of regulations and rules, the working
class, was the first to set the example of setting them aside as a
general war measure when the country called upon the workers to take
action of that kind during 1915. We must, therefore, keep in mind the
fact that workmen are naturally suspicious. That suspicion is the growth
of the workshop system, into which I have not now the time to go, and we
must avoid causing the workman to suspect that our unity, the unity we
are seeking among classes, is a mere device for getting him to work
harder and produce greater wealth and perhaps labour even longer hours
than ever.

The first great step towards this unity is to secure the good will of
the Trade Unions. Having secured that, the next thing is to proceed upon
lines which will bring at once home to the individual workman in the
workshop some sense of responsibility with regard to the response which
he must make to the appeal which we put before him. In short, better
relations must precede any first step that could effectively be taken to
secure this greater unity, and better relations are impossible in
industry until we have given the individual workman a greater sense of
responsibility of what he is in the workshop for. Let me briefly outline
how that might be secured. It was put, I think, quite eloquently if
simply in an address to the Trade Union Congress a short time ago by the
President of the Congress, who said that the workman wanted a voice in
the daily management of the employment in which he spends his working
life, in the atmosphere and in the conditions under which he has to
work, in the hours of beginning and ending work, in the conditions of
remuneration, and even in the manners and practices of the foremen with
whom he had to be in contact. "In all these matters," said the
President, "workmen have a right to a voice--even to an equal
voice--with the management itself." I know that is a big, and to some an
extravagant claim to make, but to set it aside or ignore it is to
provoke and invite further trouble. Industry can no longer be run for
the profit which it produces, or even because of the wealth which
collective energy can make. That, indeed, was the mistake out of which,
as I said at the beginning, this disunion, and this suspicion, and this
selfishness, have grown. We have had greatly to modify our doctrines of
political economy during the course of the war, and all the things which
many teachers told us never could