ABSTRACT
Having regard to the failure of working-men in most cases to become their own employers by co-operation, and the apparent remoteness of the time when the system of industrial partnership is likely to be adopted in this country, we must turn with increased interest to the measures which have been taken with respect to conciliation and arbitration. A conciliator is one who intervenes between disputants in order to promote calm discussion, to draw forth frank explanations, or to suggest possible terms of compromise. The mere fact that the conciliator is, as he always ought to be, unimpassioned and disinterested, the impartial spectator of Adam Smith’s theory of morals, is often sufficient to enable him to allay the irritation and to prove that the disputants are more nearly of a mind than they imagined themselves to be. An arbitrator, on the other hand, is one appointed either by the consent of the parties, or by superior authority, to inquire into the facts, to receive explanations from both sides, and then, with or without the concurrence of the disputants, to assign the terms of arrangement. The logical difference between conciliation and arbitration is that the agreement is in the former case entirely voluntary; in the latter case it is, if need be, compulsory. It follows that conciliation may be practised any day by any person, irrespective of the law or the State. To constitute arbitration in the proper sense of the term there must be some statutory or judicial power under which the arbitrators proceed. Even if the parties enter into arbitration in a perfectly voluntary way, they must surrender their freedom to a certain extent, by agreeing to accept the arbitrators’ award, and thus enabling it to be judicially imposed. If this be not the case, the arbitration so called is in reality only conciliation.
