THE INDUSTRY OF TO-MORROW

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 2955, 15 December 1916, Page 18

THE INDUSTRY OF TO-MORROW

PROFESSOR ASHLEY ON STATE ACTION

ORGANISING EMPLOYERS

Something like a prophetic vision of tho new industrial era after the war was given recently by Professor ABhley and Sir Oliver Lodge ..before the members attending the annual conference of the Congregational Union at Birmingham. These distinguished gentlemen talked upon the anticipated economic upheaval after the war. To begin with Sir Oliver uttered a warning against the dangers of a premature peace. It would be a misfortune, he said, if the war ended without a definite, crisp, and understandable result. There must be no half-hearted peace. Our enemy must learn how they had been misled, misguided, befooled by their system of government. Thoy must change-their Constitution, their modes of government, and they must effect changes for themselves before they could bo admitted again to tho international friendship .which they had so sadly forfeited. After the war, he continued, turning -to social questions, peace and good'will between employer and employed would be one of the most fruitful and beneficent assets, if only we could attain it. Enlarging on the claim for better conditions for the workers, Sir Oliver was loudly applauded for tho sentiment that it is men and women who are the important output. Professor Ashley, dealing with "Leeson from experiments in social action by the State' during tho war," laid stress on the needs of a reorganisation of industry in which the principle of combination by both master and man would receive fuller development. He was pessimistic about co-operation between employers and employed in business control. In the direction of trado unionism probably lay the future development of every considerable industry, of the next steps in industrial legislation would bo to give the force of law to agreements made by unions of masters and men, whore these represented on each side a substantial majority of the- interests involved. The organisation by which Germany reached her present stage in metallurgical production, nnd by which she so long outstripped the Allies in tho production of munitions, was the inter-connected series of syndicates running right through the raw materials of steel manufactures to the finished products, and participated in by the Government.

We had been Blower than other countries in the creation of what were popularly known, as trusts or combines for a number of reasons, among which our Free Trade policy was undoubtedly a leading one. But Free Trado or no Free Trade, the requirements of modern plant and of modern large-scale production had already before .the war-led .to. the creation of effective combinations in several important branches of trade. With the end of the war combination would be not loss, but more necessary to prevent Germany from recovering her hold on the world, by peaceful penetration. That the country expected the Government to carry through measures of industrial and commercial defence, if only for a term of years, had been sufficiently indicated. No serious'economist^ 'could join -whole-heartedly in the public outcry against trusts on the score of excessive prices. Ho admitted, howover, that it was difficult to combino political democracy with prices -apparently fixed arbitrarily. The /lay of free competition was passing away in tho direction of capital as much as in tho direction of labour, and though it had its dangers the movement represented a line of progress. It was_ inevitable, if the restraint of competition was removed, that the State should interpose to protect the interests of the public as consumer.