hard as they can, for as long hours as they
possibly can support, but in spite of that they would not turn out a
sufficient number of shells and other material of war without doling
out a good part of the work to women in those factories. Well, now, if
there are any trade-union regulations to prevent the possibility of
that being done, I hope during the period of war these will be
suspended. ["Hear, hear!"]

Now, I am coming to another thing--and I am here to talk quite
frankly--it is very much better to do so. ["Hear, hear!"] There must
be no deliberate slowing down of work. I have had two or three very
painful cases put before me. One was from an arsenal upon which we
were absolutely dependent for the material of war. There was a very
skilled workman there who worked very hard and who earned a good deal
of money. He was doing his duty by the State. He was not merely warned
that if he repeated that offense he would be driven out, I am not
quite sure that he was not actually driven out.

The same thing happened in another factory. Now, in the period of war
this is really intolerable. ["Hear, hear!"] We cannot do with it. We
cannot afford it, I say again. There may be reasons, there might be
very good reasons, that a policy of that sort should be adopted in the
period of peace. I am expressing no opinions about that. I am simply
stating the case of this particular emergency, and I am sure that the
only thing in this emergency is that everybody should put forward all
his strength in order to help the country through. [Cheers.]

Therefore, I do hope that whatever regulation, whatever practice,
whatever custom there may be in existence at the present moment which
interferes in the slightest degree in the increase of war material,
will be suspended during the period of war.

We have given our undertaking as a Government, and that undertaking
has been inherited by a new Government. That is that those safeguards
which have been established by trade-union action prior to the war
will be restored exactly to the position they were when the war is
over, in so far as the action of the Government is concerned. We can
only ask for a suspension of these regulations during the period of
the war, then afterward the same process of discussion will go on
between capital and labor as has gone on, I have no doubt, during the
last fifty or one hundred years.

Those are two or three of the things which I wanted to put. The lives
of our