f the plan, for they
involved a great deal of consideration as to many difficult questions of
selection of representatives, provision for action by umpires, for
appeal to a board in certain contingencies, the character of questions
to be considered, methods of enforcement, standards of labor, and so on.
The point that I wish to make clear is that the Conference plan is
fundamentally the promotion of collective bargaining under fair
conditions of representation by both sides and the definite
organization of public opinion only as a pressure on the parties at
conflict to secure it. It is therefore basically not a plan of
arbitration, nor is it an industrial court. It is stimulation to
self-government in industry. The plan contains no essence of opposition
to organized labor or organized employers. It involves no dispute of the
right to strike or lock out, nor of the closed or open shop. It simply
proposes a sequence of steps that should lead to collective bargain
without imposing compulsions, courts, injunctions, fines, or jail. It is
at least a new step and worth careful consideration before employees and
employers subject themselves to the growth of public demands for the
other alternatives of wider governmental interference.

The Conference has set out the critical necessity of the development
within industry itself of a better basis of understanding as having the
great values that all prevention has over cures. There have been hopeful
developments in American industry during the past two or three years in
this direction. The first unit of employment relationship is each
industrial establishment, and if we would battle with misunderstanding
and secure mutual action it must be at this stage. It takes its visible
form in the organization in many establishments under various plans of
shop councils, shop committees, shop conference, all of which are based
on the democratic selection of representatives of employees who shall
remain in continuous open and frank relation and conference with the
employer in the interests of both. Where this development has had
success it has had one essential foundation; that is, that it must be
conceived in a spirit of cooeperation for mutual benefit and it has
invariably lost out where it has been conceived solely to bargain for
wages and conditions of labor. It does not necessarily involve
profit-sharing, but it does involve a human approach to the problems on
both sides and a mutual effort