AMAZING INDUSTRY.

Evening Post, Volume XCVI, Issue 40, 15 August 1918, Page 2

AMAZING INDUSTRY.

Mr. G. H. Roberta, Minister of Lab our:—

"After the war we must unite to make Great Britain still greater. Not one of our soldiers should be allowed to return to dirty slums, to fever-stricken alleys, or to debasing labour conditions. They must be welcomed back to a pure atmosphere, a sense of security and a position of sufficiency of means. Utopia would not come by dreaming of it, but by working for it. If I were an autocrat I would like to pass a single clause Bill enacting.that no person should take another person'into his employ unless he were willing to pay the employed person such a wage as' would enable him and those dependent on him to livo a decent life. ■ I would also ask the workmen not to be deluded by the belief that the less they produced the more there was to divide, for if great, schemes of social reform were to be financed and higher wages were to be paid, there must be increased productivity and wealth. That increased productivity could not be obtained unless employers and employed came into closer relationship. The greatest blot on modern industry is the impersonal nature of the relationship between employer and employed. Men did not _ want higher wages simply to be able to jingle coins in their pockets, but becnuse, in the existing order, they represented life to us, and I believe that if we could create the better spirit of which I have been speaking we would have sufficient wealth to liquidate our liabilitiijs, to provide for a decent/ living for all, and workers to help the home inarkflts."