If the workman who has been “dealt with” was a shop steward, and was really using his employer’s time for doing his Trade Union branch work when he might and ought to have been doing his shop work, the men have accepted the position that, after notice, the employer is entitled to take exception to that procedure. On the other hand, if he has only been utilizing for Union business the many periods of time which occur in the best organized shops when he is “waiting for work” or “standing by,” and has done it in such a way as not to interfere with his shop work, then the men claim that he has only done what he was entitled to do, and that an employer who objects to him doing Union business under such circumstances is really out against the Union. Most fair-minded people would probably draw the same inference. The Money Value of Sympathy in Industry There are to-day many employers, managers, under-managers, and foremen who still act on the dogma that there is nothing to be got out of the sympathetic handling of labour. “It’s so much cutting air,” more than one has said to me. If an employer of this type honestly believed there was money in it, he is far too keen a business man not to try it. But to many employers Labour is still only a machine which, as long as it runs in any sort of way, is to be left severely alone; when it jerks or sticks it is to be lubricated with smooth words, professions of the employer’s anxiety for its welfare, “soft sawder,” for which the men, naturally, have the utmost contempt. The Sympathetic Handling of Labour a Special Art