tribunal. They meet members of the Boards, and the representatives of the employers at the meetings of the Boards, man to man and face to face across the table. No lawyers are allowed without the consent of both parties. The chairman is not “Your Honour.” Free and open discussion is not hampered by plaguey points of law and technicalities. Question is answered by question, and sometimes jest is intermingled with earnest. “Now then, Jack, haven’t I always treated you well?” was the question a master hairdresser put to a hostile witness at a meeting of the Canterbury Board. In the Court, on the other hand, the President sits in his wig and gown, and the proceedings necessarily partake somewhat of the dignity and stiffness of an ordinary civil sitting of the Supreme Court. While employers declare that the Boards are worse than useless, workers are almost unanimous in maintaining that the Boards’ work on the whole is well done, and that they are very necessary. An influential manufacturer at the head of one of the largest organisations of employers in the colony has frequently stated that the Boards have failed to conciliate. This opinion has been endorsed by many other employers. The employers’ representative on the Court, at a sitting in Christchurch, said that the business of that tribunal was to undo a good deal of mischief done by the Boards. On the following day, however, when his statement was challenged, he modified it by explaining that he had meant to say that the mission of the Court was to make peace.
In the House of Representatives, the Boards in operation were denounced as unbusinesslike, mischievous, and sordid institutions. It was alleged that members prolonged cases in order to secure more fees. These extravagant attacks were courted by one of the Boards, which was composed of men who gained the respect of neither employers nor workers; but in districts where the members are carefully selected, the Boards and their decisions are above reproach.
After the critics had been hammering at the Boards for some time, they were asked to name a substitute. Amongst the most feasible suggestions was that there should be established in each district a Board of Experts, consisting of twenty-four
