INDUSTRIAL PEACE LEGISLATION IN CANADA deemed expedient, the date from which the settlement should commence, and the period of its duration. The rulings, findings and recommendations of the majority shall be those of the Board, but any dissenting mem ber may make a minority report. Although the findings of the Board are not binding per se, and leave the parties to take such action as they choose, yet, by mutual agree ment, the award or recommendation may be made a rule of court and binding as if made pursuant to a reference to arbitration on the order of a court of record. Further important provisions of the Act are those requiring employers and em ployees to give at least thirty days' notice of any intended change affecting conditions of employment with respect to wages or hours, and that, pending proceedings before a Board, the relation to each other of the parties to the dispute shall remain un changed, and neither party shall do any thing tending to promote a lockout or a strike. Penalties are provided for infringement of the act by employer or employed, and for inciting, encouraging, or aiding, a lock out or a strike contrary to the provisions of the statute. The Act, however, does not contemplate the Department of Labour, or any department of the Government, insti tuting a prosecution. Any person may lay an information for that purpose, in which case the proceedings shall be the same as those prescribed by the criminal code for enforcing penalties under the summary jurisdiction of justices of the peace. The penal clauses of the statute have been twice invoked, first, against certain miners em ployed by the Texada Steel Company in the copper mines at Marble Bay, Texada Island, B. C, where the coming together of the parties in court resulted in an agree ment; and secondly, against the president of the miners' union and others for inciting a strike, and going on strike, at Cobalt, Ontario. Proceedings in these cases are now pending on an appeal to the High Court
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against a conviction of one of the defend ants. The first Board to be established under the new Act was in connection with the dispute between the Western Coal Opera tors' Association, seven or eight companies operating mines in British Columbia and Alberta, the largest of these being the Crows' Nest Pass Coal Company. The total num ber of employees concerned was between three and four thousand. In this instance both parties invoked the statute to secure an adjustment of their differences. The Act having heen recently adopted, was not unnaturally misunderstood on both sides, and work had been suspended before the establishment of a Board could be effected. Sir William Mulock, one of the Chief Justices of the High Court of Justice of Ontario, was appointed chairman of the Board, and finally, by the efforts of the Board and the active intervention of the Deputy Minister of Labour, a settlement was reached effective for two years. A more complete test of the efficacy of the Act is found in the case of the dispute between the Grand Trunk Railway Com pany and its machinists. This application was received by the Department in April. The machinists had invoked the measure to secure the settlement of a long list of grievances between themselves and the company, involving terms of overtime, apprenticeship, night work, general wages, and numerous questions of a highly tech nical and intricate character, including the reinstatement of men who had been on strike for nearly two years, and an adjust ment of whose grievances had been hitherto impossible. In this case, the two members of the Board first appointed having been unable to agree on a third member of the Board, the Minister of Labour appointed Professor Adam Shortt of Queen's Univer sity, Kingston. It was ' well understood that, should the enquiry before the Board not result in a settlement, a strike would take place which would throw the whole
