Arbitration.
The results which have followed from the reference of disputes relating to wages to arbitration are a sign of the happiest augury for the future relations between employers and employed. It has been urged, on the part of the employers, that the working class will only accept the decision of arbitrators, when it is favourable to themselves. But in this, as in many other respects, the organisation of the trades unions, and the influence which the more enlightened workmen, acting as members of the executive committees of the unions, possess over their less-instructed fellow-workmen, have been the means of securing obedience to every decision arrived at after careful investigation, conducted in an impartial spirit. Such influence becomes more important when the members of the trades unions are for the most part uneducated men. It is always more difficult for an employer to negotiate or to argue with a boiler-maker than with a fitter. The executive councils of the unions have entitled themselves to the gratitude of the employers of labour, by accepting the use of machinery, the substitution of which for manual labour becomes more and more indispensable with every advance in the standard of wages.