Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/238

 7. While probably the strike may tend to consolidate the Union and so to prevent the repetition of such a crisis, and may tend besides to secure some mprovement both in the safety and in the convemence of the public service, it is possible that had the agitation been deferred for a few months, the bulk of the railway servants m Scotland would have become members of the Union, the influence of it upon the directors, for reasonable purposes, would have become irresistible, and a strike would have been unnecessary.

8. The directors of the companies cannot fail to remember that the men have had revealed to them the extent of their power, that their organization is being perfected, and that any attempt to perpetuate the conditions which have led to the strike must have one or other of these results: either the men will be driven to strike again and again, or an irresistible demand for legislative control of railway administration must arise.

9. There is probably an targent necessity for more adequate training of those who are intended to fill the higher posts in railway management, especially on the Scottish lines. It is too much to say that they are wholly ignorant of the existence of such a science as railway administration; but their administrative methods are clearly too crude and uncoordinated. The locomotive would never have been the highly developed machine we know unless the engineering department had been far ahead of the administrative. An organization fit enough for a small business breaks down altogether before the pressure of a large one.

10. The possible danger resulting from the passing of the control of large masses of men into the hands of men who may use this power even in a more anti-social manner than the companies have used it, is very obvious; but it is rendered more imminent by mal-administration and by a dictatorial attitude on the part of employers than by any other means.

11. For the public the serious lesson is this: cynical disregard of the infringement of ordinary physical and physiological laws by those who are responsible for the public service must bring retribution in its train. The public took no interest in the long hours of railway servants until their Christmas turkeys were delayed, and until they found no trains at the stations to carry them to their destinations for their Christmas holidays. Then they upbraided indiscriminately.

12. The only remedy efficacious in such circumstances as those which have been described is more efficient administration. Two practical suggestions may however be made. The railway servants might invest some of their capital in the companies and thus secure representation upon the respective boards. When their Union is strong enough they might even insist upon this. And the provisions of the Employer and Workmen Act, 1875, might be extended so far as to enable either party in a trade dispute, which has lasted beyond a certain number of days, to submit the matters in dispute to the arbitration of a judge, or of a judge and jury, the other party being cited to appear in the customary manner. The disproportion between the social loss and the direct loss to the combatants in an important strike, renders imperative the adoption of some reasonable method of settlement to take the place of strikes, during the transition through which our commercial and industrial system is passing.