AN M.P. AND ARBITRATION.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXIV, Issue 95, 17 December 1912, Page 6

AN M.P. AND ARBITRATION.

ATTACK ON “DOWN TOOLS” POLICY. In Mr Philip Snowden’s book, “The Living Wage,”, just published by Messrs Hodder and Stoughton under Mr Harold Spender’s editorship there is a chapter on “The Cost and Futility of Strikes,” which will be regarded in Labour circles as a sensational attack on the “down tools” policy” Take the folio.ring figures. From 1900 to 1911 inclusive, there have been 6150 labour disputes, involving 3,000,000 workers, and 62,000,000 days lost, which means £12,400,000 in wages and £3,000,in in benefits,./ Yet in the decade wages as recorded have fallen by, roughly £3,000,000. In 19H there were 864 strikes and lock-outs, involving 931,000 workpeople, and the number of days lost was 10 247,000, which represents in wages a sum of over £2,000,000. The net effect of the struggle was an increase in wages of £25,927 a week, or about £1,300,000 a year, so that a tfull employment it. will take the workers 21 months to recover the cost of the stoppages. STRIKES AND THE COMMUNITY.

In the transport strike this year there has been no' advandes secured, but rather the reverse, and with weaker wage rates the workers have to make good the desolation of their

homes. ' Mr Snowden speaks plainly on the right to strike “The trade union movement still professes a firm faith in the power of the strike upon occasions, and it definitely rejects any suggestions that the right to strike should be limited in any way. The Socialist parties also oppose any interference with the right to strike. “The Socialists, at any rate, ought to look at this question from the point of view of the community interest, whatever view the trade unionist., may take. But by, defending the right to strike they are repudiating every principle of their creed. Something might, perhaps, he said for the right of workmen and employers to disregard the State if the strike did not affect others than themselves. But when an industrial war brings suffering upon tens of thousands who have had no part in the making of the quarrel, it is the primary duty of the community to interfere to end this suffering and loss by doing full justice to the grievances which may he found to exist,”

PROBLEM OF SUBSISTENCE. This declaration is accompanied by a masterly review of Arbitration as imposed in the colonies and by our own Trade Boards. Mr Snowden urges that the keynote of national life to-day is the demand for a living wage. It will, I believe, he found that at the very base of Mr Lloyd George's investigations into the land tenure lies the belief that every problem of subsistence in a highly-organised and superlatively wealthy State. LABOUR’S PLIMSOLL LINE. It is remarkable that Mr Snowden, who has been a notable critic of the Insurance Act, appears now to regard it as merely ft a ns perversely mischievous in its operations. His book, which h throughout written in terms of studious fairness to Liberalism, is undoubtedly an invitation to the Government to set up machinery which will, in Mr Spender’s excellent phrase, establish “a Plimsoll line for Labour as well as for ships.” While, however, the book makes for peace, its terrible analysis of poverty statistics at a period of exceptional trade shows that there can bo no last-

ing peace unless a proper standard -of maintenance is secured to the workers.