July 19, 1917 
LAND & WATER 
Past and Future : Organisation 
By Jason 
13 
THE creation of Joint Councils will mark an important 
stage in the development of our industrial organi- 
sation. It will give to those industries, where Trade 
Unions are well established, representative insti- 
tutions. In this way it will enfranchise the workman and 
give to society the benefit of his knowledge and ex- 
perience. It will increase the power of the industry, reduce 
waste, help to destroy the old view that the workpeople are 
a separate class, the mere instruments of the power and wealth 
of others. If this scheme is developed widely and full ad- 
vantage is taken of its opportunities the setting up of these 
Councils will be a turning-point in our history. 
But none of these consequences will follow unless' the Trade 
Union is the basis of the scheme. We do not want to see new 
and rival organisations enabhng employers, when they are 
hostile to Trade Unions, to play off one force against another. 
That would mean not strength but weakness, not co-operation 
but chaos, and civil war more bitter than any of the quarrels 
of the past. There must be no " Yellow " Unions in our 
workshops. The initial principle is to confirm what we may 
call the spirit of Trade Union law. 
It is, of course, essential that the Government should 
accept this constitution for its own workshops and industries. 
In the Post Office, in the Dockyards, on the Railways 
which are now under Government control, and in all Govern- 
ment undertakings, the principle should be applied without 
delay. The Government cannot well recommend to other 
employers methods that they do not adopt themselves. 
Slowly and gradually we havfi come to see that the Govern- 
ment must be a model employer. We have recognised that 
principle in the case of hours and of fair wages, and in the 
case of a departure so important and so promising as this the 
Government must obviously set the example themselves. 
Elements of Chaos 
It happens that Government employment offers a specially 
favourable field, for it is relatively free from the difficulties 
caused by the number and variety of Trade Unions. In the 
case of the railways and the mines, now under Government 
control, and in the case of the Post Office and the Dockyards, 
there are forces tending to overcome the competition of 
different Trade Union interests, and to bring all classes of 
workpeople into line. It is easy to see that the elements of 
chaos and discord in the Trade Union world are a serious 
embarrassment and danger to the prospects of the scheme and 
therefore the experiments in Government employment will 
be particularly instructive. 
In those industries where Trade Unions are weak, some 
special method is necessary. In most of those industries 
there exists a special machinery in the form of Trade Boards, 
established under the Trade Boards Act of 1908, an act for 
fixing and enforcing rates of wages in sweated trades. The 
operation of this Board has been reviewed by Mr. R. H. 
Tawney in an important book]" Minimum Rates in the Tailoring 
Industry" and the experience of the Act shows that it has had 
two beneficent effects : in the first place it has promoted and 
encouraged Trade Unionism, and in the second the members 
of these Boards have developed a habit of discussing other 
questions than mere wage questions. This habit has arisen 
partly because it is their duty to fix conditions about learners 
and in this way they have come to regulate more or less the en- 
trance to the Trade. The machinery of these Boards might be 
extended and certain further definite powers might be given to 
them. Before very long we may hope the Trade Unions in these 
industries will become powerful and representative. Mean- 
while these Boards might be set up in certain sweated industries 
where they do not exist and in certain svyeated sections or 
departments of organised industries. ''^' ' "' 
When industry has its constitutipn thefe Will be questions 
enough for its representatives to discuss and settle. We have 
referred to the questiorB that come illideT the term of scien- 
tific management. Methods of payment will naturally be 
discussed, subject of course to the maintenance of district 
rates. There have been numberless experiments in different 
methods of payment in Munition Factories during the war, 
and this experience will be available for the use and guidance 
of Workshop Committees. Here also it is of vital importance 
to have the men's views represented. It is the instinct of 
the employer so to arrange methods of payment as to obtain 
the maximum of work from a workman in a certain time. 
It is the instinct of the workman to steady and regulate this 
pressure, and it is the instinct of the Trade Union to substitute 
what we may call either a group selfishness or a group loyalty 
for a merely personal incentive and method. The payment 
that may be calculated to elicit the greatest effort at a given 
time may be unfair to the older workmen, and the Trade 
Union represents collective interest, as against the tempta- 
tion to the individual to think only of his earnings. 
Idle or Industrious 
There was a good deal of discussion in the i8th century on 
the question whether workmen were idle or industrious. 
Bishop Berkeley said that if a traveller noticed that a man work- 
ing in the fields stopped to gaze after him he was generally an 
Irishman : Cobbett said that the Englishman and the Irishman 
worked hard, but the Scotsman generally chose a light job 
such as peeping into melon frames. Neither of these state- 
ments can be accepted without caution, for Bishop Berkeley 
was trying to persuade Irishman to -work harder and Cobbett 
shared Dr. Johnson's prejudices against the Scotsmen in 
England. Adam Smith laid it down that workmen paid by 
the piece tend to overwork themselves, and the 
important Interim Report on Industrial Efficiency and 
Fatigue, published by the Health of Munition Workers Com- 
mittee, observes that workers, especially those newly intro- 
duced to industrial life, require protection against their own 
eagerness. The temptation to go on to the other extreme will 
be checked by the atmosphere of corporate responsibility for 
the success of the industry. It must be remembered that group 
loyalty, if it sometimes acts as a restraint, may also act as 
a stimulus. Gun-drill, for instance, becomes much more 
exciting in a battery when the sub-sections are pitted 
against each other. 
The importance of giving the workmen a voice in these ques- 
tions is very evident to anybody who has studied the paper on 
" Incentives to Work " published in the Interim Report on 
Industrial Efficiency and Fatigue, to which reference has been 
made. It is there remarked that no wage system known to the 
Committee takes any special account of the physiological 
fact that a natural inclination to work is followed by a desire 
for rest. Two officers at the front recently, for a friendly 
wager, competed in making equal lengths of a certain trench, 
each with an equal squad of men. One ' let his men work 
as they pleased but as hard as possible. The other divided 
his men into three sets, to work in rotation, each set 
digging their hardest for five minutes and then resting for a 
time till their spell of labour came again. The team 
which was so organised won easily. The second officer 
understood this physiological law and the first was ignorant 
of it ; so was his team. 
Value of Experience 
But in a Munition Factory it has been found that the 
workpeople have arranged their own exertions with an 
eye to this law, of which they were aware not from any 
scientific analysis but from personal experience. A gang 
of workers, men and women paid on a time wage, were found 
employed from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. with two half-hour meal 
intervals, at the process of emptying and filling a series of 
presses. Each press, after being filled, has to be left under hy- 
draulic pressure for 35 minutes, during which time other presses 
in the series are emptied and filled. The management calcu- 
lated the number of presses to each series, which would allow 
the work to be done in 35 minutes at a reasonable pace : but the 
workers on their own initiative have adopted a different 
method. They work with a rapidity so organised that the 
series of presses is emptied and filled in less than 25 minutes 
after which they rest for ten or twelve minutes, 
until the time comes to begin again. The Report urges that 
the work of tending machines is very apt to cause physical and 
mental exhaustion, just because the speed of the machine 
largely controls the rapidity of output and the worker has 
therefore an incentive to strive to keep pace at all costs. In all 
work of this kind interpolation of rest pauses is essential, and 
the Committee urged that a proper method of payment 
would recognise this. This clearly is a case in which the ex- 
perience and suggestions of workpeople are essential. 
The subject of Welfare Work has come into prominence 
during the war because the Ministry of Munitions, called on to 
deal with the problems created by the sudden expansion of a 
particular industry on an unprecedented scale, has been obliged 
to consider the arrangements for the health and comfort of 
; workpeople. V\'omen and boys were taken into employment 
