376 SECTIONAL TRANSACTIONS.— F. 



SECTION F. 

 ECONOMIC SCIENCE AND STATISTICS. 



(For references to the publication elsewhere of communications entered in the 

 following list of Transactions, see page 447.) 



Thursday, August 5. 



1. Presidential Address by Sir Josiah C. Stamp, G.B.E., upon 



Inheritance as an Economic Factor. (See p. 128.) 



2. Sir R. Henry Rew, K.C.B.^TAe Effects of Land Tenure Systems on 



Production. 



The factors of agricultural production may be classified under three headings : 

 (1) Physical, (2) Economic, (3) Human. The physical factors are predominant ; 

 soil, climate, and situation determine the kind of crops, and largely the quantity 

 produced. Economic factors may be summarised as cost and price. Human factors 

 are the skill, knowledge, and experience of the cultivator. The influence of the tenure 

 by which land is occupied is partly economic and partly psychological. Various 

 systems of land tenure — absolute ownership, limited or conditional ownership, 

 tenancy, share-tenancy, &c. — in different countries. The conditions on which the 

 cultivator has the use of land react upon his enterprise and energy. The extent to 

 which he feels secure in reaping the fuU advantage of his labour wiU affect the intensity 

 of hLs effort and thereby the amount of produce obtained from the use of the land. 



Friday, August 6. 



3. Sir Lynden Macassey, K.B.E., K.C. — Economic Aspects of the 



Labour Outlook. 



Effective collective bargaining is the basis of industrial stability. That depends 

 upon the existence of representative and responsible employers' federations and 

 trade unions. Recent events have shown the absence of this condition. 



Present-day industrial requirements have altogether outstripped the current 

 legislative principles and conceptions. They demand from employers' federations 

 and trade unions a quickness of response beyond the jjower of their ponderous and 

 slow-moving machinery. The kernel of the problem is reorganisation to constitute 

 them as competent and fully responsible parties to industrial agreements concluded 

 by them as any other person not imder legal disability is in respect of his contract. 

 This means providing for the vaUdity and enforcement of collective agreements, 

 which in this country, unlike most foreign countries, are by law unenforceable and 

 therefore frequently repudiated. 



If collective agreements are to be made enforceable, employers' federations and 

 trade unions must have all the rights and be subject to all the obligations of ordinary 

 contracting parties. This involves an end of sympathetic strikes and lock-outs in 

 breach of agreement and the substitution of the legal remedy for the strike and lock-out 

 argument of superior force. It also involves such a reconstitution as will ensure 

 that the employers' federations and the trade unions properly ascertain and reflect 

 the views of the majority of their members. 



4. Prof. Henry Clay. — The Authoritarian Element in Distribution. 



In the last century public opinion was opposed to any interference by authority 

 with the distribution of wealth. Even if public opinion had favoured such inter- 

 ference, the practical difficulty would have presented itself of determining the principle 

 or principles by which such interference .should be guided ; just as the absence of any 

 general agreement as to what constitutes a fair wage has stood in the way of any 

 regulation of wages by authority. Exceptions to the general rule were found in the 

 grant of public relief, in taxation, and in such regulation of the form of wages as the 



