between representatives of employers and workers.  Particularly in the work of the administrative committees, matters of detail which might easily excite controversy and passion are habitually handled with coolness and good sense in the common interest of the trade.  A number of the employers have not merely acquiesced in the system, but have become its convinced supporters, and this attitude would be more common if certain irritating causes of friction were removed.  The employer who desires to treat his workers well and maintain good conditions is relieved from the competition of rivals who care little for these things, and what he is chiefly concerned about is simplicity of rules and rigid universality of enforcement.  It is this section of employers who have prevented the crippling of the Boards in a time of general reaction.  It is blindness to refuse to see in such co-operation a possible basis of industrial peace, and those were right who in 1918 saw in the mechanism of the Boards the possibility, not merely of preventing industrial oppression and securing a minimum living wage, but of advancing to a general regulation of industrial relations.  At that time it was thought that the whole of industry might be divided between Trade Boards and Whitley Councils, the former for the less, the latter for the more organised trades.  In the result the Whitley Councils have proved to be hampered if not paralysed by the lack of an independent element and of compulsory powers.

TRADE BOARDS HOLDING THE FIELD

The Trade Board holds the field as the best machinery for the determination of industrial conditions.  It is better than unfettered competition, which leaves the weak at the mercy of the strong.  It is better than the contest of armed forces, in which the battle is decided with no reference to equity, to permanent economic conditions, or to the general good, by the main strength of one combination or the other in the circumstances of the moment.  It is better than a universal State-determined wages-law which would take no account of fluctuating industrial conditions, and better than official determinations which are exposed to political influences and are apt to ignore the technicalities which only the practical worker or employer understands.  It is better than arbitration, which acts intermittently and incalculably from outside, and makes no call on the continuous co-operation of the trade itself.

My hope is that as the true value of the Trade Board comes to be better understood, its powers, far from being jealously curtailed, or confined to the suppression of the worst form of underpayment, will be extended to skilled employments, and organised industries, and be used not merely to fulfil the duty of the community to its humblest members, but to serve its still wider interest in the development of peaceful industrial co-operation.

UNEMPLOYMENT