The Golden Antidote to Class Warfare

Dominion, Volume 19, Issue 166, 10 April 1926, Page 15

The Golden Antidote to Class Warfare

Will there be a big industrial crisis in May when the coal subsidy ends ? It is a good sign that on all hands the spirit of compromise and goodwill is being encouraged, and all avenues of peace are being approached with an earnest desire to reach this desired goal. The story told by James Douglas below, and the inspiring pleas of a Liverpool shipping director and trade union leader which follow are worthy of front page distinction. They will be read with earnest interest.— Public Opinion.

, OWARDS the close of the war an American business man m I Cincinnati was invited by the pastor of his church to preach a lay | sermon on the theme, ‘What is wrong with Christianity?’. He agreed to do so, and at once tried to apply Christian ethics in his own business,” writes Mr. James Douglas in the Daily Express. “He was a clothier, employing a hundred workers. In the clothing trade there was ruthless sweating. The workers were underpaid, underfed, and overworked. There were strikes. There was hatred between employer and employed. • • 11 “Mr. Nash read the Sermon on the Mount. An impossible, impracticable, and utterly unbusinesslike document! The golden rule would ruin the clothing factory of the ‘A. Nash Company.’ But Mr. Nash resolved, to risk ruin. He told his workers that he would in future practise the golden rule in his factory. “The golden rule worked. The turnover increased from £26, 400 in 1918 to £750,000 in 1922. In five years the workers increased from 100 to 3,000. There were no strikes. The golden rule factory paid larger wages and made larger

profits. » “The skilled workers in the factory signed a petition asking that the less highly paid workers should share in their benefits. Moreover the workers themselves devised improvements and economies. In order to find work for the unemployed in the district they offered to take a lower wage and to work on alternate weeks 1 "The whole story seems incredible and inconceivable. But it is not the invention of a canting prig. The golden rule actually and positively worked and was worked. It transformed the whole factory from top to bottom. .It developed good fellowship and good comradeship, good nature, and good feeling. It exorcised rancour, hatred, and strife. It altered the character and ennobled the temper of all concerned. "I have told the story of the golden rule factory for. the benefit of those who despairingly accept class warfare as a necessary and inevitable curse of civilisation. The golden antidote to class warfare is the golden rule, “Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, even so do ye also unto them.’ ”

After alluding to the adoption of this principle with regard to the coal crisis, Mr. James Douglas goes on to say in the Daily Express—

“The rest of the nation must not ask the mineowners and miners to practise the golden rule while they practise the iron rule, ‘Each for himself and the devil take the hindmost.’ All employers and all workers must take a hand in the business of life-saving. “This is a wealthy country. It possesses ample resources for the job of helping the mineowners and miners out of their peril. If we were at war we should all fight and work together. There is no reason why we should not all do in peace what we do in war. All that is. required is the spirt of unselfish fidelty to each other. We can, if we will, abolish the habit of hate. We can love our neighbour as ourselves. “The sheltered and prosperous industries and trades ought to come to the aid of their less fortunate fellow-industries and fellow-trades. They ought to bear one another’s burdens. They ought to make willing sacrifices. The sheltered and prosperous workers ought also to play their part in the great work of relief and rescue. There should be a voluntary equality of service and sacrifice in all classes. There should be a generous rivalry in chivalry. “If we could create a national acceptance of the golden rule in industry there would be no national crisis in May. There would be no division of the nation into opposite camps. There would be no stupid war cries. There would be no hate, no envy, no enmity, and no bitterness. “There would be no deadlocks of envenomed interests and empoisoned aims. It may seem daring to assert that a change of heart can be wrought by the golden rule in a whole nation as well as in an individual. But the nation is a collection of individuals.

“What is possible in the unit is possible in the mass. If each employer and each worker were to accept the golden rule from this day forth the miracle would be wrought, and the whole nation would march forward in brotherhood along the path of peaceful comradeship and fraternal prosperity. “But let nobody imagine that industrial fellowship can be won without his individual contribution of self-sacrifice. There must be no contracting-out for anybody. There must be no self-seeking at the expense of others*. There must be no shirking and no evasion of the universal duty. We must all be ready to shoulder our fit and proper share of the burden. “Let us start the golden rule at once. Let us begin by governing our tongues and our pens. Let us practise good fellowship in our' talk and in our writing.

Let cacli employer and each worker strive to cast ’out hate and rancour from their minds. “Thus the atmosphere of the golden rule would spread over the whole land, and make the task of the peacemaker easy. This is the miracle we must all work if we want to make our country great and happy in a brotherly comradeship of true patriotism.” “Far too long have Capital and Labour stood in separate camps, each looking with suspicion upon the other as if they were enemies. This attitude towards each other is an entirely mistaken one. Capital and Labour are not enemies: their best interests are mutual, and neither side can really succeed without the help and sympathy of the other. The real enemy to be fought and overcome is the selfishness and the greed, the envy and the enmity, the lust of pleasure and power which are to be found in the hearts and minds of both sides alike. “Let Capital and Labour, therefore, join forces, and insteady of fighting each other turn their weapons upon the real enemies—those disruptive and sinister forces within—which are. the root cause of our troubles.” —Mr. J. H. Sharrock, Director of Elder, Dempster and Co., Ltd. “Surely there is a war—a moral and spiritual war worthy of the greatest fighting qualities- of the British race. From the highest to the lowest in the land all grades of society—men, women, and even the young people—can take a part in this great battle. To win out and prove victorious in this fight means nothing less than saving modern civilisation from ending in disaster and chaos, said Mr. J. H. Sharrock, President of the Liverpool Shipping Staffs Association, at it's recent annual meeting.T “We are now at the culmination of a materialistic age, when the knowledge of the material laws and forces of the universe is so great and so terrible that unless they are,governed and balanced and overruled by a knowledge of those mysterious yet still mightier moral and spiritual laws and forces, humanity will inevitably bring about its own destruction,” added Mr. Sharrock. . . _ “The times are pregnant with great events, and we are approaching a crisis in our national and industrial history-big with fate for the future of the country and the Empire—and it is just at such momentous periods, as history proves, that the British people show the best qualities of the race. . “Already there is evidence throughout the country of a quickening spirit at work, and that a real effort is being made to awaken the spirit of goodwill and co-operation among all classes. “England has done great and glorious work for the good of the world in the past, and I think it is a sound and correct reading of the present position which sees that this old country of ours will once again rise to the occasion and will yet win a way through the present unrest into a .nobler, happier and more posperous new era which is but waiting for our right effort to bring it into being.” , , , , Mr. Frank Hodges, one of the most trusted of the miners leaders, m an able and moderate declaration reported in the “Tinies," said “The pits themselves, and the colliery villages were the ground upon which any permanent good must begin. There must be the birthplace of good relationships Any new friendliness above would be short lived if there was not a blending of interests at the mines themselves. .... . ~, “The workmen asked for a larger share in the -administration of the mines. They did not ask to interfere with the executive responsibilities of the technical officers who had to run the mines under the Coal Mines Regulations Acts. They asked for a larger share only in the general conduct of the collieries, in the buying of raw material, in the production of coal, and in t e selling of the coal as a financial product. x . “If the owners were to give a ready and generous response to that demand, which had grown up over a long period of years, and would declare openly that at the pits themselves they would begin to make it possible for the workmen to express themselves more fully in the process of production, we should be at the beginning of a real settlement of many of our troubles. . The men had experience. Why not use it? They aspired to a co-operative interest in the industry. Why could it not be readily granted? . . , , , . , “He could assure the owners that it was not a deep political plan designed to oust them from possession. It'was the legitimate expression of the desire of the 20th-century workmen to be something more than a mere hewer of wood or drawer of water. The fear of the eniployers that the men would impinge upon executive functions had to be broken down. Recognition of the mens aspirations would be the beginning of a long series of industrial relations and a long period of industrial peace.”