cannot exist under our system of free and complete investigation before the Standing Committee. Injustice is not attempted, because it is known that it will be investigated.

4. The tendency of a Wages Board is certainly towards a greater uniformity in wages, and it prevents attempts in isolated instances to reduce wages in order to undersell a competitor. It is well known that in a falling market, when orders are scarce, concessions from the workmen are sought for, and being obtained, are immediately given to the buyer. This may momentarily secure an order; but its effect is generally to depress the market still more, and so damage the interests of both employer and operative. It is better to let the wages of the whole body of workmen follow the market, as is the case with a sliding scale.

5. We assume that each of the works are represented by the employer and an operative: and each of the works being (theoretically) represented by an employer and an operative, and all operatives being members of the Board, there is a tendency towards loyalty to it; they look upon it as their protection, they are willing to maintain it financially, and to be obedient to its rules and submissive to its decisions. They realize that it is working as much in the interests of one side as of the other. The Operatives' Representatives are brought in contact with the employers at frequent meetings. By courteous and considerate bearing towards each other, by witnessing the desire on both sides to do what is right and fair and just, there gradually springs up a mutual confidence and respect, a belief that each means what he says, and is prepared to support his statements if needful. The impression that each side is attempting to hoodwink the other gradually dies away, and mutual confidence is the result. Of course in making the

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selection of representatives it is all-important that persons of the best principles, as well as of great practical knowledge, should be chosen.

6. There is no limit to the subjects that may be dealt with by a Wages Board so long as they have some relation to the interests of both parties.

7. The employer is benefited by keeping his works going and maintaining the output, reducing common charges, and saving waste, for it is a fundamental rule that there shall be no cessation of work owing to a dispute; the decision, if delayed, can be made retrospective. The employer escapes trouble and anxiety by having a committee to whom any question can be referred, by having the rate of wages settled regularly over bimonthly periods, and he maintains good relations with his workmen. The operatives benefit in the same way; they acquire access to the employers' books, and under the discipline of the Board become more orderly.

Our Board in the early stages might be compared with a "buffer state" between antagonistic parties. To-day it is a "link of mutual interests."

I look upon conciliation and arbitration, Wages Boards, Joint Committees, Sliding Scales, or whatever may be described as an instrument for maintaining reasonable and proper relations between employers and employed, as a phase in social evolution, probably something beyond our reasoning, something which was bound to come as a natural law. They are a necessary consequence of other movements in the world—a work which young men who are our successors are called upon to study and promote.

Other nations are inquiring into our methods, and I have had both French and German commissioners seeking for information by letter and personal interviews. We have before us to-day two examples of

labour troubles-one in Pennsylvania, another in France. You will notice that these strikes are not allowed to work their ruin as in old days. The State steps in when the nation begins to suffer, and the final stage is arbitration. Yes, they are wise after the event—“ prevention is better than cure."

THE BRITISH COTTON INDUSTRY

Elijah Helm

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MOST readers of English newspapers have, I imagine, been much perplexed-many perhaps alarmed—by the persistent stream of depreciation which has for some years been poured upon our industrial and commercial methods and their results. We are told that our preeminence is gone, that we are falling back in the race, and sometimes that we are upon the slope of permanent decadence. There are several methods of testing the value of such statements as these. One of the best is to examine the facts in respect of each branch of industry and trade thoroughly, with care and with an open mind. This I propose to do in the case of the British cotton manufacture in the two lectures which the Dean of the Faculty of Commerce of this University has invited me to deliver. In the first of them I hope to put before you a brief historical sketch of the industry, to describe its present organization, and to consider its recent progress and its existing position. In the second lecture a survey will be taken of the cotton industries of other countries, and the results of the whole investigation will be summarized and compared.

In one respect the British cotton manufacture differs

essentially from the great group of industries with which this capital of the Midlands is closely associated. Its raw material is derived entirely from abroad, and the greater part of its productions is consumed abroad. The cotton used in our mills is grown in other lands, most of it thousands of miles away, and fully threefourths is distributed, in the manufactured state, to every part of the globe. Yet from the very beginning of the industry as a mechanical art the pre-eminence has always remained, and still remains, in Great Britain. This remarkable feature will have to be kept clearly in mind in forming any final conclusions as to the present international position.

We need not spend very much time upon the historical aspect of our subject; yet there are some striking points in it which must not be left unnoticed. Regarded as a completely mechanical industry, the cotton manufacture is not quite a hundred years old. It is true that in the latter half of the eighteenth century the inventions of Hargreaves, Arkwright, Crompton, and others had substituted spinning-machines, which would now be regarded as ludicrously simple and inefficient, for the old hand spinning-wheel. At the same time machines were introduced for cleaning, carding, and otherwise preparing the fibre for the spinning process. All these were first used in England; and for a time the yarn they produced was much valued abroad, as well as at home, because of its superior quality. But other nations, particularly the United States, were not long in adopting the improvements. Weaving was still all over the world a handicraft process. Early in the nineteenth century an effective power loom was invented; but it was not until 1860 that the old hand-loom was entirely driven out from the British cotton industry. Even now it is still extensively