Employers and operatives in the cotton trade have once again
displayed their good sense in adjusting a dispute over wages by a reasonable compromise. They agreed on Tuesday that wages should be reduced by 4s. Id. in the pound, in two stages-3s. 3d. to be deducted next week and 10d. in the first week of November. No further changes are to be made for at least a year. Thanks to this sensible decision, the 400,000 cotton operatives and their employers will profit by the revival of trade that has just begun, and the whole community will benefit with them. We commend the example of the cotton trade to the engineering trade, which is being ruined by the thoroughly bad tactics and the utter lack of good will that characterize both sides. The engineering trade unions are much to blame for their internecine jealousies and lack of firm and honest leadership. But the Engineering Employers' Federation, with its greater opportunities, is not less responsible for the deadlock. The Federation, if it were wisely directed, would try to• shift the dispute away from abstract propositions about managerial rights and would help the moderate union leaders to devise a practical compromise. Nothing can justify the employers in looking out 300,000 men at such a time as this for the sake of ambiguous phrases.
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