must be moulded by these large facts. Upon these, as a foundation, the employers must seek to reconstitute their authority. Too many of them have shut their eyes and refused to see. Some have actually thought that they could explain such facts by crediting them to the efforts of "mischievous agitators." No man could have caused the minute system of employment. No man could have created an organization like that of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers. They are the product of vast forces acting through a long period of time; a product which man may indeed learn to modify and regulate, but which he cannot create or destroy. The explanation of such stupendous facts by the work of agitators, is exactly similar to the primitive belief of savages, who attribute the occurrence of eclipses and the appearance of comets to the manipulations of a juggler or a sorcerer. Happily the most enlightened and generous employers have not been deceived by such notions, but have clearly discerned the character of the industrial movement. An advance is being made now by some of the employers towards

the working classes which deserves the utmost praise, which warrants the greatest hope in the future, and without which all schemes of arbitration or of conciliation would be of little good.

CHAPTER II.

ARBITRATION.

RBITRATION is not the same as conciliation, but may be used when conciliation has failed, or where there has

been no attempt at conciliation. Arbitration is "after the fact," and implies that a cause of difference and a dispute have arisen. By arbitration this may be settled, a compromise effected, and war averted; and that whether the dispute relates to past arrangements, as to what are the terms of an existing contract, the just application of those terms to a new state of things, or whether the difficulty is to agree upon future prices or conditions of labour. Desirable as this obviously is,

conciliation aims at something higher, at doing before the fact that which arbitration accomplishes after. It seeks to prevent and remove the causes of dispute before they arise, to adjust differences and claims before they become disputes. Arbitration is limited to the larger and more general questions of industry, those of wages or prices, or those concerning a whole trade. A board of conciliation deals with matters that could not be arbitrated upon; promoting the growth of beneficial customs; interfering in the smaller details of industrial life; modifying or removing some of the worst evils incidental to modern industry, such, for example, as the truck system, or the wrongs which workmen suffer at the hands of middlemen and overseers. It will be seen in another chapter that the very difficulties for which arbitration is a remedy are best got rid of by the simplest kind of conciliation in the earliest stages of the difficulty. There may be arbitration without conciliation, but the converse is not true; at least, there cannot be systematic conciliation without some form of arbitration in the background, to be used

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as a last resort, instead of a strike or lock-out. In some boards there is an arbitration rule, by which, if any such dispute does arise which cannot be settled otherwise, an independent arbitrator shall be appointed. In other systems there is a standing referee, whose decision is final. In others the chairman of the board has a casting vote. A conciliation board has standing committees, regular times of meeting, and is in fact a machinery for accommodating the conflicting interests of employers and employed.

Conciliation has unquestionably sprung from arbitration. The first established system of arbitration was seen in France at the beginning of this century, and was due to the general impulse given by the French Revolution and to the destruction of class distinctions. Certain legal tribunals were created by law, called the "conseils des prud'hommes." They were composed of employers and employed, and were authorised to determine disputes that might arise between capital and labour; but they had no jurisdiction which enabled them to settle disputes as to future wages or prices,