8390 
 
 i 1919 
 
 
 :^: -a
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 
 V.v.v.,^. -JlV^iiJSgii.^, - -..,:- -. 
 
 LABOUR UNREST 
 
 THE DEBATE IN THE 
 HOUSE OF LORDS 
 
 Fe by navy ami Mnrc/i, 19 19 
 
 vtf 
 
 LUNUUN 
 
 \V. U. SiMITH .S: SOxN 
 
 Pria' i>ixp<;na
 
 LABOUR UNREST 
 
 THE DEBATE IN THE 
 HOUSE OF LORDS 
 February and March, 19 19 
 
 LONDON 
 W. H. SMITH & SON
 
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 Xe\T2R before, perhaps, in British industrial history have the 
 relations between employers and employed assumed a character 
 more challenging to national progress and social stability. On 
 one of these critical daj's Lord Buckmaster rose in his j)lace in 
 the House of Lords to move that there be laid before the House 
 ■' Papers relating to the present industrial and economic con- 
 ditions." His speech on February 18, with the speeches that 
 followed it and those deUvered when the debate was resumed 
 on February 19, February 25 and March 4, attracted much 
 attention on the part of that section of the public that has 
 leisure to watch the course of events. But the voices and pens 
 of public men were active in many directions at the time ; and 
 intelligence from the Peace Conference filled columns of the 
 Press. It may well be that this debate in the Upper Chamber, 
 so comprehensive in its survey, so suggestive in its argument, 
 so indicative of progressive tendencj', has been overlooked by 
 many who would profit by intimate knowledge of its outstanding 
 features. The occasion for reprinting the speeches, even in a 
 form somewhat condensed, wdll be generally recognised. 
 
 In deference to considerations of paper restrictions, arguments 
 have been abbreviated, and a considerable amount of statistical 
 illustration has been deleted ; but what remains may be regarded 
 as an accurate version. 
 
 The vital significance of the state of affairs in the world of 
 labour depends upon the truth or falseness of the assertion, 
 categorically put forth, that the people of this country are 
 distrustful both of the future and of the men given the task of 
 shaping that future. If such be so, the speeches here repubUshed 
 may serve to remove, at least to modify, that distrust. It is 
 Avith that end in view that this volume has been prepared. 
 
 402279
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 Lord Buc km aster : 
 
 The Willingness to make Sacrifices — The Wages necessary 
 for a decent life — Homes of »Scottish Heroes — War Profits 
 an Object Lesson — The " Unfathomable Resei'voir " Fallacy 
 — An P^xample from Diisseldorf — Ratio of Wages to Pur- 
 chasing Power — Idle Pay — The Echo of Russian Bolshevism 
 — Good Will and Patience ...... 7 
 
 Lord Islington : 
 
 Inadequate Machinery for Dealing with the Situation — A 
 super-Whitley Council — Trade L'nions and their Status — 
 Incorporation of Employers' Federations — Compulsory 
 Arbitration — -Permissive Legislation Ineffective — A League 
 of Industry . . . . . . . . .14 
 
 The Lord Chancellor (Lord Birkenhead) : 
 
 No Neglect in State Departments — " Living on our Capital 
 and Liking it " — Can we Re-establish Prosperity ? — Inevit- 
 able Waste of War — The Three Anxieties — A Mischievous 
 Minority — Revolutionism Tested at Gorbals — A Tragic 
 Document — To What Homes do they Return ?^-The 
 Government asks for Support . . . . . .18 
 
 The Marquess of Lansdowne : 
 
 The Economic Crisis — The Daily Expenditme — Our 
 Financial Position — Lightning Strikes — Trade L'nions' 
 Responsibility — The Teaching of Fundamental Principles . 25 
 
 Lord Ribblesdale : 
 
 Propaganda and Education — Sharing Profits and Respon- 
 sibilities .......... 30 
 
 Lord Emmott : 
 
 Which View is Right? — The Truth about Profiteering — 
 What Income Tax and Super-Tax Show — Evidence from 
 Dividends. ......... o2 
 
 Lord Leverhulme : 
 
 A Sympathetic View of Strikes — Comradeship in the 
 Trenches — The 100 per cent. Rise in Wages — Breaking a 
 Strike — Right and Proper Aspirations — The British Type 
 of Workman .........'>;"» 
 
 Earl Brassev : 
 
 The Employers" Duty — Objections to Nationalisation . 3!)
 
 vi CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Viscount Haldane : 
 
 The Division of Profits — Revolutionary Origins — How is 
 Wealth Created ? — Let Sweated Industries Perish — The 
 Machinery of Government ...... 40 
 
 The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (the Earl, 
 OF Crawford) : 
 
 Advocates of Turmoil — Bolshevism means Suicide — Losing 
 the Export Coal Trade — Unemployment Allowances . . 44 
 
 The Marquess of Salisbury : 
 
 Citizenship First — The Recognition of Unions^ — A Condition 
 
 of Incorporation . . . . , . . .47 
 
 Earl Russell : 
 
 The Use of the Word " Bolshevism " — The Working Man 
 of the Past — Intentions and Actions — " The Black-coated 
 Man " — The Press and Labour — Profit-sharing Examined 
 — " How to Pay for the War " 49 
 
 Lord Stuart of Wortley : 
 
 Inconsistent Pacifists — The Manchester School . . .54 
 
 Lord Sydenham : 
 
 Fatigue and Output — Profiteering Facts and Figures — 
 The Example of the " Terror " — The Albert Hall Meeting 
 — The Paris Commune ....... 56 
 
 The Archbishop of York : 
 
 Ideals of the Workers — Examples from Eight Inchistries — 
 The Two Literatures — Education by Experience — Risks 
 of Joint Control — A Permanent Industrial Council — The 
 Difference between Industries — A New Spirit Needed . 59 
 
 Lord Willoltghby de Broke : 
 
 Grovernments and their Records — Speeches and Pamphlets 
 
 — -Tory Principles — Knowledge plus Good Will . . 60 
 
 The Marquess of Crewe : 
 
 Variability among Coal Mines — How to Get Increased 
 Production — Extremists must be Watched — The Govern- 
 ment and its Supporters — Parliament's Responsibility . 69 
 
 The Earl of Selborne : 
 
 The Workers as Profiteers — Paris and the Miners — A Lack 
 
 of Imagination — One Government and One only . .73 
 
 V^iscouNT Wimborne : 
 
 Administration rather than Legislation — Reduce the Cost 
 
 of Ijiving — Work for the LTnemployed . . . .77 
 
 Thk Under-Secretary of State for War (Viscount Peel) : 
 The Return to Civil Life — Causes of Dislocation^ — Quick 
 Decisions or Democratic Delays — What the Laboiu' Ministry 
 has Done — The Count rv will not Founder . . .79
 
 LABOUR UNREST 
 
 THE DEBATE IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS, 
 February — March, 1919 
 
 LORD BUCKMASTER: 
 
 How grave the present industrial unrest is can, I think, best 
 be seen by contrasting the position in which we stand at home 
 Avith that in which we stand abroad. If we look across the seas, 
 it may be doubted if this country has ever stood at such a high 
 pinnacle of power. The last four j'^ears of our history, whether 
 measured by the achievement of individual acts of valour or by 
 the directing skill of Statesmen and Generals, or by the united 
 self-sacrificing patriotism of the people at home, will stand 
 comparison with long periods of even our great and crowded 
 history. Places that to many of us were nothing but names and 
 spots upon a map, places that we might even find with difficulty 
 in an Atlas, " regions Caesar never knew," have to-day felt 
 the full shock of our arms and enjoy the security of our justice. 
 Yet every one who watches what is happening at home must 
 reahse that events are fast gathering there which threaten to rob 
 victory of its triumph and peace of its repose. 
 
 The Willingness to Make Sacrifices 
 
 We shall discuss this question on a wrong foundation if we 
 begin by assuming that this country is divided into two hostile 
 camps. I believe in truth that the overwhelming majority— 
 I would say ninety per cent. — of the men engaged in earning 
 their living by manual labour have no desu*e whatever to do 
 anything that they believe would be to the prejudice of the 
 national safety. I believe that all classes of societj^ are united 
 ill their sincere wish to see that for the future labour does enjoy 
 some bigger and better share of the national prosperity. We 
 are all willing, just as we were in time of war, to make sacrifices — ■ 
 not the cheap and easy one of sacrificing somebody else's 
 property, but a imited sacrifice in which all join — if we can, con-
 
 8 LABOUR UNREST 
 
 sistently Avith the maintenance of our national industries, 
 give some expression to the demands of the labouring people. 
 
 It is a mistake to think that these demands of labour are 
 demands that, without any warning, have suddenly been levelled 
 at the nation in the time of great emergenc3\ For what is 
 the position ? We find the mining industry joining hands Avith 
 the railway industry and the transport industry, preparing for 
 united action to enforce their demands. For what ? Roughly 
 speaking, for an eight-hours' day, for better wages, for better 
 home conditi(ms, and, in two instances possibly, for the nation- 
 alisation of the industries. Most of these are old, stale stories. 
 Twenty-five years ago the demand for what Avas called an eight- 
 hours" day Avas adopted b}' many members of the Liberal Part}' 
 as a cardinal article of their creed. Lord Morley, A\dth char- 
 acteristic courage, declined to accept it, and said that he was 
 miable to believe that he could cure industrial trouble by forcing 
 an Eight Hours Bill like a ramrod through all the dehcate 
 machinery of British industr3^ Mj' point about it is that it is 
 nothing new. That Eight Hours Bill is the forty-four-hours 
 week which has been the subject of trouble in Belfast. It has 
 been the subject of political debate for a quarter of a century. 
 Yet, except in the regulation of hours in mines, I cannot put 
 my finger on any legislation that has been undertaken to give 
 effect to that request. 
 
 The Wages Necessary for a Decent Lefe 
 
 Let us take the question of wages. Bj' an agreement made 
 in July, 1913, between the Midland EmjDloj^ers' Federation 
 and the Workers' Union — the Amalgamated Union of Labour 
 — the wages fixed for females were from 65. a week for a girl of 
 14 to 12.S. a week for a woman of 21. There were Avages for 
 labourers of 235. a week, and in certain industries outside this 
 agreement Avomen Avere engaged in cartridge-making at 10s. 4d. 
 a week and in cordite-making at 2JcZ. a hour or 12s. id. a Aveek. 
 It is no answer to be told that these Avere Avages for AA^hich people 
 Avere Avilling to Avork. That is not at the back of their demand. 
 At the back of their demand is the intention to see that Avages 
 are paid AA'hich Avill enable the person Avho recei\^es them to live a 
 decent life, enjoying some of the pleasures of leisure and some 
 of the jjleasures of relaxation AA'hich hitherto haA^e been too 
 frequently regarded as the monopoly of the rich. 
 
 W^hat was the position AAith regard to homes ? There has 
 been a Report recently made on housing in Scotland. It is a 
 Report that has been made by Commissioners, Judges, land- 
 lords, and Dr. Mackenzie (of the Scottish Local GoA^emment 
 Board), Avith Sir Henry Ballantyne as chairman. They say, as
 
 LABOUR UNREST !) 
 
 the broad results of their survey, there are unsatisfactory sites of 
 houses and villages, unsatisfactory provision for drainage, grossh' 
 inadequate provision for the removal of refuse, widcspreafl 
 absence of decent sanitary conveniences, the persistence of the 
 unspeakable filthy privy-midden in many mining areas, badly 
 constructed, incurably damp labourers' cottages, whole to\vn- 
 ships unfit for human occupation in the crofting counties and 
 islands, primitive and casual provision for many of the seasonal 
 A\ orkers, gross overcrowding and huddling of the sexes in many 
 of the villages and towns, occupation of one-room houses by large 
 families, groups of lightless houses in the older boroughs, clotted 
 masses of slums in the STcat cities. 
 
 Homes of Scottish Heroes 
 
 The population who occupy these places must have become 
 }iermanently degraded had it not been for that strange, strong, 
 unconquerable self-respect which, as much as courage, is the 
 great and valuable heritage of our race. From these places 
 men marched ^\'ith the Scottish regiments to battle, and back 
 to those dens the shattered remnants of those regiments will 
 bring the imperishable glory of their deeds. Is it surprising 
 that people living under conditions like those were getting 
 restless, and that even then there was being placed on foot a 
 movement primarily directed and governed b}' the three great 
 controlling industries, but, believe me, having behind it the 
 discontent and the power of all the other scattered industries 
 too ? There Mas then on foot that organised effort to effect 
 by interference ^Wth the whole national life of this country 
 some improvement of the conditions under which they lived. 
 
 In November of 1914 there was contemplated precisely the 
 same movement directed by the mines and the railways that is 
 being threatened at the present time. Directly this nation 
 went to war the men sank their difficulties and proceeded to 
 throw themselves whole-heartedh' into the nation's struggle. 
 I think few of us realise — though some of us do^ — how much 
 we owe to the patriotism of labour leaders like Mr. Tliomas. 
 who throughout the war threw the whole of his personal weiglit 
 against a vast mass of angry, discontented men, who were 
 declaring that their grievances received no attention, and that 
 they would be compelled in the last resort to use the strike for 
 their enforcement. 
 
 The war broke out, and what was the result ? One result 
 was that these women earning 2^(1. an hour making cordite 
 found themselves in a position by Avhich they might be earning 
 £3 and £4 a week. They spent it as they thought best ; it is 
 useless to criticise the way ; on the whole, they spent it in an
 
 10 LABOUR UNREST 
 
 attempt to beautify their homes. They made such demands for 
 carpets that a big carpet manufacturer told me that he was 
 stopping export trade in order to supply people at home. Some 
 people speak scoffingly — though I do not — ^of their anxiety to 
 enliven their homes by the introduction of pianos. The point 
 is that these people, hard-worked as they were, did experience 
 during the war some of the conditions so far as wages, though 
 not so far as hours, were concerned, that they had been hoping 
 for before the war began, and now that the war is over there is 
 the natural resentment against going back to the conditions 
 from which they emerged. 
 
 Wak. Profits an Ob,tect Lesson 
 
 The war did something else. It produced, as an object- 
 lesson for all industrial classes to see, the most amazing profits 
 that this country has ever witnessed. In this year 80 per cent, 
 of the profits made due to the war, over and above the profits 
 made in industry before the war, amounted to about £300,000,000; 
 and the remaining 20 per cent, would be about another 
 £90,000,000, makmg about £400,000,000 of profits made owhig 
 to the war and during the war and in excess of the profits made 
 before the war. The result is that Mr. Frank Hodges, General 
 Secretary of the Miners' Federation of Great Britain has said 
 that there was sufficient to meet the proposed advance of wages 
 with reduction of hours. That is, I believe, unfortunately a 
 fundamentally false economic proposition. But is it surprising 
 that, when men, out of the nation's necessities, have grown rich 
 to an extent inconceivable before the war, the workmen should 
 say, " That fund of profits would be abundant for Avhat we 
 want, or only a fraction of it, and we shall not rest content mitil 
 we see that some means have been devised by which this money 
 can go back to SAvell a fund out of which wages may be 
 increased ? " 
 
 The " Unfathomable Reservoer ' Fallacy 
 
 The war did somethmg more. It led the people to believe 
 that there was an absolutely unfathomable reservoir of public 
 wealth into which anybody could dip their hands if they could 
 only secure the assistance of the Government. When the war 
 ended, what was the first symptom of trouble ? It was on the 
 railways, and what was it that the men asked ? They asked 
 for an eight-hours' day. It was not a new demand, but very 
 stale. The Government had appointed — I made a feeble protest 
 against it — a Minister of Reconstruction whose object it was to 
 consider this very question as one of the many to which he had
 
 LABOUR UNREST 11 
 
 to devote his attention. Had it been considered ? Had the 
 Government made up their minds Avhether an eight-hours' daj' 
 could be granted to the railway men ? If so, they ought to have 
 announced it at once. What they did was to wait till the men 
 threatened to strike, and three days afterwards announced that 
 they were going to grant this measure. The atmosphere which 
 we desire to create to-day is that we are prepared to concede 
 to the utmost limits of justice w^hat is asked, but that we are 
 prepared to concede nothing to threats of violence ; yet the 
 Government allow the threat to be made and instantly honour 
 it. And having honoured it, the railways, which brought in a 
 net profit of £50,000,000 a j^ear before the war, have now had 
 £90,000,000 of extra burden thrown upon their expenses. 
 Did the Government contemplate that or not ? 
 
 An Exasiple from Dusseldoef 
 
 There is something that, I think, should be done with regard 
 to all industries. It should be possible to avoid the misunder- 
 standing, too frequently arising and too easily occurring, of a 
 man who says, " I was paid so much for makmg this article, 
 and I can see it in shop windows sold for much more. What is 
 done with the difference ? " I hesitate to refer to institutions 
 in unpopular places, but it is sometimes well to learn even from 
 your enemies. At Dilsseldorf before the war men who Avere 
 ibeing trained for their special trades — as they are trained there, 
 compulsorily, from the ages of sixteen to eighteen — were taught 
 that fact as a part of their training. They were taught to 
 calculate the cost from the cost of manufacture to the cost of 
 sale. Every workman when he went to work knew exactly 
 how it was that the cost had been increased, so that Avhen he 
 wanted to strike he knew himself beforehand exactly where the 
 the margin was out of which he was to get his money, and where 
 the price was to be raised. I should have thought that something 
 of the sort might have been done here. At any rate it might 
 be done now, and it might be possible to have these disputes 
 conducted under concUtions which enable every one to form a 
 more careful and more intelligent judgment on the matter than 
 is possible under present conditions. 
 
 Ratio of Wages to PrKCHASiNG Po's^'eii 
 
 Associated with this labour trouble is our present financial 
 position. The currency has been inflated and the purchasing 
 power has been so reduced that the mere arithmetical value of 
 wages ceases to have the same relation that it formerly possessed 
 to their purchasing power. That will go on until some step is
 
 12 LABOUR UNREST 
 
 taken to check our expenditure and to restore our currency,, 
 little by little — and it will be a slow and difficult process — to a 
 stable and sound basis. We are no longer a rich nation. . We 
 are a nation that is crippled and burdened A\'ith debt, and even 
 the A\isest financiers find it difficult to say what is the best 
 means that can be adopted for paying the annual charges which 
 we must pay in order to keep up the interest on our Debt and 
 the cost of our Administration. 
 
 The only way they can be paid is by resuming and increasing 
 our industrial activity and multiplying the output of our 
 factories. And Avhen Ave are in need of some stimulus to be 
 applied for that purpose, we find that there is grooving evidence 
 of industrial stagnation and difficulty, that the industries ar(^ 
 not being made more active, that output is not increasing, and 
 that we have to face the difficulty of having the greater part 
 of our indu-strial Avork arrested b}' labour troubles. 
 
 Idle Pay 
 
 Tlien Ave shall be told '" Oh yes, a considerable effort has been 
 made by the proA^sion of large sums for unemployment." How 
 is that regarded ? Mr. Clynes, one of the most outspoken and 
 patriotic of the Labour leaders, says that he does not regard this 
 payment as a settlement. He says that it is a mere device to 
 (leiaA' the task of facing the difficulties, and that labour did not 
 Avan't idle pay ; it Avanted Avages for Avork. That is Avhat it had 
 not got, and not only has it not had it, but CA-erybody must knoAv 
 that the result of keeping people, induced to be idle, for a period 
 of six months, by pavdng them fairly large sums, can only have a 
 verA' serious demoralising influence in their character at the 
 end of that time. 
 
 TiEE Echo of RrssiAN Bolshevism 
 
 There is only one thing further Avith Avhich I Avish to deal. 
 We speak here often of. the tendency to Bolshevik opinions 
 among the Avorking classes. I am satisfied that it is not exten- 
 sive, but I am equally certain that it does exist. I am quite 
 conv-inced that Ave haA^ e in this countrj' an echo, faint and far 
 awav it may be, but none the less clearly perceptible, of the 
 trouble in AA-hich Russia seems to be hopelessly involved. I 
 believe there is only one ansAver. Efforts should be made to 
 satisfy the people, not that BolshcA^ism is bloody-minded and 
 Auolent, but that it is a failure. The dissemination of accounts 
 of brutalities has, I belieA^e, ceased to affect the public mind. 
 People are bruised bj^ brutalities already ; the sensitiveness 
 that Ave felt four A^ears ago has been so broken and blinded by
 
 LABOUR UXRP:ST 13 
 
 .what has happened in the last four years that they have ceased 
 to shock and horrify people as they did. To a great extent 
 they are not believed, and it is not surprising. There have 
 been a number of detailed and terrible accounts of the way in 
 which the unhappy Tsar of Russia met his end with his family, 
 and only two days ago we saw in one of the leading newspapers 
 a report that he was alive after all. We found a few days back 
 a statement that there had been an attempt to assassinate the 
 Crown Prince of Rumania, and the next day we were told that 
 no reliance could be placed upon the report. The people do not 
 believe these statements, and unless they can be made Avith 
 some greater authority than at the ])resent moment, they are 
 disregarded. Instead of accumulated stories about atrocities, 
 accumulated stories, carefully sifted, should be published with 
 some authority at their back as to the economic condition of 
 Russia. 
 
 What is at the back of this Bolshevist movement ? All 
 who have read Karl Marx know what it is. It is summed 
 up in that final sentence of his when he appealed to the prole- 
 tariat to revolt. He said : 
 
 " The proletariat has nothing to lose but its chains. 
 It has all the world to Avin." 
 
 It is a tremendous sentence, and I believe it is absolutely false. 
 But it is not a statement that carries its refutation on its face. 
 It is necessary to show that the chains they would put on ara 
 harsher and more bitter than any chains they could throw 
 away ; that so far from having the world to win, they have the 
 world to lose ; that the things which every man seeks for in life 
 — peace, justice, and security — are all swept away ; that the 
 violent divorce of directing intelligence from efficient manual 
 labour, the severance of . capital and work, the destruction of 
 property, and abrogation of law — that these have produced 
 hunger for the poor ; that they go ill-fed, ill-clad, with no 
 protector, and no resource. It ought to be possible to show 
 that the factories have ceased theii; output, that industrial 
 stagnation has overtaken the country. If they had information 
 of that kind given them I believe that the vast solid, sober and 
 loyal majority of workmen would welcome the news in order 
 that they might combat the views of the less careful and thought- 
 fid of their own ranks. 
 
 Goodwill and Patience 
 
 Grave as the position is, I am confident that goodwill can 
 conquer it, if we can only avoid the last danger of being put 
 into violent collision and having to take our place in one camp
 
 1-t LABOUR UNREST 
 
 or the other. In the last resort it may come to that, but I 
 earnestly beg those who have influence with the Government 
 to secure that every concession that can be made to the very 
 last limits should be made before a decision is taken that nothing 
 further can be done, and when that line has been reached that 
 it is never abandoned. Then if trouble does break out we shall 
 be able to know that there is no justice left in the demands that 
 are being denied and that there is nothing further that can bo 
 done ; that we are not fighting against men's reasonable desu-e 
 for an easier, better, and happier life, but that we are fighting 
 for the maintenance of society, the permanence of this country 
 at home, as we fought for it abroad. 
 
 I do not believe it will be necessary. I beUeve, given good 
 will and understanding, a little patience, an abandonment of 
 official language and a resort to simple, plain, rough terras, 
 telling everything and keeping nothing back, the difficulty 
 may go by, and we shall be able to find that the phrases, 
 Liberty and Justice, a decent life, and a living wage are not 
 merel}^ cant phrases, not merely useful words to decorate a 
 speech from the platform, but that they are strong threads out 
 of which has been woven the mantle of our national life, and 
 that within its folds there may well be found shelter and 
 warmth for all. 
 
 LORD ISLINGTON : 
 
 Perhaps I may be allowed, very briefly, to summarise some 
 of the cardinal reasons why, in my view, we have reached this 
 state of affairs. In the first place, I believe that it is due to a 
 need for propaganda so that the public and the workmen may 
 understand the exact position of affairs. I think it is to be 
 regretted — I am not sure that it is not reprehensible in char- 
 acter — that more publicity has not been given to the economic 
 conditions of the country, and the economic condition under 
 which the workman is situated to-day, and the results that would 
 accrue if some of the proposals that are now being made col- 
 lectively by trade unions were to be carried out. 
 
 Inadequate Machlnery for Dealing with the Situation 
 
 Secondly, I suggest that there is a widespread misunder- 
 standing as regards the Armistice. A large number of people 
 think that we are to-day in the enjoyment of Peace. There is 
 another reason for the state of affairs, and that is the cost of 
 living. Again, there is the war strain and the demand for a 
 general higher standard of conditions. That demand prevailed 
 before the war, but it undoubtedly has been greatly accentuated
 
 LABOUR UNREST 15 
 
 as a result of the war. Lastly, there is widespread anger over 
 what is knoMTi as profiteering, whether that be well or ill- 
 founded. What is the machinery and procedure existing to-day 
 to deal with this extremely grave situation i On the one side 
 you have large bodies of workmen organised in their trade unions. 
 These trade unions are unincorporated, and therefore do not 
 possess any statutory responsibility, and they are indulging in 
 anarchical measures within their oami ranks. We see repeated 
 day bj^ day the unmoral attitude taken up by sections of workers 
 of repudiating their o\\'n appointed leaders and refusing to abide 
 bj^ the results of collective agreement. The trade union move- 
 ment has, I think by common consent, become an indispensable 
 element in our modern industry, but in its present immature 
 condition, unendowed by Parliamentary or any statutory 
 responsibiht}^ it is to-day largely the prey of any anarchical 
 section within its o\\ti ranks. This has been eloquently and 
 courageously stated by many prominent labour leaders through- 
 out the country-. We have read speeches quite recently by Mr. 
 CljTies, ]\Ir. Thomas, jVIr. Appleton, and others denouncing the 
 lack of discipline within the ranks of the trade unions. My 
 object is to discuss the importance of establishing machinery, 
 representative and elective, for the purpose of remedying this 
 evil. When agreement has failed, the Government is resorted to, 
 so that it may act as mediator or referee. In critical times of 
 the war, the Prime Minister himself has had to be called in, 
 and on other occasions the Home Secretary or the President of 
 the Board of Trade. I feel that by themselves individually 
 these gentlemen constitute an inadequate form of machinery 
 to deal with such acute problems. 
 
 A Super-Whitley Council 
 
 Then there is the machinery known as the Whitley Councils. 
 It is to be regretted that these Councils have not taken deeper 
 and wider root throughout the country, but it must be remembered 
 that the}- are entirely voluntary. That was, of course, inevit- 
 able at first. A fresh proposal, in accordance A^ith our practice, 
 has to be made on permissive lines. Where the}^ have been in 
 operation on voluntary fines during the past year I am afraid 
 they have proved somewhat ineffectual to prevent strikes. 
 I think that a ver}' urgent matter for consideration by what I 
 may call a representative super-Whitley Council, sitting in 
 Whitehall, might be as to whether these Whitley Councils shoidd 
 not be made statutorj^ estabfished and constituted by Statute, 
 with a permanent secretary, and so be in constant session. I 
 am aware that a proposal of this character will meet "with con- 
 siderable opposition. It will meet with considerable opposition
 
 10 LABOUR UNREST 
 
 within the ranks of the trade unions themselves at first, but it is 
 ([uite useless now to leave great questions such as we are con- 
 fronted with to-day purely to voluntary organisations, de- 
 pendent on the good will of employers on the one side and work- 
 men on the other. 
 
 Along with this question and dependent on it is the question 
 of tlie trade unions themselves. At present, these bodies are 
 inchoate, they are unincorporated bodies ; they are naturally 
 essentially militant. Historically the trade unions have had to 
 fight, in the teeth of bitter opposition, against employers and 
 even political parties, for everything they have gained during 
 the last forty years. Psychologically they have to depend on 
 their appeal to the workers by always shouting on the top notes, 
 and the louder their claim the more likely they are to appeal to 
 their people. 
 
 Trade Unions and their Statics 
 
 Surely the time is approaching when these unincorporated 
 trade unions should be definitely recognised as a part of tho 
 industrial machinery of the country, constituted and established 
 by statutory recognition, incorporated under a common seal, 
 capable of suing and of being sued. At present the lack of uni- 
 formity in the position and power of trade unions is very marked. 
 Some are large, some are small ; some are strong, some are 
 weak ; and it by no means follows that the largest are the 
 strongest, or that the smallest are the weakest. I say that a 
 machinery should be created whereby trade unions should reach 
 the status of being incorporated bodies very much on the lines 
 of the procedure of the friendly societies under the Friendly 
 Societies Act, or of limited liability companies under the Com- 
 panies Acts. Some of these unions are sufficiently developed 
 to come in now ; others would require undoubtedly a good 
 deal more fostering and assistance before they were ripe to come 
 into these Councils. 
 
 The second stage of evolution in trade unions is that they 
 should be endowed with compulsory powers. I mean by " com- 
 pulsory powers " that they should be able to compel every one 
 in a trade to be a member of that trade's trade union. There 
 should be no non-trade unionists. Employers must bury their 
 sneaking affection for the non-trade unionist. 
 
 Incorporation of Employers' Federations 
 
 The foregoing observations with regard to trade unions apply, 
 of course, with identical force to all employers' organisations 
 and federations. Thus you would aim at obtaining statutory 
 industrial councils, composed on the one hand of incorporated
 
 LABOUR UNREST 17 
 
 trade unions with every man in that trade a member of the 
 miion, and on the other hand of incorporated employers' federa- 
 tions with every employer engaged in that trade in the federa- 
 tion. On these councils the representation of employers and 
 workmen should be equal. By that means you would set up an 
 organisation in the country which I beHeve would by degrees 
 acquire the confidence of all parties. It could by general assent, 
 as time proceeds, have plenary and penal powers. 
 
 Co:mpulsoiiy Aebiteation 
 
 It is no good talking to-day of indiscipline Ln the ranks of trade 
 imions, of the violation of collective agreements. Is it not a 
 matter of simple reason that the enforcement of collective 
 bargaining is incompatible with the existence of unincorporated 
 bodies ? Collective bargaining in the end must imply in- 
 corporation. I think that these facts have to be faced, and I 
 hope they Mdll be faced at an early date ; othermse the whole 
 issue in the industrial controversy Avill be obscured, and I believe 
 we shall only go from bad to worse. It may be said in this 
 debate, in reply to what I have said, that compulsory arbitration 
 has been unsuccessful when tried elsewhere — in Australia and in 
 New Zealand. I am not in the least shaken by that argument. 
 Compulsory arbitration on the Whitley basis — on a basis of 
 absolute equality between the master and the man — ^wiU attract, 
 in my opinion, the full confidence of labour throughout this 
 country in the process of time ; and, provided that the pro- 
 ceedings in those Councils are in open court, so that the whole 
 public may know them, that confidence will be fully assured. 
 
 Permissive Legislation Ineffective 
 
 It will be said that England does not like compulsion ; that 
 the people may be led, but cannot be forced. Most of our 
 social legislation is, however, now compulsory — housing, public 
 health, infectious diseases ; I could go through a long list. I 
 have only to mention old-age pensions, the feeding of school- 
 children — opposed most bitterly by very influential sections of 
 the community only a few years ago — national insurance, and a 
 great many more. All these were declared to be impossible ; 
 yet they have been placed upon the Statute Book and are com- 
 pulsory, and it is only because they are compulsory that they 
 are effective. They would not be worth the paper upon which 
 they are wTitten if they were permissive Bills. What is im- 
 portant for those matters is of equal importance in the grave 
 industrial situation in which we are placed to-day ; and pro- 
 vided always that you lay do^vn the conditions of a complete
 
 18 LABOUR UNREST 
 
 and absolute equalit}* as between Capital and Labour, Labour 
 itself would Aveleome its organisations and its councils being 
 clothed with the proper Parliamentary power to enforce the 
 decisions of those bodies. 
 
 A Leagi'e of Industry 
 
 In France the representatives of the Powers are trying to 
 evolve a scheme, kno\ATi as the League of Nations, to ensure 
 peace among nations hereafter. It is our business to-day to 
 erect as scientific and as fair a form of machinery as possible 
 in order to ensure a League of Industry against industrial war 
 within our own country and among our own people. This cannot 
 be done in a day. You cannot produce a finished and complete 
 building in all respects in a day. But what I venture to say you 
 can do is to lay down the foundations sure and sound ; and I 
 believe that the only sure and sound foundations are those 
 which I have with great respect endeavoured to indicate. 
 
 THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD BIRKENHEAD): 
 
 I am sure that Lord Buckmaster will not forget that the 
 Government have been in office for a very short time, and that 
 during this period a great many of their ablest and most repre- 
 sentative members have been continuously engaged in Paris 
 in perhaps the most momentous discussion in which British 
 statesmen have ever taken part. Those who have necessarily 
 been absent are just those without whose actual contribution 
 no permanent solution would be possible. 
 
 No Neglect in State Depautiments 
 
 But it would be entirely wrong to suppose — and I do not think 
 that Lord Buckmaster intended to give the impression — that 
 nothing has been done. It is no exaggeration to say that every 
 Public Department to whom control of these grave matters 
 is committed has been exploring every line, and attempting to 
 foresee every difficulty and to make plans for dealing with 
 difficulties if and when they arise ; and it would be very wrong to 
 suppose that in anj- single Department of the State there has 
 been idleness or neglect on matters of such gravity. 
 
 "Living on Oue, Capital and Liking it" 
 
 There Avas indeed little that I had to complain of on behalf 
 of the Government in the speech made by Lord Buckmaster, 
 and I think that he rendered great public service by calling 
 attention to the circumstances, menacing as in many respects
 
 LABOUR UNREST 19 
 
 they are, in which we live to-day. Nothing is gained by ignoring 
 realities, and the situation is most grave. It is one which we 
 are wise to look at wdth clear and unclouded eyes. It is true 
 that our Debt is nearly £8,000,000,000. It is tru3 that on that 
 sum we must pay interest. It is true that the most formidable 
 economic difficulties that can be conceived will attend the 
 payment of that part of our Debt which must still be paid to the 
 United States. On every side we are confronted b}^ new demands 
 upon the Treasury, some of Avhich are and must be irresistible. 
 Future Chancellors of the Exchequer must budget upon a scale 
 that would not merely have staggered our fathers but which 
 would have staggered the j^oungest member of the House of 
 Lords. To underrate these difficulties is an ill-service ; to 
 conceal them from the countrj^ is at this moment a crime. The 
 nation has been living upon its capital, and liking it. In this 
 spirit every one wishes to work less and to receive more. The 
 tendency is quite simple and quite universal, and this is at a 
 moment Avhen. unless we produce upon an enormous scale, the 
 nation will most certainlj* perish. 
 
 Can We Re-establish Peospekity ? 
 
 Is the prospect hopeless ? Lord Buckmaster sounded — I heard 
 it Avith great pleasure after the necessarily melancholy note of 
 much of his speech — a note of hope. I share that hope. The 
 situation is charged with the most pregnant anxieties, but I do 
 not believe that it is hopeless. It is, however, idle to talk of 
 cure, unless one has made some attempt, however superficial 
 and incomplete, to analyse the cause of the mischiefs by which 
 we find ourselves confronted. I have no doubt as to the first of 
 these causes, the first in order, the first in importance. It is 
 the consequence of the reactions of the war, the agony of bereave- 
 ment, the hysteria of hope deferred, through which the whole 
 community has passed. You cannot lay the iron hand of 
 authority upon a community, little accustomed as is this country 
 to compulsion ; you cannot take middle-aged men awa}" from 
 their single businesses ; you cannot scatter them in all the 
 corners of the earth and leave their families as the families of 
 such men have been left in the last five 3'ears, without producing 
 wounds in the body politic the effect of which is not easily 
 obliterated. After the Battle of Waterloo England passed 
 through what were, I suppose, four of the most anxious years 
 of its history in time of peace. The tragedies of Cato-street and 
 of Manchester will be remembered. There were many who in 
 those days thought that it would be impossible for this country 
 ever again to re-establish its trade and prosperity. 
 
 This unrest is not particular to this country. The waves 
 
 B 2
 
 20 LABOUR UNREST 
 
 of the tide which we observe are Avashing upon the shores of every 
 continent and almost of every country. Civilisation in all the 
 world may have conquered Germany, but it has almost swooned 
 in the exertion. The cure can only consist of time, of patience, 
 of the gradual obliteration of pamful memories ; and, so far as 
 the cure is applied to those who have actually suffered, something 
 doubtless can be done by showing the practical sympathy which 
 all sections of the nation feel for those soHders, thanks to whose 
 exertions, and to whose exertions alone, we are to-day deliberating 
 in seciu-ity. It is hoped by the Government to carry out 
 important land proposals. It is hoped that these sturdy English 
 fathers will become the fathers of sturdy English children, 
 leavening the whole body politic by the high traditions of duty 
 nobly done. In this way the mischiefs of Bolshevism may be 
 arrested and countered in our midst. 
 
 Ikevitable Waste of Wae, 
 
 The second in order of these causes is the derangement of 
 every sound and reasonable financial standard. Thoughtless 
 people say quite simply : " There is plenty of money ; look what 
 has been spent in the last few years." There is no section of the 
 community which is not spreading these dangerous fallacies. 
 It is said that there has been great waste in the war. Of course, 
 it is true that there has been great waste in this war. I have 
 been a Minister for four years, and every Minister who speaks 
 candidly will say that in time of war, and more than all in a war 
 Uke that from which we have just emerged, there must be waste. 
 Who is going to take the responsibility of refusing to send that 
 last shell to Russia, which, in one event that did not unfor- 
 tunately arise, might have restored the Russian situation ? 
 Who is going to hesitate to make experiments and purchases in 
 munitions, in aircraft, in guns, and in those elusive discoveries 
 of which it is promised that " this at last is certain to win the 
 war " ? The true line for any Public Department M-hich is 
 accused of waste in war is to say boldly, " We were all wrong, 
 but if we had not been wrong, if we had not dared to be ^^Tong 
 on many isolated occasions, that nation and that civilisation of 
 which we were the trustees might well have j)erished." In 
 days so gravely critical it is impossible to observe the doctrines 
 which are suitable to peace-time economy. The remedies for 
 this danger are explanation, education, and propaganda. I 
 myself most gravely regret that the Ministr}^ of Information 
 came to an end so soon. I have no doubt at all that with the 
 grasp they had of the methods of instructing public opinion 
 they could have rendered invaluable service in the work which 
 lies in front of us. What is that Avork ? It is to teach the people
 
 LABOUR UNREST 21 
 
 of this country, and most important to teach the manual labourers 
 of this country, that the very burdens necessarily bequeathed 
 to us as the result of our past expenditure make it imperative 
 that we should avoid any fresh expenditure which is not abso- 
 lutely vital. 
 
 TiEE Three Anxeeties 
 
 In this connection I think we must place three great anxieties 
 by which at this moment we are confronted — the threat of the 
 mining strike, the railway strike and the transport strike. What 
 is the policy of the Government in relation to these menaces ? 
 It has never varied from the moment when the anxieties of the 
 war somewhat diminished and it became possible that general 
 attention could be given to the interests of the country. The 
 policy of the Government has been inquiry and pubUcity — 
 inquiry upon every point, the most full discussion and the most 
 complete candour. I deeply regret that Mr. Smillie should 
 have told the balloting miners, at a most grave moment in the 
 fortunes of the coiintry, that the Government had declined to 
 accede to the request of the men. The matter could have been 
 and ought to have been put in a very different way. We have 
 invited the miners to a full public enquiry. If my voice could 
 reach the miners I would say, " Trust the Government ; trust 
 your fellow-countrymen, and if you can point at that enquiry 
 to one remediable wTong it shall be remedied." 
 
 The miners will do well to consider that, in the long result, 
 whatever injury it be in their power to inflict on the people of 
 this country, no strike ever has succeeded, and no strike, however 
 formidable its weapons, in mj^ humble opinion ever will succeed, 
 which does not have the aid and support of the great and silent 
 majority which constitutes the people in this country. This, 
 perhaps, is the greatest source of hope still open to us. At this 
 moment the desire and hope of the Government is that it ma}' be 
 found possible to persuade the men of all the three classes that 
 they are being given at the present moment, in relation to what 
 is economically possible, the fullest fruits of their toil ; that they 
 are being given the greatest consideration in the matters of 
 hours, and that the Government will be lacking in no effort which 
 may, as far as possible, afford to these men the amenities and 
 enjoyments which any man who discharges toil necessary to the 
 State ought to find to render attractive the moments of his 
 leisiu-e. 
 
 A Mischievous jMinoeity 
 
 I would add to the causes of disorder one which has deeply 
 engaged the attention of the Government, and must deeply 
 engage the attention of any Government. There is a small,
 
 22 LABOUR UNREST 
 
 relatively small, section of this community which is gravely 
 tainted by mischievous and revolutionarj^ doctrines. Men, 
 neither insignificant in numbers nor contemptible in influence, 
 have undoubtedly become converts to that inscrutable disease, 
 the bitter enemy of democracy, Bolshevism. Lord Buckmaster 
 said with great force that what was wanted in relation to 
 Bolshevism, in order to combat its strength and destroy it where 
 its seeds have already been cast, was publicity. He added, 
 with no special encouragement to those whose duty it would be 
 to carry out this task, that nobody would believe anything that 
 was published on the subject. He said that quite a short time 
 ago he read of horrible outrages ujion the Tsar and his family, 
 and not long after the publication of that he saw an account in 
 another paper saying that the Tsar was still alive. 
 
 Lord Buckmaster will not expect that an}^ responsibility or 
 any blame should be accepted by any whom he is addressing 
 in connection with this episode, which I confess had escaped 
 my notice. But nothing could be more important than that you 
 should let the community as a whole know what the true char- 
 acter and the real crimes of Bolshevism have been. Within the 
 last eight weeks I have contested a Parliamentary constituency 
 against a Labour opposition, and in the course of that campaign 
 I suppose that I spoke in some thirty or forty constituencies. 
 In those constituencies I encountered every kind of audience, 
 and almost every variety of Labour candidate. I came away 
 from addressing those great democratic audiences with a pro- 
 found and unconquerable belief in the faith and stability of the 
 overwhelming majority of the people of these Islands. Those 
 impressions are greatly confirmed by the reflection, so com- 
 forting to all of us, that while this war has swept over Europe, 
 submerging and sweeping away D^masties, there never was a 
 moment in which the Dynasty in this country was more securely 
 and permanently founded in the affections of the people. 
 
 I can only add upon this point that there will be no want of 
 firmness in the Government in dealing with this section of the 
 population. We do well to remember that, formidable in some 
 parts of the country as the growth of these mischiefs has been, 
 it is far less than for the four years after the Napoleonic Wars. 
 We should remember, moreover, that every man who held 
 Bolshevik views, and who could procure his selection as a 
 candidate at the General Election, was rejected. 
 
 Revolutionifm Tested at Goebals 
 
 To enable one to steady one's judgment and adjust one's 
 perspective, carry 3 our minds back to a period three, four, six, 
 and twelve months before the Armistice. There was hardly a
 
 LABOUR UNREST 23 
 
 moment at any one of those periods at which the country was 
 not full of the most alarming rumours as to the spread of re- 
 volutionary feeling on the Clyde. That matter was contested 
 at the General Election in a way most interesting and illus- 
 trative. Mr. Barnes, after all, was a representative of Labour — ■ 
 I speak untechnically — in the Government. His opponent, 
 John Maclean, was the very hero of all the extreme movement 
 in its most revolutionary^ form. He was actually in gaol, 
 where he had been placed for offences, and the demand was widely 
 made in Glasgow that he should be released. I am not con- 
 cerned with the question of why he was released ; I am concerned 
 with the result. He came back to Glasgow. He was received 
 by the largest procession which had ever met any political hero 
 in the streets of that city. It was generally assumed, especially 
 by those who were in sympathy with him, that he would be a 
 formidable opponent to Mr. Barnes ; and when the appeal was 
 taken, he obtained a few thousand votes as compared to the 
 overwhelming number that were given to Mr. Barnes. We may 
 comfort ourselves from this illustration, which may be multi- 
 plied in a lesser degree in other places, with the assurance that 
 those who hold these views are extremely noisy in proportion 
 to their numbers. We shall be able to appraise their threats 
 at their real value. 
 
 These are some comfortmg facts. But in the meantime we 
 may say to those who have quite definitely arranged themselves 
 on the side of disorder, to those who have no concern at this 
 moment except to destroy first one industry and then another 
 by means of what are kno\vn as lightning strikes, that if they 
 think the community will yield to threats like these they little 
 know England and the ancient spuit of these Islands. If this 
 Government failed to deal with menaces plainly put forward in 
 the light of day, it would be necessary for some sterner instru- 
 ment than the present Government to take such steps as are 
 necessary to ensure the safety of the community. 
 
 A Tragic Docuivient 
 
 I come to the last of the particular class of causes to which I 
 will assign this unrest. I speak of the complaints of people 
 who in foul surroundings are leading unspeakably filthy and 
 wretched hves. The report of the Scottish Land Commission 
 is one of the most horrible and tragic documents that has ever 
 been presented to Parliament by any Commission. It is stated 
 that in the existing conditions there has developed a vast over- 
 crowding, the workers shoving into the foulest accommodation 
 if only a roof can be obtained in a one-roomed or two-roomed
 
 24 LABOUR UNREST 
 
 hovel, and something like a bed. Here is a quite typical 
 
 illustration : 
 
 " A two-roomed house, the kitchen occupied by a husband 
 and wife and three children and two lodgers, and the bed- 
 room sub-let to a husband and Avife and one child. In 
 another case the kitchen was occupied by the tenant, his 
 two brothers, and his mother, all adults, and the room by a 
 man and vnie and four children. In another case there were 
 two families consisting of five adults and eight children in a 
 two-roomed house ; and in still another, a family of twelve, 
 six adults and six children." 
 
 Those conditions are a disgrace and a shame to a Christian country. 
 Whatever the cost may be, it is an imperative duty cast upon the 
 Government, cast upon our very civilisation, that no grievances 
 of that kind shall be capable of allegation. 
 
 To What Homes do They Return ? 
 
 One is able to speak with some freedom because every one 
 knows, first of aU, the sacrifices which you have made on your 
 owTi estates in the matter of housing, and every one knows, 
 in the second place, the great store of expert information to be 
 found among members of this House upon this point. But it is 
 a shocking reflection that, when these Scottish soldiers went to 
 the Battle of Loos — the largest Scottish Army that ever fought 
 under one banner since the Battle of Bannockbum — these were 
 the homes to which they were to return. I remember a little- 
 known but simple and affecting ballad, describing the feelings 
 of a British private soldier shortly before his death. He said : 
 
 Far Kentish hopfields 
 Round him seemed like dreams to come and go. 
 The smoke above his father's house 
 In grey, soft eddies hung. 
 
 If these boys, just before they gave the supreme proof of their 
 devotion to their country, thought of the home to which they 
 would return, a far different picture from that which is attributed 
 in the ballad to the Kentish soldier must in many cases have 
 been before their eyes, and our wonder at their valour and their 
 devotion can only multiply a hundredfold. 
 
 The Government asks foe Support 
 
 It is the confident belief of the Government that they will 
 not faU to meet with your support in the attempt which they 
 contemplate to deal with every one of those basic causes, and 
 to correct the specific mischiefs which have flown from them all. 

 
 LABOUR UNREST 25 
 
 But I do most earnestly appeal to you not to come to the Govern- 
 ment and demand a remedy for every difficulty at the point of 
 the sword, not to approach the question in the atmosphere that 
 there is no peril so great or so swift in its origin that you cannot 
 expect and demand that a Government Department shall 
 produce from a pigeon hole an immediate remedy. All that you 
 are entitled to ask of the Government is that its ablest men 
 shall labour night and day in the attempt to find solutions, 
 that they shall explore every road which promises success, that 
 they shall comit no labour too arduous, no examination too 
 detailed. AU these I can promise for the Government. I 
 can promise that they will consult and use the labours of all 
 men of good intention in any station of society who will contri- 
 bute and help. The Government know well that in a great part 
 of these problems you are qualified by long experience of building 
 m the country to offer views which may be put forward ; and 
 I express — I am sure I do not express in vain — the hope that 
 in these efforts the Government may count upon the co-operation 
 of this House. 
 
 THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE : 
 
 You cannot consider the industrial unrest which now prevails 
 Avithout considering also the nature of the great economic crisis 
 through which the country is at this moment passing. It is 
 quite true that these deplorable strikes are not new to us. In 
 1911 you had strikes, and again in 1912 ; but there can, I think, 
 be no doubt that the present troubles have been very greatly 
 aggravated by two facts. One is the suspicion — I would almost 
 say the knowledge — of the working classes that immense profits 
 have been made by persons engaged in various industries con- 
 nected with the war. The other aggravating cause is, I think, 
 that, although the face value of the wages which the workers 
 have been receiving of late has mounted up with, I would 
 almost say, alarming rapidity, the recipient finds that the pur- 
 chasing power of the wage is a very different thing from its 
 face value. 
 
 I do not believe we shall get a juster view of these industrial 
 problems imtil we have returned to something like normal 
 conditions ; until we have succeeded in placing our finances 
 on a sounder basis ; until we have got away from this era of 
 inflation, and, I am almost tempted to say, reckless borrowing, 
 and return to an era of sobriety and carefully regulated ex- 
 penditure. I "wdsh I could say that I see any signs of a return 
 to such an era. On the contrary, I never open a newspaper 
 without reading of some new and expensive venture, without 
 hearing of new commitments, of new largesses, and of the creation
 
 26 LABOUR UNREST 
 
 of Government Departments which, whether you have regard 
 to the salaries of the officials who compose them or to the funds 
 which they will dispense, must inevitably open a new leak in 
 the public treasury. 
 
 The Daily Expenditure 
 
 Our indebtedness is increasing in an appalling manner. During 
 the twelve weeks before the Armistice the daily expenditure 
 from Exchequer issues was £6,970,000 ; during the twelve weeks 
 since the Armistice the daily expenditure has been £6,738,000. 
 That is to say, the daily expenditure since the Armistice has 
 shown a very sHght falling off as compared with the daily expendi- 
 ture before the Armistice. I think we may safely assume that 
 if our daily borrowing averaged £5,000,000 before the Armistice 
 it averages only a very little under £5,000,000 now. Unless I 
 am mistaken, the national income, according to the Budget 
 estimate, is a little over £2,000,000 a day. If, therefore, we are 
 spending £7,000,000 a daj-, or nearly that amount, we are adding 
 to our national indebtedness, now that the Armistice is signed, 
 at the rate of about £5,000,000 a day. I think these figures 
 are really most portentous and alarming. 
 
 OuE Financial Position 
 
 I do not think anybody has yet told the country what our real 
 financial position is, or whether there is any prospect of putting 
 things upon a sounder footing. I never read a speech delivered 
 b}' any of our great banking and financial authorities Avithout 
 noticing a deep note of anxiety running through all that is said. 
 I wish that the Government would take the country a Httle 
 more into their confidence upon this vital point, and would 
 tell us the worst. The burden of taxation is hard to bear, but 
 I honestly believe it would be borne more cheerfully if you tell 
 people quite frankly where you are and at what kind of result 
 you exjaect to arrive in the end. What i^eople feel now is that 
 they are being bled white b}^ taxation and that all the time 
 this constant increase to our Debt is proceeding unchecked. 
 
 I should also be very glad if, whenever a stock-taking of this 
 kind comes to be made, we could be told, also quite franldy, a 
 little more about our supposed assets. For example, we are 
 often comforted by the assurance that if we owe a great deal of 
 money to other people, other people owe a great deal of money 
 to us. That is quite true. But I should like to know, for 
 instance, at what value does the Government rate the (I think 
 it is) £570,000,000 for which Russia is indebted to us. Then 
 there is the question that was raised by Lord Buckmaster—
 
 LABOUR UNREST 27 
 
 ^^hat about these indemnities ? This is not a question that we 
 can pursue to-night, but we ought to be told by and by — we 
 have not been told yet — distinctly and unec[uivocally what the 
 policy of the Government is with regard to this question of 
 indemnities ; whether they really mean to extract, or to try to 
 extract, from Germany, outside of anything that may be due to 
 us for the purpose of reparation, restoration, compensation to 
 the poor people whose homes have been ravaged in France and 
 in Belgium — whether they propose to extract, outside that, a 
 colossal sum to be paid as a solatium to the victors in this great 
 war. 
 
 There is, perhaps, rather a tendency to belittle the gravity of 
 the threatened strikes. They are represented as a sort of natural 
 reaction after the war. Peoples' nerves have been rattled during 
 the war, Ave are told, and it is not a matter for surprise that 
 they should do very foolish things. Let us, in the first place, 
 remember that the year 1912 surpassed all previous years so far 
 as the number of men who went out on strike and the number 
 of working days lost by strikes are concerned. Therefore we 
 must not get into the way of talking of these strikes as if they 
 were merely a by-product of the war. They are a blow — a 
 deadly blow — aimed at the community, and instigated by people 
 who desire to produce chaos and confusion wherever they can. 
 During the war, we were threatened by strikes, when industrial 
 disorder in this country would have been worse for us almost 
 than a military reverse ; and now, at this moment when peace 
 is in sight, we are going to be held up again. We are going to 
 be held up when the country is engaged, or ought to be engaged 
 in the great work of post-war reconstruction. 
 
 Lightning Steikes 
 
 The Lord Chancellor spoke of " lightning strikes." What are, 
 the characteristics of a lightning strike ? The first is a complete 
 disregard of the public welfare or of the pubHc convenience. 
 That is part of the Sjndicalist creed. Next is indifference to 
 human suffering. The community may be deprived of fuel in 
 the dead of winter when the deprivation means the suffering 
 and death of Avomen, children, and in\^alids. We may be de- 
 priA'ed of light, AA-ithout AA'hich a great part of the community 
 cannot do its Avork. We may be deprived of the means of 
 locomotion, AA'ithout Avhich the greater number of us cannot get 
 to our Avork. Then there is the further characteristic of the 
 complete defiance of leaders. Negotiations are ignored ; and 
 finally ruthless coercion is applied to the dissentient minority, if 
 there happens to be one. 
 
 Do let us remember Avhat these strikes mean in a highly organised
 
 28 LABOUR UNREST 
 
 community such as ours. The whole of our industries are inter- 
 dependent, and it is impossible to tamper seriously with the 
 foundation of one industry without ruiming risk of a disastrous 
 collapse. We are now threatened with such a disaster when the 
 country is still reeling from the effects of the war. We have 
 become a debtor nation. We have lost a considerable part of 
 our export trade, which has passed into the hands of our com- 
 petitors in different parts of the world. We have, I am afraid, 
 lost a great part of our carrying trade, to which we mainly owed 
 our commercial supremacy in the world. And this is the moment 
 chosen by some of those who engineer these strikes in order to 
 drive industry — that is what they are doing — away from our 
 shores. A statement appeared not long ago, with regard to the 
 great Yarrow firm of Glasgow — a firm known for their considerate 
 treatment of their employees. The Yarrow firm are moving a 
 great part of their plant to Vancouver because they expect to 
 find there the security denied to them in this country, and 
 because the output of labour of a man in the Vancouver yards 
 is said to be 200 per cent, in excess of the output of the same man 
 in our yards. 
 
 Trade Unions' Eesponsibelity 
 
 There is surely only one way of salvation — the way of frugality 
 and industry. I do not make these remarks in any spnit of 
 hostility to trade unions or labour. I recognise that we are under 
 great obligation to labour, that we were under an obligation to 
 labour before the war — to improve the standard of living, to 
 deal in particular with the urgent question of housing — and that 
 that obligation is a stronger one at this moment after the war, 
 and after all that has been done for us by the working classes, 
 than ever it was before. I have alw^ays been one of those who 
 believe that trade unions were not only useful as a part of the 
 economic machinery but essential to the efficiency of that 
 machinery. So little am I Jealous of, or ill-disposed towards, 
 the trade unions that I remember one occasion at least when I 
 incurred the displeasure of a great many of my political friends 
 because I supported some of the more stringent provisions of 
 the famous Trades Disputes Act. So little am I hostUe to these 
 labour organisations that, if I am asked for my remedy for our 
 difficulties, I say at once that to my mind the remedy is to be 
 found in asking these labour organisations to take a still higher 
 place at the economic table. The whole progress of enlightened 
 thought has been in that direction. Most of us can remember 
 a time when trade unions were regarded with almost rooted 
 antagonism by a great many people belonging to the educated 
 classes. Antagonism gave way in time to toleration ; toleration 
 gave way to encouragement ; encouragement at last carried us
 
 LABOUR UNREST 29 
 
 the length of actually conferring upon trade unions privileges 
 which no other body, so far as I know, have ever been given by 
 Act of Parliament. I venture to think that the time has come 
 for a new definition of the position and of the responsibilities of 
 the trade unions. I should like to see them made a part of the 
 statutory machinery for dealing with these labour difficulties. 
 To a great extent the way has been cleared for us by the Whitley 
 Report. A good deal more might, I think, have been done to 
 set in motion the machinery of the Whitley Councils. I should 
 like to see every industry with its council. I should like to see a 
 national joint council, district councils, and shop committees, and 
 I should Uke to place that organisation in the most intimate touch 
 with the proper Government Department. That was, I think, 
 very much the plan which Lord Islington sketched out, and I 
 understand that some such plan is in the mind of the Government. 
 If that is so, I would say to them — Lose no time ; proceed at 
 once to set your machinery going. 
 
 The Teaching of Flnda^iental Peinciples 
 
 The Whitley plan affords opportunities not only for conciliation 
 but for education. Our boys and girls at the elementary schools 
 are taught nothing of the fundamental principles which govern 
 these particular questions. Take, for example, the fallacy 
 that you can cure unemployment by shorter hours. I doubt 
 whether it is realised as a fallacy by the average worldng man. 
 Take the belief that there is almost no limit to what you can 
 squeeze out of a sufficiently hard-pressed industry m the way of 
 increase of wage. A man finds that the sovereign which you pay 
 him only purchases what lOs. used to purchase. He strikes 
 for, we will say, 30 per cent, increase of wages. The effect is 
 to send up prices. Your friend comes round and says you 
 must increase his wages again, and so on. 
 
 Is it not true that in all these cases you must reach a point 
 where the mcreased wage becomes prohibitive, where j'ou put 
 the price of the commodity up so high that the maker cannot 
 afford to make it or the buyer to buy it ? Then there comes a 
 strike of a different kind, the strike of the consumer, a silent, 
 respectable strike — -simply the consumer does not buy the 
 commodity any more, and the labourer finds himself deprived 
 of his work. What you want in aU these cases, it seems to me, 
 is some recognised authority which will determine and make 
 known to those concerned whether there is or is not room in a 
 particular industry for the demanded increase of wages. The 
 great advantage of this Whitley procedure seems to be this, that 
 you get a frank and open discussion, at the end of which it is up 
 to the employer either to close his works or to pay more wages ;
 
 30 LABOUR UNREST 
 
 it is u]) to the ^\■ol•ke^ to take less or to remain idle ; and it is up 
 to both parties to decide whether they will, each of them, sacrifice 
 something, or whether they are prepared to see the particular 
 industry in \\hich they are concerned driven out of the country 
 by their conduct. 
 
 A policy of this kind involves no denial of the men's right to 
 strike. If the man chooses not to work, you cannot make him 
 work, any more than you can make an employer pay if he chooses 
 not to pav. In the last resort, therefore, you must contemplate 
 the possibility of the strike. I do not myself believe very much 
 in the possibility of com]Dulsory arbitration, but if labour claims 
 for itself the right to destroy an industry by driving it out of the 
 country, I think labour must consent to be held bound to exhaust 
 the resources of conciliation before it proceeds to extremities. 
 Certainly the Government should make it perfectly clear to labour 
 that in no case is it to be allowed to use an}^ methods encroaching 
 on the personal liberty of that section of their body which prefers 
 not to act with the main block. I believe it to be the duty of 
 the Government to provide an organisation which will afford the 
 fullest opportunities of investigation to the parties concerned, 
 which will protect the dissentients, if there are any, and which 
 will ]iunish those who precipitate hostilities until proper steps 
 have been taken to ascertain whether they can be avoided. 
 
 There are, I think, other points at which the law requires 
 reconsideration. I will only mention one which was referred to 
 by Lord Islington. I think the time has come when we should 
 insist on the incorporation of the trade unions, and when they 
 should assume the privileges and the responsibilities of an incor- 
 porate bod3\ Legislation of this kind would not be capitalist 
 legislation or class legislation. It would be legislation required 
 in the interests of labour, which if it does not take care may find 
 itself idle and without pay; in the interests of the freedom of 
 society, which is threatened by a ruthless and exacting tyranny ; 
 and in the interests of the Avhole country, which is trying to 
 recover from the consequences of an exhausting war, and is at 
 this moment threatened, in addition, by the unwise action of 
 men who misjudge the problem they have to solve, in a great 
 measure because they wholly fail to understand its real signifi- 
 cance. 
 
 LORD RIBBLESDALE: 
 
 We have been provided with gloomy or picturesque views of the 
 effects and causes of the general derangement. After all, it 
 boils down, I think, to this — that we, the public, have to recognise 
 the formed resolve of Labour that it has become entitled to receive 
 a larger share of the profits of Capital and of what we may call 
 the otklm cum dignitate of Capital. Labour is ver}' well aware
 
 LABOUR UNREST 31 
 
 of the difficulties and the slowness of legislation ; of trying to 
 get things in a highly complicated civilisation like ours up to the 
 profit-sharing basis for industry'. For the moment labour claims 
 its share of capital apparently, rightly or wTongly, in ver\^ high 
 wages and very short hours. One can conceive a state of things 
 in which the appetite of labour for high wages and for short hours 
 would result in complete paralj^sis of the mind and body of all 
 the enterprise that we designate as Capital. 
 
 Propaganda and Education 
 
 What is to be done ? All kinds of remedies have been sug- 
 gested. Publicity and inquiry was one remedy. Then there 
 was candour, and the development of the Whitley Council. 
 Lord Islington went so far ultimately as to create a sort of super- 
 man Whitley Council. Lord LansdoA^Tie, I think, went so far 
 as to say that the super-man Whitley Council was to have actual 
 powers to punish delincjuents. Then the Lord Chancellor relied 
 a good deal on our old friends, propaganda and education. I 
 really do not loiow what propaganda was to do, but as regards 
 education I think that one of the difficulties that we are in is that 
 labour is perfectly well educated enough to understand balance 
 sheets, and it has come to the conclusion, particularly since the 
 Excess Profits Tax has realised such very large amounts to the 
 country and the shareholders have not suffered verj^ materially 
 in dividends, that something can be done in time of peace out of 
 excess profits just as it can be done in time of war, and that that 
 something should be done in their favour. 
 
 Sharing Profits and Responsibilities 
 
 I live in a pastoral country on the fringe of the West Riding 
 and the fringe of Lancashire. A good many manufacturers 
 have told me that much of this difficulty would disappear if 
 something could be done to release food, if you could get food 
 prices down, and allow the ordinary laws of supply and demand 
 to come into operation as quickly as possible. All these remedies, 
 to my view, are only prophylactics and palliatives. I do not 
 believe they touch the spot. What we have to do, I think, is to 
 find out the best and fairest way by which the results of the 
 co-operation of Labour and Capital, that is the pounds, shillings, 
 and pence available for divisible profits, can be shared between 
 the parties ; and beyond and above that I should not only like 
 to see Labour admitted to a greater share of the profits of Capital 
 but I should like it to share in the responsibilities and the vicissi- 
 tudes of the administration of industries. By legislation or 
 otherwise, we have to run this country industrially on a profit- 

 
 32 LABOUR UNREST 
 
 sharing basis. That to my mind is tho only way by which you 
 can stimulate output and stabiKse labour. Increased output and 
 steady labour are vital to this country if we are to pay our way, 
 get rid of our Habilities, get back to everyday life, and repair the 
 great waste of the four years' war. 
 
 LORD EMMOTT: 
 
 The general impression left upon my mind is that at the bottom 
 there must be some genuine misunderstanding between Capital 
 and Labour as to the economic possibilities of the future of 
 finance and business. Experts assure us that there must be a 
 hard struggle in this and succeeding years, in order that we may 
 meet foreign competition, even if there is in this country complete 
 harmony and co-operation all the time between Capital and 
 Labour. The capitahst knows that we have been living in a 
 fool's paradise during the war in an economic sense. He knows 
 that the adjustment of prices must be made much more difficult 
 by the immense load of taxation required to pay the interest 
 on the Debt and pay a double wages bill. Unless we can compete 
 in the next few years successfully, our commercial and financial 
 supremacy is gone for ever. 
 
 WmcH View is Kight ? 
 
 Labour, on the other hand, appears to think that, because 
 during the war it was possible to advance wages very materially, 
 to pay excess profits, to pay very satisfactory dividends on the 
 whole, it would be possible under peace conditions to go on 
 improving the position of Labour without doing any material 
 harm in the long run to Capital. Both sides hold these views 
 very tenaciously, and both unfortunately cannot be right. Time 
 alone can show whether the vaticinations of Capital or the more 
 optimistic anticipations of Labour are really sound ; meanwhile, 
 the country, rather than the immediate combatants, has to make 
 a most fateful decision. 
 
 The one vital consideration is to get our export trade going 
 again. By the blockade we had to stop goods going to neutrals 
 adjacent to Germany. We deHberatety forced them to manu- 
 facture for themselves goods that we had been in the habit of 
 supplying. Because Holland, for mstance, had large stores of 
 raw rubber, we Avould not send her any rubber manufactures. 
 The result has been that we have forced Holland to learn to 
 manufacture for herself those goods which we supplied her with 
 before the war, and with which we might have continued to 
 supply her had we not taken that particular step. That is one 
 instance out of many.
 
 LABOUR UNRB:ST 33 
 
 In addition we almost killed our entrepot trade, which was 
 reduced by the end of the war to something like one-tenth in 
 volume, I should imagine, of what it was at the beginning. 
 With what result ? America and Japan have, quite naturally 
 and quite properly, stepped in and taken a great deal of our trade, 
 which it will be extremely difficult for us to recover. To one who 
 thinks as I do the prospect is absolutely appalling ; and now 
 the one vital matter is, it seems to me, to increase our export trade 
 in order that the country may be able to live — in order that we 
 )nay be able to pay wages, even apart from interest and profits. 
 
 The Truth about Profiteering 
 
 I think there is something in what Lord Ribblesdale said as 
 to the exasperation that has been caused hy not taking more 
 immediate steps to give the workers a larger share in dealing 
 with workshop conditions. But there must be some deeper 
 difference stOl. I believe that they are profoundly misled on the 
 question of profiteering. It seems as if they argue that because 
 a certain number of people have unquestionably made large 
 fortunes and increased their incomes during the war, aU share- 
 holders and capitalists are enormously richer than they were. 
 They argue from this that there is somewhere an illimitable fund 
 of wealth which can be exploited. In a speech b}^ Mr. Thomas 
 in the other House recently, he referred to the Maj^ole Dairy 
 Company. Imagine some working man, who had read Mr. 
 Thomas's speech, going home and telling his wife that the 
 Maypole Dairy Companj' had made 225 per cent, profit. His 
 wife would say, " And the price of margarine Avent up so much 
 so manj^ weeks ago ; what a shame it is that the price of mar- 
 garine should go up and that somebody should make 225 per cent, 
 profit out of it." I mention the matter because the Maypole 
 profits were no question of war-time profiteering. That company 
 was making about 212 per cent, before the war began ; for some 
 years their profits have been enormous. 
 
 Lord Buckmaster stated that the amount of profit that has 
 gone to the profiteer is about £90,000,000. Accepting his figure, 
 I calculate that the extra taxation during this war imposed on 
 the wealthier classes would amount to from £150,000,000 to 
 £200,000,000. Therefore, I argue that the general effect of the 
 war has been to reduce somewhat, rather than to increase, the 
 net income of the wealthier classes. 
 
 Wages on the other hand have been doubled. That means 
 that the working classes have received from £750,000,000 to 
 £1,000,000,000 more per annum than before the war, while I 
 cannot see that the amount paid to capitalists — in gross, before 
 
 o
 
 34 LABOUR UNREST 
 
 taxation — can have been materially more than £100,000,000 
 in addition to what their pre-war- income was. 
 
 What Income Tax and Super-Tax Show 
 
 If enormous extra profits had been made in industry-, 
 Schedule D in the Report of the Commissioners of Inland 
 Revenue would inevitably show them. I found from the last 
 Report that the increase in the gross income rose in the year 
 from £732,000,000 to £998,000,000. But when I looked further 
 to see the incomes on which tax was received — namely, the 
 incomes after the various deductions had been made — I found 
 that the amount had only increased from £533,000,000 to 
 £593,000,000. The enormous increase in the early figures was 
 obviously due to the increase in the number of working men 
 who began to be in that year Income Tax payers for the 
 first time. 
 
 The Super-Tax figures for 1914-15, clearly founded on incomes 
 before the war, show that 30,211 people had incomes assessed at 
 £244,769,000. The figures for 1916-17 (the last year given as 
 yet) were 29,723 persons, whose incomes were assessed at 
 £247,000,000. Thus the number of Super -Tax payers was less 
 than in the earlier year, while the amount paid was only about 
 1| per cent, larger. I suggest that it should be possible for the 
 Government to give the public later figures, and I appeal to the 
 Government to take that step. 
 
 Evidence from Dividends 
 
 I saw a statement in a paper called the New Statesman the 
 other day. It said, " Why should it be possible for a relatively 
 smaU number of private persons to become £5,000,000,000 richer 
 than before the war ? " Why indeed ! I wonder who they are. 
 I wonder whether this is a net addition to their capital, if any 
 such change has taken place, and I wonder what increase in real 
 wealth it signifies. Also, incidentally, is it true ? I looked at 
 the " Stock Exchange List," and I thought there must be some 
 figures in that List which would show some great mcrease if any 
 such enormous addition had been made to the wealth of individuals 
 in this country. What did I find ? British Government stocks, 
 Indian Government stocks, Colonial Government stocks — all 
 do^vn. Home railways, Indian railways, Colonial railways, 
 foreign railways — every one decreased in value. Banks are 
 about the same. Canals and docks are down. Gas and electricity 
 companies are doAvn, of course. Insurance companies — some 
 down and some up. Mines are down on the average. Commer- 
 cials and industrials, of course, vary. Some are down and some
 
 LABOUR UNREST 35 
 
 are uji. Only on oils, shipping and breweries and distilleries 
 should I say that there had been any general advance. And in 
 the case of breweries in particular it must be remembered thai 
 there is a great deal of borrowed money and preference capital 
 and that the debenture capital and the preference shares have all 
 gone do\vai in value although the ordinary shares have risen. 
 On the whole I should say there was a fall rather than a gain of 
 thousands of millions, so far as the " Stock Exchange List " 13 
 any guide. 
 
 People with fixed incomes in Trust funds are enormoush- 
 worse off. Take the poor clergy, about whom we have heard so 
 much ; the average income of the clergyman is not so large as 
 that of an artizan to-day. 
 
 Roughly, with the present taxation and present purchasing 
 power of money, the incomes of wealthy men only buy from one- 
 third to one-half of what they bought before the war. If these 
 things were loiOAvn, it might do something to quieten labour unrest 
 and to give the country a breathing time to see where it is before 
 these deadly strikes take place in such large numbers as are 
 threatened. If I am correct, the publication of authoritative 
 figures by the Government of changes in the amount of income 
 received by different classes would do good, and the public at 
 large and the workers might grasp what it is absolute^ essential 
 they should grasp sooner or later, and that is that the nation 
 has not a bottomless purse. If, on the other hand, I am mis- 
 informed and wrong, I shall have the satisfaction of knowing 
 that the danger I have feared for our trade is not so imminent 
 as it was, and I shall be able to look forward to the future 
 with greater courage and greater hope. 
 
 LORD LEVERHULME : 
 
 We are met to consider the question of labour unrest. Believe 
 me, it is the healthiest sign in the country at the present time. 
 There is no unrest of the Bolshevist order. Our soldiers have 
 returned, and I do not think you will find a single Bolshevist 
 among them. The Bolshevists whom we have in this country 
 are the men who resisted conscription and who generally have 
 not proved themselves good citizens during the war and cannot 
 be expected to be good citizens now the war is over. It is not 
 1 deep-rooted emotion in this country. 
 
 A Syhipatketic View of Strikes 
 
 On the subject of strikes, let us consider what a strike is. 
 There is no commodity bought and sold between any two in- 
 lividuals but Avhat a small strike takes place. The seller asks 
 
 2
 
 36 LABOUR UNREST 
 
 too much and goes on strike if the buj^er will not pay. In the 
 }narkets at Liverpool, London, Glasgow or elsewhere when the 
 demand exceeds the supply, the strike is one by the seller ; when, 
 on the other hand, the demand is not equal to the supply it is 
 by the buyer. I cannot see how we could Avith advantage 
 attempt to deprive any body of men of the right to use this 
 means, common to all of us, in connection with the only article 
 that they have to sell — namely, their labour. And it would 
 seem to me, therefore, that we must bear patiently with this 
 state of affairs at the present time. We must endeavour to shoAv 
 broadminded sj'mpathy A^th the objects of those who resort to 
 a strike. 
 
 Comradeship in the Teenches 
 
 For about twentj^-seven years, the rise in the wages of organised 
 labour was round about one penny per hour. But in the four 
 years of war the rise that has taken place in the wages of organised 
 labour has not been Id. per hour but over 100 per cent. Do you 
 not think we have been teaching the lesson that a scarcity of 
 labour has brought advantages that a plentiful supply of labour 
 has not brought, and have we not rather taught that by means of 
 strikes wages have been advanced, and that where no strike has 
 taken place Mages have not been advanced ? I think it is 
 deplorable it should be so, but that is the position. There is a 
 deep-rooted suspicion between employers and employed which 
 ought not to exist. I think it entirely arises from misunder- 
 standing. We have often had reports appearing in the Press of 
 letters sent by sons of employers, sons of members of this House, 
 who have fought in the trenches and have come into contact' 
 with organised w'orkpeople fighting as privates under their! 
 command. They have wTitten home their surprise that these 
 men, whom they expected to be a poor t\"pe, were very fine men 
 — men who had studied political economy and in some cases 
 understood more about it than their officers. Those officers 
 have come back Mith an improved idea of the working man, 
 and the worldng man has come back with a higher idea of his 
 employer and his employer's son. It has been a mutual advan- 
 tage that they have been fighting the common enemies of the 
 country, for many misconceptions have been brushed aside. 
 
 Bear in mind that the workman is not a machine to be merely 
 kept well oiled by high wages and smoothly running by good 
 housing. No, the workman is not to be kept running as a 
 machine by satisfying his wants. Every fresh aspiration of the 
 workman that we grant to-day will lift him higher and give him 
 new and greater aspirations to-morrow, and so we shall always 
 have what we call labour unrest if we are to be a healthy com- 
 munity.
 
 LABOUR UNREST 37 
 
 Some reference has been made to co-partnership. I am a 
 convinced behever in the principle and have put it in operation 
 to as great an extent possibly as any one. But let me point out 
 the weakness of co-partnership. The complaint I invariably 
 hear against co-partnership from the workmen themselves is 
 that it does not give them enough ; that the dividends they 
 receive as co-partners are not sufficiently high to be of interest to 
 them. They expect the profits to be higher than they really are 
 or than they ever can be. 
 
 The 100 per cent Rise in Wages 
 
 If an arrangement had been made with the working people 
 of this country at the outbreak of war that, instead of having 
 increased wages, they should have all the excess profits their 
 employers made, they would have made a very poor bargain. 
 The excess profits remaining in the hands of the emplo3^ers, if 
 you calculate them, would not have given the workmen 4a". 
 per head per week. What has the worker obtained by the 
 ordinar}' bargaining methods of his trade union, more often with- 
 out a strike, but sometimes with the aid of a strike ? He has 
 obtained over 100 per cent. That must mean that he has ob- 
 tained considerably over £1 per Aveek, so that the rise in the wages 
 of the worker has been five times or more the amount of the 
 increase of profits of the employer. 
 
 Breaking a Strikic 
 
 What are strikes for generally ? Putting little disputes on 
 one side — there ■will always be little disputes — strikes are generally 
 either for an increase in wages or a reduction in hours, or both. 
 I wiU give you an experience of what, from an employer's point 
 of view, was a successful strike. It was a strike upon a question 
 of Avages. The employer refused to grant the demand, and a 
 strike took place. In the end the workpeople surrendered, and 
 went back to work on the emj^loyer's terms. What did the 
 employer find ? He found that his workpeople went back 
 soured and discontented, and that he did not get the output 
 from his jjlant and machinery which he had a right to expect ; 
 in other words, although nominally the rise in Avages had not 
 been granted and he had broken the strike, actually his cost of 
 production had advanced more than if he had had a contented 
 body of workpeople back at their emploA-ment with the increase 
 in the wages conceded to them. He had in reality lost by his 
 refusal to grant an increase in wages. 
 
 402279
 
 38 LABOUR UNREST 
 
 Right and Proper Asphiations 
 
 Why should we not recognise that it is a right and proper human 
 aspiration for a workman to desire an increase in wages ? Those 
 who, like mj'self, have been born and bred in a Lancashire manu- 
 facturing town have listened between five and half-past in the 
 morning, while lying in bed, to the patter of the clogs of people 
 going down the street on the way to the mills, and we have heard 
 the same patter between five and six o'clock in the evening when 
 the w'orkpeople have come back. In the late 'fifties, among 
 male operatives, you could only see two patterns of legs — the 
 knock-kneed and the bow-legged. That was the result of 
 immature youths being forced to Avork laborious hours in the 
 vitiated atmosphere of mills and foundries. Their poor feeble 
 legs either bent inwards or outwards. When there was a re- 
 duction in the long hours we w^ere told that the industries of the 
 country would be ruined. The late Lord Shaftesbury brought 
 forward the question of the age at which child labour should enter 
 mills, and it was raised. Instead of our industries being ruined 
 by reduction of hours, they became more prosperous than ever. 
 
 When we receive a request for an increase of wages and a 
 reduction of hours, it is in our power to take our workpeople into 
 a partnership in which we say to them, " We recognise j^our desire 
 for a higher income out of which you can not only meet the 
 higher cost of living but can also live on a higher scale. You 
 will not only have to meet the cost of higher living but have to 
 live higher. You also want shorter hours, so that you may 
 enjoy the green fields and the country, or mnj visit picture 
 galleries, so that there may be somethmg more than Saturday 
 afternoon for shoppmg and attending to all the other interests 
 of your life. You will want sometimes to cultivate your mind 
 and soul in libraries among books." 
 
 The British Type of Workjman 
 
 I believe that if we admit that the British workman is as fine 
 a type as any there is in the world — and in my experience more 
 amenable to argument and to logic and to proof than any other 
 section of the community — and if we then set our minds to try 
 if we cannot satisfy his natural and right ambition for an im- 
 proved social position, then I believe that the bogey of strikes 
 will be shorn of all its terrors, that a strike will be merely a 
 prelude to consideration of the situation, and that quickly and 
 readily we shall raise ourselves as a producing nation. We 
 shall not be able to discharge our load of debt unless pro- 
 duction is great, unless output is great and — the consequence 
 — profits on reduced cost are great ; so that the tax collector, 
 
 1
 
 LABOUR UNREST 39 
 
 with the sweet simplicity of Income Tax and Super-Tax and any 
 other tax that may be required, Avill find active commerce and 
 not stagnation, active shipping because of the goods that will 
 be moved to the country and from the country, active industries 
 in ever}- direction, and work increasing. 
 
 EARL BRASSEY: 
 
 I share to the full the anxiety of Lord Buckmaster and the 
 Marquess of Lansdowne as to the economic condition of the 
 countr3^ There are many people who believe that this country 
 is in sight of national bankruptcy. I am not sure that they are 
 not right. At any rate, I am much alarmed that there is no 
 indication in the ELing's Speech or in the Government programme 
 of any intention to do what Lord Lansdowne described as putting 
 an end to the era of reckless borrowing and returning to an era 
 of sobriety and carefully regulated expenditure. 
 
 The E:mployees' Duty 
 
 I am a firm believer, like Lord Leverhulme, in the worker 
 having a share of the profits of the industry in which he is 
 engaged, and also having a voice in the management. I am 
 satisfied from personal experience that the employers are, in 
 far too many cases, one of the principal causes of industrial 
 imrest ; in too many cases there has been the tendency in the 
 past — though I am happy to say that this tendency is passing 
 away — to treat the workman not as a human being but as a 
 machine. Big companies have spent thousands, tens of thou- 
 sands, maybe hundreds of thousands of pounds, in sinking a 
 pit, in erecting a factory, or in acquiring some new and expensive 
 plant, but they have taken no thought whatever for the housing 
 of the men who work m that pit or in that factory. 
 
 Objections to Nationalisation 
 
 I want to say a word on the demand which is being 
 actively put forward by the workers for the nationalisation of 
 mines, of railways, and other industries. I myself am strongly 
 against the carrying on of Industry by the State. After our 
 experience of the State control of industry during the war, I 
 do not think that in the interests of the commiuiity State control 
 of industry is desirable. The Welsh coalowners, in a statement 
 pubUshed the other day, said that the experience of State control 
 during the past four or five years was in itself a convincing 
 argument against the interference of the Government with 
 business ; and they did not hesitate to declare that, had it not
 
 40 I^ABOUR UNREST 
 
 been for the service of men possessing practical knowledge and 
 experience of the coal trade, and the check which this knowledge 
 j)rovided against incompetence, employment in the coal fields 
 would have been much more irregular and the loss of trade 
 would have been far greater than it has been. I know of nobody 
 engaged in business who is in favour of the Government carrying 
 on industry for themselves. 
 
 The second reason why I am against the State control of m- 
 (iustry is that I think labour will be much more unreasonable 
 in its demands, if the cost of meeting those demands is met by 
 the taxpayer, whose pockets are believed to be bottomless, or 
 if the dealings are with a Government who are spending other 
 ])eople's money, than if labour learns the consequences to the 
 industry in which it is employed, from an increase in wages or 
 shorter hours, after a conference with employers round a table. 
 
 The third reason why I am against the carrying on of industries 
 by the State is that Parliament has no time for controlling the 
 carrying on of industry by Public Departments. We attempt 
 to deal in one Parhament, by one set of men, with three distinct 
 classes of business — business affecting the people of each of the 
 three countries forming this kingdom, the affairs of the people 
 as a whole, and the affairs of our widely-extended Empire. I 
 believe that there can be no end to industrial unrest until we 
 have established in this country National Legislatures, which 
 can give their time to all these problems. 
 
 VISCOUNT HALDANE: 
 
 I have been much impressed by one feature which this debate 
 l)ears. A new and menacmg problem has presented itself for 
 solution ; a new spirit has come (that has been the phrase of some 
 mIio have taken part in the debate), but there has also prevailed 
 in this debate a comfortable sense that, menacmg as the problem 
 Is, it would be dispelled if only the workmen had sufficient 
 knowledge, such knowledge as some of you have felt that you 
 possessed. I wish to point out that it is a fallacy to suppose 
 that the working classes, as represented by the Labour Party, 
 are not furnished with all that Icnowledge which we had pre- 
 sented in outline so admirably by Lord Emmott, and much more. 
 If any of you who walk home down Tothill Street will look into 
 the Bureau of the Labour Research Department, on the left 
 liand as you go north, you will see a variety of books, pamphlets, 
 and articles dealing with, I think, every one of the subjects 
 which have been discussed, and with a great many more. These 
 are not the work of ignorant workmen who have not time to 
 .study these things. These wTitmgs are the production of some 
 of the most brilliant young economists in this country. If you
 
 LABOUR UNREST 41 
 
 go to Oxford or Cambridge, or to any of the Universities, you 
 Avill find a very large proportion of the younger men on the side 
 of Labour. Among them are very eminent students, men who 
 have devoted their lives to the study of industrial problems, 
 and who have produced a mass of learning on the subject which 
 compares most favourably with anything produced by any other 
 Party in the State. Turn to a journal like The Round Table, 
 which cannot be said to be the organ of any particular Party. 
 In its articles, and in such books as the brilliant volume by Mr. 
 Zimmem, you will find the subject put in a wider form than it 
 has been put here, A^ith full knowledge of the facts. 
 
 The Division of Profits 
 
 We have been told to look at the excess profits and to see what 
 a comparatively small share has gone to the employers. The 
 Labour Party and its advisers would answer that this is a sure 
 fallacy. The fallacy is that you are dividing that profit between 
 Labour and Capital as if they were two equal entities, but the 
 true entity is what you discover as you go through the streets. 
 Walk through London, or any crowded city, and go into the 
 churches, and listen to the sermons on the contrast between rich 
 and poor, and you will be told that millions of workmen are 
 living in a condition which presents the sharpest contrast Avith 
 the mode of Hving of the comparative^ few who share the surplus 
 Avealth. If you take the comparison, not as between Capital 
 and Labour, but per capita, then you will find cases of inequality 
 which display themselves at large in the condition of our slums. 
 
 Revolutionary Origins 
 
 It was in 1848 that the question of to-day began to take shape 
 in an acute form. That w^as a revolutionary time, and it was to 
 those days that the origin and influence of Marx and Lassalle 
 and the other great socialists \\\a,y be traced. Thrones were 
 shaken even then, but the convulsion of 1848 was not comparable 
 to the convulsion that has taken place within the last five years. 
 The spirit of revolution is penetrating, Avith the result that at 
 this moment perhaps the only rather conservative country in 
 the world is the United States. W^e here may be thankful that 
 Ave have it in such a mild form. Go to Russia and see the form 
 it assumes there. Remember that the predecessor of the GoA'ern- 
 ment Avhich noAv exists in Russia AA'as a Government Avhich, 
 from the point of vicAv of industry and of those social standards 
 of which I am speaking, was a thoroughly bad Government. 
 What has succeeded is the counter-revolution Avhich takes place 
 when there has been a Government that has ignored the rights
 
 42 LABOUR UNREST 
 
 of people to the extent that the old order of things in Russia 
 did. This has spread West. Germany is in a revolutionary^ 
 state, far in advance of anything Avhich you have among the 
 Allied Powers that have been victorious. But among the Allied 
 Powers themselves labour unrest is everywhere, because this 
 great question has become ever so much jnore acute now. 
 
 How IS Wealth Created ? 
 
 I agree with Lord Buckmaster that this is not a question which 
 is going to be put right very simply. I do not lose courage 
 over it. If you approach it and deal A^dth it in the right way, 
 the world will come through it and will emerge a better world 
 tlian it was before. One school speaks as if it was Labour 
 that created wealth, and the other school speaks as if it was 
 Capital that created wealth. Almost the whole of wealth is 
 created by mind. Labour plays a merely mechanical part. 
 Capital is something which nowadays you can hire in the market . 
 It is the organiser that makes the wealth. It is often my lot 
 to sit in this House to decide patent cases. In two cases out 
 of three, they are cases in which some body, some company, 
 which is contending for its monopoly during fourteen years, 
 has bought the patent of the invention of some patentee "with 
 a very high degree of brain who has discovered a new secret 
 in the conversion of the potential energy of the earth into the 
 kinetic energy which goes to make wealth, and has bought it 
 for a comparatively small sum so that the company and its 
 shareholders can put the profits arising from the monopoly into 
 their pockets. To say that that company is the source of the 
 wealth created is to say what is not the fact. Before this war 
 if anybody had a doubt as to the value of a General Staff as a 
 preliminary to operations, his doubt has now been dispersed. 
 Nothing has been better proved than that victory lies with those 
 who have the best loiowledge and are able to put their resources 
 into operation. It is so with industrial questions. You require 
 your general staff just as much as m the case of mihtary opera- 
 tions, and 3'Ou must have close and exact study. 
 
 Let Saa'eated Industries Perish 
 
 I do not know what the Government are going to do, but 
 I think there is much to be said for this course — to tell the 
 pubhc that the mind of the Government is perfectly open to 
 very far-reaching proposals, it may be to take over complete 
 control of the railways and mines and any other industries that 
 are arterial and control the conditions of labour, and to say that,
 
 LABOUR UNREST 4.3 
 
 if competition is carried on, it must not be carried on so as to 
 keep sweated industries in life. It is much better that they 
 should perish than that the health of the community should 
 be affected by them. Let other people produce cheap goods 
 for them to purchase. And, to consider how best the numerous 
 group of problems is to be solved which are connected with these 
 things, let the Government set up an organisation that -svill be 
 thoroughly and completely trusted. 
 
 For myself, I think that in the case of one or two of the disputes 
 at the present time it might be well, possibly, to get representa- 
 tives on whom labour would rely, armed with exact knowledge 
 of the comprehensive kind of which I have spoken, and get them 
 to meet re})resentatives of the other point of view with equally 
 exact and comprehensive knowledge, and let them assemble 
 under a neutral chairman who need not give a vote, but whose 
 business it would be simply to guide the deUberations. I do 
 not mean merely another conference. I mean taking the matter 
 in bitter earnest. I mean studying all these questions as Marshal 
 Foch did his operations before he put them into force during 
 the recent campaign. I mean a minute and careful sifting of 
 the facts from every point of view, and \^ith the very best 
 expert assistance. That is the only way in which you can get 
 the working classes to believe in you. 
 
 The jVIachenery of Govekioient 
 
 It fell to my lot to preside over a Committee appomted to 
 mvestigate the condition of the Executive Government, and 
 I had as colleagues two very distinguished representatives of 
 Labour, Mr. J. H. Thomas and Mr. Sidney Webb, and two very 
 distinguished Civil Servants, Sir George Murray and Sir Robert 
 Morant, and I also had the assistance of the Right Hon. E. S. 
 Montagu and Sir Alan Sykes, M.P. We came to a unanimous 
 conclusion that the manner, machinery, and instrument of 
 Government, as it exists to-day, is one with which it is astonish- 
 ing that we should ever be able to get on as we do — overlapping 
 of subjects, overlapping of details at every turn, and the source 
 of contention aU round. 
 
 I have not risen to reproach the Government for not doing 
 the best that is possible. I know how enormous are their diffi- 
 culties, and how great is the multitude of their problems. I 
 think they have been rash in holding out hopes, and now they 
 A\-iU have to take very thorough and drastic means of the kind 
 that I venture to suggest to deal ^Aith the situation.
 
 U LABOUR UNREST 
 
 THE CHANCELLOR OF THE DUCHY OF LANCASTER 
 (THE EARL OF CRAWFORD) : 
 
 The range of subjects covered in this debate shows how nearly 
 everything is concerned, directly or indirectly, with industrial 
 problems. I feel quite sure myself that social reform must 
 depend upon the solution of those industrial problems. The 
 Government, conscious of this, is anxious to examine the matter 
 fully and most sympatheticalty. The inquiries to be instituted 
 by the Government are not, as Lord Haldane rather indicated, 
 with a view to shelving the subject. They are genuine and 
 comprehensive schemes for probing these issues to the full. 
 
 That much labour unrest arises from genuine and lofty ideals 
 I entertain no doubt. Lord Leverhulme said that this in itself 
 was a healthy sign, that more fruitful leisure was required, and 
 better conditions of life and housing. The housing difficulty 
 has been greatly intensified by the war, and before the war 
 there had been a good deal of neglect in this matter. A large 
 expenditure is forecasted ; indeed, it will have to be gigantic 
 to meet the requirements. 
 
 Advocates of Turmoil 
 
 Another cause of industrial trouble arises from less praise- 
 worthy ideals — from what is called Bolshevism, the advocates 
 of turmoil, the wreckers, the authors of those " misunderstand- 
 ings " of which we hear so much. Lord Buckmaster complained 
 that propaganda on this question of Bolshevism was inadequate. 
 That may be so. We once had a Department to deal with 
 propaganda, but it was the subject of very hostile criticism, 
 notably in this House, and that Department has now been 
 demobilised. In any case, propaganda in time of peace must 
 be very discreet. The Government cannot take too partial a 
 view of any controversy, and will have, in any case, to content 
 itself with bare statements of facts, without exhortation. 
 
 I fancy, however, that the broad facts of the Russian experi- 
 ment are pretty well know^i to the public as a whole. Bolshev- 
 ism began in disorder — perhaps in di'unkenness. Dirt followed, 
 and dirt in Russia means disease ; and the chaos and confusion 
 is now beyond belief in that country. Lots of artisans earn up to 
 £10 a day, but, of course, it is paid in paper. They are reverting 
 to the conditions which prevailed late in the French Revolution, 
 when, under the assignat system, one had to pay 500 francs for 
 an orange or 10,000 francs for a cab-fare. The money was 
 available but it Avas paper money — it was bogus, in all sense 
 of the word. The only universal article in Russia is the paper 
 rouble, which circulates in thousands of millions, representing
 
 LABOUR UNREST 45 
 
 on paper immense and fabulous sums of money ; and yet the 
 people are starving. Disorder has dislocated their whole trans- 
 port sj^stem ; chaos has ensued, and starvation. 
 
 BoLSHEVis:\i Mea^js Suicide 
 
 From all the information which reaches me I think I am 
 justified in saying that there is plenty of food in Russia to 
 feed the inhabitants of that country, but it cannot be moved, 
 owing to the disorganisation of industry, to their typhus-stricken 
 toAvns. Petrograd is shrinking into a small town, and the death- 
 rate is tremendous. For every woman and child who lost their 
 lives during the war through Prussian brutality at least a hundred 
 must owe their deaths in Russia to the new system of Russian 
 autocracy. For the artisan population as a whole Bolshevism 
 simply means suicide. 
 
 These facts are pretty well laiown. But on the economic 
 side of our industrial troubles steps are being taken to inform 
 all the parties concerned of the issues at stake. One cannot, 
 however, force the public to learn. The matters in themselves 
 are not very simple, and' there are a good many people who do 
 not intend to learn. 
 
 I do not vnsh to go far into a question to which a good deal 
 of reference has been made^the question of profiteering. I do 
 not deny for a moment that profits and profiteering have existed. 
 They always will exist in peace or in war, and in every section 
 of the community. But one must remember that through 
 Government agency and Government control the sterling value 
 of wages has been very largely maintained, so that, while divi- 
 dends have depreciated in sterling relatively, that depreciation 
 has applied very much less to wages. The loaf of bread costs 
 1-s. 3f^. or more to the State, and 9d. to the individual. Lord 
 Ribblesdale suggested further reductions in the price of food. 
 The Government intend so far as is possible to reduce these 
 prices, but no permanent reduction can be effected unless there 
 is a permanent reduction in the countries of origin ; nor is it 
 wise to reduce prices before you are quite secure in your supplies. 
 Until those conditions are fulfilled, and until we are quite certain 
 that ample tonnage is available — which is far from being the 
 case at the present time — it would be imprudent to take any 
 active step in that direction. We want trade to revive. We 
 are faced with very formidable competition. There are belliger- 
 ents who have been undamaged by the war — notably Japan 
 and the United States ; and unless we can re-establish our 
 industrial position those rivals, and other countries will tmder- 
 cut our position. We must strain every effort to re-establish 
 our export trade.
 
 -iG LABOUR UNREST 
 
 Losing the Export Coal Trade 
 
 It is a lamentable thing that to-day there are scores if not 
 liundreds of British ships outward bound in ballast because 
 no cargo was available when they sailed. In old days we used 
 to have a very good market in the Plate for our coal, where I 
 think from 8,000,000 to 10,000,000 tons were sent every year. 
 That was useful because that outward freight cheapened the 
 return cargo of grain, or wool, or hides, brought from South 
 America for consumption in this country. We cannot afford 
 to lose a market Avhich took 10,000,000 tons a year of our coal ; 
 and unless we are cautious we shall find that the United States 
 —which has good seams and new seams, and where there is a 
 notable disposition on the part of the craftsman and the artisan 
 to avail himself of labour-saving machinery — -will exclude us 
 from a market where Ave considered ourselves supreme. 
 
 Our valuable trade M-ith India, where we send Manchester 
 goods, is already subject to formidable local competition from 
 Bombay and the neighbourhood ; but Japanese competition 
 is there, too ; and before very long United States competition 
 will also make itself felt. We are no longer the creditor country 
 of former years, and if Ave lose our export trade Ave shall be a 
 third-class Power in fifteen years' time. 
 
 Unemployment Allowances 
 
 Reference has been made to the unemploA^ment benefit. 
 This was placed on the high side for reasons which I think Avere 
 adequate. It was anticipated that, while demobilisation vA'^as 
 in progress, the rate of unemploAanent would be pretty high. 
 There is now no normal fluctuation of employment ; three, 
 four, or six weeks of unemploj^ment in old days generally would 
 end the difficulty, but noAv it is much more serious because 
 factories have to be remodelled, and in some cases entirely 
 scrapped and ncAv equipment installed. 
 
 The public are not aware, ahvays, hoAv much has been achieved. 
 For instance, on the question of hours, much is done Avithout 
 advertisement or publicity to-day. Excluding such industries 
 as the coal-mining and railAvay industries, no fewer than 3,000,000 
 employees are under agreements covering the hours of their 
 labour. Other trades are in process of getting reductions, but 
 uniformity, Avhich is so often demanded, cannot be granted 
 Avithout very close scrutiny, as trades differ so much and react 
 in so many Avays upon each other. 
 
 Labour, I think, should not shrink from taking its share in 
 responsibility for an improved scale of production. Capital
 
 LABOUR UNREST 4T 
 
 and Labour must recognise the difficulties of the situation — 
 the reaction from war conditions, the gradual revival of industry, 
 the dangers of existing and of new competitions. I think, 
 therefore, that one may ask not merel}' from critics but from 
 labour and the business world that everybody should exercise 
 as much patience as possible. I believe, myself, that with good 
 will and -with cool heads our problems are in process of solution. 
 
 THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: 
 
 I do not rise for the purpose of criticising the Government. 
 Much of what the Government said — indeed, as far as I 
 know, all the Government said — is admirable. The Lord 
 Chancellor and Lord CraAvford have spoken of firmness, of 
 restraint, of consideration of all legitimate complaints, of 
 patience, of education, of sanitary reform — all these things are 
 excellent. They have testified to the need of publicity. Of that 
 we are very glad. It is clear that Lord Cra\vford is conscious 
 that there has not been sufficient publicity, and no doubt that 
 was in the Lord Chancellor's mind. Indeed, one wishes that the 
 public, who have to judge of these matters, had been present 
 dviring these debates. I have never heard speeches in this 
 House more full of matter, more full of important considerations, 
 more full of educational efficiency, than the great speeches to 
 which we have listened. I earnestly hope that they will find 
 their way to the ears of the public. 
 
 But information is not sufficient. We must act as mission- 
 aries, to convert employers and employed to the necessity of 
 working together. I do not think that Lord Cra\A^ord showed 
 quite that the Government reahse their responsibility in the 
 matter. He realised the responsibility of doing what he could 
 to improve the conditions of the working classes, but it is up 
 to him (if I maj' use the phrase), and up to the Government, to 
 persuade the working classes. That is what is essential. 
 
 Citizenship First 
 
 The speech has been referred to in the course of the debate 
 that was dehvered by a distinguished representative of labour 
 in the House of Commons, IVIr. Thomas. That was a brave 
 speech, and in most respects it was a speech with which I humbly 
 say I entirely agree. I do not agree with every Avord of it, of 
 course, but mth its broad outlines. ^\Tiat was Mr. Thomas's 
 first position ? It was this. That representatives of labour 
 must recognise that their position as citizens came first, and that 
 they were not entitled to ignore their position as citizens and to
 
 48 LABOUR UNREST 
 
 makv A\ar upon society. If that is a representation of what 
 labour thinks, it is a very important point. The whole concep- 
 tion of the general strike, which is to hold up all the industry 
 of the countiy and to make war upon the country, is, according 
 to Mr. Thomas, niled out. 
 
 The principle, however, goes further. It is not merely that 
 the workers are not entitled to hold up the rest of their country- 
 men, but that they are not entitled to live upon the earnings 
 of the rest of their countrymen. The Prime Minister has showed 
 that, in consequence of the cost of working the railways, the 
 profit was turned into a deficit. This means that if that state 
 of things is to continue the railways Avould be worked at a loss 
 — in other words, that that particular business would be sup- 
 ported not by the legitimate earnings of the men but by a sub- 
 vention from the State. That is inconsistent with the interests 
 of the State, and we may say at once that none of these businesses, 
 neither the railAvays nor the mines, can be earned on at a loss 
 and at the cost of the taxpaj^ers. If labour recognises that, 
 that again is a point which tends towards agreement. 
 
 TiiE Recognition of Unions 
 
 Let us go further. There is the question of recognition of 
 the trade imions. There is no question on principle between 
 employers and employed on that subject now. There is certainly 
 no question as between the Government and labour or as between 
 this House and labour on such a point. We all desire that 
 labour should be recognised. The universal approval with 
 which the Whitley Report was received testifies to that. Mr. 
 Thomas said that labour now considered that it had a right to 
 have a share in the management and control of their daily 
 affairs — that is to say, a share in the management of izidustry. 
 For my jjart I am entirely in favour of their having a share in 
 the management of industry, and I believe I am speaking the 
 vicAvs of a great man}^ others. 
 
 A Condition of Incoeporation 
 
 In his very important speech. Lord Leverhulme said he 
 believed in joint management between employers and employed 
 in business. That is a point upon which it appears there is 
 not very much which divides parties ; recognition, and then 
 management. Lord Islington said that he would like to see 
 trade unions, as I understood him, universal, aU labour organ- 
 ised : he would like to see them incorporated. That certainly 
 would be a very important step. For my part I would not 
 exclude it, provided labour would undertake all the obligations
 
 LABOUR UNREST 49 
 
 which such a recognition would involve, and would accept the 
 necessity, which all other Englishmen are under, of answering 
 for their actions before the ordinary Courts. In that case I 
 am not sure whether Ave should not all of us be ready to see the 
 organisation of labour universal, and I see no reason why we 
 should not come to some agreement in that direction. 
 
 I hstened A^ith great interest and sympathy to a passage in 
 Lord Leverhulme's speech when he spoke of hearing from his 
 own sons, or the sons of friends of his, officers at the front, how 
 easily they got on with the men who were the representatives 
 of labour at home. Why should it be that in such a capacity 
 it was easy enough for the two classes to get on, and yet that 
 there should be all this misunderstanding and industrial unrest 
 now before us ? I do not believe such a state of things is natural. 
 Let us hope that we shall persuade both sides, employers and 
 emploj'ed, to take the view Avhich reason, sjanpathy — and may 
 I say Christian charity ? — prescribes, and in so doing, as we 
 have saved our country in the war, so we shall save it from the 
 consequences of industrial unrest. 
 
 EARL RUSSELL: 
 
 The speech of Lord Leverhulme was, I think, a relief to the 
 House generally, and to those of us who have been having our 
 flesh made to creep by gloomy pictures of industrial unrest. 
 I think it A\as a consolation to us to feel that at any rate so far 
 as his experience went he did not think the British workman to 
 be at all unreasonable, or that adjustment A^dth him in labour 
 troubles was impossible. Perhaps it was a little more optimistic 
 in tone because he had not, in his oaaii particular business, been 
 brought so much into contact with the engmeermg trades, which 
 are responsible for a good deal of the trouble. 
 
 Lord Haldane reminded the House that it was not quite 
 certain how much we should be able to teach labour in this 
 matter. He reminded the House that labour was, m fact, 
 fairly well informed on this subject — I venture to think probably 
 rather better informed than most of this House — and that there 
 were to be obtained within a few minutes of this House pam- 
 phlets and other productions of the Fabian Society and more 
 serious works by persons of academic distinction, which deal 
 with these labour problems exhaustively and give to labour a 
 great deal more knowledge than perhaps from the selfish capitalist 
 point of view it is convenient that labour should have. If T 
 may say so, perhaps the chief use of this debate is not to educate 
 labour, but to educate this House and pohticians. I think 
 it is important that we should learn what we certainly do not 
 know — that is, what are the grievances of labour, and what
 
 so LABOUR UNREST 
 
 there is at the back of the demands which appear in the news- 
 papers as labour unrest, and which in some cases are reflected 
 in strikes. 
 
 The Use of the Woed " Bolshevism " 
 
 Labour as a whole is certainly not anarchic or revolutionary. 
 I deprecate the use of the term Bolshevism as applied to any 
 section of our own community. That word is associated — and 
 rightly associated — with excesses of the most terrible and 
 horrible description, with uncivilised and savage actions, and I 
 should be sorrj' to think — and I do not think — that any section 
 of mv comitrymen, however extreme, are anxious to be associated 
 with' actions of that kind. Therefore, even Avhen we are com- 
 plaining of extreme action, we should try and avoid the use 
 of a foreign word implj^ing a foreign and Russian state of mind 
 which I think is entirely alien to any section of the British 
 people. I am not quite so optimistic as Lord Leverhulme, who 
 went so far as to say that there was no such thing as a revolution- 
 ary British workman, and that none of them were anarchical 
 sjTidicaHsts. Some of them certainly are ; some of them go 
 to great extremes, but generally do not let us introduce these 
 foreign words with which to tar some of our oAvn countrymen 
 who quite possibly may prove amenable to reason, and who in 
 any case, I am convinced, are not anxious to run a course of 
 bloodshed through the country. 
 
 I think that the cause of labour unrest dates back to the time, 
 really more than a generation ago, when industry as we know 
 it began in this country, and when employers and capitalists 
 recklessly and thriftlessly took to exploiting the manhood of 
 this country for the purpose of making profits, when the old 
 doctrine of industrial competition took no account whatever 
 of the lives and bodies of the men who made those pi'ofits. We 
 exploited in those daj^s— -it is useless to deny it — the lives of 
 these people, and this is not forgiven, and I do not think it is 
 likely to be forgotten. 
 
 The Working Man of the Past 
 
 What was the life of the working man ? It began perhaps 
 at eighteen, and finished perhaps at forty-five or possibly fifty. 
 Did anybody care what happened to him either before he began 
 his work or after he had finished it ? He was used, and he was 
 then throwii aside on to the scrap-heap of society, very often 
 driven to the workhouse to end his days. We all recognise now 
 that that is a state of things which is not good from the purely 
 selfish capitalists" point of view, but much more so is it not good 
 from the ethical or moral point of view. Moreover, we recognise
 
 LABOUR UNREST 51 
 
 that it is an immoral proceeding which the State should not 
 countenance, a proceeding which does not make for the well- 
 being and for the prosperity of the country as a whole. 
 
 I do not subscribe for a moment to the doctrine of Marx that 
 labour and labour alone is the source of all wealth. I think 
 that, in these days, or at any rate in this country, labour 
 itself has begun to recognise that many other things beside 
 mere manual labour are required before you can produce wealth. 
 But I think that labour has realised that it is a very essential 
 contributing cause to the production of wealth, and it intends 
 to have a fair share of that wealth. It is not a thing for us to 
 reflect upon with pride that those who have been kno^vn as the 
 governing classes have been content to allow a state of things 
 in which insanitary hovels are regarded as proper places in which 
 to house a man who is contributing to the nation's wealth, in 
 which his health is neglected, and in which a large portion of 
 the population is attacked with tuberculosis and other diseases. 
 Housing before the war was in most cases inadequate, in many 
 cases quite insanitary ; and if I am told that there have been 
 many excellent landlords who have built many good cottages, 
 who have had model villages, I frankty admit it. There have 
 been individuals whose o^^ti conscience has been so shocked by 
 this state of things that they have even been prepared to remedy 
 it at their own expense, regardless of whether it was profitable 
 to do so or not. But the community as a whole has remained 
 selfish 1}^ happy and contented with its own enjoyments and with 
 its own leisure. These, I think, are the things for which labour 
 finds it difficult to forgive the capitalist class. 
 
 Intentions and Actions 
 
 Did the community ever really take these matters in hand 
 except under pressure and under threats ? There have been 
 good words and good intentions, but have those who have 
 control of those conditions made serious efforts to alter them 
 until they were forced to do so ? Has every pulpit resounded 
 with denunciations of that sort of thing Sunday after Sunday 
 until it was remedied ? Has every politician said " I will not 
 consider that my work is done until those who work for this 
 country are properly treated and properly housed ? " No, in 
 spite of philanthropists, and in spite of a good deal that has been 
 T done, the general social sense of the community has not really 
 been pricked and stirred to such an extent as would make it 
 take definite action. For that supine content we are largely 
 suffermg to-day. 
 
 I do not think that the reason why we did not do these things 
 was due to ill-^^dll on our part, nor do I think that it was due 
 
 D 2
 
 52 LABOUR UNREST 
 
 altogether to mere laziness ; but it was clue to what we as a 
 nation suffer from a great deal, and that is a want of imagination. 
 There is none of you but will say on reading about such things 
 in Reports : '" This must be remedied ; I cannot sleep com- 
 fortably unless it is corrected." But when a thing is not before 
 us, we do not think about it. 
 
 " The Black-Coated Man " 
 
 I purchased the other day on a bookstall one of those illus- 
 trated magazmes which one gets to while awaj' an hour on a 
 railway journe}- — a magazine which one has never hitherto 
 associated with labour questions, or seiious questions of any 
 sort. In the pages of this normally harmless magazine I found 
 an article about " The Black-coated Man," an article which said 
 ■nith great vehemence — 
 
 " Mr. Black-coated Man, we have done with you. You 
 stayed at home ; j^ou did not suffer the risks of the war. 
 You were our master ; you made the money while we sweated 
 and toiled. We have finished "\Aith you, Mr. Black-coated 
 Man ; we are coming back, and coming into our own." 
 
 The article was, I think I may fairly say, revolutionary m senti- 
 ment, and it was significant that we should find such sentiments 
 in an organ of that kind. 
 
 The Peess akd Laboiti 
 
 Our newspapers do not give a fair representation of labour 
 conditions or of any labour dispute. The chief organ of this 
 country. The Times, has lately changed that pohcj', and has 
 had more than one leading article advocating that the cause 
 of labour should be presented c{uite as strongly and quite as 
 clearly as the case of the capitalist. That is a sign of the times, 
 but it is rare and novel ; the ordmarv paper read by the man in 
 the train has seldom anythmg but a sneer for any demand of 
 labour, or anything but a gibe at the attitude of labour. 
 
 There is one matter on which I think the Government could 
 do something. If the Government were prepared to announce 
 the nationalisation of the coal-mining industry in this country, 
 this would so far satisfy the miners that at any rate they would 
 be willing to hold their hands until the whole question were 
 looked into and fuUy investigated. Xationahsation is not a 
 question of fact to be found by a Commission ; it is a question 
 of high pohcy to be decided by the Government of the day ; 
 it is for them to come to the decision, and not for anybod}- else. 
 But if it be true that the announcement of such a decision would
 
 LABOUR UNREST 58 
 
 avert this threatened calamity, then I think the Government 
 would be very ill-advised not to take that step. 
 
 Profit -Shaking Exaahned 
 
 The other suggestion which I have seen made in the Press is 
 some kind of joint working arrangement between the coal- 
 owners and the coal-miners, a kind of profit-sharing enterprise 
 on a large scale. I do not for a moment believe that an arrange- 
 ment of that sort will work well ; I do not for a moment believe 
 that the men A^dll think they are being treated fairly under it ; 
 there are so many things which they do not know and which they 
 will find it difficult to check. Such a system obviously could 
 not be as economical, and therefore as beneficial, for the country 
 as a system of unified control and unified management of all 
 the coal pits in the country for a common national purpose. 
 
 It may be said that such a scheme is Socialism. Well, what 
 many of the workers are asking for is Socialism. What many 
 of them are askmg for is that the whole of the material of industry 
 should be placed in the hands of the State ; that the right of 
 any man to work should be dependent on the caprice of no in- 
 dividual employer or company. But they are not pressing you 
 for it yet on a universal scale ; and you may be -vWse to give it 
 in instances of this sort, if thereby you will succeed in doing 
 something which is economical and beneficial, and which will 
 avert such a great danger as is now before us. 
 
 " How TO Pay for the War " 
 
 I should like to ask whether all these matters have been fully 
 considered and gone into carefully from every point of view, 
 whether there has ever been seriously considered by a Govern- 
 ment Department, and worked out with facts and figures, a 
 Fabian pamphlet called " How to Pay for the War," which 
 suggests the nationalisation, amongst others, of the coal industry' 
 and of the railway industry ? A perfectly clear suggestion is 
 made there by which the hope is held out that these industries 
 by amalgamation may make such economies as "vvill enable them 
 to pay larger wages and to have a surplus over towards the pay- 
 ment for the war. That statement may be true or it may not 
 be true ; it may be a chimera. Has the Government ever 
 thought it worth while to examine a statement of that sort 
 which is put forward by a very considerable section of the com- 
 munity ; because if they have not considered it, then I think 
 they have been rather blind to a matter which ought to have 
 been one of the first thmgs considered A\-ith facts and figures by 
 a Dej^artment. They ought to have been prepared with an 
 answer if it is not true.
 
 54 LABOUR UNREST 
 
 Social revolution has come, and it is impossible to meet it 
 with any sort of chicanery or smooth words, and still less is it 
 possible to meet it with anything in the shape of force. Ex- 
 ploiting has come to an end. The remedy is greater efficiency 
 and increased production. Xothmg is more true than what was 
 said bj^ Lord Leverhulme and others — namely, that we do not 
 produce anj-thing hke what we ought to do per man and per 
 machine and factory in this country. The workman must do 
 his share. He must recognise that unemployment is not going 
 to be destroyed by the sort of fallacious remedy he adopts, of 
 working half time himseK m order that there may be work for 
 others. That sort of thing makes the country poorer ; it is 
 an argument based on the same kmd of fallacy as that Avhich 
 possesses the mind of the Tariff Reformer. 
 
 If labour once feels it can trust those whom it is entitled to 
 trust and those responsible for the Government of the country, 
 we shall have made a great advance towards the solution of un- 
 rest in general. 
 
 LORD STUART OF WORTLEY : 
 
 Speaking with eloquence, and, if I may say so, with the clarity 
 which is ever better than eloquence. Earl Russell has said that 
 no member of this House has, so far, uttered an unsympathetic 
 word towards the claims of labour. I hope to say nothing to 
 disturb that good record. 
 
 What are the true causes of industrial unrest ? The first 
 cause that Mr. Thomas assigned, in his speech on February 13, 
 was the existing unemployment. He said that the unemploy- 
 ment grant has been, in some cases, withdrawn on the pretext 
 that an offer of employment has been refused, which offer 
 amounted to no more than an offer of sweated employment. 
 Certainly, none of us \\ishes the unemploj^ment grant to be 
 taken away on any such grormd as that. Mr. Thomas has also 
 said that the working classes are disappointed because they 
 have no share in the management of industrial concerns. I, 
 for one, should like to see them have a share. I believe that if 
 railway men took their seats on the boards of railway companies 
 they would learn something to their advantage ; directors 
 would learn something to their advantage, and the public would 
 reap much to its advantage. 
 
 Inconsistent Pacifists 
 
 There is a Conference sitting which is doing its best at Paris 
 to make impossible in future wars between nations, and what 
 one finds so shocking is that even among (and I might say
 
 LABOUR UNREST 55 
 
 especially among) those in this country who have been most 
 fom^ard to condemn wars between nations you find men — some 
 of them foreigners, and some, I am sorry to say, countrymen of 
 ours — who were apparently ready to begin a war between classes 
 at home, and indeed ready to wade in the blood and tears of their 
 fellow-countrymen for no more noble a purpose than to have a 
 clean slate on which to write their new constitution. 
 
 I do not know whether you saw a letter in The Times from 
 Sir L^Tiden ^Nlaca-ssej", whom I quote as having a special ex- 
 perience of industrial disputes. He says he knows of the exis- 
 tence of attempts to poison the minds of the young in what are 
 called socialistic Sunday schools — 
 
 Question — Who is your enemy ? Answer — The emploj^er, 
 
 I am told that even up to quite recent times in America a not 
 very complimentary form of the account of British behaviour 
 in past wars and diplomacy was put before children in American 
 elementary schools. We ourselves pay substantial sums of 
 money to have books put before the children in Irish schools 
 which actively teach disloyalty to, and hatred of, British poUcy 
 and Government. I think there is there a very fruitful field for 
 efforts to prevent international strife and internal discontent 
 between classes in the future. 
 
 The Manchester School 
 
 I really think we can do no more than put our trust m what 
 Lord Haldane said, which is to make these things more and more 
 a matter of the mind. We have somehow or other to mitigate 
 this morbid class consciousness, and teach if we can conceptions 
 of citizenship, and indeed it has to be said of humanity — and 
 it is not alone to the working classes that humanity has to be 
 taught. Earl Russell referred to the doctrines of certain superior 
 persons in the nineteenth century. Those doctrines were very 
 persistently held. Mr. Disraeli mocked at them, and he was 
 put down "wdth patronising smUes by the superior persons. Tha 
 significant thing is that the political successors of those who held 
 these doctrines are now among those who most -vvish to put them 
 on one side. I thank my stars that throughout my whole political 
 career I have never belonged to a political party of exact thinkers. 
 When you have a party, or a set of doctrines, you may call it 
 the Manchester School or laisser faire, which says you must 
 leave everything to the free play of economic forces, you then 
 know that what is proposed is to leave ever}i:hing to the free 
 play of man's most violent passions. I never have been, and 
 never will be, a party to that kind of doctrine. By recognising 
 the plain simple thing which is called human nature, I believe
 
 56 LABOUR UNREST 
 
 we shall arrive at something like conciliation, and we may be 
 able to induce that larger production by which alone we can 
 escape national bankruptcy and thereby reach that popular 
 contentment, which at the lowest estimate is the interest of all 
 political parties and is tlie only sound basis of national welfare. 
 
 LORD SYDENHAM: 
 
 This very important debate has served to emphasise the 
 earnest desire of all members of this House that every grievance 
 of what is called labour shall be removed in so far as it is humanly 
 possible, and that a larger share of profits shall be granted to 
 labour in all cases where profits are produced. I suppose that 
 the criticism of this debate will be that there have been not 
 many practical proposals made for remedying the evils which 
 we all feel so strongly and I am afraid this is inevitable because 
 the causes are so many and there are so many untoward circum- 
 stances combining to bring about the unrest which is threatening 
 our national solvenc}'. 
 
 Fatigue and Outpi't 
 
 I am doubtful if the physiological effects of the overstrain 
 during the war have been sufficiently considered. On three or 
 four occasions I ventured to draw attention to the excessive 
 hours which the people were working in munition factories, 
 and to the fact that the output was being diminished. Latterly 
 there would seem to have been an improvement, but after more 
 than three j^ears of war Sir George Newman's Committee reported 
 in these words — 
 
 " Taking the country as a whole, it would seem that the 
 munition workers in general have been allowed to reach a 
 stage of reduced efficiency and lowered health which might 
 have been avoided without reduction of output by attention 
 to the details of daily and weekly rests. The signs of 
 fatigue are now more noticeable in the case of managers 
 and foremen, and these practical results are probably more 
 serious than in the case of the workmen." 
 
 These are grave words. It is impossible that the effects of 
 this overstrain of brain, nerve, and muscle are not enduring up 
 to the present, and they must help to account for the irritable 
 mentality which we see so plainly and must also create favourable 
 conditions for revolutionary propaganda. Working hours can 
 in most cases be reduced and working conditions improved by 
 applying the knowledge we now possess, and this can be done 
 without reducing wages, with actually mcreasing wages, if only
 
 L.\BOUR UNREST 57 
 
 every worker will put forth his full efforts during the limited 
 time which has been calculated to secure him from the effects 
 of cumulative industrial fatigue. I am quite certain that Lord 
 Leverhulme is right in all that he says when he speaks from his 
 great experience, but I think he rather forgets the very favourable 
 circumstances under A\'hich his business is carried on. He is 
 working now, I believe, on a capital of £60,000,000. He has a 
 partial monopoly in a product of prime necessity, and he is able 
 to employ machinery to a ver}' large extent, so that, like Mr. 
 Ford, he can do some things which are really not possible in less 
 favoured enterprises ; but I should like to say that the great 
 business which he has built up is a striking example of the im 
 jncnse benefit which cajjital, wisely and generously used, can 
 confer upon manual labour. 
 
 Profiteering Facts and Figures 
 
 A source of ps3'cliological unrest is the belief in profiteering. 
 The Government might give figures which would reduce matters 
 to something like true proportions. I beUeve that it would 
 be found that profiteermg is confined to not very many persons. 
 Again, figures could be given shomng the immense power which 
 capital has played during the Avar, and proving that but for 
 .accumulation, which after all is what capital is, the Gerinans 
 must have beaten us. Lastly, it might be explained how many 
 capitalists are persons of very small means, in many cases with 
 incomes which range considerably below the earnings of the 
 skilled artisan. I hope that the Government Avill carefully 
 consider the question of making pubUc certain basic financial 
 and economical facts. But it is necessary to take special means 
 that such facts shall be made loiown, and that they shall reach 
 the classes which are now in danger of being misled. 
 
 Some speakers in this debate have not, perhaps, realised how 
 serious the revolutionary movement is. It was going on long 
 before the war, and it has received an immense impetus since 
 the war. Socialist Sunday schools were at work for many 3'ears 
 before the war, teaching the doctrine of the red revolution to 
 quite little children, and many thousands of men and women 
 in this country have been induced to believe that the employer 
 is the real enemy, and that if only all capital were destroyed 
 xmiversal prosperity would follow. Let me quote the words 
 used in a leaflet which was widely circulated by the National 
 Socialist Party about two years ago, not only among the poorer 
 (Classes but also among soldiers. These are the words — 
 
 " Millions of you are now armed, trained, and disciplined. 
 You have the power if you have the will to SA^eep away
 
 58 LABOUR UNREST 
 
 your enslavers for ever. Then take final control of your 
 country, and all that it contains. Wealth may be made as 
 plentiful as water if you Avill but seize the enormous engines 
 for making goods at the disposal of man in society." 
 
 That is a dangerous appeal to the passions of ignorant people, 
 and the sad thing about it is that it is so absolutely false. 
 
 The Example of the " Terror " 
 
 In Russia the theories which were tried in the French Revo- 
 lution have agam been put to the test, with the result of murder, 
 ruin of the working classes, and starvation on a large scale in 
 a country which has food enough to support itself. In Russia 
 a deliberate attempt is being made to kill off the comparatively 
 small class which could m time rebuild a new Russia on the ruins 
 which the Bolsheviks have brought about, and that was the 
 object of the Germans in carefully selecting Lenin from other 
 competitors in Switzerland and sending him to Russia. Apart 
 from these frightful atrocities which are unrivalled even in 
 darkest Africa, the whole thing is so tragically stupid. 
 
 The Albert Hall Meeting 
 
 Surely it is a serious portent in this country when the achieve- 
 ments of the Bolsheviks are acclaimed and some of our people 
 are directly called upon to imitate them. The other day there 
 was a large meeting in the Albert HaU, The object was to 
 protest against any interference with the activities of the Soviets, 
 which apparently are believed to be setting up a sort of earthly 
 paradise for the working man. Violent speeches were made 
 on that occasion, Bolshevism was cheered, and the Red Flag 
 was constantly in evidence. At that meeting Mr. ZangwiU is 
 reported to have said — 
 
 " Bolshevism is only Socialism in a hu^^3^" 
 
 That is perfectly true, but I think a good many Socialists wiU 
 not relish that truth. Does such a meeting as that mean simply 
 the existence of gross ignorance of the plain facts ? Or does it 
 mean that there is a real wish on the part of a certain minority 
 for bloodshed and civil war ? If it means the first, then surely 
 full publicity of the terrible situation in Russia is urgently 
 needed, because we must remember that all the atrocities are 
 being denied. This is what a paper which preaches revolution 
 said last week — 
 
 " The tearing and raging propaganda against the Bol- 
 sheviks was started in the Press and on the platform. No
 
 LABOUR UNREST 59 
 
 slander was too vile, no calumny too mean, for them Tales 
 of murder or outrage, of nationalisation of women, were coolly 
 invented in the newspaper offices, and all this was done to 
 create an atmosphei'e." 
 
 We have evidence of these facts from all sorts of sources — not 
 from Russian sources only, but from Englishmen Uke Colonel 
 Ward, who have seen atrocities A\dth their own eyes, and then 
 we have the deliberate statements of Lenin and Trotsky them- 
 selves. The facts should be made laiown as widely as possible. 
 But if there are people who really are preaching doctrines of 
 murder and civil war, then the doings of these people ought to 
 be carefully watched. 
 
 The democracy of xlmerica apparently proposes to take special 
 steps against revolutionary propaganda and to prevent the 
 display of the Red Flag, which since the French Revolution 
 has been always the emblem of murder and violence. 
 
 The Paims Cosemutse 
 
 France was beaten to her knees in 1870-71, and directly peace 
 came she was faced with a Bolshevist rising in Paris which led 
 to atrocities just like those which are being perpetrated in Petro- 
 grad to-day. France was also shorn of two fine provinces and 
 was burdened with the heavy cost of the war and "with an in- 
 demnity which was deliberately calculated mth a view to cripphng 
 her national life. Then France sternly repressed the Commune 
 and set herself to the task of reconstruction, and by sheer hard 
 work and by thrift she succeeded in a very few j^ears. I believe 
 that the people of this country in victory — their greatest victory — 
 yvHl show themselves as wise, as sane, and as patriotic as did 
 the French people in the days of crushing defeat. 
 
 THE ARCHBISHOP OF YORK: 
 
 I cannot speak as an expert ; I can only speak as one whose 
 work makes him familiar with all sorts and conditions of men in 
 the industrial North of England, and who knows a great deal 
 of what is passing through the minds of those men. At this 
 stage of a prolonged debate it would be tedious to attempt to 
 resume the discussion of the cause of the present so-called 
 unrest, and if I do so at all it is only to lead up to my main point, 
 which is that it is not enough for us to analyse the causes of 
 unrest and disturbance, or to remedy isolated grievances, but 
 to recognise plainly, frankly, and courageously that the time has 
 come when we must prepare the way for the introduction of a 
 new spirit and system into industry as a whole.
 
 60 LABOUR UNREST 
 
 I believe that there is, iii spite of economic tension, a better 
 personal feeling between employer and employed at the present 
 time than there has been for a very long time. But what it 
 is important for us to remember is that the utmost possible good 
 will, personal regard, gratitude, even in some cases affection, 
 between masters and men does not in the least blunt the deter- 
 mination of the men to do what thej^ can to change a sj-stem 
 which is quite independent of those kindlier personal relations. 
 
 Ideals of the Workees 
 
 There are three waj^s, I think, in which the war has affected 
 the spirit of unrest. Workmen who have gone through sacrifices 
 so great with such splendid tenacity and patriotic service are 
 very naturally determined that, having wrought so much, they 
 shall be entitled to a larger and fuller share in the resources of 
 industry. In the second place, the whole class of workers have 
 been stirred by the promises so freely given of a better England. 
 I do not think that this was ever intended to be merely an 
 election cry. I believe there is no one in this House, even the 
 least emotional and demonstrative, Avho did not feel that almost 
 the one thing that would make up for the sacrifices which had 
 been offered was the creation of a better England. But our 
 working people are fearful lest, in the stress of increased pro- 
 duction, the hopes and desires of that better industrial England 
 should be forgotten. In my judgment, strikes have been or- 
 ganised so that the workers can give, so to speak, forcible and 
 dramatic notice to the community that no pressure of production 
 will be aUowed to put aside these claims, not here and there 
 to an addition of wages or a shortening of hours, but to a different 
 and better industrial England in the days that are to come. 
 
 In the third place, I think that the great bulk of our workers 
 — not extreme men only, but in my experience some of the 
 quietest, most thrifty, and steadiest of workmen — are pro- 
 formdly stirred by the upheaval of new forces in every part of 
 Europe. I think it would be quite untrue to suggest that there 
 is any desire in any responsible section of British workmen, 
 even the most extreme, to imitate the barbarous and unspeakable 
 methods of Russian Bolshevism. But I believe that there is, 
 far more widely diffused than perhaps we appreciate, a great 
 common emotion in the minds of the Avorking classes, which 
 leads them to say to one another that the hour has struck when 
 a definite and united movement must be made for a reconstruc- 
 tion of the whole basis of national industry, that this time must 
 not be allowed to lapse but that it must be seized. Therefore, 
 so far as one can judge a very complicated situation, holding 
 great strikes in their hands is intended to be an announcement
 
 LABOUR UNREST 61 
 
 to the whole community, to all classes withm it, tliat the great 
 bulk of our workers, thoughtful responsible men, are determined 
 that there shall be no retui'n to the industrial condition which 
 marked the nineteenth century. 
 
 EXAJEPLES FE03I ElGHT INDUSTRIES 
 
 I do not think that any of us could feel that this was an un- 
 natural determination. Take, for instance, such admitted facts 
 as these in the figures of eight great staple industries in 1907 — 
 cotton, woollen, worsted, tailoring, boot and shoe, building, 
 pubHc utihty services, engineering, shipbuilding, and railways. 
 In each of these eight staple industries more than one-third of 
 the adult male workers were earning less than 30s. a week. 
 Take another concrete instance — mentioned because it is the 
 result of careful and scientific investigation — of four industrial 
 towns. In Northampton, Warrington, Reading, and Stanley it 
 was found that just under one-third of the working classes were 
 earning prior to the war less than 24s. a week ; in one toA^Ti, 
 29 per cent, were receiving an income too low to provide the 
 necessaries of healthy physical existence. I believe that what 
 we have to do primarily is to acloiowledge the justice of the 
 demand that industry shall in its characteristic features no 
 longer reflect autocracy, "wdth all its efficiency, benefits, and suc- 
 cess, but much more closely reflect democracy, with all its risks 
 and imperfections, yet with the status Avhich it gives to human 
 nature. 
 
 It has been acknowledged that there is a grievous misunder- 
 standing between labour and capital. It is deep and sometimes 
 it seems to be in%TJicible. The truth is that the representatives 
 of each seem to be living in different worlds, and when one 
 passes from one to the other it is as if you pass from one contment 
 to another. There is no lack of kindhness and good aWII and 
 interest. It is lack of imagination and intimate knowledge of 
 the circumstances of daily life. The miners, for instance, live 
 in a world completely isolated and apart. They live, move, 
 and have their being in a world exclusively confined to miners 
 and their families. It is not unnatural that their Avhole outlook 
 is conditioned by the limited range of their daily vision. It is 
 not much otherwise with, a large part of the world of employers. 
 I am not speaking of those who have addressed this House, but 
 of members of the typical employer world. Of course, in a man- 
 ner they know their men and are able to boast that all their 
 lives they have knoA\Ti how to deal with working men, but they 
 have dealt with them from the point of view of the management 
 of the w^orks, and not from the point of view of those who really 
 understand where is the pinch, sometimes of Avant and often 
 of indignity, with which the workers have had to deal.
 
 62 LABOUR UNREST 
 
 The Two Literatuhes 
 
 As there are two worlds, so there are two Uteratures. The 
 Press which one sees is different from the Press which the other 
 world sees, and when you read both, as I have tried to do, it 
 is almost impossible to suppose that you are perusing hterature 
 which professes to be dealing with the same subject. This 
 misunderstanding can only be fully removed if we can overcome 
 that division of class, in residence and occupation and interests, 
 which occurred in that century of mingled prosperity, and I 
 had almost said shame, which has passed. Even now it might 
 be possible in the mining communities, and elsewhere, if it is 
 backed up by recognition of the need of partnership in industry, 
 to have a more natural union of classes, such as existed in sport 
 and did so much to promote good fellowshij) in country Ufe. 
 
 This misunderstanding can only really be removed in one way. 
 It will not be removed by repeating, j)ublishing, and propaganding 
 those striking figures about profits and profiteering laid before 
 this House b}^ Lord Emmott, and I am sorry to say that the 
 reason is just that which was indicated by Lord Russell — namely, 
 that somehow or other these men, thoughtful and reasonable 
 men, do not trust the statements. The reason why they do not 
 trust them is that they and their fathers listened to these state- 
 ments made about every single advance in wages or reduction 
 of hours during the whole of the last century ; hardly has any 
 attempt been made to get an increase of wage or a shortening 
 of hours but they were told on all sides that it would ruin industry 
 and drive capital out of the country. Therefore, I do not 
 myself attach much importance to a propaganda of figures and 
 economics based upon them. 
 
 Education by Experience 
 
 The only method which holds any prospect of success is the 
 method of education, not by that kind of propaganda but by 
 responsibility and experience. Get these men with their masters 
 round a table where they can discuss day by day and week by 
 week not merely causes of dispute but the whole business in 
 which they are engaged ; get them together and let them listen 
 to the kmd of conversation which Lord Leverhulme outlined in 
 his speech ; get them to know side by side what are the real facts 
 of the business. Then you will find that these men are intelli- 
 gent enough to understand. But they must get at the facts 
 because they are partners, not because they are told to remain 
 quiet and trust the Government or take the figures as they are 
 given by the employers. I hope I have not put the point too
 
 LABOUR UNREST 63 
 
 strongly, but I am sure that that is the only way economically 
 to overcome the misunderstanding which all speakers have 
 mentioned. 
 
 Increased output can only be secured by the good will of the 
 worker. It cannot be secured — in spite of what has been said, 
 I think, by Lord Haldane — simpl}^ by greater application of 
 science and by greater skUl in management. These things are 
 good and necessarj^, but it can only really be carried out if the 
 worker wiU co-operate. It depends upon his good will. And he 
 wiU not give his good will in an atmosphere of distrust. He will 
 only give his good will to this demand for increased output — 
 the force and justice of which he recognises as much as anybody 
 — if he has some means of being assured that he will get his due 
 share of the increased product when it is made, and that he will 
 have some voice in determining the conditions under which the 
 production is carried out. 
 
 Risks of JomT Control 
 
 Of course, there are risks — there must be risks — in any such 
 determined attempt at joint control. There are risks involved 
 in the publication of profits. But is it better lor industrial 
 peace that profits should be kept secret or that the real facts 
 of an}^ business or trade should be made lalo^vn to the workers ? 
 If you keep profits secret the fact may help financial transactions, 
 but if you do not pubfish the real facts of the case you simply 
 preserve perpetually an atmosphere of suspicion. 
 
 There has been agreement as to the danger of, and the need 
 of combating in every possible way, what has been called during 
 the debate, and what I think ought not to be called, the spirit 
 of Bolshevism. While there may be great sympathy wdth the 
 ideals which the Bolshevists have in view, except in a little 
 ring of fanatics and cranks among the working people I beheve 
 there is complete and entu'e abhorrence of their methods. Let 
 us call it the extremist spirit— or what you please. The way 
 to cure it is not to denounce it and to prove that economically 
 it is bound to fail — which it certainly will — but rather to remedy 
 the grievances which it exploits and to recognise the aspirations 
 to which it appeals. I feel sure it is not a hazardous proposition 
 to say that in these commg days industry must increasingly 
 move along the channel of increased control bv the worker. 
 I do not think it is possible to resist that tendency A\ithout in- 
 volving industry in the perpetual contmuance of these outbreaks 
 of strikes Avhich paralyse capital and jeopardise the whole em- 
 ployment of our people. 
 
 As we cannot resist, it is, I think, better that we should simply 
 accept, and then proceed to guide, to prepare the workers, to
 
 64 LABOUR UNREST 
 
 educate them (iii the only Ava}^ iii which free and responsible 
 men can be educated) by experience to take their share in the 
 great industries of this country. It will enable our employers 
 — in taking what the best of them loiow to be the surest path 
 of safety and of success — to use the best and most responsible 
 leaders of labour, to get alongside them in a new sort of fellow- 
 ship as men Avho are standing for the same thing — output, pro- 
 duction and steadiness of employment, as against class antagon- 
 ism and anarch3^ We do not want employers to detach these 
 men from labour but to use them as a means by which labour 
 can be brought into the council chamber. That is why Ave 
 are all agreed on the principles of the Whitley Councils, and Ave 
 Avish they could be AAddely extended. 
 
 A Perjmanent Industeiai. Council 
 
 Some of us Avdll go further. I share the hope that there might 
 be evolved a League, a permanent Industrial Council representing 
 the employers, the Avorkers, and the Government of the country. 
 I wish that in time such a permanent Council could acquire 
 authority enough to play the part in industry that the League 
 of Nations is desired to play in the life of nations. I Avould 
 hope that such a council Avould in time develop its organisation, 
 Avould become a great steadying force to which increasingly 
 any of the three j)arties — employers, employed or the Government 
 — Avould make reference, the decisions or recommendations of 
 which Avould be increasingly respected, and to Avhich the public 
 (with Avhom, after all, the ultimate verdict in these industrial 
 disputes rests) would turn for guidance and information. While 
 the employer must keep ultimately his right to lock out and the 
 Avorker retain his right to strike, I hope that there AA^ill be less 
 and less recourse to force before there has been an appeal to a 
 permanent, constant, and abiding tribunal representing the best 
 brains of the Go\^ernment, the employers, and the employed. 
 
 Mr. Arthur Henderson has said that the League of Nations 
 was the keystone on Avhich the Avorkers, as a class, meant to 
 build a better social order. The very principle of such a League 
 is that a man, a nation, a class, shall be Avilling to forgo the 
 right of being the sole judge of the justice of his oAvn case. 
 Mr. SmiUie's speech in ansAver to the Prime Minister Avas, as we 
 would expect, frank, straightforAvard, determined. But one 
 could not help feeling all the Avay through that he was insisting 
 on the right of being the judge in his oaati case. 
 
 The Difference Between Industries 
 
 One Avord more. I hope that I shall not be felt to be going 
 beyond what I have a right to say, but I cannot but share the
 
 L.\BOUR UNREST 65 
 
 hope that was expressed by Earl Russell that this Commission 
 will not merely pay lip service to the proposals for the national- 
 isation of the mines, but will go into that matter with a directness 
 and an intention to find a practical answer such as has not always 
 been forthcoming when questions of the nationalisation of 
 industry have been at stake. I have no brief whatever in the 
 matter, and I recognise most fully the objections to State manage- 
 ment. But there is a great difference between the ordinary 
 industries and those from which go, like the coal trade, the life- 
 blood of industry, or along which, like the transport trade, 
 that life blood is reaching industry— and I think it is well worth 
 while asking the question. The future in any case is doubtful. 
 Will it be more doubtful if 3'ou leave it to the chance of this 
 perpetual friction ? In your plea to the miners you say, " Remem- 
 ber that coal concerns the whole community, and therefore you 
 must not be selfish and exploit the coal industry for the raising of 
 your owTi wages and the shortening of your own hours." Their 
 reply to that alwaj^s is, "' We could understand that, if the element 
 of private profit were eliminated, if we knew that it was really 
 for the community we were working and not for private profit." 
 I hope I have not in any way spoken as a partisan. I am 
 only asking you what I have asked myself to do, and that is to 
 look with new eyes upon a new world and to recognise that it is 
 not enough to analyse the causes of this distrust and point to the 
 manifold ignorance and shortsightedness of the workers of this 
 country. What we have to do is to endeavour so far as possible 
 to transform the system of these industries of the country into 
 the likeness of the political system upon which its freedom is 
 based. I think there are good grounds for hope. I meet con- 
 tinually a new class of younger employer who is really looking at 
 things from a new point of view and often surprising the older 
 members of the Employers' Federation. If employers Avith a 
 new point of view and the union officials, recognising the dangers 
 to which their own principles are exposed, can be brought to- 
 gether and kept together on a basis of increasing joint control, 
 then I think there is still good hope for the future of industry 
 in this country. 
 
 A Xew Spirit Needed 
 
 Yet, after all there is not one of us here who does not know 
 that what reaUy matters is what it is impossible in this House 
 to put into words. What reall}^ matters is not the machinery 
 but the spirit with which it is to be worked. What we need in 
 industry is a new spirit. With that, machinery, however simple, 
 vriil succeed ; without that, machinery, however elaborate, 
 MiU fail. And in our heart and conscience we know that the 
 spirit which industry needs is the apphcation of those principles 
 
 E
 
 66 LABOUR UNREST 
 
 of Christianity to economic and industrial life which have been 
 banished from it too long. Thither they must return, and they 
 will make plain that there is a supreme value of every single 
 human life, that every man is an end in himself, and not a means 
 for the good of others, and that the supreme motive of industry 
 must be no longer competition for private gain, whether in the 
 way of profit or of wage, but co-operation for the common good. 
 
 LORD WILLOUGHBY DE BROKE : 
 
 I thmk that those who study this debate will be very glad 
 indeed to find that the advice has been followed which was given 
 by Mr. Burke when he said, " When the nation finds itself in 
 a particular difficulty the best question you can ask yourself is 
 not how to get out of the difficulty but how j^ou got into it." 
 This is one of the symptoms of many years of struggle on the 
 part of labour in this country — a legitimate, natural, and honour- 
 able struggle — to secure for itself a certain status in the enjoy- 
 ment of the good things of life, and in the position which it 
 ought to occupy in a great community like this. I have nothing 
 but honour for them in what they are striving to get, but it is 
 the fashion to say that they are ignorant and suspicious. Sus- 
 picious they certainly are, and in a great many ways greatly 
 suspicious. It is true that there has been a certain amount 
 of ignorance ; and if they are indeed ignorant, whose fault is it ? 
 It is not their fault ; it is the fault of those who ought to have 
 been their leaders, whether Ministers or employers, or what is 
 called capitalists, and it is the fault of those who have had a 
 better education and ought to have taken them into their 
 confidence and pointed out the right path along which to go. 
 They have been rightly suspicious. 
 
 Governments and Theeb Records 
 
 I do not think that the record of the late Government before 
 the war, and it may of the Government before that — I am not 
 going to try to make any Party capital out of what I am to say 
 — has been of a kind to engender confidence, because Govern- 
 ments have not taken the people into their confidence. You 
 may date it from whatever time you like — from the Diamond 
 Jubilee of Her Majesty Queen Victoria, or the Boer War, or any 
 other landmark — but during the last thirty years the labour 
 movement was gathering strength in this country, and either 
 one Party or the other in the State was responsible during that 
 time for the conduct of affairs and the leadership of thought. 
 After the year 1897, which we may take as a convenient date, 
 we displayed the British Empire as in a highly satisfactory
 
 LABOUR UNREST '" 67 
 
 condition, and asked the whole world to come and see it. A few 
 years afterwards we were plunged into the Boer War, and there 
 began to be a doubt whether the British Empire could function 
 as rapidly as it ought. Since that time we have had two Govern- 
 ments in office. We had the Conservative Government which 
 came in at the Khaki Election in 1900, and we know what the 
 history of that Government was. It did not contribute very 
 much towards consoUdating national thought. 
 
 Then we had the great victory of the Liberal Party in 1906, 
 which afforded the finest opportunity for setting our house in 
 order that anybody ever had. That Party was returned to 
 Parliament absolutely free from any chque or combination of 
 cliques. But you cannot say that the Party which was in office 
 from 1906 until the CoaUtion in 1916 really had a record which 
 engendered confidence among the working classes of this country 
 who were promised every conceivable thing. 
 
 Speeches and Pamphlets 
 
 Lord Haldane, in a speech he made at the beguining of this 
 debate, indicated that the ignorance among the Labour Party, 
 about which people complain, is not so great as many people 
 think, because they are sustained by studying the Fabian Re- 
 search Committee's \^Tituigs and other Uterature of that kind. 
 While I cannot pretend to a very intimate knowledge of that 
 particular Hterature I can deal with another complaint of the 
 noble Viscount's, and that was they did not believe a single 
 word that anybody told them. If he refers to the speeches of 
 Ministers and of Members of Parliament and complains that the 
 working classes do not beUeve those speeches, then I am entirely 
 on the side of the working classes, because I beheve very few 
 political speeches, except those speeches which I hear in this 
 House, and occasional!}^ even with regard to those a doubt may 
 arise in one's mind. 
 
 But I say that in spite of this Fabian literature — which, I do 
 not for a moment question, is absolutely genuine, and I have 
 not the slightest doubt that they think they are perfectly right 
 — I believe that if you were to print and circulate the speeches 
 that have been made in this debate (I will say nothing about 
 the speech which I am delivering at this moment) among those 
 who are reaUy thinking about the labour trouble to-day, you 
 would do almost as much good as by all the writings that have 
 ever come from the doctrinaires of either University, who supply 
 the literature for the Labour Party. There is a Uterature of 
 an infinitely more mischievous kind than the hterature of the 
 Fabian Research Committee. In my mihtary capacity it was 
 jny duty to overhaul and to read an enormous amount of pam-
 
 68 LABOUR UNREST 
 
 phlets, leaflets, and literature, which was disseminated with 
 the sole object of setting one class against another. That 
 literature was anti-national in the highest degree, and the 
 Government will do no good unless some means is taken either to 
 prevent its being circulated — which, as the Archbishop said, is 
 probably not the right way — or to counteract it by something 
 of a different spirit and of what we conceive to be a better kind. 
 
 Tory PurNcrPLES 
 
 I was very glad to hear the Lord Chancellor, in his powerful 
 speech, advocate our having propaganda of the right kind. 
 But it is no use talking about having a propaganda unless you 
 decide what you are going to propagate. I think the propa- 
 gation of sound Tory principles is the only thing that will be of 
 the sHghtest use. Do not laugh ; every speech that has been 
 delivered in this debate has been a sound Tory speech and a 
 complete vindication of the principles of Lord Beaconsfield. 
 Go and read Lord Beaconsfield's works and you will see what 
 I mean. What I mean by Tory principles is not Party principles 
 at all, not leaflets of the Tariff Reform League or anything of 
 that kind. Tory principles are national principles, and we have 
 not had any great political leader for a great many years in this 
 country who has continually addressed his fellow countrymen 
 from the national point of view. 
 
 Kkowleege Fees Good Wiel 
 
 Side by side with the enunciation and explanation of the 
 industrial truth we must have the proper spirit from the point 
 of view of racial responsibiHty. Mr. Lansbury (who is a long 
 way from Lord Beaconsfield) put this exceedingly well in an 
 article in the Herald — a paper widely read by the working classes 
 and therefore worth considering. The dominant note of that 
 article was that what we want in this country is knowledge 
 plus good will. Knowledge by itself of economic truths is no 
 good imless you have good wUl to carry them out. With all 
 the good will in the world it is not the slightest use 
 making phrases and expressing good intentions unless we 
 have economic truth at the same moment. Now we want 
 knowledge and good will, and I will try to state what I 
 understand by Tory or national principles. The first thing is 
 that every man, woman, and child in this country is a partner 
 to a racial responsibihty. We are responsible to Divine Provi- 
 dence and to mankind for raising the race to which we belong 
 to the highest point of moral and material efficiency, and in order 
 to do that everj^body ought to have a good start in Hfe, to have 
 
 I
 
 LABOUR UNREST 69 
 
 decent and dignified and sanitary surroundings, and be brought 
 up in the ideas of duty, responsibility, good will, and hard work. 
 We do not hear these doctrines preached. Neither political 
 Party has taken the trouble to initiate or to carry out any 
 leadership in thought in this country, and until we get a body 
 in the State who Avill disseminate the right kind of thought and 
 knowledge from the national point of view, all these efforts 
 and all these meetings betAveen Mr. Smillie and Mr. Lloyd George, 
 and so on, will not do the slightest good. 
 
 I hope that 3^ou "VAill not think me impertinent if I say that it is 
 perfectly obvious, as this debate has shown, that this is the one 
 body in the country which really understands these things, and 
 if when v:e come to handle legislation later on we only give effect 
 by deed, as well as by thought and word, to the principles which 
 3^ou have been laying do"^v^l in this debate we shall deserve well 
 of our fellow-countrymen, and I believe we shall have their 
 confidence. 
 
 THE MARQUESS OF CREWE: 
 
 I think the note of all the speeches that we have heard hasf 
 been a demand for more light to be throAvn on the subject — more 
 information to be acquired, not only by the workers but also, 
 as we have been reminded by some speakers, by ourselves and 
 other members of the capitalist classes generally. Indeed, 
 some speakers have told us that so far as information was 
 concerned we stood in a good deal more need of it than the 
 Labour Party, or at any rate than many of the workers. In 
 one sense there is a great deal of truth in those observations. 
 The exertions of such an admirable body as the Workers' Educa- 
 tional Association, and the distribution of Uterature of all kinds, 
 with some of which we may agree, with some of which again w^e 
 may find ourselves in profound disagreement — all these things have 
 no doubt produced an amount of loiowledge amongst the workers 
 very different from that which obtained aity or perhaps twenty- 
 five years ago. But when the demand for more light and in- 
 formation is made, I do not think that it is doctrinaire loiowiedge 
 or knowledge of the theories of pohtical economy or of the dis- 
 tribution of wealth which is needed. When more fight is asked 
 for it is meant that misunderstandings exist regarding particular 
 industries, and indeed regarding particular enterprises within 
 those industries, which might be dissipated by a more complete 
 interchange of knowledge between those engaged in them. 
 
 Vauiabhity Among Coal Mines 
 
 Take, for instance, one subject that has been widely discussed 
 throughout our debates — that of the extra profits which have 
 
 E* 2
 
 70 LABOUR UNREST 
 
 been obtained by some capitalists and regarding which there has 
 no doubt been much ill-feeling created. Of course, it has to be 
 reaUsed that where these large profits occur they arise to a great 
 extent from the necessary inequahty of circumstance in certain 
 industries. There is no industry to which that statement is 
 more applicable than that of coal or iron mining. The difference 
 between the profits to be gained from the most advantageous 
 ■conditions of the industry and the slender profits to be wrung 
 from those concerns which are on the margin of profit is simply 
 ■enormous. Something similar, though on a smaller and less 
 dramatic scale, is equally true of the industry of agriculture. 
 We are told in quite general terms of the vast profits supposed 
 to be made by farmers ; but there again, if you examine the 
 whole business and attempt to measure the inequalities of 
 circumstance, you will see how it arises that in a few cases what 
 appears unduf^ profit must necessarily be made. 
 
 The real question is : Do the workers seriously desire that all 
 the elements of adventure and of good fortune should be ehmin- 
 ated from the prospect of the capitahst ? Perhaps, to some 
 extent, they may, and if they do one cannot be altogether 
 surprised, because those elements are the exclusive property of 
 the capitahsts. The manual worker has here no such chance. He 
 may work under conditions which enable him to earn a somewhat 
 larger wage than the average of his employment, but he has 
 none of the excitement of the gold miner in the earty days of 
 California and Australia. He has no chance of striking a vein 
 which will make him a prosperous man at once. Those streaks 
 of good fortune are only open to the capitahst. But I am very 
 far from believing that the manual workers generally would 
 desire to ehminate entirely those prospects of exceptional benefit 
 if the general condition of their obtaining a definite share in the 
 profits of capital could come into effect. 
 
 How TO Get Increased Production 
 
 There is a second matter on which I am quite certain that 
 more light is required— not Hght which can be obtained from text 
 books, from works of political economj^, or from leaflets issued 
 by this or that association — I mean the effect on the workers of 
 increased production. As the Archbishop of York stated in 
 his speech, to which we all listened with such deep and con- 
 tinuous interest, increased production can only be obtained by 
 the good will of the workers. That I believe to be profoundly 
 true. How are we going to set about persuading the workers 
 as a rule that somehow or other they are not going to lose by 
 increased production ? I am certain there is no more difficult 
 task than to hammer into the minds of those engaged in a great
 
 LABOUR UNREST 71 
 
 many industries the belief that it is a pure fallacy to suppose 
 that you must Umit the amount of work done or there will not 
 be enough to go round. That is an ingrained behef with a large 
 part of labour and somehow or other that belief has to be 
 dissipated. 
 
 The old-day memories of over-production, of statements all 
 through the Press that there was a glut of this, that, and the 
 other, and the consequent enforcement of short time — these 
 things are fresh in the memories of the workers in many industries, 
 and it will be no easy matter to persuade them generally that 
 arguments in favour of cutting down production are founded on 
 the sand. I remember a rhyme, often repeated in my boyhood, 
 which must have dated I should think from a good many years 
 earher, back to the days of the Chartists. It ran : 
 
 " Eight hours work, eight hours play, 
 Eight hours bed, and eight shilhngs a day." 
 
 In those times that was regarded as a mere fantastic dream 
 almost too remote to be even amusing. Now the full accom- 
 phshment of that ideal presents nothing extraordinary. There 
 are a great many workers who to-day enjoy it and a good deal 
 more ; just as, indeed, all the points of the Charter (which in 
 those days were thought fantastic) are now practically the law 
 of the land. It is no doubt a good thing that there should be a 
 great Industrial Council on which Labour and Capital can sit 
 side by side and discuss all the high problems of industries, but 
 it is in the works themselves, and even in the shops of those works, 
 that there must be perpetual and continual association, both to 
 some extent in control as well as in the share of the profits of 
 capital, if this state of industrial uneasiness is to be abated. 
 There are also many sharply opposed views to be foimd among 
 those who are ready for the time being to make common cause 
 against the capitalist in certain industries. For instance, when 
 we hear of the possible charms of nationaUsation in certain 
 great industries, whether it be of mines, railways or shipping, or 
 of the land generally, it has to be borne in mind that there is a 
 large and important section in the labour world and among the 
 writers and thinkers who support labour to whom nationahsation 
 combined with centraHsation possesses Httle charm indeed. 
 You only have to observe the keenness of argument that is 
 carried on between the collectivist socialist pure and simple 
 on the one hand, and what is called the guild sociahst on the 
 other, and you wiR get quite as lively, often acrimonious, an 
 atmosphere of controversy as you could have if an unhappy 
 capitaUst was engaged with either. 
 
 It is interesting too to ask why so large a proportion of the most 
 capable and vocal advocates of the labour cause appear to flout
 
 72 LABOUR UNREST 
 
 schemes of co-partnership and profit-sharing ? These expedients, 
 admirable as they appear to many of us, are regarded by many 
 of those who speak for labour as being mere soporifics offered to 
 them to lull them into a state of helpless quietude in order to 
 avoid the approach of the real questions between labour and 
 capital which they would desire to bring forward. 
 
 Extremists Must be Watched 
 
 At the other end of the scale we have what has been described 
 as Bolshevism. Perhaps it is unfortunate that that word has 
 been so freely used in the discussions, in the sense of an extreme 
 or anarchic socialism. Bolshevist means, I take it, either an 
 extremist or a member of the socialist majority. I am not a 
 Russian scholar and I do not know much about the word, but 
 it"; means " most " in Russian, and I have seen it explained in 
 both those senses. The word has obtained an association of 
 bloodshed and horror which naturally make us unwilling to 
 ascribe similar ideals to any of our fellow-countrymen. But 
 there must be a certain number of persons in the United Kingdom 
 who may actually aim at a sanguinary revolution to obtain their 
 desires because they think they can obtain them in no other 
 way. So far as they exist, they ought to be watched. But I 
 believe that they are very few in numbers, and that their aims 
 and methods are simply abhorrent to the workers taken as a 
 whole. 
 
 The word " unrest " has been in everybody's mouth, and it 
 no doubt expresses as well as any other the sort of thunderous 
 condition of the atmosphere which we all feel. I confess I agree 
 with those who are unwilling to ascribe the unrest entirely, or 
 even mainly, to the war. When one looks back to the position 
 of affairs in 1913 and 1914 I cannot help feeling that in some 
 respects if there had been no war this industrial movement might 
 have taken an even more dangerous course. 
 
 The Government and Its Supporters 
 
 One or two of the previous speakers seemed to assume that 
 this original Motion represented something like an attack on the 
 Government, and appeared to resent some of the comments 
 which Lord Buckmaster made. I thought some of those com- 
 plaints were exaggerated. It is true that in certain pomts 
 Lord Buckmaster believed that the negotiations of the Govern- 
 ment had not been altogether happily conducted, but it appears 
 to me that he was quite within his rights in saying so, holding 
 the views that he did. In fact, I thmk that the Government 
 have to some extent really their more injudicious friends and
 
 LABOUR UNREST 73 
 
 supporters to thank for what they considered to be the undue 
 criticisms of Lord Buckmaster. To some extent also those 
 criticisms are the consequence of certain declarations of their 
 o\Mi, especiaUy during the General Election, but more I think 
 they are due to the character which has been ascribed to them 
 by some of their sup]3orters on the platform and in the Press. 
 They have had ascribed to them the quahty of perpetually 
 dealing \sdth emergencies by happy strokes of intuition rather 
 than by the results of solid study and thought. It is quite 
 clear that great industrial problems of this kind can only be settled 
 by a close study and by anxious thought, such as the Lord 
 Chancellor stated that the Government were giving. We cer- 
 tainly do not expect that solutions can be reached by happy 
 coiips de main. They are bound to be the result of anxious 
 examination and sometimes of what must be a hesitating advance. 
 Therefore I, for one, am not at all inclined to blame the Govern- 
 ment if they do not come do^^^l every morning with a fresh solu- 
 tion of a great industrial problem. 
 
 PARLIAIEENT'S RESPONSLBrLITY 
 
 There is a tendency to conduct inquiries and to arrive at 
 solutions outside Parliament. I hope that the Government will 
 not be tempted to have too frequent recourse to expedients of 
 that kind, carrying out a series of petty inquests instead of the 
 " grand inquest of the nation." Because I feel sure that extra- 
 Parliamentary inquiry and the direction of affairs by those who 
 are not responsible to Parliament must in the long run tempt 
 others to extra-Parliamentary action of all kinds. It is, perhaps, 
 the most serious prospect that could threaten this country 
 if it came to be generally believed that things could better be 
 done outside Parliament than in — whether it be the conduct of 
 an Inquiry or the obtaining of an advantage for industry by what 
 people are pleased to call " direct action " rather than through 
 legislation or the administration of Departments subject to 
 Parliament. Those are the objects which the Government ought 
 ■ to have before their eyes in connection with these industrial ques- 
 tions ; and if they pursue that path I firmlj'^ beheve that we shall 
 in due course find our way out of the somewhat dense thicket in 
 which we are now involved. 
 
 THE EARL OF SELBORNE : 
 
 In the speech to which we listened %Wth so much interest from 
 the Archbishop of York, he summed up the position somewhat 
 thus — that what the great mass of the workuig classes are after is 
 not paj'- but stahis. We cannot conceal from ourselves that the
 
 74 "^ ' LABOUR UNREST 
 
 thoughts of a great many of these men towards this House and 
 those whom we represent are unkindly. But this debate, I 
 hope, will show those who study it that there is no reciprocation 
 in this House of any such feeling. Quite the contrary. I say 
 without any fear of contradiction that the general sentiment of 
 this House and of those classes whom we specially represent is 
 whole-heartedly with the workers in their desire for improvement 
 of status. More than that, we have a most profound belief in 
 our fellow-countrymen — in their common sense, in their sense 
 of justice, and in their capacity to deal with questions. The 
 only thing we are afraid of is lest they should try to deal with 
 very complex questions too hastily and expect a realisation of 
 their hopes without the essential preparation. 
 
 The Workers as Profiteers 
 
 We have heard a lot in this debate about profiteering, but we 
 have never had any definition of profiteering. Profiteering 
 cannot mean that a man is better off after the war than he was 
 before the war, because, if that was the definition of the profiteer, 
 then a very large proportion of the working classes would be 
 profiteers. The definition of a profiteer must be somebody 
 who has become to an undue degree better off after the war 
 than he was before the war. I wonder how many members 
 of the organised unions realise that, while they are actually better 
 off to-day than they were before the w^ar, vast numbers of their 
 fellow-countrymen whom they are accustomed to think of as 
 more fortunate than themselves are very much worse off now 
 after the war than they were before the war. Take that great 
 mass of the population which is embraced within the general 
 term of the middle classes — the agricultural landowners, the 
 professional classes, many of the smaller tradesmen. In respect 
 to them, all people wdth fixed incomes or with incomes flexible 
 to a very small degree, it is true to say that they are paying at 
 the present moment anything from 33 to 50 per cent, of their 
 income in Imperial and local taxation, and that their expenses 
 have doubled, even after they have made all possible economy. 
 Therefore that great mass of their fellow-countrymen are rela- 
 tively much worse off at the end of the war than they were before 
 the war, and in respect to them the members of the trades unions 
 have relatively greatly improved their position. 
 
 Paris ai^d the Mesters 
 
 The particular occasion of this debate and of the national 
 anxiety arose from the demands of the Miners' Federation —
 
 LABOUR UNREST 75 
 
 demands for wages, for hours, and for the nationalisation of the 
 industry. It was wholly reasonable that the Federation should 
 put forward those demands if they thought these were questions 
 that required investigation ; but what was reaUy wholly un- 
 reasonable was the expectation that such a complicated question 
 could be answered quite shortly and simply ; and it was still more 
 unreasonable to put forward those demands at a moment when 
 the heads of the Government were absolutely immersed in the 
 most critical negotiations at Versailles. It was absolutely 
 impossible for the principal members of the Government to give 
 their attention at the same time to the question of the peace 
 of the world, to the League of Nations, and to these industrial 
 demands. I am very glad that the Prime Minister and his 
 colleagues did not abandon their work on the League of Nations 
 but pursued that to the end of that particular stage. They 
 really ought not to have been put in the position of having to 
 consider two such sets of questions at the same moment. There 
 is no body in this country more loud or honest in its profession 
 of attachment to the principle of the League of Nations than 
 organised Labour at the Trade Union Congress. But what an 
 extraordinar}" inconsistency is it that, at the moment when we 
 are trying to get the nations of the world to put to the arbitra- 
 tion of some Court questions affecting their vital interest, this 
 should be the moment chosen by those great trade union organ- 
 isations to present an ultimatum — because it was an ultimatum — 
 and to rattle the sabre in the scabbard. 
 
 What is it that we hope the nations wdll do ? We hope that 
 the nations will consent to abandon what may be described as 
 their selfish claims for the sake of the good of mankind as a 
 whole. That is exactly the problem which confronts the trade 
 unions. The nation is greater than the trade union ; and unless 
 and until trade unionists will admit — as a great many of them, 
 like j\Ir. Thomas, have again and again admitted — that the 
 nation is more important than the trade union, it is impossible 
 that they can be in the right frame of mind to approach the 
 solution of these questions. 
 
 A Lack op Biagenation 
 
 Nothing has been more common than the accusation that in 
 past days, when they had the power, the landowners used their 
 power for their selfish interests, or that the manufacturing classes 
 used their power for their selfish interest ; and I think the 
 accusation up to a certain point was true. The fact is that 
 selfishness of that kind is almost always unconscious ; it arises 
 from a want of imagmation. The class in question does not put 
 itself into the position of other classes, or realise what effect the
 
 76 LABOUR UNREST 
 
 policy is going to have on others who are at the moment less 
 poAverful to make their voices heard. But to-day it is no longer 
 the lando\v'ner or the manufacturer, it is the trade unionist who 
 is the governing class in that sense ; and surely we may hope that 
 he will benefit by the example of the past and the criticism that 
 he^himself has made, and will remember that it is not his own 
 class alone which he has to consider but the effect of his pro- 
 posals on the nation as a whole. 
 
 One Goveenment and One Only 
 
 This leads me to draw attention to another aspect of the 
 question — namely, the tendency to establish alongside the 
 National Government another Government that is sectional, an 
 imperium in imperio. Hitherto all classes in this country have 
 only looked up to one Government to which they owed allegiance, 
 the Government that is reposing in the last resort on the will 
 of the majority of the people. There are 17,000,000 electors 
 on the Register. A Government elected once every five years 
 by those people must be held to be the only Government en- 
 titled to the national allegiance. To put up alongside of that a 
 Government with no constitutional position, but to which a 
 section of the population, two or three or four millions, render 
 their allegiance in preference to the National Government, is the 
 sure road to national disintegration. Remember also that the 
 Labour Party are themselves likely to be the King's Government 
 within a few years. I have no doubt that we shall see a Party 
 in power which is neither Conservative nor Liberal nor CoaUtion, 
 but the Labour Party. Surely it is unwise, with that prospect 
 before them, that they should encourage this tendency to estab- 
 lish a rival Government which the Constitution loiows not and 
 which only represents a section of the people. 
 
 With that tendency there is also the tendency to take out of 
 Parhament, to some outside authority, the decision of questions 
 which can only be decided in Parhament. That, again, is a 
 disruptive tendency, leading I know not whither. It must be 
 evident to all of us that the Parliamentary machine has hopelessly 
 broken down, and that unless we can mend it in time this great 
 and ureparable misfortune may occur, that the great masses of 
 the people will lose faith in the machine and in the form of 
 Government. I want to ask organised labour if they have really 
 realised what nationalisation means as applied to our system of 
 Government. To nationalise the railways, or the mines, or land, 
 may be a wise or unwise thing, but I say it is absolutely in- 
 compatible with our Parhamentary system of Government. 
 Consider the railways, the mines, the transport services, and the 
 land, in addition to the post-offices, the dockyards, and the pohce ,
 
 L.4B0UR UNREST 77 
 
 as Government institutions. Every Member of Parliament 
 when a candidate would be subjected to a series of questions from 
 the representatives of each of these industries and all their 
 branches, asking him to pledge himself to vote for improvements 
 in wages or other conditions of employment. It is bad enough 
 to-daj' with the few dockyard constituencies and with the Post 
 Office, but what would it be when all the great industries were 
 nationalised ? The House of Commons would become nothing 
 but a wage auction. 
 
 What we have tried to do in this debate is to put our con- 
 tribution forward towards the solution of this question. The 
 struggle, as the Archbishop of York said, is for status. Status 
 can only be surely founded on a reckoning of all facts, which 
 cannot be ignored, and which, if ignored, will surely defeat the 
 attempt to improve conditions. 
 
 VISCOUNT WIMBORNE: 
 
 I do not think that there has been great diflference of opinion 
 between the various speakers on the main fundamental broad 
 propositions. The Government have stated their attitude. 
 They seemed to me to indicate that the programme of the Govern- 
 ment is both comprehensive and bold and well-designed. The 
 analysis to which they have submitted the present condition of 
 unrest seems to me to be both sympathetic and penetrating, 
 and their determination to redress inequahties on the one hand 
 and to resist the dictations of any section of the community on 
 the other is at once sincere and statesmanlike. 
 
 Admenistration Rather than Legislation 
 
 In dealing with the present situation two instruments, lie to 
 the hands of the Government. The one is legislative and the 
 other administrative. Legislation, however well conceived and 
 however beneficial in its ultimate results, must necessarily be 
 deferred, whereas administrative action can be immediate. I 
 do not think the urgency of the present situation is in dispute. 
 Therefore it seems to me that it is to administrative action that 
 we must look for redress and for improvement. One of the justifi- 
 cations of the Coahtion, so far as domestic afifairs are concerned, 
 and the reason which obtained it a very large measure of support 
 at the General Election, was that there should be in existence 
 at this time an Admmistration in which there was the general 
 confidence of aU Parties and of all classes ; and I think the 
 result of the Election did in fact produce that very state of affairs.
 
 78 LABOUR UNREST 
 
 Reduce the Cost of Livestg 
 
 What, then, is the duty of the Administration at the present 
 time ? It is the price of food which more than anything governs 
 the cost of Hving. It forms by far the most important part in 
 the ordinary working man's budget, and, as we all know, the 
 price of food to-day is at least double what it was before the war. 
 I say that not only are the Government unwise in making a 
 profit on food, but they ought to be prepared, if necessary, even 
 to incur a loss. Only the other day, in response to the original 
 demand of the miners, the Cabinet proposed to grant an addition 
 of 6s. per week to the miners' pay on the very ground that the 
 cost of Hving had gone up by that amount since the last arrange- 
 ment. To add even 6s. to the miners' wages must add to the 
 price of coal, and that, of course, is nothing less than a tax on 
 the community and a tax on industry which must come back to 
 the general consumer. It would be far more satisfactory to 
 reduce the general cost of living and to get back to a more normal 
 condition than to increase the illusory inflation of wages. 
 
 Industry is faced with great difficulties. There is a lack of 
 raw material ; there are falling markets, which discourage the 
 early and prompt resumption of business ; and, further, there 
 is the uncertainty with regard to conditions of labour and with 
 regard to taxation. I have no doubt that this state of things 
 may slowly right itself, but there is a gap which must be bridged, 
 and so far as I can see it can only be bridged by State action. If 
 ever there was a case for public works of a reproductive and 
 remunerative kind the case exists to-day. If we look across the 
 Channel we see that the French authorities are proposing to 
 put into execution the long-contemplated plan for razing the 
 fortifications and bringing the land into profitable use. That is 
 in the nature of a public work to tide over the present difficulty 
 until trade and industry are restored. 
 
 WOEK FOR THE UNEMPLOYED 
 
 Take the public services. They are depleted, and that is bad 
 for the pubhc services and for business generally. For instance, 
 our railway service might be restored to something like its pre- 
 war condition. That would give employment. Then nobody 
 can pretend that the postal, telegraph, and telephone services 
 are at anything like full strength. Delay is notorious, and I 
 cannot help feehng that these services are depleted. There are 
 roads in many districts in a deplorable condition ; surely work 
 might be instituted on them. Then, with regard to the housing 
 scheme which we are promised, could not something be done in
 
 LABOUR UNREST 79 
 
 the direction of assembling materials for that purpose ? Any- 
 thing of that kind would be better than having a million people 
 out of work, as is the case to-day, and paying somethiao- like 
 £1,000,000 a week on unem^^lo^-ed benefits. 
 
 A clear pronouncement on the future of the Excess Profits Tax 
 would go a long way to restore confidence on the part of manu- 
 facturers. Most of us are much poorer as the result of the war 
 than we were before. On the other hand, there is no doubt 
 that profiteering has occurred on the part of a few, and it has 
 produced a very bad impression in labour circles. With regard 
 to the fact that labour itself has received some eight or ten times 
 more profit than capital it must be remembered that all wa^e 
 profiteering has to a great extent been discounted by the 
 increased cost of living. I think a statement might go a lono^ 
 way to reassure labour that excess profits were not going to be 
 countenanced, and it would also enable manufacturers to know 
 what liabilities they may have to meet. The three points I 
 have tried to make are — in the first place, that it is necessary to 
 reduce the cost of food, and that even though it cost you money it 
 would be the cheapest in the long run ; secondly, that you should 
 give employment and not doles ; and, in the third place, that 
 you should attempt to define the Habilities which manufacturers 
 wiU have to meet. I think those three points would constitute 
 a sensible advance in dealing wdth the practical issues M'hich lie 
 before us at the present moment. 
 
 THE UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR 
 (VISCOUNT PEEL): 
 
 Lord Selbome has said that throughout this debate there was 
 shown the utmost sympathy with the desire of the working 
 classes for an improvement of their status. Anyone who loiows 
 this House vnR consider that that was the case, but it is perhaps 
 as well that this statement and feeling should be recorded and 
 reiterated. When one talks about industrial unrest, it is difficult 
 to limit the causes of the unrest. There is a state of unrest 
 everywhere. We are all in a state of unrest, and some of the 
 symptoms exhibited by the working classes are only part of a 
 more general disturbance which has agitated us all. 
 
 The Return to Civil Life 
 
 I had rather special opportunities at the Ministry of National 
 Service of observing the movement of industry, the disturbance 
 of trade and of labour, which went on during the last two years 
 of the war. One saw an elaborate process, described as selection,
 
 80 LABOUR UNREST 
 
 dilution, substitution, and many other phrases of that kind, hy 
 which labour was drawn from aU sorts of industries and poured 
 into the army. You saw all these industries running with greater 
 and greater difficulty, and making greater efforts to cope with 
 decreased production and suddenly increased charges. As the 
 war progressed, your industries became either war industries or 
 gradually diminished in force and volume. When you had almost 
 a condition of atrophy in industry the reverse takes place, and 
 you have to fill the old veins of industry with this rapidly return- 
 ing labour. That task of adjustment is enormous, and supposing 
 there existed no feeling between Capital or Labour, or any of 
 these troubles, it would alone in my own opinion account for a 
 great deal of the existing disturbance. Here we were during 
 these years of war as one nation braced for this tremendous and 
 single effort of dealing with the war and beating Germany. 
 Suddenly that pressure is relaxed and at once we are thrown on 
 the thousand distracting and disturbing aims which beset us the 
 moment we get back again into ordinary civil life. There are 
 many little matters, physiological causes, which one ought to 
 note. There is the question of food, and curious substitutes ; 
 restrictions in drink, and changes in drink. These are quite 
 enough to produce a disturbance in temper. Lord Buckmaster 
 who was one of the few who suggested the shadow of a criticism 
 on the Government. I think his objection was that the Govern- 
 ment were rather apt to wait until a strike took place and then 
 merely to act under the pressure of necessity. Of course, there 
 have been some cases where a strike and the action taken by the 
 Government were so nearly contemporaneous that it did suggest 
 a sequence of cause and effect, but those cases were few, and gave 
 a very unfair picture of the Government's general activity. 
 Lord Buckmaster ignores those cases where these disturbances 
 were settled without any great announcement in the Press, with- 
 out matters being discussed in Parhament, but settled by the 
 action of the Department, or by the action of those industries 
 acting collectively among themselves. I was, I confess, rather 
 surprised to hear an observation coming from Lord Russell who 
 admitted that a very large proportion of these profits inured to the 
 Government and were collected in the form of excess profit tax 
 by them, yet said that that did not satisfy the industrial classes. 
 I do not understand that statement. I should have thought that 
 the question whether these profits went to the Government or 
 to private individuals would make an immense difference, and 
 indeed the reason very largely that they were introduced was not 
 only to obtain money but also to satisfy the feeling of the in- 
 dustrial classes against the making of excess profits. 
 
 Lord Leverhulme took a very cheerful and rosy view of the 
 whole situation, and rather attributed these disturbances to a
 
 LABOUR UNREST 81 
 
 general discontent which he was good enough to characterise as 
 divine. No doubt much of the discontent prevaiHng may be due 
 to the desire, with which we all sympathise, of people to improve 
 their position and status ; yet when some of those disturbances 
 result in the sufferings of others and in general annoyance, as in 
 the case of some recent strikes, one is inclined to think that part 
 of this discontent arises from a less celestial origin. We can 
 look forward, I think, ^\^ith perhaps a little more degree of hope 
 than was aroused by some speakers, because, after all, the causes 
 that are sufficient to account for much of the unrest are causes 
 which are passing away as Ave gradually move from the time of 
 war. 
 
 Causes of Dislocation 
 
 The business outlook, it must be admitted, is difficult enough, 
 even if there were no industrial luirest. We have not that 
 pleasant balance of imports which we used to have before the 
 war, and it must be admitted, too, that some of our assets, 
 some of what bankers would call loans to customers — our loans, 
 for instance, to Russia — ^will have to be considerably AVTitten 
 down before they can be entered in any honest balance-sheet. 
 Then the concentration of all our efforts on war industries has 
 necessarily shaken our hold on foreign markets, and there must 
 be a long and tedious effort before we can recover the position 
 which we held before the outbreak of the war. Much has to be 
 expended in repairs and improvements before the machines of 
 industry will be equal to starting again on their victorious race 
 for production. In addition, we have great burdens of taxation, 
 and the question of indemnities. Indemnities are difficult to 
 assess and take long to collect. Prices of commodities and 
 materials are so high that the working capital for industries has 
 to be more than doubled. The Government has large stocks of 
 various kinds the sale of which may affect the price of commodities 
 and therefore may be disturbing to those who are trjdng to base 
 their future calculations on existing prices. 
 
 There are difficulties enough in the industrial situation, and if 
 we were all skilled economists, if we were all as well read in Fabian 
 and other essays as Viscount Haldane thinks the working classes 
 are, we should say, " Let us set our industry going, let us do our 
 repairs, let us regain our position in foreign markets, let us put 
 our currency on a new basis ; then, when we have got again a 
 large production, let us agree among ourselves as to the division 
 of the profits of industry, as between employer and employed." 
 Unfortunately, we are not aU economists in that sense, and the 
 necessity of that vast increase of production so essential to our 
 national life is not fully recognised in many industrial quarters.
 
 82 LABOUR UNREST 
 
 Quick Decisions or Democeatic Delays 
 
 The Archbishop of York made a very interesting suggestion 
 as to the democratisation of industry. There is unfortunately 
 this difficulty as regards the democratisation of industry, that 
 you must have decisions rapidly taken or your industry may 
 disappear. You cannot get decisions rapidly taken in demo- 
 cratic government, because you must consult everybody until 
 they are satisfied, or fairly weU satisfied. Nobody, for instance, 
 from a business point of view would have dreamt of carrying on 
 the war on a voluntary basis, but you would have put it at once 
 on a compulsory basis and distributed your man-power among 
 your various industries and your Army. With large numbers of 
 people concerned you cannot come to a definite decision quickly 
 and your industries may suffer. It is very different when you 
 come to giving them an interest in the industry — such an interest 
 that they may understand and realise the difficulty and the 
 risks that are run by manufacturers, merchants, and capitalists. 
 They have then more sympathy and understanding of the way 
 in which business is carried on. 
 
 I had intended to give some slight sketch of the policy followed 
 by the Ministry of Labour before, during, and after the war, but 
 it is difficult at this late hour to deal with it fully. Generally 
 speaking, during the war Government control was greatly extended ; 
 strikes and lock-outs were made illegal, and arbitration was made 
 compulsory. The Government observed the fair wages clause, 
 and taking its cue, as it were, from other industries, became 
 during the war a great employer, and therefore it has had to set 
 the rate of wages, making allowance, of course, for extra com- 
 pensation where high prices of living necessitated it, and leaning 
 somewhat the other way when great demands for labour led to 
 undue inflation in the price of labour. After the war, of course, 
 the whole situation is changing. Then it was necessary to get 
 commodities at any price ; now the question is the price at which 
 those commodities can be obtained. All those arrangements for 
 compulsory arbitration and the forbidding of strikes have now 
 been relaxed, and the Government are reverting to the position 
 which obtained before the war and allowing these industries — 
 with certain limitations, of course — to settle their wages and 
 hours of labour. 
 
 What the Labour Ministry Has Done 
 
 One of the matters on which the Ministry of Labour lays 
 great stress is the Whitley Councils. Something like twenty-four 
 have been already set up in very important trades ; another
 
 LABOUR UNREST 83 
 
 eighteen are in progress of formation, so that you will soon have 
 no fewer than forty-two of these permanent industrial councils, 
 embracing something like 2,500,000 workpeople, in such trades 
 as building, baking, electrical contracting, furniture, printing, 
 waterworks, and the non-trading services of the municipalities. 
 In addition to that, there are certain other trades where interim 
 industrial councils have been set up, covering some 200,000 
 workpeople. There is another set of great industries which 
 have organisations of their own. The Ministry of Labour is now 
 thinking of applying the Whitley Report to the Civil Service, 
 which numbers 230,000 people. Then, great changes have been 
 made in the matter of hours. The Government have intervened 
 there. The railwaymen led the way mth their eight hours day, 
 and then an arrangement was made with the Engineering 
 Federation and the engineers for a forty-seven-hours week. 
 Arrangements for reducing hours have been effected in the case 
 of 3,000,000 workers and are already in progress in the case of 
 1,000,000. The Bill is nearly ready to deal with the war pledges 
 — that is to say, to do away with the changes voluntarily agreed 
 to by the trade unions during the war. These mainly affect the 
 distribution of work between skilled and unskilled workers and 
 women. Appeal committees wiU be set up to deal with any 
 difficulty that may arise. 
 
 There is an impression, reflected in the newspapers, that 
 industrial unrest exists all over the country. As against that, 
 it is remarkable to note the number of disputes about wages and 
 so on which have been settled Avithout any blowing of trumpets. 
 In the Courts of Arbitration 292 of these have been settled. 
 There is thus an immense amount of quiet settlement of every 
 kind of industrial dispute going on. 
 
 The Country will not Founder 
 
 In spite of certain threatening symptoms, there are many 
 hopeful signs. First of all, during the war a great many persons 
 have learned to work much harder than before. We have shown 
 that we had far larger resources of labour of various kinds on 
 which to draw, which have been disclosed to us by the stress of 
 the war. Among the leaders of Labour there is a strong demand 
 for higher and improved education. The status of teachers is 
 being raised. Then there is a greatly increased sense of respon- 
 sibihty showai by the leaders of the worldng classes, knoAving as 
 the}' do that they may very likely soon have the government of 
 the country in their hands, and they may be unwilling to start 
 precedents which may have a tendency to re-act upon themselves. 
 Moreover, I think it is incredible, considering the great develop- 
 ment of a spirit of co-operation between classes and of comrade-
 
 84 LABOUR UNREST 
 
 ship shoAATi in the war between officers and men, that this spirit 
 should not have a reflex effect upon civil struggles and industrial 
 warfare. Without undue optimism, we need not look upon the 
 future with gloom. We have heard of nations beaten in war 
 succumbing to the stress of industrial disturbance and civil 
 commotion, but I trust that a country which has so gallantly 
 surmounted the waves of war wiR not fomider in the dismal 
 abyss of internecine broils and civil strife. 
 
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