CHAPTER VI.

ARBITRATION IN OTHER INDUSTRIES.

HE English working classes have given the most favourable reception to the proposals for courts and boards of

arbitration or conciliation. Wherever

representatives of the working classes have met together, and the subject of arbitration has been brought forward, favourable resolutions have been passed with remarkable unanimity and enthusiasm. On no other subject has there been so hearty a response. Mr. George Odger, to the great value of whose life and influence upon the industrial progress I am glad to bear witness, introduced the subject of arbitration to a large representative meeting that was held at Sheffield in the year

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1866. He said that "With the principles of strikes he had no sympathy, but he looked upon them as a sad necessity-as a two-edged instrument, which was dangerous to use, and which ought to be avoided. Strikes were to the social world what wars were to the political world. They became crimes, unless they were prompted by absolute necessity." This view has steadily been growing among the workmen, who have been taught to look to peaceable and just settlements of the labour questions. None know better than the advocates of arbitration and conciliation, that the success of their efforts is due to the teaching and guidance of men like Mr. Odger, who have preached and prepared the way for peace.

We have come to the conclusion that permanent boards, either of arbitration or conciliation, are not possible unless the operatives are united together in some form of permanently established organization, without which there is no guarantee that the men will abide by the decisions of the board; and that the system has the best chance of success when the employers are also associated

together. In examining the conditions of some other industries, we are naturally led to the consideration of those trades in which there are highly organized associations of employers and employed, and yet no board established,-where there has been arbitration but only in an exceptional and unsystematic way.

In the preceding chapters the reader may have noticed that the industries treated of have been local in character. There are, in fact, two great divisions of human industry. One, the more general, which consists principally of the manufacture of the instruments, machinery, and buildings used in other industries, and where the operatives are necessarily scattered over the country, and not collected into groups. In the other, each trade tends to group itself in certain localities, and, therefore, includes mining operations, as well as the more special and complicated industries, as the textile manufactures, shoemaking, pottery, cutlery, etc. Where the operatives are locally united, the board forms an institution in their midst, working under their eyes, influencing them

in their opinions and actions, itself subject to their criticism and judgment. This is not so with the more general trades, whose work consists in the manufacture of the tools and plant used in the special trades. Steam-engines and engineers are wanted in all trades everywhere. Carpenters, bricklayers, painters, masons, plasterers, moulders, etc., do not admit of local aggregation: they are scattered all over the kingdom. Can the conciliation principle apply to such trades? Is a board practicable among them? The difficulty is more clearly seen when we come to consider how the principle could be applied to large engineering manufacture, or to steel works, like those at Sheffield. It cannot be supposed that a local Sheffield board for steel manufacture could possibly settle wages for a trade union like that of the iron moulders, extending all over England and Wales, and even to Ireland.

The Iron Moulders.

Besides this, the very strength and success of some unions constitute a difficulty of itself. The

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Iron Moulders' Union is a typical case. Their union is extremely strong, stable, and highly organized. For many years their respected leader, Mr. Daniel Guile, has guided them with prudence, energy, and wisdom. The society has been in existence for sixty-six years, and steadily increases. The relations between employers and employed are, on the whole, satisfactory. Strikes occur but seldom. They feel themselves so strong and so united that they do not, as a rule, adopt the system of picketing. If any employer insists upon a mode of work they do not like, they simply leave his employment and find work elsewhere. There is no strike in the sense of an active struggle to prevent other workmen from going in. Their wages do not fluctuate. They fix a minimum, below which they decline to work; but they neither attempt nor have any wish to fix a maximum. If wages were to be reduced below 38s. per week a moulder would simply give the usual notice and leave. Wages have hardly altered at all. The present minimum in London is 38s.; in 1848 it was 36s.; "therefore," say the iron moulders, "what is there for us to