STRIKES AND CONFERENCES.
WE have hitherto said nothing about the shipbuilding strike. In trade disputes there are ordinarily quite enough expressions of amateur opinion. Such criticism is necessarily based on imperfect information, and is often the obvious outcome of a priori convictions. All of us, perhaps, approach these questions with a pre- disposition in favour of either the employers or of the workmen, and this is a bad preparation for the formation of an impartial conclusion. The dispute in the shipbuilding trade has now, however, taken a form which excludes any decision on its merits. It has become a simple fight about wages. Stripped of the particular figures in which it is stated, the issue comes to this,—Does the state of trade allow the payment of the wages asked by the men without unduly trenching upon the profits of the masters ? The answer to this question can only be discovered by experi- ment. A strike about wages is an ordeal by battle in which the right is on the side of the conqueror. If the men win, it is evident that the employers have pitched their estimates of legitimate profits too high. They began by pleading inability to pay better wages without fore- going the return which alone makes it worth while to keep their capital in their business. They end by proving that they can pay better wages if they are put to it, and yet make a profit which is worth having. In that case, it is plain either that they have wanted to get better interest on their capital than the position of the trade warranted, or that they have underrated the resources and endurance of the workmen. There is not, indeed, any moral standard in the matter of profits. We cannot say beforehand when employers ought to be satis- fied with 5 per cent. on their capital, and when they may legitimately insist on 15 per cent. But our sympathy in these matters is not evoked by moral considerations only. We may fairly wish to see the largest possible share of the profits allotted to workmen, and the smallest possible share to the masters. The community will be happier in proportion as the profits are distributed. In the scale of public benefits good wages come before high interest. If, on the other hand, the employers win, the men will incur the same kind of blame. They have the same right to put a price on their labour as a manufacturer has to put a price on his goods. But equally with the manufacturer they may be deceived as to what their labour is worth. The prudence of fixing their demand at a particular figure, and striking work rather than submitting to any reduction in it, must be determined by the balance of several con- siderations. The simple wish to have a little more in their pockets at the end of the week, though perfectly natural and perfectly legitimate, is not sufficient to justify a strike. For that purpose there must be a reasonable belief that the employers can, and if pressed will, give the advance asked ; that they can do this without unduly weighting themselves in the race with foreign producers; and that the reserve fund at the disposal of the men is large enough to maintain them until there has been time to ascertain which of the parties to the quarrel has taken the most accurate view of the facts. This is a question which only the event can decide. Lord James has been less fortunate than Lord Rosebery in bringing masters and men into line. Evidently matters had not got to the point at which a conference is bound to be•successful. That point is not really reached until the dispute is practically over, and all that remains to be done is to announce the settlement in the way which will best save the pride of the combatants. It sometimes happens that employers are willing to go beyond their original offer, that workmen are willing to take less than their original demand, and that the only obstacle to peace is the unwillingness of each to make the first move. This is the psychological moment for a conference with some eminent politician in the chair. In the case of the coal strike this psychological moment had been reached ; in the case of the shipbuilding strike it had not. From this point of view the failure of the Conference is not altogether to be regretted. If such expedients are to have any permanent function in trade quarrels they must never be resorted to when the indispensable conditions are absent. Here it had been too hastily assumed that they were present, and the failure that has followed will have a use of its own if it makes the proposers of conferences more cautious in the future. There are, it must be remembered, three varieties of negotiatiou between employers and workmen the distinctions between which are often lost sight of. There is the conference which, as in that which has just come to nothing, simply prepares terms to be submitted to the parties. There is the conference which brings together the accredited representatives of the parties and arms them with powers to bind those for whom they severally speak. And there is the conference at which the accredited repre- sentatives of the parties submit their respective conten- tions to an arbitrator, who decides between them. The dif- ference between the second and the third of these varieties probably appears greater than it is. We suspect that an arbitrator and a really free conference of picked masters and picked men would ordinarily arrive at pretty much the same conclusions. But between the first and the third variety the difference is greater than it seems. A confeience the results of which have to be submitted to the body of workmen, is only useful when the workmen are known to be already prepared to accept the masters' offer. A conference in which the delegates are armed with full powers to come to a settlement is able to go minutely into the questions in dispute. Consequently its members may be of a different mind at the end of the discussion from that in which they were at the beginning. They may have had new evidence submitted to them, and in view of this their convictions may have undergone a real change. At any stage therefore of a trade quarrel a conference of this kind would be useful, and the failure of one would be no argument against the summoning of another. New proof or new reasoning upon old proofs might always be pre- sented, and there would always be a probability that they might convince those to whom they were addressed. A conference of this sort has two conspicuous advantages over an arbitration. The persons with whom the decision lies enjoy between them the confidence of all the parties to the dispute, whereas an arbitrator is probably accept- able at most to one party, and more or less grudgingly acquiesced in by the other. And then a representative conference is not bound to come to a decision. It may break up again and again, only to reassemble again and again. An arbitration, on the other hand, must end in an award, and if this award is repudiated, or only accepted for form's sake, with the full intention of giving as little effect to it as possible, the whole transaction will have done more harm than good.
We greatly regret, therefore, the discredit into which representative conferences seem to have fallen among the members of Trade-Unions. There was a time when the disposition of the workmen to distrust their leaders was regarded as a healthy reaction against trade despotism. The rank-and-file of the Unions, it was said, will no longer be dragged into strikes merely to please the pro- fessional agitators whom they have hitherto been foolish enough to pay and follow. We never shared this sanguine view of the change, and the event, we think, has shown that our scepticism was well founded. The leaders of the workmen are not always wise, but at least they are wiser than their followers. Their decisions may be biassed and passionate, but at all events they have some relation to the evidence submitted. The decisions of the men whom they nominally lead have no relation to anything save their own sentiments. They hear that trade is im- proving, they see that their employers are well-to-do, they feel that a small addition to their weekly wage would make a disproportionate difference in their comfort, they know that they have a reserve fund which they can only
handle when they are on strike. They have nothing to Bet against these arguments, because employers will not show their balance-sheets to a mob, or make them acquainted with data which, if published, would be so many weapons in the hands of their rivals. If strikes are to be brought to an end by argument and conciliation, instead of by the exhaustion of one or the other com- batant, conferences which merely prepare offers to be sub- mitted to a general ballot must give place to conferences organised on a more rational basis than that iu which Lord James has just been playing a distinguished, but we fear useless, part.
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