created in quite impracticable numbers. The report concludes that it would be unwise to institute any general system of industrial tribunals, but that there might be some advantage in empowering town and county councils to establish them in a tentative manner. It would be the function of the councils to take the initiative without directly appointing the members, and any court of the kind, when approved by a public department and established by an Order in Council, would have the statutory powers exercised in pari materia by county courts.

These tribunals, it is held, would deal only with disputes arising out of existing agreements or trade customs. But all the greater and more serious disputes affecting large bodies of men, have regard to the future rather than the present, and to the modification of existing conditions rather than to their interpretation. The next question, therefore, is, whether it is desirable to establish statutory boards of conciliation and arbitration. On this point the report concludes that no central department could have the local knowledge necessary to attempt with success the creation of such institutions, and that the intervention of local public authorities cannot be usefully extended at present beyond the experimental action just referred

to. The Commissioners hope and believe that the present rapid extension of voluntary boards will continue. At some future time it may be found advisable to give them statutory powers, but at the present stage of progress "it would do more harm than good either to invest voluntary boards with legal powers or to establish rivals to them in the shape of other boards founded on a statutory basis and having a more or less public and official character."

With regard to the promotion of voluntary boards of conciliation and arbitration, the Commissioners report that, though they cannot agree in recommending the direct establishment of such boards of the State, they think that "a central department, with an adequate staff, and having means to procure, record, and circulate information, may do much by advice and assistance to promote their more rapid and universal establishment." It is suggested that legislation such as that proposed

by Mr Mundella last year might do much good by giving the Board of Trade a better locus standi for friendly and experienced intervention. But care must be taken to guard against any injury to the unique position which the Board of Trade now occupies. Its statistical duties will, in all probability, increase, and "in the collection and preparation of information the importance of absolute and universally recognised impartiality and freedom from any end or purpose except that of exact ascertainment of facts is so great that care will have to be taken that intervention, even of the most friendly character, in trade disputes shall in no degree impair statistical accuracy and credit."

The next point dealt with in the report is the appointment of official arbitrators. When all concerned are willing to arbitrate, there is often great difficulty in finding an arbitrator. "Either the proposed arbitrator or umpire is quite unconnected with industrial work, and then the process of informing his mind is too long and costly, or he is in some way connected with the industrial world, and then one party or the other is apt to suspect him of bias or partiality." The Commissioners think that this difficulty might be got over by giving a public department power to appoint an arbitrator to act either alone or in conjunction with others. If the same persons were frequently appointed, they would become arbitration experts, they would be fairly free from suspicion of bias, their expenses would be paid by the Treasury, and in time, if the system worked well, they might be made permanent instead of temporary and occasional judicial officers, with perhaps power to summon witnesses and examine them on oath.

It will no doubt be very disappointing to those who expected a great deal from the labours of the Commission to find that on this crucial question of the settlement of trade disputes their recommendations are so lame and inconclusive, and their joint wisdom has so manifestly failed to find a panacea for one of the greatest social evils of our time. But men of wisdom and experience must have known better what to expect. There is no "divine afflatus" about a Royal Commission, and it is not necessarily any more easy for a tribunal of this kind to

I

solve a great problem than it is for the individual. The Commissioners, however, indicate one direction in which an improvement of existing machinery is desirable. They hint at the lack of adequate provision for dealing with the minor. grievances of workmen. This matter is one that has been taken up and adjudicated upon by the joint-committees that are now at work in connection with most boards established in the iron, coal, and other industries. But such organisations, as we have seen, are relatively few, and it is highly desirable that the system should be as far as possible extended.

SECTION II.-FOREIGN COUNTRIES.

CHAPTER XVIII.

LABOUR DISPUTES AND THEIR SETTLEMENT IN THE UNITED STATES.

THE United States of North America are the most important industrial and manufacturing country in the world after Great Britain. It is even probable that they are to-day ahead of the old country from this point of view. But whether their industries as a whole are equally diversified, it is certain that in reference to many of them, such as mining, the manufacture of iron and steel, the working of other metals, the manufacture of railway plant, and above all, the working of railway traffic, the United States are by far the most important industrial nation in the world.

This unique position has been attained within such a comparatively short space of time, that it seems only like yesterday when the United States could make but small pretensions to being an industrial nation, and had little more than a merely agricultural reputation. Even so recently as 1880, only 7.6 per cent. of the total population of the country were employed in manufactures, as compared with 15.3 per cent. engaged in agriculture, while at the same time 23 per cent. of the population of the United Kingdom were engaged in manufacturing industry, as compared with only 7.5 per cent. engaged in agriculture.*

*

England's Supremacy, by J. Stephen Jeans, p. 16. Longmans.

If we go further back still, we shall find that the percentage proportion of the population of the United States employed in manufactures was relatively smaller, while that of the United Kingdom was not greatly different. Indeed, even in 1861, the industrial population of England was 22.7 per cent. of the whole, as against only 10 per cent. employed in agriculture.*

These facts have a more important bearing on the questions discussed in this volume than might appear at first sight. In the case of a settled and more or less independent agricultural population, such as that of the United States, there is not the same liability to labour disputes that there invariably is where the population is shifting and migratory, and engaged first in one occupation and then in another. Hence the United States have not until quite recently been called upon to face to any extent the great economic problems of work and wages which had at a much earlier period perplexed and disturbed our own country; and hence also we should not expect to find in the United States the same ripe experience of the labour question in its earlier forms and phases, as we must have in Great Britain.

Although in the industrial history of the United States unions of some kind have existed since the beginning of the present century, it is only since the time of the civil war that the labour organisations of that country have attained to anything like their present importance.† The excitement of that period, and the abolition of slavery, gave a strong impetus to the movement in favour of organised labour, and in the ten following years many new unions and so-called brotherhoods were constituted. Of these by far the most important appears to be the "Federation of Organised Trades and Labour Unions of the United States and Canada," which was established at Pittsburg in 1881, and which, ten years later, had a member

* England's Supremacy, by J. Stephen Jeans, p. 17.

+ Royal Commission on Labour: Foreign Reports-The United States, P. 7.