BELFAST, DEC. 14.
To-night a banquet was given to the Right Hon. W. J. Pirrie, J.P., Lord Mayor of Belfast, and Mrs. Pirrie by the citizens on the occasion of the
approaching termination of the second year of Mr. Pirrie's mayoralty. There
was a large and brilliant gathering, representative of the city and the
north of Ireland generally, and amongst the speakers were the Marquis of Dufferin and Ava, Sir William Ewart, the Rev. Dr. Hamilton, president of the
Queen's College, Professor Cuming, and others. In proposing the toast of the
evening, the Marquis of Dufferin and Ava said he had to express his deep
obligations to the organizers of the banquet for the privilege of presiding
on so memorable an occasion. They had known the Lord Mayor from his earliest
manhood. It would, therefore, be superfluous for him to insist upon the
large share he had had in constituting Belfast the third greatest commercial
city in the United Kingdom (cheers), or to remind them that, whereas 20
years ago the shipbuilding industry which his predecessors originally
founded only occupied eight acres and only employed 800 men, it now
required, thanks to the skill and energy with which it had been stimulated
and developed by Mr. Pirrie and his associates, 80 acres for its
accommodation and paid away £13,000 a week to something like 10,000 artizans
and artificers. (Cheers.) Their district was without coal and without iron,
yet Mr. Pirrie and his partners had forced it, by dint of their perseverance
and organizing power, to become the birthplace of the fleetest and most
gigantic steam vessels that sailed the sea. (Cheers.) Having referred in
warmly eulogistic terms to Mr. Pirrie's personal qualities, the noble
marquis, continuing, said :---There was one quality, or rather combination
of qualities, in Mr. Pirrie and in men of his calibre upon which he should
venture to dilate, as it was upon its presence and exercise that the very
existence of their country had to depend. (Hear, hear.) Let them think for
the moment what this England, Ireland, and Scotland of theirs really was.
Two small and insignificant-looking islands anchored in a capricious and
cloudy climate on the outer skirts of Europe, and yet inhabited by a dense
population of nearly 40 million souls. These multitudes were in their turn
dependent for the larger portion of their daily food, and for many other
necessaries of life, upon what they could purchase from the foreigner with
the product of their own industries---in other words, upon their commerce
and manufactures. If either failed they perished. But a man must be indeed
purblind to the march of events who could not be made to understand that the
expanding competition of rival nations, aided by the equalizating influences
of science, education, steam facilities of communication, and similar causes
were threatening their former unchallenged supremacy in both directions, and
that the commodities produced in different countries were acquiring, under
the strain of competition, such a tendency to uniformity of price, as to
admit of a trifling, nay, almost an imperceptible circumstance turning the
scale in their favour or against them in the markets of the globe. In the
presence of so critical a situation, the mere blind industry of their masses
would prove of slight avail. They did not possess, they could not acquire an
adequate comprehension of the complicated forces which were acting and
reacting amid the whirling tides and cross currents of the world's
commercial movements and relations. To secure them the remuneration which
was their due their interests must be fostered and safeguarded, their
efforts guided and directed to profitable results by those great captains of
their national activities who not only possessed the requisite information
and experience, but were also endowed with the coup d'oeil, the intuition,
the nerve---in other words, with that rarest of all qualities, the true
genius of creative industrial enterprise. (Cheers.) As the victor in a
battle alone knows what risks to run and sees with eagle eye when and where
to strike, so it is upon these men to whom he was alluding that they must
depend for the prompt and effective application of the nation's producing
energies, for the wisedisposal of its capital, and, as a consequence for the
maintenance of its commercial supremacy in the bitter struggle which awaited
them. It was as one of these exceptionally gifted men, as a successful
organizer of labour, as a sagacious pilot of their industrial opportunities,
as the creator of hundreds of peaceful and contented homes, and as a
principal benefactor of that great city which he was pleased to say was
about to recognize his services by conferring upon him the signal honour of
its honorary freedom, that they hailed the name of Mr. Pirrie with gratitude
and admiration. (Cheers.)
The toast having been drunk with enthusiasm, The Lord Mayor, in response, referring to the great struggle which was still
going on in the engineers' trade, said he would like at least to define his
position in regard to the unfortunate dispute. In the first place, he
desired to say frankly that he extremely regretted his inability to take the
same view as the majority of his fellow employers. Indeed, so widely had he
found himself to differ from many employers of labour during the last ten
years that he had sometimes wondered whether he was right in keeping to his
progressive and advanced policy, and whether the idea that so many had as to
the means by which the industries of this country could be successfully
continued was not, after all, the right one---so strong were the
representations that were made to him by his friends, some of them amongst
the most eminent in their profession---and he had taken the greatest pains
to study the matter in all its bearings with a view to working in harmony
with his fellow employers, if at all possible. But a comprehensive view of
the situation, in the light of the experience gained in the working of his
own establishment and a careful study of the problems presented by the
industrial conditions of the present day, confirmed the strong opinion he
held regarding the impossibility of satisfactorily and permanently adjusting
matters by the recourse to measures that might have been well enough 50
years ago but were utterly impracticable at the end of the 19th century.
They must get free from old prejudices and class hatreds. Why should
employers on the one hand or workmen on the other regard each other with
suspicion and enmity? Were not capital and labour mutually dependent upon
each other? Why, then, should there be so much difficulty in their working
harmoniously together to their mutual advantage and the good of the whole
country? He thought it would be extremely unfortunate if employers should
cease to interest themselves in their workmen and if the latter should cease
to take a pride in their work. His opinion was that they needed the most
highly skilled workmen in their industrial establishments, and that
therefore every encouragement should be given to those organizations that
had done, and still did, so much to raise the standard of competency amongst
workmen. Having the most competent workmen, as they undoubtedly had in this
country, they should have also the very best and latest machinery and plant
to insure economical production, and generally speaking, for the proper
conduct of their business, they required the most intelligent and capable
staff of officials; but if they lacked these essentials they might he quite
sure that nothing else could possibly save them their trade. Personally, he
was not so much alarmed as some people seemed to be by the increasing
competition of other countries. He believed it would only stimulate their
energies, and it was part of their business to find out for themselves the
best means of meeting such competition. The shipbuilding industry of Belfast
owed much of its great development to the keen competition that they knew
they must always expect from the other side of the Channel, where many of
the shipyards had coal and iron works almost adjoining them. The knowledge
of this had, as far as his own firm was concerned, caused them to expend
from time to time a great deal of capital in furnishing their yard with the
most complete equipment of machinery, and in providing every mechanical
contrivance suitable to the work, so that they might be in the very best
position in this respect for competing with others. His contention was that
they must adopt the same means to preserve their national industries as they
did to maintain their local trade. These were his views briefly stated, and
these were the reasons why his firm had had nothing to do with the
unfortunate dispute in the engineering trade, which he was sure every one
would join with him in hoping might now very speedily be terminated. (Hear,
hear.)