BRITISH LABOUR MINISTER ON STRIKES

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 3092, 24 May 1917, Page 5

BRITISH LABOUR MINISTER ON STRIKES

A FRANK CONDEMNATION. Mr. Join Hodge, M.P., Minister of La- - bour, speaking in London recently, eaid that when peace was declared the war would have to be paid for, and the only Tray of paying for it -was by the co-opera-tion of capital and labour.. Both capital ' and labour must change their methods. Old and obsolete methods must be scrapped; old restrictions, so far as Labour was concerned, niust go. by the board. He believed that with a spirit of ' mutual trust we could make more ships than the German super-submarines could possibly sink. In the past the employer wanted the utmost output for tne smallest wage, and on the other hand the workman wanted the bigpest possible wage for the smallest possible output. In approaching employers he advocated an attitude of sweet rensonableness. He never, believed in strikes, and he did not believe in them to-day. A strike meant a loss. Capital must have its dividend. It must make up the loss of a strike, am he believed the workmen had got to make it up. He believed, further, that if the workers entered upon a policy of no strikes whenever they asked for an advance the employers would be far more ready to grant it. The war had demonstrated that the iron and steel trade was a basic industry, and •£15,000,000 of new capital had been placed in the industry. Before the war this country was open to the importation of steel from Germany, while Germany was closed <o English imports, but he was jiot willing that a single furnace should bo idle so that German steel might enter •this country. So far as demobilisation was concerned, lie was laying his-plans, he hoped, well and trnly. No section of the community could handle that problem better than capital and labour in co-operation, and he bolieved that every promise made by employers to take buck t.iie men who had been fighting for them would be honourably fulfilled.