THE STRIKE ON THE CLYDE

New Zealand Tablet, 6 May 1915, Page 23

THE STRIKE ON THE CLYDE

(By the Archbishop of Glasgow.)

I was very much surprised by the article in your issue of last week (says his Grace Archbishop Maguire in the London Tablet of March 13), in which you refer to the strike of Glasgow engineers. The observations on that subject did not seem to me to reach the high standard of fairness for which The Tablet is remarkable. I fear that the writer of the article had not read Mr. Lloyd George’s speech with sufficient care, and that he was not very well informed as to the circumstances which led to the strike. I hope that you will, in justice to a very respectable and hard-working body of men, allow me to occupy a good deal of your valuable space. The writer of the article seems to put the whole blame of the strike on the shoulders of the men. Mr. George did not do so. Is your writer sure that nobody else is to blame ? He speaks of the men as the tradeunion hirelings of Glasgow who are chaffering for another farthing an hour for their work, and threatening to withdraw ammunition till the bribe is paid. What is meant by the word hirelings —evidently used in an unfavorable sense? Does it mean hirelings of the trade union? Surely not; the men are paying members of the trade union, and they have the right to vote and direct policy, just as is done by members of Parliament. Does it mean hirelings of the masters? In that sense nearly all of us are hirelings, and there does not seem to be much reason to reproach the engineers because they are hired. You yourself and your leader writer, I presume, receive a salary ; so do I; so do members of Parliament and Cabinet Ministers. We are not ashamed of that, and we are not called hirelings. . it . , , The men are ‘ chaffering for a farthing an hour. (By the way, this sum is a rhetorical misstatement.) Are not the masters also chaffering Why should the men only be censured It may be said—because they have moved, gone on strike. But the masters do not

need to move; they have only to sit still, their profits go on and wages do not, increase unless the men strike; The masters are ready enough to use their , special weapona lock-outwhen it suits them. It would not suit them just now. They want work to go on briskly and to produce good dividends, without having to pay higher wages. Meanwhile, Prices of Food and Other Necessaries Go Up. The men, most of whom, thank God, do not believe in race suicide, and have families, have to think of their wives and children. Most of the masters and shareholders would be very little inconvenienced even if food prices should rise further and their dividends be somewhat reduced. As things are, there may be the trouble of looking out for new investments for surplus profits. We do not at present observe any very stringent economy in the lives of the comfortable classes of Glasgow and its suburbs. Now as to the circumstances which brought about the strike. Three years ago the men entered into a wages agreement with the masters, rather an unfavorable agreementas it turned out—for the men; trade improved, the employing firms were full of ordersbut an agreement is an agreement, and the men loyally worked on. The agreement was due to expire on January 13, 1915. On June 14, 1914, before war broke out, the men, after considering their position, decided to apply for an advance of twopence an hour. In the terms of the ‘ provisions for avoiding disputes,’' one month’s notice requires to be given by either side. The application was put in on December 7, 1914. No reply was received from the masters till December 31, and in it the application was termed unreasonable and unjustifiable. Note that according to the ‘provisions’ mentioned above, the men had a right to have a * local conference ’ of representatives of masters and men within seven days of their application. Later, meetings took place between masters and men. An increase of first one farthing, then one halfpenny an hour was offered and refused. All this time the old scale of wages continued, and profits went on. The masters, as I have said before, had only to sit still. At last the men lost patience and struck. You have an example of the advantage of delay to the profit makers in your London coal difficulty. A Government Committee is at last inquiring and gathering statistics. Meanwhile, those who are making profits out of the East End poor’s bags of coals know that every week that passes is adding to their gains. Against your writer’s condemnation of the men I will call a, perhaps, reluctant witness. One of the engineer masters made a public speech the other day, in which he was reported as saying that the men were lazy, indolent, and unpatriotic. He was at once taken to task by the local secretary of the men’s society, and in to-day’s Glasgow Herald there is a letter signed by the speaker in which he explains that he did not intend what he himself calls ‘ the offensive adjectives ’ to be applied to the general body of the men, and must have expressed himself very badly. He meant to refer only to the originators of the strike, and adds;— ‘But even to those men I was not justified in using such strong and ill-chosen language, and to them I apologise.’ Of the general body, he says that he has always considered them one of the most reliable sets of tradesmen, most regular in their attendance, diligent at their work, loyal and willing to do what is required of them.’ And these art. the chaffering hirelings of the trade union on the look-out for a bribe. Some light on the question of The Reasonableness of the Men’s Demands - is thrown by the report in to-day’s Glasgow Herald that the great ironfounders, the Carron Company, Falkirk, have, without waiting to be asked, granted to their men, because they are working at high pressure, a war bonus of 10 per cent, on total earnings, in addition to all overtime payments. I would ask you, then, not to put all the blame on the shoulders of the men. And it might be worth while to remember that if Mr. George and other Ministers and members of Parliament had taken up fewer hours in bickering over little per-

sonal disputes between Honorables and Right Honorables, and on Bills by which these < great parties tried - in turn to ‘ dish ’ each other, and so get or keep power, time might have been found long ago to pass wellconsidered legislation for the automatic settlement of trade disputes/ It might be remembered, too, that it is not the working man only who brings pressure that may hamper the Government in time of war. The loyal members for Wales are threatening pressure if they do not get their own way about Disestablishment. . If Mr. George were not a Cabinet Minister, he would probably be the loudest of the leaders of the threatened' revolt. You will permit me to speak of the drink question. Your article refers to Mr. George’s hopes for what your writer calls ‘ the swift bridling ’ of the liquor traffic. ‘ For,’ says the writer, ‘it seems that the very men who are clamoring for a higher wage in consequence of the increased price of bread are coming to their work sodden with drink.’ But turn back to the certificate of character from one of the masters given above, and then read Mr. George’s own words. He merely says that some shirk their duty, that this is due to various causes, but mostly to the lure of drink, through which strength and efficiency are impaired. He admits that these men are a minority, but adds that even a small minority can throw a. whole works out of gear. That we may take as rhetoric. He has to confess that ‘ the vast majority belong to a class we can depend on.’ In the light of this, does not the remark about ‘ the very men . . . are coming to their work sodden with drink ’ seem a little exaggerated ? I trust that what is written here will induce the writer of vour article and its readers to believe that the Glasgow engineers, though their local nickname is the ‘ Black Squad,’ are not so black as they are painted, while some other people are not, perhaps, so white as they are washed. I trust also that nothing of what has been said will be looked on as offensive to your leader writer. lam sure that he wrote with the best and most patriotic motives. But we are all, just now, apt to get a little over-excited in our natural anxiety to see the war brought to a victorious close.