I look on the excellent feeling which happily prevails between the
employers and the workmen in our great industry as another of the most
important elements of its future prosperity. It confers honor on all
concerned that by our Boards of Conciliation and Arbitration, ruinous
strikes, and even momentary suspensions of labor, are avoided; and
still more that masters like our esteemed Treasurer, Mr. David Dale,
should deserve, and that large bodies of workmen should have the
manliness and discernment to bestow on him, the confidence implied in
choosing him so frequently as an arbitrator. I believe that similar
friendly relations exist in some, at any rate, of the other great
centers of the iron and steel industries, and that although our
methods may not be adapted to the habits of all, there is no country
in which some way does not exist, or may not be found, to avoid those
contests which were so fatal to our prosperity in former days. Lastly
I regard as one of the most hopeful signs of the future the increased
estimate of the value of science entertained by our practical men. In
this respect we may claim with pride that the Iron and Steel Institute
has been the pioneer, at any rate, so far as this country is
concerned. But the conviction that the elements of science should be
placed within the reach of those who occupy a humbler position in the
industrial hierarchy than we do who are assembled here is rapidly
spreading among us. The iron manufacturers of Westphalia have been the
first to found an institution in which the intelligent and ambitious
ironworker can qualify himself by study for a higher position, and I
hope when this Institute visits Middlesbrough in the autumn, some
progress will have been made in that locality toward the establishment
of a similar school. Other districts will doubtless follow, and the
result will be, to quote the words of Sir W. Siemens on a late
occasion, that "by the dissemination of science a higher spirit will
take possession of our artisans; that they will work with the object
of obtaining higher results, instead of only discussing questions of
wages." It is on the mutual co-operation in this spirit of all the
workers of every grade in our great craft that we may build the
hope--nay, that we may even cherish the certain expectation--of
placing it on even a higher eminence than that which it has already
attained.
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