Ittttro to tbt thitor.
now STRIKES MIGHT DE PREVENTED.
12th October 1853.
SIR—Inferring from several able articles in recent numbers of the Spec- tator that you are fully alive to the enormous evils, moral as well as phy- sical, which arise front the strikes that have so long disturbed the rela- tions of capital and labour in this country, I venture to submit to you a plan for adjusting wages, which would, I think, be more creditable to both parties in the dispute, and more worthy of the boasted knowledge and enlightenment of the nineteenth century, than the rude method now em- ployed; which, even when it seems to accomplish its purpose, is attended with so heavy a loss, both material and moral, to the successful party not less than to those who are compelled for a time to yield, that the victors might truly say, paraphrasing the words of an ancient conqueror, " Many more such victories, and we are undone." Now, since strikes arise chiefly from imperfect knowledge, and that generally on the part of the labouring class, of the ratio between the demand and the supply of labour,—that is, of the mutual wants of the employing and the employed classes,—might not this deficiency of knowledge be supplied, and the consequent uncertainty as to the fair rate of wages be removed, by forming in every manufacturing town or industrial district a committee composed of equal numbers of employers and working men, to be chosen, by their respective constituents at certain periods, and meeting once a month or oftener for the full and unreserved communication of all the facts known to both parties affecting their relations to each other, and for settling, for a limited time, the rate of wages which the actual state of affairs rendered just and necessary ? If such a plan—analogous, I believe, to that which is embodied in the Conseils des Prudhommes in France—were adopted, the decision of the com- mittee would, of course, be binding on all those represented by it; and even when its determination did not give satisfaction, it would be acquiesced in, as the arrangements consequent upon it would be temporary only ; and the party which considered itself aggrieved by them might, by choosing dif- ferent representatives, secure a revision of them at the next meeting. It would be indispensable for the satisfactory working of such a plan, that the considerations by which the committee were guided in fixing the rate of wages should in all cases be fully made known to its constituents ; the essential function of the committee being, in truth, to ascertain the facts and to publish them ; for it may be safely assumed that nine-tenths of the disputes about wages are occasioned by want of the necessary knowledge on
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