MR. CLAY SPEAKS ON ENGLAND'S INDUSTRIES

Though delayed by the bad conditions which his car encountered on the way to Cambridge, so that in one instance "it was necessary to procure two horses, each of 'one horsepower', to extract it from a bog". Mr. Henry Clay, well-known British economist, spoke on "The Present Industrial Situation in England" in the Quiet Room of the Union last evening in such a clear and non-technical manner that even the laymen in his audience needed no economic reference book as an aid to understanding. Mr. Clay was introduced by professor Zechariah Chafe LL.B. '13, who spoke of the amount which the United States has always been able to learn from England and of the progressiveness of that country.

As introduction to his subject, Mr. Clay told of industrial conditions in England before the war, showing particularly the organization of labor and wages to be on a district standard. He also outlined the growing demand of labor for national organization, which had result in one branch--the Miners, but had nowhere reached the wage scales or the owners by 1914.

Sudden Change with War

With the war, there came "a sudden rapid, extensive economic change; a rapid growth of government owned and operated industries; and new classes of work and workers" which caused a "tremendous dislocation of the existing conditions",--including substitution of national for district wage systems; extensive payment by result, bonuses, and price fixing without experience. Mr. Clay said one of the most disastrous results of the war to the stability of industrial conditions in England was the severing by the official control of wages of the normal contact between the trade unions and the employers.

In telling of the results of his investigation of mining conditions, Mr. Clay outlined the relations of the mining industry with the government in the past under the Asquith ministry, and those of the present under Lloyd George. He showed that the threat of the Triple Alliance was only natural because if the miners were defeated in their demands, the Alliance would be the next affected. The only danger Mr. Clay sees would be the organization of England on a class conscious basis. There may be, and are, other disputes browning but they are all of the same type--the change of wages and labor from a war to a peace basis--and may be worked out in due time.