Chapter II: Part 2

I do not pretend for a moment that all is easy if you simply gather men around the table. There are differences--differences of education, of early environment, psychological differences, differences of training. I was struck once by a remark made, I think it was, by Mr. Hodges in stating the miners' case in the recent coal dispute, that he never felt less nervous than in presenting it at No. 10 Downing Street, to members of a Government which he had no reason to believe was particularly anxious to agree with him.

I understand what he meant, and it has often struck me that it might be of real help to conferences in trades between the employers and the employed if they were presided over by a neutral person, a man qualified by his own character and ability, by his detached and independent outlook, and by the confidence which people felt in his fairmindedness--that the presence of such a chairman might enable two parties to get on with greater ease, with greater freedom, and with more success in ultimate results.

There are other things arising to which our leaders of industry, whether they be from the ranks of the employers, or from the ranks of the men, must devote their attention at this present day, if they do not wish to make confusion still worse confounded.

It is not wages alone that have to be studied, and that we must keep our eyes on. If you fix on paper minimum standards of pay it does not follow that those standards will, in fact, apply to all the men in the industry. What often results is the stoppage of the marginal factory or the marginal coal-pit, or you may find that some of them near the margin will have to go on short time, and you often find that many men are thrown out of employment.

In the same way you often hear men's leaders to-day speaking about the necessity for rigorous efficiency on the part of employers, but rigorous efficiency again often acts hardly on many of those employed. You have to take the long view as well as the short; and I think in these days what those most concerned in industry have to study is what can be accomplished in the way of insurance benefit, and what burdens can be borne by industry--this in consultation with the Government--and how far regulations and rules made in trade unions to fit circumstances of many years ago are fitted to meet the circumstances not only of to-day, but the circumstances that lie ahead of us.

Here, again, there is ample room, ample scope, for such conferences as I have advocated, and, mind you, for the very best brains and the best hearts that the best men among the employers and the men themselves can put forward. This is not work for hacks, it is work for the statesmen among us.

I don't know whether things may be different and happier in Russia, for I have not had the advantage of having six weeks in that country. But in England let us never forget this: that under our system trade expansion depends so much on initiative and enterprise, and on the willingness of our people--men and women--to embark their savings in industry in anticipation of making something rather more out of industry than they could make if the savings were kept in a stocking.

Now, the element of risk and uncertainty cannot be absent from industry--it is inseparable from our system of production--but readiness to embark on that form of investment is a question of confidence. Nothing can destroy that confidence more surely than what destroys confidence on the Continent--no sense of security. The present unsettlement in this country is in itself a clog on the wheels of progress.

There may be a better industrial system imaginable than ours, and I hope indeed we may be slowly moving towards something better; but there is no doubt in my mind that if it were possible to destroy the present system in a moment, those who destroyed it would cause a shipwreck, and they would not bring into being a ship in which to take away the survivors.

Short, too, of any deliberate destruction of our industry, such as we have seen advocated in a few quarters, I dread that subtle poison of hatred which is being preached in some quarters, which weakens the faith of men in their own efficient service and sound workmanship--the very things which have built up the reputation of our great country, on which we still live. You may have one of the finest fleets of liners in this world, you may have it owned by the State, and you may have it run by the State; but if you have a crew bent on defying all that makes for co-operation and discipline you will bankrupt that fleet.

It has not come to that in this country, and in my belief it never will. The power of managing our own affairs in our own way is the greatest gift of Englishmen. We have demonstrated that fact in the past, and we shall demonstrate it in the future, It has been ours in a growing degree for a dozen centuries. And I cannot put that thought before you better than in the words of a distinguished Oxford man, the late Master of Balliol, who wrote:

"Nowhere was the village community so real and so enduring a thing as it was in England for at least twelve centuries of its history. In every parish men met almost daily in humble but very real self-government, to be judged by their fellows or fined by them, or punished as bad characters, to settle the ploughing times and harvest times, the fallowing and the grassing rules for the whole village. To these twelve centuries of discipline we owe the peculiar English capacity for self-government, the enormous English development of the voluntary principle in all manner of institutions (clubs, associations, hospitals, joint stock) and the aptitude for colonisation. Our politics, our commercial enterprise, our Colonial Empire, are all due to the spirit of co-operation, the spirit of fair play, and 'give and take,' the habit of working to a common purpose which tempered the hard and grim individuality of the national character."

And if I have a message to-night for you and the people of the country, it is just this. I would say:

"England! Steady! Look where you are going! Human hands were given us to clasp, and not to be raised against one another in fratricidal strife."

PEACE IN INDUSTRY. II

IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, ON THE SECOND
READING OF THE TRADE UNION (POLITICAL
FUND) BILL.

6_th March_, 1925

In some ways this is a very difficult speech for me to make. The matter of the Bill itself digs right into one of the most difficult and fundamental questions in the country to-day, and it touches at various points questions which have interested me during the whole of my working life. I have thought so much about them, and I feel that I have so much to say about them, that my difficulty will be in choosing the little that I can possibly say to-day and finding words to express clearly to the House what is in my mind.

I often wonder if all the people in this country realise the inevitable changes that are coming over the industrial system in England. People are apt either to get their knowledge of the industrial system from textbooks, which must be half a generation behind, or from some circumstance familiar to them at a fixed and static point in their lives, whereas, as a matter of fact, ever since the industrial system began in this country, it has been not only in a state of evolution, but in a state of evolution that, I think, historians in the centuries to come, when they write its history, will acknowledge to be an evolution that has developed at a far more rapid rate than was visible to the people who lived in these times.

I hope the House will bear with me and forgive me if I draw for a few minutes on my own experience, because it so happens that, owing to the peculiar circumstances of my own life, I have seen a great deal of this evolution taking place before my own eyes.

I worked for many years in an industrial business, and I had under me a large number, or what was then a large number, of men. And it so happened, as this was an old family business, with an old and, I venture to say, very good tradition, that when I was first in business I was probably working under a system that was already passing. I doubt if its like could have been found in any of the big, modern industrial towns of this country, even at that time.

It was a place where I knew, and had known from childhood, every man on the ground; a place where I was able to talk with the men not only about the troubles in the works, but troubles at home and their wives. It was a place where strikes and lock-outs were unknown. It was a place where the fathers and grandfathers of the men then working there had worked, and where their sons went automatically into the business. It was also a place where nobody ever "got the sack," and where we had a natural sympathy for those who were less concerned in efficiency than is this generation, and where a large number of old gentlemen used to spend their days sitting on the handles of wheelbarrows, smoking their pipes.

Oddly enough, it was not an inefficient community. It was the last survival of that type of works which ultimately became swallowed up in one of those great combinations towards which the industries of to-day are tending.

I remember very well the impact of the outside world that came on us, that showed how industry was changing in this country. Nothing had interrupted the even tenor of our ways for many years, until one day there came a great strike in the coal-fields; it was one of the earlier strikes, and it became a national strike.

We tried to carry on as long as we could, but, of course, it became more and more difficult to carry on, and gradually furnace after furnace was damped down and the chimneys ceased to smoke, and about 1,000 men, who had no interest in the dispute that was going on, were thrown out of work, through no fault of their own, at a time when there was no unemployment benefit.

I confess that that event set me thinking very hard.

It seemed to me at that time a monstrous injustice to these men, because I looked upon them as my own family, and it hit me very hard--I would not have mentioned this, only it got into the Press two or three years ago--and I made an allowance to them, not a large one, but something, for six weeks to carry them along, because I felt they were being so unfairly treated.

But there was more in it really than that. There was no conscious unfair treatment of these men by the masters. It simply was that we were gradually passing into a new state of industry when the small firms and the small industries were being squeezed out, and business was all tending towards great amalgamations, on the one side of employers, and on the other side of the men, and when we came in any form between these two forces, God help those who stood outside!

That has been the tendency of industry. There is nothing that could change it, because it comes largely, if not principally, from that driving force of necessity in the world that makes people combine together for competition and for the protection they need against that competition.

Those two forces with which we have to reckon are enormously strong, and they are the two forces in this country to which now to a great extent, and it will be a greater extent in the future, we are committed. We have to see what wise statesmanship can do to steer the country through this time of evolution until we can get to the next stage of our industrial civilisation.

It is obvious from what I have said that the organisations of both masters and men--or, if you like the more modern phrase invented by economists, who always invent beastly words, employers and employees--these organisations throw an immense responsibility on the organisations themselves and on those who elect them, and, although big men have been thrown up on both sides, there are a great many on both sides who have not got the requisite qualities of head and heart for business.

There are many men with good heads and no hearts, and many men with good hearts and no heads.

What the country wants to-day from the men who sit on this side of the House and on that is to exercise the same care as the men who have to conduct those great organisations from inside.

I should like to try to clear our minds of cant on this subject, and recognise that the growth of these associations is not necessarily a bad thing in itself, but that, whatever associations may call themselves, it is the same human nature in both, and exactly the same problems have to be met, although we hear a good deal more of some of those problems than of others.

Now, if you look at an employers' organisation for a moment--and we will assume that it has come into being to protect the industry in the world market--we cannot lose sight of the fact that in that organisation, just as much as in the men's organisation, the mere fact of organising involves a certain amount of sacrifice of personal liberty. That cannot be helped. Everybody knows that perfectly well, both employers and employees.

To a certain extent both these organisations must on one side be uneconomic.

A trade union is uneconomic in one sense of the word when it restricts output and when it levels down the work to a lower level. It is an association for the protection of the weaker men which has often proved uneconomic.

Exactly the same thing happens in the employers' organisation.

Primarily, it is protective, but in effect it is very often uneconomic, because it keeps in existence works which, if left to the process of competition, would be squeezed out, and whose prolonged existence is really only a weakness to the country.

Also it has another very curious effect, not at all dissimilar from that of the trade union reaction which shows that both those organisations are instinct with English traditions. The workmen's organisation is formed to see that under the conditions a workman cannot get his living in a particular trade unless he belongs to that union. An employers' organisation is formed in that particular trade for the protection of the trade, and it has the result of effectively preventing any new man starting in that trade.

In this great problem which is facing the country in years to come, it may be from one side or the other that disaster may come, but surely it is plain that the only progress that can be obtained in this country is by those two bodies of men--so similar in their strength and so similar in their weaknesses--learning to understand each other and not to fight each other.

It is perfectly true that trade unionism has its weak spots. We are primarily discussing trade unions, and that is why I shall content myself to speak about trade unions only. It is perfectly true that my hon. and learned Friends [Mr. Macquisten and Mr. Greaves-Lord, who moved and seconded the Second Reading of the Bill] have laid their finger on three points which trade unionists themselves know are their weak spots. That can be seen by the interruptions that came from the Labour benches.

Those three points are, the question whether in all cases the subject of the levy is treated fairly, the question of the ballot, and the question of bookkeeping. To my mind it is impossible to dissociate one of these questions from the other, and they really all hang together.

The whole tradition of our country has been to let Englishmen develop their own associations in their own way, and with that I agree. But there are limits to that. I spoke a little earlier--and I spoke with a purpose--about the recognition of the change in the industrial situation in those works with which I was connected, when for the first time what was done in the way of organising the coal strike suddenly came and hit thousands of men who had nothing to do with it and had no direct interest in it.

As these associations come along and become more powerful, on whichever side they are, there may come a time when not only may they injure their own members--about which probably there would be a good deal of argument--but when they may directly injure the State. It is at that moment that any Government should say that, whatever freedom and latitude in that field may be left to any kind of association in this free country, nothing shall be done that shall injure the State, which is the concern of all of us and far greater than all of us or our interests.

I have not very much more to say. I have just tried to put, as clearly as I can in a few words, my conviction that we are moving forward rapidly from an old state of industry into a newer, and the question is: What is that newer state going to be?

No man, of course, can say what form evolution is taking. Of this, however, I am quite sure, that whatever form we may see, possibly within this generation, or at any rate in the time of the next generation, it has got to be a form of close partnership, however that is going to be arrived at; and it will not be a partnership the terms of which will be laid down, at any rate not yet, in Acts of Parliament, or from this Party or that.

It has got to be a partnership of men who understand their own work, and it is little help that they can get really either from politicians or from intellectuals.

There are few men fitted to judge of and to settle and to arrange the problem that distracts the country to-day between employers and employed.

There are few men qualified to intervene who have not themselves been right through the mill.

I always want to see, at the head of these organisations on both sides, men who have been right through the mill, and who themselves know exactly where the shoe pinches, and who know exactly what can be conceded and what cannot, and who can make their reasons plain; and I hope that we shall always find such men trying to steer their respective ships side by side, instead of making for head-on collisions.

Having said what I have said about that, what am I to say about the attitude of the Party of which I have the honour to be the head?

I do not know whether the House will forgive me if I speak for a minute or two on a rather personal note.

For two years past, in the face of great difficulties, perhaps greater than many were aware of, I have striven to consolidate, and to breathe a living force into my great Party. Friends of mine who have done me the honour to read my speeches during that time have seen clearly, however ill they may have been expressed, the ideals at which I have been aiming.

I spoke on that subject again last night at Birmingham, and I shall continue to speak on it as long as I am where I am.

We find ourselves, after these two years, in power, in possession of perhaps the greatest majority our Party has ever had, and with the general assent of the country. Now how did we get there? It was not by promising to bring this Bill in; it was because, rightly or wrongly, we succeeded in creating an impression throughout the country that we stood for stable Government and for peace in the country between all classes of the community.

Those were the principles for which we fought; those were the principles on which we won; and our victory was not won entirely by the votes of our own Party, splendidly as they fought. I should think that the number of Liberals who voted for us at the last Election ran into six figures, and I should think that we probably polled more Labour votes than were polled on the other side.

That being so, what should our course be at the beginning of a new Parliament? I have not myself the slightest doubt. Last year the Leader of the Labour Party [Mr. Ramsay Macdonald], when he was Prime Minister, suspended what had been settled by the previous Government, and that was further progress for the time being on the scheme of Singapore. He did it on the ground that it was a gesture for peace, and he hoped that it would be taken as such by all the countries in the world. He hoped that a gesture of that kind might play its part in leading to what we all want to see, that is, a reduction in the world's armaments.

I want my Party to-day to make a gesture to the country of a similar nature, and to say to them: "We have our majority; we believe in the justice of this Bill which has been brought in to-day, but we are going to withdraw our hand, and we are not going to push our political advantage home at a moment like this. Suspicion which has prevented stability in Europe is the one poison that is preventing stability at home, and we offer the country to-day this: We, at any rate, are not going to fire the first shot. We stand for peace. We stand for the removal of suspicion in the country. We want to create an atmosphere, a new atmosphere in a new Parliament for a new age, in which the people can come together. We abandon what we have laid our hands to. We know we may be called cowards for doing it. We know we may be told that we have gone back on our principles. But we believe we know what at this moment the country wants, and we believe it is for us in our strength to do what no other Party can do at this moment, and to say that we at any rate stand for peace."

I know, I am as confident as I can be of anything, that that will be the feeling of all those who sit behind me, and that they will accept the Amendment which I have put down in the spirit in which I have moved it. And I have equal confidence in my fellow-countrymen throughout the whole of Great Britain.

Although I know that there are those who work for different ends from most of us in this House, yet there are many in all ranks and all parties who will re-echo my prayer:

"_Give peace in our time, O Lord._"

INDUSTRY AND PSYCHOLOGY

AT THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF INDUSTRIAL
PSYCHOLOGY

12_th November_, 1925

We are met to-night to celebrate the invasion of the realm of industry by psychology. We have all of us been familiar for many years past with the study that economists have made of industry and the study that moralists have made of the development of the personality of the individual; but the systematic study of industrial society by psychologists is a matter, as I understand, of the last three or four years. Certainly it is something quite new since I had the pleasure of being in business.

Within the present century there has been a drastic overhauling of a great many of the assumptions with which some of us were familiar in our youth, whether the assumptions were those of the economists, the moralists, or of the psychologists. Psychology has been applied not only to the handling of the individual, but to individuals in groups, or in the mass, in association. The results of this change in the line of investigation are now just beginning to penetrate our economic thinking. The Institute, to celebrate which we are here to-night, is a striking example of this change, and it has had from its start the support of two men whom I am proud to think I may call my friends--Lord Balfour and Lord Haldane. It has also enlisted the support of employers and employed.

There exists a certain interesting and harmonious relation between this voluntary body and one that has been set up by the Government--the Industrial Fatigue Research Board, which works as a branch of the Medical Research Council. Roughly speaking, the Industrial Fatigue Board initiates work and undertakes experiments which are likely to have fruitful results and be of interest, though unremunerative in themselves. Your Institute spends private money, and it obtains support from among those who stand to benefit by the results of your investigations, but who are undoubtedly attracted to the work of the Institute through the interest which they take in the problems you are attacking. The Institute, so far as I have been able to learn, is surveying the vast realm covered by the operation of the Factory Acts, and it is striving to introduce into that realm improvements--not improvements which require legislation, but improvements in mental and bodily conditions of work. The study of such things as lighting, heating, ventilation, movement of the body, cultivation of interest, the avoidance of fatigue, occupational guidance--in other words, the study of the whole human factor in relation to the machine and the job--that, as I understand it, is the field of study of the industrial psychologist.

A movement of this kind has this in common with the League of Nations: it has two principal obstacles to encounter--the prejudice of people who think it can do nothing, and the support of people who think it can do everything. In the first place it met, not unnaturally, with the resistance of those who thought that, in spite of its name, it was another capitalist dodge to rivet the chains of the wage slave more firmly than before. I think it is now clear, not only among the leaders of the employers and among the leaders of the men, but also among the men themselves, that in this Institute they have a real friend.

The fundamental question is how to make the most of the individual, with all his idiosyncrasies, in his work. If you consider the matter in the realm of sport, there seems really much less to wonder at in the work of the Institute than if you regarded it in the realm in which they are now working. Consider what is meant by training for a boat race. It means nothing more nor less than true co-operation of effort, rhythmic movement, distribution of energy in the proper place, and at the right time, with the minimum fatigue and the elimination of wasted effort. That is all. And there you have a very suggestive parallel with industry. It is quite true that the changes which accompanied the Industrial Revolution have been far more costly in human life and human wear and tear than they would have been had our ancestors been as wise as we sometimes think that we ourselves are. But these depressing features of the Industrial Revolution, whatever they have brought in their train inside workshops, have had a tendency to bring in their train outside workshops one very bad thing, and that is a dislike of work itself. If work can be presented in a palatable form, I am not sure that the ordinary human being does not like it, provided that he gets a reasonable amount of play. The real enemies are overwork, under-payment, insecurity and bad conditions. These are the real evils, to the assuaging of which the work of this Institute, as I understand it, is directed, and in that we wish more power to its elbow.

We must not exaggerate what is possible. You cannot abolish repetitive work; you cannot, even in a Socialist State; and, after all, the monotony of the workman's life is very much due to the monotony of the consumers' demands. If a man wants the same thing every day, the man who provides it will have a monotonous task.

I am no mathematician, but I believe a straight line is, or was, the shortest way between two points, but I am told that curved movements are preferable to straight lines--whether on grounds of aesthetics or comfort I am not sure--and there is no doubt, as Mr. Myers has discovered, of the economic importance of rhythm, which has been gradually recognised in industry, I understand, and made use of. There must be something in rhythm which appeals to human nature. Witness the popularity at present of dancing, and witness also the vogue of the Volga Boat Song, which always makes me want to run along the bank and pull the barge.

Under the aegis of the Institute I am told that the miners, some of them, have been able to pick coal with greater regularity and have gained happiness thereby. That opens up a new field, and I am thinking seriously of asking Mr. Cook to bring in that which Mr. Thomas knows so well--that Welsh gift of music--and to set his men swinging their picks to the tune of "The Men of Harlech" or, better still, "The Rising of the Lark," and give us an output that will defy foreign competition.

But, seriously, if solutions can be found along these lines--if anything can cause the man, the woman, the boy and the girl at the heavy or monotonous job to find ways of doing that job with as great or with greater efficiency and with less strain, more comfort, more happiness--you will add more, perhaps, to a combination of human efficiency and human happiness than we politicians can hope to do by anything that lies in our power.

And there is another line on which you are working. You are always paying attention, I understand, to boys and girls who are leaving school in finding suitable occupations according to their fitness. This is a matter of tremendous importance, and involves practically what so many of us talk about--equality of opportunity. But I expect even this Institute has got a good deal to learn in that direction. One's first inclination is to smile at the idea of testing intelligence and vocational aptitude. I should be extraordinarily sorry at my age to have either of those things tested by anyone. We must not expect from this Institute infallible results, but I shall watch the results with intense interest, not only because I believe you may do a great work among the young people, but because I see an infinitely lighter task before my successor when he is able to apply the tests of this Institute to candidates for the Cabinet. If I can only draw on the resources of the psychologist to test the suitability of all candidates for Cabinet rank in initiative and self-control under criticism, intuitive insight into what Lancashire is going to say to-morrow, and when trade is going to revive, how much easier it would be; and if we could only test also their physical qualifications for all-night sittings, and how long they can speak without boring an audience, then, indeed, Mr. Myers, you will rise up, and we shall call you blessed.

THE GOSPEL OF HATE

FROM A SPEECH IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS

16_th February_, 1923

One word about the speech delivered last night by the hon. Member for Motherwell. (Mr. Newbold.) I have always been a student of history, and I learned from him several things that I had not known before. There was only one remark of his on which I wish to comment. He said that when the Labour Party had been in power, and failed, he was coming in. I believe that the hon. Member for Silvertown (Mr. J. Jones) expressed dissent. I am myself of that somewhat flabby nature that always prefers agreement to disagreement, and I welcome the opportunity of recording the fact that I find myself in hearty and uncompromising agreement with the hon. Member for Silvertown. When the Labour Party sit on these benches, we shall all wish them well in their effort to govern the country. But I am quite certain that whether they succeed or fail there will never in this country be a Communist Government, and for this reason, that no gospel founded on hate will ever seize the hearts of our people--the people of Great Britain. It is no good trying to cure the world by spreading out oceans of bloodshed. It is no good trying to cure the world by repeating that pentasyllable French derivative, "Proletariat." The English language is the richest in the world in thought. The English language is the richest in the world in monosyllables. Four words, of one syllable each, are words which contain salvation for this country and for the whole world, and they are "Faith," "Hope," "Love," and "Work." No Government in this country to-day, which has not faith in the people, hope in the future, love for its fellow-men, and which will not work and work and work, will ever bring this country through into better days and better times, or will ever bring Europe through or the world through.

_ON POLITICAL LIFE_

SERVICE

AT THE LEEDS LUNCHEON CLUB

13_th March_, 1925

I want to begin by going back a few years and trying to voice to this room thoughts that perhaps have not been expressed in public, but which were common to a vast number of thinking men during the years of the war. I am one of those (of whom there are many here) who when the war broke out were too old for active service, but who were possessed in those days of the war with a consuming desire to do something for our country, and to look round to find where we could most usefully give service.

I think probably everybody here, members of such a club as yours, found their vocation at that time. But as the war went on, the effect of it psychologically was curious. Many of the things that had played a large part in our lives before shrank into insignificance, and we felt that the world could never be the same again to us who had grown to maturity in the years of peace. I think some of us found that we were getting to cling much more loosely to material wealth, and to realise that wealth was made to be a servant and not a master--that as a servant it had a most useful function to perform, that as a master it meant damnation.

I think, too, we felt this: we were not peculiarly impressed with speeches that talked of the glorious time that was coming after the war. We realised what the war meant in the world. We felt the foundations of civilisation in Europe cracking. We knew as business men that for a generation this country and the world would be as a whole far, far poorer, and we realised early the struggle that must result to repair the cracks in the foundations of our civilisation and to restore to the country that level of prosperity which she had enjoyed before the war. I think, too, many of us had little faith in supermen. I think that our experience in business had taught us that, as a matter of fact, there are no such things as supermen, and that we should have to rely on the innate common-sense, integrity, courage and faith of the common men and women of this country if we were to make good.

I think probably those thoughts which I certainly had, and which, I gather, you had, were pretty common throughout the country. It was for that reason, feeling as I did, that I was driven into the course which I embraced in December, 1916, when I accepted Mr. Bonar Law's offer to serve as his Parliamentary Secretary. I did that deliberately, because I believed that at my time of life, having already sufficient means to be independent of the active business in which I had passed my life up to then, I had the opportunity of giving my services to the country without any feeling that it was necessary to be remunerated for them.

There is nothing singular in that. There must have been millions of men who felt as I did. I have never said, or believed, that that service which I had the opportunity of rendering was one whit higher or better than any other. All service ranks the same, according to the spirit in which it is performed.

One of the sources of the great strength of our country in every part of the kingdom is that there are men who have no personal ambition for themselves to get where the limelight is brightest and publicity is greatest. And as long as our country can go on producing that type, which I am thankful to say it is producing from all classes of the community--so long as that is the case, I should never despair of England.

There is another observation I would like to make about the war before I pass on. It became evident to me long before the war was over that the effect of it, which would hit this country hardest in the years immediately succeeding, was the tragedy of the loss of the men who were just qualifying and getting ready to be the leaders of our younger men--the men who had already been at work in the factory and the mill, in all kinds of business and in the professions, who were just beginning to be masters of their own work--men of about thirty years of age, who by now would have been qualified to be leaders in their respective spheres.

There is nothing in the first twenty years after the war that can make good to this country the loss of so many men of that age. And that was an additional reason why we men who were middle-aged already when the war began should have banded ourselves together by the time the war ended under a vow to our better selves that we would give for the rest of our lives, as a thank-offering to the dead, nothing but the best services we could render to our country. It has become our lot not to seek the ease that we might legitimately seek, but to carry on to the end and help the next generation that is coming along--the generation that was too young to fight--help that to take its place as and when the time comes. It is, and it will be, a tremendous burden on the older men, but it is their proud contribution--the giving of the best they can to help a broken and a shattered world.

Among the problems that we have to face to-day there are some with which you are peculiarly fitted to deal, and where your advice, knowledge, understanding and enthusiasm may be of the greatest service to your country. In few things is it more difficult to make sufficiently rapid progress than in the problem of housing, and that problem in the big towns and cities of our country is linked up with kindred and greater problems of the planning of our cities. I spoke last night (not for the first time) of the rapidity with which the change had transformed our country, the change wrought by the growth of our industrial system. It was so unexpected, so unforeseen, and so incalculable in its effects that men were unable, and they had not the imagination, to plan and to look forward. If they had only done so how much easier our task would have been! But we to-day not only have to devote ourselves to undoing the evil effects of things left undone by those who went before us; we in our time must look ahead to plan that we do not leave problems for our descendants as grave as have been left for us.

In the growth of our big industrial centres to-day let us, while there is yet time, look forward and plan to see where the factories of the future are to be, and where the houses of the future are to be, and where the open spaces and the playing fields are to be, and how people are to be got to and from their work--that complicated system of transport. All these things need thought, sympathy, imagination and vision. In a gathering like this there are men who are capable of doing most useful work of this kind.

One centre after another of the big populations in this country can make its own plans and contribution to the common stock of knowledge and enter into a glorious competition to make in the progress of years their city more beautiful, more convenient, more commodious, and happier for the human beings who live in it.

In the same way in a city like this, where the intelligence and the moving spirits of industry meet round this table, what an opportunity you have for making your contribution to the solving of the most difficult problem we have to face to-day! There are few here, probably, who believe that the industrial system is static and here for all time. You are all mainly engaged, as I have been, in industry, and have gone through the mill, and we have to move on and realise, as I do, that so far from industry being static it is dynamic. We have to move on into a state of things that has yet to be a better one both for efficiency and in its spirit than anything else that we have yet come through. There will have to be much hard thinking on the part of all who are engaged in industry, whether they be masters or whether they be men; and it will be impossible for the change that I believe to be necessary in the future to come about until there is a very different atmosphere in which to discuss and negotiate those changes than has been the case in the last twenty years.

The atmosphere in those years has been, in many parts of the country, poisoned. I do not wish to say anything here about where the faults may lie. But I do want to say that I realise, as you do, that a great deal of the propaganda which has been done during the last twenty years--the propaganda of a kind that teaches class hatred--has in many places done its evil and its poisonous work.

I am thankful to say that I see signs throughout the country to-day that those who believe that permanent progress can be made by that method are not an increasing number, but the work that has been done in that direction cannot be undone in a moment. And it will mean the utmost goodwill, the utmost force of example to bring about, to any great extent, something better and something on which we may erect a permanent and stable building. In industrial matters I believe in publicity. I believe, in spite of much that we fear, that the agreement that was made in the mining industry has taught the country a great deal. As you pass away from the days of small businesses into the days of big limited liability companies, your problem is completely altered, and what we have to do--and here nothing can be done without your help--is to humanise the system of limited liability. That is an extraordinarily difficult thing to do, but after all, let us remember publicity. Where there is ignorance there is always suspicion, and until you on your side--I will say we on our side--get the men who work for us to understand our problems, as they do not understand them to-day, you can never hope for progress.

I have often said I regard it of the greatest importance for workmen in industry, and particularly their leaders, to have what some of them already have, a knowledge of the industry that they are in--a knowledge of the finances of that industry, a knowledge of the costs of that industry, a knowledge of the costs of that industry abroad (that they may understand what competition means), a knowledge of the methods of marketing those commodities abroad. It is far more important for them to have that knowledge than to have even the amount of knowledge that may be accumulated after six weeks' sojourn in a foreign country of the language of which they are ignorant.

I am catholic in my views. I would exempt no class to-day from working hard at their own problems. I think those who lead Labour and those who lead the employers have got to work harder at their task of comprehension and of explanation than they have ever worked before.

There is one thing that I have always felt as an employer, and it is this. A good employer is very apt to devote his whole time to his own works, and to refrain from coming out into public life, because he has not time for it, and it perhaps does not attract him, and for some reason he is often reluctant to leave his own place of work. There is one cause in which he should be prepared to sacrifice himself--and it is a sacrifice. I want to see the ranks of employers throw up a man who will lead his men, making it the principal task of his life to be the mediator in all subjects affecting their work, whilst standing up, as he is entitled to do, for the order he represents. There can be no finer career for a young man than to go into business, not with the object only of making a fortune, as he probably would--for any man is worthy of his hire--but with the idea of making his contribution towards getting the whole of these relations on a firmer footing.

There can be no finer work for men who, as boys, went out to France, and learnt what a British regiment was, than to try to get something of the spirit of the British regiment into their industry.

DEMOCRACY AND THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE

FROM A SPEECH AT THE ALBERT HALL

4_th December_, 1924

The responsibility for progress rests not only on the Government, but on every man and woman in the country. The Government can go no faster in progress than the people will allow them to do. Willing co-operation in new methods is essential, and without the will to work progress is not possible, and with constant stoppages of industry progress is not possible. Progress can be obtained by the people of this country if they have the will to obtain it. But just as it can be helped by them, so it can be impeded and retarded and stopped altogether. The ultimate responsibility is with the people more even than with the Government. It is a testing time for democracy. Many are those who would pay, and do pay, lip service to it. But I remember that democracy is after all but the government of the people by the people through their freely elected representatives, and unless the responsibility for that government is felt throughout the length and breadth of the country, from top to bottom, by men and women alike, democracy itself will fail.

Democracy, democratic government, calls for harder work, for higher education, for further vision than any form of government known in this world. It has not lasted long yet in the West, and it is only by those like ourselves who believe in it making it a success that we can hope to see it permanent and yielding those fruits which it ought to yield. The assertion of people's rights has never yet provided that people with bread. The performance of their duties, and that alone, can lead to the successful issue of those experiments in government which we have carried further than any other people in this world. Democracy can rise to great heights; it can also sink to great depths. It is for us so to conduct ourselves, and so to educate our own people, that we may achieve the heights and avoid the depths.

Closely akin to that comes the subject of our great Empire, on which I would say a word or two. When we speak of Empire, it is in no spirit of flag-wagging. What we feel, I think, is this: we feel that in this great inheritance of ours, separated as it is by the seas, we have yet one home and one people, and we want the realisation of that to be so vivid to our own people that men may ask themselves, as they come to manhood, "Where, in this great inherited estate, can I do best for myself? Where have I a better opportunity of bringing up my family? Where can I do best for the Empire?" When the answer given is "overseas," let us do everything we can to see that the path is made easy for those who desire it, that we may help to spread the peoples of our Empire, the ideals of our Empire, the trade of our Empire from one side of the world to the other. After all, great as the material benefits are, we do not look primarily to them. I think deep down in all our hearts we look to the Empire as the means by which we may hope to see that increase of our race which we believe to be of such inestimable benefit to the world at large; the spread abroad of people to whom freedom and justice are as the breath of their nostrils, of people distinguished, as we would fain hope and believe, above all things, by an abiding sense of duty. If ever the day should come when an appeal to that sense of duty falls on deaf ears among our own kin, that day indeed would be the end of our country and of our Empire, to which you and I have dedicated our very lives.

And, if I may, a few words in conclusion to you workers from all over the country and to the new members of Parliament who sit behind me. We have to-day perhaps the most magnificent opportunity of service to our country that has ever been given to any party. You who have just been elected to the House of Commons are, by the testimony of your fellow-countrymen, their natural leaders for the next four or five years. It is your duty, your primary duty, to educate that great democracy of which we are all a part. Let me put this to you, to all of us who have passed through the experience of the recent election. Can there be anything that stands before us more clearly or poignantly than the groups of our fellow-countrymen who listened in faith to what we had to say, who trusted us and have given us their confidence, and who believe in their hearts that we have come to London to do what we can to right those things that are hard and difficult for them, and to help them in what is always the difficult struggle that they have in life? Don't ever lose touch with your constituency; don't ever mistake the voice of the clubman and the voice of the Pressman in London for the voice of the country. It is the country that has returned you; it is the country which will judge you.

I was struck two or three days ago by reading the words of an old Oxford economist, with whom I disagree in almost everything else that he ever wrote. He said: "Consider not only the process by which the machinery of our social condition has been made, but much more the opinion and action which has developed and moulded the character of the English people." Do not ever forget the character of the English people, in which character and in love of which character pursue your work and help them.