136 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 



upon employment that may follow, are not necessary and inevitable 

 consequences of the extension of collective settlements, but, in so far as 

 they are attributable to it, due rather to an obvious defect in the 

 machinery and current practice of collective bargaining than to anything 

 inherent in collective bargaining as such. 



The changes that distinguish the post-war wage situation, public 

 control of wage-settlements and pubhc relief for unemployment, are 

 instances of the operation of the habit, described by Dr. Cannan as 

 ' proposing remedies for economic pressure without considering the 

 question whether that pressure may not be an integral part of the 

 existing organisation which cannot be removed without causing disaster 

 unless some efficient substitute is provided.' We have interfered with 

 the harsh but efiective correctives of wage-demands that restrict employ- 

 ment, namely, the loss of income by unemployment and the expansion 

 of employment where wages are not held up. Either, therefore, we must 

 devise alternative correctives, or we mu.st expect unemployment on a 

 large scale from this cause alone. 



It is not likely that any party in industry or politics will propose to 

 restore the old correctives. The sufiering caused by unemployment before 

 the war, a repetition of which on a greater scale the extension of the 

 unemplovment insurance scheme has prevented, was too hard a price to 

 pay even for a nice adjustment, which it did not always secure, of wages 

 to the demand for labour. Still less likely is it that the extension of 

 collective bargaining will be reversed. Its completion was needed, as we 

 saw, to prevent the unconscious exploitation of ill-organised and un- 

 organised groups of wage-earners by the well-organised minority ; and the 

 removal of this inequality points rather to the need of attacking other 

 inequalities and elements of monopoly that obstruct an economic 

 distribution of the product of industry. 



The defect in the machinery for wage-negotiation to which the present 

 unemployment points is the purely sectional character of its deliberations. 

 It is no one's business to consider wages as a whole, there is no authority 

 charged with the duty of reminding wages boards of their responsibility 

 to industry in general. Collective bargaining must fail in securing an 

 accurate adjustment of wages to industrial conditions, so long as it is 

 confined to negotiations over wages in individual trades and industries. 

 If it is to continue, it must be supplemented by some device for ensuring 

 that the negotiators in each trade and industry have regard to the effect 

 of their determinations upon other trades and industries, and for com- 

 pelhng them to contemplate the needs of industry as a whole. The 

 ' barometer,' by which, according to Mr. and Mrs. Webb, the organised 

 industries were guided before the war, the extent of unemployment in 

 their own industries, is no longer trusted ; but, even if it were, it would 

 be inadequate and misleading, since a trade union might pursue a policy 

 that caused unemployment in other trades without causing unemployment 

 in its own. 



Moreover, by considering only its own needs and interests, an industry 

 might pursue a policy that was restrictive in efiect, though regulative in 

 form. If all industries and all trades pursue such a policy — and all now 

 have the requisite organisation — and maintain rates of wages that restrict 



