FOREWORD 
The losses accruing from recurring industrial 
conflicts are vividly exhibited in these pages, and 
the real value of wages is tested by the degree of 
benefit which those wages can cover when balanced 
by the losses associated with industrial conflicts. 
Organised workers in the past would have been 
absolutely helpless without the possession of the 
strike weapon. Its value lay, not so much in the 
use as the possession of it. It was an influential 
and effective last resort, and settlements which 
secured advances and improvements were often 
reached because of the workers’ power to withhold 
their labour. 
With changes within our industries, changes in 
organisation became inevitable. Local movements 
or settlements in districts or areas were transformed 
into national movements, seeking settlements on a 
basis which would cover alike all wage earners in a 
particular occupation. 
In pursuits unaffected by foreign competition 
and catering only for internal necessities of our own 
people, national settlements have been comparatively 
easy. On railways, in gasworks and building trades 
and innumerable public services, the difficulties of 
competition are unknown, but in most other occu- 
pations the rates and conditions of service for 
millions of British workers are very much affected 
by the rates applying in other lands to men doing 
similar work. 
These dissimilarities form part of the strong case 
for arranging wage standards through the medium 
of arbitration. It is easier in these days to ascer-