TOPICS OF THE DAY.
INQUIRY BY PUBLIC MEETING.
WE cannot pretend to view the composition of the Labour Commission with anything approaching satisfaction. Instead of being a committee of inquiry, it is a little deliberative assembly, to which the delicate task of examining witnesses, eliciting views, weighing argu- ments, and reporting upon their relative value, is to be entrusted. If the members of the Commission were one and all men trained in the difficult work of collecting and testing evidence, they would find themselves in a grave predicament owing to their numbers. As it is, their pro- ceedings from the very first will be choked by the insur- mountable difficulty of arranging that every Commissioner shall have an equal opportunity of airing his own particular fads. When some eight or ten Judges of the Queen's Bench Division sit together in the Court of Crown Cases Reserved to hear appeals upon points of law in criminal causes, it is understood that the individual occupants of the Bench shall not exercise their privilege of interrupting counsel with questions, or of interpolating remarks. If they were to do so, it is felt that the judicial inquiry could never proceed. It is all very well when one, or even three Judges are sitting, for the Court to save time by talking with counsel informally. With a Bench of nearly a dozen, the result would be the direst confusion and loss of power and efficiency. But if it is necessary in the case of a trial, where the procedure is fixed and well understood, prac- tically to entrust the conduct of the inquiry to one, or at the most to two or three men, what possible chance is there that twenty-seven zealots, for the most part unaccustomed to the work in hand, will be able to keep the wheels of their little parliament unclogged ? Every member of the Labour Commission represents a different point of view, and therefore every witness may have to be examined some fifteen or twenty times. Imagine, too, the difficulty of getting a body of this kind to agree upon a report. We have had experience of minority reports before, no doubt ; but the Labour Commission might easily pro- duce half-a-dozen different series of suggestions. We have already declared our dislike of the system upon which modern Commissions are chosen, and have advo- cated the far more reasonable plan adopted in former times. Instead of a selection from the experts on both sides being seated at the Board, they were all kept to give evidence. The Commission itself formed a jury of hard-headed, sensible men, whose business was not to prove out of the mouths of the witnesses that certain views were correct, but to bring to the test of common- sense and reason the theories offered before them. The Government found, however, that it was impossible to revert to this wiser system, and for this we do not desire to blame them. Had they appointed Lord Hartington, Mr. Henry Fowler, Mr. Gerald Balfour, Sir Frederick Pollock, and Mr. Bryce to hear the capitalists on the one side and the Trade-Unionists, old and new, on the other, they would have got a thoroughly efficient body ; but no doubt the popular clamour against such a scheme would have been overwhelming. But, granted that the Ministry were under compulsion in the matter of making partisan Commissioners, what necessity was there for appointing twenty-seven members to the Board ? They might have adopted the representative system and yet not have sunk the Commission beneath its own weight. For example, they might have put Mr. Burt for the men, Mr. Livesey for the masters, and Lord Hartington as moderator, and left them and their Secretary to deal with the evidence. No doubt we should have had two, if not three reports, but at any rate there would have been some chance of avoiding confusion and inefficiency. But supposing the appointment of only three Commissioners would have seemed too heroic, why should the Govern- ment not have named seven and been content ? Lord Hartington, Lord Derby, Sir John Gorst, Mr. Burt, Mr. Livesey, Mr. Tom Mann, and Mr. Ismay would have drawn up a far more satisfactory report alone than in company with some eighteen other men. It is just possible for a vigilant Chairman to keep three men on each side of him in touch with the inquiry, and to prevent the evidence running to waste. Explanations can be whispered from one to the other, and the general sense of the Commission on any point can be taken in a moment. When, however, such numbers as twenty-seven are reached, the Commission becomes a. public meeting to which the Chairman must make speeches every time he wants to get at the members' opinions, or to persuade them to adopt a particular course. Twenty-seven men cannot nod assent, or be " understood to agree," except when they are almost unanimous, and votes must be taken and resolutions carried. When an inqui- sition is conducted under such circumstances, it is not necessary to be a professional pessimist in order to feel grave doubts of the results that will be arrived at.
If we leave out of sight the two great blots in regard to the composition of the Commission to which we have alluded above—the adoption of the system of repre- senting particular interests, and the great number of members appointed—we are willing enough to admit that the Government has exercised its power of choice wisely and well. Given that it was necessary to choose twenty- seven men representing every view of the labour question, they could not have done better. Lord Harlington is an ideal Chairman. He is open-minded ; he is scrupulously fair ; and, what is even more important, he is universally believed to be fair. Again, he has the quality of making men cohesive. Before the Commission is a fortnight old, he will have inspired its members with a sense of loyalty to himself and to each other,—an invaluable quality for a. corporate body. Lord Derby is, of course, an unexceptionable appointment. He is able to see the strength, of the case against Socialism without being made either angry or con- temptuous towards its advocates, and this power is likely to prove of no little service. Sir Michael Hicks-Beach is put on to represent the Board of Trade, Sir John Gorst is a non-working-man advocate of -State action, while Mr. Mundella, Mr. Fowler, and Mr. Courtney represent various phases of Liberal opinion on the Labour question. In Sir E. Harland, the Belfast shipbuilder ; Mr. Bolton, the Chairman of the Caledonian Railway ; Sir W. Lewis, of the Bute Docks ; Mr. Ismay, of the White Star line ; Mr. Dale, a well-known ironmaster • Mr. Livesey, of the South Metropolitan Gas Company ; Mr. Tunstill, a cotton manu- facturer ; and Mr. Hewlett, of the Wigan Coal and Iron Company, the capitalists find their advocates. The workmen obtain theirs in Mr. Burt, Mr. Abrahams, Mr. Maudslay, Mr. Tom Mann, Mr. Trow, Secretary to the Board of Conciliation of the Iron and Steel Trades, Mr. Henry Tait, and Mr. Austin, the Secretary of the Irish Democratic Labour Federation. Among the " outside " members are one or two excellent appointments. It was a real inspiration on Mr. Smith's part to think of Sir Frederick Pollock. The Commission will find his clear and fine intellect of the greatest possible service in unravelling the tangle of sophistries which is sure to be put before them in one form or another. Again, Sir Frederick's profound knowledge of the principles of the common law will prevent a hundred misapprehensions and blunders.
Laymen witnesses on either side who may feel inclined to talk airily as to what is the law on this or that point, will find the Commission prepared to give their evidence its true value. Sir Frederick Pollock, too, has thought deeply, and as his writings show, not fruitlessly, upon those subjects which lie on the borderlands between law, economics and politics ; and there will be few social problems presented for the consideration of the Commission in regard to which his intellectual experience will not be of value. If we mistake not, it will be found, when the Commission comes to report, that any name could have been spared better than his.
The reference of the Commission runs as follows :—" To inquire into the questions affecting the relations between employer and employed, the combinations of employers and of employed, and the conditions of labour, which have been raised during the recent trade disputes in the United Kingdom. And to report whether legislation can with advantage be directed to the remedy of any evils that may be disclosed, and if so, in what manner." In other words, have the employed any just grievances against the em- ployers, and if so, can they be redressed ? The Commission have evidently no easy task before them. That their deliberations will be useful, if successfully carried through, is matter of course. In view, however, of the size and character of the Commission, we can only repeat that we feel very faint hop-es of any considerable advantage arising from its labours.
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