and conciliation is due to the fact that the employers have really accepted the independence of the men—that is, they have accepted the trades unions, which the men rightly regard as the secret of their strength. To pretend that their independence is assured when each workman contracts individually with his employer and their collective wishes and actions are disregarded, is too transparent a fallacy to need discussion. As if men could be made independent when their strength was paralysed, or when they were deprived of habitual association and co-operation in their common purposes. Complete independence involves a recognition by the employers of the trades unions, and this is better done and more permanently assured by a board of conciliation. Whatever difficulties there may be in the application of systematic conciliation to some trades, this much is shown-that where it has been successfully applied, it is not only capable of diminishing the shock of the opposing forces, but apparently of actually reconciling capital and labour.

The conciliation system has been contemptuously

termed a "panacea." The sarcasm brings out the truth. No one, not even the strongest opponent, ventures to use any other language than that of respectful acknowledgment for what has been effected. It is precisely as a panacea that the system works and is most needed. It has to deal with a diseased and abnormal condition of the industrial relations. The system is so elastic, and admits of being so easily modified to fit the differences which the various trades exhibit, that I do not hesitate to say that there is more cogent proof of its being universally applicable to industrial disputes, than there is of any medicine in the pharmacopoeia being universally applicable to the treatment of any bodily disease. that these modern associations, of employers, of workmen, or of both, are permanent institutions. The value of a trade union or of a board of conciliation is as a means to a definite end, not as a solution of the labour difficulty. That solution can only be moral-improved morality on the part of masters and men. The very strength of the conciliation plan consists in its being a rough

But it does not follow

scheme, which directly brings the two in contact, and developes the higher human qualities of each.

Far too much is made of such questions as that of piece-work or day-work. The mere form of remuneration or hiring is a matter of comparatively secondary importance. Crushing and enslaving abuses are incidental to both piece-work and daywork, unless regulated by a high morality, or, at least, by a sense of justice. Even in some of those very trades in which, as for instance, in agriculture, the general introduction of piece-work would insure a great advance in the material welfare of the labourers, there are districts in which piece-work is the instrument of injustice and tyranny. Where this is the case, the substitution of a day system, regulated with justice and kindness, and recognizing the independence of the men, would be a change from bad to good. The trades unions are not, as is often alleged, opposed to piece-work. The majority of them work by the piece. This is the case throughout the textile manufactures. In some industries, as the tailors', the strikes have been for

the purpose of establishing a proper system of prices for piece-work. The strike of the cabinetmakers, which was alleged to be against piece-work, was to maintain the true piece-work system, and prevent the introduction of the lump or sweating system. A great deal of unjust criticism has been poured upon the unions that do resist the introduction or increase of piece-work; although no one has refuted the assertion made by the men, that in certain trades piece-work has given rise to a grinding oppression, embittering and degrading the workman's life. This rests upon the most convincing evidence, and therefore the struggle against piecework in those trades has been a struggle for liberty, quite irrespective of whether piece-work or daywork is the best in theory. Mr. John Burnett, the Secretary to the Amalgamated Engineers, in his letter to the Times on the Erith strike, admitted that, after all, his objections were rather to the abuses than to the principle of piece-work. The subject has been inadequately discussed, not having been treated by any one who had taken the trouble to investigate the large facts of social and industrial

organization on which it depends. Very few of those who did write upon it fully recognized the limits within which piece-work is desirable or practicable. In very many industries piece-work is impossible, from the nature of the work, or because there is no means of measuring the piece, or because the quality of the work and the time required are uncertain and variable. Nor must we forget that one of the most serious evils of modern industrialism is the excessive subdivision of labour, which the piece-work system apparently stimulates and fails to regulate.

The gradual rise and development of the working classes is then the great social fact underlying the whole industrial question. Individually and collectively, the workmen have assumed a new position. The old relationship of masters and men is shattered. Everywhere short contracts, even minute contracts, are superseding the longer periods of hiring. Short service is becoming the rule among domestic servants. The yearly hirings of agricultural labourers have been rudely shaken. It cannot be doubted that the future of the working classes