y that are non-organised. Some of those trades,
much to our shame, in former years were known as sweated industries, but
even there it is found that the workers, men and women alike, are coming
gradually into the trades unions, and should they not be in the trades
unions to any great extent they are to be reached by other ways and
means which this committee has developed. It is intended to apply to
them, so as to establish the necessary machinery for better relations,
the personnel of the Trades Boards Acts, those boards which, in the
absence of trades unions, deal with the sweated conditions of thousands
of workers employed in those sweated trades. So I have no fear myself of
the non-organised trades being left altogether out of the range of the
spirit to which I have referred. In addition to the committees there is
to be in every district, it is proposed, a representative council, drawn
from the employers and employed of the particular industry, and some
scores of these councils are now being set up. In addition, there is to
be in relation to every principal industry a national council, and many
of us are now engaged in the creation of those several bodies. The
public may not hear much about them, but they are the foundation upon
which this structure of better relations is to rest, and, so far as we
can spare some small margin of our time for those duties, considerable
headway has been made in establishing these different organisations.

But I attach most importance to the workshop committees, and so I want
to pursue this idea a little further. What are those committees to be?
They would have to be free representative bodies, chosen by the men
themselves. They could be empowered to meet the management, possessed of
a sense of responsibility, to discuss in their own homely way matters
which would have to be settled between them. Indeed, we know from
experience that many of the big trade disputes in this country have
grown out of trifles, out of small nothings comparatively, which could
well have been settled inside the workshop gates by bringing master and
man together, empowered to discuss matters which both understand as
matters of personal experience. The committees when created, in this
atmosphere and spirit to which I refer, would exist not in rebellion
against the trade unions or against the trade union system, or exist as
being in revolt against the management of the works, or the employer of
labour. The committe