Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/544

 THE ECONOMIC JOURNAL Association in N. E. Lancashire, who added that one of the two employers who suffered their men to strike, .did so in the teeth of the recommendation of the committee of the Masters' Association. The cause of all these strikes was a refusal to pay the list prices agreed upon between the committees of the two associations. In the cotton industry differences about wages are now generally settled by a con- ference between the two standing committees, but in the branch of weaving, a special joint committee, smaller in number, was instituted for the purpose in 1881, and both Mr. Birtwistle, on the part of the men, and Mr. Rawlinson, on the part of the masters, speak very decidedly of its good results. It has dealt with thirty disputes which might have issued in strikes, and settled them all amicably but one. The cotton operatives are, like the miners, opposed to arbitration because, as Mr. Mawdaley explained, it has always ended against them, and because they find arbitrators merely split the difference or else proceed on the assumption of a certain standard of profit- generally 10 per cent. being necessary for the employers. The employers appear to distrust it also. One employer indeed, Mr. A. Simpson, asked for a public board of arbitration for each industry, with compulsory powers of enforcing its award, though he admitted in the end he saw no way of executing such powers; but Mr. Rawlinson mentioned a case where the men asked for arbitration and the masters declined it, and he added that the employers as a rule objected to making the conditions of their trade subject to the opinion of any person but themselves. Mr. Wilkinson said he had no objection to a superior board of arbi- tration, if it were composed, like the joint committees, of persons who understood the business practically, an equal number from both sides, but he thought it would do no more good than joint committees did now. Employers and employed in the cotton industries declared unanimously against an eight hours' law, because they think it would injure their trade in the face of foreign competition, though Mr. Birtwistle admitted that the last reduction of hours from 60 to 56 had produced no such effect, but had actually, through extra exertion on the part of the' men, ended in a positive increase of production of 4 per cent. A good deal of complaint was made by the representatives of the workmen, of the fines for spoiled work and late attendance, and the stoppages for oiling nachinery which are in vogue in some not all districts of Lancashire, and of the baneful effects of the process of steaming and oversizing of cloth, which had come in during the last twenty years, and was alleged to be a great cause of the exceptional prevalence of brag diseases among the weavers. Dr. Barwise said in a recent report that 90 per cent. of the weavers die of lung diseases, and Mr. George Barker, of the Blackburn Weavers' Associati. on, and other witnesses believed he was correct. For the employers, Mr. Simpson admitted that the atmosphere was heated in which this process of heavy sizing required to be conducted, but said the sizing was done to the order of customers, and, if it 'ere interfered with, the country must lose an important