nd passion are habitually
handled with coolness and good sense in the common interest of the
trade. A number of the employers have not merely acquiesced in the
system, but have become its convinced supporters, and this attitude
would be more common if certain irritating causes of friction were
removed. The employer who desires to treat his workers well and maintain
good conditions is relieved from the competition of rivals who care
little for these things, and what he is chiefly concerned about is
simplicity of rules and rigid universality of enforcement. It is this
section of employers who have prevented the crippling of the Boards in a
time of general reaction. It is blindness to refuse to see in such
co-operation a possible basis of industrial peace, and those were right
who in 1918 saw in the mechanism of the Boards the possibility, not
merely of preventing industrial oppression and securing a minimum living
wage, but of advancing to a general regulation of industrial relations.
At that time it was thought that the whole of industry might be divided
between Trade Boards and Whitley Councils, the former for the less, the
latter for the more organised trades. In the result the Whitley Councils
have proved to be hampered if not paralysed by the lack of an
independent element and of compulsory powers.

TRADE BOARDS HOLDING THE FIELD

The Trade Board holds the field as the best machinery for the
determination of industrial conditions. It is better than unfettered
competition, which leaves the weak at the mercy of the strong. It is
better than the contest of armed forces, in which the battle is decided
with no reference to equity, to permanent economic conditions, or to the
general good, by the main strength of one combination or the other in
the circumstances of the moment. It is better than a universal
State-determined wages-law which would take no account of fluctuating
industrial conditions, and better than official determinations which are
exposed to political influences and are apt to ignore the technicalities
which only the practical worker or employer understands. It is better
than arbitration, which acts intermittently and incalculably from
outside, and makes no call on the continuous co-operation of the trade
itself.

My hope is that as the true value of the Trade Board comes to be better
understood, its powers, far from being jealously curtailed, or confined
to the suppression of the worst form of underpay