Industrial Unrest : a Way Out. By B. Seebohm Rowntree.
(Longmans. ls. net.)—As a keen student of economic conditions and as a good employer Mr. Rowntree is fairly entitled to propose a cure for industrial unrest. He maintains that we shall not have peace until the workman is assured of fair wages, reasonable hours, " reasonable economic security during the whole working life and in old age," " a reasonable share in determining the con- ditions of work," and " an interest in the prosperity " of his industry. He would attain economic security by unemploy- ment insurance in each trade—the State and the workman 'bearing half the cost and the employer the other half, so that the reserve of workpcople who are occasionally out of employment may have a subsistence wage, varying from half to three-quarters of their average earnings. His own firm, he says, makes up the State unemployment grant to this amount. He outlines the method which his firm has adopted for " giving an increasing share of responsibility to the workers," subject `to the veto of the directors and of the trade union, who seldom exercise it. Finally, he states the conditions on which profit-sharing may Succeed, the main condition being that labour's share should be fixed and inalienable. The pamphlet, temperate and lucid, is well worth reading.
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