WAR AND INDUSTRY.
911-1REE years ago the war, breaking in suddenly upon our
domestic quarrels, saved us from great social and industrial perils. -We were within sight of civil war in the military sense in Ireland, and of civil war in the industrial sense in England and Scotland. If peace were to return as suddenly as it left us, and we had not made good all our pre- parations for demobilizing the Army and for establishing system which would secure harmony in the relations between Capital and Labour, we should be at once confronted with the grave danger of industrial chaos, almost of revolution. We should have lost the patriotic impulse towards imity, which is felt as strongly in the working classes as in those which are supposed to wear black coats, and we should not have gained anything equally potent to put in its place. But since peace is not at all likely to come upon us without ample " warning," we have still time to examine the forces of unrest which, even under the pressure of war necessities, continue to smoulder beneath the industrial surface and here and there to break through in actual strife.
War has taught to industry, to those who employ labour and those who supply it, lessons of incalculable value. It has taught, first, .that our capacity of production as an industrial nation is almost without limit. Our peace system of intensely jealous individualism on the part of employers, and of intensely suspicious restrictions on the part of Trade Unionists, has given place to the national organization of production, which, though still far from perfect, has shown what can be done by modern brains and modern machines when they are given a-fair run. Prices of material will continue high after the war—at least for a considerable time—and wages must continue high. Yet our latent productive capacity has been revealed to be so great that we shall be able to supply all our people with far more of the necessaries and comforts of life—at prices lower comparatively than they were before the war—if • employers and employed will but unite for a common effort. It is a big " if," upon which -everything turns ; without a unity of effort brought about by a system of enlightened mutual self-interest, we shall drift back to restricted costly • output, to constant friction, and to a future almost swept clear of hope for the wellbeing of our people. To secure this sentiment of enlightened national self-interest employers must learn that workmen or workwomen will not put forth their -best efforts unless they are sure of enjoying a liberal share in the value of their increased output ; workmen
• and workwomen must learn that employers cannot lay down new and -expensive plant, and remorselessly scrap old and wasteful plant, unless they -are sure that their machinery will be worked to its full capacity. Content on the part of employers and of workpeople cannot be secured unless each learns to regard the other as a partner in production.
Towards this end—the begetting and birth of this sentiment. of enlightened self-interest upon which the future of British. industry depends—the best brains and hearts of Capital and Labour are striving to -day. The Government by becoming the-chief controller of production in the country are materiallyhelping with their experience and advice. We have rarely seen pronouncements which inspired us with greater 'hope for the future than Dr. Addison's recent speech on munition production, and the Reconstruction Comn3ittec's proposed scheme of Industrial Councils extending from the factory to the central, or the national, body at the heart of each organised industry. Dr. Addison showed how the methods of war had expanded ahnoat miraculously our pro- Auction of munitions, and laid down two propositions which seem to us to contain the whole secret of our future industrial prosperity. " Nothing," said he, " in the relations between Capital and. Labour gives rise more to- dfflieulty and distrust than two customs which are dependent upon ono-another. The first is the cutting of rates of pay on piece-work so as to limit the rise of earnings when improved methods -of manufacture, -leading to a great output, are introduced. It is not the practice of the best employers, but it is adopted by many. This practice—or the fear of it—has inevitably led to the second and retaliatory practice of the restriction of output. The influence of these two practices in our industrial life is thoroughly poisonous. We must establish a system whereby both parties have a direct interest in the introduction of improved methods." In other words, British employers and workmen must learn, what their American cousins have long since discovered, that the more a man produces the more he-is "worth," and the more a machine produces the more it earns. 'If an American workman earns so much that he conies down to his labours in a Ford car wearing a far coat, his employer regards this brilliant spectacle as the finest advertisement of the soundness of his pay methods and the best proof that his machinery is earning its full keep. An average British employer with this evidence of working- class wealth before him would instantly seek—the foolish man !—to cut down the piece-work rates which made possible such healthy prosperity. The Ford car and the furs would go and restrictions on output would come. The workman would suffer, the employer would suffer, and the country— whose wealth is not in money but in goods—would also suffer. It would have been of little use to tell employers and• work- people how foolish they had been to cut one another's throats unless a way had been at the same time indicated of putting their razors to a more useful purpose. Two days after Dr. Addison had indicated the two lessons which employers and workmen must learn in unison, the Reconstruction Com- mittee set forth its proposed system of Industrial Councils representative of employers and employed in which. each may learn from and teach to the other how industrial peace and mutual prosperity may be attained. Dr. Addison's principles, if adopted in practice, with the Councils to see that both sides loyally carried them out, would give us not only harmony between Capital and Labour, but a rate of national production not to be surpassed by any country, except possibly the United States. And production is everything. Wages are paid and profits are earned out of the value of the goods produced. The more goods produced per man or per woman, the higher wagon can rise and the greater can be the turnover out of which profits are paid. There is no other wealth than goods—in the widest sense—and the products of the soil. All the rest, what we call for'convenience money, is a matter-of figures in books and on scraps of paper. We cannot make up for the destruction of war, and for the deferment of production during these melancholy years, except by getting on with the production of necessaries and comforts the moment that the war ends. For a long time there will be no possible " glut " to fear. The world is years -behind in the manufacture of the goods which it really wants to use and enjoy, and one may anticipate that the demand for labour during the period of reconstruction will be as eager as it is now. And afterwards, when we get down to a new normal consumption, if employers and em- ployed have learned to work hand in hand instead of with fist against fist, if the wages earned are high and the costs of goods low as the result of, greatly increased output, theft, should be -a demand much larger than we knew ig the days before the war. The world can never supply the world with as much as it desires to consume ; its appetite is limited only by its purse. If we all produce more; ve -shall have more to exchange for' the productions of others in our own country or overseas. Our modern power of production—even at Lord Leverhulme'a ideal of a six-hours day—is.so tremendous if restraints -upon its capacity are abandoned, and our desire for goods to consume so limitless, 'that recovery
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