Welsh Journals

unless it involves a new organisation of industry, and a new principle governing the products of industry. In other words, the producing class must- secure a different status, and they must have such a share in the wealth produced that the conditions of a fuller life will be possible. The report of the Commission on Industrial Unrest for Wales and Monmouthshire lays stress on these points. They also suggest the establishment of industrial councils as outlined in the Whitley report; the equalization of wages in similar occupations; the decasualization of labour, and the shortening of the working day. There is, however, the primary question of em- ployment underlying all these claims. Let us suppose that the measures adopted in the months following the conclusion of the War will succeed in preventing widespread unemployment among the demobilised soldiers and the displaced munition workers. There will still remain the problem of normal unemployment which was characteristic of capitalistic industry before the War. Security of tenure and decasualization of labour demand the elimination of this normal unemployment. In the past, industry has neither given regular em- ployment nor has it maintained the unemployed. During the ten years 1904-13, the percentage of unemployed members of trade unions averaged 4.6 a year. This is to take the most favoured workmen. The unorganised workers would reveal a higher per- centage. The figure also gives no indication of irregularity of employment or of short time. Un- employment, indeed, seemed to be a function of industry. There was always a reserve of labour, necessary when trade was good, but figuring as a more or less considerable volume of unemployment at other times. The cost of this "reserve" has fallen partly on the trade unions and under the unemployment section of the Insurance Act was divided, for a limited number of occupations, between the State and the employers. In some directions the view is now put forward that if a reserve of labour is essential to industry, the cost of maintaining it ought to be thrown entirely on the employers. They have to bear the cost of reserves of material, and it is primarily their interest which are served by the "reserve of labour. If the industry had to shoulder the cost of its reserve" it would arrange tha tit should be as small as possible; at any rate, the workman could count on employ- ment or on maintenance. To the objection that even under such arrangements private industries could not absorb all those seeking employment, it can be answered that properly planned public work in the years following the War would meet the difficulty. There will be opportunity to test the schemes for the prevention of unemployment so strenuously advocated by the Minority Report on the Poor Law in 1908. The question of the remuneration of labour is complicated by the existence of so many classes and grades. We have seen that trade unionism makes for the equalisation of workers in any particular employ, and that for this reason it will not tolerate Scientific Management. This equalisation would be nearer attainment if casual labour were eliminated and all those employed in industry were adults in the enjoyment of reasonably good health. From this point of view we ought to welcome the steps which have been taken towards limiting juvenile employment. If we were really convinced about the merits of education and training, we would pre- vent the employment of children under say sixteen. Who would dare to set against what would be gained in intelligence and health, the apparent temporary sac- rifice such a programme would involve? Then, at the other end of the scale it would be really worth while (apart from all questions of justice and humani- tarianism) to pension on a liberal scale all workers at sixty or sixty-five. With the juveniles and the aged withdrawn from employment for profit, we should still have the competition between men and women. Here the simple principle of equal pay for equal work seems just and reasonable. In prac- tice the formula is often of little use. Suppose men and women are paid equal time-wages, if the employer found that on an average women did not render equal services to him, he would obviously prefer to employ men. So women would be displaced. On the average women are less desirable from the em- ployer's point of view. They are not available for so much overtime or for night-work. Their average absence from ill-health is much higher. Usually they do not remain so long in employment as men. For these and other reasons the enforcement of equal time-wages is not advisable in the interests of women. On the other hand, women must not be employed at the rate which will displace men. The problem, as stated in the Labour Year Book, is The fixing of a rate for men and women, which shall be in equitable proportion to any less degree of physical endurance, skill or responsibility exacted from the woman, or to any additional strain thrown on the man, and which shall neither exclude women on the one side nor blackleg men on the other." The diffi- culties of this problem are considerable, but the trade unions will have to face them in the future. It is hardly likely that the women who have during the War entered into industry will withdraw on the return to peace conditions. R.