weeks stopped the coal trade of the Midlands of England. The next year saw the intervention of Mr. Asquith, as Home Secretary, in the quarrel between the London cabowners and their drivers. In 1895 Sir Courtenay Boyle, Permanent Secretary of the Board of Trade, drew up the agreement which terminated the great strike in the boot trade. And Lord James, a distinguished member of the Conservative Ministry of the day, in January 1896 brought about, after protracted negotiations, a settlement of the dispute between the Clyde and Belfast shipbuilders and their engineers. But notwithstanding the official position of these magnates, it is significant that in no case were they asked, and in no case did they attempt, to cut the Gordian knot by the judicial decree of an umpire or arbitrator. It was not their business to inquire into the merits of the case. They were not called upon to make up their minds whether the employers or the workmen were in the right. They had not even to choose between the rival economic assumptions on which the parties rested their respective claims. Their function was to persuade the representatives of both sides to go on negotiating until a basis was discovered on which it was possible for them to agree.

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This work of conciliation is, we believe, destined to play a great and for many years an increasing part in the labour struggles of this country. In the present state of public opinion the intervention of an outside conciliator' is, as regards the imperfectly organised trades, a precursor of regular collective bargaining. In many trades the employers themselves are not united in any association in many others they still haughtily refuse to discuss matters with their workmen. In any prolonged dispute public opinion now almost forces the parties to resume negotiations, and the intervention of an eminent outsider is found the best lever for collective bargaining. His social position or official status secures for the proceedings, even among angry men, a certain amount of dignity, order, and consideration for each other's feelings, whilst it prevents any hasty rupture or withdrawal. So long as Lord Rosebery was willing to go on sitting, it was practically impossible for either the coalowners or the coalminers to stop discussing. But prolonged discussion does not lead to agreement unless the parties get on good terms with each other, and are brought into a friendly mood. It is the conciliator's business to see that this atmosphere of good humour is produced and maintained. The excellent luncheon which Lord Rosebery provided for owners and workmen alike was probably more effective in creating harmony than the most convincing arguments about the living wage.' All this, however, is but preliminary to the real business. We have already described the important part played by a tactful and experienced arbitrator in drawing out the best points in each party's case, restating them in the most persuasive form, and eliminating from the controversy all unnecessary sources of irritation

or non-essential differences. The ideal conciliator adds to this a happy suggestiveness and fertility in devising possible alternatives. Throughout the discussion he watches for the particular points to

which each party really attaches importance. He has a quick eye for acceptable lines of compromise. At the right psychological moment, when discussion is beginning to be tedious to both sides, he is ready with a form of words. This is the crisis of the proceedings. If the parties are physically and mentally tired, and yet pleased with themselves and no longer angry with their opponents; if the conciliator is adroit in his drafting, and finds a formula which, whilst making mutual concessions on minor points, includes, or seems to each party to include, a great deal of what each has been contending for, the resolution will be agreed to, if not by acclamation, at any rate after a few minor amendments to save the dignity of one side or the other; and almost before some of the slower-minded representatives have had time to think out all the bearings of the com- ́ promise the agreement is signed, and peace is secured.

We see, therefore, that outside intervention in wages disputes may be of the highest value, and we anticipate that it will, for many years to come, in all but the best-organised trades, play a great, and even an increasing, part. But its function will not be that of 'arbitration,' properly so called, but rather that of conciliation,' though this will continue to be sometimes carried on under the guise of arbitration. Instead of aiming at superseding collective bargaining, the arbitrator will more and more consciously seek to promote it. In fact, so far from being the crown of industrial organisation, the reference of disputes to an impartial outsider is a mark of its imperfection. Arbitration is the temporary expedient of incompletely organised industries, destined to be cast aside by each of them in turn when a higher stage, like that of the cotton operatives or the boiler-makers, is attained. The present Government has therefore done well to cut down its arbitration bill to a modest Conciliation Act.' The pretentious legislation of 1867 and 1872, from which so much was expected, is now simply repealed. The Board of Trade is empowered, in case of an industrial dispute, 'to inquire into the causes and circumstances of the difference.' It may intervene as the friend of peace, to persuade the parties to come to an agreement. If a conciliator is desired, it may appoint one. Finally, if both parties join in asking that the settlement shall proceed in the guise of arbitration, and wish the Board of Trade to select the arbitrator for them, the Board of Trade may accede to their request, as it might have done without any Act at all!

This conclusion will disappoint those who see in arbitration not a subordinate and temporary adjunct to collective bargaining, but a panacea for stoppages of industry. The popularity of arbitration has deep roots. At the back of the peremptory public demand for the

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settlement of any strike or lock-out, there lurks a feeling that in the interests of the whole community neither employers nor workmen ought to be allowed to paralyse their own industry. If one side or the other persists in standing out, we have a clamour for 'compulsory arbitration: that is, the intervention of the power of the State. We need not enter into the numerous suggestions that have been made for State Boards of Arbitration,' authoritative intervention by the Board of Trade, or the deposit, by both parties, of sums of money to be legally forfeited upon breach of the award. The authors of such suggestions always find themselves in a dilemma. If resort to this kind of arbitration is still to be voluntary, the liability to penalties or legal proceedings is not calculated to persuade either employers or workmen to come within its toils." If, on the other hand, it is to be compulsory, it will amount to legal regulation, of a novel kind. It may well be argued that the community, for the protection of the public welfare, is entitled to step in and decide the terms upon which mechanics shall labour, and upon which capitalists shall engage them. In such a case the public decision could perhaps best be embodied in the award of an impartial arbitration tribunal, invested with all the solemnity of the State. But here we pass outside the domain of 'arbitration' properly so called. The question is then no longer the patching up of a quarrel between capitalists and workmen, but the deliberate determination by the community of the conditions under which certain industrial operations shall be allowed to be carried on. Such an award would have to be enforced on the parties whose recalcitrance had rendered it necessary. This does not imply, as is sometimes suggested, that workmen would be marched into the works by a regiment of soldiers, or that the police would open the gates (and the cash box) of stubborn employers. All that the award need decree is, that if capitalists desire to engage in the particular industry they shall do so only on the specified conditions. The enforcement of these conditions would become a matter for official inspection, followed by prosecutions for breaches of what would in effect be the law of the land. Here, it is true, we do find an effective panacea for strikes and lock-outs. Although industrial history records plenty of agitations and counter-agitations for and

"The following extract from a recent report of so experienced and well-informed a society as the United Textile Factory Workers' Association is significant: Boards of Conciliation.-Any number of Bills are constantly being introduced on this question, but your Council do not see that any useful purpose can be served by their becoming law. The assumption on which all these proposals are based is that . . . when the return goes down the wages of labour and the profits of capital should go down together. . . . The umpire is never a workman, but always a member of the upper class, whose sympathies and interest lie in the direction of keeping wages down. . . . They believe that the Bills now being brought forward are meant as so many traps with which to catch a portion of the workers' wages, and they have consequently opposed them.'-Report of the Legislative Council of the United Textile Factory Workers' Association for 1893-4, p. 17.

against the fixing by law of various conditions of employment, there has never been either a lock-out or a strike against a new Factory or Truck Act. But by adopting this method of avoiding the occasional breaking off of negotiations which accompanies collective bargaining, we should supersede collective bargaining altogether. The conditions of employment would no longer be left to the higgling of masters and men, but would be authoritatively decided without their consent in the manner which the community, acting through an arbitrator, thought most expedient. Compulsory arbitration' means, in fact,

the fixing of wages by law.

SIDNEY AND BEATRICE WEBB

1896

NOTICEABLE BOOKS

1

THE WELL AT THE WORLD'S END1

THE creative gift of Mr. Morris, his distinctive power of imagination, cannot be defined or appreciated by any such test of critical comparison as is applicable to the work of any other man. He is himself alone, and so absolutely that his work can no more be likened to any mediæval than to any contemporary kinsman's. In his love of a story for a story's sake he is akin to Chaucer and the French precursors of Chaucer but if he has not much of Chaucer's realistic humour and artistic power of condensation and composition, he has a gift of invention as far beyond Chaucer's as the scope of a story like The Well at the World's End is beyond the range of such brief romances as Amis and Amile or Aucassin and Nicolette. Readers and lovers (the terms should here be synonymous) of his former tales or poems in prose will expect to find in this masterpiece-for a perfect and unique masterpiece it is-something that will remind them less of Child Christopher than of The Wood beyond the World: the mere likeness in the titles would suggest so much and this I think they will not fail to find: but I am yet more certain that the quality of this work is even finer and stronger than that of either. The interest, for those who bring with them to the reading of a work of imagination any auxiliary or sympathetic imagination of their own, is deeper and more vivid as well as more various but the crowning test and triumph of the author's genius will be recognised in the all but unique power of touching with natural pathos the alien element of magical or supernatural fiction. Coleridge could do this: who else till now has done it? And when we venture to bring in the unapproachable name of Coleridge, we are venturing to cite the example of the most imaginative, the most essentially poetic, among all poets of all nations and all time.

It should be remembered that when an allegorical intention was The Well at the World's End. 2 vols. By William Morris. Longmans & Co., 1896.

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