INDUSTRIAL PEACE

Northern Advocate, 22 June 1925, Page 7

INDUSTRIAL PEACE

HOW TO OBTAIN IT.

(By Sir Leo Chiozza Money.)

Our industrial salvation lies in our own hands. We can, by economical industry, maintain our present or an even larger population. We can win out of the post-war trade crisis, and aim at new and higher levels of production, generously directed to produce a fuller and a better life for all our people—a life refreshed by comfortable homes, ample 'provision for genuine sport, and the full enjoyment of nature and the arts. But all our aspirations will come to naught if we cannot arrive at Industrial Peace, and, unfortunately, we sco men, in pursuit of fixed ideas, disdaining means of improvement, through fear that if they improve industrial methods they will be a little further removed from the heavenly conditions which have been established at Moscow!

The view suggested here is that it has become necessary to remove profound misconceptions about the nation's wealth, and that there is only one way to do that effectively—by the method of thorough inquiry and publicity. I frequently receive letters from distressed people, who ask me to tell them the truth about what wealth there is to distribute, and to these I reply to the best of my ability. I never do so, however, without deploring the absence of what one may call certified official information. The absence of industrial intelligence is a danger to us all. There is quite naturally trouble and disturbance in the mining centres. Those who know our miners respect; them, and those who know their lives wish that they had not only better wages, but better real wages—wages of good life and good housing and good amusement. One thing, and one thing only, has saved us from cataclysmic coal troubles recently, and that has been the official investigation and publication of facts by the Mines Department.

The publication of the plain truth lias convinced a sufficient number of the miners' leaders to prevent what would otherwise have been a disastrous stoppage of work. But even so, there is no information to enable the miners-" leaders to relate their industry in true perspective to the rest of the work of the country and to the National Wage Fund.

We need a continuous examination of all our industries, conducted by a thoroughly well-equipped impartial census department. We have plenty of men of ability to conduct the investigations, and their verity would be guaranteed, not only by the unimpeachable traditions of the Civil Servlci, Lut by a directing board, upon which the employers and employed would sit in equal numbers, presided over bv some great public servant, such as Lord Milner. This census would become the eyes and ears of Government, of the Treasury, of the Board of Trade, of employers, of trade unions, and of the nation at large. It would tell' ns periodically the national capital, the national income, the distribution of wealth, and for each industry its productivity, progress and wage fund. All the cards would be on the table. There would be no room for disputes as to whether or not it. was possible to pay a certain wage or to improve certain conditions. The possibilities or impossibilities would reveal themselves as' went along.