t Government.
We have not issued our programme yet. When we do, we are going to make
the country a wonderful promise. We are going to promise that there
shall be no more strikes. That sounds a large order, perhaps, but we
shall keep our word and we are going to end for ever this bitter
struggle between capital and labour by welding the two into one and by
making the interests of one the interests of the other. Our scheme is
that the person whom you elect to-day will be chairman of an inner
conference of twelve. We shall ask you to elect a further three from
amongst yourselves, which will give the trades unions four
representatives upon this inner council. Four representative Cabinet
Ministers will be chosen by ballot to add to their number. Four
employers of labour, elected by the Employers' Association, will also
join the council and the whole will be presided over by the person whom
you elect to-day. There will be a select committee, or rather
fifty-seven select committees, of each industry always at hand, and we
consider that we shall frame in that manner a body of men competent to
deal with the inner workings of every industry. They will decide what
proportion of the earnings of each industry shall be allocated to labour
and what to capital. In other words, they will fix or approve of or
revise the wages of the country. They will settle every dispute and
their decision will be final. The funds held by the various trades
unions will form charitable funds or be returned as bonuses to the
contributors. I have given you the barest outline of the scheme which
has been drawn up to form a part of our programme when the time comes
for us to present one. To-day you are only concerned to elect the one
representative. I am here to beg, gentlemen, that you elect one whose
theories, whose principles, whose antecedents and whose general attitude
towards labour problems will fit him to take a very important place in
the future government of the country."

There was a little murmur of applause. Miller was once more on his
feet.

"I claim," he said, "that this is neither the time nor the place to
spring upon us an utterly new method of dealing with Labour questions.
What you propose seems to me a subtle attack upon the trades unions
themselves. They have been the guardians of the people for the last
fifteen years, and even though some strikes have been necessary and
although all strikes may not have been successful, yet on the who