THE GREAT INDUSTRIAL OPPORTUNITY
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—Our nation has been through a testing time and has emerged consolidated but chastened. The recent struggle should be a lesson to us all—Government and people, employer and employee. Our national losses will not have been in vain if we have taken these lessons to heart. To my mind these lessons are as follows 1. That a Government with a powerful majority must use the mandate entrusted to it by the electorate to carry out their will.
2. That employers must realize that labour is necessary to capital. That employers should take their employees into their confidence and give them representation on the manage- ment, also a share in the industry and a share in profits. A scheme for payment by results should be introduced.
8. Employees must realize that capital is necessary to labour ; that an industry cannot continue indefinitely to pay *ages where no profits are made ; that the nation has decided overwhelmingly against nationalization of the Coal Industry ; that a workman must give a fair day's work fora fair day's pay- I venture to say that if employers and employees put into practice these commonplaces little more would be heard of strikes or lockouts. Industry would soon recover and pro- sperity would reign over all our countryside and our exports would increase enormously. All that is neeessary to establish these results is for Labour and Capital, employer and employed, to forget the past and get together in a spirit of give and take, and with a mutual feeling of sympathy and good will to insure universal peace and progress.
May I add that I am no visionary but a plain, practical, business man who has been through the mill of industry and who has been an employer of labour for forty years? In con- clusion, may I pay my tribute to the finest workman in the World—given fair treatment—the British working-man ?—I am, Sir, &c.,
Previous page
