(b) whose cases were pending before tribunals; (c) to whom tribunals had refused exemption; (d) to whom tribunals had given temporary exemptions, and (e) already under notice to join the army. A second was that the Ministry of Munitions should be allowed to claim the services of men in the above classes, who would then, unless immediately required for service in an equally skilled capacity in the army, be transferred to re- serve as the "army reserve munitions workers."
Two results emerged from these recommendations when they were adopted, neither of which could have been expected by those who made them. The first was the growth of considerable resentment amongst the skilled trade unions, who complained that the new arrangement was contrary to the pledge given by the Prime Minister that skilled men should not be taken for general service. This feeling was so strong that in the end it led to a complete revision of the basis of exemption by what came to be known as the trade-card agreement. In the second place the Man-Power Board saw that they could not hope really to deal with their main problem of adjudicating between departments, unless they had effective local machinery. Though the machinery they planned was never put into force, they had indicated two things. First, the vital need of the whole question of manpower both from the recruiting and the civilian points of view being under one authority. Second, the necessity that that authority should be independent of all the departments interested. In this way they sowed the seeds of the Ministry of National Service, and it cannot therefore be said, even if at the time the upshot seemed disappointing, that in the long run it was unfruitful.
The new policy of exemptions caused grave difficulties with the trade unions. Their complaints were: (a) that recruiting officers ignored the validity of badge certificates; Agreement, indeed that badged and certificated trade unionists had actually been arrested as defaulters; (b) that there were skilled men unbadged in railway shops; (c) that skilled men in commercial work were being taken, greatly to the detriment of the country's credit system; and (d) that skilled men with the colours were still being used for general service instead of skilled work. At the same time as these complaints were growing, grew the demand for men with the colours. To meet the demand, various proposals were mooted, but their shape was ultimately determined by the crisis precipitated by the wide-spread feeling of uneasiness among the men. There were three proposals before the Government. There was first the proposal of the Man-Power Board, which, subject to elaborate safeguards, suggested the immediate decertification and debadging of all men of military age under 26. There was the proposal of the Ministry of Munitions to leave all skilled men alone, but, with certain special exemptions for steel and similar work, to release all both semi-skilled and unskilled men as far as possible. There was finally the proposal of the skilled trade unions to the effect that no skilled men should be taken for the colours, that they should be protected from military service by a card issued to them by their societies and that skilled men with the colours should be used in mechanical units.
While these three proposals were being debated, the storm broke early in November. A strike at Sheffield centred round the recruiting of a man named Hargreaves, and in order to allay the general uneasiness, of which this strike was a symptom, on Nov. 1 8 the Trade-Card Agreement was signed at a meeting with the Executive of the A.S.E.:
1. That all members of ' the Amalgamated Society of Engineers as one of the Trade Unions of the skilled engineering trades not now fully engaged, or at any time hereafter ceasing to be fully engaged, on war work, shall enrol as war munitions volunteers, and thus place their services at the disposal of the country, in accordance with arrangements under the war munitions volunteers scheme.
2. The skilled men referred to in this agreement are men who were either journeymen or apprentices prior to Aug. 15 1915.
3. All skilled men on war work or who have enrolled as war munitions volunteers shall be provided with a card of exemption from military service. The form of this card will be authorised by
'The words " the Amalgamated Society of Engineers as one of the " were added at the conclusion of the conference with the Government on Nov. 18.
the Army Council and the card will be issued through the trade unions. Orders will be issued by the Army Council to all recruiting officers that no man who produces such a card to the local recruiting officer shall be removed from his work without a specific authority from the War Office, which will not be given without reference to the Minister of Munitions and the executive of the man's union. In case of any dispute arising as to a man's right to hold a card, it shall be decided by a representative of the War Office, a representa- tive of the Ministry of Munitions, and a representative appointed by the executive of the union to which the man belongs.
4. The provision of skilled mechanics for the army will in fi'ture be made by the Ministry of Munitions. The trade unions wi.l do their utmost to provide the Ministry of Munitions with skilled men, who will undertake to serve at the choice of the Ministry either in the artificers' corps in the army or as war munitions volunteers in civil life. If skilled men for the army are not secured in this way, it is clearly understood that recourse must again be had to the statutory powers.
5. That the Amalgamated Society of Engineers will furnish names and, wherever possible, particulars of skilled men, now serving in non-mechanical corps, and the Army Council will con- tinue to make every effort to transfer mechanical units.
The scheme was subsequently extended to the remainder of the unions in the engineering and shipbuilding group.
This agreement did nothing directly to increase the supply of men for the army, except in the condition which required skilled men to enrol themselves as war munitions volunteers and thus render themselves mobile. It remained accordingly for the Government to decide how to draw from the ranks of the skilled and the semi-skilled the necessary recruits. This prob- lem was still unsolved when in the middle of Dec. 1916 the first Lloyd George Government was formed.
The first step taken by the new Government in this matter was to form a Ministry of National Service. By doing this the Government recognised that the coordination of man- power could only be effected by an executive body, First and that no committee, however powerful and strongly ^"ioa constituted, could hope to deal with a problem which Service. was in the last resort inevitably one of detail. Thus one of the lessons of the Man-Power Board was learned, but the second and more vital was at this stage overlooked. The Ministry of National Service under its original constitution dealt only with civilian labour: it did not touch recruiting. This was a fatal flaw, for by the omission of this function not only did the department fail to balance the rival demands of the forces and home production, but it became a fifth wheel which, side by side with the organization of the Ministry of Munitions and the Admiralty, necessarily tended to revolve in the air, or if on the ground, then only to get in the way of the four effective wheels. As the result, till this defect was remedied by the reconstitution of this Ministry in Aug. 1917, the depart- ment was practically powerless.
But the needs of the forces and of production were incessant and remorseless. Consequently, until the reconstituted ministry was set up, the burden, as in the time of the Badge Committee and the Man-Power Board, continued to fall on the executive departments. These departments found that the Trade-Card Agreement had not alleviated their difficulties. Not only did the intake of recruits continue to be much below requirements, but the Agreement itself had. led to new embarrassments of its own creation. On the one hand, so far as labour was concerned, it created almost as much unrest as it allayed. For its operation had been restricted to a selected list of unions, with the result that all those excluded resented their exclusion. On the other hand, from the Government point of view, a system which practically handed the exemption of skilled men to the trade unions was bound to work unsatisfactorily.
In the beginning of 1917 accordingly the Government decided that the needs of the forces rendered imperative the abolition of the Trade-Card scheme. Its place was taken by the schedule of protected occupations. Under this Protected schedule men engaged in the specified occupations tioaf."' on Admiralty, War Office or munitions work or in railway workshops were entitled to a " scheduled occupations certificate if over a specified age or in a medical category below A." Men put in scheduled occupations received a "protection certificate " of a more limited and precarious character.
