SECTIONAL TRANSACTIONS.— F. 579 



Mr. S. Mayor. — ' Suggestion ' Schemes as a Means of promoting Individual 

 Co-operation by Workpeople. 



National Councils and committees of representatives of capital and labour meeting 

 in London may do much to improve industrial relations ; how much will depend 

 ohiefly on the willingness of both sides to sacrifice to the common cause present 

 advantages, real or supposed. When national negotiating bodies have done their 

 best there will remain the real and basic task of giving in the workshops practical 

 expression and effect to the awakened spirit of goodwill and co-operation. In the 

 workshops goodwill was lost': in the workshops alone can it be regained ; the initiative 

 is with the employer and it is already being widely exercised. A condition essential 

 to success of eSort in this direction is that the firm's relation to its employees shall 

 be inspired by human sympathy and consideration for the interests of the workers, 

 and that all dealings shall be governed by consistent fairness. Where this funda- 

 mental condition exists many methods of promoting co-operation of the workers 

 are practised with success ; it is here submitted that one of these — Suggestion 

 Schemes — has received less attention than it deserves. 



The purpose of a suggestion scheme is to induce workpeople to apply their 

 intelligences to the work in hand, and to suggest how time, effort or material, might 

 be saved in the doing of it. It is probably true to say that the greatest source of 

 waste in the engineering industry is the comparative stagnation of the reservoir of 

 latent mental abilities and mechanical aptitudes of the men in the workshops ; the 

 sluices should be opened and streams of ideas should be made available for enhancing 

 the workers' earnings, and for reducing the cost and improving the quality of the 

 products. ' You are not paid for thinking ' has been the too-frequent snub by the 

 "wrong kind of foremen to men who have had the initiative to put their heads out of 

 their shells. Management does not have a monopoly of brains, and workmen ought 

 to be paid for thinking, and it is worth while so to pay them. 



It has been complained on behalf of the workers that under modern workshop 

 conditions they do not have opportunity for self-expression, and that this is a cause 

 of much industrial unrest. 



A suggestion scheme provides to the workman wide scope for his legitimate and 

 laudable ambition to exercise his creative abilities, and to stamp his own individuality 

 upon his work ; it is a channel through which he can make personal contribution to 

 technical progress, and so have a conscious share and proper pride in promoting 

 the general advance, while reaping immediate and appropriate reward for his effort. 

 The fuller exercise of his faculties is a source of pleasure to a workman ; it increases 

 his self-respect and enables him the better to realise his place in the industrial and 

 social structure. Suggestion schemes contain large possibiUties of fostering goodwill 

 and practical co-operation of the workpeople, and of promoting industrial harmony ; 

 they provide opportunities to the workers of increasing the value of their contribution 

 to industry and of enhancing their earnings by adding the work of their heads to the 

 "work of their hands. 



Mr. G. C. Allen. — Changes in Methods of Industrial Organisation in the 



West Midlands since 1860. 



This paper deals -with changes in the type of industry conducted in the West 

 Midlands area, and with changes in the scale, administration, and control. 



Friday, September 7. 



Prof. Mauritz Bonn. — Mediaeval Economic Theory in Modern Industrial 

 Life. 



Dr. K. G. Fenelon. — Some Aspects of Road and Rail Transport. 



During the past few years several causes have combined to focus public attention 

 on the position of inland transport in Great Britain. The rapid development of 

 mechanical road transport has brought a number of difficult problems into prominence, 

 while trade depression has had severe reactions on railway finance. Especially acute 



pp2 



