An Industrial Truce.

Press, Volume LXIV, Issue 19211, 18 January 1928, Page 8

An Industrial Truce.

We said yesterday of the industrial "Peace Conference" that has just met in England that if it would he foolish to expect it to achieve a miracle it is encouraging to know that it has been' able to meet at all. The same general remark applies to the appeal for an industrial truce made hy the secretary of the Canterbury Employers' Association, and reported in this issue of The Press. To throw cold water on any hopeful attempt to improve industrial relations would be a public wrong; yet the fact remains that if there were enough sense and goodness in the average man to make a real truce possible it would already exist. Whatever friction there is in industry now, and Whatever corruption and waste, are there chiefly because there are comparatively few wise men in the world, and in the ultimate sense not very many honest ones. We do not say that a truce is not worth asking for. It is worth saying or doing almost anything to bring about, so'long as there is a chance that when it arrives it will be honourably observed. But there is some risk in all such approaches and negotiations that we drift into foolish sentimentalities which we mistake for a change of heart. There has been no change of heart in industry on one side or the other, and if we hope to make any real progress towards healthier relations it must be on strictly realistic lines. Comparatively few employers desire to cut wages, unless as a last and desperate resource; but it cannot be said with the same confidence that comparatively few wage-earners are aware of the danger of forcing wages up without a more than corresponding increase in production. The wise employer's concern is not really wages at all, but output; but Labour is being taught that the more money it is paid, apart altogether from the service it renders, the more it will have to spend, and the sooner industry will return to good times. There is thus a wide gulf between employer and employee which a truce would not bridge. If there were no strikes or lock-outs for a period of years, that would prevent the gulf from becoming wider, and by giving time for improvements in the methods of production, leave both sides in a more prosperous condition. But if the peace could be kept for so long a time by consent—and it will not be kept by any other method—it is difficult to see what excuse there is for the Arbitration Court. It would have no value during the period of the truce, and to suppose that it would become necessary again the day the truce expired is to admit in advance that the truce would be only a breathing space.