Part 10

Well, then, we may, whilst not overlooking other helpful activities of a large number of people in this country, seek this unity among three main divisions of our people, viz. (_a_) in industries, (_b_) in agriculture, and (_c_) in businesses. Given unity of interest and oneness of purpose and aim in those three broad divisions of the nation, the rest must be attracted and brought into harmony by mere force of example, if nothing else, with the unity which might be secured in the three broad divisions to which I have referred. One of the hopeful things, the significant things, recently uttered in other quarters from which I am going to quote, is clearly seeking this tendency to unity instead of the different interests and classes being driven by the waste and folly of the disuniting lines upon which so far we have persisted. I observe that only a few days ago Lord Selborne, who is one of our principal mouthpieces on agricultural matters, presided at a new body called into existence within the past few weeks and to be known as the National Agricultural Council. Now, that is not a body which will consist of landowners, or of farmers, or of farm workers; it is a body to consist of all three. The landowners, the farmers, and the agricultural workers have come to recognise that they all have something in common touching agriculture, touching the trade or industry in which they are brought into close touch day by day. I know as a matter of fact that only a very few years ago the Farmers' Union would not tolerate the idea of the farm workers having a union, and the land workers looked with real dread upon the farmers having a union, and now all three have come to the stage when they agree to join in one Council, and, though it was admitted that the interests of those three classes were primarily in conflict, it was recognised that by holding meetings, by the representatives of all these quite distinct interests frequently coming together, much good might be done. For what? As they say, for agriculture. So, though none of them will forfeit any rightful interest anyone of them may have in the pursuit of a special claim, they will all recognise a higher sense of duty, and feel there is an obligation upon them to make agriculture in this country a greater thing not only for themselves as the three partners, but for the mass of the community at large. And if it is necessary to do that in the farmers' interest or the landowners' interest, it was at least as necessary to do it in the interest of the agricultural worker, and I put his claim first, not because he is the sole contributor to any yield that may come from the land, but because he is the most numerous body, and numbers in this as in other respects may well be the determining factor; and because if he withholds his labour there will be none of the fruit of the soil for which we look year after year. I follow up this statement by an authoritative one from another quarter. Lord Lee, who as we know was the Director of the Food Production Department at the Board of Agriculture, spoke some time ago on this aspect of the case, and said: "Take the agricultural labourer for example. Does anyone suppose, or suggest, that he should return from the trenches--where he has distinguished himself in a way unsurpassed by any other class in the community--to the old miserable conditions under which, in most parts of the country, he was under-paid, wretchedly housed, and denied almost any pleasure in life, except such as the public house could offer him? Those conditions were a disgrace to the country, and I shall never be content until they are swept away for ever. I do not say this only in the interest of the man himself; it is necessary these conditions should go, in the best interests not merely of the labourer but of the farmer and of agriculture." So it may be that unity and oneness of purpose and of action will be driven upon us as one of the bye-products of war conditions. For your simple plain agricultural worker will come back feeling that as he has fought for the liberties of his country he will be entitled to enjoy a little more of it than ever before, that if the land is to be freed from designs of the tyrant abroad it must be freed also from any wrong at home, and that he must have a larger share in the fruits of his labour than he has enjoyed before. My own view is that you will not on that account make the farm worker a less efficient harvestman, but you will make him a happier father, you will be making him a more contented citizen, and may make him a more profitable worker than he has ever been.

Various remedies have been tried or thought of to give effect to what are our common aspirations. One I have seen referred to frequently is one I would like to see always avoided. It is the remedy of placing before workmen as a necessity a greatly increased output from their manual labour in the future; not that I am opposed to an increased output, but I am not going to demand it as part of the bargain which should itself be arranged and carried out, even if it did not necessarily secure for us any greater sum total of wealth than we now enjoy; for poor as we may have accounted ourselves we have seen in the past few years how vastly we can spend and lend in support of any high purpose to which the country may devote itself. Poverty can never again be claimed by the nation as a whole whenever there is a proper and reasonable demand for any social change or reform which may be necessary and proper. Men are asking for a greater yield, for a greater output, for building up our wealth higher than ever before, so as to repair the ravages of the war, if for no other purpose. With all those objects I agree, but we must not make them as terms to the worker in exchange for those conditions of unity which we are asking our workers to arrange with us. Greater output, increased efficiency, a bigger and better return of wealth from industrial and agricultural energy, can well come out of a better working system, a better rearrangement of combined effort, a more extensive use of machinery, a more satisfactory sub-division of labour, a wider employment of the personal experience and technical skill of our industrial classes, a higher state of administrative efficiency and management in the workshops, the creation of a better and more humane atmosphere in the workshops. Out of all of these things a greater yield of wealth could be produced, and it is along those lines we must go in order not merely to convert but to convince the workman that he is not being used as a mere tool for some ulterior end for the benefit of some smaller class in the country. It has been said by some that Trade Union restrictions and limitations must go. I candidly admit there have been Trade Union regulations and conditions which perhaps have stood in the way of some increased output, but I am not here to apologise for Trade Union rules. Every class has its regulations and rules. The more powerful and the more wealthy the class the more rigid and stringent those rules have been. However, the class which was most in need of regulations and rules, the working class, was the first to set the example of setting them aside as a general war measure when the country called upon the workers to take action of that kind during 1915. We must, therefore, keep in mind the fact that workmen are naturally suspicious. That suspicion is the growth of the workshop system, into which I have not now the time to go, and we must avoid causing the workman to suspect that our unity, the unity we are seeking among classes, is a mere device for getting him to work harder and produce greater wealth and perhaps labour even longer hours than ever.

The first great step towards this unity is to secure the good will of the Trade Unions. Having secured that, the next thing is to proceed upon lines which will bring at once home to the individual workman in the workshop some sense of responsibility with regard to the response which he must make to the appeal which we put before him. In short, better relations must precede any first step that could effectively be taken to secure this greater unity, and better relations are impossible in industry until we have given the individual workman a greater sense of responsibility of what he is in the workshop for. Let me briefly outline how that might be secured. It was put, I think, quite eloquently if simply in an address to the Trade Union Congress a short time ago by the President of the Congress, who said that the workman wanted a voice in the daily management of the employment in which he spends his working life, in the atmosphere and in the conditions under which he has to work, in the hours of beginning and ending work, in the conditions of remuneration, and even in the manners and practices of the foremen with whom he had to be in contact. "In all these matters," said the President, "workmen have a right to a voice--even to an equal voice--with the management itself." I know that is a big, and to some an extravagant claim to make, but to set it aside or ignore it is to provoke and invite further trouble. Industry can no longer be run for the profit which it produces, or even because of the wealth which collective energy can make. That, indeed, was the mistake out of which, as I said at the beginning, this disunion, and this suspicion, and this selfishness, have grown. We have had greatly to modify our doctrines of political economy during the course of the war, and all the things which many teachers told us never could be done have come as natural to us under war conditions which we could not resist, and of which we were the creatures. Where now is the law of supply and demand? Indeed, if the law of supply and demand were operating at this moment, there are few workmen in the country who would not be receiving many, many pounds more a week than they are. The workman is not paid to-day according to the demand for his labour. A very much higher obligation decides for him what his remuneration is to be. I have in mind, of course, the fact that a considerable number of workers, who are employed upon munition services and so on, are enjoying very high wages, but that is not at all true of the masses of the industrial population, and we ought not to be deceived by these rare instances which are quoted of men coming out of the workshop with _£_20 or _£_30. Speaking of the industrial population in the main, what was the outstanding economic doctrine?--the doctrine that the demand for labour and the volume for supplying that demand determined the remuneration. That doctrine has had to go by the board like so many other things that could not exist under war pressure.

Then, how are we to give effect to this general workshop aspiration for 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.