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justice rather than go to law, and the High Court itself is becoming, as some of the County Courts are ceasing to be, a mere small debt court, for the average sum recovered in actions is only about £50. There would be no need in the first instance formally to sever the two branches, but it might be enacted that a barrister should be authorised to do a solicitor's work and enter into partnership with a solicitor. It is already perfectly lawful for a barrister to take instructions direct from his client and appear in court without the intervention of a solicitor. It was so decided by Lord Campbell and the Queen's Bench judges in Doe d. Bennett v. Hale in 1850. There is only one profession in the United States and Canada, and, indeed, in most of our colonies. In one or two colonies the change from two to one profession has been made in recent years. There is no case, it is believed, of a change in the contrary direction. More and more university men are becoming solicitors, fewer and fewer barristers. Meanwhile the study of law at the universities flourishes and abounds. The number of men in the law schools at Oxford and the Law Tripos at Cambridge tends steadily to increase. The accomplished men of past generations-men who were fine scholars as well as learned lawyers, men of the type of Bowen and Wright-are dying out, and few indeed survive. With wise legislation they may reappear; but it is to be feared that no Government which makes an attempt at real reform will find much co-operation from the Bar.

A LAW REPORTER.

A CANADIAN EXPERIMENT

THE struggle between capital and labour is probably the most tremendous problem of our time, and it will be interesting to many to trace briefly the inception, enactment, and operation of a measure emanating from the Parliament of the Dominion of Canada in the spring of 1907, which appears to mark some real advance in labour legislation. Let it be stated at the outset that it is not pretended for a moment that Canada has devised any golden rule for the settlement of labour disputes, or discovered any panacea for ills of society that are as ancient as history itself. A moment's reflection will show that the acute tension that exists to-day between capital and labour is but a phase, though at the moment the most obtrusive phase, of the eternal problem or fact of poverty which has plagued philosophers and law-makers from Plato and Lycurgus to John Morley and John Burns. The problem may be ultimately solved by the regeneration and spiritualisation of human nature, but it would probably be easier to start the race anew on some other planet than to look to such a process for an antidote to present evils. Old Sir Thomas More's sixteenth-century comment in Utopia: "For it is not possible for all things to be well unless all men were good, which I think will not be yet for these many years," is equally true of to-day. A less ambitious but speedier and more practicable method of relieving the present situation than that offered by either of the alternatives named may help to hold us up awhile yet under the increasing burdens of civilisation. This perhaps is the limit of a reasonable hope, and something in the nature of such relief appears to have been devised to meet the necessities of the industrial struggle in Canada.

The principles involved in the new legislation are not, of course, novel-one may doubt if any new principle remains to be

enunciated in the twentieth century-and the machinery of the measure is not, as already intimated, warranted to work miracles. The former are the familiar peace-making methods of conciliation, investigation, and compulsion, blended, however, in a somewhat original fashion; and the latter has proved itself strong enough and ingenious enough to meet a severe strain, though, being still somewhat experimental in character, it may be susceptible of improvement.

The Canadian law is fully entitled "An Act to Aid in the Prevention and Settlement of Strikes and Lock-outs in Mines and Industries Connected with Public Utilities," but is known more briefly as "The Industrial Disputes Investigation Act, 1907." Popularly it is known as the "Lemieux Act," taking the name of the Hon. Rodolphe Lemieux, Minister of Labour in the Dominion Government, who skilfully piloted the measure through the House of Commons, and has had charge of its administration since it became law on March 22, 1907.

First as to the origin of the measure. In the month of March 1906 some hundreds of miners employed in coal-mines at Lethbridge, Alta., went on strike. Little attention was paid to the matter by the public. The Dominion Government, through the Department of Labour, offered to intervene as conciliator, this being the only right it had in the matter at the time, and its services were refused. The mines affected are a hundred miles east of the Rockies, a little south of the main line of the Canadian Pacific Railway, and largely supply the residents of Southern Alberta and Southern Saskatchewan with fuel. During the spring and summer of 1906 a very large immigration occurred into these vast and fertile prairie districts, and this fact, emphasising the effect of the decreased output of coal consequent on the strike, threatened to produce a shortage of fuel which, with the approach of the winter season, alarmed the public men of the country. In view of the public emergency, Mr. W. L. Mackenzie King, the Deputy Minister of Labour for Canada, was sent by the Dominion Government to the scene of the strike, and succeeded in effecting an agreement by virtue of which the men returned to work on December 1. The worst effects of a coal famine were averted, but the supply of coal throughout the winter was limited and caused considerable hardship at some points, the situation being

accentuated by the unusual severity of the winter that followed and the consequent difficulties of transportation. It was above all evident that if the strike had continued throughout the winter great distress would have resulted, not alone to the strikers, as is more or less inevitable in every instance of a prolonged labour struggle, but to the general public, a less frequent consequence of such strife. In his report to the Government on the causes and settlement of the Lethbridge coal strike, Mr. King suggested legislation making investigation into a dispute in a coal-mine or public utility industry a necessary preliminary to a strike on the part of the men or a lock-out on the part of the employers. The warning of the Lethbridge strike had been taken well to heart, and a bill was immediately framed with a view to the protection of the public interests, so far as this could be done without undue interference with the rights of the individuals. The Labour Bill became the feature of the session, and emerged from Parliament on March 22, 1907, known, as we have seen, in popular parlance, as "The Lemieux Act."

Briefly, the Act makes it a criminal offence, punishable by heavy fine, to bring about without a preliminary inquiry before a Board of Conciliation and Investigation established under the Act, a strike or lock-out in a mining property, agency of transportation or communication or public service utility, including railways whether operated by steam, electricity or other motive power, steamships, telegraph and telephone lines, gas, electric light, water, and power works. Except therefore that the Act embraces all classes of mines, and not coal-mines alone, its provisions are limited, so far as the penal features are concerned, to enterprises accepted by general consent as public utilities. The reason of such limitation is obviously based on the theory that the public, and therefore the Government, is more vitally interested in industrial struggles of this class than in those relating to industries not in the nature of public utilities. A strike on the part of dock labourers, railway men, coal miners or telegraph operators may result in immense harm to the public interests, and possibly in great distress to the community. Whether it would be wise to give the Act a wider scope and include all industries was no doubt an interesting point, and called for serious thought. It is sufficient for the present to know what was

decided, though it may be added here that a representative body of Canadian working men, meeting in Winnipeg in September 1907, as the Trades and Labour Congress of Canada assembled in annual session, with six months' duration of the Act upon which to base their verdict, passed by a large majority a resolution calling for the extension of the Lemieux Act to all industries. If after longer experience than time has yet allowed the Act should justify its existence, it may at least become a question whether it should not be extended to all industries in the case of disputes where the number of employees concerned is above a certain specified figure, the precise figure in such a case being of course a factor which would be the centre of much weighty argument.

The compulsory aspect of the Act is limited to the investigation or inquiry. Obviously the purpose of the inquiry is to secure a settlement if possible of the dispute that threatens a suspension of work by lock-out or strike. If, after such inquiry, fairly conducted before a tribunal as impartial as can be devised, the parties to the dispute refuse to come to an agreement, they are free to act as they please. It will be seen, therefore, that the Canadian law stands midway between, on the one hand, the purely conciliatory measure that formerly represented Canada's best efforts at the settlement of industrial disputes and is still the limit which English legislation has reached, and, on the other hand, the compulsory arbitration measures which have been enacted in New Zealand and Australia. It is needless to say that this aspect of the subject was much discussed in the passage of the measure through the Dominion House of Commons. There were not a few who believed that the optional character of the award made by the tribunal established under the Act would render the measure futile, and the example and supposed success of New Zealand, especially in the realm of compulsory legislation, were much quoted. Since the debate on the measure took place the failure of the New Zealand Act as to its compulsory features has been practically admitted through the inability of the courts to enforce unacceptable awards in the case of employees, and legislation of a most drastic character has lately been introduced by the New Zealand Government with a view to overcoming this weakness. Whether in this amended form compulsory

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