THE RELATIONS OF WORKMEN AND EMPLOYERS. [To THE EDITOR OF
THE " SPECTATOR."] SIR,—Much is being talked and written just now about " the need of a better understanding between workmen and their employers," &c., and it is all very right and necessary, no doubt, but to a more or less uninformed person like myself it seems we are going about the process in a very roundabout way. It is an excellent plan to hold public meetings to discuss the matter and listen to many clever and well-thought-out speeches, couched in admirable language and voicing real truths and real remedies, but—and here is the point of my argument—are those speeches listened to by sufficiently large numbers of either workmen or their employers to make them have the real results which they merit? My idea is that they emphatically are not. Look round the average audience at one of these sort of gather- ings, and what sort of people do you see? Certainly not a majority of the two classes I have named! Many members of the ordinary audience are the kind of people who really enjoy meetings, almost regardless of the subject to be discussed, others take a quite genuine interest in the objects of the gather- ing, but are totally powerless to turn to any practical effect the admirable suggestions they may hear. Others may be there for the sole and extremely annoying purpose of ventilating pet grievances of their own (in this connexion it is really remark- able to note the persistent way in which Ireland gets dragged perseveringly into the unofficial agenda of almost every single public meeting in London to-day!), matters totally extraneous to the questions at issue, and merely creating an irritating interlude and hampering progress.
Letters and articles on such subjects in the Press, too, while being thoroughly laudable in their aims, also seem to me to miss their mark a little, owing to the unfortunate fact that they are rarely read by both sides, as it is an undoubted—and quite natural—fact that only a minority of the reading public try to see both points of view on matters in which they take a real interest. My humble suggestion in order to remedy this state of affairs is simply this :Let the meetings—instead of being held in public halls, to which the workmen rarely find their way—be held in the big factories all over the country where it has become necessary to alter the hours or wages in order to fit in with present conditions, and let the head of the firm himself do the speech-making, and in a few plain words tell his men the truth about the industrial situation and exactly how they—as an industrial concern—are affected by it. Encourage the workers themselves to make suggestions for the general good, go into figures frankly and clearly, discuss costs, markets, &c., with the men, and surely a better mutual under- standing will be the result. Such a method would -go a long way to restore that genuine confidence between masters and men which is the most potent factor in keeping real industrial
Previous page
