"The situation in which we as a county find ourselves makes it imperative that we should address you. We do not refer to our own organisations, for these are strong, but to our relation with the employers and the settlement of our transactions with them. How are these to be managed in the future? Has our attitude to be one of repulsion or attraction? Have the employers and ourselves to act like two antagonistic forces, looking with suspicion upon each other, and ready to take every advantage, as if we were in a continual wrestling match on the catch-who-can principle, where those who get the hold win, whether their cause be righteous or not? If the members persisted in their resolve to have no Conciliation Board, or some substituted machinery, who would suffer most? If there were two parties before you of equal strength and similarly conditioned, then the issue would be uncertain, and the victory would depend upon some unforeseen circumstances. Such is not the case with us. Given a solid organisation of labour, and the same of employers numerically--still the balance of the chances in a wear-and-tear and struggling policy will he on the side of the party who is the best ammunitioned and provisioned. In this case, which in your opinion as the advantage?" They pointed out that they were mutual sufferers with the members, if there were suffering; that there was not time in the lodge meetings to discuss the utility of such a system; and that as a consequence they, as one of the obligations of their office, were bound to have a fuller knowledge of the subject than the members. It was an unfortunate circumstance that the system had been tried in a receding market, but the proper test was not by one condition of trade. If conciliation were tested by an increasing as well as a falling market it would then be seen how useful it was. Some people seemed to charge the Conciliation Board with being the cause of the depression. "There cannot be a greater fallacy. The causes of the reductions lie outside the purview of any system yet arranged, and the control of them is not within the possibility of an arrangement yet thought of. But the question that faces us now, and demands an answer from us, is, would they have come if the Board had never been formed? There needs no philosophical knowledge to satisfy the mind on that point, except it be the philosophy of matter-of-fact, everyday life, which in these matters is not an unsafe test. Let experience guide, and it will afford a sure refutation of the unfounded idea that it is possible to fix, firmly and permanently, wages by any scheme within the knowledge of man."