Page:Eminent English liberals in and out of Parliament.djvu/158

 When he removed to Nottingham in 1848, new public duties awaited him. He was made successively town councillor, sheriff, alderman, justice of the peace, and president of the Chamber of Commerce. These local experiences were, of course, valuable to him as a legislator and minister in posse; but it was in another and more original field that he first did signal, and, I might say, inestimable, service to the entire community. He was the author in 1860, as he was the president for eleven years subsequently, of the Nottingham Board of Arbitration and Conciliation for the Hosiery Trade,—the harbinger of so many others. Wearied with incessant "strikes" and "lock-outs," Mr. Mundella, after many weeks of fruitless negotiation, at last got employers and employed together. After three days' discussion, the then existing strike was closed by mutual concession, and a resolution agreed to, that, in future, all questions affecting wages should be authoritatively settled by a board consisting of nine duly elected representatives of the masters, and nine of the men. The board held its first meeting on the 3d of December, 1860. In an article on "Conciliation and Arbitration" in "The Contemporary Review" for 1870, ten years later, Mr. Mundella thus sums up the results of the experiment: "Since the 27th of September, 1860, there has not been a bill of any kind issued. Strikes are at an end also. Levies to sustain them are unknown; and one shilling a year from each member suffices to pay all expenses. This—not a farthing of which comes out of the pockets of their masters—is equivalent to a large advance of wages. I have inspected the balance-sheet of a trades-union of ten thousand three hundred men, and I found the expenditure for thirteen months to amount to less than a hundred pounds."