Address delivered by Prof. H. A.
GRIMSHAW, at the invitation of the Faculty of Law. Batavia, Java, D. E. I., on February 1st 1929.
Ladies and Gentlemen! — I am speaking at the invitation of the Faculty of Law in Batavia and I take it you will not expect from me under the circumstances and at the present moment anything in the way of a political speech. Much as a political speech might be congenial to me, and much as you might enjoy it, or disagree with it, as the case may be, I am sure that you will agree that this is not quite the place and not quite the occasion to deliver such a speech.
Tonight I wish more particularly to speak of the great social experiment which is going on in Geneva since 1919, an experiment in which I personally am deeply interested; I have seen it from its birth, and even before its birth I had some acquaintance with its principles and its doctrine.
Let me speak for a few moments of the origins of the Inter-national Labour Organisation. In the first place I should emphasize that the idea of an international organisation concerning itself with the conditions of labour is not new, and was not new in 1919 when it came into being. It probably was new almost exactly a century before, in 1818, and, curiously enough, under similar cir-cumstances to those of 1919. As you remember, in 1818 the Great Powers of Europe were still trying to clear up the difficulties and the mess which the Napoleonic wars had left begind them. It was
to one of the congresses held by the Great Powers, that an Eng-lishman, — I beg your pardon, a Welshman — Robert Owen, who, had been so wise as to marry his employer's daughter, and had
1) Stenografisch verslag van den heer N. ANT. JANSEN.
become a successful cottonspinner, a man with a great deal of experience of the conditions of labour in the growing machine industry of that time, wrote a memorandum. He suggested to the Great Powers that the best way of overcoming the difficulties which were inherent in growing industrialism was to come to an international agreement about them. The Great Powers of that time were not particularly well educated; they were not then pro-minent in the forefront of social thought any more than today, and Robert Owen's appeal fell on barren ground.
But the idea lived. It was carried on on the continent of Europe for the most part; in my own country it does not seem to have taken any root. It was carried on in France, in Belgium, in Ger-many and in Switzerland, by persons who were seeing in their own countries the development of machine industry and of in-dustrialisation and their attendant evils. And finally, at the end of the century, the idea led to the formation of a semi-private orga-nisation, known as the International Labour Association. It was, I have said, a semi-private organisation, but the more intelligent governments, not at first including my own, for quite a long time subsidized that organisation in order to assist it in carrying on its work, and it was able to hold a series of international conferences at which the conditions of labour and the regulation of these con-ditions were discussed. The first of these conferences was held at Berne in 1905, the second in 1906. At the first conference, which was known as a "technical" conference, there were some 13 or 14 countries represented. The delegates present discussed in the main two subjects of great interest at that time, namely the use of white phosphorus in the manufacture of matches and the night-work of women. In the following year they held a "diplomatic"
conference. The first conference had as its sole object the gathering together of the best opinions on the question under discussion;
the second conference was an attempt to get agreement among the governments. The persons who came to the latter conference were representatives of their governments, instructed by their gov-ernments and they agreed to two international conventions on the subjects I mentioned.
In 1913 a "technical" conference met again at Berne in Swit-zerland with the object of discussing other conditions of labour
that should be regulated, but the "diplomatic" conference that should have followed in 1914 was not held for reasons I need not go into.
In addition to the holding of these conferences, the Association created a permanent Office at Basle, known as the International Labour Office, to collect information and to carry out research work on labour conditions.
The germ of the present day International Labour Organisation, set up by the Treaty of Versailles, is thus found in this older Association.
This brings us to the war. During the war it was suggested from all quarters, from the governments, from the employers' asso-ciations, but especially from the workers' organisations, that the end of the war should bring into being some machinery for inter-national conciliation in regard to labour conditions. The causes which produced that suggestion, particularly from the workers, are perhaps not easy to detail, but I could indicate one or two.
Every thinking person was struck during the war by the ease with which in the belligerent countries one could rouse a feeling of hatred against the "enemy". There was, it was felt — I am thinking now more particularly of England and Germany — a kind of pre-pared seedbed in people's minds, which nourished the germs of hatred against the other nation and which enabled them to spring up to maturity with astonishing rapidity. On analysing that state of mind some people came to the conclusion that the long economic struggle between Great-Britain and Germany, with its repercussion on working hours, wages, on the extent and development of trade, had prepared the ground for the extraordinary outburst of feeling which accompanied the early years of the war.
In my own experience, — my own family is engaged in the wool-lenindustry, — I can remember time after time when that industry was threatened by German competition, and when the woollen ma-nufacturers grumbied and said: If only the Germans paid the same wages as we have to pay, we could beat them. But they employ sweated labour. — And their workpeople agreed, of course, in that opinion. And so, as a result of economic competition, the seedbed was prepared in which hatred could spring up with extraordinary ease.
Here then was one of the underlying ideas that led to the sug-gestion that some machinery should be created at the end of the war, by which international agreements could be obtained for mea-sures leading to the standardisation of labour conditions where that was possible.
There was a second idea, which was that labour conditions in general were in considerable need of improvement. The workers, who had suffered and died in millions during the war, had earned a better "place in the sun".
Now these ideas found expression in the treaty of peace in a rather curious way. It is no longer secret history, because an Eng-lishman who knew something about it told the story at an inter-national labour conference two years ago. Up to that point it was little known, but now I am at liberty to tell you the story. The ideas took practical shape in the minds of a number of brilliant young men in England, some of them in the Universities, some of them employed in the Ministry of Labour. One of them was here with Mr. Albert Thomas the other day, — Mr. Phelan, one of the most brilliant and at the same time most modest men I have met.
In the study circle which these men formed, a "labour convention"
was drafted. These men thought out an international organisation, they prepared the whole scheme, and they did what was even more clever, they persuaded Mr. Lloyd George to believe in it. I think perhaps it was easier at that time to persuade the Lloyd Georges and Clemenceaus of the world that something must be done, be-cause something had been done in Russia. The repercussions of the Russian revolution, and particularly of the Bolshevik revolution upon the minds of statesmen in Europe were heavy. They were prepared at that time to accept an astonishing amount of social progress. So Mr. Lloyd George did accept the scheme, and it was laid before the Peace Conference at Versailles. The Conference handed it over to a special committee, which met during several weeks, looked into the scheme, discussed it, modified it very con-siderably in some respects and added to it certain of the proposals brought forward by the French, Belgian, Italian and other repre-sentatives, (and I may here recall that some of these proposals, not adopted by the Conference, were very far reaching indeed) and finally produced Part XIII of the Treaty of Peace, the "Labour
Part". That was accepted by the Peace Conference, the "Big Five", almost without discussion. Some words of praise from President Wilson, some words of even greater praise, but perhaps less sin-cerity, from Clemenceau, a few blessings from Lloyd George and the thing was adopted.
Now these gentlemen builded better than they knew. I do not think that the Peace Conference realised the possibilities of the machinery they had created. Remember that when they created that machinery the League of Nations was not yet called into existence, the Covenant was not yet adopted. When the Covenant was finally adopted, only changes of form, and no change of principle, had to be made in the Labour Part of the treaty to bring it into agreement with the Covenant. Part XIII then is not dependent on the Cove-nant, and it is conceivable that were the League of Nations to come to an end, and the Covenant to disappear from the treaty, Part XIII and the International Labour Organisation created by it might continue to exist. Of course, there would be certain difficulties, especially financial, but there is nothing which binds the League of Nations and the Labour Organisation so tightly together that they are like the famous Siamese twins. If one dies it does not necessarily follow that the other dies also.
Let us now look at the organisation set up by the treaty. It is an organisation of states, not of political parties. It is an organisation of states in exactly the same way as the League of Nations is such an organisation, and its members are the same as the members of the League; membership of the League of Nations carries with it ipso facto membership of the International Labour Organisation.
There was a time, before Germany and Austria were admitted to the League of Nations, that they were nevertheless members of the International Labour Organisation. Even from the beginning, on the recommandation — strange as it may seem to us now — of the Big Five, Germany was admitted to the International Labour Organisation.
Those are the members; now let us look at the machinery. The first and most important part of the machinery is an annual con-ference, which is worth some of your attention. I told you a moment ago that the conferences organized by the pre-war International Labour Association were of two kinds, technical and diplomatic.
In the present Organisation an attempt is made to combine the two, to have the necessary technical and the diplomatic elements sitting at the same time. That means a sacrifice of some of the most sacred points of the older diplomatic procedure, and it gave us an infernal amount of trouble when we tried to work it first. The authorities of the Downing Streets and Wilhelmstrasses of the world could not sacrifice the least jot or tittle of what they thought was the correct international law and diplomatic procedure. The creation of this kind of conference was a revolution to them, but it was in fact a step, and a long step, towards that "open diplomacy"
which was demanded so persistently by the nations Which had shuddered through the horrors of the Great War.
The composition of the Conference is unique. I want to call your attention to it especially, because of its difference from the com-position of the Assembly of the League of Nations, which is in some respects a similar body. The Assembly is the annual conference of the League of Nations. At the Assembly every delegate present
— there are three from each country — is a representative of his country, and is instructed by his government. He may perhaps be able to associate with others, but within narrow limits, and fre-quently not at all, so that in some ways the Assembly of the League of Nations differs in no essential from the old-fashioned diplomatic
reunion for the arrangement of some treaty. But the Labour Con-ference is composed only as to 50% of its members of delegates of governments; 25% are representatives of employers and em-ployers' associations and another 25% of workers and workers' organisations. Every national delegation contains 4 members, 2 nominated directly by the government, one appointed by the gov-ernment on the nomination of the employers' association which is the most influential and the most important in the country, and one again appointed by the government on the nomination of the most important workers' organisation.
Now I personally, when I studied the composition of the Con-ference before it began to work, had some little doubt about its justice and its practicability, and there were other people who had much stronger doubts. When the plan was laid before the revolu-tionary government of Germany in 1919, they pointed out that this was not a democratic scheme; it gave the workers, who formed the
great bulk of the population, only one quarter of the representation at the Conference, and in all probability employers and governments would combine together against the workers. The German govern-ment suggested there should be a much stronger representation of the workers. Similar suggestions had already been made in the committee of the Peace Conference which had discussed the matter, and had been defeated. I could recommend my friends who possess the official publications of the International Labour Office to look up the correspondence between Clemenceau and Von Brockdorff Rantzau on this point. To those of us who are blessed with a sense of humour, it is really comic to think of Von Rantzau urging pro-gressive democratic ideas, even socialistic ideas, and it is doubly comic to read the reply of Clemenceau. The older democracies, he
said, and it is clear that he meant the real democracies, had more experience than Germany which had only become a democracy, so to speak, the day before yesterday, and were alone competent to know and understand what democracy means. In any case, Ger-many had to accept this part of the Treaty as she had to accept everything else. Let me say at once that she accepted it under pro-test, but successive German governments since 1919 have loyally observed it.
Now experience has shown that the division 50-25-25% has worked quite well, and my own opinion is that the workers are probably better off with it than they would have been with a division in three equal parts. A combination between employers and governments has not occurred, nor yet a combination between governments and workers. We have on the one hand the employers, and on the other hand the workers, forming almost always two solid blocks, and the governments as a block in the middle, saying the last word and commanding the decision. This after all is perhaps the best scheme that can be adopted, because in the first place the governments are the ones who have to put any decision of the Conference into exe-cution. The Conference has no executive power of its own: if its decisions are to have any practical value, they must be acceptable to the Governments who alone can enforce them.
In the second place, though employers and workpeople form a large proportion of the population of the world, they are not the whole, and they themselves have more than one function in world
economy. They are not only producers, but, in common with the rest of the world, consumers also. In the Conference, their two groups may be taken to represent the producers of the world and the producing interests. In a very real sense, the governments re-present the consumers and their interests. So that, in the compo-sition of the Conference production (capital and labour) and con-sumption (the government delegates representative of the general population) meet on equal terms.
The same composition goes through the whole structure of the International Labour Organisation. The Governing Body of the International Labour Office is composed in the same way: 50-25-25.
I think, before we leave the Conference, I can bring in here most conveniently the objects of the Organisation as laid down in the Preace Treaty. Two of them I mentioned already as underlying the movement of opinion which brought the Organisation into being.
The first is that the standard of labour conditions should be brought to approximately the same level in all countries under similar con-ditions, in order to minimise international friction. The second is best expressed in the Preamble to Part XIII, which states that con-ditions of labour exist which involve such injustice, hardship and privation to large numbers of people as to produce unrest so great that the peace and harmony of the world are imperilled. Real peace, according to that Preamble, can only be based upon social justice.
In everyday language, the duty of the Organisation laid down by the Peace Treaty is to improve the conditions of labour where those are not satisfactory.
The Conference illustrates how that may be done. The task of the Conference is to draft International Conventions on labour questions, not, be it noted, to conclude treaties. No Draft Conven-tion can be adopted by the Conference until at least two and in prac-tice three years have passed from its inception. Proposed Draft Conventions are discussed by committees on the usual parliamentary
lines — a little more complicated perhaps, because we work in two languages. Rather should I say that we are fortunate in Geneva, when we work only in two languages; in practice we work in many more, and that is one of the reasons why you find grey hair, and worse, among the members of our staff. Finally, the Conference
lines — a little more complicated perhaps, because we work in two languages. Rather should I say that we are fortunate in Geneva, when we work only in two languages; in practice we work in many more, and that is one of the reasons why you find grey hair, and worse, among the members of our staff. Finally, the Conference