The Evening Star TUESDAY, JANUARY 15, 1924. BRITISH RAILWAY CRISIS.

Evening Star, Issue 18532, 15 January 1924, Page 4

The Evening Star TUESDAY, JANUARY 15, 1924. BRITISH RAILWAY CRISIS.

Last year closed in Britain with a feeling of quiet confidence that a trade revival was beginning on sound lines. This year opened with the announcement that a serious situation was developing in the railway world, with possibilities of a shrivelling blast in lend transport that would give a bad set-back to any young buds on the stem of trade. Hardy in November the National Railway Wages Board hold a session to consider the claims of the railway companies and the counterclaims of the trade unions for a revision 'of service conditions. This board is not, strictly speaking, a court of arbitration. It is not empowered to give a binding decision, but can only recommend a settlement, which cither party may reject. It comprises outsiders as well as representatives of the disputants. The principle, excellent in theory, of having representation of the great third party in all disputes. in this case the users of the railways, has been followed. On the one side these are -drawn from -Che chambers of commerce -and the federation of British Industries, and on the other from the Trade Unions Conference and the Co-operative Union. These four members sit with the representatives of the railway companies and the railway trade unions. From the nature of its constitution and from the limit set to its findings its proceedings are naturally designed to be of a mediatory character, something in nature of our New Zealand Conciliation Board system. It negotiates with a view to effecting a compromise, forming the basis of a settlement which !t is hoped both -parties will accept. It whs recognised as soon as the hoard’s session began that a strain of exceptional severity was being imposed on it. The railway companies were challenging some of the fundamental principles established for the railway industry after the war. During the war, when -the British Government took over and administered the railways, paying the companies a fixed dividend on their capital and making up the deficiency on working out of the Treasury, railway servants previously underpaid secured concessions which in many ways revolutionised conditions of service. It was found that post-war trade was staggering under the burden of extremely high railway freight charges, which the companies claimed were imperative under the -higher working costs. In compliance with heavy pressure from outside the companies have been trying a policy of periodical reduction of their charges, which nevertheless remain at a far higher level than the -pre-war scale, and are still complained of as being a serious handicap to British trade. In -order to justify past concessions to the users and make further ones possible, the railway companies sought to make cuts in their wages bill totalling four million sterling per annum for the present as a forerunner of further reductions in wages in the future. It has been claimed on behalf of the railway employees that they have already lost £43,000,000 a year in wages as compared with the boom days of war time, though it is admitted that wages in the railways, even after such a huge cut, have yet been maintained at a higher comparative level than in many other less prosperous industries in Britain. Apparently the National Wages Board succeeded in persuading the railway companies to prune less hard on this occasion, and it was recently cabled that the companies agreed to abide by the terms of settlement recommended by the board. But the railway employees, notably the engine drivers and firemen, who are asked to accept wages lower by some 20s to 30s a week, will have none of the compromise. And now news of an upheaval, most damaging to the well-being of a country at any time, but particularly inopportune just now, may be expected. This unfortunate dispute is merely one instance of a -general problem which has to be faced by politicians, economists, employers, and employed. It is that of endeavoring to maintain the standard of living in a country -in face of the fact that the demand for its goods abroad has greatly diminished. A few contend that the task can bo achieved, but only by greeter efficiency on the part of both employers and employed, and even then success will have to he wrung by dint of unremitting effort. The alternative is the counsel of despair. That counsel is the diminution of wages and the reduction of the standard of living to a point that will enable British labor to compete on equal terms with foreign. It is on the lines of this' latter alternative that the railway companies appear to be moving. British labor, possibly elated by recent political developments, is in no mood to comply. Its threatened answer is a strike, which can only make worse the position which has ultimately been retrieved. The Great War has shown that the plight of the victor is only less pitiful than that of the vanquished, ( and it would be foolish to imagine that industrial war would have any different results when all is over. There is a double danger in the political and industrial crises in Britain becoming merged, in which case he would be a bold man who would set limits to the ; possibilities