August 2, 1917 
LAND & WATER 
21 
admirals and politicians, but we have often forgotten the 
deserts of the common soldier, the common sailor, and the 
common citizen. This war is above all the achievement of 
the common citizen who, whether he has become a foot soldier 
or a gunner or a sailor or a munition-worker, has responded 
to the call of civilisation with a noble readiness. 
Not Service but Profit 
Tlie gi. neral spectar le of the national effort during these three 
years is inspiring and stimulating. But it carries also a 
warning. If our national resources have surprised us it re- 
mains true that our industrial system has found us out. The 
basis of that system is not ser\'ice but profit ; its motive 
power is not freedom, but discipline. When we turned to 
that system for the machinery to which to harness the ener- 
gies of the nation we learnt something of its weaknesses. 
The first and most conspicuous failure of the time has been 
the failure to deal with profiteering. Under the spell of 
the first emotions of the war, the Trade Unions abandoned 
all their claims for higher wages, and called a truce. If the 
Government had acted at once to stop profiteering, a great 
deal of trouble that came later would have been avoided. 
But the great doctrine of the industrial revolution (the theory 
that the enlightened self-interest of the trader corresponded 
by an unfailing law with the interest of the State) was too 
deeply embodied in the intellectual composition of our states- 
men for any such measures to be taken, and the workmen 
who were prepared for any sacrifice and surrender 
of their claims, saw that for other classes business was to be 
very much as usual. The Government said it was unfor- 
tunate that prices were rising, but that it was impossible to 
control this tendency. Thus, the poorer classes learnt that 
the law of sacrifice had its limits, and that there were people 
whose destiny it was to make fortunes out of the sufferings 
of their neighbours. The spell was broken. 
The atmosphere of contention has clung to industry in con- 
bi quence. The Government had to choose between the two 
courses. Either industry was to continue as usual, in which case 
the elements of strife that belonged to the industrial system 
remain,or industry was to be transformed by placing employers 
and workmen on some basis of ser\ice, eliminating all profit 
and putting everybody on the footing < f the soldier. Such 
measures would have excited some opposition from all classes. 
They needed courage and imagination. But we may say that all 
the efforts of the Government to create social and industrial 
peace have been efforts to find substitutes for that measure. 
The various measures that have been taken in this direc- 
tion have included the setting up of a Committee of three 
for adjustment of wage disputes (this Committee made 1,500 
awards during 1916) ; the introduction of the principle 
that war profits had some special liability in the excess profit 
tax ; ihe arrangements for controlling shipping ; the new 
and important system of Government purchase associated 
with the Contracts Department, and the several attempts 
to control prices, in the case, for example, of coal and food. 
Not all of these problems have been solved, far from it. But 
we have travelled some distance from the early days when 
Ministers threw up their hands and exclaimed that no Govern 
ment could lay a finger on the great law of profits. 
The conversion of the national energy to the one task of 
providing for war, has been a gradual process. It was some 
months after the outbreak of the war that the Government 
of the day realised that munitions could not be left to the 
War Office. The business of the War Office was to raise and 
train armies. For the other tasks of providing equipment, 
amunition, guns and the vast apparatus of modern war, the 
Department had neither the experience nor the qualifications 
that were wanted. A separate Department was necessary, 
the Ministry of Munitions was established, and Mr. Lloyd 
George became the first Minister. What the scope and range 
of the Ministry have become we may gather from Dr. Addison's 
speech in the House of Conamons at the end of June. 
The Ministry was primarily concerned with munitions of 
war, but it has developed mto a Ministry of Industry, for 
the war has brought one problem after another into the light. 
When the Ministry was established rather over two years 
ago, it was as Dr. Addison described it, a munition shop. It 
is now in addition a great Department of Industrial research, 
manufacturing not only 18 pounders, heavy guns, tanks, 
aeroplanes, but machines for agriculture, devising schemes 
for supplying material for which we were dependent on many 
countries. Potash is a case in point ; the Germans thnught 
we should be dependent on them after peace, but by n.ob li ung 
our scientific resources the Ministry has discovered a pro.;ess 
for obtaining great quantities of potash, and Dr. Addison 
can assure us that his Department would be able to provide 
every ounce of potash that the glass trade requires, and very 
largely to meet the need of agriculture as well. Our capacity 
for providing sulphuric acid is fifteen times what is was before 
the war ; a fact of great significance for our industry in the 
future. Before the war we could rely on British resources for 
only about 10 per cent, of the optical glass we require, most 
of the rest came from Germany or Austria. We are now in 
a position to supply our own needs, and to give substantial 
help to our Allies. We have been compelled to bring our 
men of science into play for the purpose of war, and their 
work will last for the purposes of peace. A great stride 
forward has been taken in modernising our methods and 
arrangements. 
This has been the most successful side of the work of the 
Ministry of Munitions, and it represents an achievement of 
which the nation may be proud. The Ministry has been less 
fortunate in its handling of the labour question. Here there, 
have been two disturbing forces at work. 
First the Government tried to adapt the industrial system 
to the National emergency. Now the industrial system, as the 
articles that have appeared in these columns have attempted 
to show, sets up a permanent atmosphere of conflict, ^n 
integral part of that system is the Trade Union organisation 
and tradition, for they represent the defensive resources of the 
workpeople created and developed by generations of struggle. 
A Minister about to call on that system for a supreme effort 
would naturally prefer to have so much plant and so much 
labour power at his disposal so that he could economise 
power, time, space, transport whenever possible. But before 
the engineering industry could be simplified in this way a 
revolution was necessary, and that revolution threatened the 
Trade Union rights wluch the workpecple had acquired at 
great cost, to which they clung as the guarantee of their 
liberties for the future. Most of the trouble in the munition 
works has turned on this question. The Government entered 
into solemn negotiations with the Trade Union leaders, and 
the first agreement to surrender their rights so far as war 
work was concerned, was an agreement between the Prime 
Minister and the Minister of Munitions on the one hand, and 
the representative of the A.S.E. on the other. 
The Trades Unions 
Later the Government called on the Trade Unions for a 
further and more dangerous surrender. The submarine 
campaign and the general depredations of the war make 
economy of labour in all directions essential, and one method 
of economy was to extend dilution to private and commercial 
work. This was a very big demand, and it was presented with 
little care or tact. The workpeople were already suspicious, 
and their suspicions were aggravated and inflamed. It was 
believed in many munition centres that the Government 
were conspiring with the employers to get rid of Trade Union 
customs altogether, and the language of some of the news- 
papers and politicians dwelling on the obstructive character 
of these customs, encouraged this belief. Meanwhile it must 
be remembered the old antagonistic relations of workpeople 
and employer had not been abolished. On the contrary, 
they were emphasised in the mind of the workpeople because 
this reserve power, the right to strike, had been withdrawn. 
The situation would have been cased if the Government 
had known how to bring the workpeople into co-operation. 
Early in the war, joint advisory committees had been set up, 
representing workpeople and employer, for stimulating the 
production of munitions. The Government were urged to 
take this committee for their model. Unfortunately, Mr. 
Lloyd George preferred more bureaucratic methods, and 
instead of developing this committee, he created a new machi- 
nery of Munition Tribunals and Labour Officers. The Tri- 
bunals have become intensely unpopular. 
This, then, was the first disturbing force ; the spirit of 
the old industrial system. The other was the new element 
of compulsion in the workman's life. The Military Ser- 
vice Acts, and the Munition Acts between them destroyed the 
personal freedom of the workmen. We know enough by this 
time of the working of the .\cts and Medical re-examinations 
to reaUse that the way in which conscription has been ad- 
ministered has not tended to reconcile the working classes to 
their new burdens. The Trade Card scheme, which, in its 
existing form is open to serious objections of principle, re- 
])resented some modification of a power which seemed to the 
workman arbitrary and indiscriminate. The Government 
wanted to get rid of the scheme because it hindered the supply 
of recruits and in this case, as in that of the extension of dilu- 
tion, they acted in such a manner as to make the workpeople 
still more distrustful of their aims. 
For these reasons the close of the third year of war found 
the nation better equipped and organised in material than 
anybody cc uld have expected, but less united in spirit than 
it would have been if the Government had been more de- 
mocratic in its methods. But the war has prepared men's 
minds for changes, and in this respect also, lessons have 
been learned for the future. 
