72
 

SOUVENIR,
 

INDUSTRIAL  PEACE.
 

"Labor difficulties" are not due to any
mysterious cause, nor does their existence re¬
quire to be explained by occult reasons.

They arise only from the selfishness and
tyranny of men unrestrained by nobler quali¬
ties, and selfishness and tyranny are equally
hateful and mischievous whether exhibited
by employers or employed. Unfortunately,
whichever side has had the power has usually
exercised it in so arrogant a manner and with
such unrelenting harshness as to goad the
other side to resistance, resulting often in a
state of open warfare, which has continued
either until one side or the other is quite con¬
quered, when the old series of acts is begun
again to end in the same way, or until both
sides are exhausted, and then there has some-
limes resulted a much happier and nobler
mutual relation.

The preliminary step to this higher relation
is usually the mutual recognition that both
sides are about equal in strength, that each
can injure the other seriou.sly, but that neither
can conquer the other. The proof of this
necessarily comes from the experience of
a long series of alternating strikes and lock¬
outs—the employees making unreasonable
demands when trade is good, the employers
doing the same when trade is bad, a system
"mutually predatory." Finally, it occurs to
a few men on one side or the other that the
whole thing is foolish, wasteful and wicked,
and unworthy of intelligent men who make
their living by the help of each other. Tenta¬
tive overtures are made ; the most reasonable
and fair-minded men among employers and
employed talk over the matter among their
fellows ; a conference is proposed, and is held ;
and at last with much difficulty a "Joint
Committee," a "Wages Board," or a " Board
of Conciliation " is formed, with equal repre-
sentati(j^ from both sides, to which is dele¬
gated the power to settle all questions relating
to wages and conditions of work.

Equal representation on such Boards is given
because it is recognized that employers and
employed are economically   equal, that  they
 

are partners who are in business together, that
each contributes his necessary share to the
success of the whole, and that each has, there¬
fore, the same right as the other to a voice in
the decision of questions of mutual interest,
such as wages, hours of work, conditions of
work, etc.

This sounds simple enough and to a disinter¬
ested observer seems the only reasonable
method of settling questions which are of the
greatest importance to both employers and
employed, questions which cannot be settled
except by mutual consent, either forced or
voluntary, and which must be settled if busi¬
ness is to go on at all.

And yet the obstinacy and arrogance of men
makes this reasonable arrangement a very
difficult one to accomplish and, at first, a very
difficult one to carry out.

To make it at all possible the two sides must,
as I have said, be about equal in strength, or
in other words, both must be "well organ¬
ized"— there must be a strong association of
employers and a strong trade union or other
labor organization, both of which shall repre¬
sent either the majority of the employers and
workmen in the trade, or else the most successful
and best paid. This is necessary because the
"Joint Committee " or " Wages Board " must
be composed of representatives who are author¬
ized to bind their constituents, otherwise their
agreements would be empty words.

Besides this, however, both the representa¬
tives and the members of the organizations they
represent must in the main be honest men, hon¬
orable men, intelligent men, or the plan will
fail. The Employers' Association and the Em¬
ployees' Union must enter into the arrange¬
ment in good faith —trusting their own repre¬
sentatives, trusting the representatives of the
other side, really wishing to have justice done,
and not wishing for unfair advantages.

The trade union has rendered industrial
peace possible, y?r.y/, by educating the work-
ingmen and giving them the intellectual and
moral perceptions necessary to render them
ready and able to meet their employers on
equal terms ; second^ by making them power¬
ful enough to force their employers to respond ;