There is one point on which I cannot congratulate my right hon. Friend. I do not say, however, that the blames rests with him, or even with the Ministry of Labour. Great and serious delay has occurred in bringing this Bill before Parliament. It has been under discussion, as is well known, in trade union circles and at conferences and public meetings for a long time past, and the delay has given rise to a great deal of suspicion, and in some ways has caused dislocation of industry and trade. But now that we have the Bill I quite agree with the right hon. Gentleman's view that it is our business to make the best of it, and to accept it as a genuine and earnest effort on the part of the Government to keep faith with the definite promise which was given. The question has been put to the right hon. Gentleman as to why the necessity of establishing in law conditions of employment which rested upon voluntary effort before the War, and the answer to that is that, inasmuch as employers could not be trusted by the trade unions to restore, after the War, conditions which during the War the trade unions voluntarily agreed to set aside, the trade unions had to exact from the Government of the day a pledge that they would use the instrument of the law to give them back what they had forfeited while the War was on. Personally I should very much prefer that the employers should agree to restore these workshop practices. Trade unionism has rested throughout all its history upon the principle of voluntary effort, but the special circumstances of the War have produced this situation, and it seems to me now that there is no escape from this legislative treatment.

I join with the right hon. Gentleman in commending the Bill to the acceptance of the House, with perhaps some little re- servation. I can recall the circumstances of 17th March, 1915, when there was entered into what was termed the Treasury Agreement. I was present as one of the trade union delegates representing the unions concerned, and I think it can be said that the almost unanimous decision which was then reached, to make a very considerable forfeiture of power and privileges on the part of the trade unions, was due to the really patriotic motives which not only inspired the delegates then present, but pervaded working class feeling at that time in relation to the War. It was clearly shown to that conference that the men in the workshop would only be second as a national power to the soldiers in bringing the War to a successful conclusion, and just as workmen were joining the Army in such very large numbers the workmen who remained in the workshops were, in the main, willing to set aside certain personal advantages so as enormously to increase output and make us equal, if not superior, to the enemy in shot and shell. I say that because there are people not so well acquainted with the trade union position who look, not merely with wonderment, but sometimes with disgust upon the very existence of what are called trade union privileges and practices. No one need apologise to any class of the community for these factors that are called trade union privileges, rules and regulations, for every class has its privileges, its practices, regulations and lines of demarcation, and I suppose not least of the classes in the country the legal profession has built up a very considerable network of regulations which constitute formidable privileges for the men who are in the different grades of that honoured service. Indeed, trade unionists have often cited that highly skilled and experienced class of men as those who have set them a great example in building up for manual workers some of those defences to which, I think, they are entitled. So that the difference between the apprenticed engineer and the non-apprenticed, non-skilled labourer is, perhaps, only the difference expressed between the position, say, of the solicitor and of the advocate or barrister. As one who has had very little experience in relations with those different sections of a great profession, I have found that having got these strong, well established privileges, rules and regulations, they adhere to them very rigorously. I think it can be said that the only very considerable class in the community which set aside its privileges and rules and regulations was the manual working class. I do not know any other. There may be such, and, if so, they are worthy of honourable mention. So no apology is needed for the existence of these rules and regulations.

I have observed in one or two previous Debates references to the attitude of the trade unions now in relation to the position of returned soldiers, and charges were made in a quite recent discussion to the effect that the trade unions were not behaving either honourably or generously towards the returned soldiers who had increased necessities because of the position in which the War had left them, and, therefore, I want to quote the view of this Labour Conference, held on 17thMarch, 1915, on this very question. One of the resolutions passed unanimously by the trade union delegates was: That in any readjustment of staffs which may have to be effected after the War priority of employment will be given to workmen in our employment at the beginning of the War who were serving with the Colours or who are now in our employment. The view of the Labour Conference on that date was that this is a condition which the Government should impose upon every employer, in order that after the War was over those men should be given, not an equal chance with those who had not gone to the War, and who had been able, incidentally, to remain at home enjoying good conditions and high earnings in comparison with the earnings of the soldier, but that they should have a prior claim, and that employers should, even by law or by some effective instrument, be required to put that prior claim into practice. I hope that as that was the trade union view on that date it has been in no way weakened by what has happened since 1915, and if need be we can appeal, I believe unanimously, to every trade union to stand by the returned soldier in that sense, that for the sacrifices he made in the nation's interest, and, indeed, for the work he did as a fighter in defending the workmen while they were in the workshops in this country, the workmen now should show themselves willing to act fully up to the declaration of sympathy with the soldier which they made in March, 1915.

The right hon. Gentleman said, with a great deal of truth, that this was an agreed Bill. But there is an aspect of that subject of agreement to which I should like to draw attention. It is an agreed Bill so fax as the official opinion of organised employers on the one hand and organised trade unions on the other is concerned. But a great question of this kind affects more than two parties, and, although I know I am incurring certain risks in drawing attention to these really outstanding facts, I want to bring them before the notice of the two parties who have formulated this Bill, because in practice it will be seen that these other two parties of whom I speak cannot be permanently shut out of the questions which are raised by the passing of the Bill. The two parties are, in the first place, a very large group, numbering hundreds of thousands of men and women workers, who are not in the trade unions which have entered into this arrangement, and the second great party is the community itself. This very powerful group of organised workers built up around itself trade union regulations, practices, and rules, because of the bitterness of their experience when they had not such rules and regulations. Trade union history and general industrial history show that in the past systems of piecework, sub-division, new arrangements in respect of improved output and greater production, anything in the nature of greater industry on the part of the workmen in the end brought them little or no gain. Indeed, general experience showed that the more efficient a workman made himself the less was his reward. He increased his industry; he increased his energy and got nearer and nearer to the point of human endurance as a wealth maker, and yet experience showed that in the degree that he increased his output his remuneration diminished, so that in the end he was no better rewarded than if he had been a very indifferent worker. So that reduced wages and fresh' methods and rearrangements, usually enforced against his will, embittered the workmen and made them turn to methods of organised self-defence in the form of these different rules and regulations.

But while that is, I think, the history of the case, there is an aspect of the question which skilled workmen, powerful as they are now, cannot continue to leave out of account. It is the claim of the workman who to-day is described as a less skilled or an unskilled workman, and it is the claim of the woman who, especially because of war conditions, must become more of a breadwinner than the average woman of the industrial classes has been in the past. The effects of the War in its most melancholy and bitterest sense visited many homes which can only be maintained by the future energy and industry of the wage-earning women, and it will not do merely to extend sympathy to them. Opportunities of earning their living under conditions of dignity, under conditions which will give them a proper place in industry, with wages equal to their needs, are gifts that we must extend, not as favours but as rights, to a very considerable number of women who are deeply interested in the Bill. As to the less skilled and the unskilled workers among the men, I would like to put the view that for many years in this House Labour Members have been required by the unanimous view of organised Labour to appeal to the State to establish what Labour has called the right to work. I want to extend that appeal. That is to say, if there is to be right to work, it is a right from which the labourer, whether skilled or less skilled, should not be excluded by any action on the part of the skilled worker. With that right to work I couple the right to rise, to advance, to progress along the avenues of industry, according to the man's energy, initiative, and pursuit of self-education, and all the other individual qualities which are ever prized in this and other countries, so that right to work is not and cannot remain the distinctive claim of any particular class in industry, no matter how powerfully organised that class may be. I would like to see a state of industry that would give wider opportunities and greater chances of advancement in our industrial system to that large number of workers who must begin as labourers and must go on as labourers, who are deprived of those great advantages of apprenticeship and training which happily so many of our skilled men are able to enjoy.

Next to the great group of partners who under this Bill will insist upon having their point of view, there is a fourth partner, the community itself. I am in full agreement with my right hon. Friend in what he said with regard to the question of increasing the quantity and value of the products to be got out of industry by the joint energies of employer and employed. I am not now pursuing broadly the question of the relationship between employers and employed.

I merely want to put the view that any deliberate limitation by the workers of output may be some harm to industry and some loss to employers, but it is bound to be a great loss and a real loss to the workman himself. Its tendency is to diminish earnings, and, worse than that, its tendency is to diminish the purchasing power of what the workmen earn. Dearness is inseparable from scarcity, and to the extent that you lessen the quantity of goods produced by labour in industrial effort, to that extent you are creating a dear market in which there is reduced earning, because of diminished output. All I want to add to this view of our industrial conditions is this: that if workmen can be assured now—and in practice under this Bill I believe they can be assured—of sharing in the increased results accruing from any increased energy on their part in order to produce greater output, and becoming real sharers in the increased wealth that may accrue from their energy, it would be an extremely foolish thing on their part to put any obstacle in the way of greatly increasing the output of goods. It is because the workers in the past were not in a position to secure and guarantee for themselves an increased share in the results of their increased efforts that they resorted to the device to which I have referred. If workmen cannot depend upon the Government, if they cannot depend upon Parliament, or upon a Court of Arbitration, they can at least depend upon the strength of the organisation by which they are now defended. The great growth in the number and authority of the trade unions should be a sufficient security and argument to give them confidence that if they do agree to co-operate with the State and with the employers in greatly increasing the output of any kind of goods they can depend on receiving their reasonable and fair share of any good results accruing from that new line of policy.

With these observations, I desire to commend this Bill to ready acceptance. I hope there will be no attempt to-day to take the Bill through its various stages, because it may be that some aspects of the questions on which I have touched at least as regards the position of the less skilled men, and the position of the women, may have to find expression in Amendments which ought to be put upon the Paper and fairly considered. I am glad that although there has been delay—perhaps unavoidable because the right hon. Gentleman has been so busy since he took office—the trade unions will see that there-is a genuine intention on the part of the Government fully to restore their conditions, and I hope that when they are restored the trade unions will turn a new mind to many of these newer problems which present-day industry has produced and which are indeed a by-product of the great War.