ON PEACE IN INDUSTRY

PEACE IN INDUSTRY. I

AT BIRMINGHAM

5th March, 1925

However hardened a public speaker may be, and in however many places he may have spoken, he cannot rise for the first time in Birmingham Town Hall before a Birmingham audience without feeling a thrill of emotion. For a generation this great hall was associated throughout England with the names of two of our greatest orators—John Bright and Joseph Chamberlain.

Though we who are called, so far as we are able, to fill their places in the struggle to-day, may fall far short of them in eloquence, we can at least be stimulated by their example, so that we do not fall short of them in sincerity of purpose and in truth, and in an honest endeavour to improve the condition of our people.

To-night I have no desire to ask you to join with me in a pæan of victory. You and I are thankful for the decision to which the country came at the beginning of the winter, but we want to look forward now and to devote a short time to-night to looking at some of the problems which lie before us, to see what progress has been made, and to see in what direction the people of England should look for their own security.

I think we can best preface such an investigation by casting our eyes for a few moments at the continent of Europe, a continent separated from us indeed by a narrow strip of ocean, but joined to us by a hundred links of commerce and of humanity, indissolubly bound up with our fate, whether we like it or whether we do not. I think we may fairly claim that although there is much to be done in Europe, yet there are signs to-day of what has not been seen hitherto, and that is a general desire for stability, and what proceeds from desire, and is more important, the will to achieve stability.

It is only determination that will produce it, and until you have stability you can have no confidence, and until you have confidence you can never get that increased productive power which is one of the absolute necessities for the bettering of our own trade in England.

Now, not long ago Austria, for example, was on the verge of bankruptcy. Her administrative expenses were all in arrear; her industries were paralysed. Largely owing to the action of the League of Nations, and largely owing to the action of her own countrymen, she has been saved, and she has been put in a path, strait, indeed, but one which is leading her, and will lead her, into a position where once more she can make her contribution to the well-being of Europe, instead of being a black spot from which might spread the seeds of disease into other countries.

The same with Hungary—the same process, the same contribution, and the same results. And we see the new states brought into being since the War—Poland, Czecho-Slovakia, Jugo-Slavia—slowly, but surely, establishing their industries, buying raw material, which is the beginning, coming once more into the comity of industrial and commercial nations, and helping to start again that wheel of the circulation of industrial life which alone can bring health to Europe, and, by bringing health to Europe, health to us.

And in France, and in Belgium, there is a healthy and progressive increase in the industrial life of those countries, and bit by bit over the three years you have seen the healthy spots forming in Europe and spreading outwards, and gradually driving back the unhealthy parts, so that we are beginning to have a hope that before too long the body itself may be whole.

And Germany! The Dawes plan, which has settled—at any rate on paper—the reparations question has by that very factor increased confidence in the public finance of Germany, which means confidence in the public finance of that vast population of Central Europe. The fact that a successful loan was issued, that the Reichsbank has been reconstituted, and that the currency has been restored, has enabled private credits once more to function in Germany. The negotiation of a commercial treaty with this country means that if she will now play the game, there is no reason why the interrupted trade with Central Europe should not commence again to join in the increase of European and world trade for the ultimate betterment of everybody.

Her internal troubles are diminishing. We in England have, in the last year or two, made once more foreign loans to help to repair the shattered edifices throughout the world, and the United States has come in with loans, contrary to her usual practice, in Europe, to set in motion the creative energies of the peoples, which energies will be gradually reflected in the growing purchasing powers of the peoples.

The failure of that purchasing power and the financial chaos which followed on the War have been, I was going to say amongst, but I would say the chief reason for that appalling depression from which we are only just beginning to emerge in this country.

But what is it that has prevented the recovery of Europe proceeding at a greater speed than it has, and what is it to-day that is the one check and the one blight on an outlook which is beginning to look more hopeful? It is that cursed and diabolic suspicion between man and man and nation and nation that robs Europe of that sense of security that is essential to the unity of spirit which we must have before the world can function aright.

It is to help to abolish that suspicion, to help to show the better way, that Mr. Austen Chamberlain leaves England to-morrow to see what he can accomplish amongst the nations of Europe. It is his attempt to execute that great mission that has prevented him from having the pleasure of being here to-night, and has prevented you from having the pleasure of giving him the welcome he so well deserves in Birmingham. There is no member of the Government who has a more arduous task than he; there is no one better qualified by training and by temperament at this time to make a success of that mission.

Now, having said a few words about Europe, let us look nearer home. There is much the same story to be told—a story of constant struggle, and, on the whole, a story of ground gained and hope for the future.

But while in England we can put our finger here and there on the hopeful signs, there are many that cause us anxiety. We have only a very partial prosperity, an industry here and there, sometimes one, sometimes another; but for four years we have hoped against hope that we might be able to show prosperity in all our industries.

Two years ago the coal industry enjoyed a brief spell of prosperity, due partly to the conditions in the Ruhr; and in the wake of the coal trade followed the trades in iron and steel. But, as prospects in the Ruhr looked better, and greater prosperity seemed in store for them, so the temporary improvement here gave way to depression. As those industries tailed off, there has been improvement in cotton, there has been fairly good trade in the electrical industry; but we are denied still that all-round and simultaneous improvement which is necessary before we can feel ourselves in that position of security and stability which we all desire to see.

If we look at the figures of our foreign trade as a whole, we do indeed find some ground for moderate hopefulness. We find that the balance of imports over exports is not larger proportionately than we are accustomed to, and that our invisible exports come to our rescue as they did before the War, and we cannot yet say that we have an adverse balance.

But whatever conclusions people may draw from the examination of figures of exports and imports, I never can help translating this story into terms of unemployment. At the end of January there were a million and a quarter on the registers—practically the same as a year ago—no real substantial improvement.

Now, you know well enough in Birmingham how the steel and heavy engineering trades, and you know well enough by repute how the shipbuilding trades, are suffering to-day. These heavy trades have in their numbers something like 10 per cent. of the insured population of this country, but among these trades to-day their unemployment represents more than 20 per cent. of the total unemployment. They are trades closely interlocked, and they are trades closely dependent and immediately reacting on the coal trade; and I think I ought to say a word or two on the subject of this trade.

The production of coal in Europe last year increased by scores of millions of tons at a time when there was a heavy under-consumption of coal compared with the pre-war standard. It is not surprising in these circumstances that our export of coal dropped by 18 million tons. The increased cost of production here wiped out all that margin of profit at which some of the older and less efficient pits worked.

And you find pits closed, especially in the North of England and in North and South Wales; and here and there, the unexampled spectacle of pools of unemployed labour in the mining industry, where they have little immediate prospect of a resumption of work.

Now, the iron and steel trades have been specially hit by the condition of the shipbuilding trade. There you have fewer ships being built; you have an intensively increased foreign competition, and you have at home an immensely increased capacity in point of output and a largely increased technical capacity; and you have at places like Sheffield and Barrow, where there were enormous accumulations of labour during the War for special purposes, the almost impossible task of finding in works of peace sufficient employment to take over not only their old population but the men who were attracted there for munition work in time of war.

And so it is, seven years nearly after the War, that we yet see this prolonged and intensified depression, and this horrible figure of unemployment.

Now, if you look back you will find that in 1908 you had very nearly as bad a time of unemployment, and you had it in those industries of which I have just spoken to you.

But what is the difference? In 1908 it was of comparatively short duration. To-day, we have lived through four years of it, and who can say whether we are yet at the end? There are, of course, international factors largely beyond our power to deal with, but there are national factors within our own control. We stand to-day at a point where, roughly speaking, one out of every ten of the insured population is out of work—a thought sufficient to arrest the imagination of the dullest and the most thoughtless amongst us—and a challenge to all of us to use every power we have to remedy this state of things. But there is no direct remedy from the State alone. There can be no direct remedy by private men alone.

Nothing can be done unless we can all pull together with a will. And I am—and I speak seriously—quite profoundly thankful that the Labour Party have been in office, and for this reason: that they now know that they, no more than any other Government, have been able to produce a panacea that would remedy unemployment. And in their hearts they must admit that they have no remedy which can be guaranteed to cure this disease and at the same time maintain unimpaired the international position and power of the British Empire.

And it is at this moment, with one in ten of the working population unemployed, at this moment when in some industries there is a faint hope of a revival, at this moment when other industries, with the utmost endeavours on their part, can but just hold their own, that we witness in England signs of an industrial storm gathering, which, if it were to break, would spread misery far and wide, and sweep back, possibly for years, all chance of returning and reviving prosperity.

By the natural evolution of our industrial life in England we are confronted to-day, and shall be more and more, with great consolidations of capital managed by small concentrated groups, and by great organisations of Labour led by experienced and responsible leaders. That position must be accepted. It is the natural accompaniment of the large-scale production which is gradually becoming the predominant force in all the industrial countries of the world.

It is perfectly true that if the great trade unions of this country, such as the miners, the transport workers, and the railwaymen, unite on a policy of trying to enforce a demand for higher wages in their own trades by means of a strike, they have it in their power to hold up at the same time many industries in this country, and do them irreparable damage.

Now, I said when I concluded what I had to say about the state of affairs on the Continent of Europe, there was one element that must be removed before you could get stability, before you could get security, and before you could get what follows on security—disarmament. That was suspicion, and suspicion must be removed.

I am whole-heartedly with those men who talk about disarmament on the Continent, peace on the Continent, and the removal of suspicion on the Continent, but far more do I plead for disarmament at home, and for the removal of that suspicion at home that tends to poison the relations of man and man, the removal of which alone can lead us to stability for our struggling industry, and create the confidence in which our people may be able to move forward to better things.

By all means let us aim at having our conferences abroad for these good ends. Let us not neglect to have these conferences at home for these good ends, which touch us far more closely and far more nearly than anything which happens across the Channel.

Why must we reserve all our talk of peace and our prayers for peace for the Continent, and forget to have our talks and our prayers for peace at home? It is one of the paradoxes of public life that from the very lips which preach pacifism abroad we hear the cries for war at home. Who was it said of Rousseau that he was a lover of his kind, but a hater of his kin? The children of such a philosophy can only bring damnation to this country.

Having said that, I want to recognise, in the most generous way that I can, that there have been speeches made amongst the leaders of Labour to-day which would endorse every word that I have uttered; and I recognise the courage of those speeches, because the men who uttered them are trying at the same time to do their duty to those whom they represent and to that greater community, their country.

When a man is in public life, whether he be a Labour leader or the leader of the Tory Party, if he speaks the truth that is in him and that he burns to tell, often enough he will find many who will be ready to deride him for what he has said. I want to endorse the kind of speeches to which I have referred.

I want to plead for a truce.

In the Middle Ages, when the whole of Europe was in conflict, one part with another and one fragment with another, men of goodwill strove in vain to get what they called a truce of God, in which people might compose their differences and live like brothers.

I want a truce of God in this country, that we may compose our differences, that we may join all our strengths together to see if we cannot pull the country into a better and happier condition.

It is little that a Government can do; these reforms, these revolutions must come from the people themselves.

The organisations of employers and men, if they take their coats off to it, are far more able to work out the solutions of their troubles than the politicians. Let them put the State out of their minds and get down to it, as the Foreign Secretary is getting down to it to-day to try to improve the relations of foreign countries by seeking peace and pursuing it through every corner and alley that he may. So let those who represent labour and capital get down to it, and seek and pursue peace through every alley and every corner of this country.

And just as those who want peace in Europe have ever before their minds, if they fail in their object, what war may mean to the Continent, so let those who are working for peace in England realise that the breach of the peace in industry can mean nothing more than the prolongation of what is already too much misery among those who are suffering from unemployment to-day.

Indeed, how much there is for those responsible for the conduct of the industry—and I mean masters and men just the same—how much there is for them to-day to try to discover, and to try to understand.

Let me give one illustration. I have a letter before me now from a British firm which has works in this country, works in France, and works in Germany. And the making of a machine of exactly similar type costs £565 here, in Germany £520, and in France £400. Now all those concerned in industry should try to get at the root of the reason why a thing of this kind is possible.

Look for a moment at the employers' side.

Are the reasons for our failure to compete connected with over-capitalisation, are they connected with defective management, with wasteful use of plant and of material?

Are they due at all to the absence of facilities for economic marketing?

Are State subsidies granted on the Continent?

Is there a freer use abroad of unskilled labour in various processes?

What is the cause?

And on the men's side, should not they look into the question of whether in the allocation to different branches of labour, there is not greater fluidity and absence of demarcation disputes which make it easier for the Continent to compete?

These are questions no Government can settle, that no Government can interfere with, and no Government can solve; but to get a correct answer is life and death to those in industry, whether they be employers or employed.

These are the kinds of issues that want to be examined by both parties round a table, and to be approached, not with a view on the one side to get an increase of wages, or with a view on the other to get a reduction of wages, but to get at the reasons and see where the fault lies. All should take counsel together and see where and how improvement can be made in this country to achieve the desired result.

And there should be an end once and for all of that secretiveness in business which has so often poisoned the atmosphere by causing suspicion.

When you discuss disarmament there must be all the cards on the table. Is not mystery of any kind the mother of suspicion? Confidence breeds confidence, and I would give it in the fullest and largest degree.

I would like to see firms who have factories as I have described, place on the table carefully prepared analyses of the comparative costs in the different countries for the men to examine, for accountants to examine—no mystery, no secretiveness, but a common desire to get at facts, and a common desire to help.

I do not pretend for a moment that all is easy if you simply gather men around the table. There are differences—differences of education, of early environment, psychological differences, differences of training. I was struck once by a remark made, I think it was, by Mr. Hodges in stating the miners' case in the recent coal dispute, that he never felt less nervous than in presenting it at No. 10 Downing Street, to members of a Government which he had no reason to believe was particularly anxious to agree with him.

I understand what he meant, and it has often struck me that it might be of real help to conferences in trades between the employers and the employed if they were presided over by a neutral person, a man qualified by his own character and ability, by his detached and independent outlook, and by the confidence which people felt in his fairmindedness—that the presence of such a chairman might enable two parties to get on with greater ease, with greater freedom, and with more success in ultimate results.

There are other things arising to which our leaders of industry, whether they be from the ranks of the employers, or from the ranks of the men, must devote their attention at this present day, if they do not wish to make confusion still worse confounded.

It is not wages alone that have to be studied, and that we must keep our eyes on. If you fix on paper minimum standards of pay it does not follow that those standards will, in fact, apply to all the men in the industry. What often results is the stoppage of the marginal factory or the marginal coal-pit, or you may find that some of them near the margin will have to go on short time, and you often find that many men are thrown out of employment.

In the same way you often hear men's leaders to-day speaking about the necessity for rigorous efficiency on the part of employers, but rigorous efficiency again often acts hardly on many of those employed. You have to take the long view as well as the short; and I think in these days what those most concerned in industry have to study is what can be accomplished in the way of insurance benefit, and what burdens can be borne by industry—this in consultation with the Government—and how far regulations and rules made in trade unions to fit circumstances of many years ago are fitted to meet the circumstances not only of to-day, but the circumstances that lie ahead of us.

Here, again, there is ample room, ample scope, for such conferences as I have advocated, and, mind you, for the very best brains and the best hearts that the best men among the employers and the men themselves can put forward. This is not work for hacks, it is work for the statesmen among us.

I don't know whether things may be different and happier in Russia, for I have not had the advantage of having six weeks in that country. But in England let us never forget this: that under our system trade expansion depends so much on initiative and enterprise, and on the willingness of our people—men and women—to embark their savings in industry in anticipation of making something rather more out of industry than they could make if the savings were kept in a stocking.

Now, the element of risk and uncertainty cannot be absent from industry—it is inseparable from our system of production—but readiness to embark on that form of investment is a question of confidence. Nothing can destroy that confidence more surely than what destroys confidence on the Continent—no sense of security. The present unsettlement in this country is in itself a clog on the wheels of progress.

There may be a better industrial system imaginable than ours, and I hope indeed we may be slowly moving towards something better; but there is no doubt in my mind that if it were possible to destroy the present system in a moment, those who destroyed it would cause a shipwreck, and they would not bring into being a ship in which to take away the survivors.

Short, too, of any deliberate destruction of our industry, such as we have seen advocated in a few quarters, I dread that subtle poison of hatred which is being preached in some quarters, which weakens the faith of men in their own efficient service and sound workmanship—the very things which have built up the reputation of our great country, on which we still live. You may have one of the finest fleets of liners in this world, you may have it owned by the State, and you may have it run by the State; but if you have a crew bent on defying all that makes for co-operation and discipline you will bankrupt that fleet.

It has not come to that in this country, and in my belief it never will. The power of managing our own affairs in our own way is the greatest gift of Englishmen. We have demonstrated that fact in the past, and we shall demonstrate it in the future, It has been ours in a growing degree for a dozen centuries. And I cannot put that thought before you better than in the words of a distinguished Oxford man, the late Master of Balliol, who wrote:

"Nowhere was the village community so real and so enduring a thing as it was in England for at least twelve centuries of its history. In every parish men met almost daily in humble but very real self-government, to be judged by their fellows or fined by them, or punished as bad characters, to settle the ploughing times and harvest times, the fallowing and the grassing rules for the whole village. To these twelve centuries of discipline we owe the peculiar English capacity for self-government, the enormous English development of the voluntary principle in all manner of institutions (clubs, associations, hospitals, joint stock) and the aptitude for colonisation. Our politics, our commercial enterprise, our Colonial Empire, are all due to the spirit of co-operation, the spirit of fair play, and 'give and take,' the habit of working to a common purpose which tempered the hard and grim individuality of the national character."

And if I have a message to-night for you and the people of the country, it is just this. I would say:

"England! Steady! Look where you are going! Human hands were given us to clasp, and not to be raised against one another in fratricidal strife."

PEACE IN INDUSTRY. II

IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, ON THE SECOND READING OF THE TRADE UNION (POLITICAL FUND) BILL.

6th March, 1925

In some ways this is a very difficult speech for me to make. The matter of the Bill itself digs right into one of the most difficult and fundamental questions in the country to-day, and it touches at various points questions which have interested me during the whole of my working life. I have thought so much about them, and I feel that I have so much to say about them, that my difficulty will be in choosing the little that I can possibly say to-day and finding words to express clearly to the House what is in my mind.

I often wonder if all the people in this country realise the inevitable changes that are coming over the industrial system in England. People are apt either to get their knowledge of the industrial system from textbooks, which must be half a generation behind, or from some circumstance familiar to them at a fixed and static point in their lives, whereas, as a matter of fact, ever since the industrial system began in this country, it has been not only in a state of evolution, but in a state of evolution that, I think, historians in the centuries to come, when they write its history, will acknowledge to be an evolution that has developed at a far more rapid rate than was visible to the people who lived in these times.

I hope the House will bear with me and forgive me if I draw for a few minutes on my own experience, because it so happens that, owing to the peculiar circumstances of my own life, I have seen a great deal of this evolution taking place before my own eyes.

I worked for many years in an industrial business, and I had under me a large number, or what was then a large number, of men. And it so happened, as this was an old family business, with an old and, I venture to say, very good tradition, that when I was first in business I was probably working under a system that was already passing. I doubt if its like could have been found in any of the big, modern industrial towns of this country, even at that time.

It was a place where I knew, and had known from childhood, every man on the ground; a place where I was able to talk with the men not only about the troubles in the works, but troubles at home and their wives. It was a place where strikes and lock-outs were unknown. It was a place where the fathers and grandfathers of the men then working there had worked, and where their sons went automatically into the business. It was also a place where nobody ever "got the sack," and where we had a natural sympathy for those who were less concerned in efficiency than is this generation, and where a large number of old gentlemen used to spend their days sitting on the handles of wheelbarrows, smoking their pipes.

Oddly enough, it was not an inefficient community. It was the last survival of that type of works which ultimately became swallowed up in one of those great combinations towards which the industries of to-day are tending.

I remember very well the impact of the outside world that came on us, that showed how industry was changing in this country. Nothing had interrupted the even tenor of our ways for many years, until one day there came a great strike in the coal-fields; it was one of the earlier strikes, and it became a national strike.

We tried to carry on as long as we could, but, of course, it became more and more difficult to carry on, and gradually furnace after furnace was damped down and the chimneys ceased to smoke, and about 1,000 men, who had no interest in the dispute that was going on, were thrown out of work, through no fault of their own, at a time when there was no unemployment benefit.

I confess that that event set me thinking very hard.

It seemed to me at that time a monstrous injustice to these men, because I looked upon them as my own family, and it hit me very hard—I would not have mentioned this, only it got into the Press two or three years ago—and I made an allowance to them, not a large one, but something, for six weeks to carry them along, because I felt they were being so unfairly treated.

But there was more in it really than that. There was no conscious unfair treatment of these men by the masters. It simply was that we were gradually passing into a new state of industry when the small firms and the small industries were being squeezed out, and business was all tending towards great amalgamations, on the one side of employers, and on the other side of the men, and when we came in any form between these two forces, God help those who stood outside!

That has been the tendency of industry. There is nothing that could change it, because it comes largely, if not principally, from that driving force of necessity in the world that makes people combine together for competition and for the protection they need against that competition.

Those two forces with which we have to reckon are enormously strong, and they are the two forces in this country to which now to a great extent, and it will be a greater extent in the future, we are committed. We have to see what wise statesmanship can do to steer the country through this time of evolution until we can get to the next stage of our industrial civilisation.

It is obvious from what I have said that the organisations of both masters and men—or, if you like the more modern phrase invented by economists, who always invent beastly words, employers and employees—these organisations throw an immense responsibility on the organisations themselves and on those who elect them, and, although big men have been thrown up on both sides, there are a great many on both sides who have not got the requisite qualities of head and heart for business.

There are many men with good heads and no hearts, and many men with good hearts and no heads.

What the country wants to-day from the men who sit on this side of the House and on that is to exercise the same care as the men who have to conduct those great organisations from inside.

I should like to try to clear our minds of cant on this subject, and recognise that the growth of these associations is not necessarily a bad thing in itself, but that, whatever associations may call themselves, it is the same human nature in both, and exactly the same problems have to be met, although we hear a good deal more of some of those problems than of others.

Now, if you look at an employers' organisation for a moment—and we will assume that it has come into being to protect the industry in the world market—we cannot lose sight of the fact that in that organisation, just as much as in the men's organisation, the mere fact of organising involves a certain amount of sacrifice of personal liberty. That cannot be helped. Everybody knows that perfectly well, both employers and employees.

To a certain extent both these organisations must on one side be uneconomic.

A trade union is uneconomic in one sense of the word when it restricts output and when it levels down the work to a lower level. It is an association for the protection of the weaker men which has often proved uneconomic.

Exactly the same thing happens in the employers' organisation.

Primarily, it is protective, but in effect it is very often uneconomic, because it keeps in existence works which, if left to the process of competition, would be squeezed out, and whose prolonged existence is really only a weakness to the country.

Also it has another very curious effect, not at all dissimilar from that of the trade union reaction which shows that both those organisations are instinct with English traditions. The workmen's organisation is formed to see that under the conditions a workman cannot get his living in a particular trade unless he belongs to that union. An employers' organisation is formed in that particular trade for the protection of the trade, and it has the result of effectively preventing any new man starting in that trade.

In this great problem which is facing the country in years to come, it may be from one side or the other that disaster may come, but surely it is plain that the only progress that can be obtained in this country is by those two bodies of men—so similar in their strength and so similar in their weaknesses—learning to understand each other and not to fight each other.

It is perfectly true that trade unionism has its weak spots. We are primarily discussing trade unions, and that is why I shall content myself to speak about trade unions only. It is perfectly true that my hon. and learned Friends [Mr. Macquisten and Mr. Greaves-Lord, who moved and seconded the Second Reading of the Bill] have laid their finger on three points which trade unionists themselves know are their weak spots. That can be seen by the interruptions that came from the Labour benches.

Those three points are, the question whether in all cases the subject of the levy is treated fairly, the question of the ballot, and the question of bookkeeping. To my mind it is impossible to dissociate one of these questions from the other, and they really all hang together.

The whole tradition of our country has been to let Englishmen develop their own associations in their own way, and with that I agree. But there are limits to that. I spoke a little earlier—and I spoke with a purpose—about the recognition of the change in the industrial situation in those works with which I was connected, when for the first time what was done in the way of organising the coal strike suddenly came and hit thousands of men who had nothing to do with it and had no direct interest in it.

As these associations come along and become more powerful, on whichever side they are, there may come a time when not only may they injure their own members—about which probably there would be a good deal of argument—but when they may directly injure the State. It is at that moment that any Government should say that, whatever freedom and latitude in that field may be left to any kind of association in this free country, nothing shall be done that shall injure the State, which is the concern of all of us and far greater than all of us or our interests.

I have not very much more to say. I have just tried to put, as clearly as I can in a few words, my conviction that we are moving forward rapidly from an old state of industry into a newer, and the question is: What is that newer state going to be?

No man, of course, can say what form evolution is taking. Of this, however, I am quite sure, that whatever form we may see, possibly within this generation, or at any rate in the time of the next generation, it has got to be a form of close partnership, however that is going to be arrived at; and it will not be a partnership the terms of which will be laid down, at any rate not yet, in Acts of Parliament, or from this Party or that.

It has got to be a partnership of men who understand their own work, and it is little help that they can get really either from politicians or from intellectuals.

There are few men fitted to judge of and to settle and to arrange the problem that distracts the country to-day between employers and employed.

There are few men qualified to intervene who have not themselves been right through the mill.

I always want to see, at the head of these organisations on both sides, men who have been right through the mill, and who themselves know exactly where the shoe pinches, and who know exactly what can be conceded and what cannot, and who can make their reasons plain; and I hope that we shall always find such men trying to steer their respective ships side by side, instead of making for head-on collisions.

Having said what I have said about that, what am I to say about the attitude of the Party of which I have the honour to be the head?

I do not know whether the House will forgive me if I speak for a minute or two on a rather personal note.

For two years past, in the face of great difficulties, perhaps greater than many were aware of, I have striven to consolidate, and to breathe a living force into my great Party. Friends of mine who have done me the honour to read my speeches during that time have seen clearly, however ill they may have been expressed, the ideals at which I have been aiming.

I spoke on that subject again last night at Birmingham, and I shall continue to speak on it as long as I am where I am.

We find ourselves, after these two years, in power, in possession of perhaps the greatest majority our Party has ever had, and with the general assent of the country. Now how did we get there? It was not by promising to bring this Bill in; it was because, rightly or wrongly, we succeeded in creating an impression throughout the country that we stood for stable Government and for peace in the country between all classes of the community.

Those were the principles for which we fought; those were the principles on which we won; and our victory was not won entirely by the votes of our own Party, splendidly as they fought. I should think that the number of Liberals who voted for us at the last Election ran into six figures, and I should think that we probably polled more Labour votes than were polled on the other side.

That being so, what should our course be at the beginning of a new Parliament? I have not myself the slightest doubt. Last year the Leader of the Labour Party [Mr. Ramsay Macdonald], when he was Prime Minister, suspended what had been settled by the previous Government, and that was further progress for the time being on the scheme of Singapore. He did it on the ground that it was a gesture for peace, and he hoped that it would be taken as such by all the countries in the world. He hoped that a gesture of that kind might play its part in leading to what we all want to see, that is, a reduction in the world's armaments.

I want my Party to-day to make a gesture to the country of a similar nature, and to say to them: "We have our majority; we believe in the justice of this Bill which has been brought in to-day, but we are going to withdraw our hand, and we are not going to push our political advantage home at a moment like this. Suspicion which has prevented stability in Europe is the one poison that is preventing stability at home, and we offer the country to-day this: We, at any rate, are not going to fire the first shot. We stand for peace. We stand for the removal of suspicion in the country. We want to create an atmosphere, a new atmosphere in a new Parliament for a new age, in which the people can come together. We abandon what we have laid our hands to. We know we may be called cowards for doing it. We know we may be told that we have gone back on our principles. But we believe we know what at this moment the country wants, and we believe it is for us in our strength to do what no other Party can do at this moment, and to say that we at any rate stand for peace."

I know, I am as confident as I can be of anything, that that will be the feeling of all those who sit behind me, and that they will accept the Amendment which I have put down in the spirit in which I have moved it. And I have equal confidence in my fellow-countrymen throughout the whole of Great Britain.

Although I know that there are those who work for different ends from most of us in this House, yet there are many in all ranks and all parties who will re-echo my prayer:

"Give peace in our time, O Lord."

INDUSTRY AND PSYCHOLOGY

AT THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF INDUSTRIAL PSYCHOLOGY

12th November, 1925

We are met to-night to celebrate the invasion of the realm of industry by psychology. We have all of us been familiar for many years past with the study that economists have made of industry and the study that moralists have made of the development of the personality of the individual; but the systematic study of industrial society by psychologists is a matter, as I understand, of the last three or four years. Certainly it is something quite new since I had the pleasure of being in business.

Within the present century there has been a drastic overhauling of a great many of the assumptions with which some of us were familiar in our youth, whether the assumptions were those of the economists, the moralists, or of the psychologists. Psychology has been applied not only to the handling of the individual, but to individuals in groups, or in the mass, in association. The results of this change in the line of investigation are now just beginning to penetrate our economic thinking. The Institute, to celebrate which we are here to-night, is a striking example of this change, and it has had from its start the support of two men whom I am proud to think I may call my friends—Lord Balfour and Lord Haldane. It has also enlisted the support of employers and employed.

There exists a certain interesting and harmonious relation between this voluntary body and one that has been set up by the Government—the Industrial Fatigue Research Board, which works as a branch of the Medical Research Council. Roughly speaking, the Industrial Fatigue Board initiates work and undertakes experiments which are likely to have fruitful results and be of interest, though unremunerative in themselves. Your Institute spends private money, and it obtains support from among those who stand to benefit by the results of your investigations, but who are undoubtedly attracted to the work of the Institute through the interest which they take in the problems you are attacking. The Institute, so far as I have been able to learn, is surveying the vast realm covered by the operation of the Factory Acts, and it is striving to introduce into that realm improvements—not improvements which require legislation, but improvements in mental and bodily conditions of work. The study of such things as lighting, heating, ventilation, movement of the body, cultivation of interest, the avoidance of fatigue, occupational guidance—in other words, the study of the whole human factor in relation to the machine and the job—that, as I understand it, is the field of study of the industrial psychologist.

A movement of this kind has this in common with the League of Nations: it has two principal obstacles to encounter—the prejudice of people who think it can do nothing, and the support of people who think it can do everything. In the first place it met, not unnaturally, with the resistance of those who thought that, in spite of its name, it was another capitalist dodge to rivet the chains of the wage slave more firmly than before. I think it is now clear, not only among the leaders of the employers and among the leaders of the men, but also among the men themselves, that in this Institute they have a real friend.

The fundamental question is how to make the most of the individual, with all his idiosyncrasies, in his work. If you consider the matter in the realm of sport, there seems really much less to wonder at in the work of the Institute than if you regarded it in the realm in which they are now working. Consider what is meant by training for a boat race. It means nothing more nor less than true co-operation of effort, rhythmic movement, distribution of energy in the proper place, and at the right time, with the minimum fatigue and the elimination of wasted effort. That is all. And there you have a very suggestive parallel with industry. It is quite true that the changes which accompanied the Industrial Revolution have been far more costly in human life and human wear and tear than they would have been had our ancestors been as wise as we sometimes think that we ourselves are. But these depressing features of the Industrial Revolution, whatever they have brought in their train inside workshops, have had a tendency to bring in their train outside workshops one very bad thing, and that is a dislike of work itself. If work can be presented in a palatable form, I am not sure that the ordinary human being does not like it, provided that he gets a reasonable amount of play. The real enemies are overwork, under-payment, insecurity and bad conditions. These are the real evils, to the assuaging of which the work of this Institute, as I understand it, is directed, and in that we wish more power to its elbow.

We must not exaggerate what is possible. You cannot abolish repetitive work; you cannot, even in a Socialist State; and, after all, the monotony of the workman's life is very much due to the monotony of the consumers' demands. If a man wants the same thing every day, the man who provides it will have a monotonous task.

I am no mathematician, but I believe a straight line is, or was, the shortest way between two points, but I am told that curved movements are preferable to straight lines—whether on grounds of aesthetics or comfort I am not sure—and there is no doubt, as Mr. Myers has discovered, of the economic importance of rhythm, which has been gradually recognised in industry, I understand, and made use of. There must be something in rhythm which appeals to human nature. Witness the popularity at present of dancing, and witness also the vogue of the Volga Boat Song, which always makes me want to run along the bank and pull the barge.

Under the aegis of the Institute I am told that the miners, some of them, have been able to pick coal with greater regularity and have gained happiness thereby. That opens up a new field, and I am thinking seriously of asking Mr. Cook to bring in that which Mr. Thomas knows so well—that Welsh gift of music—and to set his men swinging their picks to the tune of "The Men of Harlech" or, better still, "The Rising of the Lark," and give us an output that will defy foreign competition.

But, seriously, if solutions can be found along these lines—if anything can cause the man, the woman, the boy and the girl at the heavy or monotonous job to find ways of doing that job with as great or with greater efficiency and with less strain, more comfort, more happiness—you will add more, perhaps, to a combination of human efficiency and human happiness than we politicians can hope to do by anything that lies in our power.

And there is another line on which you are working. You are always paying attention, I understand, to boys and girls who are leaving school in finding suitable occupations according to their fitness. This is a matter of tremendous importance, and involves practically what so many of us talk about—equality of opportunity. But I expect even this Institute has got a good deal to learn in that direction. One's first inclination is to smile at the idea of testing intelligence and vocational aptitude. I should be extraordinarily sorry at my age to have either of those things tested by anyone. We must not expect from this Institute infallible results, but I shall watch the results with intense interest, not only because I believe you may do a great work among the young people, but because I see an infinitely lighter task before my successor when he is able to apply the tests of this Institute to candidates for the Cabinet. If I can only draw on the resources of the psychologist to test the suitability of all candidates for Cabinet rank in initiative and self-control under criticism, intuitive insight into what Lancashire is going to say to-morrow, and when trade is going to revive, how much easier it would be; and if we could only test also their physical qualifications for all-night sittings, and how long they can speak without boring an audience, then, indeed, Mr. Myers, you will rise up, and we shall call you blessed.

THE GOSPEL OF HATE

FROM A SPEECH IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS

16th February, 1923

One word about the speech delivered last night by the hon. Member for Motherwell. (Mr. Newbold.) I have always been a student of history, and I learned from him several things that I had not known before. There was only one remark of his on which I wish to comment. He said that when the Labour Party had been in power, and failed, he was coming in. I believe that the hon. Member for Silvertown (Mr. J. Jones) expressed dissent. I am myself of that somewhat flabby nature that always prefers agreement to disagreement, and I welcome the opportunity of recording the fact that I find myself in hearty and uncompromising agreement with the hon. Member for Silvertown. When the Labour Party sit on these benches, we shall all wish them well in their effort to govern the country. But I am quite certain that whether they succeed or fail there will never in this country be a Communist Government, and for this reason, that no gospel founded on hate will ever seize the hearts of our people—the people of Great Britain. It is no good trying to cure the world by spreading out oceans of bloodshed. It is no good trying to cure the world by repeating that pentasyllable French derivative, "Proletariat." The English language is the richest in the world in thought. The English language is the richest in the world in monosyllables. Four words, of one syllable each, are words which contain salvation for this country and for the whole world, and they are "Faith," "Hope," "Love," and "Work." No Government in this country to-day, which has not faith in the people, hope in the future, love for its fellow-men, and which will not work and work and work, will ever bring this country through into better days and better times, or will ever bring Europe through or the world through.