Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 32.djvu/226

I90 HARVARD LAW REVIEW any one State." Each of the six states of Australia has tribunals, wages boards or courts, for industrial matters; but this Court was created for disputes which pass beyond the boundaries of any one state, disputes which cannot be effectually dealt with by state laws. In recent years there have been proposals in the direction of enlarging the powers of the federal court, and even of altering the constitution by committing to the federal Parliament the whole subject of labour; but I address myself to the court as it stands under the existing constitutional power. It is a court for compulsory arbitration — in the sense that its awards are binding as law upon the parties. I have found that in Great Britain as well as in America the idea of compulsory arbi- tration is repugnant to the leaders of the working class, whereas in Australia, facing different stars, the opposition comes principally from the class of employers. In the earher years of my work I received through the post many insulting anonymous letters, most of which I have kept as curiosities, and nearly all of these letters came from partisans of the employers. The party with a stronger economic position naturally wants to be free to act as it thinks fit; it objects to be bound by orders from outside. The act makes it the first duty of the Court to endeavour to get agreement on the matters in dispute and to exercise its compulsory powers only when an agreement is impossible; but when the party with a stronger economic position refuses to agree on Hues of justice in- stead of economic strength the Court has to interfere by dictating terms such as would, in its opinion, be just in a collective agree- ment. The ideal of the Court is a collective agreement settled, not by the measurement of economic resource, but on lines of fair play. The stronger economic position is usually held, of course, by the party which has the right to give or withhold work and wages, the means of livelihood. It is usually held by the employ- ers. This is the reason why the awards necessarily operate more frequently as a restraint upon employers than as a restraint on employees. I desire to deal in particular with the constructive part of the work of the Court. The awards have to be framed on some definite system, otherwise in getting rid of one trouble you create many others. Some years ago a friend who had had on one or two occasions the fimction of reconciling parties to industrial troubles