The War and Unity: Being Lectures Delivered At The Local Lectures Summer Meeting Of The University Of Cambridge, 1918
Religion
The War and Unity: Being Lectures Delivered At The Local Lectures Summer Meeting Of The University Of Cambridge, 1918
Christian sociology; Christian union; Social change; World War, 1914-1918 -- Religious aspects
that the demand for labour and the volume for supplying that demand
determined the remuneration. That doctrine has had to go by the board
like so many other things that could not exist under war pressure.
Then, how are we to give effect to this general workshop aspiration for
bringing the workman into closer unity with the conditions which
determine that part of his life which is the bread-winning part, for
which he has to turn out in the morning early and often return home late
in the evening? There was established some time ago what can be
described as a quite responsible committee to report upon how better
relations not only between employers and employed through their
associations, but in regard to employers and employed in the workshops,
might be established. That committee issued the report commonly known to
us now as the Whitley Report, of which I am quite sure more will be
heard in a few years. The men who had to frame that report were drawn
from the two extremes of the employers and trade unions. We had men with
very advanced views, like Mr Smillie, on the one hand, and we had quite
powerful employers of labour, like Sir Gilbert Claughton and Sir William
Carter, on the other. I had the privilege of sitting on that committee,
and for some months we laboured to frame some definite terms which might
be accepted by those who were concerned in our recommendations. I very
often hear the suggestion that people will have little of it because it
is not ideal, not grand or great enough, but we have to come down to the
earth upon these matters, and we have to recommend only what we feel is
likely to be accepted lest our labour should be wasted. We must avoid,
therefore, throwing our aims too high, and we must suggest only what
practical business men and workmen are likely seriously to consider.
Having decided to reach that conclusion, and feeling the sense of
responsibility which, opposed as so many of us were to each other, drove
us to reach a conclusion, we expressed ourselves in these terms: "We are
convinced that a permanent improvement in the relations between
employers and employed must be founded upon something other than a cash
basis. What is wanted is that the workpeople should have a greater
opportunity of participating in the discussion upon an adjustment of
those parts of industry by which they are most affected. For securing
improvement in the relations between employers and employed, it is
essential that any proposals put forward should offer to workpeople the
means of attaining improved conditions of employment and a higher
standard of comfort generally, and involve the enlistment of their
active and continuous co-operation in the promotion of industry."
Previously, the view was that the workman had nothing whatever to do
with this phase of the management of business, and that is a phrase
still very much used. We make no claim in this report that workmen
should have the right to interfere in the higher realms of business
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