WAR MEMOIRS OF DAVID LLOYD GEORGE 1917

PROBLEMS OF LABOUR UNREST 175
meant calling on the workers to abandon for the time being
many rights and privileges in regard to hours of work and
division of labour which they had won by generations of
slow struggle from their employers. Something of this process
I have recorded when telling about the development
of the Ministry of Munitions.
It was far from easy to achieve that object. The workers
had already agreed, for patriotic reasons, to lay aside
for a time their campaign for better conditions. On top of
that, they were asked to renounce some privileges and protections
already won. We had to secure their consent and
cooperation by persuasion, not compulsion, for so long as the
system of private enterprise prevailed, a worker could not
be ordered to his task in the service of a profit-making employer
as a soldier could be ordered to the trenches in the
service of his country, even though the worker's task might
be as vital for the national safety. The pecuniary rewards of
the most exalted Generals did not amount to one tenth the
profit earned by a successful employer of labour. Those who
waxed impatient at times with the difficulty we experienced
in our dealings with labour during the War, and who thought
the Government too lenient and timorous in its methods,
ignored this difference, which was the essence of the problem.
Our workers were resolute, and quite justifiably so,
however ready they were to do their bit for their country,
to submit to no regulation which would make them mere
platoons of industrial mercenaries under the command of
private employers.
Throughout the War, this problem of the wise handling
of labour was one that gave the Government constant anxiety.
But by 1917, several causes combined to make it more
than ever acute.
Conscription, which had been adopted in the spring of
1916, was now in full operation. The country was being