ugh, but we have to come down to the
earth upon these matters, and we have to recommend only what we feel is
likely to be accepted lest our labour should be wasted. We must avoid,
therefore, throwing our aims too high, and we must suggest only what
practical business men and workmen are likely seriously to consider.
Having decided to reach that conclusion, and feeling the sense of
responsibility which, opposed as so many of us were to each other, drove
us to reach a conclusion, we expressed ourselves in these terms: "We are
convinced that a permanent improvement in the relations between
employers and employed must be founded upon something other than a cash
basis. What is wanted is that the workpeople should have a greater
opportunity of participating in the discussion upon an adjustment of
those parts of industry by which they are most affected. For securing
improvement in the relations between employers and employed, it is
essential that any proposals put forward should offer to workpeople the
means of attaining improved conditions of employment and a higher
standard of comfort generally, and involve the enlistment of their
active and continuous co-operation in the promotion of industry."
Previously, the view was that the workman had nothing whatever to do
with this phase of the management of business, and that is a phrase
still very much used. We make no claim in this report that workmen
should have the right to interfere in the higher realms of business
management, in, say, finance, in the general higher details of
organisation, in the extension of works, in all those more important and
urgent matters which must come before the board of managers or the
manager himself. These are things which belong properly and exclusively
to those who have the responsibility of managing our great industries,
but in all the other things affecting the conditions of the workman, the
manner in which he is to be treated, hours, wages, conditions of
employment, relations between section and section, and working division
and working division, all those things which were regarded previously
as the private monopoly of the foreman or manager must in future become
the common concern of the workmen collectively, and they must have some
voice in how these things are to be settled. The country and its
industries, of course, may refuse to hear that voice, but really we have
to choose between reconciling workmen to a given system of industry or
fin