J-4 
LAND & WATER 
July 19, 1917 
m great numbers, and in the early months of pressure many 
of the lessons learned so painfully in the Industrial Revolution 
were forgotten. Everybody was thinking of the firing line, 
where the Germans could drop a shell on our infantry when- 
ever they wished, while w? liad to ration our guns day by day. 
It was a choice between lives and shells, and the authorities 
yielded to the temptation to suppose that long hours, Sunday 
work.and incessant overtime were the means to rapid production. 
We had to learn over again that all this is false econoniy, 
and that there is no sphere in which the law of diminishing 
returns exacts such certain penalties from those who dis- 
regard it. The circumstances under which this work has 
been done forced on the attention of the Ministry the whole 
question of provision for canteens, washing, rest rooms and 
other necessities of a decent working life in the factory. 
From this there developed a Welfare Section, and in many 
works a Welfare Supervisor is appointed whose business it is 
to see that the factory conforms to a certain standard in these 
respects and to gi-ye help and advice. This institution 
might obviouslv become a positive evil if it meant a new 
inquisition on "the part of the employer ; if the welfare 
worker becomes mainly a new pair of eyes for the management. 
But if the workpeople themselves control it, it becomes 
quite a different thing. It would represent the organisation 
by the workpeople of arrangements for their own comfort, 
and their enforcement of the kind of standard that would 
be imposed if our Factory Acts were brought up to date 
Workshop Committees 
The mention of the sort of questions that will be discussed- 
under tlie new arrangement shows that the success and 
reality of the scheme are largely dependent on the Workshop 
Committees. Any tendency to concentrate authority and 
function in the District and National Councils would be 
fatal, f6r it would be followed by discord between these 
■ several bodies. The Workshop Committees would be in the 
closest touch with the actual life of the shop, and they must 
have initiative and power if the scheme is to be genuinely 
representative. 
The creation of these Councils and Workshop Committees 
will mean the beginning of representative Government. It 
will mean that the general conditions on which the main 
body of the industry is agreed will be applied throughout 
the industry. But industry, organised for this purpose, 
will be a unit also for other purposes. 
Take for example the recent establishment of the Board 
of Control for the cotton industry. The high price of cotton 
and the shortage of supply have caused a crisis. In the old 
days every encouragement was given to the chaos and 
confusion that arose in such a case, for the several iirms were 
left to do what they could and many firms suffered while 
others actually might make profit out of the difficulties of the 
trade. Such a crisis occurred at the time of the famous 
Orders in Council (the answer of the Government to Napoleon's 
Berlin Decrees) when works were closed by the score and 
workpeople turned into the streets by the thousand. 
It is obvious that an Industry ought to act together and 
pursue a common policy. The setting up of this Board is a 
recognition of this truth, and a recognition also of the 
truth that the workpeople ought to have a voice in deciding 
that common pohcy. It will put an end to speculation. For 
the Board will regulate the buying and selling of raw cotton, and 
it will have the most extensive powers. Buying and selling 
will be by licence, and licences will be granted solely by the 
Board of Control on which Trade Unions have full representa- 
tion. Thus Labour is admitted to the control of commercial 
policy and not merely of industrial conditions. In this 
crisis it is emphatically true that economical pohcy will 
determine_industrial conditions. 
The same arrangement has been applied to the woollen 
industry in even greater detail. The Government had to 
find clothing for millions of men, and this entailed all kinds 
of changes and adaptations in the industry. From tliis 
there has grown up a system of control of the industry, 
which is in name state control, but in fact self-control. 
The Advisory Committee through which the Government 
control is exercised has full Trade Union representation. 
This Committee rations its firms and it also determines the 
margin to be allowed at each stage in the process of production 
as remuneration for the work performed at that stage. In its 
relations to the State the industry thus resembles a Guild. 
The centre of gravity is now the Advisory Committee, though 
the Government began by attempting to exercise its control by 
the old-fashioned methods of specialised oificials. It is not 
improbable that this Advisory Committee will expand into 
a permanent organisation after the war. 
The Government would have been well advised to adopt 
the same large view in setting up its railway management 
committee. If Mr. J. H. Thomas is fit to be President of the 
Local Goverhinent Board (and nobody questions it), he is fit 
to serve on a Railway Committee. There is no reason foi 
discriminating between the railways and such an industry as 
cotton. Industries that have learned to act together in a 
crisis will not revert to the old disorganised methods. 
Ministry of Industry 
We have learnt something also about the use of central 
institutions or departments. Two Ministries have been set 
up during the War with whom future industry is specially 
concerned ; Ministry of Labour and Ministry of Munitions. 
Now the idea of a Ministry of Labour is obviously false and 
misleading. The name suggests that " labour " is a separate 
class in the State for which separate laws are made and ad- 
ministered. It looks like an extension of the vicious principle 
of the Insurance Act. That Act introduced the principle 
that if a man has an income below a certain figure he can be 
compelled to do things which men richer than himself need 
not do. It says something for the unreality into which our 
politics had degenerated that so wrong a principle should 
have encountered so little opposition. To talk of a Ministry 
of Labour seems to imply that the workman instead of being 
an ordinary citizen belongs to some distinct world of his own, 
with its interests and its own concerns needing the special 
interference of the State. It is as if the democrats in the 
French Revolution had called for a Ministry of the Third 
Estate instead of demanding for the Third Estate the full 
rights of active citizenship. In the reorganisation after 
the war, the Ministry ought to be absorbed in a Ministry of 
Industry, a Ministry, that is, which concerns itself with in- 
dustrial matters that are of interest alike to employers and to 
workmen. 
Certain functions would naturally belong to such a Ministry 
of Industry, which is needed. It is agreed that the nation has 
a direct and vital interest in safeguarding essential industries, 
and in maldng secure the supply of essential raw materials. 
The organisation of Scientific Research, immensely stimulated 
during the war by the sheer necessity of discovering substitutes 
for products that we had imported from Germany, is recognised 
now as an administrative work of capital and paramount im- 
portance. What is wanted is some means of providing manufac- 
turers and men 'of business with full knowledge of the latest 
results of experiences and research, of giving advice and guid- 
ance based on experience at home and in foreign countries. 
The Ministry would have, for example, a Costings Depart- 
ment which would work in conjunction with the Industrial 
Councils. It would be the business of the Department to 
issue reports, like the reports issued by the Bureau of 
Standards in the United States, showing what is a reasonable 
cost of production for each class of article and each pro- 
cess. Such a report would be a guide to the Government in 
placing contracts and in deciding what profits are excessive. It 
would be a guide to industry, for a manufacturer would learn 
whether his work was up to the average standard of efficiency 
and if not where and why he fell below it. It would be a guide 
also to collective bargaining on wages. 
Such a Department would enable the Government to keep 
watch over the supply of raw materials and generally to help 
the efforts of industries to organise and improve their resources. 
Such action will be needed particularly in the period im- 
mediately following the Declaration of Peace. The shortage at 
the beginning of the war caused by a vastly increased demand 
will be succeeded after the war by a real shortage in relation 
to a normal demand. This will' involve a strict control of 
raw material and not least, of shipping, to protect the nation 
and its industries from the dangers of famine. 
It has already been announced that a Committee representing 
the chief employers' associations and the chief Trade Unions 
will be the central authority for advising on dcmobihsation, 
and such a Committee should become a permanent feature of 
the Ministry for the discharge of the functions assigned to 
the present Ministry of Labour. This Committee might be 
formed by representatives from Industrial Councils. 
The working of the Trade Boards Act, -the supervision of 
Employment Exchanges, the control of Unemployment In- 
surance, would all naturally belong to a Ministry of Industry. 
The leading principle to" be kept in view in the operations 
of this Department would be precisely the opposite principle 
to that of the Insurance Act. As much work as possible 
should be done through the representative associations of 
employer and workman, and as little as possible through the 
Department itself. In the case of Unemployment Insurance 
the principle of supplementing the provision made by Trade 
Unions which was recognised in the Act of 1909 should be 
extended, and the administration of the Employment Ex- 
changes, locally as well as at the centre, should be associated 
with these representative bodies. 
