bringing the workman into closer unity with the conditions which
determine that part of his life which is the bread-winning part, for
which he has to turn out in the morning early and often return home late
in the evening? There was established some time ago what can be
described as a quite responsible committee to report upon how better
relations not only between employers and employed through their
associations, but in regard to employers and employed in the workshops,
might be established. That committee issued the report commonly known to
us now as the Whitley Report, of which I am quite sure more will be
heard in a few years. The men who had to frame that report were drawn
from the two extremes of the employers and trade unions. We had men with
very advanced views, like Mr Smillie, on the one hand, and we had quite
powerful employers of labour, like Sir Gilbert Claughton and Sir William
Carter, on the other. I had the privilege of sitting on that committee,
and for some months we laboured to frame some definite terms which might
be accepted by those who were concerned in our recommendations. I very
often hear the suggestion that people will have little of it because it
is not ideal, not grand or great enough, but we have to come down to the
earth upon these matters, and we have to recommend only what we feel is
likely to be accepted lest our labour should be wasted. We must avoid,
therefore, throwing our aims too high, and we must suggest only what
practical business men and workmen are likely seriously to consider.
Having decided to reach that conclusion, and feeling the sense of
responsibility which, opposed as so many of us were to each other, drove
us to reach a conclusion, we expressed ourselves in these terms: "We are
convinced that a permanent improvement in the relations between
employers and employed must be founded upon something other than a cash
basis. What is wanted is that the workpeople should have a greater
opportunity of participating in the discussion upon an adjustment of
those parts of industry by which they are most affected. For securing
improvement in the relations between employers and employed, it is
essential that any proposals put forward should offer to workpeople the
means of attaining improved conditions of employment and a higher
standard of comfort generally, and involve the enlistment of their
active and continuous co-operation in the promotion of industry."
Previously, the view was that the workman had nothing whatever to do
with this phase of the management of business, and that is a phrase
still very much used. We make no claim in this report that workmen
should have the right to interfere in the higher realms of business
management, in, say, finance, in the general higher details of
organisation, in the extension of works, in all those more important and
urgent matters which must come before the board of managers or the
manager himself. These are things which belong properly and exclusively
to those who have the responsibility of managing our great industries,
but in all the other things affecting the conditions of the workman, the
manner in which he is to be treated, hours, wages, conditions of
employment, relations between section and section, and working division
and working division, all those things which were regarded previously
as the private monopoly of the foreman or manager must in future become
the common concern of the workmen collectively, and they must have some
voice in how these things are to be settled. The country and its
industries, of course, may refuse to hear that voice, but really we have
to choose between reconciling workmen to a given system of industry or
finding workmen in perpetual revolt against their conditions. And it
will pay the country to concede a great deal, not only for peace in the
workshop but for a higher standard of peace generally in the whole
community. The appeal that must be made to the workman must be followed
up by asking him to receive it in a very different spirit from the
spirit sometimes shewn in certain workshops. I am not here by any means
to pour praise altogether upon the working classes, and I am conscious
of the mistakes and wrongs which have sometimes been done in their
names, and I am therefore anxious that the spirit of the workshop should
be so tempered and altered as to be fit to receive and make the best use
of the approaches which are to be made to it to participate in workshop
management upon the lines which I have indicated.
So this appeal which has been made by the Whitley committee, and which
has been followed up by some other departments of government, is put as
an appeal to the common-sense and reason of the men in the workshop, and
does not rest upon any of the many agencies which have been employed
previously in the pursuit of definite trade union ends. This spirit can
be fostered only when the masses of workmen are reached by the
consciousness that they themselves are being called upon to share in
the undertakings of which they are so important a part. The importance
of workmen has been revealed in a most startling way during the period
of the war, and the war has shewn in many trades that recurring
differences between capital and labour can be adjusted without strikes
and without lock-outs if methods are provided in the workshop which are
acceptable to both sides, and are made to operate fairly and
satisfactorily between the different interests. Think how important the
workman has become because of the war. Consider how much the workman is
now pressed and drawn into all manner of services which previously he
could either remain in or leave at his will. The war has made such a
demand upon national industrial energy that there is no service now for
which there is not a demand. Indeed, you have seen the effect in that
services in the workshop include men who previously would have been
ashamed to have had it known that they had ever soiled their hands at
any toil at all, but who have been glad to get a place in the workshop
because it was work of national importance. War experience has shewn us
how high manual service stands in the grades of service which can be
rendered for community interest. This new spirit does not appeal to
force as a means of settling differences, nor to compulsory arbitration,
nor to the authority of the State, nor to the power of organisation on
either side. It is an appeal to reason, an approach to both sides to act
in association on lines which will give freedom, self-respect, and
security to both sides, whilst enabling each of them to submit to the
other what it feels is best for the joint advancement of the trade and
those engaged in it. In short, I would like to see inside the gates of
every workshop the cultivation of the same spirit in British industry
as has been hinted at already as the first essential for the future
development of agriculture in England. Those processes of calling in the
individual workman through committees, to which I will refer briefly in
a moment, are not intended to take the place of the great organisations.
They are to be supplementary to the Trade Unions, and are not intended
to supplant them.
Trades Union leadership has changed hands to a great extent during the
past year or two, and the virtual leaders of the men are now men
themselves employed at the bench and in the mine. They are exercising
very great authority and influence over masses of their fellow workmen,
and often the authority, and decisions, and advice of executives and
leaders are set aside and the advice of the men employed in the
workshop, given to their fellow workmen as mates, is followed. So with
this change, due to conditions into which we have not time to go, there
must be recognised the need for applying new remedies in considering
this question of improving the relations between employer and employed.
It will not do now merely to have discussions between association and
association. We might improve upon that and supplement it as I have said
by having discussions direct in the workshop with the workmen
themselves, who would be brought into touch at once with persons who
were responsible for what action must be taken. So leadership having
been to some extent transferred from the Trade Union to the workshop,
the workman must be followed there and must be shewn how essential it is
to recruit his good will and his aid in improving workshop conditions,
not for the betterment of the management, but as much, if not more, for
his own betterment as a workman in the shop. This may not touch certain
industries in the country that are non-organised. Some of those trades,
much to our shame, in former years were known as sweated industries, but
even there it is found that the workers, men and women alike, are coming
gradually into the trades unions, and should they not be in the trades
unions to any great extent they are to be reached by other ways and
means which this committee has developed. It is intended to apply to
them, so as to establish the necessary machinery for better relations,
the personnel of the Trades Boards Acts, those boards which, in the
absence of trades unions, deal with the sweated conditions of thousands
of workers employed in those sweated trades. So I have no fear myself of
the non-organised trades being left altogether out of the range of the
spirit to which I have referred. In addition to the committees there is
to be in every district, it is proposed, a representative council, drawn
from the employers and employed of the particular industry, and some
scores of these councils are now being set up. In addition, there is to
be in relation to every principal industry a national council, and many
of us are now engaged in the creation of those several bodies. The
public may not hear much about them, but they are the foundation upon
which this structure of better relations is to rest, and, so far as we
can spare some small margin of our time for those duties, considerable
headway has been made in establishing these different organisations.
But I attach most importance to the workshop committees, and so I want
to pursue this idea a little further. What are those committees to be?
They would have to be free representative bodies, chosen by the men
themselves. They could be empowered to meet the management, possessed of
a sense of responsibility, to discuss in their own homely way matters
which would have to be settled between them. Indeed, we know from
experience that many of the big trade disputes in this country have
grown out of trifles, out of small nothings comparatively, which could
well have been settled inside the workshop gates by bringing master and
man together, empowered to discuss matters which both understand as
matters of personal experience. The committees when created, in this
atmosphere and spirit to which I refer, would exist not in rebellion
against the trade unions or against the trade union system, or exist as
being in revolt against the management of the works, or the employer of
labour. The committees would be vested with responsibility for
negotiations. They would be able to use the personal knowledge derived
from contact with the questions arising day by day. They would develop a
sense of independence and a sense of just dealing, so that the doctrine
of "a fair day's wage for a fair day's work" should apply not only to
the wages but to the work to be done, a thing which sometimes does not
occur. These committees could check the driving methods of some persons
in authority, and, whilst getting the best from those who are above
them, they could give the best, as I am sure they would provided the
spirit is created, from the workmen in return for the fairer treatment
they would enjoy. These committees could deal not only with manual
service and ordinary work and wage questions; they could develop a
better use of industrial capacity and technical knowledge in matters of
workshop life. But the spirit is everything, and the best desires of
equitable workshop management could find expression through those
committees if they were created. The committees would give a chance to
the many workmen who now talk a great deal about democracy to express
that democracy through the persons of the workmen themselves. I fear
there are many of our friends in the labour movement, as we term it, who
are given freely to talking of democracy without clearly understanding
all that is covered in that term. It is a term which, it is a pleasure
to see, has recently found its way not merely into the phrases of
statesmen, but into the King's speech itself. We are now speaking
commonly of all the sacrifices that are being made, of all the blood and
treasure that is being spilt, in order to have a wholesome democratic
system of world government. Well, we must begin in the workshops, for
you cannot have peace on a large scale the country over, or between
nation and nation, unless you have peace in our places of employment.
They are the starting points and there it is that your contented
millions must first be found. If they are not happy and if they are not
at ease in connexion with their national service, you cannot expect any
of those larger results for which highminded statesmen are seeking the
world over.
Upon two main lines, in my judgment, democracy will require the most
sane guidance and most sagacious advice which its leaders are capable of
giving to it. It will not do for leaders merely to say that the future
of the world must be decided, not by diplomats or thrones or Kaisers,
but by the will of peoples. The will of peoples can find enduring and
beneficial expression only when that will seeks social change by
reasonable and calculated instalments, and not by any violent act of
revolution. Peaceful voters on their way to the ballot boxes and
properly formulated principles will in the end go further than fire and
sword in the internal affairs of a nation. I say this because of the
loose talk we have heard from many labour platforms recently of
revolution and its benefits. Revolution may well be in any country the
beginning and not the end of internal troubles, often expressed in a
more painful and more violent form than ever. We need only look at our
former great partner, Russia, to find full confirmation of all I have
now implied. The red flag marches with the machine gun and the black cap
when a certain stage of physical revolt is reached. The theory of new
methods of life can only find rational application when democracy is
wisely guided in taking slow but sure steps peacefully to turn its
theories into an applied system, wherein the people of a nation and not
merely a section or a class shall find their proper place and security
for service, and find an assured existence under conditions of comfort
for themselves and advantage to the State. Democratic leaders must tell
these things to the people time after time if need be. They must repeat
them so that the masses may understand them, because the tendency in
labour has been to narrow the meaning of democracy. Democracy is not,
and ought not to be, limited to those who now constitute the industrial
population. Democracy is not a sect or a trade union club. Democracy is
wider than the confines of the manual worker. Democracy should strive to
reach the highest level of morality in doctrine and aspiration. It is
not a class formula. It is a great and elevating faith which may be
shared by all who believe in it. Democracy stands for the general
progress of mankind and means the uplifting of men, and the liberation
and unifying of nations. It does not mean the dominion of one class over
another, nor the violent wresting of position or authority by some
dramatic act of physical force, which if used would still leave a nation
in a state of unreconciled and contending factions. Democracy, again, is
a spirit whereby vast social and economic change may be effected through
a medium approaching common consent or at least by the application of
the political power of the people acting through representative
institutions and resting upon ideas which majorities accept and
understand. The spirit which has already accepted vast political changes
can be made to apply to vast economic and industrial changes. This
spirit must be cultivated by the leaders of democracy. They have now
opportunities as great as their responsibilities. The success of
parties, in the old sense of the term, is a trivial thing to the success
of the great ends to be secured. These ends will justify the use of any
constitutional means for dethroning that form of power upon which
privilege and the mere possession of wealth have rested. But democracy
must not be duped by phrases, nor be swayed by any influence which does
not lead to a lasting advance for the nation as a whole. Nor should its
leaders think that fundamental and enduring changes in our social system
can be reached by any short cut to which the great mass of the people
have not been converted. Progress will be faster in the future if
impatience and folly do not retard it.
Having said a little with regard to the position of the poorer people,
let me before I close respectfully address a few words to the richer and
more favoured in the country. Should all rich folk in the country work?
That is a very plain and I dare say it will be regarded in some places
as quite an impudent question. But really, rich people who have never
had cause in any way to earn their living have always been a danger to
the State, just as they have been the greatest instance of wicked waste
to be found in any country. There is nothing more melancholy, and even
degrading, to a country than the sight of educated people who have
nothing to do. Wealth is the fruit of service and endeavour. Work is the
only medium by which the ravages of the war can be made good. Ignorance
and idleness present a most pitiable spectacle, but the most criminal of
all sights is education and idleness combined. Finally, let me say that
whilst I have addressed myself mainly in terms of appeal to the workers,
I am not unmindful at all of the difficulties of the great employers of
labour and those covered by the phrase "our Captains of Industry." I
know that many of them work very hard under the greatest and most trying
mental pressure, and have duties and trials unknown even to the workmen,
but with those duties and trials come reliefs again unknown to the
workmen--holidays, change, and rest, and the meeting of men of their own
class whose very company is an intellectual joy, so that the worst off
your employer of labour as a human being may be he is far better off
than the average workman. Think of the housing conditions of so many
thousands, hundreds of thousands, of workmen, and how intolerable it
would be for you to live under those conditions, how discontented you
would be, how discontented the rich would be were it their fate to drag
on an existence in some of those places which are commonly described by
the term "houses." Why, the very waiting room of the employer's ordinary
office is a much more cosy and pleasant place than the homes of many of
the most industrious workers of England. I plead that the elements of
the human order should begin to pervade the relations of the workshop,
that the workman should be less of a drudge and more of a human asset
than he has been, that he should be brought into partnership in the
undertaking and in the management; that incidentally he should have a
more secure remuneration and not have to bear the penalties and ordeals
of employment as he has had alone to bear them during times of trade
depression and unemployment in previous years. The human side of the
workshop has, therefore, to be built up, and you cannot hope to build it
up upon any foundation of drudgery such as the workmen in the main have
had to live under, and, as I have said, it will pay the country to
conciliate the men on these terms. It is a high ideal, but it is
attainable. I believe it is attainable because we have seen it in
another sphere of sacrifice where it has already been secured. The war
has brought all classes together. In the trenches, at sea, and in all
theatres of danger, men of all classes are now labouring shoulder to
shoulder. There you have had a sinking of individual interests. There
you have had a common sacrifice, a common endeavour for a common cause.
Surely, as all classes have been able to unite in their sacrifice and in
their resistance of the aggression of a foreign foe, it is, I hope, not
asking too much that when they come back and take their places in
peaceful pursuits again, and become masters, workmen, managers, and
foremen in our enterprises and businesses, when they return from danger
and come back to take their places amongst us,--surely it is not too
much to hope that those who are able to unite abroad will be able to
unite for the ends of peace and joy here at home.
UNITY IN THE EMPIRE
By F. J. CHAMBERLAIN, C.B.E.
The word "unity" in relation to the Empire has a deeper meaning to-day
than it had five years ago. Then it was a watchword, a theme for
Imperial conferences and for speakers at demonstrations. The sanguine
were sure, the pessimists and that great body of Britishers of moderate
views and moderate faith regarded it as one of the things hoped for.
With dramatic suddenness the event clarified the situation, England
awoke at war. There was no time for preliminary councils. The supreme
test of the Empire had been reached. It is no exaggeration to say that
the whole world watched with eagerness for the result. It was in that
moment that the great discovery was made. The British Empire stood fast.
From that day until now, from end to end of the world has been seen an
object lesson of unity that has justified the sanguine, and been an
inspiration to the Allies. That revelation has been more inspiring
because the world is aware that it is in spite of the most sinister and
subtle campaign against it, planned and brilliantly executed by an enemy
under the cloak of friendship. I do not forget the tragic circumstances
of one small nation within the Empire. But Ireland has given more
evidence of her faithfulness to Empire on the fields of France and
Flanders than of her treachery at home, and to-day we have more reason
to count her ours than has the enemy. Examine the position in cold
blood, if you can, and you are still aware of a substantial, solid, and
effective unity running round the Empire, binding it in one as with a
girdle of scarlet and gold.
The war is not responsible for the unity; it has only discovered or
uncovered it. The storm does not establish foundations; it may reveal
them. A century of building has created the structure that the storm has
failed to destroy.
The British Empire is a successful experiment on the lines of the
longed-for League of Nations. The race contains no more diverse elements
than are found within its borders; one-third of the land surface of the
world, and one-fifth of the inhabitants, have been held together in a
living federation and have been kept until this day. Upon our generation
rests the awful and splendid responsibility of proving to a questioning
world that this unity can be made permanent, and of illustrating how a
still larger unity may be achieved.
You will forgive one or two homely pictures of our unity that cannot
fail to strike the imagination. It has been our privilege to meet
thousands of men from the Overseas Dominions. How many times have boys,
whose forefathers emigrated from England or Scotland, who were
themselves born in Australia, or on the Western plains of Canada, said,
"I have been wanting to come _home_ all my life"? These islands are the
"home" of the Empire, and there is no more wonderful word in the
language.
Or think of Botha and Smuts, within the memory almost of the youngest of
us, fighting with all their heart and mind against the Empire, and,
to-day, dominant personalities proclaiming their loyalty, and proving it
in unrivalled service.
Or picture, if you can, young India, pouring out her life-blood with
pride and ready sacrifice, in France, in Egypt, and in Mesopotamia, for
the "British Raj." The most moving scene in the history of the British
Commons was on that evening in 1915, when the princes of India stood
amidst the representatives of the people of the homelands and paid their
homage.
How much such things mean will depend on the vision of those who hear
them; but they have in them the stuff that holds the future.
This ghastly war, not of our choosing, has transferred the seats of
learning for young Britain from their peaceful sites to the battlefield.
If the object of education is the cultivation of the power of thought
and observation, the kindling of imagination, and the extension of
knowledge; then "over there" is a University set in full array, with
ghostly as well as human tutors, a curriculum without precedent, and
such a body of undergraduates as Cambridge or Oxford might covet.