business which has so often poisoned the atmosphere by causing
suspicion.
When you discuss disarmament there must be all the cards on the
table. Is not mystery of any kind the mother of suspicion?
Confidence breeds confidence, and I would give it in the fullest and
largest degree.
I would like to see firms who have factories as I have described,
place on the table carefully prepared analyses of the comparative
costs in the different countries for the men to examine, for
accountants to examine--no mystery, no secretiveness, but a common
desire to get at facts, and a common desire to help.
I do not pretend for a moment that all is easy if you simply gather
men around the table. There are differences--differences of
education, of early environment, psychological differences,
differences of training. I was struck once by a remark made, I think
it was, by Mr. Hodges in stating the miners' case in the recent coal
dispute, that he never felt less nervous than in presenting it at No.
10 Downing Street, to members of a Government which he had no reason
to believe was particularly anxious to agree with him.
I understand what he meant, and it has often struck me that it might
be of real help to conferences in trades between the employers and
the employed if they were presided over by a neutral person, a man
qualified by his own character and ability, by his detached and
independent outlook, and by the confidence which people felt in his
fairmindedness--that the presence of such a chairman might enable two
parties to get on with greater ease, with greater freedom, and with
more success in ultimate results.
There are other things arising to which our leaders of industry,
whether they be from the ranks of the employers, or from the ranks of
the men, must devote their attention at this present day, if they do
not wish to make confusion still worse confounded.
It is not wages alone that have to be studied, and that we must keep
our eyes on. If you fix on paper minimum standards of pay it does
not follow that those standards will, in fact, apply to all the men
in the industry. What often results is the stoppage of the marginal
factory or the marginal coal-pit, or you may find that some of them
near the margin will have to go on short time, and you often find
that many men are thrown out of employment.
In the same way you often hear men's leaders to-day speaking about
the necessity for rigorous efficiency on the part of employers, but
rigorous efficiency again often acts hardly on many of those
employed. You have to take the long view as well as the short; and I
think in these days what those most concerned in industry have to
study is what can be accomplished in the way of insurance benefit,
and what burdens can be borne by industry--this in consultation with
the Government--and how far regulations and rules made in trade
unions to fit circumstances of many years ago are fitted to meet the
circumstances not only of to-day, but the circumstances that lie
ahead of us.
Here, again, there is ample room, ample scope, for such conferences
as I have advocated, and, mind you, for the very best brains and the
best hearts that the best men among the employers and the men
themselves can put forward. This is not work for hacks, it is work
for the statesmen among us.
I don't know whether things may be different and happier in Russia,
for I have not had the advantage of having six weeks in that country.
But in England let us never forget this: that under our system trade
expansion depends so much on initiative and enterprise, and on the
willingness of our people--men and women--to embark their savings in
industry in anticipation of making something rather more out of
industry than they could make if the savings were kept in a stocking.
Now, the element of risk and uncertainty cannot be absent from
industry--it is inseparable from our system of production--but
readiness to embark on that form of investment is a question of
confidence. Nothing can destroy that confidence more surely than
what destroys confidence on the Continent--no sense of security. The
present unsettlement in this country is in itself a clog on the
wheels of progress.
There may be a better industrial system imaginable than ours, and I
hope indeed we may be slowly moving towards something better; but
there is no doubt in my mind that if it were possible to destroy the
present system in a moment, those who destroyed it would cause a
shipwreck, and they would not bring into being a ship in which to
take away the survivors.
Short, too, of any deliberate destruction of our industry, such as we
have seen advocated in a few quarters, I dread that subtle poison of
hatred which is being preached in some quarters, which weakens the
faith of men in their own efficient service and sound
workmanship--the very things which have built up the reputation of
our great country, on which we still live. You may have one of the
finest fleets of liners in this world, you may have it owned by the
State, and you may have it run by the State; but if you have a crew
bent on defying all that makes for co-operation and discipline you
will bankrupt that fleet.
It has not come to that in this country, and in my belief it never
will. The power of managing our own affairs in our own way is the
greatest gift of Englishmen. We have demonstrated that fact in the
past, and we shall demonstrate it in the future, It has been ours in
a growing degree for a dozen centuries. And I cannot put that
thought before you better than in the words of a distinguished Oxford
man, the late Master of Balliol, who wrote:
"Nowhere was the village community so real and so enduring a thing as
it was in England for at least twelve centuries of its history. In
every parish men met almost daily in humble but very real
self-government, to be judged by their fellows or fined by them, or
punished as bad characters, to settle the ploughing times and harvest
times, the fallowing and the grassing rules for the whole village.
To these twelve centuries of discipline we owe the peculiar English
capacity for self-government, the enormous English development of the
voluntary principle in all manner of institutions (clubs,
associations, hospitals, joint stock) and the aptitude for
colonisation. Our politics, our commercial enterprise, our Colonial
Empire, are all due to the spirit of co-operation, the spirit of fair
play, and 'give and take,' the habit of working to a common purpose
which tempered the hard and grim individuality of the national
character."
And if I have a message to-night for you and the people of the
country, it is just this. I would say:
"England! Steady! Look where you are going! Human hands were given
us to clasp, and not to be raised against one another in fratricidal
strife."
PEACE IN INDUSTRY. II
IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, ON THE SECOND
READING OF THE TRADE UNION (POLITICAL
FUND) BILL.
6_th March_, 1925
In some ways this is a very difficult speech for me to make. The
matter of the Bill itself digs right into one of the most difficult
and fundamental questions in the country to-day, and it touches at
various points questions which have interested me during the whole of
my working life. I have thought so much about them, and I feel that
I have so much to say about them, that my difficulty will be in
choosing the little that I can possibly say to-day and finding words
to express clearly to the House what is in my mind.
I often wonder if all the people in this country realise the
inevitable changes that are coming over the industrial system in
England. People are apt either to get their knowledge of the
industrial system from textbooks, which must be half a generation
behind, or from some circumstance familiar to them at a fixed and
static point in their lives, whereas, as a matter of fact, ever since
the industrial system began in this country, it has been not only in
a state of evolution, but in a state of evolution that, I think,
historians in the centuries to come, when they write its history,
will acknowledge to be an evolution that has developed at a far more
rapid rate than was visible to the people who lived in these times.
I hope the House will bear with me and forgive me if I draw for a few
minutes on my own experience, because it so happens that, owing to
the peculiar circumstances of my own life, I have seen a great deal
of this evolution taking place before my own eyes.
I worked for many years in an industrial business, and I had under me
a large number, or what was then a large number, of men. And it so
happened, as this was an old family business, with an old and, I
venture to say, very good tradition, that when I was first in
business I was probably working under a system that was already
passing. I doubt if its like could have been found in any of the
big, modern industrial towns of this country, even at that time.
It was a place where I knew, and had known from childhood, every man
on the ground; a place where I was able to talk with the men not only
about the troubles in the works, but troubles at home and their
wives. It was a place where strikes and lock-outs were unknown. It
was a place where the fathers and grandfathers of the men then
working there had worked, and where their sons went automatically
into the business. It was also a place where nobody ever "got the
sack," and where we had a natural sympathy for those who were less
concerned in efficiency than is this generation, and where a large
number of old gentlemen used to spend their days sitting on the
handles of wheelbarrows, smoking their pipes.
Oddly enough, it was not an inefficient community. It was the last
survival of that type of works which ultimately became swallowed up
in one of those great combinations towards which the industries of
to-day are tending.
I remember very well the impact of the outside world that came on us,
that showed how industry was changing in this country. Nothing had
interrupted the even tenor of our ways for many years, until one day
there came a great strike in the coal-fields; it was one of the
earlier strikes, and it became a national strike.
We tried to carry on as long as we could, but, of course, it became
more and more difficult to carry on, and gradually furnace after
furnace was damped down and the chimneys ceased to smoke, and about
1,000 men, who had no interest in the dispute that was going on, were
thrown out of work, through no fault of their own, at a time when
there was no unemployment benefit.
I confess that that event set me thinking very hard.
It seemed to me at that time a monstrous injustice to these men,
because I looked upon them as my own family, and it hit me very
hard--I would not have mentioned this, only it got into the Press two
or three years ago--and I made an allowance to them, not a large one,
but something, for six weeks to carry them along, because I felt they
were being so unfairly treated.
But there was more in it really than that. There was no conscious
unfair treatment of these men by the masters. It simply was that we
were gradually passing into a new state of industry when the small
firms and the small industries were being squeezed out, and business
was all tending towards great amalgamations, on the one side of
employers, and on the other side of the men, and when we came in any
form between these two forces, God help those who stood outside!
That has been the tendency of industry. There is nothing that could
change it, because it comes largely, if not principally, from that
driving force of necessity in the world that makes people combine
together for competition and for the protection they need against
that competition.
Those two forces with which we have to reckon are enormously strong,
and they are the two forces in this country to which now to a great
extent, and it will be a greater extent in the future, we are
committed. We have to see what wise statesmanship can do to steer
the country through this time of evolution until we can get to the
next stage of our industrial civilisation.
It is obvious from what I have said that the organisations of both
masters and men--or, if you like the more modern phrase invented by
economists, who always invent beastly words, employers and
employees--these organisations throw an immense responsibility on the
organisations themselves and on those who elect them, and, although
big men have been thrown up on both sides, there are a great many on
both sides who have not got the requisite qualities of head and heart
for business.
There are many men with good heads and no hearts, and many men with
good hearts and no heads.
What the country wants to-day from the men who sit on this side of
the House and on that is to exercise the same care as the men who
have to conduct those great organisations from inside.
I should like to try to clear our minds of cant on this subject, and
recognise that the growth of these associations is not necessarily a
bad thing in itself, but that, whatever associations may call
themselves, it is the same human nature in both, and exactly the same
problems have to be met, although we hear a good deal more of some of
those problems than of others.
Now, if you look at an employers' organisation for a moment--and we
will assume that it has come into being to protect the industry in
the world market--we cannot lose sight of the fact that in that
organisation, just as much as in the men's organisation, the mere
fact of organising involves a certain amount of sacrifice of personal
liberty. That cannot be helped. Everybody knows that perfectly
well, both employers and employees.
To a certain extent both these organisations must on one side be
uneconomic.
A trade union is uneconomic in one sense of the word when it
restricts output and when it levels down the work to a lower level.
It is an association for the protection of the weaker men which has
often proved uneconomic.
Exactly the same thing happens in the employers' organisation.
Primarily, it is protective, but in effect it is very often
uneconomic, because it keeps in existence works which, if left to the
process of competition, would be squeezed out, and whose prolonged
existence is really only a weakness to the country.
Also it has another very curious effect, not at all dissimilar from
that of the trade union reaction which shows that both those
organisations are instinct with English traditions. The workmen's
organisation is formed to see that under the conditions a workman
cannot get his living in a particular trade unless he belongs to that
union. An employers' organisation is formed in that particular trade
for the protection of the trade, and it has the result of effectively
preventing any new man starting in that trade.
In this great problem which is facing the country in years to come,
it may be from one side or the other that disaster may come, but
surely it is plain that the only progress that can be obtained in
this country is by those two bodies of men--so similar in their
strength and so similar in their weaknesses--learning to understand
each other and not to fight each other.
It is perfectly true that trade unionism has its weak spots. We are
primarily discussing trade unions, and that is why I shall content
myself to speak about trade unions only. It is perfectly true that
my hon. and learned Friends [Mr. Macquisten and Mr. Greaves-Lord, who
moved and seconded the Second Reading of the Bill] have laid their
finger on three points which trade unionists themselves know are
their weak spots. That can be seen by the interruptions that came
from the Labour benches.
Those three points are, the question whether in all cases the subject
of the levy is treated fairly, the question of the ballot, and the
question of bookkeeping. To my mind it is impossible to dissociate
one of these questions from the other, and they really all hang
together.
The whole tradition of our country has been to let Englishmen develop
their own associations in their own way, and with that I agree. But
there are limits to that. I spoke a little earlier--and I spoke with
a purpose--about the recognition of the change in the industrial
situation in those works with which I was connected, when for the
first time what was done in the way of organising the coal strike
suddenly came and hit thousands of men who had nothing to do with it
and had no direct interest in it.
As these associations come along and become more powerful, on
whichever side they are, there may come a time when not only may they
injure their own members--about which probably there would be a good
deal of argument--but when they may directly injure the State. It is
at that moment that any Government should say that, whatever freedom
and latitude in that field may be left to any kind of association in
this free country, nothing shall be done that shall injure the State,
which is the concern of all of us and far greater than all of us or
our interests.
I have not very much more to say. I have just tried to put, as
clearly as I can in a few words, my conviction that we are moving
forward rapidly from an old state of industry into a newer, and the
question is: What is that newer state going to be?
No man, of course, can say what form evolution is taking. Of this,
however, I am quite sure, that whatever form we may see, possibly
within this generation, or at any rate in the time of the next
generation, it has got to be a form of close partnership, however
that is going to be arrived at; and it will not be a partnership the
terms of which will be laid down, at any rate not yet, in Acts of
Parliament, or from this Party or that.
It has got to be a partnership of men who understand their own work,
and it is little help that they can get really either from
politicians or from intellectuals.
There are few men fitted to judge of and to settle and to arrange the
problem that distracts the country to-day between employers and
employed.
There are few men qualified to intervene who have not themselves been
right through the mill.
I always want to see, at the head of these organisations on both
sides, men who have been right through the mill, and who themselves
know exactly where the shoe pinches, and who know exactly what can be
conceded and what cannot, and who can make their reasons plain; and I
hope that we shall always find such men trying to steer their
respective ships side by side, instead of making for head-on
collisions.
Having said what I have said about that, what am I to say about the
attitude of the Party of which I have the honour to be the head?
I do not know whether the House will forgive me if I speak for a
minute or two on a rather personal note.
For two years past, in the face of great difficulties, perhaps
greater than many were aware of, I have striven to consolidate, and
to breathe a living force into my great Party. Friends of mine who
have done me the honour to read my speeches during that time have
seen clearly, however ill they may have been expressed, the ideals at
which I have been aiming.
I spoke on that subject again last night at Birmingham, and I shall
continue to speak on it as long as I am where I am.
We find ourselves, after these two years, in power, in possession of
perhaps the greatest majority our Party has ever had, and with the
general assent of the country. Now how did we get there? It was not
by promising to bring this Bill in; it was because, rightly or
wrongly, we succeeded in creating an impression throughout the
country that we stood for stable Government and for peace in the
country between all classes of the community.
Those were the principles for which we fought; those were the
principles on which we won; and our victory was not won entirely by
the votes of our own Party, splendidly as they fought. I should
think that the number of Liberals who voted for us at the last
Election ran into six figures, and I should think that we probably
polled more Labour votes than were polled on the other side.
That being so, what should our course be at the beginning of a new
Parliament? I have not myself the slightest doubt. Last year the
Leader of the Labour Party [Mr. Ramsay Macdonald], when he was Prime
Minister, suspended what had been settled by the previous Government,
and that was further progress for the time being on the scheme of
Singapore. He did it on the ground that it was a gesture for peace,
and he hoped that it would be taken as such by all the countries in
the world. He hoped that a gesture of that kind might play its part
in leading to what we all want to see, that is, a reduction in the
world's armaments.
I want my Party to-day to make a gesture to the country of a similar
nature, and to say to them: "We have our majority; we believe in the
justice of this Bill which has been brought in to-day, but we are
going to withdraw our hand, and we are not going to push our
political advantage home at a moment like this. Suspicion which has
prevented stability in Europe is the one poison that is preventing
stability at home, and we offer the country to-day this: We, at any
rate, are not going to fire the first shot. We stand for peace. We
stand for the removal of suspicion in the country. We want to create
an atmosphere, a new atmosphere in a new Parliament for a new age, in
which the people can come together. We abandon what we have laid our
hands to. We know we may be called cowards for doing it. We know we
may be told that we have gone back on our principles. But we believe
we know what at this moment the country wants, and we believe it is
for us in our strength to do what no other Party can do at this
moment, and to say that we at any rate stand for peace."
I know, I am as confident as I can be of anything, that that will be
the feeling of all those who sit behind me, and that they will accept
the Amendment which I have put down in the spirit in which I have
moved it. And I have equal confidence in my fellow-countrymen
throughout the whole of Great Britain.
Although I know that there are those who work for different ends from
most of us in this House, yet there are many in all ranks and all
parties who will re-echo my prayer:
"_Give peace in our time, O Lord._"
INDUSTRY AND PSYCHOLOGY
AT THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF INDUSTRIAL
PSYCHOLOGY
12_th November_, 1925
We are met to-night to celebrate the invasion of the realm of
industry by psychology. We have all of us been familiar for many
years past with the study that economists have made of industry and
the study that moralists have made of the development of the
personality of the individual; but the systematic study of industrial
society by psychologists is a matter, as I understand, of the last
three or four years. Certainly it is something quite new since I had
the pleasure of being in business.
Within the present century there has been a drastic overhauling of a
great many of the assumptions with which some of us were familiar in
our youth, whether the assumptions were those of the economists, the
moralists, or of the psychologists. Psychology has been applied not
only to the handling of the individual, but to individuals in groups,
or in the mass, in association. The results of this change in the
line of investigation are now just beginning to penetrate our
economic thinking. The Institute, to celebrate which we are here
to-night, is a striking example of this change, and it has had from
its start the support of two men whom I am proud to think I may call
my friends--Lord Balfour and Lord Haldane. It has also enlisted the
support of employers and employed.