Edward Lee

determined to get a place in the sun which I think is quite as it should
be’. 50 At this time there was great difficulty in the commercial life of
Dublin. The effects of the War and the Rising were still being felt and there
were still labour troubles. In March of 1919 the Dublin Merchants Annual
report contained a brief note from the Association’s President, Edward
Lee, still a shrewd but fair businessman. In the report, he again addressed
the employers and employees; ‘A cogent message for masters and men
alike, good wages, shorter hours - an ideal realisable, but production must
be maintained and if possible, increased – otherwise economic disaster’. 51
‘The workers are determined to get a
place in the sun, which I think is quite
as it should be’
At the 1919 AGM, Edward Lee as President of the Dublin Mercantile
Association gave his opinion on the social upheavals afflicting Irish
society. ‘There was nothing that would settle the unrest like giving every
worker in the community a stake in the country and a stake in the business
in which he worked. There should be a system of profit sharing with the
worker, a policy which might do away with strikes in the country. What
they had to do was to give labour a good wage and good conditions of
employment and to give capital a fair return’. 52
Labour unrest and fairness for both worker and business was still
occupying Edward Lee’s mind when he delivered an address at the
annual distribution of prizes to the students of Blackrock Technical
School in the Town Hall at the end of November 1919. Referring to the
industrial strife he said, ‘my conviction is that the workers should have
good conditions of employment, the highest standard of wages and
capital should have a fair interest and after that a portion of the profits
should be given to the workers and a portion assigned to capital. What
can be done with efficiency is to get everyone interested in their work
and to make them feel that they were interested in the concern in which
they were engaged. Technical instruction and training must mean better
work, better pay and greater production. If production only meant more
50 Letter to Tennyson Lee. 24/11/1918
51 Irish Times. 19/3/1919
52 Irish Times. 27/3/1919
56 Edward Lee