INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20317, 27 January 1928, Page 9

INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS

GREATEST FACTOR OF PEACE. SPIRIT OF CO-OPERATION. (British Official Wireless.) (Press Association —By Telegraph—Copyright.) RUGBY. January 25. Speaking last night, Mr Philip Snowden (who was Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Labour Government) said he anticipated that the conference with the employers would effect a great change for better industrial relations. There was only an extreme minority among the workers who refused to accept responsibility for co-operation in industry. He said he could conceive, of no folly more colossal than the possibility of some sudden and revolutionary act to change the existing industrial system and then immediately to build up and erect a new and superior industrial order. Progress wa_s not made that way. The true class division to-day was not between the employers and the workmen, but between those who put their selfish interests foremost and those who were willing to sacrifice their individual interests for the common good. To say that the lot of the wage-earning class could not be improved under the existing system was sheer nonsense. Improvement in the past had been won not by fighting but by co-operation among the workers. The limit of improvement under the existing order had not been reached.