ding workmen in perpetual revolt against their conditions. And it
will pay the country to concede a great deal, not only for peace in the
workshop but for a higher standard of peace generally in the whole
community. The appeal that must be made to the workman must be followed
up by asking him to receive it in a very different spirit from the
spirit sometimes shewn in certain workshops. I am not here by any means
to pour praise altogether upon the working classes, and I am conscious
of the mistakes and wrongs which have sometimes been done in their
names, and I am therefore anxious that the spirit of the workshop should
be so tempered and altered as to be fit to receive and make the best use
of the approaches which are to be made to it to participate in workshop
management upon the lines which I have indicated.

So this appeal which has been made by the Whitley committee, and which
has been followed up by some other departments of government, is put as
an appeal to the common-sense and reason of the men in the workshop, and
does not rest upon any of the many agencies which have been employed
previously in the pursuit of definite trade union ends. This spirit can
be fostered only when the masses of workmen are reached by the
consciousness that they themselves are being called upon to share in
the undertakings of which they are so important a part. The importance
of workmen has been revealed in a most startling way during the period
of the war, and the war has shewn in many trades that recurring
differences between capital and labour can be adjusted without strikes
and without lock-outs if methods are provided in the workshop which are
acceptable to both sides, and are made to operate fairly and
satisfactorily between the different interests. Think how important the
workman has become because of the war. Consider how much the workman is
now pressed and drawn into all manner of services which previously he
could either remain in or leave at his will. The war has made such a
demand upon national industrial energy that there is no service now for
which there is not a demand. Indeed, you have seen the effect in that
services in the workshop include men who previously would have been
ashamed to have had it known that they had ever soiled their hands at
any toil at all, but who have been glad to get a place in the workshop
because it was work of national importance. War experience has shewn us
how high manual service stands in th