the employers' and workers' organisations, and independent of state control. Moreover, although their functions have been considerably extended by the Act of 1918, their primary function is still the fixing of minimum wage rates. Useful and important as their work must be in raising the level of wages and conditions in badly organised trades, they can never take the place of the joint industrial councils as a medium of constructive co-operation between the parties to Industry. It is probable, however, that the establishment of trade boards may in many cases act as a spur to those engaged in the industry to bring their organisation up to the level which would render it possible to form a joint industrial council and approach the Ministry of Labour with a request for recognition.

To the Final Report of the Whitley Committee, five members of the Committee appended a reservation setting forth that industrial councils and trade boards, while likely to "afford an atmosphere generally favourable to industrial peace and progress," cannot, in their opinion, "be expected to furnish a settlement for the more serious conflicts of interest involved in the working of an economic system primarily governed and directed by motives of private profit."

In this reservation we may fully concur without necessarily sharing the views as to economic organisation by which it appears to have been inspired. It has already been urged in this Memorandum that the replacement of the existing industrial system, based on private enterprise, by a system of guild or state ownership, is in the main a question of practical expediency, to be decided as such. It has further been suggested that in the index function of profits and prices, and in other factors and conditions of industrial life, there exist strong reasons against hasty or too confident generalisation as to the benefits of such a change. But whether the existing system be retained, modified, or abolished, industry will fall short of playing its proper part in the life either of the individual or of the nation, so long as it is "primarily governed and directed" by the motive of personal advantage-whether that motive find expression in the desire to extort profit without rendering equivalent service, or in the acceptance of a standard rate of remuneration without conscientious performance of the work for which it is paid. Against the operation of this motive no economic system can, in itself, afford a guarantee; for, however far it may prove practical to control profits or wages,

it is not possible to compel the exercise by any man of his full powers of hand or brain. Any genuine renaissance of industrial life must depend upon the permeation of industry as a whole by the idea of co-operation for public service as the dominant motive of industrial activity. It is the chief virtue of the proposals outlined in the Whitley Reports, and the chief claim which can be made for the similar proposals contained in this memorandum, that they would encourage and facilitate this transformation of motive, whether it is found desirable to replace or to preserve the existing economic system.

THE INDUSTRIAL COUNCILS OF
GREAT BRITAIN1

Readers whose knowledge of the industrial situation in Great Britain is confined to the speeches of Cabinet Ministers and the comments of the daily press are apt to imagine that a new heaven and a new earth are being created by some magical process initiated by the Whitley Report. Joint Standing Industrial Councils representing employers and employed, so the press and the politicians inform us, are being set up almost every day, and a new spirit of fellowship and good will is animating masters and workmen alike. I can only say that I have sought for this new spirit, and I have not found it. Joint Standing Industrial Councils are indeed being established in considerable numbers; but most of the vital industries have hitherto shown no anxiety to establish them, and, even where they have been established, there is not much evidence of the "new spirit" of which we hear so much. In fact, the Whitley Report, loudly as it has been acclaimed in governmental circles, has almost entirely failed to stir the world of Labor. In some industries, notably on the railways and in the big engineering group, it has been definitely rejected. In other cases it has been accepted as a useful piece of machinery, but without any particular enthusiasm, and certainly with no idea that it provides a panacea for all industrial troubles. The only case in which its adoption has been urgently pressed by the workers is that of State employees, and in this instance the urgency arises largely from the desire to use it as a means of securing full recognition and the right of collective bargaining.

1 By G. D. H. Cole. Dial. 66:171-3. February 22, 1919. (Mr. Cole is an exponent of the Guild Socialists Movement.)

The first Whitley Report, to which the later Reports are hardly more than supplements, proposes that in the better organized industries Standing Joint Industrials Councils should be set up nationally in each industry, with District Councils and Works Councils under them. The National and District Councils are to consist of an equal representation from Employers' Associations on the one side and from Trade Unions on the other. They are to be voluntary in character, and the endowing of their decisions with any legal power is to be a matter for further consideration. The State is not to be represented, and is to appoint a chairman only when requested to do so by the Council itself. At the same time the Government has announced its intention of recognizing the Councils as advisory bodies representing the various industries, and of consulting them on matters affecting their interests.

In all this there is nothing in the smallest degree revolutionary. In most industries in Great Britain there have long existed regular means of joint negotiation and consultation between employers and employed. In some cases these have taken the form of Boards of Conciliation with agreed rules and methods of procedure; in others there have been merely regular arrangements for periodic conference. The important point is that, in the majority of organized industries, recognition of Trade Unionism and frequent negotiation between Trade Unions and Employers' Associations have long been the rule.

The Whitley Report does not in reality carry matters very much further, though at first sight it may seem to do so. It hints again and again that one of its principal reasons for urging the establishment of Joint Industrial Councils is in order to satisfy the demand of the workers for a greater control over industry; but the actual constitutions of the Whitley Councils which have been established do nothing at all to make this aspiration a fact. They provide, indeed, for joint consideration of questions affecting the industry; but they do nothing to affect the final and exclusive control of the employer over the way in which he runs his business. I am not complaining, or saying that they could do more. I am merely criticizing the prevalent view that the Whitley Report makes a new and revolutionary departure in the sphere of industrial relations. It does not: it only regularizes and formalizes a process which has long been going on in most of our principal

industries, and one which would have continued whether there had been a Whitley Report or not. In fact, the control of industry cannot be altered merely by the setting up of a few Joint Committees. The control of industry rests on the economic power of those who control it; and only a shifting of the balance of economic power will alter this control. Such a shifting of power may be, and I believe is, in progress at the present time; but it is quite independent of such events as the issuing and adoption by the Government of the Whitley Report. The view most current among Trade Unionists-that the Whitley Report does not matter much one way or the other is certainly the right one.

Nevertheless, though it is not likely to produce large permanent results, the Report has for the time being attracted a good deal of attention. Official Trade Unionism, represented by the Parliamentary Committee of the Trades Union Congress, accepted it without enthusiasm and subject to its remaining purely voluntary. Even official Trade Unionism will not tolerate compulsory arbitration in any form, except under protest as a war measure. Unofficial rank and file Trade Unionism, represented by the shop stewards' movement and other agencies, roundly denounced "Whitleyism" as an attempt to sidetrack the growing movement of the class-conscious workers towards the control of industry. "Whitleying away our strength," one rank and file critic entitled his article upon the Report, and went on to urge that the capitalists, fearing the rising tide of rank and file committees, had inspired the Report in the hope of substituting for them joint committees of masters and men, and so depriving them of their dynamic and revolutionary character. The National Guilds League, also representing the left wing, declared against the underlying assumption of the Report that industrial peace is possible and desirable under capitalism, and pointed out that, whatever the merits or demerits of joint committees, they cannot provide the dynamic for securing control, or offer any alternative to workshop agitation and workshop organization for the purpose of a gradual assumption of control by the workers. Other critics, largely among State Socialists, dwelt rather on the dangers of Whitleyism to the consumer and the risk of establishing a common solidarity between employers and workers in a particular industry against the public-a risk also noted by the Guild

Socialists. In fact, everywhere the left wing, and often a part of the right also, rejected the Whitley proposals.

What, then, of the Whitley Councils and other bodies on similar lines, which are being established? The first thing to notice about them is that many of them affect only small and often ill-organized groups. The Whitley Committee itself recommended the establishment of Joint Industrial Councils only in those industries in which employers and employed were comparatively well organized. For the industries in which organization was weak, it recommended the establishment of Trade Boards under the act recently passed to extend the scope of the original Trade Boards Act of 1909. Nevertheless, Whitley Councils have been established in a number of industries which cannot by any means be regarded as well organized. Instances of this are the Pottery Council and the Match Makers' Council. Moreover, Councils are being set up for certain small sectional trades which can hardly by any stretch of imagination be regarded as industries. The Bobbin Industrial Council and the Spelter Industrial Council are notable examples of this undue tendency to sectional organization. On the other hand, Councils have been or are being set up in a number of important industries, including the woolen, printing, building, baking, and other industries.

In addition to the Industrial Councils set up under the Whitley scheme, the Government, through the Ministry of Reconstruction, has established a number of Interim Reconstruction Committees, principally in industries in which the formation of Industrials has not been found possible, but also in some cases for small or almost unorganized industrial groups, such as needles and fishhooks, and furniture removing and warehousing. Altogether there are about twenty Industrial Councils now in existence, and a considerably larger number of Interim Reconstruction Committees. No steps have yet been taken to extend the Trade Boards Act to new trades, unless not very definite promises to distributive workers, to tobacco workers, and to one or two other groups are treated as steps in this direction.

It is too early yet to say what the new Industrial Councils are likely to do when they get to work. Their constitutions are, as a rule, drawn so as to embrace a large variety of purposes, without giving much indication of the course which they will actually pursue. One significant clause, which occurs in