ABSTRACT
The most outstanding features of industrial relations in this period, and certainly the ones most frequently commented on by observers, were the comparative absence of deep-seated hostility and the infrequency of open conflict. The absence of open conflict was not due to lack of important matters of disagreement. Representatives of unions and employers were in almost continuous negotiations, often on a matter regarded by one side or the other as involving a vital principle. Terrible though the level of unemployment seems, by modern standards, the fact that printing was comparatively prosperous and expanding helped to induce a mood of compromise, almost of complacency. The printing unions took little interest in this extension of State printing. The old craft unions, consistently refused to disband their historic associations, and merge in an organization in which their interests might be subsidiary to those of the numerically stronger semi-skilled men.
