The Cotton Factory Times. — 1909-04-23 (Manchester, Greater Manchester, England)

EMPLOYERS' OFFICIAL'S VIEW OF FINING.  What some people would call a " mild sensation " has been created in North and North-east Lancashire by the publication in certain newspapers of excerpts from Mr. John Taylor's evidence before the Truck Committee in regard to fines, and deductions from wages. As is well known, Mr. Taylor is the secretary of the North and North-East Lancashire Cotton Spinners' and Manufacturers' Association, a society comprising 3,500,000 spindles only, but embracing practically the whole ot the organised employers in the weaving department. Mr. Taylor's evidence is just the kind we should expect from an employers' official, and from him in particular. Viewed in the light of cold reason it establishes rather than destroys the weavers' demand for total abolition of all fines. When faced, and, in our opinion, cornered, with the reason why fining does not exist in the spinning section, he explained that the persons employed in that department were mostly adult males, and in their cases, being older people, there was not the same necessity for fines. What nonsense ! Are there no adults fined in the weaving section, both male and female ? Age has nothing to do with the question of fining in the weaving shed; it is simply a question of the employers having made it into a "custom," irrespective of the rights or wrongs of the system. Mr. Taylor says that discipline would not suffer if fines were abolished, as the employers would discharge the operatives, and that, he says, would lead to "any quantity of suicides.'' Well might the chairman lift his eyebrows and ejaculate that the assertion was very strong evidence, lie might have added, without exaggeration, that it was an "unsubstantiated bogey," very greatly discounted by the fact that the employers discharge people every week in spite of, and in addition to, their so-called " merciful,aiternative of fining." In his very next sentence Mr. Taylor had to admit that he had not found any suicidal tendency in any other trade where fines were not imposed. He could not even cite a case of suicide in connection with mills where fining has been abolished, although he said they now discharged the weavers as an alternative. The whole evidence is conflicting, and Mr. Taylor appears to put a theory up in many places only to knock it down in a couple of sentences following. If it were true even that discharges in the place of fines, small or otherwise, would cause those discharged to commit suicide, as Mr. Taylor infers, that would not justify the system in the least. It is next door to contending that if the operatives will not accept work on the employers' terms, no matter what they may be, the only alternative is that they willl have to commit suicide. There are, however, several alternatives to suicide, even without such a dishonest system of fining. With respect to the case of a suicide at Darwen some years ago, about which we have made some inquiries, we contend that Mr. Taylor's version places an entirely perverted construction on the evidence and verdict, and that he acted injudiciously and unjustly in mentioning the case in the manner set forth in the evidence tendered to the Commission. The agitation of the weavers for the total abolition of fining will go on as vigorously as ever in spite of all attempts to scotch it. One recommendation of the majority report of the Truck Committee to the effect that the maximum fine, or accumulation of fines, in any one week, permissible by law, should not exceed four per cent of the wages of the workman for the week, will meet with the most strenuous opposition from the cotton operatives. Such a provision would be a standing license to the employers to deduct a shilling in the pound from the operatives' wages. The operatives have set out for total prohibition of fines, and they will be content with nothing short of that object. Fining must iuot be legalised, it must be ended.