<ind which they supply are effectively protected, by acquiring 
snowledge of the openings which exist for them through visits to 
Australia of the heads of firms or responsible representatives, by 
the employment of competent and well-paid agents and travellers, 
and by using to the full the services of the admirable organization 
astablished for their benefit in Australia under the British Trade 
Commissioner. 
61. We have observed in an earlier passage in this report that 
the effects of the protective tariff and of the wages and conditions 
of labour fixed by decisions under the Arbitration Acts are inti- 
mately infer-related, and it is incumbent upon us to offer such 
dbservations as we have to make upon the latter subject. 
62. In every capital city of Australia we have had the advantage 
of meeting the leaders of the Trade Union movement. We have 
been much struck by the strength of that movement, reinforced 
as it doubtless is by the homogeneity of the people and by the active 
and intelligent interest which they take in all matters affecting 
their welfare. We have had frank and interesting discussions with 
the leaders of the movement; and we have found that practically 
on every occasion the subject of the Arbitration Acts and of the 
Courts established thereunder has come up during the course of 
these discussions. By workmen's representatives, not less 
emphatically than by representatives of the employers, it has been 
consistently represented to us that the Arbitration Courts are not 
achieving their purpose and that a system designed to arrive by 
judicial decisions at fair and prompt settlement of industrial dis- 
putes such as could be freely accepted by both sides must be held 
‘o have failed. 
63. The most important of the reasons which have been ad- 
vanced for this view are that experience has shown that there 
arises between the two parties who appear before the Arbitration 
Court Judge or Arbitrator the spirit of antagonism inseparable from 
litigation, and that the object of prompt settlement is defeated by 
the delay occasioned by the necessity for the collection and 
presentation of detailed evidence in a form acceptable to a Court. 
[t is complained that the procedure of the Court occasions the 
expenditure of much time and money by the litigants and involves 
very long absences from their ordinary occupations for a large 
number of persons whose time might be more profitably employed ; 
that the subject matter of the questions which are brought before 
she Courts is not of a nature with which judicial tribunals, neces- 
sarily unversed in the practical problems of industry or in the 
sconomic questions to which they give rise, are best fitted to deal; 
and that the overlapping jurisdictions of the Federal and State 
Arbitration Courts have led to an almost inextricable tangle of 
conflicting decisions so complicated that large staffs have to be 
maintained to keep track of them and to endeavour to guard 
against involuntary contravention of any of them in the course of 
everv-dayv business. 
The Arbitra- 
tion Acts.