As You Were. More Time and Money for Conciliators.

Free Lance, Volume II, Issue 67, 12 October 1901, Page 8

As You Were. More Time and Money for Conciliators.

THE constitution of Conciliation Boaids is allowed to be bad, the utility of then existence has been questioned and then influence foi evil m the fomenting of mdustiial distui bailees is openly asserted Under such encumstances it appeal s to be lather an anomaly that while Parliament has been playing with legislation that might icasonably have been held over foi a session 01 two (or may be a decade or so), the conciliation blot has not been erased or modified, and lcmams as big and black as ever * * * It has been cleaily illustrated that, while the countiy is wcaiy of the conciliation business, the piocess, admittedly inimical to our best mtciests, is to continue Legislators know that it has done haim, but the object-lesson is not sufficiently telling to uige them to leform, and they lcqunc the conviction that shall come when the country has paid away many more guineas m the allcady admitted useless woik If the Conciliation Boards had been established bv the Government as a chantable institution for the purpose of finding employment for persons who could not find anything else to do, the Government might certainly have created billets in the occupation of which the holders would mjuie no one, and m which thcie would be a specified "knock-off" time and a cessation of pay » * * No one believes but that the Boaids were appointed with the best of motives, but, having proved that they aic valuable only to those who constitute them, why continue to urn a conseivativc charity oiganisation which, while benefiting a few, docs the lemamdei gieat harm The decision to let the matter slide until next session piactically tells piofessional concihatois to make guineas while the sun shines and fiom the samples of then abilities aheady examined it is possible that they will take then fill of conciliation and guineas while theie is yet time * * * One docs not blame the individual 01 the collection of individuals, but one may be allowed to expicss suiprisc that, with the knowledge that is cunent of the uselessness of the mtei medial y and expensive process, nothing has been done this session to eithei altei the constitution of the Boaids 01 abolish them altogether The Boaids are as much commissions of mquny as was the Fcdeiation Commission Neithei commission ever settled anything, and both weie, and aie, expensive and unsatisfactoiy While theie has been much legislative bickciiiig duimg the session attention beyond the very minor amendments might have been given to this mattci with the view eithei of lemoving the admitted defects of the Conciliation Boaid as a tnbunal, 01 else of lmpioving it out of existence altogethei