Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/436

 414 THE ECONOMIC JOURNAL and cognate trades; (2) transport and agriculture, the term transport including shipping, canals, docks, railways and tramways; (3) textile, clothing, chemical, building, and miscellaneous trades. Each Com- mittee will conduct its inquiry separately, though any member of one of them may attend and take part in the work of any other, and the evidence will be taken in public. The Commission has prepared the following very complete syllabus of the subjects to be inquired into by the Committees: TRADE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN EMPLOYERS AND EMPLOYED. Their Causes. 2. Their Development, Organization, and Conduct. 3. Their Cost. 4. Their Prevention or Settlement. The/r Caus.--A. Wages: 1. How fixed. 2. How calculated: a. By piecework. b. By daywork. c. By taskwork.--3. How paid: a. Direct, by employer, or sub-con- tractor. b. Weekly, fortnightly, or at other periods. c. Increased by bonus, or reduced by stoppages. d. Truck or payment in kind. e. House, land, or other allowances. 4. Fluctuations of wages: a. How brought about. b. How adjusted. 5. Differences of wages in different establishments and localities. 6. Existence and effect of: a. Pensions. b. Deferred pay. c. Sick insurance. d. Accident insurance. 7. Notice required for the termination of wage contracts.--B. Hours of labour and continuity of employment: 1. Normal hours of work. 2. Overtime, and how re- munerated. 3. Night shifts, and how remunerated. 4. Short time, season work, or other irregularity of employment. 5. Sunday and holiday labour, how arranged and paid for. 6. Duration of days' work and weeks' work, and how regulated.--C. Subdivision, distribution, and classification of work, as between different trades, individuals, men, women, or children, whether half-timers or not, factories, work- shops, or homes.--D. Apprenticeships. E. Introduction of machinery.--F. Supply and quality of the machinery and materials of production or transport.--G. Safety of employment, provisioning of ships, lighting, sanitation, and inspection of work- places.--H. Discharge for belonging to a trade union.--I. Refusal to work with non- unionists.--J. Discharge of representative delegates and use of black list.--K. Employment of foreigners.--L. Obnoxious officials.--M. Sympathetic strikes.--N. Other causes of dispute. 2. Their Development, Organization, and Condt.--A. Trade associations or combinations of employers or of employed, whether permanent in character or temporary, occasional, or for special dispute purposes, their trade rules, benefits, and policy. B. Strikes and lock-outs. Picketing, black-listing, and other methods o! influencing persons concerned or not directly concerned in the dispute.--C. Impor- tation of new or foreign labour, whether under contract or otherwise. 3. Their Cost.--A. Economic result of strikes and lock-outs to workers, to employers, and to the community at large. 4. Their Prevention or Settlement.--A. Conciliation by joint committees or other- wise.--B. Mediation.--C. Arbitration, voluntary or compulsory.--D. Sliding scales. --E. Profit sharing.--F. Industrial partnerships.--G. Co-operation. ThE May demonstrations for a legal eight hours day of labour passed off this year with comparative tranquillity. The country in which most violence appeared was France the country in which the working class generally are most indifferent or even opposed to the whole movement, and in which the demonstrations would therefore naturally fall to the violent. In Germany, on the other hand, the Socialist party, now so strong but so sobered by their strength, scat-