If asked what was the strongest sentiment I found permeating the workshops, I should answer, suspicion of employers. In some districts it is worse than in others; in some works it is worse than in other works in the same district. Many reasons have been advanced for its existence, but the real explanation is simple. Between the fifties and the eighties of last century, when the machinery of collective bargaining was coming into operation, the principle of action adopted by many employers was “enlightened self-interest”—the individualistic theory that an employer best served his own interests, and, automatically by so doing the best interests of the country, by furthering on all occasions his own advantage. To call this greed or selfishness is wrong. It implied no callous disregard of the rights of the workers, but it did involve such a bias of mind that the interests of employees were subordinated in the scheme of industry to those of the employers. In the course of collective bargaining, of manœuvring for position, of higgling, many managements contracted the habit of seizing upon any circumstances which might enable them to cut piece-rates and time-allowances, bring down wages, revise conditions of employment, and adopted the invariable attitude of resisting all the demands of their employees. Such employers have disappeared, but “the evil that men do lives after them.” Not unnaturally, the workers learned to decipher some hostile motive behind each action of their employer, however apparently beneficent, and regarded everything he did with unalloyed suspicion, and as calling for the closest scrutiny. This is the cause of the want of confidence in the industrial atmosphere to-day. While it continues so charged with mistrust, confidence between all persons concerned in industry, which is necessary for production and essential for smooth running of the industrial machine, can never flourish. All employers unreservedly now deprecate this unhappy condition of things, many have gone to exceptional trouble to dissipate the blight on industry of such distrust, but memories are long, industrial prejudices tenacious, and it will take time and much effort to forge a bond of trust. The Worker and his Trade Union