Professor of Sociology, London University.
Professor Hobhouse said:--The wages, hours, and general conditions of
industrial workers are of interest to the community from two points of
view. So far as the less skilled and lower paid workers are concerned,
it is to the interest and it is the duty of the community to protect
them from oppression, and to secure that every one of its members, who
is willing and able to contribute honest and industrious work to the
service of others, should be able in return to gain the means of a
decent and civilised life. In this relation the establishment of a
minimum wage is analogous to the restriction of hours or the provision
for safety and health secured by Factory Legislation, and carries
forward the provision for a minimum standard of life. The problem is to
determine upon the minimum and adjust its enforcement to the conditions
of trade in such wise as to avoid industrial dislocation and consequent
unemployment.
With regard to workers of higher skill, who command wages or salaries on
a more generous scale, the interest of the community is of a different
kind. Such workers hardly stand in need of any special protection. They
are well able to take care of themselves, and sometimes through
combination are, in fact, the stronger party in the industrial bargain.
In this region the interest of the community lies in maintaining
industrial peace and securing the maximum of goodwill and co-operation.
The intervention of the community in industrial disputes, however, has
never been very popular with either party in the State. Both sides to a
dispute are inclined to trust to their own strength, and are only ready
to submit to an impartial judgment when convinced that they are
momentarily the weaker. Nor is it easy when we once get above the
minimum to lay down any general principles which a court of arbitration
could apply in grading wages.
For these reasons the movement for compulsory arbitration has never in
this country advanced very far. We have an Industrial Court which can
investigate a dispute, find a solution which commends itself as
reasonable, and publish its finding, but without any power of
enforcement. The movement has for the present stuck there, and is likely
to take a long time to get further. Yet every one recognises the damage
inflicted by industrial disputes, and would admit in the abstract the
desirability of a more rational method of settlement than that of
pitting combination against combination. Such a method may, I would
suggest, grow naturally out of the system which has been devised for the
protection of unskilled and unorganised workers, of which a brief
account may now be given.