 authority. In all cases, moreover, the danger of foreign 
 competition must be borne in mind. 
 
 It is along these three lines voluntary agreement, 
 agreements extended by recognition, and Trade Boards 
 for sweated industries that the movement towards the 
 minimum wage will be best directed. The minimum 
 wage, made universal by the converging operation of the 
 
32 OUR PROPOSALS 
 
 several instrumentalities thus outlined, would conduce 
 enormously to the well-being of the working population. 
 It would involve not only an increase in actual remunera- 
 tion, but also what is of even greater importance as the 
 basis of a well-ordered family life greater regularity in 
 working-class incomes. We anticipate that it would 
 conduce also to the greater productivity of labour, by 
 making the work-people more efficient, bodily and 
 mentally, by stimulating invention, and by promoting a 
 general improvement in industrial organization. We do 
 not anticipate that the general adoption of the principle 
 will impede manufacturing enterprise ; it will only plac"e 
 it on a higher plane, and diminish the social evils which 
 at present attend it. 
 
 (d) Administrative Action. 
 
 Our main object, it will be seen, is to facilitate the 
 determination of wages and the other conditions of labour 
 by conference, and, if possible, agreement, between the 
 parties immediately concerned, with the assistance, where 
 requisite, of the Executive Government of the country, and 
 the support of an instructed public opinion. To leave 
 free scope for the working of the method of negotiation, 
 we have thought it expedient, after careful consideration, 
 not to press proposals of a more coercive character. For 
 instance, in the matter of Government contracts, \vc 
 believe that the language of the Fair Wages Resolution 
 of 1909 sufficiently corresponds in its general intention 
 with the principle on which we are proceeding. It insists 
 on the payment of rates of wages and the observance of 
 hours of labour, " not less favourable than those com- 
 monly recognized by employers and trade societies (or, 
 in the absence of such recognized wages and hours, those 
 which in practice prevail amongst good employers)." 
 This naturally includes wages under the Trade Boards 
 Acts. But in the cases, probably not very numerous, to 
 which this language cannot be made to apply, and in 
 which it seems unlikely that conditions for an indefinite 
 period will be improved by organization, we think it 
 
DECASUALIZATION 33 
 
 highly desirable that the departments involved should 
 themselves fix the wages which contractors shall pay. 
 This has already been done in some few cases, we under- 
 stand, by the Post Office and by the War Office. Now 
 that an Interdepartmental Advisory Committee, presided 
 over by a representative of the Board of Trade, has been 
 constituted for the purpose of dealing with the matter, it 
 is only necessary that the departments should proceed 
 persistently, if cautiously, along the path on which they 
 have already entered. But an even closer co-operation 
 with the Labour Department would be advantageous, 
 especially when the statistical work of that department 
 has been re-organized as we shall propose later, including 
 the branch which shall collect evidence as to cost of living. 
 And it would be well that the whole subject should be 
 periodically reported upon, say once in every two years. 
 
 3. DECASUALIZATION OF LABOUR. 
 
 But while the general observance of minimum rates of 
 wages is, in our opinion, most desirable in the interest of 
 the nation, we do not imagine for a moment that it will 
 remedy all the defects of our industrial system. Many 
 of these defects flow from a maladjustment of the labour 
 force to the work required of it. This maladjustment is 
 far greater than is involved in the fluctuations of demand, 
 and it is quite capable of being largely diminished by 
 sensible organization. 
 
 The experience of Liverpool shows that State and 
 Municipal action can do a great deal to secure regularity 
 of employment in casual trades. At present there are 
 schemes in operation at the Liverpool, Goole, and Sunder- 
 land docks, among the Manchester cloth-porters, and the 
 South Wales ship- repairers ; all having a common object, 
 all providing for the engagement of casual labour through 
 the Labour Exchanges. In the Liverpool scheme matters 
 have gone so far by agreement between the employers 
 and the Dockers' Union, and with the co-operation of the 
 Board of Trade, that the dockers are paid in lump sums 
 at the Labour Exchange all they may have individually 
 
34 OUR PROPOSALS 
 
 earned from a number of employers during the week 
 while the employers are charged pro rata for their sick- 
 ness insurance. 
 
 The purpose of such schemes is, on the one hand, to 
 prevent the flooding of employments like dock labour 
 with a greater amount of labour than can properly be 
 employed, and, on the other hand, to ensure that the avail- 
 able labour is properly distributed. The result will, it is 
 hoped, be the employment of a more regular force at 
 higher wages and under better conditions. We recom- 
 mend that this process of decasualization should be helped 
 forward by giving the Board of Trade the right to declare 
 certain trades in certain localities to be casual trades, 
 and to compel all engagements in them to be made through 
 Labour Exchanges. 
 
 It has been realized of late that the ranks of casual 
 labour are largely recruited from " blind alley " employ- 
 ments. The Post Office, which long pursued the de- 
 moralizing practice of employing a much larger number 
 of boy messengers than it could provide work for as 
 adults, without making any attempt to fit them for other 
 desirable occupations, has recently set its house in order 
 by linking up more definitely the juvenile and adult 
 branches of the postal service, and by introducing a 
 scheme of compulsory continuation schooling. We sug- 
 gest that the Board of Trade should call upon the Rail- 
 way Companies to furnish periodical statements as to 
 the number of van-boys employed, their chance of absorp- 
 tion into the adult branches of railway service, and the 
 arrangements, if any, made for their industrial training. 
 We are of opinion that the mere requirement of such a 
 return would exercise a salutary influence. 
 
 4. ORGANIZATION OF LABOUR DEPARTMENTS. 
 
 We have already recommended that all the labour func- 
 tions of the Board of Trade should be concentrated under 
 the Labour Department of the Board of Trade, as or- 
 ganized under the charge of the Chief Industrial Com- 
 missioner. 
 
ORGANIZATION AND FACTORY INSPECTION 35 
 
 The balance of argument would seem to be in favour 
 of retaining the present association of the Labour Depart- 
 ment with the Board of Trade. But we concur in the 
 general opinion that it is unfortunate when the action of 
 the Board of Trade in labour matters can be attributed, 
 with any show of reason, to the political interests of the 
 party to which the temporary Parliamentary President 
 of the Board happens to belong. We recognize, of course, 
 that in grave social emergencies it is the duty of the 
 Executive Government to take such action as may seem 
 likely to restore industrial peace. And we also agree 
 that information as to the proceedings of the Labour 
 Department must be always obtainable by Parliament 
 through one of the ministries. But we desire that the 
 appointment of members of a Court established in accord- 
 ance with Section i should be definitely confined by 
 statute to the Chief Industrial Commissioner, who will 
 thus be rendered immune from political pressure in his 
 most important function. 
 
 5. FACTORY INSPECTION. 
 
 The time has come when an inquiry should be held by 
 a small Royal Commission into the work of the factory 
 inspectorate with a view (i) to the increase of their 
 number, which has long been overdue ; and (2) to the 
 provision of more adequate methods of communication 
 and co-operation between the Government Departments 
 and the business community, so as to diminish friction 
 and hostility on the part of the employers. 
 
 Competent inquirers into the factory law of Germany, 
 as compared with that of England, have recently re- 
 ported that the German system is characterized by 
 greater elasticity ; that while it lays down the objects to 
 be aimed at, it allows more discretion to the administra- 
 tion to adopt the means to particular circumstances, and 
 that it is, therefore, in fact, less harassing to employers. 
 Conditions in Germany and England are, of course, 
 different, but it is certainly desirable that an impartial 
 inquiry should be made into the alleged superiority of 
 
36 OUR PROPOSALS 
 
 German practice in this regard. More factory and work- 
 shop regulation will probably be found necessary in 
 future ; but this should clearly be enforced as consider- 
 ately as possible, and with the least possible expense 
 and trouble to employers. 
 
 6. IMPROVEMENT OF STATISTICAL INFORMATION. 
 
 We recommend, first, that a settled policy should be 
 adopted by the Labour Department as to the preparation 
 of statistics of the cost of living. 
 
 The Board of Trade published for the first time in 
 1913 a " Report on Changes in the Cost of Living of the 
 Working Classes." This instituted a comparison be- 
 tween 1912 and the year 1905, for which it happened to 
 to have first brought together comparable data. We are 
 strongly of opinion that instead of scattering the staff 
 assigned to the task, and having to reconstitute it anew 
 in some future year, when public interest in the subject 
 demanded a fresh report, a permanent section of the 
 Labour Department should be employed in the con- 
 tinuous collection of data, and the preparation of an 
 annual report. 
 
 Secondly, we are of opinion that the Labour Department 
 should give guidance to the general public by collecting 
 and publishing the conclusions of contemporary physio- 
 logical science on the dietetic requirements for healthy 
 activity, and the dietetic values of the foods commonly 
 used by the working classes. This would be best done 
 by a small departmental committee, consisting of a due 
 admixture of physiological experts. It is not generally 
 realized that the only estimates of the necessary quan- 
 tities of the several food constituents that have hitherto 
 been available as standards by which to judge of the 
 adequacy of remuneration are those of one American 
 investigator, Professor Atwater. These are, doubtless, 
 of considerable authority ; but much would be gained by 
 the preparation of standards based on a wider consensus 
 of scientific opinion, and with special regard to English 
 conditions. 
 
IMPROVED STATISTICS 37 
 
 We recommend, thirdly, that an inquiry should be 
 held into the whole range of the present statistical work 
 of the Labour Department of the Board of Trade, with 
 a view to its extension and improvement in directions 
 which will make it more serviceable and accessible to 
 employer and employed. We would call attention to 
 the inquir}^ at Washington in 1907 into the statistical 
 work of certain of the American Departments, and of 
 the recommendations to which it led. ,The oppor- 
 tunity might well be taken to consider the relation, 
 or want of relation, between the statistical returns 
 of the various branches of the Board of Trade and 
 of other Government offices, such as the Home Office 
 and the Local Government Board. For a reasonable 
 co-ordination of the statistics of the Labour Depart- 
 ment with those of other branches of Government 
 service, something in the nature of a standing Inter- 
 Departmental Statistical Committee will doubtless be 
 necessary. 
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 IN conclusion, it may be as well to restate the main 
 outline of the scheme put forward by the Committee. 
 Our contention is that we are following along a line of 
 development based on the historic traditions of the Tory 
 Party in its dealings with the industrial problem in the 
 past. As far as the tentative recognition of an agreed 
 wage is concerned, we can base ourselves on the Statutes 
 of Elizabeth, while in the proposals made to obtain in- 
 dustrial peace, we are merely pursuing the political ideas 
 of the Governments of Lord Liverpool, Lord Beacons- 
 field, and Lord Salisbury. 
 
 In the matter of method the general idea of the Report 
 has been to accept the existing organization of industry 
 both in the sphere of the agreed wage and of industrial 
 disputes, and to extend and to fortify the tendencies and 
 processes which have already commended themselves 
 to the genius of the nation. This has appeared a better 
 
38 CONCLUSION 
 
 policy than any attempt to force a cast iron system of 
 wage regulation or compulsory arbitration on an in- 
 dustrial community quite unprepared for such drastic 
 measures. The scheme set out, then, does not march 
 in advance of public opinion in these respects, but it 
 contains in itself no bar rto a further advance should 
 public opinion itself take further strides towards a more 
 severe regulation of our industrial system. It is, 
 in fact, on existing public opinion in the broadest 
 sense of the term namely, the opinion of employers 
 and employed and of the community as a whole, 
 that we depend for the enforcement of the awards 
 of impartial tribunals. These tribunals are so consti- 
 tuted as to be impervious to the pressure of political 
 agitation, so that the great objection generally raised to 
 the increased interference of the State with industry 
 cannot be advanced against this Report. The function 
 of the State as here conceived is to provide machinery 
 for setting up Conciliation and Wages Boards where 
 such Boards do not already exist, and to encourage those 
 industries which already possess a rough system of 
 Conciliation and Wages Agreements, to extend and 
 make more effective a method which they already 
 pursue. The instrument to be used for this purpose is 
 that of the Recognition of Agreements, by which the 
 party which breaks a recognized agreement loses the 
 advantage of the certainty of an agreed wage sanctioned 
 by the Chief Industrial Commissioner. For the rest, the 
 reorganization of a Board of Trade never constituted 
 originally, and certainly not now peculiarly fitted, to 
 deal with the grave development of modern economic 
 strife, must be carried out in order to supply a type of 
 machinery adequate to the needs of the time. In the 
 long run, the appeal of any such system of Conciliation 
 and Arbitration as is suggested in these pages must 
 depend on the support given by public opinion to the 
 published and widely disseminated decisions of impartial 
 and disinterested authorities. Strikes almost invariably 
 fail when moral or financial support is withheld from the 
 
THE FUTURE 39 
 
 strikers by the public, while deiyands which the com- 
 munity as a whole believe to be justified are not 
 generally resisted to the bitter end. 
 
 We are at the present moment faced with doleful 
 prophecies of what may happen in the world of industry 
 in the ensuing autumn. The Committee has at least 
 prepared a scheme in anticipation of such a threatened 
 catastrophe as a general strike. It is, however, too late 
 to begin devising the machinery of settlement when the 
 trouble has already broken out. Nor is it much use to 
 preach the doctrine of the solidarity of the interests of 
 capital and labour as an integral part of a single national 
 unity in the middle of a bitter industrial war. It is to be 
 hoped, then, that this Report may help to draw the 
 national mind towards this urgent problem, and so to 
 force legislative action upon a Government too dis- 
 tracted by other issues to give any real or voluntary 
 heed to our urgent social necessities. 
 
 BILLING AND SOUS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFOKD 
 
RETURN TO the circulation desk of any 
 University of California Library 
 
 or to the 
 
 NORTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 Bldg. 400, Richmond Field Station 
 University of California 
 Richmond, CA 94804-4698 
 
 ALL BOOKS MAY BE RECALLED AFTER 7 DAYS 
 2-month loans may be renewed by calling 
 
 (415)642-6753 
 1-year loans may be recharged by bringing books 
 
 to NRLF 
 Renewals and recharges may be made 4 days 
 
 prior to due date 
 
 DUE AS STAMPED BELOW 
 
 W1TT9ST 
 
 :LEY 
 
 s 
 
44 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY