SETTLEMENT OF INDUSTRIAL DISPUTES. 499 



Twenty-eight disputes in course of settlement at the same time, 

 as against the one Court wearily attempting the impossible, with 

 congestion hopelessly clogging its efforts. 



While the Board decisions have been generally well accepted, 

 these can not yet be said to constitute a real test. Times have on 

 the whole been good, and the awards have as a rule been favourable 

 to the employees. No machinery of this kind can be finally classed 

 as efficient until it stands the strain of depressed times and of 

 awards adverse to the employees' claims. It can, however, be 

 confidently said that the Act has proved itself an immense im- 

 provement upon the Arbitration Act of 1901. 



It would be idle to affirm that relations between masters and 

 men are in any degree happy. The 1901 Act sowed much dis- 

 sension, and the full harvest has not yet been reaped. The men 

 on the whole (there are some exceptions) are not as industrial!)' 

 efficient at the higher rates of pay cmTcnt to-day as they were 15 

 years ago. The old direct relations with the reputable employer 

 are gone ; and to-day the men more readily obey the hints of 

 the union secretary than the behests of the employer. To some 

 extent this may be due to the gradual displacement of the small 

 individual employer by the joint stock company ; but this only 

 applies in comparatively small degree. Labour is not as plentiful 

 as it used to be, yet the unions discourage immigration and the 

 apprentice. The unions have as a rule no test of efficiency in 

 connection with membership, and they object to any grading 

 of unionists according to skill and merit. The really skilled worker 

 gets no encouragement from the union, and his employer dare not 

 specially recognise him. Therefore all employees tend to sink 

 to one level of pay and regulated output. 



On the other hand the employer is harassed by the incumbency 

 to obey a dozen or more awards in his one industry, each bristling 

 with instructions upon many minor points, and sometimes one 

 award overlapping another. The "handy man" is doomed to 

 extinction, for a master dare not ask an employee to leave his 

 ordinary work for an hour in order to paint a door, or mend wood- 

 work, or execute any other trifling maintenance job, without 

 risking the breach of some award which insists upon specialists 

 for every type of work, however minute. 



Before passing on to the Victorian system it may be well to 

 say a word in explanation of the Amendment Act of December, 

 1909 — more widely known amongst the Labour party as 

 " Wade's Coercion Act." It provides 12 months' imprisonment 

 for insiigatins: a strike or lockout. It renders illegal any meetings 

 to those ends, also meetings for contimiing a strike or lockout ; 

 and it empowers the police to forcibly enter premises where they 

 have reason to believe such meetings are in progress. All this 

 in connection with public necessities, such as coal or water, or the 

 transport services. Passed at the time of the recent disastrous 

 Newcastle coal strike, precipitated by the men without much 

 warrant in point of real grievance, the Act was probably justified 



