The owners and workers who perform the daily public service
of producing the Manchester Guardian have together worked out a scheme by which comes into being " The Manchester Guardian and Evening News Society." This is a most interesting industrial experiment, and we shall watch its course with great sympathy. It is a trade union, not according to craft but for workers of all kinds who serve the two newspapers. There is no compulsion to join and members need not leave their present craft unions of printers, packers, and so on. They agree to serve the public interest by not interrupting the issue of the papers, and to submit all disputes to discussion and, if necessary, to arbitration. An elaborate and generous pensions scheme is part of the agreement. The Labour Press has received it with stones, and called for a boycott. It objects to a worker becoming interested in his employment rather than being ranged with his " class " against his own and other employers. We should have more sympathy with this view if the admitted altruism in trade unionism were never over- borne as a motive by industrial and political antagonisms, and if unionism took a longer view of the advantages to all of peace in industry. So far as this scheme is a move towards conciliation and peaceful working, and results in men working " with " rather than " for " their employers, it has our hearty approval. The business in which it originates is one in which, if anywhere, traditions must create esprit de corps, and that should give it a hopeful start. • * *
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