Welsh Journals

Industrial Disputes and Compulsory Arbitration. By D. Henry Rees. MUST we forever buy wisdom, in matters economic and industrial, in the dearest market? Can we not come into pos- session of it in some less costly way ? Does not the protracted and ruinous Coal Strike -or deadlock in the industry-furnish an irrefutable argument in favour of some scheme of compulsory arbitration in industrial disputes, or at least in disputes in basic industries like the coal trade. I will endeavour to set forth the argument under several headings. I. There is the loss in money and trade by the industry itself; the loss in other industries largely dependent upon an adequate supply of cheap coal; and there is the loss sustained by the entire community. It is estimated that the six months' strike has cost the country at least £ 300,000,000, at a time when the nation can ill- afford to lose a penny. The miners have lost many millions pounds sterling in wages, while their Union funds are exhausted through the heavy drafts upon them for strike pay to their members. Other industries, more particularly the iron industry, have suffered great loss as a direct consequence of the deadlock, and their future prosperity has been seriously endangered thereby. British coal markets abroad have been lost which it will be difficult, if not impossible, to recover. The iron trade, the woollen and textile trades, and numerous other trades have been adversely affected by the follv and mis- management in a single industry, which happens to be a basic industry. The Government has been spending in doles and unemployment pay- ments the millions which should have gone in the reduction of taxation, in more and better educa- tion, and in the stimulation of the country's de- pressed trade and commerce. The poor rate, more particularly in strike areas, has gone up by leaps and bounds. A term must and will be put to the present deadlock, but we shall have to pay in rates and taxes and in crippled industries for many a long year, because of the absence of reason and commonsense in the coal industry during the past six months. In addition to these material losses, there is the heavy burden of suffering and privation laid upon the miners' wives and children, and upon the wives and children of tens of thousands of workers in other industries who have been thrown out of employment by the coal stoppage. When mineowners and miners are alike held in the grip of a pig-headed obstinacy, they appear incapable of giving a thought to such facts. The public has a right to ask: what moral right has one industry to penalise other industries by an inter- minable dispute, when the men in some of these dependent industries are in receipt of a lower wage than the miners? If employers and em- ployed were less addicted to methods of barbarism in industry, they would have time to reflect that the industries and commerce of the country are a unity; whatever injures one in- dustry adversely affects every related industry; while the total stoppage in a basic industry means a stoppage, or at least half-time, in other indus- tries. If this simple truth could be brought home to the business and bosoms of men, the country would cease to reap the fruits of folly, for men would cease to play the fool in matters vital to a nation's welfare. II. Of all great industrial nations, Great Britain can least afford to play these monkey-tricks in basic industries. We are far from being a self- sufficing community. More than half our food stuffs has to be imported from abroad, and most of the raw materials for our industries. We have to pay for these with exports of manufactured goods or starve. Thus our position is very precarious, for our foreign trade is vital to our existence as a great industrial community. It was not always so. When the Industrial Revolution set in about the middle of the eighteenth century, it rapidly transformed a population of some eight millions that was pre- dominantly agricultural, into one that was essen- tially industrial, and increased it by the middle of the nineteenth century to forty millions. By that time England had become the workship of the world. The land could no longer produce sufficient food for its population. Three things had become vital to such an industrialised com- munity-a plentiful supply of cheap food for the toiling millions in factory and workship; an adequate supply of raw materials, at the lowest market cost, for the national industries; and easy access to the world's markets for its surplus goods. Hence the repeal of the Corn Laws and the setting up of the standard of Free Trade. Like conditions prevail to-day. Yet while the population is steadily growing, our foreign trade, even before the coal stoppage, was only some 75 per cent. of the pre-war volume. That means a gradual impoverishment of the people. The populations of these islands must be reduced, or we must increase our trade and commerce, if we are to maintain even the pre-war standard of living and comfort. Mr. Harold Cox says there are at least 15 millions too many people in this country of ours. These millions cannot be massacred or compelled to emigrate to less crowded lands. There seems only one real solution of the problem greatly increased pro- duction of commodities and an increased volume of exports. How can these ends be reached? Not by methods of ca' canny and consequent increase in the prices of our manufactured goods