Your future is still before you. Your land is a vast storehouse of mineral and agricultural wealth awaiting further development for the benefit of mankind. It potentialities are magnificent.
Unfortunately, in collective bargaining one party or the other too often tries to gain an advantage - a bargain, like buying something in a store for less than it is worth.
The only sound approach to collective bargaining is to work out an agreement that clarifies the rights and responsibilities of the parties, establishes principles and operates to the advantage of all concerned.
The prices of raw materials do not fluctuate directly with the labour cost of producing them.
Furthermore, the spirit of enterprise which had its first intellectual development in England has especially flourished here as well as throughout all of Canada, while the same spirit has become less virile in the land of its origin.
Furthermore, there is no good ethical or economic reason for asking workmen and current producers to forego all economic gain in order to increase the purchasing power of all the wealth accumulated in past years.
No plan can prevent a stupid person from doing the wrong thing in the wrong place at the wrong time - but a good plan should keep a concentration from forming.
That it is logical, fair and reasonable to maintain the purchasing power of an hour's work in terms of goods and services the employee must purchase in his daily living.
There is no royal road; you've got to work a good deal harder than most people want to work.
There may be some backward countries where the mass of the people are on a subsistence level and where, as an aftermath of wars or partial crop failures, the standard of living has to be drastically reduced, but this certainly is not the case in our prosperous nations.
If workmen are denied any increase in real wages and they can look forward only to a better standard of living through reduction of prices, progress for them is terribly slow, and they become impatient and dissatisfied.
