Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 32.djvu/936

900 900 HARVARD LAW REVIEW living is to be materially helpful, several things are necessary: (i) A clear apprehension, on the part of both employers and employed, of the ideal in view. That ideal includes nothing less than the stability of industry, and the economic security of the worker — security of employment, security of earning power of wages, and security in respect of those general conditions of work which safe- guard the worker's health and comfort. (2) A clear apprehension on the part of both employers and employed of the means condu- cive to the realization of the ideal just indicated. Superficially, those means involve progressive production; but a material in- crease in production will be found on analysis to demand a whole- hearted cooperation, in my opinion, some form of real partnership between employers and employed. Only thus can the pernicious doctrine of "go-slow" be eliminated. Apropos, the term "go-slow" is by custom reserved as a monopoly of the employed. But when I compare the methods of industrial organization in Australia even with those in force in America, or in Germany before the war, I can- not resist the conclusion that so far as concerns Australia, there is considerable room for improvement in most industries, both as re- gards the work done by employees, and also as regards the methods of business organization and management by employers. Employ- ers cannot have it both ways; they cannot argue that brain as much as muscle is the source of wealth, and at the same time deny the possibiUties of very materially increasing production by means of better methods of business management and organization. If the views just expressed were taken to heart by the employers and employed, a statutory direction authorizing automatic adjust- ments of existing awards in accordance with new standards could be given effect to without any catastrophic increase in prices, or any perilous dislocation of trade and industry. Under conditions of mutual recrimination and conflict between employers and employed, even the purposes of wise legislation are frustrated, the possibilities of judicious action by industrial courts are nullified or hampered at every turn, and that future social justice which is the inspiration of progressive thinkers is postponed to some remote and imaginable future. If the real good now within our grasp is missed, even though the motive should be the attainment of something imaginably better, then that something imaginably better will have been made the enemy of an actual and immediately attainable good. For the