be done have come as natural to us
under war conditions which we could not resist, and of which we were the
creatures. Where now is the law of supply and demand? Indeed, if the law
of supply and demand were operating at this moment, there are few
workmen in the country who would not be receiving many, many pounds more
a week than they are. The workman is not paid to-day according to the
demand for his labour. A very much higher obligation decides for him
what his remuneration is to be. I have in mind, of course, the fact that
a considerable number of workers, who are employed upon munition
services and so on, are enjoying very high wages, but that is not at all
true of the masses of the industrial population, and we ought not to be
deceived by these rare instances which are quoted of men coming out of
the workshop with _L_20 or _L_30. Speaking of the industrial population
in the main, what was the outstanding economic doctrine?--the doctrine
that the demand for labour and the volume for supplying that demand
determined the remuneration. That doctrine has had to go by the board
like so many other things that could not exist under war pressure.

Then, how are we to give effect to this general workshop aspiration for
bringing the workman into closer unity with the conditions which
determine that part of his life which is the bread-winning part, for
which he has to turn out in the morning early and often return home late
in the evening? There was established some time ago what can be
described as a quite responsible committee to report upon how better
relations not only between employers and employed through their
associations, but in regard to employers and employed in the workshops,
might be established. That committee issued the report commonly known to
us now as the Whitley Report, of which I am quite sure more will be
heard in a few years. The men who had to frame that report were drawn
from the two extremes of the employers and trade unions. We had men with
very advanced views, like Mr Smillie, on the one hand, and we had quite
powerful employers of labour, like Sir Gilbert Claughton and Sir William
Carter, on the other. I had the privilege of sitting on that committee,
and for some months we laboured to frame some definite terms which might
be accepted by those who were concerned in our recommendations. I very
often hear the suggestion that people will have little of it because it
is not ideal, not grand or great eno