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Author: 
 
 Baker, Ray Stannard 
 
 Title: 
 
 The new industrial unrest 
 
 I I3C6- 
 
 Garden City, N.Y 
 
 Date: 
 
 1920 
 
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 B173 
 
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 Baker, Rajr Stannard, 1870- 
 
 The new industrial unrest: reasons and remedies, by Ray 
 Stannard Baker. Garden City, New York, Doubleday, Page 
 & company, 1920. 
 
 vl, 231. cli p. 21- 
 
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 (tuisanina (Hnttiecefttp 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 School of Business 
 
 Given by 
 
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 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
1 HE 
 
 NEW INDUSTRIAL 
 
 UNREST: 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 1 
 
 BY 
 
 RAY STANNARD BAKER 
 
 ^*isE^^*"i.ut 
 
 Garden City New York 
 
 DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 
 
 1920 
 
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 4 « I 
 

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 CONTENTS 
 
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 CX^PTBIGHT, 1920, BT 
 
 OOVBLBDAT, PAGE & COMPANT 
 
 ALL RIGHTS RESKBVED, TNCLUDINO THAT OF TBAN8LATION 
 INTO FOREIGN LANOUA43£a, INf^LUDINO THI! BCAtTDINAyiAN 
 
 CHAFTKB 
 I. 
 
 II. 
 III. 
 
 IV. 
 
 V. 
 
 VI. 
 
 VII. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 IX. 
 
 X. 
 
 ^Jl. 
 
 FAQB 
 
 3 
 
 13 
 
 XII. 
 
 The New Industrial Crisis .... 
 The Industrial Crisis as it Appears from 
 
 above to the Capitalist-Employer . 
 The Industrial Crisis as it Appears from 
 
 below to the Worker ..... 27 
 The Imputed Causes of the Unrest 
 The Real Causes of the Unrest . 
 
 The Massed Forces behind the Industrial 
 Conflict — Organized Labor 
 
 The Massed Forces behind the Industrial 
 Conflict-— Organized Capital . 
 
 Awakening of the Public to the Industrial 
 Crisis 
 
 Approaches to a Solution of the Problem— 
 by Americanization, as suggested by the 
 Employers 
 
 Approaches to a Solution of the Problem 
 
 by Political Action, as suggested by the 
 Workers. The New Labor Party . 
 
 The Genius of Mechanism and the Soul of 
 Man. The Spiritual Aspect of the Prob- 
 lem 
 
 Welfare Work as a Solution of the Problem. 
 How it is Regarded by both Employers 
 and Workers . . . . . . 136 -* 
 
 40 
 
 48 
 
 58 
 
 78 '^ 
 86 
 
 99 
 
 111 
 
 123 
 
■■MIM 
 
 W1 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTBS 
 
 XIII. The New Shop-Council System as applied 
 
 in a Typical Small Industry — The 
 Dutchess Bleachery at Wappingers Falls, 
 
 J^ civ X Oa J£ •••«.«« 
 
 XIV. Development of the Shop-Council System in 
 
 America. Method of Organization. The 
 Movement, in England and Germany 
 
 XV. The Shop-Council System as Applied to the 
 Men's Clothing Industry of America and 
 Canada — The History, Principles and 
 Structure of the Development , 
 
 XVI. A Critical Examination of the Shop-Council 
 System in the Clothing Industry. How 
 does it Really Work.? What are its Ex- 
 cellencies and Limitations? . . 
 
 XVII. Foundations of the New Co-operative 
 Movement in Industry: the new Profes- 
 sion of Management, and the Lahor 
 Manager 
 
 XVIII. Autocracy and Democracy Struggle for In- 
 dustrial Control. Some Results of the 
 New Co-operative Experiments 
 
 PAGB 
 
 149 
 
 166 
 
 179 
 
 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST: 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 193 
 
 208 
 
 219 
 
'■'■"^ili^aJSLt 
 
 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 The New Industkial Ckisis 
 
 WE have recently emerged from 
 two of the greatest strikes the coun- 
 try ever saw: the steel strike and 
 the coal strike. In both cases the losses in 
 wages, in production, in earnings, were stupen- 
 dous, and in the case of the coal strike the 
 country was brought close to the brink of 
 disaster. 
 
 We have indeed emerged from both strikes— 
 but with nothing really settled. Large num- 
 bers of the men went back to work dissatisfied. 
 There was no compromise and apparently no 
 spirit of compromise. Judge Gary stands just 
 wihere he did before the strike began: so does Mr. 
 Gompers: so do Mr. Fitzpatrick and Mr. Lewis. 
 In the coal strike both operators and miners are 
 sullen. The Pennsylvania operators were as 
 unwilling to accept the President's proposal for 
 a temporary cessation of hostilities as were the 
 lllmois miners. 
 
i THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 A West Virginia leader, commenting upon 
 the discontent among the miners in his state, 
 predicted another strike within a few months; 
 and the twenty-four presidents of unions con- 
 nected with the steel strike have expressed their 
 determination to go forward with the struggle 
 to organize the workers in the steel industry. 
 
 Leaders in both camps refer in clearer terms 
 than ever before to what they seem to regard 
 as irreconcilable diflferences of view. Judge 
 Gary was heartily cheered by 1,500 members of 
 the American Iron and Steel Institute, an 
 organization of the iron and steel masters of 
 the nation, when he declared his determination 
 not to deal with representatives of labour 
 unionism. 
 
 " This is the great question confronting the 
 American people, and, in fact, the world 
 public," he said. 
 
 During the progress of the strike, which 
 began in September, 1919, Judge Gary re- 
 ceived hundreds of letters and telegrams from 
 employers and employers' associations in many 
 parts of the country supporting his position. 
 
 On the other hand labour is taking a stronger 
 stand than ever before. On December 13, 1919, 
 the heads of 119 powerful national unions held 
 a conference at Washington, and adopted a new 
 "bill of rights." They reiterated their deter- 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 5 
 
 mination to exercise the right of organization for 
 all industries, the right of collective bargaining, 
 the right of "being masters of themselves." 
 
 " Labour," they said, " must be and is militant 
 in the struggle to combat the sinister influences 
 and tendencies. Labour will not permit a reduc- 
 tion in the standard of living. It will not con- 
 sent to reaction toward autocratic control." 
 
 This represents the view of the conservative 
 wing of the labour movement, headed by Mr. 
 Gompers. The more radical wing of the 
 workers — and I do not mean by this the extreme 
 revolutionary fringe — met on November 22, 
 1919, in convention at Chicago and organized 
 a new Labour Party to carry the whole struggle 
 into the field of pohtics — a movement which 
 will be treated in another chapter. 
 
 " Labour," says an official report of this con- 
 vention, " has hurled its challenge to the business 
 and financial interests that control the American 
 government to-day. The battle is on." 
 
 This sense that " the battle is on " is to be 
 found among certain groups in both camps. 
 I heard a great manufacturer arguing that 
 the employers were better prepared at this 
 time to fight than they ever would be again. 
 They had surpluses from prosperous years: 
 and a strike now would " cost only about half 
 as much as it would in an ordinary year " on 
 
>l 
 
 'J 
 
 if 
 
 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 account of savings in income and excess profit 
 taxation. 
 
 On the other hand I heard several labour 
 leaders argue that they were in a better position 
 to fight now than later, owing to the national 
 shortage of labour. There was now no surplus 
 from which employers could draw strike- 
 breakers. 
 
 Reference is here made to the position of two 
 large sections of the labour movement: but there 
 exist, as every one knows, still more radical 
 groups, smaller but noisier, which are for various 
 kinds of " direct action." There was never be- 
 fore in America such a number of revolutionary 
 groups, or so widespread a propaganda of radi- 
 calism. 
 
 These conditions are not set forth with any 
 desire to be alarmist. There are strong counter- 
 currents and reconstructive movements among 
 both employers and employees — which will be 
 treated in later chapters — but we ought above 
 everything to face the situation honestly and 
 frankly. It is only by recognizing the problem 
 which confronts us that we shall be able to 
 deal with it. 
 
 Another disturbing factor in the situation-in 
 some ways the most disturbing of all— has been 
 the impotency of the government in meeting 
 these industrial crises. Both sides seem equally 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 7 
 
 critical, if not contemptuous, of Congress; both 
 sides have refused to accede to the requests of 
 the President. The steel workers would not 
 delay their strike even for two weeks until the 
 President's industrial commission could sit. On 
 the other hand Judge Gary refused the Presi- 
 dent's request for a conference with the labour 
 leaders. 
 
 In the case of the coal strike the govern- 
 ment through the Attorney CJeneral announced 
 that " the full power of the government " would 
 be used to save the country from a fuel famine. 
 Nevertheless coal was not mined: factories were 
 closed, railroad transportation was crippled: the 
 country suflPered acutely. Coal strike leaders 
 were enjoined by the federal court: but the 
 injunction produced no coal. Congress investi- 
 gated the steel strike: it had not the slightest 
 effect upon the resumption in the production of 
 steel. The recent cessation of the coal strike was 
 no settlement at all: only a postponement of the 
 controversy. 
 
 The effort of the government to get the 
 parties to the controversy together to formulate 
 some general plan of compromise — at the Octo- 
 ber Industrial Conference — failed utterly. A 
 new Commission of Seventeen appointed by Mr. 
 Wilson was later summoned to Washington, 
 to devise some plan whereby in his own words, 
 
■I ^m»lM 
 
 wmm 
 
 1,1 I 
 
 8 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 "the public will not suffer at the hands of 
 either class." 
 
 This commission was made up of a very able 
 and distinguished group of public men, includ- 
 ing several former governors and cabinet secre- 
 taries. Mr. Herbert Hoover was a member. 
 And yet before, the commission had its first 
 meeting the labour groups had expressed their 
 disapproval of it because it had no representa- 
 tive of labour upon it. 
 
 The labour situation upon the railroads has 
 also been in a highly unstable condition, with the 
 breach widening between Congress and the 
 powerful railroad brotherhoods. The railroad 
 unions were opposed to the plans for re- 
 turning the railroads to private control: and 
 have been upon the point, several times, of 
 striking. 
 
 In this crisis the public, which is the principal 
 sufferer, grows confused and impatient. Pro- 
 duction suffers at a time when abundant pro- 
 duction, not only for America but for the whole 
 world, was never so necessary. Prices mount 
 higher and higher. A strong tendency exists 
 to deal with problems of immense complexity 
 and difficulty either by hasty legislation, or crude 
 force. 
 
 Never was there such need for accurate in- 
 formation, and patient action. A vast mass of 
 
 / 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 9 
 
 detail regarding strikes and industrial disturb- 
 ances is daily presented to us — detail which few 
 ordinary busy human beings can possibly piece 
 into a picture of the whole scene. We cannot 
 see the forest for the trees: nor the news for the 
 headlines. One of the most conscientious editors 
 in the country told me that he did not know 
 until some time after the steel strike began that 
 the twelve-hour day and the seven-day week were 
 so common still in the steel industry: and that 
 it was a week or more after the coal strike began 
 that he found out that the demand for a five- 
 day week of six hours a day — which seemed so 
 astounding and unreasonable — ^would, if it were 
 introduced, actually mean a slightly longer 
 average working week than the miners of 
 America have had during the past few years. 
 Over and over again, in examining this un- 
 stable industrial situation, one feels as he did at 
 Paris, during the Peace Conference. There is 
 the same "slump" from the high spirit and 
 noble idealism which characterized the war 
 period. Never was there such unity between 
 labour and capital as there was in America 
 during the war, never such a spirit of co- 
 operation, never so little regard for profit, never 
 so great a concern for generous service and high 
 production. It was the marvel of the whole 
 world. I was in England during the spring of 
 
10 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 1918 and know how widely the British press 
 published the records made by us in shipbuilding 
 and other industries through the co-operation 
 of employers and their workmen. But the mo- 
 ment the war ceased the same disintegration took 
 place in industrial relationships in America as 
 we saw at Paris between the nations. The 
 bottom fell out of ideahsm! The great moment 
 had passed, there had been no miracle, we were 
 back at the old controversies, selfish interests 
 were again rampant, and the struggle was 
 sharper than ever before. 
 
 We are passing through much the same 
 psychological process in getting a new under- 
 standing between labour and capital as we are 
 in getting a League of Nations. Much the 
 same forces are at work: the same obstinate 
 reactionary elements, the same unreasonable 
 radicahsm. We are trembling upon the thin 
 edge, in both problems, between organization 
 and anarchy. Which way are we going? Is it 
 to be confusion and anarchy and war— or is it 
 to be good order, and organization, and co- 
 operation? 
 
 In both cases almost every one agrees that we 
 cannot go back to the old. But can we go on 
 to the new? Are we brave enough? Are we 
 clear-sighted enough? Our record, so far, re- 
 garding future international relationships, is not 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 11 
 
 reassuring. Will we do better with our equally 
 difficult internal problems? We know, or think 
 we know, pretty well what to do in interna- 
 tional affairs. Ahnost every one agrees to some 
 land of a League of Nations. Are we anywhere 
 nearly as clear about the industrial problem? 
 
 The prime difficulty in this crisis, as it was in 
 Paris, is the want of proper publicity. The 
 great American public does not understand the 
 situation. 
 
 I felt over and over again at Paris that if 
 one who had been there could sit down with a 
 group of his neighbours and explain the whole 
 situation, present the difficulties involved, de- 
 scribe the dangers of drifting -without a con- 
 structive purpose, he could show them why, even 
 though the treaty was defective in many ways, 
 it was profoundly necessary to get some organi- 
 zation at work, some league in being to steady 
 the world. 
 
 I have had exactly the same conviction regard- 
 ing the present industrial situation in America. 
 It is based upon the same solid faith in the 
 essential good sense of the American people. 
 If they can only see the situation, as it presents 
 itself in some of the great industrial centres, 
 where strikes have been raging; if they can only 
 know what the issues really are as interpreted 
 by leaders on both sides of the great con- 
 
 
12 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 troversy; if they can only understand how in- 
 tensely human the problems are, how full of 
 the common stuff of life; if they can be shown 
 where the truly reconstructive experimentation is 
 going on and who are the thoughtful leaders 
 on both sides,— if the American people can see 
 and know and understand these things they will 
 decide aright regarding them. 
 
 It is with these conditions, and this need, in 
 view, that the following chapters have been writ- 
 ten—to present a survey, for the general reader, 
 of the present industrial crisis, and the various 
 reconstructive experiments now under way to 
 meet it. 
 
 ;! 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 The Industkial Crisis as it Appears to the 
 
 Capitalist-Employer 
 
 IT is important, in approaching the prob- 
 lem of industrial unrest which now con- 
 fronts America, to understand first how it 
 looks from above to the employer. In order to 
 present this point of view clearly I am using 
 the explanatory example of Gary, Indiana, one 
 of the centres of the recent steel strike. In the 
 following chapter I shall show how the same 
 conditions appear to the workers. 
 
 It is much easier to get at the point of view 
 of the employer in the steel industry than it is 
 to get at the point of view of the workers, for 
 it is quite definitely the expression of one man 
 —Judge Gary, the head of the United States 
 Steel Corporation. It is a clear-cut, far-sighted, 
 logically-expressed point of view, whereas the 
 voice of the workers is confused and vague: a 
 multitudinous murmur, as diverse as Babel, with 
 as many opinions as a town-meeting. Be as 
 conscientious as you like in making your in- 
 quiries and you are never quite sure you have 
 got it all. Judge Gary knows exactly what 
 
 18 
 
, 
 
 14 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 he wants: the workers are profoundly restless, 
 without any one clear idea of what they want. 
 Not only ignorance and foreignness but real 
 differences of view divide and confuse them. 
 Judge Gary's position is based upon experience 
 and tradition: but the workers want something 
 new, they are pressing forward into an undis- 
 covered country. Judge Gary, representing the 
 group having power and place, desires security: 
 the workers, having neither, want change. 
 
 There are, indeed, other voices, and powerful 
 counter-currents among employers in American 
 industry—even in the steel industry as I shall 
 show later. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and 
 Charles M. Schwab are far from seeing eye to 
 eye with Judge Gary. Nevertheless in the re- 
 cent controversy Judge Gary was the type- 
 defender, the accepted spokesman, of the entire 
 industry. No other important witness repre- 
 senting the employing side of the steel industry 
 was heard by the Senate Committee. His stand 
 was supported by the Iron and Steel Institute, 
 which represents the entire steel industry in 
 America. He was conmiended for his position 
 by J. P. Morgan, the most powerful financier 
 in America. Even some of the strong men in 
 the steel industry who differed sharply with 
 Judge Gary in regard to his policies or prac- 
 tices, came to his support in this emergency. 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 16 
 
 I have a copy of a letter from a steel master 
 connected with an independent company, in 
 which he says: 
 
 "At the greatest personal sacrifice, both in 
 friendship and in money, for the past twenty- 
 five years, I have waged an unceasing warfare 
 against the steel corporation on the question of 
 the seven-day week, the twelve-hour day, and 
 the autocratic methods of dealing with workmen, 
 but in the present struggle my sympathies are 
 entirely with Judge Gary." 
 
 Boiled down, the position of this steel master 
 is that the recent conflict was really a revolu- 
 tionary struggle for the control of the steel 
 industry on the part of organized labour: he 
 was, therefore, with Judge Gary. Now that the 
 employers have won the strike he is for begin- 
 ning a harder fight than ever against what he 
 calls " these relics of barbarism "—meaning the 
 twelve-hour day, the seven-day week, and the 
 refusal to permit workmen to organize and 
 bargain collectively. Indeed, in the company he 
 represents, the men have been encouraged to 
 form shop committees and to co-operate with the 
 management. 
 
 Judge Gary's leadership was accepted by the 
 entire steel industry not alone because of the 
 enormous power of the United States Steel 
 Corporation— the general policies of which must 
 

 
 
 16 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 and do set the pace for the entire steel industry 
 in America— but because of his sheer ability. 
 It is not for nothing that he is at the head of 
 the greatest business corporation in the world, 
 with property worth $2,250,000,000 (his own 
 figures) and having 270,000 employees. He 
 not only has this enormous power, and is con- 
 scious of having it, but he knows with pene- 
 trating clearness what he wants to do with it. 
 " While I have a good deal of authority and 
 power," he told the Senate Committee, " I use 
 the same very sparingly, I am in the habit of 
 consultation." 
 
 No one who touches the steel industry at any 
 point fails to become conscious of this pervasive 
 authority. Though the power-house may be 
 distant, no one who makes a contact anywhere, 
 fails to get a shock. I had such an experience 
 myself— which I tell in no spirit whatever of 
 criticism, but merely to illuminate the point I 
 am making. When I went to the city of Gary 
 to look into the strike situation I was as anxious 
 to understand the point of view of the manage- 
 ment as I was that of the workers. So I asked 
 quite directly if I might see the mills and talk 
 with some of the superintendents and foremen. 
 They seemed astonished : and referred me to the 
 headquarters of the subsidiary corporation at 
 Chicago. So I went there: and found that no 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 17 
 
 observer had been allowed to enter the mills 
 since the strike began: and that it was impos- 
 sible for any one to talk about the situation with- 
 out Judge Gary's personal permission. 
 
 " But how am I going to get your point of 
 view? Judge Gary has complained that in- 
 vestigators present only the workers' side. How 
 can I get your side if I can see nothing, and no 
 one will talk to me?" 
 
 I told what I was trying to do and what for. 
 Judge Gary was reached by long-distance tele- 
 phone in New York— and I was enabled, then, 
 to talk with the representatives of the corpora- 
 tion at Chicago and at Gary, and to visit the 
 mills. 
 
 But to a remarkable degree these men I talked 
 with, and very able men they are, echoed Judge 
 Gary's views. They would give facts, but would 
 express no opinions whatever of their own. It 
 is a wonderfully disciplined organization that 
 Judge Gary has created. It speaks as one man. 
 
 As to the attitude of the corporation toward 
 labour— and I am trying now to exhibit the 
 industry fairly as it looks from above, — one of 
 the foremen at Gary seemed to me to strike a 
 kind of keynote: 
 
 "Judge Gary," he said, "knows far better 
 what is good for these workingmen, mostly igno- 
 rant foreigners, than they know themselves." 
 
, T' 
 
 18 
 
 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 /- 
 
 Let me develop this a little further from 
 Judge Gary's own testimony before the Senate 
 Committee. As I said, he knows his power. 
 
 I recognize," he testified, " that the power 
 of concentrated capital necessarily involves the 
 power to do more or less harm. I recognize the 
 tact personally that concentrated capital has the 
 advantage over a single individual, if the con- 
 centrated capital is in the hands of dishonest and 
 unfair men." 
 
 This point of view leads directly to the very 
 heart of Judge Gary's attitude toward labour. 
 Kecognizmg the power of concentrated capital 
 for good or evil, he desires to do good, as he 
 sees the good. Absolute power is to remain in 
 the hands of the employer-but the employer 
 must use it wisely and generously. AD his utter- 
 ances—and like any man who believes honestly 
 and earnestly in what he says, he has been a 
 tree talker,— all his utterances, and his testimony 
 before the Senate Committee, resound with this 
 Cloctnne. j /|-'*'''^'^''ii •-• 
 
 "The only way of combating and overcoming 
 that -the " wave of unrest in certain loca- 
 tions, he said to the presidents of the subsidiary 
 companies of the Um'ted States Steel Corpora- 
 tion on January 21, 1919^" is for the employers, 
 the capitahsts, those having the highest education, 
 the greatest power and influence, to so manage 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 19 
 
 / 
 
 their own affairs that there will be left no just 
 ground for criticism." 
 
 A little later in the same address he discloses 
 vividly his whole policy toward the workers. 
 This should be read carefully: 
 
 ** Make the Steel Corporation a good place for 
 them (the workers) to work and live. Don't 
 let the families go hungry or cold; give them 
 playgrounds and parks and schools and churches, 
 pure water to drink, every opportunity to keep 
 clean, places of enjoyment, rest and recreation: 
 treating the whole thing as a business proposi- 
 tion; drawing the line so that you are just and 
 generous and yet at the same time keeping your 
 position and permitting others to keep theirs, 
 retaining the control and management of your 
 affairs, keeping the whole thing in your own 
 hands, but nevertheless with due consideration 
 to the rights and interests of all others, who may 
 be affected by your management." J 
 
 This is the very bony structure of his philos- 
 ophy: and Judge Gary is one of the rare men 
 who has tried to practise all he preaches. The 
 Steel Corporation has spent millions of dollars 
 in various forms of welfare work— forms so in- 
 teresting and so significant in many ways, — the 
 prevention of accidents, the pension system, and 
 the encouragement of stock ownership by the 
 workers— that I shall enlarge upon them in 
 
20 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 whole thing as a business proposition." He told 
 the students of Trinity College in June, 1919, 
 that " It pays big, in doUars and cents, for the 
 employer to maintain working conditions which 
 are beneficial to the health and disposition of the 
 employee." 
 
 He has also adhered from the beginmng with 
 smgleness of purpose to the principle he lays 
 down for his subsidiary presidents of " keeping 
 the whole thing in their own hands." 
 
 This principle forms, indeed, the basis of his 
 attitude toward unionism in his plants and ex- 
 plains his refusal to meet or deal upon any terms 
 with representatives of organized labour. His 
 logic is clear. If once it is admitted that 
 unionized workmen may have any say regarding 
 their conditions, the whole fabric of his philos- 
 ophy begins to crumble. Judge Gary is not a 
 weak man, and not muddle-headed: he saw the 
 issue from the very beginning, and has never 
 swerved m his course. He has the immense 
 advantage, as a leader, of a perfectly clear and 
 logical position,— and one concerning which he is 
 absolutely sure of himself. He believes it as one 
 beheves a religious dogma. He believes that if 
 you let unionism begin anywhere, it will mean 
 more and more power to the vorkers and finally 
 the " closed shop." It is nothing to him that the 
 
 r 
 
 
 \ 
 
 KEASONS AND REMEDIES 31 
 
 Strike leaders and Mr. Gompers declare that the 
 strike is not for a " closed shop "—he will not 
 have even the camel's head in the tent. To him 
 such a change in the tried system which he 
 knows, such jST division of control even in one 
 department of the industry, not only threatens 
 the power of the capitalist-employer, but makes 
 for confusion and lowered production. He cites 
 the English situation as an example of this and 
 bids us beware of it. So he is against the whole 
 movement, root and branch : for it is to him the 
 beginning of revolution.^] t i?i/a,ii|fiffi«} 
 
 The corollary of his principles, of course, is 
 exactly what his foremen at Gary told me, that 
 he knows better what is good for the workman 
 than the workman himself knows. He tells 
 the Senate Committee that unionism " is not a 
 good thing for either the employer or the em- 
 ployee." 
 
 " We know what the rights of our employees 
 are," he said in an address, " and we feel obli- 
 gated and take pleasure in knowing that we are 
 at all times doing all we can for the people in 
 our employ." 
 
 " How did you know," asked Senator Walsh, 
 in the Senate inquiry, " that hundreds of thou- 
 sands of your employees were content and satis- 
 fied? " 
 
 " I know it," said Judge Gary, " because I 
 
1 1 
 
 I 
 
 22 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 make it my particular business all the time to 
 know the frame of mind of our people. . 
 My instructions regarding the treatment of the 
 men are absolutely positive." 
 
 It follows then, that the strike, which was a 
 great surprise and shock to Judge Gary, was not 
 due to Ms workers, not due to any grievances 
 upon their part— for his instructions regarding 
 their good treatment were " absolutely positive," 
 —but to outside agitators and revolutionaries, 
 and to foreigners— as he repeatedly tells the 
 Senate Committee. 
 
 Similarly when the subject of the twelve-hour 
 day, the seven-day week, the '* long turn," and 
 the like, came up for discussion before the 
 Senate Committee, he was forced by the logic 
 of his own position— for he had said that he 
 knew at all times the frame of mind of his 
 employees— to declare that his workmen really 
 wanted the long day and Sunday work— 
 although most of the workmen who testified be- 
 fore the Senate Committee, and there were many 
 of them, complained of the long hours and the 
 Sunday work. 
 
 " The question of hours," Judge Gary tells 
 the Committee " has been largely a question of 
 wishes, of desire, on the part of the employees 
 themselves." They want them because they 
 " want more compensation." 
 
 /" 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 23 
 
 So much for the industry as it looks in its 
 broader aspects from above — to the only spokes- 
 man among the employers. Taking up, specific- 
 ally, the twelve-hour day complaint, the em- 
 ployers argue against change from a two-shift 
 to a three-shift basis on account of the immense 
 cost entailed. It would require at once a large 
 increase in the number of workmen employed, 
 when the labour supply in America is already 
 dangerously short: and in most steel-towns the 
 housing is far from sufficient for such added 
 population. There is great difficulty also in 
 making wage readjustments; for if the workers 
 go to an eight-hour day and expect twelve-hours 
 pay for it — and they cannot live on much less — 
 it means an enormous addition to the labour-cost 
 of steel. The eight-hour day has already been 
 introduced in a number of American steel 
 mills, though in none of those owned by the 
 United States Steel Corporation: and it is 
 universal in England— and has been for many 
 years. 
 
 Another thing that disturbs the employers 
 profoundly— and I am trying to show how the 
 situation looks and feels to them— is what seems 
 the utterly wild demand of the more radical 
 groups of labour not only to a voice in settling 
 labour questions (which is all that the conserva- 
 tive labour movement has asked in the past) but 
 
 jjjUi^Mi^ 
 
 jljaajuCjiauiAte 
 
24 
 
 T I 
 
 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 /' 
 
 in the management of the industry itself. Thev 
 assert that the whole labour movement is beinj 
 penneated with these dangerous ideas: sever^ 
 of them told me that they had formerly held 
 Gompers m high esteem as a conservative labour 
 leader but that he now seemed to have yielded to 
 the radical element. They made a great point 
 -Judge Gary did in his Senate testimony- 
 of the leadership of such men as William Z. 
 Foster, who was formerly a radical syndicalist, 
 and a member of the I. W. W. They have had 
 repnnted and distributed widely Foster's smaU 
 red book. I had it offered to me four different 
 fames m as many days-to show what labour 
 IS alter. 
 
 They see clearly the enormous complexity and 
 
 bu if7 Si: ^^^"^'"'^ "^''^'"^'^ *-/have 
 bmlt up. They see the comphcated technical 
 processes m their industry-I visited at Gair 
 tlie huge establishment where the by-products 
 of the coking ovens are reduced into various 
 valuable oils and chemicals— they see the im 
 mense mtricacy of their organization for digging 
 and shippmg the ore and the coal and for manu- 
 facturmg and selling their products from China 
 
 m^Tr 7"^ ^^"""^ ^^^ ^^^' '' '^^'' '^ throw 
 this delicate mechanism out of gear. The idea 
 
 then, of crowds of ignorant workers, who have 
 
 no knowledge of the problems involved, no train- 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 25 
 
 ing to deal with them, breaking in with extreme 
 demands for a share or a control of the manage- 
 ment seems wildly destructive and disastrous. 
 They fear it desperately— and exhibit as a proof 
 of the reasonableness of their fear what has 
 happened in Russia. They regard it not only 
 as meaning the destruction of their own power, 
 and of the organization which they have built up 
 so painfully through so many years, but as a 
 complete overthrow of our institutions. The 
 solid earth of traditions, economic practises, legal 
 regulations— their very earth seems crumbling 
 under their feet. I am trying here to show how 
 the situation really looks and feels from above. 
 It is this feeling that has brought so large a 
 number of employers, many of whom do not 
 agree with his policies, to the support of Judge 
 Gary. 
 
 One of the more moderate employers said to 
 me : " We probably made a mistake in not sooner 
 establishing a basis of real co-operation with our 
 men: but that is past: and now that the issue 
 has come in the form it has, we've got to stand 
 by Judge Gary." 
 
 One unfortunate effect of the present crisis 
 has been to drive both sides to extremes. The 
 employers' group has undoubtedly been moving 
 toward the extreme position of Judge Gary: and 
 the labour group has undoubtedly been moving 
 
26 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 away from Mr. Gompers toward the more radi- 
 cal leadership. But there are also tremendous 
 counter-influences at work, and many quiet re- 
 constructive experiments— which I shall describe 
 later. 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 The Industrial Crisis as it Appears to the 
 
 Worker 
 
 HAVING examined, in the previous 
 chapter, the point of view of the em- 
 ployer-capitalist in the steel industry, 
 I wish now to show how the same conditions 
 appear from below to the workers. It is only 
 as one tries to understand how the worker feels 
 and thinks: his own actual point of view: that 
 we can get at the problem. 
 
 When I went to Gary to make inquiries about 
 the steel strike I had in mind the twelve demands 
 made by the national leaders when the men 
 walked out on September 22, 1919, but I heard 
 only two discussed with any emphasis either by 
 the workers or the management. 
 
 First, the twelve-hour day. 
 
 Second, the right to organize and to bargain 
 collectively with the employer. 
 
 The twelve-hour day is a very real thing in the 
 life of Gary: and I tried in a number of specific 
 cases to find out what it means. Here is the 
 exact daily schedule of a skilled American work- 
 man who does eleven hours a day during one 
 
 27 
 
I 
 
 it 
 
 t 
 
 \ 
 
 i 
 
 ' 
 
 28 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 week and then thirteen hours s night during the 
 next. He has his Sunday free, though many 
 men in the steel industry stOl have the seven- 
 day week: nor does he do the "long-turn" of 
 twenty-four hours continuous service when the 
 change from day to night work takes place— a 
 practice still persisting in some centres of the 
 steel industry. In order to get cheap rent— 
 for there is a great shortage of housing in Gary 
 —this man lives four miles out from the mill 
 He must, therefore, in order to be on time, get 
 up early. ° 
 
 4: 30 A.M. he arises and gets breakfast. 
 
 5 : 10 he leaves home. 
 
 5 : 55 he reaches the mill. 
 
 6 : 00 he begins work. 
 
 He is on duty steadily until five o'clock in 
 the afternoon. There is no stoppage for the 
 luncheon hour, but he has time, during waiting 
 periods, to get something to eat. He arrives 
 home at six o'clock: soon after he finishes his 
 supper he must go to bed, for at 4:30 in the 
 morning he must be up again. 
 
 During the night shift he gets up soon after 
 three o'clock in the afternoon, starts work at 
 five o clock, works thirteen hours, until six in 
 the morning, is home at seven, and in bed before 
 eight. Including the time it takes to go and 
 come from the mill this man's time is really 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 30 
 
 I 
 
 Jiii 
 it 
 
 commanded for some fourteen hours every- 
 day. 
 
 He has been at this work all his life; he now 
 makes $7.87 a day. 
 
 " I don't live," he said, " I just exist— work 
 and sleep. I don't get any time to see my 
 family. I can't go to any entertainments with- 
 out taking it out of my sleep : and I am too tired 
 to go to church on Sunday, or to do anything 
 else but lie around." 
 
 Another striker, a Pole, said to me in broken 
 English : 
 
 " They tell us go to school, learn American. 
 When we get time? Twelve hours a day I 
 What the hell they want! " 
 
 Remember, I am trying to show just how it 
 looks from below. 
 
 According to Judge Gary's testimony before 
 the Senate Committee there are 69,284 men in 
 the mills of the United States Steel Corporation 
 (out of about 270,000 employed) now working 
 the twelve-hour day— and there are many thou- 
 sands more in the independent companies. Most 
 of the workers actually engaged in the steel mills 
 are twelve-hour men. The ten- and eight-hour 
 men are mostly in other branches of the work, 
 mines, transportation and the like. A great 
 proportion of these twelve-hour men are igno- 
 rant foreigners, of some forty-two nationalities 
 
I 
 
 30 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST " 
 
 at Gary alone, speaking a babel of tongues and 
 hitherto unorganized and unorganizable. 
 
 When I remarked to a group of workers that 
 .Judge Gary had told the Senate Committee 
 that employees of the United States Steel Cor- 
 poration desired a twelve-hour day, and even a 
 seven-day week, in order to make more money, 
 I was greeted with a shout of laughter. 
 
 "Want it!" said one of them. "We can't 
 help ourselves. The mills run on the two-shift 
 basis and it's either twelve hours or quit. Be- 
 sides, at the rate of wages per hour paid by the 
 company most of the men could not live unless 
 they worked the long hours." 
 
 So much for the twelve-hour day: the Senate 
 Committee, in the recent conclusions, after in- 
 vestigation, said: 
 
 " That the labourers in the steel mills had a 
 just complaint relative to the long hours of 
 service on the part of some of them and the right 
 to have that complaint heard by the company. 
 We believe where continuous operation is 
 absolutely necessary the men should at least be 
 allowed one day's rest in each week." 
 
 The other great complaint, the demand to 
 organize and bargain collectively, was more 
 complicated, went down deeper into the roots of 
 the controversy. For if the workers were 
 granted the eight-hour day and the six-day week 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 31 
 
 I 
 
 this other demand would not only persist but 
 would probably be strengthened. I met one 
 steel-employer who said to me: " If you give an 
 inch: if you let them discover that agitation and 
 organization gets them anything, you're gone. 
 Gary's right." 
 
 He spoke of Rockefeller's introduction of the 
 eight-hour day and shop committees in his 
 Colorado plants. "Did it stop the strike? " he 
 asked. " No, they went out with all the others. 
 So did the Cambria mills where they had com- 
 pany unions. Gary's right." 
 
 There was one independent mill that was 
 scarcely touched by the strike. It was looked 
 upon with some envy in the steel industry. Its 
 superintendent explained how he managed his 
 workmen: 
 
 " Catch 'em young; treat 'em rough; tell 'em 
 nothing." 
 
 So this question of unionization and collective 
 bargaining— as Judge Gary testified— was the 
 real crux of the strike. He saw it long ago 
 when the Steel Corporation was organized: and 
 he has never changed in his opinion or in his 
 policy of opposition. 
 
 The workers also recognized this as the crux 
 of the problem. I did not find much complaint 
 of wages at Gary, for average wages of all em- 
 ployees since 1914 had increased from $2.93 a 
 
11 
 
 32 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 day to $6.27 per day. 114 per cent., an increase 
 a little larger than the increase in the cost of 
 of^Vj r^^ "^'"^ * considerable number 
 
 houses or who owned th^Iorht:. Z!Z 
 
 Tuvlt . r 'r*^ ""^ *^^ corporation "n 
 buymg stock These were mostly the more 
 highly skilled men, either Americans or fo^ 
 
 These men. for the most part, did not strikeTt 
 
 then ?^«f *r' ^^''"P. ""^ '^''^''' ^hat it was, 
 then, that they wanted. Every one of them had 
 
 been workmg in the Gary mills: every ^e of 
 them spoke English well, two were of pure 
 Amencan stock, one was of Dutch anceZ 
 Pdish."''' "°^ '^'^^'^^^' *- Serbian. 1^' 
 Since I am trying to show exactly how the 
 
 exactly the answers I got: 
 «S! "'^ striding for freedom." 
 
 « -Sn* 1° ^°" f '^ ''^ ^""^'^^'"^ " I asked. 
 
 tte S tl "f * *° ''^^^ °"^ organizations, 
 the right to employ representatives to act for 
 
 rT^hf f r *'' ^'''' Corporation doe^^ and the 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 
 I found this group of men very intelligent. 
 They told me that it had been the settled policy 
 of the steel corporation from the beginning to 
 fight unionism and one of them handed me a 
 pubhcation containing a copy of a resolution 
 passed by the Steel Corporation on June 17, 
 1901— six weeks after its organization (which 
 I have since verified; it appears in the reports 
 of the United States Bureau of Labour), as 
 follows : 
 
 " That we are unalterably opposed to any 
 extension of union labour and advise subsidiary 
 companies to take firm position when these ques- 
 tions come up and say that they are not going to 
 recognize it, that is, any extension of unions in 
 mills where they do not now exist, that great 
 care should be taken to prevent trouble and that 
 they promptly report and confer with this 
 corporation." 
 
 While Judge Gary testified before the Senate 
 Committee that men were never discharged for 
 belonging to unions, the strikers not only assert 
 here at Gary, but witnesses from the Pennsyl- 
 vania mills asserted before the Senate Com- 
 mittee, that many such discharges had been 
 made. 
 
 " Oh, the foremen don't say: ' You're a union 
 man: get out.' But every movement, every 
 whisper, in the mill is known. If we have a meet- 
 
i 
 
 34 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 ing, we know there is a spy inside, or else the 
 foremen or other officials come and stand out- 
 side the hall and watch the men go in. Let a 
 man try to get the workers together, try to 
 organize, and some day he'll get his pink slip 
 because he has been ten minutes late, or because 
 he's had an accident, or for one of a hundred 
 small excuses." 
 
 WTiatever may be the instructions from Judge 
 Gary, this is what the strikers everywhere in the 
 steel districts believe. Indeed, the second de- 
 mand of the twelve that they made when they 
 struck reads thus: "Reinstatement of men dis- 
 charged for union activities, with pay for time 
 lost." 
 
 Another thing they believe, is that foreigners 
 of so many nationalities, who are now accused 
 of causing most of the trouble, were deliberately 
 brought in by the employers in order to make 
 orgamzation impossible. The difficulties in the 
 way of unionizing ignorant men speaking twenty 
 or thirty different languages are of course al- 
 most insurmountable. 
 
 " But the company denies this," I said. 
 
 " Of course they do-but look at this adver- 
 tisement. 
 
 And they handed me an advertisement in the 
 Pittsburg Gazette Times of July 14, 1909 
 (which I also verified) : 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 35 
 
 1 III 
 
 i! 
 
 'I 
 
 "Wanted: Sixty tin-house men, tinners, 
 catchers and helpers to work in open shops: 
 Syrians, Poles and Roumanians preferred: 
 steady employment and good wages to men 
 willing to work; fare paid and no fees charged 
 for this work." 
 
 They have a most extraordinary mixture of 
 human beings in Gary — forty-two different 
 nationahties, the Croatians and Poles leading, 
 with large numbers of Greeks, Slovaks, Rus- 
 sians, Swedes, Hungarians. Latterly the Span- 
 iards have been coming in: and since the war, 
 and especially since unionism began to threaten, 
 many ignorant Negroes and Mexicans. In the 
 main mill at Gary over 1,000 Negroes are now 
 employed. 
 
 I asked why it was, then, if this was a strike 
 for freedom, that so many men went back to 
 work so soon after the strike began. 
 
 " That's easy enough to answer. In the first 
 place the power and watchfulness of the mana- 
 gers was such that we never could form a very 
 strong union. How can you get ignorant 
 Hungarians, Italians, Poles, Negroes and Mexi- 
 cans together and teach them the value of organ- 
 ization when the dread of the boss is always 
 over them? And no sooner does the strike start 
 than the military comes in and prevents picket- 
 ing and large meetings. Many of these for- 
 

 «! 
 
 86 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 eigners are easily frightened by soldiers: they've 
 had experience at home. On the other hand the 
 most intelligent men, who ought to be leaders, 
 hold high-paid places, or are buying company 
 houses, or are getting bonuses, or are working 
 for pensions. They know that if they go out 
 they lose everything. Since this strike the com- 
 pany has done its best to stir up racial and 
 national feeling between the skilled American 
 workers and the Negroes and foreigners. It's 
 their cue to keep us apart and disorganized. 
 So it has got to be a movement largely made up 
 of the unskilled labourers and they are for- 
 eigners. And there you are. Oh, they know 
 their business— the steel corporation! And 
 that's what has made wild radicals of some 
 of the foreigners: they don't see any other 
 
 way out except secret organizations and revolu- 
 tion." 
 
 Another thing these workers believe— and be- 
 lieve everywhere in the steel districts, as shown 
 by the Senate investigation,— is that the gov- 
 ernment is somehow against them: the govern- 
 ment meaning to many of the foreigners— for 
 they know next to nothing at all of American 
 institutions— the local police. I am not entering 
 into the question of whether they are right or 
 wrong but trying to get down what they actually 
 beHeve or feel, for it is not upon what they 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 37 
 
 I 
 
 ought to believe and feel that they act, but upon 
 what they do believe and feel. Well, they be- 
 lieve that the officials and constabulary are con- 
 trolled by the steel companies. In Pennsylvania 
 there is every evidence of suppression and even 
 violent suppression by the constabulary. Much 
 testimony was given before the Senate Com- 
 mittee to show that there is no such thing in 
 some of the steel towns as free speech or free 
 assemblage. The companies assert that this 
 control is necessary to preserve order and pro- 
 tect property: but from below, to the strikers, 
 it looks like oppression. 
 
 Many of the officials in steel towns are em- 
 ployees of steel companies. Even in Gary, 
 where the control has been less rigorous, I heard 
 much of the same kind of complaint. Whether 
 the strikers are right or wrong, no honest in- 
 quirer can avoid the impression that they feel 
 themselves suppressed. Much is done for them 
 by the steel corporation: but of themselves, 
 either by political or social organization, they 
 feel that they are allowed to have no say about 
 the vital conditions under which they work. 
 
 "But," I argued, "Judge Gary said to the 
 Senate Committee that any worker or group of 
 workers could make a complaint and get it 
 remedied: that all superintendents were especi- 
 ally instructed upon this point." 
 
li 
 
 1 
 I 
 
 88 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 I am going to put down the exact answer I 
 got. 
 
 "Say, Mister, you weren't born yesterday, 
 were you? What chance do you suppose one 
 * hunkie ' or a bunch of * hunkies ' would have 
 getting to Judge Gary with a complaint, or 
 even getting to the head men of the Illinois 
 Steel Company? And what do you suppose 
 would happen if they complained very often 
 over the head of their foremen? Here's the pink 
 slip for you guys." 
 
 There are many other minor complaints— so 
 the strikers argue— that can only be met when 
 the workers are organized, just as the various 
 mills are organized, in one body, and can meet 
 the employers upon equal terms. There are ex- 
 amples of petty graft and petty oppression by 
 foremen upon ignorant workmen, men are laid 
 off without explanation or excuse, the plants 
 are closed down without warning, and the loss 
 falls upon the workers (thirteen per cent of the 
 possible working time is thus lost every year to 
 the employees). 
 
 This state of mind at Gary, and elsewhere in 
 the steel industry, has resulted in vast losses to 
 every one concerned. A considerable number of 
 foreigners drew their money from the postal- 
 savings bank, sold their liberty bonds, and went 
 home to Europe, thus further reducing and dis- 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 39 
 
 organizing the labour supply. Some of the 
 skilled men went to work in other industries. 
 Two electricians, for example, whom I met, had 
 easily found work at the union scale of a dollar 
 an hour in Chicago. The mills were running 
 inefficiently, with many inexperienced men, and 
 the whole morale was low: and this at a time 
 when the world was never so much in need of 
 steel products. 
 
 I 
 
 4 
 
I 
 
 i 
 
 » ill 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 The Imputed Causes of the Unbest 
 
 IN two former chapters I endeavoured to 
 exhibit a typical industrial situation in 
 America— that at Gary, Indiana, during 
 the recent steel strikes, as it looked, first from 
 above, to the men who paid the wages, and, 
 second, from below, to the men who received 
 them. 
 
 We may now inquire into the immediate causes 
 of this unrest, as set forth by leaders on both 
 sides of the controversy. It is to be under- 
 stood that these are the immediate and imputed 
 causes— not necessarily the real or deeper causes, 
 which will be considered later. 
 
 Judge Gary told us with conviction that the 
 great majority of his workers were contented, 
 that they wanted no strike and no union, but 
 that they were incited and intimidated by " out- 
 side agitators " and " revolutionaries." He said 
 that alien elements with radical beliefs were 
 largely instrumental in causing the trouble. 
 
 "You think," asks Senator Kenyon, at the 
 investigation, " that this foreign element is pre- 
 cipitating the strike, do you not? " 
 
 4a 
 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 41 
 
 " I do," responded Judge Gary. 
 
 Mr. Gompers, upon his part, was equally 
 clear. He told us that the workers were not 
 contented, that they were compelled to work 
 unnecessarily long hours, that they were not 
 allowed to organize or to have any voice in the 
 determination of the conditions under which 
 they lived : that the workers were not intimidated 
 by " outside agitators " or " revolutionaries " but 
 suppressed by the employers. 
 
 Here, then is the very heart of the con- 
 troversy. Judge Gary asserted that the trouble 
 came from outside his steel plants and steel 
 towns: Mr. Gompers asserted the trouble was 
 inside of them. Judge Gary thought that the 
 trouble was imported into Gary from Washing- 
 ton where the American Federation of Labour 
 has its headquarters, or from Russia. Mr. 
 Gompers thought the trouble was in Gary itself. 
 The remedies suggested follow hard upon the 
 convictions of each group. Judge Gary — and 
 a considerable proportion of the employer class 
 in America— believes that if somehow these " out- 
 side agitators," "revolutionaries," "alien dis- 
 turbers " could be squelched all the trouble would 
 speedily disappear. So we have been seeing re- 
 cently in America a number of extraordinary 
 applications of this cure. Judge Gary himself, 
 quite logically from his point of view, refused 
 
42 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 to confer with " outside agitators "—Mr. Fitz- 
 Patrick, Mr. Foster and others. In Pennsyl- 
 vania the constabulary put them in jail; refused 
 to let them hold meetings. Upon the belief that 
 the ideas that are disturbing industry came in 
 from the outside— from Russia especially— they 
 raided private homes and halls at Gary, and ac- 
 cording to a lieutenant of the intelligence de- 
 partment of the United States Army, took away 
 some tons of radical literature. At the Senate 
 investigation Senator Smith of Georgia asked 
 the lieutenant of intelligence who investigated 
 the " reds " of Gary this question : 
 
 Senator Smith: If we shipped all the alien 
 
 agitators and organizers out of the country 
 
 Lieut. Van Buren (interposing) : There would 
 be no more trouble at all. 
 
 We are beginning literaUy to practise this 
 policy, which seems so easy a solution to Senator 
 Smith and Lieut. Van Buren. Already the 
 American ship Buford, guarded aboard by 
 soldiers and accompam'ed at sea by a naval 
 escort, has taken some 200 of these alien agita- 
 tors away from America, and returned them to 
 the lands from which they got their ideas. 
 
 This policy of meeting the unrest finds a 
 cruder echo— and yet a familiar one: I heard it 
 often recently among ordinary comfortable 
 people : " If a few of these agitators and ' reds * 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 43 
 
 were taken out and shot, we'd soon get rid of 
 the trouble." 
 
 Now the logic of these remedies is indispu- 
 tably sound: if the unrest is caused by outside 
 agitators, and by alien revolutionaries as Judge 
 Gary asserts, then if you remove the agitators, 
 seize and destroy the literature containing the 
 ideas, and prevent meetings in which they are 
 aired, you stop the unrest. This is perfectly 
 clear. 
 
 So much for the employer's view of the cause 
 of the unrest and the remedy for it. The leaders 
 of the workers, as I said, hold the contrary view, 
 that the trouble is inside of industry, not im- 
 ported from without: and, they proceed with in- 
 tense conviction to act upon their belief. They 
 try in every way, by speeches and publications, 
 some of them of the shrillest and most revolu- 
 tionary kind, to show that conditions among 
 working people in America are dehumanizing, 
 that injustice prevails, that men have become, as 
 their recent " bill of rights " declares, " cogs in 
 an industrial system dominated by machinery 
 owned and operated for profit alone." They 
 are so eager to prove their contention that they 
 welcome every kind of investigation. Judge 
 Gary profoundly distrusts public inquiries be- 
 cause, as he told the Senate Committee, they 
 "give opportunity to certain men to air their 
 
44 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 views and get before tlie public certain propa- 
 ganda that is vicious and calculated to do harm." 
 
 But the workers eagerly desire these inquiries : 
 and in the case of the recent steel strike did their 
 best to get before the public the facts, as they 
 saw them, regarding the twelve-hour day, Sun- 
 day work, the " long-turn," the speeding-up of 
 workmen, the denial of the right to organize, the 
 suppression of free speech and free assemblage, 
 and so on. The first great item in their pohcy 
 is publicity: the second is organization. The 
 motive of the first is not only to stir up their 
 own people but to get their case before the 
 public : the motive of the second is to help them- 
 selves to their own relief: their key words, there- 
 fore, are " agitate " and " organize." 
 
 Now the issue that arises here between the 
 two groups is an issue of fact : it is a question for 
 the jury of the American people. Is the trouble 
 and unrest — or any part of it, caused by condi- 
 tions inside of the steel towns, inherent in the 
 present state of the industry, or is it caused by 
 " outside agitators " and " alien radicals "? 
 
 As usual in cases presented to that great, 
 impatient, more or less inattentive jury of public 
 opinion — which hates desperately to remain long 
 enough away from private business really to hear 
 the evidence — ^there is an enormous amount of 
 exaggeration on both sides, extreme statements. 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 45 
 
 I 
 
 .1 
 
 R 
 
 the imputation of the worst possible motives, 
 personal abuse. It is ever the case that one 
 extreme view tries to justify itself by magnify- 
 ing the other extreme view. Extremes invariably 
 breed extremes. Thus Judge Gary and the 
 steel employers magnified the revolutionary ele- 
 ments among the workers, which were in reality 
 unimportant either in numbers or in influence. 
 They did their best to " play up " Foster and 
 Margolis, and to try to convince the jury that 
 these men really represented the views of 
 American labour. More time was spent by the 
 Senate in examining these two relatively inconse- 
 quential figures in the steel strike — Margolis, 
 a lawyer having no connection whatever with the 
 strike itself, and Foster being only one of a 
 committee — ^than was given to any other wit- 
 ness except Judge Gary himself. The steel 
 employers had reprinted and circulated widely 
 among employers, business men and editors, 
 Foster's red pamphlet on Syndicalism with this 
 inscription on the outside: 
 
 "William Z. Foster, one of the authors of 
 this book, is in charge of the present campaign 
 to organize the steel strikers." 
 
 They gave this pamphlet a far wider circula- 
 tion than ever Foster was able to give it: they 
 aroused just the curiosity about the ideas which 
 it contains, and which they are trying to 
 
46 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 combat, that the radicals themselves failed in 
 arousing. 
 
 Now, I am not here going into Foster's denial 
 that this wild book published nine years ago 
 represents his present beliefs— in another chap- 
 ter I shall exhibit the true relationship of radi- 
 cals to the American Federation of Labour — 
 I am merely illustrating the point that the 
 steel employers "played up" these extremists: 
 and at the same time refused to meet and deal 
 with the moderate leaders, who represent the 
 great solid masses of American labour. 
 
 On the other hand, the extremists upon the 
 side of labour play exactly the same game. I 
 have examined recently a number of the more 
 extreme publications issued by radical labour 
 groups, some of them circulated at Gary, 
 Indiana, and I have attended radical meetings 
 and heard radical speeches. To many of these 
 extremists Judge Gary is a very devil: all capi- 
 talists are devils: any one who sees anything 
 good in the " present system " is a " tool." They 
 do not recognize the fact that an immense pro- 
 portion of American industry to-day is based, so 
 far as labour conditions are concerned, upon 
 reasonable conferences between employers and 
 employees: or that many employers and 
 managers in America are earnestly and sincerely 
 endeavouring to work out new methods of co- 
 
 I 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 47 
 
 operation with their workers, — as I shall show 
 later, — or that even Judge Gary has encouraged 
 among other things great improvements in 
 safety-devices in his mills — a really remarkable 
 work. 
 
 Conservative extremists thus stimulate radical 
 extremists. We have seen employed in this steel 
 strike the now familiar technic of war. Both 
 sides try to prove atrocities: both sides assert 
 that the other is using the poison-gas of propa- 
 ganda, and the dum-dum bullets of intimida- 
 tion. Each side or a part of each side is doing 
 its best to stir up hatred and suspicion of the 
 other— with the danger always present that these 
 violent views may involve the great quiet ma- 
 jority of both employers and employees who are 
 trying to work out humanly, decently, and 
 patiently the enormously complicated problems 
 which confront all of us. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 The Real Causes of the Uneest 
 
 IN this chapter I shall endeavour to 
 answer the question: How much of the 
 trouble and unrest in American industry is 
 caused by " outside agitators " and " alien radi- 
 cals " : and how much is caused by conditions 
 inside of industry? Judge Gary thinks that 
 the trouble, as I showed in my last chapter, is 
 incited from outside: Mr. Gompers thinks it 
 due to conditions inside. 
 
 There is no doubt that what Judge Gary 
 calls " outside agitators " did come in and organ- 
 ize the steel workers. At its St. Paul Conven- 
 tion, in June, 1918, the American Federation 
 of Labour appointed a committee headed by 
 John Fitzpatrick, President of the Chicago 
 Federation of Labour, who was never connected 
 with the steel industry in any way, to go into 
 the steel towns and organize the men. There is 
 no doubt, as Judge Gary declares, that there 
 are a few revolutionaries and alien radicals, 
 some of them holding the extremist views, to be 
 found at Gary and in other steel towns: there 
 is no doubt that there is considerable violent 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 49 
 
 " literature " in circulation in these towns. There 
 is no doubt, also, after the workers went out, 
 that the familiar tactics of the strike— persuasion 
 verging always upon intimidation— did take 
 place at Gary. All this is true. 
 
 But let us look more closely at Gary. Here 
 is a fine, bright city of some 80,00a people. It 
 has an excellent Carnegie library, an impressive 
 Y. M. C. A. building, good churches, superlative 
 schools. It lives wholly upon mills owned by the 
 United States Steel Corporation. Some of the 
 workmen, largely Americans, are highly skilled 
 and well-paid, often owning their own houses, 
 sometimes having a few shares of stock in the 
 corporation. But the great mass of the workers 
 are more or less unskilled foreigners. There are 
 forty-two diflFerent nationalities, speaking twenty 
 or thirty languages. The majority in the mills 
 work twelve hours a day, and many seven days 
 a week. To an extent which at first amazes the 
 inquirer these are young unmarried men. Forty- 
 five per cent of the Servians, forty-eight per cent 
 of the Roumanians, in the steel industry are 
 single men (according to the United States 
 labour reports ) . Even of those who are married, 
 a large proportion have left their wives at home 
 (sixty-two per cent of the Croatians, forty per 
 cent of the Italians). They are strong boys 
 or young men, largely peasants (sixty-four per 
 
 
50 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 cent) from farms in southern or eastern Europe. 
 About one-third of these men are twenty-five 
 years of age or under— hardly more than boys— 
 eighty-seven per cent are forty-four years old or 
 under. The steel workers themselves assert 
 that a man is " old at forty " in the steel in- 
 dustry : that men cannot stand the strain of the 
 long hours and the heavy work. 
 
 Consider these masses of young men, peasants, 
 who came to golden America to make, instantly, 
 their fortunes. They were wiUing to work all 
 hours, all times, where American workmen 
 would not and could not work ; they got as much 
 money as possible, in as short a time, either to 
 bring their wives over from Europe, or to go 
 back there with their earnings. The poorest of 
 them hved crowded together in the very cheapest 
 places they could rent. There are some very 
 poor places in this fine town of Gary: with no 
 relation to any " American standard of living." 
 Well, these men, working under such pressure, 
 confused and divided, could not organize, had 
 no way of expressing themselves. But they 
 could get drunk. Before Indiana went dry 
 Gary had probably the largest number of 
 saloons to the population of any city in the 
 United States: solid blocks of them. A popu- 
 lation of young, unmarried men, away from 
 home, working under high strain in an un- 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 51 
 
 familiar and dangerous industry, without amuse- 
 ment or diversion — ^this was the natural outlet. 
 There may be those who think prohibition dis- 
 courages economic unrest. I do not. I believe 
 it is one of the causes of it: for it has removed 
 the great deadener of human trouble — and 
 human ambition— alcohol, and has left time to 
 the workers to talk and meet and read: and 
 money to buy publications and support organi- 
 zations. 
 
 Consider, also, what the war did when it 
 came. In the first place it brought the entire 
 working force at Gary under an iron regime. 
 Workmen could not go and come freely between 
 Europe and America as they had always done, 
 and they were worked harder and longer than 
 ever: but on the other hand they got more 
 money and had steadier work than ever before 
 in their lives, for the steel trust raised wages 
 eight times during the war. 
 
 This, however, was only a minor result of the 
 war. Consider what they were taught day after 
 day during the struggle. It was not what was 
 put into their pockets but what was put into 
 their heads that counted. They were told that 
 this was a war for democracy and that when it 
 was over everything would be different and 
 better. The War Labour Board at Washington 
 laid down the broadest and most advanced char- 
 
52 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 ter of the rights of labour ever laid down in 
 America. President Wilson said that after the 
 war " there must be a genuine democratization 
 of industry based upon a full recognition of the 
 right of those who work, in whatever rank, to 
 participate in some organic way in every de- 
 cision which directly affects their welfare or the 
 part they are to play in industry." 
 
 Never before were workmen in the steel towns 
 so courted: so distinctly made to feel that they 
 were a part, and really an essential part, of this 
 great American movement. For a moment a 
 kind of thrill of partnership, co-operation, 
 reached even the lowest labour groups. They 
 all bought hberty bonds, or war stamps, they aU 
 subscribed to the Y. M. C. A., and Red Cross 
 funds— almost to the lowest man. I heard over 
 and again in these industrial towns of the ex- 
 traordinary feeling aroused during the war. The 
 echo of it reached Europe : and was commented 
 on there with a kind of envy as being some- 
 thing better than other nations could achieve. 
 This, the workmen felt, was a taste of trud 
 Americanism. 
 
 For one glorious moment they were accepted 
 as men working in a great common cause, side 
 by side with the employers, all equally necessary. 
 Hundreds of them, indeed, had actually gone 
 into the army and fought in France. Some 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 53 
 
 had lost their lives. The soldiers who returned 
 to the mills had new and free ideas: in the first 
 great parade of strikers at Gary some 300 of 
 them marched in uniform at the head of the line. 
 
 A new era of democracy and goodwill seemed 
 dawning in the world. They were simple folk: 
 they believed it: they felt it. We aU felt it. 
 
 Then the war stopped and the disillusion- 
 ment began. Nothing was really changed: there 
 was no more democracy than there had been 
 before! They had seen a vision, dreamed a 
 dream: they had awakened. It was snatched 
 away. Not only that, but the steel companies, 
 not needing to speed up as much as during the 
 war, began to discharge many men: and the 
 workmen heard rumours that wages were soon to 
 be reduced so as to get the industry back to 
 pre-war standards. 
 
 I am trying here to show just what happened, 
 just what was the psychology of these masses of 
 men. 
 
 Well, they were back in the dull mills, work- 
 ing twelve hours a day — they had ceased to be 
 men, and were again mere machines. A labour 
 leader quoted me that bitter cry of the workers 
 — ^which originated in quite another industry; 
 
 (« 
 
 I work, work, work without end. 
 Why and for whom I know not, 
 
 I care not, I ask not, 
 
 I am a machine." 
 
I "■' 
 
 !ll 
 
 M THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 Consider, then, in all fairness, what happened 
 next. Some time before the war ended the 
 American Federation of Labour had begun its 
 campaign to organize the steel workers. It went 
 slowly: it was uphill business— until the war 
 ended. And then many disiUusioned workers 
 seized upon it as the one way of hope. The 
 employers had done nothing. There was no 
 way of getting at them. One man at Gary 
 told me that Judge Gary was " as distant as 
 God." Not a single man who has any real 
 ownership or any real control of things at Gary 
 either lives at Gary or is known to workmen at 
 Gary. Not one! They are not pleasant places 
 to live in— the steel towns. Most of the work- 
 men I asked did not even know who was the 
 " head man " of the Illinois Steel Company: and 
 Judge Gary— of whom they have all heard— 
 IS 900 miles away in New York. To these men 
 the Steel Corporation is a vast, impersonal, in- 
 human, unreachable machine. 
 
 So they listened eagerly to the labour organ- 
 izers, for these men told them the same things 
 they had heard during the war: exactly what 
 President Wilson had told them: democracy, 
 more freedom, more life. 
 
 But the moment they began to stir for them- 
 selves—organize—they at once found against 
 them the old set policies of the Steel Corpor^- 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 55 
 
 tion: its opposition to unionism: its opposition to 
 any change in the conditions which, since they 
 had had a taste of freedom, seemed doubly irri- 
 tating. In Pennsylvania when they tried to hold 
 meetings they were suppressed by the constabu- 
 lary, their organizers were arrested, their papers 
 were seized. In Gary, homes were broken into 
 and searched. They felt the old hopeless con- 
 ditions closing in around them. 
 
 Some years ago I heard deaf and dumb Helen 
 Keller describe how, as a child, she tried to ex- 
 press herself and could not speak, could not even 
 make motions that conveyed any idea, could do 
 nothing for herself. She described the wild 
 fits of rage she went into. She was suppressed, 
 inhibited. Something of the same kind goes on 
 among masses of men who are not allowed self- 
 expression. A certain number become reck- 
 less: fall into rages: are wilhng to do anything 
 to escape. 
 
 This is fertile soil for wild ideas: for quack 
 remedies: for blind revolt. When conservative 
 labour unionism is prevented, the I. W. W. 
 leader is there with a flaming doctrine that 
 promises much and promises it quick: there are 
 Utopian ideas from Russia. When open meet- 
 ings and frank discussions are suppressed, work- 
 men begin to hold secret meetings, make ex- 
 treme demands, plot violent remedies. The 
 
56 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 ideas they hold are usuaUy of the vaguest and 
 crudest. Chase them around with a few frank 
 questions — as I have done many times — and you 
 can ordinarily drive them into a corner and 
 show them the want of logic, or reason, or even 
 basis of fact, to support their beliefs. But you 
 rarely convince them, for what they lack in light 
 they make up in heat. How can they get light 
 if all association and discussion is choked off? 
 And how can anything else be expected when 
 these groups of vigorous but ignorant young 
 men are left crowded together in miserable 
 places, worked to the limit of endurance, with no 
 one paying any attention to them— body or 
 soul — so long as they come to work every day? 
 Here, then, we begin to get at the bottom fact 
 about Gary: indeed, about our entire industrial 
 life. It is the unrest, the unhealthy conditions, 
 that cause the Bolshevism; not the Bolshevism 
 that causes the unrest. Once the process starts, 
 however, as a disease germ makes easy work of a 
 debilitated human body, the radical agitation 
 increases the trouble— accelerates it. 
 
 If every radical alien were deported from 
 Gary the causes of unrest would still remain. 
 I spent most of the year of 1918 studying similar 
 conditions in Europe: in every country I visited 
 the same kind of unrest prevails— and no one 
 attributes it either to aliens or outside agitators. 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 57 
 
 One recalls, also, that exactly the same com- 
 plaint was made by the slave-owners in the 
 South before the Civil War, that the slaves were 
 contented, and that all the trouble came from 
 "outside agitators" and "revolutionaries" — 
 John Brown, Garrison, Love joy, Lincoln. As 
 for the deportation of agitators and the sup- 
 pression of opinion, that policy was tried out 
 upon a grand scale for many years by the old 
 Russian government: Siberia was populated 
 with deported radicals: read George Kennan's 
 books. It did not stop revolution: probably 
 stimulated its more violent forms. Look at 
 Russia to-day. 
 
 " While we can deport men for being anar- 
 chists," said Senator Kenyon to the Lawyers 
 Club in New York, " we cannot deport ideas." 
 The first instinct of a man or a nation with a 
 pain is to treat the symptoms: as we are doing 
 now. Both sides are trying quack remedies : the 
 employers a sure-cure bottle labelled, " Deporta- 
 tion—Suppression " : and the workers a bottle 
 with a red label: "Bolshevism." I don't 
 know which is worse : which will sooner kill the 
 patient. Why not do what any sensible man 
 with a pain finally does ? — learn what the under- 
 lying trouble is— the real disease— and try to 
 reach and cure that? 
 
Il 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 The Massed Forces Behind the Industrial 
 Conflict — Organized Labour 
 
 IT is now important, if we are really to 
 understand what is going on, to inquire 
 what are the massed forces behind the 
 present industrial struggle. For the steel strike, 
 the coal strike, big as they were, were only 
 skirmishes in a far-flung battle line: and we 
 cannot understand them unless we know the 
 grand strategy of the conflict, the diverse fac- 
 tions within both camps, and who the real com- 
 manders are. 
 
 Samuel Gompers is the type-figure of Ameri- 
 can labour: he is the most powerful and domi- 
 nating leader American labour has ever had : but 
 he is to-day in great trouble. In this respect 
 Gompers resembles most other leaders in the 
 world. All leaders are in trouble. Wilson is 
 in trouble, so is Lloyd-George. And for a 
 simple reason: followers won't follow. Pubhcs 
 have got out of bounds: they won't stay in old 
 party lines, nor yet in old union lines: they 
 challenge authority and discipline. They gibe at 
 institutions. 
 
 08 
 
 KEASONS AND REMEDIES 59 
 
 Gompers is one of the extraordinary men of 
 America to-day, not only the arch-type of a 
 movement, but a character, a personage. 
 
 I shall never forget one vivid ghmpse I had of 
 him in London last year. He was going down 
 in some triumph as a great figure to visit his 
 birthplace in the slums of the East End. Here 
 it was that his Dutch- Jewish parents had lived : 
 here he learned his trade as a cigar-maker: here 
 as a boy he spoke low Dutch. 
 
 I see him now striding down the street, a 
 powerful squat figure, followed, a step behind, 
 by a looming bodyguard of labour leaders. He 
 was scattering the assembled and gaping sub- 
 jects of King George, however well inured to 
 the sight of potentates, to the right and left. 
 His hat was set weU back upon his head, his 
 chin was thrust forward, and he was throwing 
 aside humorous remarks to his followers. So I 
 saw him once again in Paris. So he strode full- 
 fronted throughout Europe, so sure of himself, 
 and of his entire equipment of ideas, so conscious 
 of the immense power of American labour be- 
 hind him— that he scattered to the right and 
 left all peoples of all nations. He told British, 
 French, and Italian labour leaders, quite posi- 
 tively, what they must do to be saved. 
 
 Gompers reminds one a little of Clemenceau — 
 a kind of rougher Clemenceau without the 
 
I 
 
 60 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 French wit and finish, but with many of the 
 same qualities of physical and intellectual force 
 and vitality. Gompers, too, is a kind of tiger 
 — an old man long habited to power, able, obsti- 
 nate, vain, honest — a pattern of the pugnacious 
 conservative. When the Chairman of the Senate 
 Committee told Gompers that he could either 
 sit or stand while ♦ testifying, he replied: 
 
 " I will do anything but lay down." 
 
 He will not "lay down": nevertheless he is 
 in great trouble: and an account of what the 
 trouble is will disclose clearly the problems which 
 to-day confront American labour. 
 
 For thirty-eight years, except one, Gompers 
 has been president of the American Federation 
 of Labour. He helped organize it. He has 
 done more than any other man in shaping the 
 American labour movement. 
 
 In its beginnings the Federation represented a 
 reaction from the policies of the old Knights 
 of Labour. The Knights did a great work in 
 their day: they helped give labour a national 
 vision: but the organization was too indiscrimi- 
 nate in its membership, too centralized in its 
 control, too vague in its purposes: and it made 
 unfortunate ventures into politics. 
 
 Gompers avoided these mistakes. He built 
 firmly upon narrow but strong craft unionism; 
 he encouraged democratic control: he eschewed 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 61 
 
 politics. He discouraged Utopian schemes: he 
 urged labour to ask for specific things and a 
 little at a time: better hours and better wages: 
 and to clinch what they got with "collective 
 bargains " with employers. If anything was de- 
 sired from Congress or legislatures, labour was 
 to get it just as business men got it, by lobbying, 
 or by pledging candidates. 
 
 I speak of Gompers as doing these things: he 
 was, of course, only one of many leaders who 
 represented the main stream of development 
 during recent years of American labour organi- 
 zation. 
 
 Well, it was a practical, hard-headed policy: 
 and it has had a great influence in improving the 
 material conditions of the more highly skilled 
 groups of labour. Many of the craft unions are 
 to-day very powerful, and rich. They have fine 
 halls and office buildings, some have hospitals 
 and homes, some have pension and benefit funds. 
 The American Federation of Labour itself has 
 a magnificent home office of the sky-scraper type 
 at Washington: a very different place indeed 
 from the cluttered little back office where I first 
 called on Mr. Gompers, twenty years ago. 
 
 Like all successful movements, labour organi- 
 zation in America has tended to become institu- 
 tionalized—the church of labour: and Gompers 
 is the Pope of it. 
 
If 
 
 62 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 The leaders are of a very definite type : practi- 
 cal, efficient, unimaginative business men. A 
 group of labour leaders of successful craft 
 unions cannot be distinguished to-day from any 
 ordinary group of American business men. 
 They are business men: and many employers 
 have found them more than a match. They are 
 traders: they meet* and haggle over minute de- 
 tails of agreements: they work out complicated 
 contracts: they handle and invest considerable 
 sums of money. The American labour move- 
 ment, so far as it is typified by Gompers, has 
 the reputation of being the most conservative 
 labour body in the world— as it undoubtedly is. 
 It reached its very apex of power and honour 
 during the war. It came as strongly to the sup- 
 port of the government as any Chamber of. 
 Commerce or Board of Trade. Gompers served 
 on the Council of National Defence: and other 
 labour leaders were used and honoured in many 
 ways. 
 
 All this vigorous and successful development, 
 of course, has not been without strong opposi- 
 tion. At every Convention of the American 
 Federation of Labour for years before the 
 war Gompers had a fierce tussle for control with 
 the radical or socialist left-wing of the movement 
 —but always won out. Gompers has fought 
 socialism tooth and nail for years, with the result 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 63 
 
 \ 
 
 It 
 
 f 
 
 that in America the old craft union leaders still 
 dominate the movement, while in England, 
 socialists are in control. 
 
 The radicals charge that the policy of the 
 American Federation of Labour has been too 
 narrow, too strictly economic: that it has no 
 social vision: that it is essentially aristocratic 
 — that it has built up and protected the skilled 
 crafts, but tended to neglect the great masses of 
 unskilled, or foreign, or Negro labour. The pro- 
 gressives say that better hours and more wages 
 are not enough, that these things will never 
 finally content the spirit of the worker: that he 
 must strive for what many of them call, often 
 vaguely, "industrial democracy." 
 
 All of these charges have some basis in fact. 
 The number of members in the American Fed- 
 eration of Labour has never been more than 
 a very small percentage of the total number 
 of workers. The last census showed over 
 27,000,000 wage-earners in America, including 
 agricultural labourers, domestic servants, and 
 other non-industrial groups. But of this 
 27,000,000 fewer than eight per cent, were at 
 that time in labour organizations affiliated 
 with Gompers' Federation. Several of the 
 greatest industries, where unskilled or foreign 
 labour was largely employed, were left almost 
 untouched— like the steel industry, the textile 
 
k 
 
 I 
 
 64 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 mills, the oil industry and others. On the other 
 hand the mine-workers with many unskilled and 
 foreign labourers are firmly organized and afBli- 
 ated with the American Federation of Labour; 
 so are the hod-carriers : and in the last two years 
 there have been large accessions to the ranks of 
 organized labour. 
 
 This situation gave opportunity for the social- 
 ists and radical labour organizations like the 
 I. W. W. to come in. I was at the Lawrence 
 strike in 1912. Here there were several old, 
 small, aristocratic craft unions, but no attention 
 had been paid to the masses of the foreign 
 workers until the I. W. W. leaders came in with 
 their doctrine that the interests of the whole 
 working-class, foreigners and unskilled as well 
 as Americans and skilled, were identical, that 
 there should be one great union and a place for 
 every worker in the industrial organization. The 
 idea carried like wild-fire— as it has in other 
 industries. Right or wrong, it was a ray of 
 hope to thousands of neglected, under-paid and 
 over-worked human beings. 
 
 Another charge brought by the progressives 
 was that the skilled craft unions, strongly organ- 
 ized, could make advantageous bargains with 
 the equally strong employers' associations and 
 mulct the public. That is, the union, having a 
 monopoly on labour, could force up wages ; and 
 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 65 
 
 
 ■') 
 
 i 
 
 
 the employers, having a monopoly on the in- 
 dustry, could force up prices — and the public 
 would have to pay. I made a study some years 
 ago of several extreme instances of this sort of 
 bargaining under the title " Capital and Labour 
 Hunt Together," and the practice still continues. 
 The public pays high for both kinds of monop- 
 oly. And the worst feature of all, in this sys- 
 tem, as the great masses of workers are now 
 suddenly discovering, is that the "public" is 
 made up very largely of the immense wage- 
 earning class in America that is not in any 
 union, and is thus wholly unprotected. In short, 
 the masses of the unskilled, the foreigners, the 
 Negroes, help pay for the good fortune, the 
 high wages, and the short hours of the highly 
 skilled organized workers. 
 
 This aristocratic unionism, this selfish atten- 
 tion to their own interests, this neglect of the 
 masses of labour, furnishes the chief ammuni- 
 tion of the socialists and the radicals of the 
 I. W. W. type in their attacks upon Gompers 
 and the American Federation of Labour. It has 
 also given powerful impetus to those in the 
 labour ranks (many of them socialists) who 
 want what they call a " real " labour movement, 
 and therefore recommend a national labour 
 party in America. They say that the American 
 Federation of Laboiu' has no genuine recon- 
 
I 
 
 66 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 structive program like the British labour 
 movement, and that it is controlled by a kind of 
 political machine, headed by Gompers, which is 
 impervious to new ideas or new methods : that it 
 is old, rich, conservative, and no longer responds 
 to the real aspirations of labour. I am trying 
 here to put down the situation just as it looks 
 from all sides. To be able to estimate the 
 seriousness of the present unrest we must know 
 all the factors in it. 
 
 Now, several recent tendencies have served to 
 throw more power into the hands of the radicals. 
 In the first place there has been the long-evident 
 drift in American industry toward the employ- 
 ment of a greater proportion of unskilled men. 
 Employers have introduced machinery and 
 divided the tasks of labour so that each work- 
 man has, so far as possible, only one simple 
 manipulation to learn. Modern industry has 
 tended to steal away the skill of the craftsman. 
 Any foreigner, no matter how ignorant, any 
 Negro, can quickly learn to do much of the 
 work in many of the greatest of our industries. 
 This tends to defeat the whole idea of the old 
 unionism, based upon craft skill, especially as it 
 apphes to the great basic industries. 
 
 Other more immediate tendencies have devel- 
 oped out of the war. Since 1914 all Americans 
 have been more interested than ever before in 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 67 
 
 ) 
 
 i 
 
 i 
 
 Europe and in European movements: and espe- 
 cially the workers. Among foreigners the Rus- 
 sian revolution has had a profound influence: 
 among the more moderate and thoughtful 
 groups, the program of the British Labour 
 Party. I have found in talking with labour men 
 of all kinds recently an astonishing knowledge 
 of these foreign movements. Ten years ago, 
 except for a few socialists, American workers 
 had little idea of anything beyond the horizon of 
 American methods and American ideas. 
 
 Another vital influence may be noted. This is 
 the awakening self -consciousness of labour to 
 its own power, dignity, indispensability, which 
 came with the war. Labour was courted as 
 never before, taken into government councils as 
 never before, made to feel that in the future it 
 would enjoy greater privileges than ever before. 
 It came out of the war feeling that it had served 
 well, done all that was expected of it; and was 
 now entitled to the promised rewards. 
 
 New and enthusiastic campaigns for the 
 organization of hitherto more or less untouched 
 industries, like the packing houses and the steel 
 mills, were begun. Whole new groups of 
 workers began to come into the ranks of organ- 
 ized labour — actors, school-teachers, newspaper 
 reporters, architects, nurses — and the wave even 
 swept in many groups of government or public 
 

 68 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 service employees— policemen, postmen, clerks 
 and the like. The most powerful and ably led 
 unions in the country— the Railroad Brother- 
 hoods—came forward with an ambitious plan, 
 the Plumb plan, for the future control of the 
 railroads. A strong movement was launched 
 for the organization of a new Labour Party, to 
 carry the whole struggle into the political field 
 — which I shall consider in another chapter — 
 and finally a sudden, but enthusiastic, interest 
 sprung up in developing wholesale and retail 
 co-operative stores, on the English system, in 
 order to meet some of the problems of the high 
 cost of living. 
 
 This sudden burst of new self -consciousness on 
 the part of labour, new enthusiasm, new organi- 
 zation, has been met by a cold douche both from 
 employers and from the government. "They 
 taught us to be lions' whelps during the war," 
 as one leader said, " and now they want us to 
 subside quietly into beasts of burden. We shall 
 never do it." 
 
 Now, the progressive and radical groups in 
 the labour movement assert that Gompers and 
 the American Federation of Labour are un- 
 sympathetic toward most of the new move- 
 ments: that all vital thinking and new leader- 
 ship is frowned on by Gompers. They say 
 that he does not believe in a Labour Party, 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 69 
 
 ii 
 
 I 
 
 nor in the Plumb plan, nor in the more 
 or less vague but powerful demands for more 
 "socialization" in industry. He sees the new 
 unrest, but he knows only the rules of the old 
 game as he has played it for fifty years. He has 
 indeed tried to adapt himself to the new condi- 
 tions — for example, in supporting a movement, 
 which he could not have prevented, on the part 
 of progressives like Fitzpatrick and Foster, to 
 organize the meat-packing industry at Chicago, 
 and later the steel industry, on a new plan, bor- 
 rowed, in part, from the I. W. W. Aiid he has 
 welcomed into the Federation some of the abler 
 young radicals like Foster, who are now " bor- 
 ing from within "—using the machinery of the 
 Federation for pressing agitation and organiza- 
 tion along the new lines. 
 
 Thus Gompers, with the wonderful machine 
 he has built up, finds himself attacked upon all 
 sides. A labour party movement, began scarcely 
 a year ago, and led by men in his own camp, is 
 spreading rapidly. There were never so many 
 unauthorized and uncontrollable strikes as there 
 have been recently. Gompers advised the steel 
 workers to delay their strike, as the President 
 requested: but they paid no attention to him. 
 There have been powerful and successful in- 
 surgent unions — like the Amalgamated Clothing 
 Workers — ^growing up outside of the Federa- 
 
I 
 
 70 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 tion. He excommunicates them, but it does no 
 good. And finally, to cap the climax, the asso- 
 ciation with government agencies formed during 
 the war, which Gompers and the American 
 Federation of Labour felt to be such a bulwark 
 of strength, has suddenly crumbled away. He 
 is no longer looked to and courted as the su- 
 preme arbiter and spokesman of labour. He 
 could not even prevent the government from 
 enjoining the coal miners! 
 
 Thus the whole great world of labour in 
 America is in a new ferment — stirred to its 
 depth as it never was before. 
 
 As regards the tendencies now apparent it 
 may be divided into three great groups: 
 
 1. The old conservative unionists of the 
 American Federation of Labour led by 
 Gompers. While this group is wholly non- 
 revolutionary, it is still very powerful: 
 and if aroused, if it sees any of its hberties 
 sUpping away, it will prove a tough fighter. 
 This is equally true of the great railroad 
 brotherhoods. The present policy on the part 
 of many employers and politicians toward in- 
 discriminate attacks on all organized labour 
 tends to drive these conservatives into a more 
 radical position. Gompers, for example, finds 
 himself now attacked by an employer, Gary, 
 and a politician, Pomerene, for just the 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 71 
 
 
 kind of radicalism he has been fighting all his 
 lifel 
 
 2. The new progressive group. This is 
 mostly made up of the left wing within the 
 American Federation of Labour which has been 
 fighting Gompers for years and has now formed 
 a National Labour Party, with a program 
 much more radical, more socialistic, than that 
 of the American Federation of Labour. No 
 one knows yet how strong the sentiment 
 behind the movement is, but from what I 
 saw at the convention in Chicago I should 
 judge that it would take very little to precipitate 
 a considerable number of the workers of America 
 into radical political action. 
 
 3. The revolutionary groups. The chief of 
 these is the I. W. W. but there are, or have 
 been, many smaller bodies of communists, 
 anarchists and syndicalists, especially among the 
 foreign elements. In total mmibers this element 
 is very small, and divided up into many and 
 warring factions. 
 
 Labour unrest exists: profound changes in 
 alignments and leadership is going on. New 
 and more radical men are coming to the front. 
 Much will depend upon how this movement is 
 treated by employers and political leaders. If 
 it is indiscriminately attacked, if every leader 
 who proposes a plan, or advances an idea not 
 
72 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 approved from above, is called a " Bolshevik," 
 or arrested and clapped into jail, or deported, 
 the result will be to drive the whole movement 
 toward a more radical position, and more revo- 
 lutionary methods. Here is a great awakening 
 of life: new ideas and new enthusiasm: if it is 
 met with understanding, if there is evidence of a 
 desire for co-operation, there are possibilities of 
 a new constructive epoch in American industry. 
 Many such patient attempts at better under- 
 standing and co-operation are now being made 
 by both managers and men— I shall later tell 
 of some of them— but there are also abroad 
 wild councils of force which do not even try 
 to understand what is happening and which tend 
 to break down all the agencies of reasonableness 
 and conciliation, and make for the very revolu- 
 tion which they think they are preventing. 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 The Massed Fokces Behind the Industrial 
 Conflict — Organized Capital 
 
 IABOIIR, as I have tried to show in my 
 last chapter, presents no unbroken front. 
 ^ It is torn by factions, has no one pro- 
 gram, nor any undisputed leadership. It has 
 no unity. 
 
 But neither does the employers' side pre- 
 sent an unbroken front. Here also there 
 exist wide differences of policy and program: 
 an outline of which will lead to a clearer 
 understanding of the present industrial con- 
 troversies. 
 
 Probably Judge Gary is to-day the out- 
 standing representative of the more conserva- 
 tive group of employers — ^the right wing. He, 
 too, like Gompers, who typifies the more con- 
 servative group of organized labour, finds him- 
 self under attack. 
 
 Judge Gary does not quite belong to the 
 great group of industrial pioneers: Carnegie, 
 Rockefeller, Frick : but he represents in general 
 their attitude toward labour — the old tradition. 
 He came a little later. He was not a steel- 
 
 78 
 
74 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 master; he was the man of finance whose pur- 
 pose it was to develop and conserve. 
 
 There was something magnificent about these 
 pioneers: they were big, free men. They had 
 imagination. In a new America, they had an 
 unsullied canvas and they painted with a comet's 
 tail. One who visits the city of Gary gets a 
 vivid impression of the grand scale upon which 
 they worked. Thirteen years ago, there was 
 nothing here but a wilderness of sand-dunes; 
 and to-day a city of 80,000 people. I don't 
 know whether it was Judge Gary or some other, 
 but consider going there thirteen years ago, and 
 standing, let us say, upon one of the low hills 
 overlooking the wide grey lake and saying: 
 
 " Over there I will build my mills: there shall 
 run the main street of my city: there I shall 
 encourage churches and schools. This spot of 
 infertile sand I will cover with soil: I will water 
 it: I will plant trees. This shall be my park 
 where all the people may enjoy themselves." 
 
 Think, moreover, of having both the power 
 and the money— unlimited millions — to create 
 the city and the mills there planned, and to see 
 that creation succeed! 
 
 Well, these were genuinely big men and they 
 did a great work. There was something cosmic 
 about the way they dreamed, the way they built, 
 the way they accumulated money : and the way 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 75 
 
 they have given it away. Frick, dying the other 
 day, left $117,000,000 to the American people. 
 The very boldness and success with which they 
 created and built gave all the men of that gener- 
 ation an extraordinary sense of authority and 
 self-confidence. In visiting many of the offices 
 of the Steel Corporation, I found one motto, 
 printed upon card-board, upon the wall. It 
 somehow expressed the spirit of the place, in- 
 deed, the very spirit of American industry and 
 these were the confident words: 
 
 3t Can iBe Bone 
 
 Like so many of these early men. Judge Gary 
 came up from the bottom. He was born on a 
 farm in Illinois where as a boy he worked twelve 
 hours a day — as he relates when the twelve-hour 
 day in the steel mills is discussed; he was a 
 lawyer, a judge, and finally a great financial and 
 industrial organizer — the head to-day of the 
 greatest corporation in the world, with more 
 power over the lives of human beings than 
 many a king. A magic career! 
 
 These earlier men all dealt boldly not only 
 with material but with men. They were strong 
 individualists. They did not confer, or co- 
 
 ^^^bdU^^sl^S^. 
 
m 
 
 76 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 operate, or teach : they dictated. It was the way 
 of the times. They fought union labour when 
 they could, dealt with it when they must, and 
 finally crushed it. But in those days if a work- 
 man did not like the management, or the man- 
 agement like him, he could and did get out. But 
 then there was always a place for him to go: 
 there was always the West; and more or less 
 free land and free opportunity. The restless, 
 agitating, organizing spirits thus left the ranks 
 of the workers : whereas in Europe, there being 
 no easy way to escape, they remained in the 
 workers' ranks and agitated and organized. 
 
 But a change in this respect has come swiftly 
 in America: there is no longer a free escape: 
 no open and easy West. So the restless spirits, 
 more and more, have to remain where they are 
 and take out their restlessness in social organiza- 
 tion. This is only one of many profound 
 changes that have been going on in America 
 since Judge Gary was young: since the great 
 days of the creators and developers of industry. 
 I wonder sometimes if he fully visualizes these 
 changes 1 
 
 Judge Gary is an old man: he is 74 (Gompers 
 is 70)— a strong man with strong ideas, very 
 sure of himself. No one who talks with him— 
 as I did— can doubt his sincerity. He wants 
 to do right, he believes he is doing right. He 
 
 I, 
 ■ 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 77 
 
 is quiet-voiced and tranquil and deliberate. 
 When he talks he asserts very little, but seems 
 curiously to comment, to suggest, to question. 
 He is frank: and he has the courage of his 
 convictions. 
 
 I tried in a former chapter to show, in his 
 own words, just how he looks at the present 
 industrial ferment. He stands, so far as labour 
 is concerned, just about where Carnegie and 
 Frick stood in 1892. He judges the twelve-hour 
 day in his mills by his own twelve-hour day 
 sixty years ago on the farm. He has indeed seen 
 the approaching unrest and has tried to meet 
 it with a really wonderful development of wel- 
 fare work: safety devices, housing, hospitals, 
 pensions, play-grounds and the like. His cor- 
 poration spent $17,000,000 in 1918 in these 
 various activities which I hope to describe more 
 fully later, for they are as fine an experiment as 
 has anywhere been made of welfare work as a 
 means for meeting industrial unrest, and exhibit 
 both the strength and the weakness of that 
 method. 
 
 Judge Gary's autocracy has been benevolent: 
 but it has been an utter autocracy. As to the 
 new spirit stirring among the workers, especially 
 during and since the war, I think it fair to say- 
 judging by his own speeches and testimony — 
 that he has never sensed it at all. He has done 
 
 • 
 
ff 
 ll I 
 
 t .1 
 
 if' 
 * ', 
 
 78 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 iimch for the bodily comfort of his men: of the 
 soul of tlie modern worker he seems never to 
 have had a glimpse. 
 
 I said that Gompers and the American 
 Federation of Labour represented the most 
 conservative labour body in the world. Judge 
 Gary represents the most conservative group 
 of employers. It is. only in the United States 
 Steel Corporation and in certain independ- 
 ent steel companies that the twelve-hour work- 
 day and the seven-day week remain entrenched. 
 There is no metallurgical necessity for the long 
 day: the eight-hour day has been introduced in 
 England and in Germany: and in other indus- 
 tries having continuous operation, like the paper- 
 pulp industry, the three-shift system is the rule. 
 Judge Gary is also the last great bulwark 
 against labour unionism and collective bargain- 
 ing. Even in the steel industry, some of the 
 principal employers have clearly recognized that 
 new human devices must be created to meet 
 new human needs. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., 
 has introduced company unions and shop com- 
 mittees in his Colorado steel plants: and he has 
 the eight-hour day. The Midvale Steel Com- 
 pany, one of the great independents, also has a 
 shop-committee system — of which I shall speak 
 
 Of course, one great source of Judge Gary's 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 79 
 
 strength in his position as a leader is that he 
 has made his policy pay— and pay big. And 
 this is a tremendous argument anywhere in the 
 world. Here are the profits of the corporation 
 since 1914 — after deducting federal income 
 taxes: 
 
 1914 
 1915 
 
 1916 
 1917 
 1918 
 
 $ 58,267,925 
 107,832,016 
 303,449,476 
 253,608,200 
 167,562,280 
 
 There have been dividends and extra dividends 
 —amounting, on common stock in 1917 to five 
 per cent, regular and thirteen per cent, extra 
 and in 1918 to fourteen per cent. Large sums 
 of money have also gone into improvements of 
 the property and into surplus. 
 
 Do not think that these profits escape the 
 eyes of the workers. They are published in all 
 the labour papers : and when the argument that 
 the cost of introducing an eight-hour day makes 
 it prohibitive these figures are produced. One 
 of the labour papers has a heading called " Hid- 
 den News"; and into that column goes the 
 profit records of great employing corporations 
 of all sorts. Here is an item recently pub- 
 lished: 
 
 " The Western Sugar Company yesterday 
 declared an extra dividend of ten per cent, in 
 
80 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 addition to the regular quarterly dividend of 
 one and three-fourths per cent, on the common 
 and preferred stocks." 
 
 It is necessary in trying to understand this 
 problem of industrial unrest to see how these 
 things really look from below to the workers. 
 We must ask what the reaction is upon tens of 
 thousands of striking, steel workers, for example, 
 who are asking for better conditions when they 
 read these reports of the profits of the steel 
 trust: or upon the same men, struggling with 
 the high cost of living and the shortage of sugar, 
 when they see the large profits of companies 
 dealing in food. Get their point of view for a 
 moment! They feel powerful resentment: they 
 act upon the information they have: no one tries 
 to explain except the radical orators. Suppose 
 we cut off the radical orators, suppose we 
 destroy the radical hterature which assumes to 
 interpret these facts : does that change the facts 
 or remove the causes of resentment? If these 
 profits and conditions are necessary or reason- 
 able in industry, is there not some way to ex- 
 plain them so that the workers can understand? 
 I talked recently with a nimiber of employers: 
 one of whom had a strike in his plant lasting for 
 three months. It had nearly ruined him and 
 his business: the overhead charges were eating 
 him up. He told me eloquently of the diiBculties 
 
 i 
 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 81 
 
 i( 
 
 << 
 
 he had to meet, the complexities and hazards of 
 his business, the competitive nature of his field 
 of operations : and of the utter unreasonableness, 
 as he saw it, of his striking workers. I was so 
 much impressed with what he said that I asked : 
 
 " Isn't there some way that you could explain 
 yoiu- position to your workers, or their leaders, 
 as you have to me? " 
 
 He scouted the idea. 
 Have you tried? " 
 
 No — what's the use? They don't want to 
 understand: they can't understand." 
 
 " But," I said, " they understand enough to 
 tie you up and ruin you — and ruin themselves at 
 the same time, for that matter. Isn't it worth 
 trying? " 
 
 Judge Gary thus represents the most con- 
 servative American attitude toward labour: but 
 other groups and other ideas are everywhere 
 springing up. Let me tell a little experience 
 I had not long ago, for it throws a vivid light 
 on the whole problem of the employers' attitude 
 toward labour. I was waiting for a short time 
 in the reception room of one of the steel plants 
 at Gary. There happened to be four technical 
 publications on the table for waiting visitors to 
 look over. So I looked them over. One of them 
 was a copy of " System," another a copy of 
 " Industrial Management." And as I read, my 
 
82 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 wonder grew. Right here in one of Judge 
 Gary's offices was enough of the dynamite of 
 new ideas to blow up his system! 
 
 Here I read of shop committees, co-operation 
 with workers, the need of new kinds of manage- 
 ment based upon mutual understanding between 
 employers and employees. Let me quote one 
 paragraph— I'd like to quote many more: 
 
 " Industry to-day is drudgery for the average 
 worker— perhaps the great impulse toward in- 
 dustrial democracy is the desire to break the 
 bonds of irksome work and restore a condition 
 where labour will be a pleasure and not toil. In 
 the face of this aspiration, which has been work- 
 ing in industry for a century and has cut the 
 average working hours in two, what reason can 
 support the demand that we must work longer 
 hours? The unanswerable argument is ' it can't 
 be done.' We cannot run counter to the great 
 forces operating in industry." 
 
 When I read this, and some other things in 
 these books, I looked again to see if they were 
 not labour journals: and then I thought of 
 running out and calling in the secret service 
 officers who were then engaged in raiding homes 
 in Gary and capturing revolutionary literature. 
 I thought Judge Gary at least ought to know 
 what was going on inside his offices! 
 The publications I saw thus at random were 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 83 
 
 i 
 
 I! 
 
 expressions of a great movement within industry 
 itself to improve human relationships. Quietly, 
 but strongly, in the last dozen years has grown 
 up a new interest in management: schools of 
 management; a science of management and a 
 new profession, the specialist in industrial rela- 
 tionships, have come into existence. These men 
 are close to the problem itself and really know 
 the situation. Financial and business heads of 
 great corporations have often got very far away 
 from the human problems of the mills: but these 
 men are trying to get back again. They are the 
 men most responsible for production and for 
 the smooth running of the shops. Yet they are 
 relatively low-paid men, especially in the great 
 corporations. Their true interests are often 
 quite different from those of the bankers and 
 capitalists who control the industry. One some- 
 times hears urged the necessity, if we desire 
 greater activity and enterprise in industry, that 
 capital be better rewarded. There are a number 
 of old ladies in a town I know who hold stock in 
 the United States Steel Corporation. If you 
 rewarded them with five times the dividends they 
 now receive I suppose production of steel at 
 Pittsburgh would not be greatly increased. But 
 if you were to reward the managers and the 
 men who are on the job, no doubt there would 
 be an increase in production. 
 
1 
 
 I) di> 
 
 84 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 Here, in short, is a great new field, full of 
 life and suggestiveness, which I hope to develop 
 more completely in other chapters. There are 
 at present in both large and small industries— 
 but mostly in small industries— a great number 
 of hopeful experiments in human relationships 
 I between owners, managers and men: not only 
 the familiar collective. bargaining between unions 
 and employers, but many other arrangements, 
 including the shop-committee system, profit- 
 sharing, arbitration boards and so on. No one 
 of them is a " solution "—all of them are hope- 
 ful experiments. 
 
 I divided the labour movement in America 
 into three great groups : the employers fall also 
 into three groups. 
 
 1. The conservative capitalists of the Gary 
 type in whom the old individualistic impulse is 
 still very strong. They are often men who 
 represent, as Gary does, the financial side of 
 the industry rather than the technical side. 
 They do not come closely into contact with the 
 human side of the labour problem. 
 
 2. The great mass of employers, like those in 
 the building trades, the railroads, and in many 
 industries, who accept the principle of labour 
 organization and bargain collectively, not be- 
 cause they like to— though many now think it 
 the best and easiest way out— but because they 
 
 ' 
 
 J 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 85 
 
 must. Labour demands it and is strong enough 
 to enforce its demand. Some of the great inde- 
 pendent steel masters hke John D. Rockefeller, 
 Jr., have come a long way into the camp of the 
 progressives. 
 
 3. A group I should call the radicals if there 
 were not such a curse upon the name. These 
 are men of the new „m§nagement:e^^ 
 tjpe who try to look at industry from a scien- 
 tific point of view, who want to know the facts, 
 and are as much interested in the human m achine 
 
 ••"iiiiilwiliiiiiiiiKli. iiiiiiiii III.. iijiLjiiiiiiiM, ,1111, mi, -.-Jliiiit 
 
 as m the power-plant or the dynamos. They see 
 m some kind of understanding and co-operation 
 between management and men the o nly solution 
 of industrial problems. They do not deal with 
 the men because they are forced to, but because 
 they want to. They think harmonious relation- 
 ships in a factory will produce more steel, shoes, 
 sugar, than continual strife and suspicion. And 
 a surprising number of these men are trying to 
 practise what they believe— and some of their 
 results are most interesting. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 Awakening of the Public to the Industrial 
 
 Crisis 
 
 HEN I was in Chicago a man with 
 whom I was discussing the indus- 
 trial problem suddenly asked : 
 
 " What are you going to do about me? " 
 
 " What do you mean? " 
 
 " Well, I'm the Innocent Bystander. I'm the 
 man who gets the brick-bat intended for one of 
 the belligerents. I'm the Public. Whatever 
 happens I get hurt." 
 
 I have dealt in former chapters with the atti- 
 tude of various groups of employers and em- 
 ployees toward the present industrial unrest. 
 It is now important to consider the point of 
 view of the " great third party." The awaken- 
 ing of the public to the seriousness of the present 
 unrest, its threat to American institutions, is, in 
 some ways, the greatest news in the whole situa- 
 tion. 
 
 We are in the midst of a sudden, powerful, 
 and, at present, crude reassertion of public 
 rights. It is as though the American giant had 
 suddenly awakened — or just returned from war 
 
 86 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 87 
 
 •I 
 
 overseas!— and finding disorder all about, had 
 acted with terrific force and directness. It is 
 the American way — ^we may not at all approve 
 it, but there it is ! — to act first and inquire about 
 it afterward. I recall a saying of the early 
 days in the north woods, when the lumbermen 
 first went in: " Cut the trees, ask about the hues 
 afterward." There is much of this spirit still 
 left in America. 
 
 So we have pounced right and left upon dis- 
 turbers — with httle inquiry and less understand- 
 ing—tossed one handful of them back to Russia 
 and evidently propose to toss still others. No 
 one knows the number of thousands — or the fleet 
 of ships required to take them! A stupendous 
 business ! We have raided the offices and homes 
 of both wild and tame radicals, sometimes with 
 legal authority and sometimes without; we have 
 choked off radical orators; turned out radical 
 members of the legislature and now propose the 
 most sweeping and drastic legislation in the 
 world for dealing with disturbers. One bold 
 stroke at what seemed a threat to public rights 
 and public order — the pohce strike at Boston — 
 has made a presidential candidate! 
 
 It is not the way they do it in England : nor 
 yet in France: it is our way: and must be so 
 accepted and dealt with. 
 
 It is our way: and behind it, ruthless as it is, 
 
'. 
 
 m THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 and little as many of us can approve the methods 
 employed, there is a deep instinct that the self- 
 ish forces of cliques, groups, interests, in Ameri- 
 can life have grown too strong: and that " there 
 must," as one leader expressed it, " be some kind 
 tit of a new deal." 
 
 The causes of the present disorder and unrest 
 reach far back and deep down : the war merely 
 accelerated developments already under way. 
 At the bottom lies the popular discontent, which 
 has been growing for years, with the economic 
 arrangements of society : a feeling that they are 
 unjust and undemocratic: a feeling that while 
 there have been enormous developments in ma- 
 chinery and business organization, the social and 
 political structure has not kept pace with them. 
 This feeling is not pecuhar to America: it is 
 worldwide. 
 
 Some one has said that the greatest invention 
 of the " Wonderful Century " was not the steam 
 engine, or the dynamo, or wireless telegraphy, 
 but that extraordinary and potent device, im- 
 restricted social organization. 
 
 Groups everywhere that felt oppressed, or 
 wanted protection or privilege, organized to get 
 it. Capitalists organized, combined, trustified 
 —and succeeded beyond the dreams of avarice. 
 Labour organized and became powerful. Pro- 
 hibitionists organized and dried up the country. 
 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 89 
 
 Women organized and got the vote. Voluntary 
 social organization has for the last twenty-five 
 years been humanity's magic wand. It would 
 do anything! It has built up a wonderful tech- 
 nique of its own: it knows how to get money, 
 use propaganda, influence elections, force legis- 
 lators. It is a wonderful tool — used sometimes 
 for good purposes : sometimes for wholly selfish 
 purposes. 
 
 Consider more specifically labour organiza- 
 tion. I remember well the little, dismal, smoky 
 rooms over saloons that used to represent the 
 typical labour union headquarters of twenty-five 
 years ago: I thought of the contrast the other 
 day when I visited the fine hall — it cost several 
 hundred thousand dollars — built by the Street 
 Car Men's Union of Chicago. 
 
 Once the movement demonstrated its success 
 in improving the conditions of life for working- 
 men — and it was the only way they had — it 
 spread like wildfire. I was amazed the other day 
 to look at the list of unions affiliated with one of 
 the principal city central bodies : school-teachers, 
 actors, newspaper writers, architects, nurses. 
 They are all coming in. Public employees are 
 coming in: policemen, postmen. The movement 
 is even penetrating the rarified atmosphere where 
 authors and college professors are supposed to 
 dwell. I received a communication the other day 
 
 ■ 
 
II 
 
 90 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 from the Authors' League, of which I am a 
 member, that read strangely like many a trade- 
 union document— only the Pants Makers and 
 Hod Carriers have had longer experience and 
 know better how to do it. We authors have 
 gone at the business in our " labour union " of 
 standardizing contracts, making better terms 
 with our employers— the predatory and shame- 
 fully plutocratic publishers !— and working for 
 more pay and better living conditions. 
 
 " As a result of six years of unremitting ef- 
 fort," remarks this document, " the author en- 
 joys a new standing and a greater security than 
 at any other time in the history of the profes- 
 sion." 
 
 You see what our union does! We're better 
 off than ever Shakespeare was: or Dickens or 
 Thackeray, or Cervantes, or Goethe. We're 
 securer: we have a new standing: and organiza- 
 tion did it! 
 
 As I say, this tendency toward group organi- 
 zation has gone to great lengths in our society. 
 It has been a powerful centrifugal influence, dis- 
 integrating our life into thousands of small, 
 warring groups, societies, factions— each seeking 
 its own advancement, its own security, regardless 
 of anything else. This has applied to both em- 
 ployers and employees. 
 
 One reason why political life has reached such 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 91 
 
 
 a low ebb in America — ^why politics attracts so 
 poor a quality of leadership — ^is because vital 
 men who really want something done feel surer 
 of getting it through outside organizations, than 
 through the indirect and cumbrous machinery of 
 politics. 
 
 In its essence this strong, crude impulse 
 toward a new public order represents a power- 
 ful reaction from these disintegrating tendencies. 
 
 For years we were hammering selfish capital- 
 istic organizations — we are still at it — and now 
 we are hammering labour organizations. We 
 don't want either Gary or Gompers to boss us: 
 to control our lives, or force their will upon us. 
 
 We have had one or two recent object lessons 
 of stunning force. The entire 110,000,000 of us 
 have seen our business paralysed, our production 
 cut off in the steel industry because Gary and 
 Gompers could not agree. The 110,000,000 of 
 us have suffered still more acutely because 400,- 
 000 of us who are coal miners stopped producing 
 a basic necessity of life. There was never before 
 in America such an acute demonstration of 
 group interest against public interest. No won- 
 der the American giant is angry — blindly angry 
 — and beats about in a kind of berserkian rage 
 — not at all particular as to what heads he hits, 
 or how. 
 
 If this rage, however, were the only expression 
 
 

 03 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 of the public interest the outlook would be dark 
 indeed. But it is not. While there are power- 
 ful forces using the fine burst of passion for 
 a " new deal," for " public rights," for " law and 
 order" in America to serve their ovm selfish 
 interests: using it as a smoke-screen to conceal 
 their own purposes: there is, it seems to me, a 
 new sense abroad tha,t law and order must be 
 based upon a real understanding of the new 
 conditions and upon a solid foundation of jus- 
 tice. 
 
 Never before has there been such a number of 
 inquiries from all sides and by all kinds of 
 organizations: or such a desire to get at the 
 truth. We have had government inquiries — 
 one of them the President's Commission — which 
 have aroused unusual public interest. It is 
 nothing that the President's first commission 
 failed: at least it failed dramatically, with the 
 protagonists of the opposing issues clearly re- 
 vealed. 
 
 On what may be called the side of the capital- 
 ists the awakening is marked. The other day, in 
 the office of one of the notable figures of Wall 
 Street — ^where one would least expect to find 
 such a sentiment-I saw framed and hanging 
 on the wall this quotation from a speech by Mr. 
 Asquith, delivered in January of last year 
 (1919) : 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 93 
 
 The old system has broken down. War was its final 
 declaration of insolvency. New factors are at work. 
 Science not only has not said her last words but is fairly 
 to be described as stiU only lisping the alphabet of annihi- 
 lation. 
 
 Organizations such as Chambers of Commerce 
 and Merchants' Associations have been working 
 on the problem. They all begin with the as- 
 sumption that the old system is at least cracking, 
 if not, as Asquith says, broken down: and that 
 new methods must be devised to meet the situa- 
 tion. I have before me, for example, the report 
 of the Merchants' Association of New York, 
 which attributes the difficulty to the greed and 
 blindness of both groups— labour and capital— 
 and suggests the following remedies— which are 
 very different in tenor from those which would 
 have been recommended by a similar organiza- 
 tion a few years ago: 
 
 The recognition by both employers and employees that 
 the determination to achieve national prosperity rather than 
 to enforce maximum selfish returns should be the con- 
 trolling motive in industry. 
 
 The establishment of a recognized and permanent method 
 of conference between the employer and his employees. 
 
 The limitation of the economic law of supply and de- 
 mand as a basis of labour policy by the utilization of a 
 more human doctrine. 
 
 The Chamber of Commerce of the United 
 States has also made public the careful report 
 
 ' 
 
94 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 of a committee which lays down thirteen 
 "principles of industrial relations." Among 
 these principles are the following: 
 
 The public interest requires adjustment of industrial 
 relations by peaceful methods. 
 
 The right of workers to organize is as clearly recognized 
 as that of any other element or part of the community. 
 
 Industrial harmony ai;id prosperity will be most ef- 
 fectually promoted by adequate representation of the 
 parties in interest. 
 
 The Church, which represents a great con- 
 servative opinion in America, is moving as never 
 before; trying to understand and meet the new 
 conditions and problems. In one church I know 
 on a recent Sunday morning one large men's 
 class discussed " The Relation Between Wages 
 and Production," another was studying Proffs- 
 sor Rauschenbusch's book on social problems in 
 the light of Christian teaching, and a women's 
 class was considering " The Health of the Com- 
 munity." 
 
 One great church movement has been spend- 
 ing tens of thousands of dollars making an in- 
 vestigation of the steel strike: and one need only 
 refer to the Social Reconstruction Program 
 of the Federal Council of Churches in America 
 and the pronouncement of the Catholic War 
 Council of the United States to be convinced 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 95 
 
 i 
 
 of the deep and serious interest of the churches 
 in this problem. 
 
 In a recent statement the Unitarian Church of 
 America says: 
 
 " The claim to a more equitable distribution 
 of the profits of industry is not only clamorous, 
 but just." 
 
 A sense that the old system is unjust and 
 needs revision permeates all groups of our 
 society. A prominent business man took from 
 his pocket the other day and read to me this 
 paragraph: 
 
 The rapid growth of great cities, the enormous masses 
 of immigrants (many of them ignorant of our language), 
 and the greatly increased complications of life have created 
 conditions under which the provisions for obtaining jus- 
 tice which were formerly sufficient are sufficient no longer. 
 I think the true criticism which we should make upon our 
 own conduct is that we have been so busy about our indi- 
 vidual affairs that we have been slow to appreciate the 
 changes of conditions which to so great an extent have put 
 justice beyond the reach of the poor. 
 
 "What Bolshevik said that?" he inquired; 
 and answered his own question, " It was Elihu 
 Root." 
 
 He was quoting from a new and exhaustive 
 study of the " present denial of justice to the 
 poor," made by so respectable a body as the 
 Carnegie Foundation. 
 
I 
 
 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 Not only public and business and religious 
 bodies are profoundly awakened, but labour 
 groups as well. 
 
 Labour is learning that it has public as well 
 as special interests, that to a large extent it is 
 the public. I heard a speech at the convention 
 of the Labour Party at Chicago in November 
 by Glenn E. Plumb, whose name is connected 
 with a new plan, the Plumb plan, for railroad 
 control. He set forth the new situation in a 
 way which seemed to startle some of the labour 
 leaders there assembled. He said that in the 
 early days of organized labour craft groups 
 could get together and by organization force up 
 wages, the cost of which the employers promptly 
 passed along to the public. But what is the 
 public? asked Mr. Plumb, and went on to show 
 that a large majority of the pubhc was made 
 up of wage-earners or wage-earners' families, 
 so that when a strong union got a raise in wages 
 most of it was paid by other wage-earners. As 
 more and more labour organizations got into the 
 field, the more wages were forced up, the faster 
 grew the process by which increasing wages for 
 one group chased up the living costs of all the 
 other groups. 
 
 He might also have said, but did not, that not 
 only increasing wages, but lessening production, 
 whether caused by the limitation of output by 
 
 I 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 97 
 
 labour unions, the inefficiency of employers or by 
 strikes or lockouts, had to be met by the public, 
 a majority of which is also wage-earners. In 
 short, we are all the public toward each separate 
 greedy group, whether of workers or em- 
 ployers. 
 
 Mr. Plumb's idea is that there has got to be a 
 " new deal, a new arrangement of society " ; he 
 has a " plan " for working it out, so has the new 
 Labour Party, so have the socialists. I am not 
 here entering into the merits or weaknesses of 
 any of these plans or proposals, whether coming 
 from labour or capitalistic organizations, of 
 churches or other public bodies, but calling at- 
 tention to them as evidences of the wide awaken- 
 ing to the seriousness of the problem and the 
 effort to grapple with it. 
 
 A new note was also prominent in the so- 
 called " bill-of -rights " issued by a group of 
 119 union leaders at Washington on December 
 12, 1919. There is a clear attempt to meet the 
 new pubhc criticism of labour organization, 
 especially regarding productivity and efficiency, 
 by the proposal of new remedies for the organi- 
 zation of industry. No group, any longer, dares 
 leave the public out of account. 
 
 All this groping for a better imderstanding 
 of conditions: this assumption on all sides that 
 there ought to be more justice, more democracy 
 
98 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 in our industrial relationships — ^however uncer- 
 tain yet of specific applications of new remedies 
 —is surely the most hopeful element in the 
 present unrest. 
 
 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 Approaches to a Solution of the Problems 
 
 — BY Americanization, as Suggested 
 
 BY THE Employers 
 
 THE clear recognition by the public, as 
 well as by the parties immediately con- 
 cerned, of the present conditions of 
 industrial unrest, and the real danger to America 
 inherent in them, is surely the best foundation 
 for making a new start. It is surprising, the 
 number of associations, both voluntary aiid 
 representative; religious, social and political 
 organizations, and trade groups, as well as indi- 
 viduals, now at work upon the problem in some 
 of its aspects. Many plans, schemes, panaceas, 
 are being suggested: many experiments being 
 tried. Some show great labour: some repre- 
 sent patient investigation: some shoot wholly 
 wide of the mark: some reveal little or no knowl- 
 edge of real conditions. But their significance 
 lies in the exhibition they give of sincere desire 
 to meet the situation in some constructive way. 
 
 We know that we are in trouble. 
 
 We have the desire and the will to find a way 
 out. 
 
n i 
 
 it 
 
 
 100 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 What we lack are clearness and unity of pur- 
 pose in seeking a remedy. 
 
 Three main ways of approach to a " solu- 
 tion" present themselves: 
 
 First: that of the extremists on both sides: 
 the "shoot 'em down" program on the part 
 of the intolerant employer: the " blow 'em up " 
 program on the part of the intolerant worker. 
 Either way lies perdition. 
 
 Second: that of a great mass of employers 
 and employees— and of the pubhc as well— who 
 see the problem dimly (or some part of it) and 
 who want really to find a constructive solution, 
 but who think it can be reached in some large 
 general way. They want a quick, wholesale 
 remedy that won't hurt much, or cost much, or 
 take much time. They do not yet understlnd 
 how deep-seated, of how long duration, how 
 chronic, the disease has become. For example, 
 it appears vividly to some employers that in the 
 recent great strikes most of the trouble was 
 caused by " foreigners," by " aliens," and " alien 
 ideas." They do not follow the extremists in 
 demanding instant suppression and deportation, 
 but they do jump at what seems to them a ready 
 and wholesale remedy: "Americanization." 
 Americanize these workers and you cure the 
 trouble! 
 
 On the part of the workers there is a similar 
 
 !» 
 
 I w 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 101 
 
 example of the desire for a broad general 
 remedy. They believe that much of the trouble 
 is due to unjust laws, the oppression of judicial 
 injunctions, outworn political methods, and pro- 
 pose a new pohtical party which will overturn 
 the old system, or parts of it, and construct a 
 new one by law. 
 
 Third : the third group is a much smaller one 
 as yet, but it is made up of those employers and 
 managers and men who are beginning to see the 
 depth and width and length of the problem, and 
 whose approach is based upon the patient 
 method of scientific inquiry guided by a spirit 
 of genuine goodwill. They strive to know all 
 the facts and to get at a real cure, through 
 steady day-by-day practice and experimentation 
 in shops and factories. These are the men actu- 
 ally on the ground, not distant financiers, nor 
 distant labour leaders, nor distant theorists. 
 These are the men who must get at a modus 
 Vivendi or be ruined. The work that some of 
 these good-will employers and managers are 
 doing is as fine and high as anything to be found 
 in this world to-day. 
 
 Now, in this chapter and the next, in order to 
 get at least two of the more general remedies out 
 of the way first, I will take up the subject of 
 the present campaign for Americanization as 
 suggested by the employers' end of the con- 
 
ill 
 
 102 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 troversy: and political action as suggested by 
 the workers. Both are valuable movements : our 
 foreigners do need " Americanization " and need 
 it badly: and the workers do need political ex- 
 pression: but we must understand thoroughly 
 what is implied by each movement and how far 
 it is intended to go with it. In the following 
 chapters I shall exhibit some of the more inten- 
 sive and scientific experiments and try to show 
 how far each is effective in meeting the trouble 
 —for example, welfare work, the shop-commit- 
 tee system, the method of continuous negotiation 
 and arbitration as remarkably practised in the 
 clothing industry, the new science of manage- 
 ment as stimulated from the employers' side, 
 and the new impulse toward co-operative enter- 
 prises among the workers. 
 ^ Consider now the subject of " Americaniza- 
 tion." I know of a meeting held not long ago 
 by a group of business men in New York City 
 to discuss this problem. They were deeply con- 
 cerned about it. The suggestion made in all 
 seriousness by the principal speaker was that 
 a certain number of those present contribute 
 enough money to have a large number of 
 copies of the Constitution of the United States 
 printed and distributed. He said that there was 
 a Bible in practically every hotel-room in 
 America: there ought also to be a Constitution, 
 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 103 
 
 People must get back to the sources! At an- 
 other meeting I know of a speaker suggested a 
 wide advertising of American principles in the 
 newspapers: said that it had been already 
 adopted with great success in one or two cities. 
 Another plan provided for a resurrection of 
 the "four-minute men" who spoke so effec- 
 tively for the liberty loan campaigns during 
 the war, in which American principles would 
 be presented in theatres, schools and so on 
 —in four minutes! Other proposals, many 
 of them very valuable so far as they go, pro- 
 vided for the wide teaching of the English 
 language in night schools, shop schools and 
 the like. This is actually being done in many 
 places. 
 
 I know of one plant in Milwaukee, a tan- 
 nery, where 406 foreign-born employees recently 
 completed nine weeks instruction in the English 
 language, speaking, reading, writing and arith- 
 metic. They had an hour every day for five 
 days each week on the company's time and with- 
 out loss of wages. The results were excellent. 
 There are said to be 500 industrial plants in 
 America where work of this sort is being carried 
 on. It is not only good for the workers but it 
 pays the employer to have a "one language 
 plant." Certain cities like Cleveland have begun 
 serious campaigns to teach English to foreigners 
 
104 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 and there has been a wide revival of interest in 
 night schools and adult schools. 
 
 There have also been many proposals to for- 
 ward the same end by law. In its report, after 
 myestigating the steel strike, the Senate Com- 
 mittee recommended a change in our naturaliza- 
 tion laws to require " some education of all 
 foreigners, at least to the extent of speaking the 
 American language,"' and providing that if they 
 do not acquire this knowledge within five years 
 after their arrival they may be deported. 
 
 All of these suggestions, though some of 
 them indicate an extraordinary failure to visual- 
 ize the stupendous nature of the problem they 
 are attacking so lightly, are significant of one 
 great fact— and this is the conviction that the 
 " melting-pot " idea of America has failed, the 
 idea that merely being in America was enough, 
 by some kind of magic hocus-pocus, to turn vast 
 numbers of foreigners of old and resistant races 
 into good Americans. 
 
 Consider this famih'ar and yet always startling 
 fact, that in the last twenty-two years since 1897 
 —the period of the greatest expansion of Ameri- 
 can industry— over 15,000,000 immigrants have 
 come to America. Twice as many people as 
 there are to-day in all Canada! A stupendous 
 migration I Unlike the eariier immigrants, who 
 distributed themselves more evenly throughout 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 105 
 
 
 the nation, these later peoples have tended to 
 settle in indigestible lumps in the industrial 
 regions. Foreigners largely dominate the great 
 basic industries of the nation: coal, steel, oil, 
 textiles, the packing-houses and the clothing 
 trades. We have been so confident of the magic 
 of the melting-pot, so busy making money, that 
 we were bhnd to the fact that instead of trans- 
 forming these masses of foreigners, American 
 institutions were being transformed by them. 
 After an investigation of certain conditions in 
 the textile industry eight years ago I wrote: 
 
 American workmen with American standards have 
 largely disappeared from the textile industry, and even 
 the solid English and Scotch workers are now flying before 
 the immigrants from southern Europe who can, or will 
 attempt to, exist on lower wages. The tendency is all 
 toward grading downward. The danger is that these 
 low-living, hopeless conditions will become the established 
 mode of life. They may become the typical American 
 conditions. 
 
 There is, indeed, much to be done with educa- 
 tion, with the teaching of English, with instruc- 
 tion in American ideas, but these things barely 
 scratch the surface of the problem. 
 
 " When we get them so that they can under- 
 stand us," asks one critic pertinently, "what 
 are we going to say to them? " 
 
J 
 
 ■I 
 
 
 106 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 Americanism has got to be learned as the 
 original Americans learned it, by practice, by 
 great freedom to talk, to read, to associate. One 
 great fount of Americanism was the New 
 England town-meeting; representing free asso- 
 ciation, free discussion, common effort. But 
 the masses of foreigners in many industries are 
 prevented from having either free associations 
 among themselves to * affect their own lives, or 
 free association or co-operation with the manage- 
 ment to make industry more efficient and p^- 
 ductive. And in some cases the conditions of 
 their employment are such that they could not 
 possibly avail themselves of such agencies of 
 "Americanization" if they had them. 
 
 I met a Serbian steel workers at Gary, who 
 said to me passionately: 
 
 " They accuse us of not becoming Americans. 
 When do we get time? Can a man working in a 
 blast-furnace— and anybody knows that ain't 
 no boy's job — twelve hours a day, or even ten 
 hours, get time to learn English — or learn any- 
 thing else? What in hell do they expect of us? " 
 They have, indeed, night schools in Gary 
 and in other steel centres, but as one teacher 
 told me plaintively, not many come for very 
 long. "They can't keep awake," he said. 
 Father Kazincy, a Polish priest in Pennsylvania, 
 bitterly complained of the long hours and Sun- 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 107 
 
 day work to the Senate Committee because his 
 people could not "have any religion." He 
 said regarding the Americanization schools : 
 
 " They are not a very great success for the 
 simple reason that the men are overworked and 
 they do not feel like going to the schools and 
 depriving their families of their company after 
 these long hours. Sundays they have none, 
 for most of them go to work." 
 
 In spite of all the faults and excesses of 
 labour unionism — and they are many — I think 
 no one who studies the situation honestly can 
 escape the conclusion that it is one of the very 
 greatest of all agencies of Americanization for 
 these foreigners: for here they really practise 
 free association, free speech, free action. Union- 
 ism to-day is almost the only agency that is free 
 from any distinctions of " race, colour or previ- 
 ous condition of servitude." I once investigated 
 a strike among the clothing workers in New 
 York. I found in the union Jews, Americans, 
 Germans, Italians, Lithuanians, Poles and even 
 Irish and Scotch, all working together in a 
 common cause. No other force tends more 
 strongly to secure the amalgamation of these 
 diverse peoples or to inspire them with a com- 
 mon public opinion than these unions. To-day, 
 I believe the unions in the clothing industry in 
 America which are now co-operating fully with 
 
Si" 
 
 I 
 
 all 
 ■l 
 
 108 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 the employers, are doing more to hold their own 
 radical elements in check— by the force of their 
 own inner public opinion— than any policy of 
 outside force and deportation on the part of the 
 government could possibly do. 
 
 The American elements in our population are 
 fully as much in need of training in American- 
 ism as most of the foreigners: for Americanism 
 is not a language, or a flag, or even a constitu- 
 tion, but a certain free and generous point of 
 view. It is a spirit: an attitude toward hfe: a 
 full acceptance of the idea that all men should 
 have free opportunity for the development of 
 the best that is in them. It cannot be given 
 from above: it has to come from within. It 
 cannot look upon any man as a mere cog in a 
 machine, as do those who believe in the com- 
 modity theory of labour, nor yet as a machine, 
 as the early and orthodox scientific managers 
 seemed to do: but he must be considered as a 
 human being. And in the larger part of Ameri- 
 can industry to-day this kind of real American- 
 ism is denied the workers and denied them by 
 Americans. It is the great fundamental error 
 of our system. 
 
 There must be, in short, a real application of 
 the principles of American democracy to in- 
 dustry— "a full recognition of the right of 
 these who work, in whatever rank," as President 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 109 
 
 Wilson expresses it, "to participate in some 
 organic way in every decision which directly 
 affects their welfare or the part they play in 
 industry." 
 
 Herbert Hoover expresses the same idea in 
 another way: 
 
 " The paramount business of every American 
 to-day is this business of finding a solution to 
 these issues, but this solution must be found by 
 Americans, in a practical American way, based 
 upon American ideas, on American philosophy 
 of life." 
 
 He says that the "primary question is the 
 better division of the products of industry and 
 the steady development of higher productivity." 
 There must be a "better distribution of 
 profits " : and maximum production " cannot be 
 obtained without giving a voice in the adminis- 
 tration of production to all sections of the com- 
 munity concerned in the specific problem: . . . 
 it cannot be obtained by the domination of any 
 one element." 
 
 In short, there must be more democracy in 
 industry. No one autocratic element, whether 
 the great steel employers at one end of the 
 scale, or the radical labour leaders at the other, 
 can be permitted to dominate: there must be a 
 greater representation in administration of all 
 the elements concerned: and there must be a 
 
110 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 better distribution of the products of the com- 
 mon toil. This is the true Americanization of 
 industry: and it is the only method by which 
 production of goods, now the greatest need of 
 the world, can be stimulated. 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 Approaches to a Solution or the Problem — 
 
 BY Political Action, as Suggested by 
 
 THE Workers — The New 
 
 Labour Party 
 
 ONE striking product of the present up- 
 heaval of industrial unrest is a new 
 national Labour Party, born at a con- 
 vention at Chicago in November, 1919. 
 
 It is important to inquire, if we are to under- 
 stand the present situation, just what this move- 
 ment represents, who compose it, and how much 
 it means. We know what a tremendous power 
 the Labour Party is becoming in the politics of 
 Great Britain: does this new movement presage 
 a similar development in America? 
 
 I attended the convention at Chicago, as I also 
 attended the Convention of the British Labour 
 Party in London, June, 1918, at which the 
 widely heralded report upon reconstruction — 
 really the declaration of the new general policy 
 of labour in the British Isles — ^was adopted. 
 
 Several features of the convention at Chicago 
 are worthy of note. In the first place the fact 
 that it was held at Chicago is significant. 
 
 in 
 
'Ill 
 
 112 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 Labour is more closely organized, more self- 
 conscious, more advanced in its views in Chicago 
 than in any other American city. It was the 
 first large city to have a local labour party: 
 in the last campaign (1919) it polled 56,000 
 votes for John Fitzpatrick for mayor (while 
 the socialist candidates polled 28,000) out of a 
 total poll of over 600,000 votes. This, then, was 
 the friendliest atmosphere for such a convention 
 that could be found in the country. 
 
 It was an unexpectedly spontaneous conven- 
 tion. It was run from the floor and not from 
 the rostrum. It was not cut and dried. I 
 think the number of delegates who came (there 
 were about 900 from thirty-five states) rather 
 surprised the promoters of the enterprise. A 
 great many false reports were disseminated 
 about it : that the convention split hopelessly on 
 several issues: one of them prohibition: and 
 that the delegates from the Farmers' Non- 
 partisan League, with Governor Frazier at their 
 head, had withdrawn. As a matter of fact, it 
 was an unusually harmonious convention which 
 did the work it set out to do: and Governor 
 Frazier did not withdraw, because he was never 
 there: and the Non-Partisan League fraternal 
 delegates remained to the end. The new party 
 was organized and is preparing to place candi- 
 dates in nomination not only for national offices 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 113 
 
 at the election next fall, but also to enter as 
 many local and state campaigns as possible. 
 
 Two warring attitudes toward political action 
 have long existed in the ranks of organized 
 labour in America. One of them is represented 
 by the conservative wing of the American 
 Federation of Labour headed by Gompers. 
 Gompers has always fought independent politi- 
 cal action: or a distinct labour party. He has 
 been for the policy of working just as the cor- 
 porations have always worked, as the anti- 
 Saloon League, and the Women Suffrage As- 
 sociations have worked: within the old parties, 
 or by lobbying in Congress or legislatures, or 
 by supporting this or that candidate upon a 
 declaration of his views concerning certain de- 
 mands of labour. He has never even been as 
 advanced in his method as the Farmers' Non- 
 partisan League of the northwest, which accepts 
 the old two-party system, but tries to seize 
 control of one of them from within — as it has 
 succeeded in doing in North Dakota. 
 
 Gompers' policy for years was attacked by the 
 radical wing of the American Federation 
 of Labour led chiefly by the socialists, and 
 once or twice he was nearly unseated. The 
 war smashed the old socialist party: but 
 by no means altered the views of the left 
 wing of labour regarding political action. And 
 
114 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 the convention at Chicago was, in reahty, the 
 independent expression of these radicals. Some 
 of its chief leaders, like Max Hayes and Duncan 
 McDonald, President of the Illinois Coal- 
 Miners, were formerly memhers of the socialist 
 party. Its chief leader, John Fitzpatrick, repre- 
 sents the " Chicago crowd," which, while main- 
 taining their position within the American Fed- 
 eration of Labour, dre more or less openly in 
 revolt against Gompers and many of his poh- 
 cies. The Chicago Convention was counte- 
 nanced by Gompers in no way, nor did any 
 national union send official delegates: the con- 
 vention was a rank-and-file movement made up 
 of delegates from local or central organizations 
 in thirty-five states. 
 
 The spirit of the convention was rather well 
 typified by the personality of its principal 
 leader: John Fitzpatrick. Fitzpatrick was born 
 in Ireland, is a horse-shoer by trade, worked as 
 a youth in the packing-houses at Chicago. He 
 is a Catholic and a total abstainer. He has been 
 for years active in the labour movement, and 
 President of the Chicago Federation of Labour. 
 He is a powerfully built man, smokes a pipe 
 continually, is a whirl-wind orator, and much 
 trusted by his following. He is an excellent 
 organizer: but he represents a type of labour 
 leader that is passing: the fiercely oratorical. 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 115 
 
 denunciatory, heavy-fighting type, which came 
 up doing great service in the hurly-burly of the 
 early days of labour organization. He knows 
 well the strategy of strikes, but has done no real 
 constructive or political thinking: has no states- 
 manlike plan. 
 
 His argument for a new labour party is based 
 upon the conviction — which is shared by a very 
 large and growing proportion of organized 
 labour — that the two old parties are controlled 
 by capitahsts and Wall Street, that the courts 
 are used by employers' interests to defeat the 
 aspirations of labour, that public offices gener- 
 ally are filled by "labour-haters"; and there 
 being no justice or right to be expected from 
 either of the old parties, the only alternative is 
 for labour to have its own political organization. 
 Fitzpatrick's speech at the convention was de- 
 scribed by one of the delegates as the " groan of 
 a wounded giant." Like most of the other 
 speeches it was shot through with a fierce spirit 
 of revolt — and there was ammimition a-plenty 
 at hand for every speaker. They denounced the 
 government injunction against the miners: the 
 threatened anti-strike provisions in the Cummins 
 railroad bill: the deportations: the treatment of 
 strikers in the steel centres: the profiteers. 
 
 The mission of the Labour Party was thus 
 set forth in the resolutions; 
 
f 
 
 
 116 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 The Labour Party was organized to assemble into a new 
 majority tbe men and women who work, but who have been 
 scattered as helpless minorities in the old parties under the 
 leadership of the confidence men of big business. 
 
 These confidence men, by exploitation, rob the workers 
 of the product of their activities and use the huge profits 
 thus gained to finance the old political parties, by which 
 they gain and keep control of the government. They with- 
 hold money from the worker and use it to make him pay for 
 his own defeat. , 
 
 Labour is aware of this and throughout the world the 
 workers have reached the determination to reverse this con- 
 dition and take control of their own lives and their own 
 government. 
 
 In this country this can and must be achieved peacefully 
 by the workers uniting and marching in unbroken phalanx 
 to the ballot boxes. It is the mission of the Labour 
 Party to bring this to pass. 
 
 But when the delegates who, h"ke Fitzpatriek, 
 expressed their sense of the injustices and 
 wrongs that labour suflFers, came to the forging 
 of a platform: a constructive policy: they ex- 
 hibited the greatest possible contrast to the 
 British Labour Party. Nothing had been 
 thought out, or worked out. Instead of a care- 
 ful, studied plan of social reconstruction such as 
 British Labour adopted, their platform repre- 
 sents a miscellaneous collection of remedies sug- 
 gested, more or less extemporaneously, by vari- 
 ous delegates. Apparently they put in every 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 117 
 
 reform that any delegate wanted — from the 
 nationalization of unused land to the abolition 
 of the United States Senate. 
 
 Certain provisions aim to reach the radical 
 farmers' group, for example: 
 
 Credits for farmers " as cheap and available as those 
 afforded any other legitimate and responsible industry." 
 
 Farmers to be assured prices for their products that 
 will meet cost of production and ** a reasonable margin." 
 
 Women's organizations are favoured in these 
 planks:— 
 
 Single standards of morals in enforcement of laws af- 
 fecting divorce and the sexual relation, with age of con- 
 sent for both sexes at 18 years. 
 
 A wage " based upon the cost of living and the right 
 to maintain a family in health and comfort without labour 
 of mothers and children." 
 
 Prohibition of labour of children under 16 years. 
 
 Among the other planks are legacies from the 
 old populist party, the " Bull Moose " move- 
 ment, and planks aimed to satisfy the more 
 advanced socialists and other radical groups, 
 the municipal reformers and the trade unionists, 
 as follows: — 
 
 Repeal of the espionage act. 
 
 Freedom of speech and assemblage. 
 
 A league of nations based upon the 14 points. 
 
118 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 "All basic industries which require large scale produc- 
 tion and are in reality upon a noncompetitive basis "—rail- 
 ways, mines and forests— to be nationalized. 
 
 Endorsement of the Plmnb plan for railroad control. 
 Heavier income and inheritance taxes. 
 The banking business " to be placed in the hands of the 
 federal government." 
 An executive budget in Congress. 
 
 Abolition or curtailment of the supreme court's right of 
 veto over national legislation. 
 
 Popular election of federal judges. 
 Guaranteed right of workers to bargain collectively. 
 State or federal aid to provide land and homes for 
 residents of town and country. 
 
 Workers to have a real voice in the management of busi- 
 ness and industry. 
 
 Abolition of detective and strike-breaking agencies. 
 
 Protection of workers from the competition of " convict- 
 made, sweat-shop or child-labour products or goods brought 
 from other countries that are produced by cheap labour for 
 the purpose of underselling the American product." 
 
 A maximum working day of eight hours, and a 44-hour 
 week. 
 
 Abolition of unemployment by various methods. 
 
 Continuation of war-time soldiers' and sailors' insurance 
 and the extension of such life insurance by the government 
 without profit to all men and women. 
 
 All government work to be done directly, not by 
 contract. 
 
 Union label on all federal, state or local government 
 supplies and materials. 
 
 Full political rights for railroad and civil service em- 
 ployees. 
 
 , Home rule for municipalities. 
 
 f I 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 119 
 
 Amendments to the United States Constitution to be 
 submitted to the direct vote of the people. 
 Initiative, referendum and recall. 
 
 Here are thirty-two planks — a mixture of 
 political, economic, social and financial reforms 
 — representing big and little ideas from every 
 source, and intended to attract all groups of 
 revolt. 
 
 And yet, although it welcomes to its rank 
 workers of both " hand and brain " in support of 
 " the principles of political, social and industrial 
 democracy" it reveals no larger vision — as do 
 both the British and French labour movements — 
 of broad pubhc and national needs. Take the 
 single matter of large and efficient production 
 which is to-day for the pubhcs of all nations 
 becoming a crying issue. In both England and 
 France immediate and large production are 
 being recognized as truly the concern of labour 
 as well as of other elements of the population. 
 Here, for example, are some sentences from 
 the resolutions of the British Labour Party: 
 
 What the nation needs is undoubtedly a great bound 
 onward in its aggregate productivity. But this cannot be 
 secured merely by pressing the manual workers to more 
 strenuous toil, or even by encouraging the " Captains of 
 Industry " to a less wasteful organization of their several 
 enterprises on a profit-making basis. What the Labour 
 Party looks to is a genuinely scientific reorganization of the 
 
« 
 
 11 
 
 120 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 nation's industry, the equitable sharing of the proceeds 
 among all who participate in any capacity and the adop- 
 tion of those systems and methods of administration and 
 control that may be found, best to promote, not profiteering, 
 but the public interest. 
 
 The French Confederation of Labour at its 
 Congress at Lyons in September, 1919, also 
 shows that it sees clearly the need of greater 
 production, especially since the war. Its reso- 
 lution says: 
 
 To continue production in order to satisfy the needs of 
 men, to increase it in order to put at the disposal of all a 
 greater total of consumable wealth, these are questions to 
 which the world situation resulting from the war has given 
 a formidable importance. 
 
 The labour movement affirms that it should and can an- 
 swer to this appeal, but it also declares that any effort in 
 this direction is irreconcilable with the maintenance of the 
 present regime. That appeal to labour to which all 
 labourers are ready to respond, must henceforth rest upon 
 the complete recognition of the rights of labour. 
 
 It is probably unfair to compare this young 
 labour party with the much older and more 
 experienced movements of Europe : but we must 
 try to see exactly where it stands. It faces a 
 much greater problem, in other ways, than the 
 British Labour Party. Here the new party 
 has not even the support of its own group, as in 
 - England, for the powerful following of Gompers 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 121 
 
 is in opposition. It thus represents only one 
 wing of the labour movement. 
 
 America is also a huge country with far more 
 diversified interests than any European country. 
 Here the agricultural and small-town vote is 
 still enormously powerful: and the new Labour 
 Party has not yet convinced even the radical 
 farmers of the Northwest. While it expresses 
 the old revolts it lacks as yet any flaming crea- 
 tive vision or moral appeal which, in America 
 particularly, is essential to any strong popular 
 movement. 
 
 And yet it is plain to see that American 
 workers and American farmers are rapidly 
 awakening to political consciousness: to' the 
 necessity of some political expression to supple- 
 ment the direct economic pressure of labour and 
 co-operative organizations and strikes. No one 
 who talks with labour leaders or attends labour 
 gatherings can avoid this conclusion. They all 
 agree to it, but differ as to method. The future 
 is at present largely in the hands of the old 
 parties and the old party leadership. If the old 
 parties offer programs of reconstruction which 
 convince the labour groups as being genuine and 
 honest they will hold the great masses of organ- 
 ized labour now wavering between the conserva- 
 tive policy of Gompers and the radical new- 
 party idea of Fitzpatrick. For the whole labour 
 

 li 
 
 122 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 movement in America is now. as never before 
 in a plastic or fluid state. If the old parties on 
 the other hand exhibit no vision of the needs 
 of the new time: or if they make insincere pro- 
 posals—as they have so often done in the past 
 —to catch the labour vote, then the drift to a 
 new radical party movement (whether based 
 upon this Chicago Labour Party or some other) 
 will be swift and sure. The war has made a 
 profound impression upon labour— here and in 
 Ji^urope-and old party leaders who think that 
 labour is going back quietly to its old-time 
 status are doomed to disappointment. 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 The Genius of Mechanism and the Soul of 
 
 Man— The Spihitual Aspect op 
 
 THE Peoblem 
 
 THIS chapter is an interlude: but like any 
 weU-regulated interlude, the play can- 
 not somehow go on without it. 
 I should like to step out for a moment before 
 the next act-like some prologue-and with 
 my thumb pointed backward at the obscured 
 actors upon the stage (who take themselves so 
 seriously!) take you. the audience, into my con- 
 ndence for a moment. 
 
 I have ah-eady exhibited, as best I could 
 some of the forces at work in the present indus- 
 trial unrest, some of the leadership, some of the 
 more evident and general devices of reform 
 Ihe plot and the protagonists, the conflict and 
 the crisis, are more or less made clear. Some- 
 thing of the high theme, the motif, the spirit is 
 yet wanting. ^ ' 
 
 I can perhaps best indicate one part at least 
 of the theme or the motif by describing my own 
 Urst vivid impression upon visiting a steel town 
 
 I went down to the city of Gary in a snow-' 
 
 123 
 
ff 
 
 
 124 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 Storm. A cold raw wind was blowing off the 
 Illinois prairies. The train was cold. The city 
 I had just left behind was cold. It was cold, 
 and darkened at night. Some of the factories 
 were closed: the stores, although at the begin- 
 ning of the hohday rush, were open only part of 
 the time. I was going from a city suffering 
 from a coal strike to a city suffering from a steel 
 strike. 
 
 It is an hour's journey from Chicago to Gary. 
 Gary is one of the magic cities of the world. It 
 has to-day about 80,000 people, and broad, well- 
 paved streets and fine public buildings, and a 
 school system with an international reputation. 
 No steel mills in the world equal in modem im- 
 provements those at Gary. And yet thirteen 
 years ago — as I have already said— the place 
 where Gary now stands was a desolate waste of 
 sand dunes. Wild ducks, flying in from the lake, 
 settled in the sluggish inlet and were undis- 
 turbed: foxes skulked among the scrubby oak- 
 trees. One of the great steel masters, coming 
 to look over the site of the future city, was 
 lost among the dunes near the present location 
 of the Carnegie Library. 
 
 It was a big, free, bold thing to do— the build- 
 ing of Gary. It was well and truly dreamed. 
 This was the one spot, here at the foot of Lake 
 Michigan, where the ore from northern ranges. 
 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 125 
 
 floated down in huge, tubby cargo-boats, could 
 most easUy and cheaply meet the coal from 
 southern mines and be fused into steel. The 
 mills could take advantage, in distributing their 
 product, of the net-work of raih-oads centring 
 around the southern loop of the lakes. They had 
 near at hand the vast human reservoir of 
 Chicago upon which to draw for their labour. 
 
 acwlvedl *°"^^* °"*'* ^""^ wonderfuUy 
 
 J.r^'l^. ^^^ °°* ^^°"^ ''^«^»«e it ^as one 
 ot the chief centres of the steel strike, but be- 
 cause among all the cities in America, the entire 
 
 itedf. " '''^"^ °°'^^^''^ """"^ ^'"^^^y P^^^^°t« 
 
 Consider what an opportunity this magic city 
 offers the observer. For here industry has had 
 a clear field: no limiting traditions, no restric- 
 tions. Here, if anywhere, American industry is 
 to be seen exactly as it most desires to be seen 
 It has had scope and space, unlimited money* 
 time, power-every ingredient for miracle-mak- 
 ing-to give form and fashion to its utmost 
 dream. Here we have it, then, at Gary-the 
 hfe-hke portrait of American industry, deline- 
 ated by its own bold hand. 
 
 Let us look at it narrowly: for like any great 
 masterpiece, it is as enlightening for what it cun- 
 ningly conceals as for what it easily discloses 
 
IH 
 ■ 'l 
 
 126 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 There is character here, certainly, a kind of 
 stark power, a kind of bold originality. " Huge 
 and alert, irascible yet strong." Is it grim? 
 Well, Vulcan is toiling at his blazing forges. 
 Is it benevolent? Is it cruel? And is there 
 not something strange about the eyes? Is it so 
 nakedly American that we should hesitate to 
 draw the curtain and exhibit it to a visitor from 
 Mars? 
 
 I had confidently expected when I went to 
 Gary to be chiefly interested in the men and 
 women there: the workers, the bosses, the ob- 
 serving newspaper editors, the merchants, 
 lawj^ers, teachers: but curiously I was not. I 
 went, indeed, first of all to see the men of the 
 town, many of them hot with the passions en- 
 gendered by the strike, I saw the unexpectedly 
 comfortable homes of the skilled workers, and 
 the wonderful schools, and the library, and the 
 post-office, and the Y. M. C. A. building. I 
 sat with the strikers in the dingy coop they called 
 headquarters. I talked with mill officials and 
 watched with some wonder the soldiers who 
 were protecting the town — but everywhere I 
 went, during every moment of the time, the 
 centre of the scene was occupied with the 
 stupendous spectacle of the mill. Its tall, slim 
 stacks, plumed with strange-coloured smoke, 
 its broad-shouldered blast furnaces, its portly 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 127 
 
 ore-piles, dominate the town. At night the 
 flare of its converters signal the very heavens: 
 and no one can escape the sound of its brazen 
 voices. 
 
 When I had been inside the principal mill, 
 and had seen with my own eyes those titanic 
 processes, had watched the blazing white metal 
 pouring from the Bessemer converters, had 
 looked through smoked glasses into the boiling 
 hell of the open hearth furnaces, had seen the 
 steel ingot hfted by iron fingers from the heating 
 ovens and rolled with easy power into steel- 
 rails— when I saw all this, the impression of 
 dominance was immeasurably increased. 
 
 As I saw it that stormy December day, just 
 at dusk, it seemed a kind of titan, dwarfing all 
 the human life around and within it. So few 
 men were to be seen, or they were so insignifi- 
 cant, so dim, compared with the stupendous 
 machinery, that one barely noticed them. The 
 mechanism appeared, somehow, to be operating 
 itself. I can scarcely describe it : but there it 
 was, a kind of monster squatting on the shore 
 of the grey lake. A tireless monster that never 
 sleeps! Regardless of disputatious workers, and 
 capitalists, and economists and politicians, it 
 toils day and night, summer and winter, Sun- 
 days, Christmas, the Fourth of July. Its appe- 
 tite is unappeasable. Thousands of men, dig- 
 
128 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 ging for their lives in the iron-ranges of Minne- 
 sota and thousands more in the coal-fields and 
 quarries of Indiana and Illinois can scarcely 
 keep it satisfied. It drinks the entire flow of 
 a river. It requires 10,000 men at Gary alone, 
 speaking a babel of twenty languages, to serve 
 the intimate daily necessities of a single mill. 
 
 Each time I visited Gary these impressions 
 deepened. More anfl more I seemed to feel the 
 implacable power of the mechanism there at the 
 lake: and, in comparison, the insignificance of 
 the human element in the process. One evening, 
 as I was going out along the high embankment 
 from which one can glimpse the whole enormous 
 aggregations of flaming chimneys and spread- 
 ing mills, it came to me, that, in its essence, man- 
 kind was facing the problem as to whether 
 machinery should dominate men or men ma- 
 chinery. Were men to be merely cogs or 
 servants of stupendous insensate mechanisms or 
 were they to stand out as masters, using easily 
 and freely the tools they had built? Was the 
 "genius of mechanism," as Carlyle expressed 
 it long ago, to sit forever " like an incubus upon 
 the soul of man," or was the soul of man to free 
 itself and command the genius of mechanism? 
 I think many an observer, visiting these great 
 industrial towns will have the same question 
 vividly presented to him: and he will begin 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 129 
 
 straightway to try, with all his power, to see 
 whether or not the soul of man is really domi- 
 nated by the mechanism, and why it is — and how 
 it can come free and triumphant in the struggle. 
 For this is the true theme, the motif, of this vast 
 drama. 
 
 Yet the more I looked at Gary, and its mills 
 and its men, the more I thought about them, 
 the more amazing, after all, it seemed that these 
 Uttle insects of human beings should be there 
 at all, that they should have been able, somehow, 
 to create such a stupendous mechanism, such a 
 titanic iron slave, and that having created it 
 they should be able to command for its service 
 so many of the forces of nature— heat and cold, 
 air and water, electricity and gas — that they 
 should know where to find all of the varied in- 
 gredients and bring them together exactly on 
 time, mix them accurately, and produce finally 
 such an outpouring of fashioned steel. 
 
 I went into the immense room, larger than 
 any cathedral, where the ingots were being 
 rolled. All the machinery was powerfully at 
 work — and no other mechanism created by men 
 gives a subhmer impression of resistless power 
 than a modern roUing mill— but nowhere at first 
 did I see a single man. Not one! It was almost 
 uncanny! Presently I looked up. There, in a 
 partly glassed cage high on the wall sat the 
 
130 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 worker among his levers and his buttons: the 
 cerebellum of the creaturel After all, it was 
 managed by men! 
 
 A moment later it came to me with a flash, 
 exactly what the trouble was. Yes, men actu- 
 ally controlled the monster, but they quarrelled 
 with another about it: there was a divided spirit: 
 there was no common purpose I They were 
 crippling the willing slave of them all, who was 
 toilmg to give them bread and clothing and 
 shelter— and whatever of books, education and 
 culture they might be able to acquire. There 
 were actually soldiers patrolling the streets and 
 guarding the mills to prevent them from kilhng 
 one another, or from injuring the monster. 
 They had built a marvellous machine— and were 
 threatening to break it up because they could 
 not agree about managing itl 
 
 Nor was this cripphng confined merely to 
 times of open strife. If that were all, we might 
 speedily find a remedy. But it was going on 
 all the time: there was no real co-operation: no 
 true unity of spirit. A scientist in manage- 
 ment, Mr. Gantt, after a life-time devoted to the 
 study of industrial plants, gave it as his mature 
 judgment that on the average the manufacturing 
 capacity of this country was not more than 
 twenfy.five per cent, of what it ought to be if 
 the productive machinery were properly man- 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 131 
 
 aged. A part of this was due to inefficiency of 
 the management: and part due to the slack- 
 ness and want of interest of the workers. Think 
 of it! A slave willing to do four times as much 
 work as it is doing — but crippled by confusion 
 in the control! 
 
 Some other extraordinary features of this 
 situation at Gary flew to my mind. In the back- 
 streets of the town, unhappy groups of the most 
 ignorant of the workers were meeting — ^men who 
 cannot speak English — men that no one pays 
 any attention to so long as they come to work 
 every day. No mill in the country has a higher 
 reputation for neatness and good order than 
 the great mill at Gary. Gleason, the superin- 
 tendent there, hates dirt, waste, rubbish, and will 
 not abide them. He thinks them unsightly and 
 dangerous! And yet they leave this human 
 wastage neglected in dark corners of the town 
 and wonder that it flames up in spontaneous 
 combustion. 
 
 Well, these ignorant foreigners — ^they have 
 never, for the most part, been organized in 
 unions at all, — hold their meetings. They feel 
 that something is wrong in the mills. It is in 
 the very atmosphere. Some of them, perhaps, 
 have read pamphlets dealing with European 
 revolutionary movements. Everything is there 
 so clearly explained. Nothing is more beguiling 
 
 f< 
 
'SHHB 
 
 = 
 
 132 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 to ignorant men than a patent remedy, whether 
 for body or mind. They want a quick cure, and 
 take it instantly. In the early days of the strike 
 some of these men quite frankly advocated the 
 immediate seizure of the mills by themselves— 
 the workers! 
 
 No one has explained anything to them, or 
 tried to: no one, so far as they know, has tried 
 to remedy the conditions under which they feel 
 that they suffer. 
 
 Nine hundred miles away from all this in New 
 York sit the commanding men of the steel 
 industry. They have given the workers of the 
 town much good housing, and cheap, they have 
 provided safety apphances at the mills— really 
 in a wonderful way— they have instituted a 
 pension fund, and they invite the workers to 
 invest their savings in the stock of the corpora- 
 tion on a helpful and generous basis. 
 
 " See what we are doing for them I " they tell 
 us. 
 
 It seems like black ingratitude that workers, 
 after all this, should strike I Twenty-five years 
 ago I saw men and women hungry in the model 
 homes of the town of Pullman during the great 
 strike there. Mr. Pullman had done everything 
 (he thought) for his workers: and he mourned 
 like some Lear over the tragedy of their in- 
 gratitude. 
 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 133 
 
 Well, those things do not prevent strikes, and 
 never have; and never will, for they do not 
 touch the heart of the trouble. 
 
 I puzzled a long time at Gary, how best to 
 describe the real trouble — how to express it. 
 I am not presumptuous enough to imagine I can 
 explain it all, but one thing, at least, I think I 
 see clearly. In the earlier part of this chapter, 
 speaking of the self-delineated portrait of in- 
 dustry as it is to be seen at Gary, I referred to 
 a certain strange aspect of the eyes. I know 
 now: and feel like whispering the truth. Blind! 
 No vision — or clouded vision. They do not see 
 what the real struggle is: they do not unite to 
 meet it. 
 
 For a little while last year — that wonderful 
 year when our soldiers were in France — Ameri- 
 can industry opened its eyes : looked up ! Both 
 sides nearly forgot they were working for 
 money : they forgot long hours : they even forgot 
 profits (some of them!) ; they forgot to quarrel; 
 they were united. For once they made the 
 monster-slave of mechanism sweat at his task. 
 For they had a vision of ships plying the 
 Atlantic loaded with American soldiers, of a 
 railroad across France, of guns for our 
 brigades to fight with. How they all worked 
 and produced for that clear purpose! The 
 eyes of the whole world watched with admira- 
 
 i 
 III 
 
1(^1 1 
 
 I 
 
 134 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 tion how we turned out ships and cars and 
 rifles. 
 
 All that has gone now. We had a glimpse 
 of a better way, we tried uniting to depose the 
 genius of mechanism which sits upon our souls, 
 tried working together for a high purpose, we 
 achieved miracles — and are back again groping 
 in the old murkiness, quarrelling with one an- 
 other, and crippling the giant that feeds us. We 
 could unite, and produce, and sacrifice, to pro- 
 tect the nation from a danger from without : we 
 seem to have no appreciation of the danger 
 within, no vision of the task of meeting it! And 
 where there is no vision the people perish. 
 
 Not long ago I read in an account of a re- 
 cently discovered manuscript of the New Testa- 
 ment a remark of the Master to a shoemaker 
 at work: 
 
 " Man, if thou knowest what thou dost, blessed 
 are thou, but if thou knowest not, thou art con- 
 demned." 
 
 It is a very wonderful place— Gary— an ex- 
 traordinary demonstration of the sheer genius 
 and energy of hmnan beings, but one wonders, 
 having been there, having seen the crippled mills! 
 the dissatisfied workers, the irritated manage- 
 ment, the fearful losses in production, wages, 
 profits, the soldiers patrolling the streets with 
 charged arms, and groups of revolutionaries 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 135 
 
 plotting disturbances, and groups of officials 
 planning suppressions — one wonders if those 
 who manage and those who work at Gary do not 
 warrant the condemnation of not knowing what 
 they are about. 
 
 And yet having said this of Gary, I have said 
 too much for industry in general, for there is a 
 new vision coming in industry; new leaders are 
 at work; new experimentation is going on. In- 
 dustry in some of its branches is finding its soul 
 — as I shall show in coming chapters. 
 
I 
 
 I 
 
 1» 
 
 1 
 
 li 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 Welfaee Work as a Solution of the Pkob- 
 LEM AND How it is Regakded by Both 
 
 Employers and Workers 
 
 I 
 
 IF one would bore into the very kernel of the 
 present industrial unrest, let him examine 
 the significant modern development of wel- 
 fare work in American mills and factories. For 
 here, at once, we encounter an extraordinary 
 difference of view between certain leaders among 
 the employers and certain leaders among the 
 workers. In the Senate investigation of the 
 steel strike, for example. Judge Gary gave no 
 part of his testimony greater importance, nor 
 spoke with more sincere enthusiasm, of any 
 aspect of the work of the United States Steel 
 Corporation, than of the extensive welfare 
 work now in operation in the various mills and 
 towns— pensions, stock-ownership, sanitation, ac- 
 cident preventions, schools, churches, clubs, play- 
 grounds and the hke. He gave at length the 
 numbers of restaurants, swimming-pools, athletic 
 fields, bandstands, sanitary drinking fountains, 
 water-closet bowls, clothes lockers, and so on, 
 provided by the corporation for the benefit of 
 
 136 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 137 
 
 its army of 268,000 workers. He showed that 
 in 1918 over $17,000,000 was expended for these 
 purposes, and in 1917 over $10,000,000. 
 
 He said: " The amount we have expended for 
 the benefit of our employees is extraordinary as 
 compared with anything that has ever been done 
 before, so far as I know, anywhere or during 
 any period." 
 
 This is absolutely the truth; no individual or 
 corporation ever equalled Judge Gary's great 
 company in the extent or cost of its welfare 
 work. There is, therefore, no better example 
 of the system to study; nowhere is the demon- 
 stration more complete. 
 
 Nor is there any doubt that Judge Gary looks 
 upon the system with sincere faith and satisfac- 
 tion, for he said to a meeting of the presidents 
 of his subsidiary corporations (in January, 
 1919). 
 
 "All of us experience more or less a thrill 
 of pride in hearing from government ofiicials 
 that our reputation for considering and promot- 
 ing the welfare of our employees is the best in 
 the entire industry." 
 He is right — it really is. 
 How, then, are we to interpret the bitter and 
 cynical references to this work by many labour 
 leaders; how explain — if it can be explained — 
 Mr. Gompers' contemptuous term for it? He 
 
138 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 called it — before the Senate Committee — " hell- 
 fare " work. If this is the word of the most con- 
 servative labour leader in America, it can be 
 imagined what must be the feeling of more 
 radical leaders. 
 
 Are not all these things— these comforts, these 
 aids to health and pleasure, these incentives to 
 thrift — are they not all good? Why, then, 
 should they be s'o bitterly refuted by the labour 
 leaders? 
 
 Before trying to explain this extraordinary 
 difference of view, I wish to present a few more 
 facts about the work Judge Gary has done: 
 for it is in many ways ver; wonderful. 
 
 The phrase, " Safety First," which has now 
 spread over the world, originated under Mr. 
 Buffington in one of the plants of the Illinois 
 steel Company at Chicago. It represented the 
 beginning of a powerful effort, in which the 
 Steel Corporation has led the entire country, 
 to introduce safety devices, to eliminate acci- 
 dents. No industry is more dangerous to life 
 and limb than the steel industry and in none has 
 the " Safety First " movement made greater 
 progress. Competitions have been set up be- 
 tween mill and mill and department and dc 
 partment and at Gary I saw huge, electric- 
 lighted bulletin boards like baseball scores — 
 bearing the records of various groups of workers 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 139 
 
 « 
 
 C( 
 
 in preventing accidents: and everywhere about 
 were signs of warning. 
 
 "Danger Here." 
 Think." 
 Our Motto: Safety and Cleanliness." 
 
 " No Smoking, Matches or Open Lights." 
 
 They have accident specialists — ^veritable 
 safety " cranks " — who do nothing else but study 
 safety improvements and train the men to watch 
 for danger. Last year (1918) they spent over 
 $1,000,000 in this work of accident prevention. 
 Between 1906 and 1912 the number of serious 
 and fatal accidents in all the plants of the 
 corporation were reduced by forty-three per 
 cent. They also have a fund for relieving men 
 and families of men injured or killed m the 
 mills, upon which they expended in 1918 
 $3,336,000. 
 
 They have a pension fund started by Andrew 
 Carnegie m 1901 for superannuated or disabled 
 workers. Over 2,900 men are now so pensioned, 
 receiving an average of about $22 a month. 
 This cost in 1918, $709,000. 
 
 But the feature of the entire plan upon which 
 Jud ge G ary lays most^ St^^^s is the effort to 
 encourage stock-ownership in the corporation 
 among the workers. Arrangements are made to 
 sell shares at a little below market price to all 
 classes of employees, give them a long time to 
 
140 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 make payments, and finally, if they hold their 
 stock continuously for five years to pay them a 
 bonus of $5 a share per year for each share 
 they hold. On September 1, 1919, there were 
 61,328 employees out of a total of 268,000 who 
 owned 158,061 shares in the corporation upon 
 this basis. This is, of course, a very small frac- 
 tion of the total stock-issue of the great corpora- 
 tion — about one fifty-fourth — not enough, nat- 
 urally, to influence the action of the directors 
 in any way. It represents an average saving of 
 aU employees of about $60 each — if the value of 
 the stock is counted at par. 
 
 The corporation has also built many houses 
 for its employees (though far from enough) 
 which it rents at rates generally lower than those 
 prevaUing among private owners, or has sold the 
 homes, as at Gary, on long time at low pay- 
 ments. It also contributes liberally to all 
 churches, many schools, libraries and the like. 
 Judge Gary personally presented a large sum 
 of money for erecting the Y. M. C. A. building 
 in the city of Gary: and Andrew Carnegie built 
 the fine library. 
 
 Why should the workers call this " hell-fare '* 
 work? If we are reaUy to understand the 
 length and breadth and depth of this problem 
 we must understand exactly how these things 
 look and feel from below. As I have said 
 
 i 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 141 
 
 before, it is not what the employer thinks the 
 worker ought to feel that matters, but what the 
 worker really does feel. 
 
 I have talked with many leaders and many 
 workers upon this subject and endeavoured to 
 get at their exact point of view. M. F. Tighe, 
 President of the Amalgamated Association of 
 Iron, Steel and Tin Workers of America, one 
 of the leaders concerned in the recent steel strike, 
 set forth some of the objections to welfare work 
 in his testimony before the Senate Committee. 
 
 " The paternal features of the industry," he 
 said, " that have been so very fluently expounded 
 by the corporate interests, are nothing more or 
 less than a hog-chain shackling the employees, 
 putting them in the position that they dare not, 
 at any time, assert those inalienable rights the 
 American citizen is supposed to have — because, 
 once he becomes the owner of that property, he 
 must be employed in that plant, he must be sub- 
 missive to any conditions that management may 
 undertake to put upon him — for if he loses his 
 position what value is placed upon his prop- 
 erty? " 
 
 As to the bonus system, Mr. Tighe also says: 
 
 "We are opposed to that. We beUeve a 
 man should be paid for the actual labour he does 
 and that pay should be put in his envelope on 
 every pay-day and not be left to the discretion 
 
142 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 of a so-caUed philanthropic employer at the end 
 of a certain period." 
 
 The Chairman: Your position is that you do 
 not ask for gifts? 
 
 Mr. Tighe: Yes: that is our position exactly. 
 
 The Chairman: You ask for justice not gifts? 
 
 Mr. Tighe: Yes. 
 
 I got the point of view of one of the workers 
 at Gary regarding the stock-ownership plan. 
 He himself held two shares of the stock. 
 
 " Every share of stock," he said, " has a string 
 attached to it. In order to win the bonus we 
 must stay five years in the employ of the com- 
 pany: and even then the bonus is distributed 
 under the rules only to those who in the judg- 
 ment of the management ' have shown a proper 
 interest ' in the welfare of the company. If he 
 leaves the employ of the company for any reason 
 — say he strikes — ^he loses the entire bonus. You 
 see what cowards that tends to make of men who 
 have a small stake in the company— and what 
 power it puts in the hands of the company. It 
 tends to make men afraid to organize or protest 
 a&rainst abuses, lest they be accused of not being 
 4al. In the same way a pension system which 
 is regulated according to the recommendations 
 of foremen and superintendents is a way of 
 shackling many older employees. Then, a cer- 
 tain number of men are tied up with houses 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 143 
 
 they have bought from the company on long 
 time: for they know that unless they are * loyal ' 
 and * good ' they may lose their jobs and have to 
 sacrifice their property— for in most mill towns, 
 if a man is discharged, he must move elsewhere." 
 
 Mr. Gompers said to the Senate Committee: 
 
 " What the workers want is l ess charity and 
 better wag es and labouring conditions, the 
 direct purpose of this welfare work is to ahen- 
 ate and prevent the workers from thinking in 
 terms of organization for self-protection and 
 mutual welfare." 
 
 In its essence the criticism of the workers is 
 that welfare work is an expression of benevo- 
 lent autocracy, while they are struggling for 
 more democracy: that it breaks up any unity of 
 action: and while it makes life pleasanter for 
 the few, it often consigns the great mass of 
 workers to the necessity of living under hard 
 working conditions. In the recent strike many 
 of the skilled workers, the Americans, were thus 
 tied up to the company by stock-ownership, the 
 purchase of homes and the like, so that any 
 group action or organization among the workers 
 was robbed of its natural leadership. Of 268,- 
 000 workers only 61,000 (and this includes many 
 foremen, superintendents, and other officials) 
 were stockholders. 
 
 " What use is most of this welfare work," one 
 
144 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 workman asked me passionately, " when we are 
 compelled to work twelve hours a day and seven 
 days a week ? In the face of the twelve-hour day 
 Carnegie Libraries, Y. M. C. A.'s, playgrounds, 
 and the like are just jokes." 
 Another workman put in: 
 "Judge Gary says that welfare work pays, 
 and pays big, in dollars and cents. If that is so, 
 why should he take credit to himself for doing 
 it? Of course it pays, because it helps keep the 
 workers separated from one another, prevents 
 organization, and enables the company to main- 
 tain its long work day." 
 
 Thus the very argument used by the em- 
 ployers to prove the value of the welfare work, 
 that it helped prevent labour organization and 
 thus broke up the strike, is the very argument 
 used against it by the workers. 
 
 Another argument frequently heard among 
 workers is this: 
 
 "Give us a chance to organize and decent 
 wages and we will do our own welfare work and 
 do it on a real democratic basis." 
 
 Some of the activities of labour unionism 
 along these lines in America are most interest- 
 ing. Several strong unions in Chicago and New 
 York, for example, have their own educational 
 directors with classes, lecture and concert 
 courses, and the like. Some of the concerts 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 145 
 
 given by the clothing-workers — and given in 
 union-owned halls — are of the very best. Other 
 unions have extensive benefit and insurance sys- 
 tems. In his testimony before the Senate Com- 
 mittee, for example, Mr. Gompers compared the 
 pension system of the United States Steel Cor- 
 poration with that of the International Typo- 
 graphical Union showing that the latter was 
 maintaining just twice as many pensioners, in 
 proportion to its membership, as the United 
 States Steel Corporation: and that these pen- 
 sions were not regulated from above, but were 
 awarded by the men themselves. 
 
 It was a significant thing, at Gary, to find 
 that no work was spoken of by both company 
 ofiicials and workmen with more sympathy and 
 approval than the Good-Fellow Clubs and the 
 Joint Committees for carrying on the accident 
 prevention work. Here, through a tiny crack, 
 had crept in a little democratic relationship, a 
 little co-operative effort, between management 
 and men. The Good-Fellow Clubs are instru- 
 ments for aiding needy workers and the Joint 
 Committees in the accident work are for the 
 pm-pose of building up public opinion among 
 workmen in the mills in the matter of preventing 
 accidents. In both of these limited activities 
 committees of the management and committees 
 of the workers are really acting toegther— and 
 
1« THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 both are proud of it— and proud of the results 
 of it. For everything depends upon the spirit 
 of approach. 
 
 " If this method works so well in these small 
 matters," I asked one of the great steel men, 
 " why wUl it not work just as well in dealing 
 with other and larger questions— wages, hours, 
 living conditions?" 
 
 "Why not?" he asked, "but we're terribly 
 slow to see it." 
 
 Yet this is exactly what Rockefeller saw— and 
 introduced— in his Colorado steel plants. It is 
 what the Midvale Steel Company has seen and 
 introduced in several of its great plants. Many 
 hundreds of manufacturing establishments in 
 America are already adopting this new demo- 
 cratic relationship in the management of the 
 labour aspects of their work. These really re- 
 markable experiments— all so new that they 
 were practically unknown before the war— I 
 shall explain in following chapters. 
 
 ?JIS.!?aS5^ °^ ^Poc'hs in the relationships of 
 labour and capital— since large-scale industry 
 came into existence— are clearly distinguishable 
 111 America. 
 
 1. The purely autocratic, individualistic 
 method. The employer believes that he can " do 
 what he likes with his own property." He 
 " hires and fires " to suit himself. Sometimes 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 147 
 
 when the plant is small and the owner-manager 
 is close to his men and can preserve a close hu- 
 man relationship, or when it is larger and he 
 happens to be a great personality, this method 
 may work very well — at least from the point of 
 view of the employer. But when ownership be- 
 comes separated from management, as is so 
 often the case now in America, or the plant 
 grows so large as to destroy the possibility of 
 close personal relationships between manage- 
 ment and men, it often works very badly indeed. 
 It is this destruction of real contact and real 
 understanding between employer and worker 
 that is the cause to-day of much of the prevail- 
 ing unrest. Especially is this true if the man- 
 ager is of the dominant, driving type. " Catch 
 'em young, treat 'em rough, tell 'em nothing," 
 was the motto of one steel-miU manager in the 
 recent strike — and some employers thought it 
 really worked, because he succeeded in keeping 
 his mill in operation while others closed down. 
 
 2. The autocratic niethod tempered by wel- 
 fare work: as in the United States Steel 
 Corporation. Judge Gary is an absolute auto- 
 crat, but he is a benevolent autocrat. 
 
 3. The militaristic method, in which labour is 
 organized, and often the employers as well. 
 Employers and employees are in two more or 
 less hostile canips: they have frequent wars 
 
148 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 (strikes) and sign frequent truces (collective 
 bargains). War is always wasteful and mili- 
 tary methods inefficient, and always the non- 
 combatant (the public) is the chief sufferer. 
 Yet this is the method (and labour has had in 
 the past no other way of protecting itself or 
 winning its rights) under which a large propor- 
 tion of the industries of America are now con- 
 ducted. Sometimes a little real co-operation 
 is attained by this method: usually not. 
 
 4. The new co-operative method now begin- 
 liag to have a wide trial in America— and a 
 still wider one in Great Britain. Here shop 
 committees of workmen (whether organized in 
 trade unions or not) and the management seek 
 to co-operate, rather than to fight, over their 
 mutual problems. 
 
 5. A step beyond this we have at least one 
 great experiment— in the manufacture of men's 
 clothing— in establishing a government for one 
 entire industry in America: a government based 
 upon co-operation and a democratic relationship 
 between management and men throughout the 
 industry. 
 
 These new schemes are not the mere sugges- 
 tions of theorists or dreamers, but are being 
 practically worked out by practical men, both 
 employers and employees, as I shall show in 
 following chapters. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 The New Shop-Council System as Applied 
 
 IN A Typical Small Industry — The 
 
 Dutchess Bleachery at Wap- 
 
 piNGERs Falls, New York 
 
 I CAN best set forth the new method of co- 
 operation between employers and workers 
 in America — generally called the " shop- 
 committee" system — by telling the extraordi- 
 narily interesting story of what has happened 
 in one small industry where it has been applied. 
 Before the war this new method was prac- 
 ticaUy unknown either in America or elsewhere 
 — although there were several pioneer experi- 
 ments in progress — but to-day there are several 
 hundred industries — or if individual plants are 
 counted, many thousands — varying all the way 
 from huge steel plants like the Colorado Fuel 
 and Iron Company and the Midvale Steel Com- 
 pany, to little factories of a few hundred hands, 
 where the new plan is being practically tried out. 
 In a following chapter I shall present a general 
 survey of the present state and promise of the 
 entire movement — for the experiments vary 
 widely in detail and still more widely in spirit — 
 
 149 
 
150 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 but the actual living operation of the new 
 method can best be understood by looking at its 
 application to a small industry in a small town 
 where all the factors are plainly visible. 
 
 Wappingers Falls is a very old town, as towns 
 go in America. It lies back from the Hudson 
 River a few miles below Poughkeepsie, where 
 a fine stream comes down out of the hills to 
 supply power for its mill. In earlier days before 
 the railroads came, its only communication with 
 New York was by way of Hudson River sloops 
 which in summer worked in through the narrow 
 inlet, or in winter by the stage-coach along the 
 river road. 
 
 Here long ago a bleachery and cotton print- 
 works was established (now called the Dutchess 
 Bleachery). I asked a bent old man I saw 
 working over one of the vats how long he had 
 been there. 
 
 "What's that?" 
 
 " How long have you worked here? " 
 
 "Fifty-nine years," he said, "in this one 
 place." 
 
 So it was long ago. It was like many, if not 
 most such plants in America. It had its Royal 
 Family that owned everything— mill, houses, 
 land — and lived little there, but had leisure for 
 education, and European travel— opportunity 
 written large. And the people worked long 
 
 ' 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 151 
 
 hours — as long, they say, as fourteen — then 
 twelve, then ten, and wages were low. There 
 was never any incentive upon their part to work 
 hard, or improve methods, or increase produc- 
 tion, because no surplus of their common toil 
 ever by any chance reached their pockets, for 
 their income was inexorably set by the iron law 
 of supply and demand in the wage-market. On 
 the other hand they did help bear whatever 
 losses the state of the trade or the inefficiency 
 of the management might entail upon the in- 
 dustry — for whenever business was " dull " the 
 mill could be slackened down or closed, and they 
 thrown out of employment. Their labour was 
 as much a commodity as the chlorate of lime 
 they used in bleaching the new grey cloth or the 
 starch in stiflFening it. 
 
 A few years ago the miU was purchased by a 
 new company, the chief owners of which were 
 men with social imagination. They were among 
 the many employers in America who are be- 
 ginning to be troubled about their relationships 
 to their business and to their workers. 
 
 When the war came to Wappingers Falls 
 there was that sudden lift of common effort, 
 common enthusiasm, which for a moment fired 
 the soul of America. For a moment we forgot 
 ourselves; we were greater than ourselves. 
 There are those who mourn over the reaction. 
 
 t 
 
11 
 
 111 
 
 II 
 
 152 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 and the present wave of unrest, but nothing can 
 ever rob us of that great moment, nor wipe out 
 the effect of it. We shall never go back to the 
 ante-bellum ways or times. Whether we like 
 it or not we are entering a new world. 
 
 The war jogged Wappingers Falls, as it 
 jogged so many other towns, into a sudden self- 
 consciousness. It had, for once, a good look at 
 itself. Here it was, a rather outwardly attrac- 
 tive town of some 3,500 people — ^with com- 
 fortable shady streets and picturesque hills all 
 about. Most of the people lived in pleasant but 
 more or less dilapidated houses, a few of which 
 were miserably built of sheet-iron, roofs and all, 
 as cold in winter as they were hot in summer. 
 There was one big Roman Catholic Church — 
 for a majority of the people are of Irish and 
 Italian origin— and four struggling, competing 
 Protestant churches most of them without vision 
 or leadership. Its schools were no better, nor 
 worse, perhaps, than those in other mill towns 
 like this — ^more a habit, a routine, than a source 
 of power. Its politics was without issues or 
 ideas: had degenerated into local factional strife 
 for trivial authority and small rewards. Its 
 saloons were the saloons of any small manu- 
 facturing town, and the less said of them the 
 better. As for the mill in which all the people 
 worked, for which the town existed, it was owned 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 163 
 
 almost exclusively (its capital is $1,350,000) 
 by people who did not live in Wappingers Falls 
 and never had. 
 
 Not an especially pleasant portrait, you say: 
 and yet this town was probably better than the 
 average of mill towns in America. It might be 
 called A Portrait of an American Town at the 
 Beginning of the Twentieth Century. There 
 was not enough emotion below the surface to 
 make its aspect tragic — ^there was only blank- 
 ness, dulness, uncreativeness — ^boredom! 
 
 In the summer of 1917 a young minister 
 named James Myers went to Wappingers Falls. 
 He was sent by the owners of the company 
 to see what he could do to change the conditions. 
 When the new company had taken the property 
 it had been much run down physically; they had 
 built it up, got it on a profitable basis, and 
 they wanted now to attack the problem of a 
 new relationship with the personnel. 
 
 JMXx Hatch, the treasurer of the company, had 
 been for some time interested in experiments in 
 "industrial democracy," and had begun the 
 introduction of the new system in a mill in which 
 he was interested in Abbeville, S. C. He 
 wanted to try out something of the same sort 
 in Wappingers Falls. He had only two general 
 ideas regarding the method of going about it — 
 both fundamental ; one was to go slow, not make 
 
 « 
 
154 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 changes too abruptly, the other was to be honest 
 with the workers at every step: that is, not to 
 give them something that looked like a "new 
 deal," merely as a screen for a closer riveting 
 upon them of the old system — or to prevent 
 unionism. , 
 
 A meeting of the 500 operatives was called 
 and the new representative plan was explained 
 to them and they elected by secret ballot six 
 representatives (afterwards eleven) from the 
 various departments. These were organized 
 into a Board of Operatives and James Myers 
 was chosen executive secretary, his salary being 
 paid by the company. It is to his enthusiasm, 
 vision, and organizing abiUty that the plan owes 
 much of its success. 
 
 There was one small labour union of skilled 
 men in the mill and they joined in the enterprise 
 and elected their president, Mr. Bennett, to the 
 Board where his experience as a union leader 
 was of great value. The Board, at the beginning, 
 was given three groups of powers: 
 
 1. To solve the problem of housing. The 
 company houses were out of repair and there 
 was constant complaint. The company agreed 
 to give the Board of Operatives entire charge 
 of these houses and to supply the money for aU 
 repairs they should recom'mJnd. 
 
 2. To take up the matter of education and 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 155 
 
 recreation in the community and especially the 
 matter of a club-house to take the place of the 
 saloons when they should be closed. 
 
 3. The Board was also empowered to suggest 
 methods of improvement to the management in 
 other matters — ^living conditions, wages and the 
 like, but it was without power to enforce its 
 recommendations. 
 
 A survey of housing conditions was immedi- 
 ately begun: and the practical knowledge of the 
 operatives on the Board was at on^ce apparent 
 — and also their desire to maintain a businesslike 
 attitude toward the problem. That is, they held 
 that the houses ought to return a fair interest 
 on the capital invested. At once a great trans- 
 formation began to take place in the village: 
 reconstruction of old houses, new paint, new 
 conveniences: and even the removal of several 
 antiquated tenements. All this was entirely 
 managed by the Board of Operatives but paid 
 for by the company. The Board also estabhshed 
 a fine baseball and athletic field in a natural 
 amphitheatre, and a playground for the children, 
 and by wmter they had taken possession of one 
 of the old saloon buildings and changed it into 
 a well-equipped village club-house which is, to- 
 day, one of the most popular places in town — 
 a centre of its life. They also began the pubhca- 
 tion of a monthly paper called Bleachery Life 
 
 I i 
 

 156 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 — dealing not only with the new plans but with 
 all sides of mill life, including certain news 
 printed in Italian for Italian workers. This has 
 been a real agency in awakening mutual inter- 
 est. Plans have now been made for selling all 
 company houses to workers at low prices with 
 deferred payments: and a savings system has 
 been instituted. 
 
 The officials of the company kept in close con- 
 tact with these developments. In November, 
 1918, they were ready to lay the foundations for 
 the next step. Mr. Hatch addressed a mass- 
 meeting of the workers and outlined the broader 
 aspects of his new plan which he called a part- 
 nership between workers, management, and 
 capital. 
 
 In a partnership each partner, he explained, 
 shares the responsibility of management by tak- 
 inff charge of the business he is best qualified to 
 h^dle: Jartners are also entitled to know the 
 general results of their joint efforts and he said 
 that in future the Board of Operatives would 
 receive the report of the net earnings of the 
 company just as did the Board of Directors; 
 and, finally, partners share in the final net 
 profits of the company, and he outlined a new 
 plan of profit-sharing between the owners and 
 the workers which I shall describe later. 
 
 Finally he summed up his attitude toward the 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 157 
 
 whole problem in words which merit careful 
 reading as a fine expression of the new point of 
 view: 
 
 Why am I not satisfied with the system of paying wages 
 as determined by supply and demand, i.e., with paying the 
 market price for labour and making as large profits for the 
 company as market conditions will permit? Because I am 
 convinced that this system has been weighed in the scales 
 of human experience and found wanting. It treats every 
 employee as a means to an end, the end being the enrich- 
 ment of the employer, whereas every man, every woman, 
 and every child is an end in himself or herself, the most 
 valuable creations in the universe. To phrase it differently: 
 Because this system has on the one hand resulted in poverty 
 for many in this glorious land of plenty, and on the other 
 causing, as it does, the concentration of great wealth in the 
 hands of a few, has enshrined the pursuit of material 
 wealth as the dominant life motive of men. 
 
 This was a general outline of principles: as 
 yet there was no real machinery for working 
 them out. But such machinery cannot be 
 created out of hand : it has to develop out of the 
 needs of the situation. As the Board of Opera- 
 tives broadened its scope of activity it came 
 again and again into contact with the deeper 
 problems of the mill itself: wages, hours and 
 real co-operative control. As yet it could only, 
 make suggestions to the management: but by 
 May, 1919, it was ready to ask for more power. 
 The Board explained to the company that " the 
 
Ij 
 
 158 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 apathy and lack of interest with which the em- 
 ployees view the Board of Operatives " were due 
 to the fact that its powers did not affect directly 
 those "things in which many employees are 
 most vitally interested— matters within the mill, 
 question of hours, wages and the various condi- 
 tions by which they are surrounded in their 
 daily work." In response to suggestions from 
 the management, which was already considering 
 the reduction of the hours of labour in the 
 plant, they also asked for a forty-eight-hour 
 week instead of the prevaihng fifty-five-hour 
 week and for an increase of wages by fifteen 
 per cent. At the same time the Board of 
 Operatives now felt enough of the new spirit of 
 co-operation and partnership not to stop merely 
 with a demand for better wages and shorter 
 hours for the workers, but they offered to do 
 their part in keeping up production. They ex- 
 pressed their determination to produce as much 
 in eight hours as formerly in ten, and actually 
 suggested the installation of time-clocks to keep 
 a record of all employees. Their resolutions are 
 well worth considerinff: 
 
 While feeling its responsibility in making these sugges- 
 tions (about decreasing hours and increasing wages), the 
 Board of Operatives believes that in addition to the saving 
 which will be affected in power and light, the plant can 
 be so managed, and its efficiency so improved in other ways. 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 159 
 
 as to result in turning out practically the same production 
 in 48 hours as it turns out at present in 55 hours. To 
 this end the Board of Operatives wishes specifically to 
 recommend the following methods of increasing efficiency: 
 
 That time-clocks be installed, covering all operatives. 
 
 That a regular monthly foremen's conference be held for 
 mutual discussion with the agent, of the problems of mill 
 management, in order to harmonize the working of the 
 various departments of the plant with each other; to im- 
 prove working conditions which may effect plant efficiency; 
 to promote the spirit of co-operation among all departments, 
 and with the management, and to increase the efficiency and 
 production of the entire plant. 
 
 That a mass meeting of all employees be called and full 
 explanations made in regard to the importance of co-opera- 
 tion on the part of every one in order that production may 
 be kept up and no loss sustained by us all as partners, 
 on account of reduction of hours. /\^ 
 
 The next step was a long one. The company 
 decided to establish a Board of Management, 
 consisting of three members representing the 
 employer's side (the Manager of the mill, the 
 New York agent, and the Treasurer of the com- 
 pany — Mr. Hatch) and three members chosen 
 by the Board of Operatives, Mr. Aurswald, 
 Mr. Beasley and Mr. Clark. This Board was 
 given absolute power " to settle and adjust such 
 matters of mill management as may arise" — 
 practically complete control of the mill. In 
 case of a deadlock between the two groups over 
 any question, they are empowered to elect a 
 
1 i 
 1 i' 
 
 i 
 
 160 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 seventh arbitrating member whose deciding vote 
 shall be final. This Board went into control 
 in August, 1919. 
 
 A profit-sharing system was adopted on these 
 terms: After all expenses are paid, including 
 SIX per cent interest on capital, the net profits, 
 whatever they may be, are divided,^ half and 
 half, between the stocjkholders and the workers. 
 Mr. Hess, the Agent (Manager) of the mill 
 has introduced a very complete cost-accounting 
 system, so that net profits can be known monthly 
 and dividends are therefore now declared 
 monthly. The first dividend to the wage- 
 workers was paid last August and represented 
 four per cent upon wages earned in the previous 
 six months. 
 
 No sooner, however, is any profit-sharing plan 
 discussed than the problem arises as to what 
 will happen when losses come. The company 
 has met this problem by establishing two sink- 
 mg funds to be built up out of profits until 
 each reaches $250,000: one to pay half wages 
 to workers if the mill is forced to close down, 
 ' the other to maintain regular interest on capital! 
 
 These new responsibilities, coupled with the 
 new opportunities for a real share in any in- 
 creased effort has awakened a wholly new spirit 
 in the mill. There is a reason now for " getting 
 busy," for pushing up production. Instead of 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 161 
 
 opposing the introduction of efficiency schemes 
 in the plant — as workmen so often do — ^they 
 welcome them. For more production, more 
 eflScient work, means more profits — and half of 
 all profits go to them. 
 
 I want to give one example of this. Last 
 winter the New York ofiice " came back " at the 
 Board of Operatives at the mill because of 
 damage to one large shipment of cloth through 
 "pin-cuts." It had cost the company $6,000. 
 In former times this loss would have been 
 "swallowed" and not much said: perhaps some 
 employee "fired" if the guilty one could be 
 found. Here is the way the New York oflice 
 expresses its feelings to the operatives at the 
 mill: 
 
 Let's just for the fun of the thing figure this out for 
 each of us. Increased expenses mean decreased profits, 
 and in this instance our decrease in profits amounts to 
 about $6,000, less what we can get for the salvage. Under 
 our partnership agreement the stockholders stand half, or 
 $3,000, and the other $3,000 is at the expense of the opera- 
 tives. You all can easily figure out for yourselves just 
 about what your individual share of this is, and can ask 
 yourselves if you got your money's worth. We are sure 
 the stockholders did not. We haven't written you a letter 
 for some time, but this subject sure did drag us out of 
 our shell. 
 
 It was no trouble for the 500 operatives at 
 the mill to calculate what that piece of careless- 
 

 li 
 
 I 
 
 162 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 iiess cost, on an average, each of them. It was 
 $6. It went through the mill like a shock and it 
 was known just how and where the damage 
 occurred. It can be seen what the public opinion 
 of the mill would be toward those workers who 
 had been so careless as to reduce by $0 the 
 profits of every employee in the miU. 
 
 Another thing the Board of Operatives has 
 done is to offer prizes for suggestions from 
 workers—in order to get the minds of every one 
 to working upon the common problems of the 
 shop. This has already resulted in a number of 
 improvements. At the payment of each month's 
 dividend also, Mr. Hess proposes to hold a mass- 
 meeting and go over aU the affairs of the mill 
 and show the workers where they can improve 
 processes, cut corners, save money. With both 
 managers and men working at improvement of 
 methods, something is bound to happen at Wap- 
 pingers Falls! 
 
 But this is not all. The company has now 
 gone still a step further upon the road to " in- 
 dustrial democracy." It has reorganized its own 
 Board of Directors. It has now five members, 
 three representing capital and management, one 
 elected by the Board of Operatives, and one 
 representing the community of Wappingers 
 Falls— who is the President of the town. This 
 is aimed to draw together all the interests con- 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 163 
 
 cerned : the management, the workers, the town. 
 Especially is the last a novel idea — community 
 representation — for in all old mill towns there 
 is a heavy weight of dull local suspicion of the 
 mill and the company. If the town can kiww 
 what is going on, it is the theory of Mr. Hatch 
 that the town also will help. He wants good 
 will all the way round. The company has now 
 also made arrangements to sell shares of its stock 
 to its operatives at a price somewhat below 
 market value. 
 
 The greatest source of difficulty, suspicion 
 and jealousy, leading to war in international 
 affairs is secret diplomacy. And so it is in in- 
 dustrial affairs: secret deals, back-stairs agree- 
 ments, sly bookkeeping, dishonest profit-sharing. 
 The men behind the Wappinger Falls experi- 
 ment recognize this and have provided for a 
 wide degree of publicity. With representatives 
 of the Board of Operatives sitting on the Board 
 of Management of the mill nothing relating to 
 the manufacturing end of the business can be 
 covered up — and now with a delegate of the 
 Operatives and of the town in the Board of 
 Directors the entire inside of the company's 
 business will be known. This is a very advanced 
 step— taken, so far as I know, by only two other 
 employers: one the Filene Store in Boston, the 
 other the Procter & Gamble Soap Company of 
 
IM THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 Cincinnati. It is perhaps practicable yet only in 
 relatively small industries, but it is a tremen- 
 dous demonstration of the absolute sincerity of 
 the employer in approaching his problem. It 
 ^ also the best insurance to the employer that 
 his mdustry will weather hard times and the 
 possible necessity of reducing wages with the 
 full co-operation of the workers— for they, also, 
 will be on the inside and know of the difficulties 
 and problems that confront the industry as weU 
 as he does. 
 
 This, in brief, is the new plan as applied at 
 Wappmgers Falls. It is, of course, very new— 
 as are all of these experiments. As Mr. Hatch 
 himself says: 
 
 "We cannot really know how it will work 
 until it has been under way for three or four 
 years and we have passed through a period of 
 hard times and losses. That will be the test of 
 it! ' 
 
 The great point, however, is that here the 
 sptrtt of approach is honest on both sides: there 
 are the beginnings of real co-operation, of real 
 democratic control. With such a spirit new 
 adjustments can be made to meet new difficul- 
 ties. Like any other human scheme it can be 
 attacked and criticized at many points, but the 
 great thing here is that the problem is beinff 
 approached with a genuine scientific desire to 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 165 
 
 know the conditions and a spirit of goodwill 
 in meeting them. If this does not work nothing 
 else will — and we might as well toss over civiliza- 
 tion, retire to the cynic's corner, and rail at the 
 wickedness of men! 
 
 I should also like to add just this observation: 
 and it applies as well to most of these new ex- 
 periments, where they are genuine, and that is 
 that both sides seem to be " having the time of 
 their lives " — downright enjoyment of the new 
 adventure. For it is real creative work in a 
 new field — the most fascinating kind of creative 
 work: with human beings. As one employer in 
 another industry said to me: 
 
 " It's the most interesting thing I ever did in 
 my life. It beats mere money making all 
 hollowl " 
 
 Like any other truly creative work its results 
 exceed expectations, and yield unanticipated 
 rewards. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 Development of the Shop Counch. System 
 IN America— Method of Organi- 
 zation — The Movement in 
 England and Gekmany 
 
 HERE is a significant observation 
 quoted, not from a labour leader, nor 
 yet from a radical reformer, but from 
 an American steel master, who is also a great 
 employer of labour: 
 
 " The real leader in industry to-day is not the 
 man who substitutes his own will and his own 
 brain for the will and intelligence of the crowd, 
 but the one who releases the energies within 
 the crowd so that the will of the crowd can be 
 expressed." 
 
 Charles M. §chwab has also said: 
 
 " I know something about making steel but I 
 don't know anywhere near as much as the 
 thousands of steel workers." 
 
 His view corresponds closely with that of the 
 foremost thinkers upon industrial reconstruc- 
 tion both here and in Europe; and that is, that 
 there are vast undeveloped resources of knowl- 
 edge, energy and creative genius in the human 
 
 166 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 167 
 
 factor in industry ; and that the next great step 
 forward in civilization will consist in releasing 
 this knowledge, energy, genius of the great 
 masses of the workers. 
 
 Under the old autocratic regime in industry 
 there have been specialists in financing, in sell- 
 ing, in advertising, in technical processes; but 
 the last thing of all to be considered was the 
 most important of all, tlie human element; the 
 labour; in industry. Any foreman or boss could 
 "hire and fire." It is only very recently that 
 labour-experts, labour-managers, labour-engi- 
 neers have begun to appear as an essential factor 
 in industrial organization, and in only a few of 
 the more enlightened has the labour expert risen 
 to anything like an equality of status with the 
 other departmental chiefs. I know of only a few 
 cases in which labour management is dignified by 
 a vice-presidency or other high official recogni- 
 tion in the company. 
 
 Under the old autocratic regime everything is 
 directed from above, according to the will of the 
 employer or manager, and the tendency is toward 
 the suppression of every form of creative energy 
 on the part of labour. The United States Steel 
 Corporation is to-day the greatest American 
 example of this system. Fortunately, not only 
 in the steel industry but in many others as well 
 the new secret for releasing the enormous ener- 
 
 IgHgtt 
 
168 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 gies of human beings is now being discovered 
 and developed. The idea is spreading with 
 extraordinary rapidity both in America and in 
 Europe. It is not confined to the thoughtful 
 labour leaders, nor to students or experts in in- 
 dustrial management, but many employers and 
 employers' associations are, as one observer said 
 to me, " riddled with it." 
 
 And this " secret " consists in applying to in- 
 dustry little by little the simple machinery of 
 democracy. 
 
 " We do not need a revolution," said H. L. 
 Gantt, one of the true pioneers of the movement, 
 " we do not need a class war. Most people will 
 work for the common good if you give them a 
 chance. The trouble is that we have been cling- 
 ing to an autocratic system under the mistaken 
 idea that it was good, at least for the aristocrat. 
 The fact is, that it isn't. Democracy is far 
 better for all of us. Industrial democracy will 
 release our energies and make us the strongest 
 people on earth." 
 
 I described in the previous chapter how this 
 new system had been introduced and showed how 
 it worked in a typical small industry. To-day 
 there are hundreds even thousands of mills, fac- 
 tories and other business organizations, all the 
 way from huge steel plants, like the Colorado 
 Fuel & Iron Company, the Midvale Steel 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 169 
 
 Company, and important transportation and 
 shipbuilding companies, to little factories with a 
 few hundred hands where the new idea is being 
 tried out. It is a very new m ovement. Before 
 the war it was practically unknown outside of 
 a few halting pioneer experiments; to-day it is 
 scarcely an exaggeration to say that it is more 
 in the thought of American industrial leadership 
 than any other single group of ideas. 
 
 Mr. Gantt predicted that it would make us 
 " the strongest people on earth "—but we shall 
 have to push hard indeed if we beat the British 
 and the Germans in the introduction of this 
 great new organization of human energy in in- 
 dustry. For the British have already gone be- 
 yond us through the adoption as a national 
 pohcy of the Whitley Councils System provid- 
 ing for the reconstruction of industry upon a 
 democratic basis. While a large proportion of 
 our employers and labour leaders, through lack 
 of understanding, are still opposing the whole 
 idea, the gi'eat majority of both organized capi- 
 tal and organized labour in Great Britain have 
 accepted it. Already forty-one national indus- 
 tries, including many hundreds of individual 
 plants, employing over two and one-half million 
 workers, are operating under the new system — • 
 although none of the great basic industries have 
 yet adopted it. 
 
'■'■■I. i . 
 
 It !' 
 
 170 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 The Germans have sought the same end in 
 their methodical and formal way by passing, on 
 January 17th of this year (1920) a "shops 
 council " law which will apply to all factories or 
 pknts where " more than five men or women 
 are employed." It is called " one of the most 
 radical pieces of economic legislation since the 
 war." It means the gradual reconstruction of 
 German industry upon a co-operative and demo- 
 cratic basis. 
 
 Compared with the sweeping changes contem- 
 plated in both Great Britain and Germany — 
 our economic competitors-the American move- 
 ment is stiU tentative and experimental. Al- 
 though many enterprises are trying out the sys- 
 tem, this represents a very small proportion of 
 the tens of thousands of employing establish- 
 ments in America. It is as yet a mere crack in 
 the surface of the old order. 
 
 The new method was adopted whole-heartedly 
 during the war by our own War Labour Board, 
 and through that organization applied in more or 
 less rudimentary forms to many industries 
 where labour disturbances were threatened- 
 great concerns like the General Electric Com- 
 pany, at its Pittsfield and Lynn plants, the 
 Bethlehem Steel Corporation, the American 
 Cash Register Company, and several important 
 plants at Bridgeport, Conn. And the Presi- 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 171 
 
 dent's Industrial Commission which recently sat 
 at Washington has recommended the adoption 
 of the new system as one of the main features 
 of its report. There is this to be said about 
 Americans; they are quick learners, and once 
 they understand the enormous possibilities of the 
 new co-operative relationship there is no doubt 
 that it will be swiftly applied. The atmosphere 
 of American life is peculiarly favourable to the 
 growth of such democratic movements, and we 
 have already demonstrated, during the war, an 
 extraordinary ability to " get together " and to 
 infuse industry with a " spirit of co-operation '* 
 which accomplished great results in a short time. 
 
 DeTocqueville long ago called attention to the 
 peculiar genius of Americans for forming asso- 
 ciations of all kinds, for all purposes — in short, 
 their ability to work together. 
 
 " Wherever at the head of some new under- 
 taking you see the government in France, or 
 a man of rank in England, in the United States 
 you will be sure to find an association. The 
 English often perform great things singly, 
 whereas the Americans form associations for 
 the smallest undertakings." 
 
 The American approach to the new system is 
 by the American method, through encourage- 
 ment by volunteer associations and experimenta- 
 tion in actual enterprises. It lacks the regu- 
 
- f/- 
 
 ■'!! 
 
 172 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 larity of a German system prescribed by law, 
 or a British system carefully studied by a gov- 
 ernmental body and adopted from above, but 
 what it loses in uniformity it may gain through 
 variety of creative experimentation, the attempt 
 by many individual brains to apply the principle 
 to specific cases. This cannot fail to product a 
 greater degree of flexibility and a closer adapta- 
 tion to actual needs than any prepared plan. 
 The creative impulse thrives best where experi- 
 mentation is freest. 
 
 So it is that when we endeavour in America 
 to define what the new system of " industrial 
 democracy " really is, we ^d a large number of 
 different " plans " or " systems," varying widely 
 in detail or still more widely in spirit We have 
 the Colorado Fuel and Iron pkn. the Bridge- 
 port plan, the Leitch plan, the Amalgamated 
 Garment Workers plan, and others, and as yet 
 no comprehensive governmental plan at all. It 
 is a movement which has grown more or less 
 spontaneously from within. 
 
 Now, I shall not enter here into a discussion 
 of the details of these various plans. I have 
 illustrated in a former article exactly how the 
 system was apphed in one small industry, but 
 there are certain broad general principles which 
 underlie the entire movement. Fundamentally, 
 the effort is to do away with the old autocratic 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 173 
 
 and militaristic organization of industry, and 
 gradually substitute for it a new co-operative 
 and democratic organization. 
 
 Under the new system labour is no longer 
 regarded as a mere part of the machinery, but 
 as a partner with a definite share in the manage- 
 ment. The essential structure is very simple. It 
 consists of committees secretly elected bv the 
 workmen of a shop or an industry (hence the 
 names " shop committee " or " employees' repre- 
 sentatives ") to meet similar committees ap- 
 pointed by the management, thus producing a 
 " workers' council " or " trade board " to discuss 
 and settle certain of the problems of manage- 
 ment — beginning with the problems especially 
 affecting labour, working conditions, wages, 
 hours and the like. One vital purpose of the 
 movement is to reach and deal with the causes 
 of unrest and never permit disagreements to 
 develop to the point of open war (strikes). It 
 may be a very crude and partial arrangement 
 in which only a little democracy is let into the 
 industry, and only very limiteji . powers con- 
 ferred upon t he " council." or it may go to the 
 length of admitting a representative of the 
 workers to a place in the Board of Directors 
 of the company with extensive privileges 
 granted the workers of sharing in the profits 
 and of purchasing stock in the corpora- 
 
I 
 
 174 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 tion— as in the example at Wappingers Falls 
 which I have already described. AJ^,o{ the 
 experiments represent an approach to " indus- 
 trial democracy." Those who wish to go into 
 the whole matter more fully — and there is a 
 notable awakening of interest irrthis subject all 
 over America — ^may find further information in 
 certain books and reports: or better yet, by 
 visiting some plant where the system is now in 
 operation. The subject is as yet so very new, 
 and the developments are so rapid, that the 
 literature is rather unsatisfactory. Two new 
 books which interpret the spirit of the move- 
 ment are " Industrial Good-Will " by Profes- 
 sor John II . Commons of Wisconsin University, 
 one of the best of our American authorities, 
 and "Industry and Humanity," by W. L. 
 Mackenzie King, former Minister of Labour of 
 Canada. For a more detailed account of actual 
 ^ plans in operation there is a report on " Shop 
 Committees and Industrial Councils " pub- 
 lished by the New Jersey State Chamber 
 of Commerce, Newark, N. J., and a sum- 
 mary, " Works Councils in the United 
 States," by the National Industrial Con- 
 ference Board, 15 Beacon Street, Boston. This 
 latter is a report made under the direction of 
 twenty-five of the foremost Employers' Asso- 
 ciations of America. Other excellent reports 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 175 
 
 may be obtained by applying to the United 
 States Department of Labour: and there is a 
 small book by W. L. Stoddard upon the experi- 
 ence of the War Labour Board in establishing 
 shop committees. 
 
 Much opposition to the new sy stem in 
 America is to be found among both employers 
 and employees. Upon the side of the employers 
 it is due in part to the natural inertia of men 
 who have succeeded by the old method, who 
 know that method well, and are fearful of any 
 change or new adventure : in part to the human 
 desire to maintain " authority " ; and in part to 
 the short-sightedness that sees more immediate 
 profit in the present system. It is so much 
 easier to " boss " than to co-operate. And the 
 new system looks like revolution! Many em- 
 ployers will examine it seriously only after they 
 have been through the hard punishment of 
 strikes or other labour disturbances. It is 
 among the younger, more progressive, more 
 thoughtful employers that the movement is 
 spreading most rapidly. Since the close of the 
 recent steel strike, employers opposed to the 
 plan have called attention to the fact that em- 
 ployers working in companies having the new 
 system (in a more or less rudimentary form) 
 like the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company and 
 the Midvale Steel Company — ^went out on strike 
 
 y 
 
II li 
 
 176 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 with the other steel workers. This is true (ex- 
 cept as to the Bethlehem Steel Company where 
 the new plan of co-operation and conciliation 
 was largely instrumental in keeping the plant 
 going) but significantly it has not discouraged 
 a single one of these great employers. They are 
 gohig straight ahead with their forward-looking 
 experiments. As the Iron Age well says in an 
 editorial: 
 
 We have looked upon the steps taken by various steel 
 companies to cultivate better relations with their employees 
 through conference committees^ on which the employee rep- 
 resentatives are chosen by the workers, as having great 
 promise, and we have the same opinion in spite of what 
 happened at these plants in the period of the strike. 
 
 It need hardly be said that the defeat of the steel strike 
 leaders and the rising up of public opinion against them do 
 not signify that there is no call for change in labor condi- 
 tions in the steel industry. . . . 
 
 The fact that so many workers in the production of steel 
 are of foreign birth makes all the more necessary the em- 
 ployment of extraordinary means by the employers to estab- 
 lish a relation of confidence. The problem is neither more 
 nor less than that of realizing throughout the industry the 
 same democracy that was urged as the goal of every united 
 effort of managers and men during the war. We believe 
 the employee representation plan is the best means yet 
 devised for reaching the desired end. 
 
 On the part of the workers the opposition to 
 the new idea is also due to fear and misunder- 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 1 ty\y 
 
 standing — especially among the older and more 
 conservative leaders of the Gompers type. They 
 havVbuilt up their labour organization upon a 
 militaristic basis: they regard the employer 
 more or less as a natural enemy upon whom, 
 from time to time, they make war (strike) and 
 with whom they sign truces (coUective bar- 
 gains). It is as hard for them to get the new 
 idea of frank co-operation and a democratic 
 relationship as it is for the old-fashioned em- 
 ployers. And they reaUy have a genuine basis 
 for theh- apprehension: for in some cases the 
 new device of shop-organizations, so-called 
 « company unions," has been deliberately used 
 by employers for hampering labour organization 
 or weakening its influence. The workers know 
 what an indispensable instnmient labour organi- 
 zation has been to them in getting even the 
 primary recognition of their rights and they 
 dread desperately anything which suggests inter- 
 ference with their free action in this regard. 
 They are very suspicious of certain of the " com- 
 pany unions" in the steel industry: indeed one 
 of their demands when the steel strike was 
 called was the "abolition of company unions." 
 On the other hand some of the progressive 
 younger leaders like Hillman of the Amalga- 
 mated Garment Workers, believe thoroughly 
 in the new movement on the ground that any 
 
I' I 
 
 V h 
 
 178 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 association of workers, giving them freedom 
 to act in matters pertaining to their own lives, 
 leads certainly to more self-conscious organiza- 
 tion—and will tend to help rather than hinder 
 the labour movement. 
 
 The only secure approach to the new system 
 is a genuine spir/o'f goodwill firmly based 
 upon a scientific examination of all the factors 
 in the problem. Any employer who " takes on " 
 the *' shop committee " or " employees' repre- 
 sentation " system merely as a sop to labour, or 
 with the intention of using it to fight unionism, 
 or to postpone doing real justice to the workers, 
 is doomed to failure. He discredits the whole 
 idea, in which the spirit of approach is the es- 
 sential element. If he wants to reap the benefits 
 of industrial democracy he must begin by being 
 democratic: if he wants genuine co-operation, he 
 must himself genuinely co-operate. In England 
 the Whitley plan of workers' councils presup- 
 poses complete organization of labour; and la- 
 hour must never be expected to forego the full 
 use of its one weapon of defence — organization 
 and the strike — unless it is thoroughly convinced 
 that capital and management is sincere in its 
 proffers of co-operation and conciliation, and 
 honestly proposes to introduce a greater degree 
 of democracy in management. 
 
 The Shop Council System as Applied to the 
 
 Men's Clothing Industry of America and 
 
 Canada — The History, Principles and 
 
 Structure of the Development 
 
 1C0ME now to what is undoubtedly the 
 niost significant and comprehensive experi- 
 ment, at present under way in America, 
 in the introduction of a new co-operative and 
 democratic relationship in industry. 
 
 It has demonstrated its success in certain 
 markets over a longer period than any other. 
 It has operated in what was for years the most 
 turbulent of all industries — the men's clothing 
 trades. Here competition among employers 
 was bitterest and most unscrupulous: here 
 labour conditions were the worst; here in the 
 ghettos and the tenement districts of New York 
 and Chicago extreme radicalism found — and still 
 finds — its toughest rootage. And yet out of 
 this condition of industrial anarchy has de- 
 veloped the beginning of a reign of law, founded 
 upon a genuine spirit of co-operation. 
 
 In the shops of Hart, Schaffner & Marx of ' 
 Chicago, with 7,000 workmen, where the new 
 
 179 
 
i 
 
 180 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 idea has been tested out for over nine years — 
 lasting through the strain of the war and 
 through epidemics of labour disturbances in 
 neighbouring clothing factories — there has never 
 been a strike. On the other hand an immense 
 and steady improvement has taken place not 
 only in the living conditions, but in the spurit of 
 responsible independence, the morale, the man- 
 hood, of the workers; production per man (in 
 that market, at least) has been rising: and fin- 
 ally, the employers have been steadily pros- 
 perous. As to the effect of the new system 
 upon the consuming public I shall speak later. 
 
 A plan, a system, a spirit, which will accom- 
 plish all these results in a time of industrial un- 
 rest is assuredly worth careful examination. 
 
 In order to make the present situation per- 
 fectly clear, let us recall for a moment the three 
 stages through which the clothing industry in 
 common, indeed, with others — has passed during 
 recent years. 
 
 1. The period of unrestricted competition 
 among both employers and workers. I remem- 
 ber well, many years ago, studying and writing 
 about conditions in the garment trades. Cloth- 
 ing was then made in dark holes in tenements — 
 veritable "sweat shops" — ^by miserable and 
 helpless foreigners who were driven to long 
 hours of work at starvation wages by the un- 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 181 
 
 regulated operation of the law of supply and 
 demand. By subdivision of labour the system 
 had stolen the skill of the craftsman and given 
 nothing in return. It requires to-day fifty 
 workers to make a pair of pants, and of tens 
 of thousands of tailors very few could to-day 
 make a coat, still less a suit of clothing. 
 
 The whole industry had become a blind and 
 greedy struggle for jobs among thousands of 
 unskilled men. Employers were practically as j 
 helpless as the workers : they were equally bound 
 upon the wheel of cut-throat competition. Any 
 one of them who tried to improve conditions was 
 speedily forced to the wall by ruthless com- 
 petitors. 
 
 2. The second great stage represented the 
 effort to escape from this hopeless condition of 
 competitive anarchy by organization. Both sides 
 in all branches of American industry began to 
 combine, the employers in corporations, trusts, 
 associations; the workers in labour unions. 
 Where large capital was invested and extensive 
 machinery was necessary — as in the steel in- 
 dustry — anarchy often gave place to an autoc- 
 racy of capital: with law and order imposed 
 from above by a strong man or group of men. 
 Judge Gary to-day is such an autocrat: and the 
 United States Steel Corporation is an example 
 of this stage of development. It has succeeded 
 
li 
 
 I' t 
 
 #» 
 
 182 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 by organizing capital and keeping the workers 
 more or less disorganized. 
 
 But this development was not possible in the 
 clothing industry, because an employer could 
 get into it with ahnost no capital at all. All 
 that was needed was a loft, or even one room, a 
 few sewing machines (or not any), and an 
 ability to attract, dominate, or browbeat 
 labour. 
 
 But if the employers in the clothing industry 
 could not combine, the workers could and did. 
 They began organizing by crafts, the more 
 skilled men first, and there ensued a long and 
 bitter w arfa re of strikes and lockouts. Unions 
 were broken and defeated only to rise and fight 
 again. The whole industry was kept in a con- 
 dition of chaos. The United Garment Workers, 
 affiliated with the American Federation of 
 Labour, at one time became very powerful but 
 not powerful enough to impose upon the in- 
 dustry an autocracy of labour— equivalent to the 
 autocracy of capital in the steel industry. For 
 floods of new immigrants kept coming into the 
 country bringing new labour competition, and 
 requiring Herculean cWotIs on the part of the 
 unions to educate them to the need of organiza- 
 tion. And one of the fundamental ideas upon 
 which unionism then rested— and it remains to- 
 day an essential weakness of the American 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 183 
 
 Federation of Labour — was craft organization, 
 at a time when craft skill and craft lines were of 
 steadily decreasing importance in many branches 
 of industry. 
 
 In the years from about 1908 until the out- 
 break of the Great War (it was worst of all in 
 New York — better, after 1911, in Chicago) 
 the conditions in the clothing industry were 
 all but intolerable. There were repeated and 
 costly strikes and lockouts, a constant tendency 
 on both sides to avoid livinff up to agreements, 
 a steady decrease-j^^duction ^d efficiency. 
 Neither side was strong enough to impose law 
 and order in the industry. This is the unfortu- 
 nate stage in which many great industries in 
 America now find themselves. The coal-mining 
 industry, for example, has recently reached an 
 intolerable deadlock. 
 
 8. We are now entering upon the great third 
 stage of development. It is not surprising that 
 it has come earliest in the clothing industry 
 because, as I have shown, the conditions were 
 such that both employers and workers became 
 convinced that life was impossible in either of 
 the other stages. 
 
 Some wholly new method was necessary. 
 Organize d hostil ity in industry had produced 
 only chaos: what remained but to try co-opera- 
 tion? Autocracy of capital in industry had not 
 
184 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 resulted in justice or in a reign of law; what 
 remained but to try democracy? 
 
 This is the great change, the right-about-face, 
 implied in the present remarkable wave of ex- 
 perimentation, which I have described in former 
 chapters, with the new system of "shop com- 
 mittees," " works councils," " trade boards." 
 
 Two men, both in the same shop, one an em- 
 ployer, one a worker, are mainly responsible for 
 the beginnings of the new development in the 
 garment trade. They were both men of vision 
 and of practical courage. It is a very interest- 
 ing story. The employer was Schaffner, of 
 Hart, Schaffner & Marx. He had built up a 
 large business in Chicago, he had retained in his 
 workers a more than ordinarily close and benevo- 
 lent interest. When the great strike of 1910 tied 
 up his shops it nearly broke his heart. It seemed 
 the height of ingratitude on the part of the 
 workers. But unlike many employers who have to 
 face this problem he did not become blindly angry 
 and assume that he was all right and the workers 
 all wrong-and that a stupid resort to force 
 was the only solution. He asked himself what 
 the trouble really was. He began to inquire 
 into the whole subject of relationships between 
 employers and workers. One thing he discov- 
 ered immediately was that as his shops had 
 grown larger, and machinery had been intro- 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 185 
 
 duced, that the old personal relationship and 
 personal understanding between him and his 
 workers had become impossible. 
 
 " The great trouble," he said, " is that I don't 
 really know my own men. I don't really know 
 what is going on in my own shops." 
 
 If he did not know his men, it was important 
 that he should know them. So he employed a 
 man who was entirely outside of the industry 
 and therefore not prejudiced, a man with a 
 trained, scientific mind, to study the problem. 
 This was Professor Earl Dean Howard of 
 Northwestern University, probably the pioneer I 
 labour manager — at least of the new type — ^in 
 American industry. There are now over fifty 
 such labour managers in the clothing trades 
 alone, many of them formerly college professors. 
 It was such an evident thing to do ! There were 
 experts in advertising, experts in selling, experts 
 in financing, experts in production — and no ex- 
 perts at all in the most important factor of all 
 in industry — labour. Goodwill in industry is 
 not enough. Schaffner had had goodwill and his 
 men had struck. There must, indeed be good- 
 will, but it must be based upon accurate knowl- 
 edge and a common understanding. 
 
 This was the beginning of the new experiment 
 upon the part of the employer. 
 
 In the same shop there was a young Jewish 
 
m 
 
 m .ill 
 
 186 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 clothing cutter named Si(|ney Hillman. He 
 was at the time only twenty-four years old. He 
 was born in Russia and came up through the 
 narrow but thorough training of a rabbinical 
 school. Like so many other restless young 
 Russians he became an active revolutionary 
 against the Czarist government. He was ar- 
 rested before he was eighteen years old and 
 thrown into prison where he spent his time read- 
 ing every book upon economics and political 
 science he could lay hands upon. When he 
 got out of prison he left Russia, spent a year 
 in Manchester, England, and then came to 
 Chicago where he went to work in the plant of 
 Sears, Roebuck & Co. and later in the shops of 
 Hart, Schaffner & Marx. He had an ambition 
 to be a lawj-er, but when the labour disturbances 
 began he at once came into local leadership and 
 was the principal agent on the part of the men 
 in working out with the firm the remarkable new 
 co-operative agreement which went into effect 
 during the following year, 1911. 
 
 At the time of this agreement the dominant 
 union in the garment trades was the United 
 Garment Workers which was affiliated with the 
 American Federation of Labour. But many of 
 the local organizations were discontented with 
 the old craft unionism and the militaristic 
 methods and leadership of the American Federa- 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 187 
 
 tion of Labour. In the national convention of 
 the United Garment Workers in 1913 the differ- 
 ences came to a head and when a considerable 
 number of delegates were denied seats they with- 
 drew, held a rump convention of their own, 
 formed a new organization called the Amalga- 
 mated Clothing Workers, and elected Sidney 
 Hillman their President, although he was not 
 present at the convention. 
 
 The principles upon which the new organiza- 
 tion was founded were in brief as follows: 
 
 1. To place less emphasis upon craft organi- 
 zation and more upon a union of all the workers 
 in the industry; to be as hospitable toward the 
 unskilled as toward the skilled. 
 
 2. To caroperate witli employers wherever 
 possible rather than to fight them — but to fight 
 and fight hard if necessary. They had before 
 them the Hart, Schaffner & Marx agreement of 
 1911 as a way of approach toward industrial 
 democracy. 
 
 Although excommunicated by the American 
 Federation of Labour this new organization 
 spread with extraordinary rapidity. To-day it 
 has a membership of some 200,000 and prac- 
 tically dominates the workers in the men's 
 garment trades (except for certain shops chiefly 
 making overalls which are still affiliated with the 
 old United Garment Workers) of America and 
 
■Ill 
 
 lilt 
 
 III 
 
 188 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 Canada. It is one of the most powerful unions 
 in the country; it publishes its paper in seven 
 languages; it conducts interesting welfare and 
 educational work; it is planning large office 
 buildings for its use (one to cost a miUion dol- 
 lars) in New York and Chicago; it is projecting 
 co-operative enterprises of several kinds; it was 
 rich enough to send a check for $100,000 to the 
 steel workers in their recent strike. It has suc- 
 ceeded in binding together in a close union 
 workers of a dozen different nationalities and 
 races, chiefly Jews, Italians, Poles, Bohemians, 
 but including many old-stock Americans, Scotch, 
 English. Scandinavians and others. 
 
 The essential element in the Hart. Schaffner 
 & Marx agreement from which the entire de- 
 velopment springs is also the fundamental idea 
 found in the " shop committee " system that I 
 •, have already described — that labour must be 
 ; represented "in managing those elements of 
 1 industry which concern its own hfe. Therefore 
 the Hart. Schaffner & Marx agreement pro- 
 vides for the secret election by the workers in 
 each shop of a " chairman." These chairmen, 
 whVare. of course, union men. because the shops 
 are firmly organized, elect five delegates to meet 
 five representatives of the employees in a " trade 
 board " where all questions that arise can be 
 discussed upon an equal and democratic basis. 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 189 
 
 This is in its essence the usual " shop coun- 
 cils " system; but in the garment trades two 
 very important new features have been intro- 
 duced. One is the principle of continuous nego- 
 tiation, with an agreement never to let a dif- 
 ference of opinion reach the point of a strike. 
 Instead of meeting occasionally and dealing at 
 arm's length, these " trade boards " in Chicago 
 are in session every day and any trouble that 
 may arise is instantly dealt with. 
 
 The other important feature is the " impar- 
 tial chairman." He is the outsider who is chosen 
 to preside over the trade board and to decide 
 questions when a deadlock occurs between the 
 five members representing the workers and the 
 five members representing the employers. In 
 short, there is not only continuous negotiation 
 but continuous arb i t ration. Very able and 
 broad-minded men, often college professors, 
 have been chosen for impartial chairmen and 
 arbitrators. At present Professor James H. 
 JTufts of Chicago University is chairman^of the 
 Board of Arbitration in the Chicago market. 
 
 So much lies in the spirit of approach to these 
 new methods that every one who is really inter- 
 ested ought to read the following four extracts 
 (written by J. E. Williams, now deceased, the 
 first chairman of the Board of Arbitration, and 
 one of the real creators of the movement) from 
 
■ 
 
 190 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 the preamble of the agreement — which are in 
 their way a setting forth of the basic principles 
 for a new constitution for industry, which is 
 now in the making: 
 
 On the part of the employer it is the intention and ex- 
 pectation that this compact of peace will result in the 
 establishment and maintenance of a high order of discipline 
 and efficiency by the willing co-operation of union and 
 workers rather than by the old method of surveillance and 
 coercion; that by the exercise of this discipline all stop- 
 pages and interruptions of work, and all wilful violations 
 of rules will cease; that good standards of workmanship 
 and conduct will be maintained and a proper quantity, 
 quality and cost of production will be assured ; and that out 
 of its operation will issue such co-operation and goodwill 
 between employers, foremen, union and workers as will pre- 
 vent misunderstanding and friction and make for good 
 team-work, good business, mutual advantage and mutual, 
 respect. 
 
 On the part of the union it is the intention and expecta- 
 tion that this compact will, with the co-operation of the em- 
 ployer, operate in such a way as to maintain, strengthen, 
 and solidify its organization, so that it may be strong 
 enough, and efficient enough to co-operate as contemplated 
 in the preceding paragraph ; and also that it may be strong 
 enough to command the respect of the employer without 
 being forced to resort to militant or unfriendly measures. 
 
 On the part of the workers it is the intention and ex- 
 pectation that they pass from the status of wage servants, 
 with no claim on the employer save his economic need, to 
 that of self-respecting parties to an agreement which they 
 have had an equal part with him in making; that this status 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 191 
 
 gives them an assurance of fair and just treatment and 
 protects them against injustice or oppression of those who 
 may have been placed in authority over them; that they will 
 have recourse to a court, in the creation of which their votes 
 were equally potent with that of the employer, in which all 
 their grievances may be heard, and all their claims adjudi- 
 cated ; that all changes during the life of the pact shall be 
 subject to the approval of an impartial tribunal, and that 
 wages and working conditions shall not fall below the level 
 provided for in the agreement. 
 
 The parties to this pact realize that the interests sought 
 to be reconciled herein will tend to pull apart, but they 
 enter it in the faith that by the exercise of the co-operative 
 and constructive spirit it will be possible to bring and keep 
 them together. This will involve as an indispensable pre- 
 requisite the total suppression of the militant spirit by both 
 parties and the development of reason instead of force as 
 the rule of action. 
 
 The new arrangement in the Hart, Schaflfner 
 & Marx shops though at first regarded by many 
 employers with great suspicion and scepticism, 
 worked so well that it has now spread until it 
 covers the entire industry in America. 
 
 In each of the great markets — Chicago, New 
 York, Rochester, Baltimore— there are " market 
 boards " in which the organized employers meet 
 the organized workers to discuss and settle prob- 
 lems that concern the wider interests that arise 
 in the entire market. Last July, 1919, another 
 great step forward was taken: the employers of 
 the entire country organized a National Federa- 
 
192 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 tion to meet upon an equal basis the national 
 union of the workers and to establish a national 
 joint board which should be in effect a govern- 
 ment for the entire trade in America and 
 Canada — establishing law and order for the 
 whole industry. This has just begun to func- 
 tion. 
 
 In this chapter I have sketched all too briefly 
 the interesting history of this new movement, set 
 forth the principles upon which it is based, and 
 outlined the structure of its organization. In the 
 next chapter I shall examine the development 
 critically. How has it affected the worker, how 
 the employer, how the public? What are its 
 defects and limitations, if any? 
 
 L/xlilx X Hixt JV.V1 
 
 A Critical Examination of the Shop Coun- 
 cil System in the Clothing Industry 
 — How Does it Really Work? — 
 What are its Excellences 
 and Limitations? 
 
 READ this acute description of the pres- 
 ent condition of American industry: 
 "A chronic state of civil warfare — 
 with the classes perpetually struggling for ad- 
 vantage — with small consideration for the public 
 welfare." 
 
 Signs of emergence from this intolerable con- 
 dition are now beginning to appear — ^here and 
 there a factory flies the flag of the new republic, 
 here and there a shop or a mill, but only one 
 great national industry, thus far, has risen into 
 the new reign of law, established anything like a 
 stable or orderly government. 
 
 I described in my last chapter the representa- 
 tive system of government in the men's clothing 
 trades of America, where we have both em- 
 ployers and workers organized and the rudi- 
 ments of legislative, judicial and administrative 
 machinery well established. 
 
 193 
 

 f 
 
 h i 
 
 194 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 Some 4,000 employers in these trades, mostly 
 in New York, Chicago, Rochester and Balti- 
 more, Boston, Montreal and Toronto, with an 
 enormous investment of capital, employing 200,- 
 000 workers, are now living under and within 
 this new government — not all happily yet, hut 
 with better order and better conditions than ever 
 existed before. It is the purpose of this chap- 
 ter to consider the new system critically. How 
 does it really work? What is its effect upon the 
 employer, the workers, the public? 
 
 The best evidence of the success or failure of 
 a government is to be found in the testimony of 
 the people who live under it. 
 
 In the factory where the new government has 
 had its longest and severest trial — over nine 
 years without a strike — the employers, Jlart^^ 
 Schaffner k Marx, have this to say: 
 
 " In our own business, employing thousands 
 of persons, some of them newly arrived in this 
 country, some of them in opposition to the whole 
 wage system, hostile to employers as a class, we 
 have observed astonishing changes in their atti- 
 tude under the influence of our labour arrange- 
 ments. Many seem to understand that they car 
 rely upon the promises made to them by the 
 company, and that all disputes will be finally 
 adjusted according to just principles interpreted 
 by wise arbitrators." 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 195 
 
 These employers find that the unexpected and 
 indirect advantages of the new system are as re- 
 markable as the direct advantages. 
 
 " Not the least of the advantages we have de- 
 rived from our system is the reaction of the ideas 
 and ideals, first applied in the labour depart- 
 ment, upon the other departments, and particu- 
 larly upon the executive staff of the manufac- 
 turing department. Inefiicient methods of fore- 
 men, lack of watchful supervision, and inac- 
 curate information as to prevailing conditions on 
 the part of higher executives, these could not 
 long survive when every complaint brought 
 by a workman was thoroughly investigated 
 and the root-cause of the trouble brought to 
 light." 
 
 I had much the same conclusions from Samuel 
 Weill, who is at the head of the Stein-Bloch 
 Company of Rochester, another large manu- 
 facturer of clothing. He is thoroughly con- 
 vinced of the value of orderly government in 
 industry, with the workers assuming their proper 
 share in the management. 
 
 " By letting the worker have what he is en- 
 titled to, we protect and guarantee what we are 
 entitled to," he says: "we cannot get security 
 unless we give it." 
 
 This is inside testimony from employers who 
 have been working under the new system, and 
 

 196 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 have found it profitable both in money and 
 in satisfaction. 
 
 It is significant, also, that in markets like 
 Chicago, where the system has been in operation 
 longest, the testimony is most unequivocal. In 
 the New York market, where its acceptance 
 is recent, there is still much doubt and scepti- 
 cism. 
 
 New York is a market where competition 
 among some 2,000 small manufacturers and con- 
 tractors is still fierce. They have indeed got 
 together in a strong organization with a labour- 
 manager, Major B. H. Gitchell, representing 
 them, but when confronted by the shortage of 
 labour, which now exists, and a strong labour 
 union, it is difficult indeed to keep them in line. 
 The less responsible among them secretly break 
 over the agreements and bid up on wages. At 
 the same time some of the lesser officials of the 
 labour union, who have not become fully imbued 
 with the new spirit, and who feel their power, 
 make unreasonable and autocratic demands. I 
 found employers in New York who told me that 
 conditions had never been worse — and yet they 
 are maintaining their organization and the 
 machinery of adjustment and conciliation. 
 
 "We employers are mostly to blame: we 
 aren't as willing to sacrifice for the common 
 good as the workers," one employer said to me. 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 197 
 
 " but we'd be far worse off than we are, if wt 
 hadn't the new system of control." 
 
 Indeed, one who gets down into the new 
 movement is astonished sometimes that it can 
 exist at all. Selfish competitive interests are still 
 so strong on both sides, the social spirit still so 
 weak, that it requires immense patience, steadi- 
 ness, perseverance, to keep the new spirit alive 
 and the new machinery in operation. On the 
 employers' side there is always a reactionary 
 group that will not " play the game," or sacrifice 
 any present profit for future security and pros- 
 perity. And if the employers find their reac- 
 tionaries a problem, the workers find their radi- 
 cals an equally difiicult one. The chief struggle 
 of the far-sighted leadership among the Amal- 
 gamated Clothing Workers is to keep in line the 
 impatient extremists who are not satisfied with 
 steady growth, but want the millennium by to- 
 morrow afternoon. 
 
 No one who examines these movements care- 
 fully can doubt that the greatest of all forces in 
 controlling and moderating "radicalism among 
 the workers is not stupid force applied from 
 the outside, but public opinion developed from 
 within, through vigorous labour organizations. 
 
 To see the labour managers on one side and 
 the labour leaders on the other dealing day after 
 day with these inflammable human elements in 
 

 »* ! t 
 
 p] 
 
 198 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 industry, trying to give to short-sighted selfish- 
 ness a little wider vision, trying to mitigate com- 
 petitive ferocity with a touch of the spirit of co- 
 operative understanding, trying to get into the 
 dull brain of prejudice some little glimpses of 
 the problem of the other man, is not only to 
 appreciate the immense difiiculty of the problems 
 involved, but to be filled with admiration for the 
 determined idealism, the . patience, the faith, of 
 these leaders, and to wonder that they have got 
 as far toward a new reign of law as they have. 
 When I think of the many men, both employers 
 and workers, who stand on the side lines and 
 agitate and denounce and threaten, who have 
 theories and dogmas which they want apphed 
 over night, who demand that the government 
 settle instantly difficulties which they are too 
 cowardly or too inert to settle themselves, my 
 admiration for these men who are patiently 
 playing the great creative game on the inside 
 is immeasurably increased. 
 
 The establishment of a new reign of law 
 means, of course, new methods of discipline. 
 Ability to secure disciphne is the test of any 
 government. I went with an employer in New 
 York into one of his shops where there were 
 only a few men at work. He explained why: 
 
 "We had a bad labour chairman here: and 
 the men got so obstreperous that we could no 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 199 
 
 longer stand it. Under their agreement they 
 could not strike, but they could commit a kind 
 of sabotage by refusing to produce. Well, we 
 entered into negotiations with the higher imion 
 officials, who investigated and found that we 
 were right, and with their sanction we discharged 
 every man in the shop : and are now building up 
 a new force. Under the old system if we had 
 discharged the entire force of a shop, it would 
 have caused a general strike and no end of 
 trouble: but we had the disciplinary power of 
 the union behind us." 
 
 T?Eis power of joint discipline is an important 
 element in the new agreement. Both sides can 
 be, and are, compelled to obey the law. 
 
 "The company's officials,'* says Section VII 
 of the agreement, " are subjec t to th e law as are 
 the workers and equal ly res ponsible for loyalty 
 in word and deed and are subject to discipline if 
 found ffuilty of violation. ... If any^worker 
 shall wOfully violate the spirit of the agreement 
 by intentional opposition to its fundamental pur- 
 poses (and especially if he carry such wilful 
 Violation into action by striking and inciting 
 others to strike or stop work during working 
 hours) he shaU, if the charge is proven, be sub- 
 ject to suspension, discharge or fine. ... If 
 any foreman, superintendent or agent of the 
 company shall wilfully violate the "spirit of this 
 
 ii 
 
1)1.1 
 
 I 
 
 200 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 agreement and especially if he fails to observe 
 and carry out any decision of the TradeBoard 
 or Board of Arbitration he shall, if theliarge 
 is proven, be subject to a fine of not less than 
 $10 or more than $100 for each offence." 
 This matter of discipline is, of course, a key- 
 1 stone of the new movement. It is one of the 
 elements which has made expert labour mana- 
 gers so necessary to employers: men expert in 
 dealing with the workers and with the union 
 leaders. Much wisdom is already growing up 
 out of these agreements. Consider this para- 
 graph upon discipline by Professor Earl Dean 
 Howard, labour manager for Hart, Schaffner 
 & Marx: 
 
 " So long as the offending employee is to be 
 retained in the factory, any disciplinary penalty 
 must be corrective and no more severe than is 
 necessary to accomplish the best results for all 
 concerned. Most offenders are victims of wrong 
 ideals or mental deficiencies, the remedy for 
 which is not punishment but help and instruc- 
 tion. Delinquencies in management can fre- 
 quently be discovered and the manager or other 
 executive may need the services of the expert 
 discipline officer quite as much as the original 
 offender. The efficiency of the discipline officer 
 should be measured by the proportion of ex- 
 oflfenders who have ultimately become compe- 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 201 
 
 tent and loyal friends of the company. It is his 
 prime duty to prevent and remove from the 
 minds of the people all sense of injustice in their 
 relations with the employer, which is the funda- 
 mental cause of the bitterest industrial conflicts." 
 
 Another most important test of the new sys- 
 tem is this : does it get results in added produc- 
 tion? This is the question that not only the 
 employers, but the public, will anxiously ask. 
 
 Well, industry is now learning, after hard ex- 
 perience, that production is due far more to the 
 spirit of the shop, to goodwill, than to any other 
 single factor. It cannot be secured for long 
 by coercion, nor do high wages necessarily as- 
 sure it. Whatever makes for more of the co- 
 operative and democratic spirit in the shop, in- 
 variably makes for more production. The ratio 
 is exact. The old spirit of civil war, antagonism, 
 and hostility is deep-seated and hard to eradi- 
 cate : therefore, the change from inefficiency and 
 low production to higher production is slow. 
 The turn has actually come in Chicago, where 
 the new government is well entrenched: it can- 
 not be said, yet, to have come in New York, 
 where the system is still new. Under the old 
 "sweat-shop" conditions high production was 
 forced by actual coercion: and the rebound has 
 been to the other extreme. And yet even in 
 New York, both employers and workers are 
 
if 
 
 202 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 beginmng to turn their attention seriously to the 
 matter of more and better production. Last 
 June the Cutters Union, in an agreement, ac- 
 I cepted the principle of joint responsibility for 
 I production and steady emEloymentTln Augurt 
 thTbTee-pants workeS^de a similar agree- 
 ment. In one shop where there had beS a 
 sharp drop in production following the introduc- 
 tion of week-work instead of piece-work, joint 
 conferences were held between employers and 
 workers. It was explained to the workers that 
 low production in New York meant that trade 
 would be seized by the more efficient markets of 
 Chicago and Rochester, and that for the good 
 of all, production must be kept high. The whole 
 matter was discussed by the workers with the 
 result that there was immediate and decided im- 
 provement. 
 
 As to the public interest in production, the 
 new agreement in the clothing trades is an im- 
 portant element in keeping down the price of 
 clothes. Continuous production, as contrasted 
 with the old wastefulness of strikes and shut- 
 downs, is a real service to the public: for what- 
 ever the issue of a strike, it is the public that in 
 the long run pays the bills for idleness. In a 
 recent award as arbitrator at Chicago, Professor 
 James H. Tufts said: 
 
 " The social and public value of an orderly, 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 203 
 
 peaceful method of negotiation and arbitration 
 for wage adjustments (and all other disputes 
 between employers and employed) cannot be 
 gainsaid. This industry, as now organized under 
 agreements which aim to substitute reason for 
 force, is performing an important public service. 
 Both the firms and the union members have 
 made certain financial sacrifices for the sake 
 of a larger end. The labour market is being 
 stabilized: goodwill is being cultivated: respon- 
 sibility is being built up." 
 
 Yet there is a real danger to the public in- 
 herent in this new movement, which the critic 
 must recognize. When the whole industry be- 
 comes thoroughly organized, the employers on 
 one side, the workers on the other, and disci- 
 phned under an industrial government of their 
 own, there is the danger that they will use their 
 power to raise prices and enrich themselves 
 at the expense of the people who must buy 
 clothing. I have argued this point many times 
 with men on both sides. They answer that their 
 arbitrators are far-sighted, impartial men of 
 high standing, who will help to watch the public 
 interest, and that they themselves are wise 
 enough to see that very high prices tend to cur- 
 tail consumption: and therefore reduce the in- 
 come to the industry. These are all, indeed, 
 drags upon the tendency of a powerful and 
 
II 
 
 I 
 
 n 
 
 204 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 united industry to force up its profits unduly: 
 but unchecked power of this sort is still danger- 
 ous. It is at this point, probably, that the 
 United States Government will have to play an 
 important part. At present there are no such 
 things as standards in any industry. We don't 
 
 *-' ..„...,«— ■■■r- " i» 1 • • 
 
 know whatTirrthe proper standards^gljiving: 
 or what should be the relationships of wages to 
 cost of living. We don't know, by scientific 
 tests," what should constitute a day's work in any 
 industry: either in hours or in production. Here 
 is a vast field for thorough and impartial ex- 
 amination, and a new kind of publicity: and the 
 United States Government is the only agency 
 that can properly undertake it. 
 
 Whenever I have spoken of this new system to 
 employers in other industries, two questions are 
 nearly always forthcoming. How about union- 
 ism? How do they get rid of bad labour 
 leaders? 
 
 In this industry, they have the open shop, the 
 closed shop and the preferential shop: all three 
 kinds: but the question, once the new spirit of 
 co-operation develops, curiously becomes one of 
 minor importance. In^Chicago they agree to 
 neither an open shop, nor a closed shop, but 
 have a preferential shop. That is, preference is 
 given to the union man in both hiring and laying 
 off. But with a thoroughly responsible union 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 205 
 
 the whole matter takes care of itself. As to the \ 
 irresponsible or grafting labour leader, he simply i 
 cannot thrive in this atmosphere of constant co- J 
 operation and goodwill. Your bad labour 
 leader fattens on civil war in industry: he plays 
 upon the fears and cupidities of both sides. In 
 the New York market, recently, several minor 
 leaders were accused of dishonest practices, tried 
 by the union itself, and not only deprived of their 
 ofiices, but in three cases expelled from the 
 union. Hart, S chaff ner & Marx gives this testi- 
 mony: 
 
 *' Much depends upon the leaders of the 
 workers. We have had some experience with 
 misinformed and self-seeking men who secured 
 temporary influence over our people, but some- 
 how they failed to thrive in the atmosphere of 
 our agreement." 
 
 As to the workers under the agreement, the 
 change from the " sweat-shop " conditions of a 
 few years ago is little short of miraculous. They 
 now have a forty-four hour week throughout the 
 industry and wages that bring them well up to 
 the American standard of living. They have 
 gained in morale and in responsibility through 
 self-expression in their unions. The social spirit 
 is strong among them, and is beginning to ex- 
 hibit itself in all sorts of new projects, such as 
 co-operative enterprises, educational and amuse- 
 
7 f 
 
 It 
 
 206 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 ment associations, naturalization and American- 
 ization work, mutual-aid organizations, and so 
 on. There is a world of social education and 
 discipline yet to be gained, but the beginnings 
 have been made. 
 
 I have feared all along the temptation to be 
 over-sanguine about this remarkable new move- 
 ment, as well as the less developed shop-com- 
 mittee systems which I have described in former 
 chapters. It must be said in all fairness, that the 
 great test of these new experiments is yet to 
 come. They have come into being on a rising 
 market and during a shortage of labour. What 
 will happen when there is a falling market, or 
 "hard times "-when there is again a surplus 
 of labour? Or, what will happen if the immi- 
 eration of f oreiim labour again inundates us and 
 brings new competition into the labour market? 
 We must face these questions. 
 
 I found the leaders on both sides in the cloth- 
 ing industry very certain that they could weather 
 the storm. 
 
 "There is no other alternative," said one: 
 "if we don't hang together, we hang sepa- 
 rately. The only alternative is anarchy and 
 chaos: we have got to maintain organization and 
 a reign of law, or we all go down together." 
 
 And it is a fact, also, that in both Great 
 Britain and Germany industry is seeking these 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 207 
 
 new co-operative arrangements as the only way 
 of escape. Far-sighted and wise men on both 
 sides see in some approach toward industrial 
 democracy the inevitable next step. 
 
 No, we cannot be sure that this particular 
 mechanism will work. All we can ever know, 
 for a certainty, about any complex problem in 
 life is the rectitude of our spirit in approaching 
 it. In these new movements, however faltering, 
 we discover, it seems clear to me, a genuine effort 
 toward more co-operation, more goodwill, more 
 democracy, an honest though difficult struggle to 
 emerge from anarchy into organization and a 
 reign of law. This eflFort, this struggle, at its 
 core, is sound ; it is based upon the eternal veri- 
 ties. We must have faith in it. 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 Foundations of the New Co-opekative Move- 
 ment IN Industry— The New Professor of 
 Management, and the Labour Manager 
 
 TO many people the new " shop council " 
 and co-operative plans for dealing with 
 the problems of labour seem like a revo- 
 lutionary innovation— a transformation too sud- 
 den to be sound. As a matter of fact the 
 preparation which preceded the introduction of 
 the new system, while quiet, has been substantial 
 and thorough. The changes appear sudden in 
 many cases because they were precipitated, per- 
 haps a little before industry in general was quite 
 ready to accept them, by the exigencies of the 
 war and of reconstruction. 
 
 In this chapter I wish to give some glimpses 
 of the background of the new movement— show 
 something of the preparation for it. A move- 
 ment which finds such swift acceptance in the 
 three principal industrial nations of the world- 
 Great Britain, Germany and the United States 
 — ^must have behind it a solid body of conviction. 
 
 We have been accustomed in the past to con- 
 sider only three groups as vitally concerned in 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 209 
 
 industry: the employer-capitalist: the worker: 
 the public. But very quietly, in the last fifteen 
 years, a fourth group has been rising in impor- 
 tance—especially in large industries of all kinds. 
 The members of this group do not belong 
 strictly to the employer-class, nor yet to the 
 working-class, nor do they stand aside like the 
 public. They belong to the new profession of 
 management: they are the experts in scientific 
 production or the experts in dealing with 
 labour. 
 
 As long as industry was small and the rela- 
 tionship between employer and worker was close 
 and personal, the labour question was of rela- 
 tive unimportance: but with the growth of 
 great industry, the owner-employer was sepa- 
 rated farther and farther jfrom the actual func- 
 tions of management. There crept in managers, 
 superintendents, foremen, as connecting links 
 between the owner and the worker. As time 
 passed these men have grown more and more 
 important to industry: for it is upon their skill, 
 knowledge, tact, that the prosperity of the shop 
 or mill really rests. In most of the greater in- 
 dustries in America to-day the owner-employer- 
 capitalist lives in some more or less distant city: 
 he handles problems of financing, salesmanship, 
 advertising, and leaves the actual operation of 
 the mill or factory largely to the managers. 
 
210 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 These managers are thus men not primarily 
 interested in profits— for they do not often get 
 any of the profits they make— but in production, 
 in efficiency, in the process itself: so they have 
 begun, more and more, to develop a professional 
 spirit toward their work. Perhaps no recent 
 movement in our educational life has been more 
 notable than the rapid development of schools 
 of business engineering, schools in which the 
 prmciples of management are studied and 
 taught. Many of the great universities and 
 technical colleges— Harvard, Dartmouth, Wis- 
 consin, Chicago, Illinois, New York and others 
 specialize in these lines. Drexel Institute in 
 Philadelphia, for example, maintains a school 
 especially for training foremen. 
 
 A great new impetus toward a professional 
 rather than a mere profit-making attitude 
 toward industry was given by F. W. Taylor a 
 dozen years ago in his campaign for scientific 
 management. Other movements like the study 
 of safety-engineering, profit-sharing, vocational 
 guidance, the sanitation and housing of workers, 
 the development of psychological tests for em^ 
 ployment, the whole great trend toward voca- 
 tional and technical education, have all helped in 
 stimulating this new professional spirit. 
 
 Managenient is thus coming to rank as a pro- 
 fession, as Webster's dictionary well defines the 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 211 
 
 term : " a calling in which a man uses his knowl- 
 edge for instructing, guiding or advising others 
 or of serving them in some art." Here the 
 ideas of education and service, not of profit, 
 come uppermost and this is the true attitude of 
 the new profession. 
 
 I speak of this broad development, which is now 
 firmly entrenched in America, with its regular 
 publications, its societies and organizations, in 
 order to make clearer the relative place of the 
 labour manager, and labour management, which, 
 as a newer part of the general movement, is com- 
 ing to occupy a most important place in our in- 
 dustrial life. 
 
 As an indication of the extent of the develop- 
 ment, the annual convention of the new Na- 
 tional Association of Labour managers held last 
 May (1919) at Cleveland was attended by 1,006 
 delegates from every section of the country. It 
 was so large a gathering that two banquets had 
 to be held to accommodate all the members. 
 
 The significance of this new movement can 
 hardly be exaggerated: for it means a right- 
 about-face in the attitude of our industries 
 toward labour. From being the least considered 
 of the elements that enter into production it be- 
 comes the most considered. 
 
 A. H. Young, the labour manager for the 
 International Harvester Company, one of the 
 
 m 
 
212 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 pioneers in the movement, speaks of the mem- 
 bers of the new profession as " pioneers in a new 
 «r» in industry." He refers to the series of 
 revolutionary changes in our industrial life in 
 the last half-century: the steam-engine and 
 power development: new methods of trans- 
 portation and communication: the perfection of 
 automatic tools: and the consolidation of busi- 
 ness organization. 
 
 "And at last," he says, "has come this be- 
 lated concentration of thought and effort upon 
 the human machine. ... Our function is to 
 nurture this new interest in human well-being; 
 to show the foremen, the workers, the officers, 
 the owners, the truly wonderful fruits of mutual 
 service; to stimulate their effort in its develop- 
 ment; to seek constantly for and apply new 
 truths; and to note as our reward not that 
 which we have done, but the result accomplished 
 by all." 
 
 The new co-operative spirit is strong in all 
 of these men. 
 
 " The whole movement," says Dudley Kennedy, 
 personnel manager at the Hog Island shipyards, 
 ^ IS an attempt to get back the old spirit of 
 ' cameraderie ' that prevailed when the owner 
 was personally known and truly appreciated by 
 every one of his employees . . . an attempt to 
 return to something like the old relationship 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 213 
 
 when the employer and his employees were real 
 co-operating friends." 
 
 The new profession is so interesting that it 
 has drawn into it a very high class of men with 
 high purposes. In the clothing industry, of 
 which I have already spoken, many of the labour 
 managers were formerly college professors; in 
 one case I know the labour manager was 
 formerly a minister: and most of them are men 
 who can approach the difficult new problems in 
 a broad scientific and sympathetic spirit. A 
 labour representative of one of the great indus- 
 tries of America thus describes the new pro- 
 fession: 
 
 " Many successful employment managers have 
 had little or no ' practical ' experience. These 
 men possess ahnost a sixth sense which is a 
 composite of a large measure of horse sense, a 
 generous dose of the milk of human kindness, 
 great sympathy, tact, diplomacy, and finaUy, an 
 unwavering belief in the cause espoused, coupled 
 with absolute honesty of purpose. The workers 
 are about the hardest people in the world to 
 fool. Mummery, stage-business, forms, mechan- 
 ics or technique, will not produce happy rela- 
 tions between the employer and employees in a 
 plant where they are set up in lieu of personality 
 and honesty of intent to serve." 
 The primary purpose of the labour manager 
 
 
214 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 is to understand the workers' point of view so 
 thoroughly and so sympathetically that he can 
 present it strongly and clearly to the manage- 
 ment. In the clothing trades, where the develop- 
 ment is probably the most advanced, the work of 
 dealing with the labour leaders is an important 
 one (and the labour leaders here co-operate per- 
 fectly with the labour managers) : and in some 
 industries the labour manager has become so 
 essential an element that he has been taken into 
 the management as a vice-president or other 
 oflScial upon an equal basis with the other three 
 great departments of industry: production, 
 finance and sales. 
 
 The labour manager also plays an important 
 part in all of the activities connected with safety, 
 sanitation, housing and in general welfare 
 work. I spoke in another chapter of the hos- 
 tility of workmen in the steel industry to wel- 
 fare work— they even call it " hell-fare " work, 
 because they think it an effort to substitute 
 trivial favours for essential justice. There was 
 no such feeling in times when industry was small 
 and employer and worker were close together: 
 for then a gift from the employer to the men 
 could be understood on both sides. Under the 
 labour manager there can be again a proper 
 approach to welfare work. Here is the word 
 of the managers of one large factory: 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 215 
 
 One of the most important functions of onr labour de- 
 partment is welfare work — giving advice and material as- 
 sistance to unfortunate employees, improving the working 
 conditions in the shops, maintaining rest rooms and librar- 
 ies, etc., — ^but this is not done for the purpose of more 
 easily depriving the workers of their right to be repre- 
 sented in all matters to which their interests are involved. 
 Working men are quick to resent the substitution of favours 
 for justice. Welfare work, however, in connection with 
 general fair dealing is very effective in securing goodwill, 
 especially if it increases the personal contact between the 
 officials of the company and the employees. 
 
 Yet I do not wish to imply that the ppthway 
 of the labour manager is " roses all the way." 
 Far from it. Often the employer does not more 
 than half believe that he is worth his salt. Fore- 
 men, superintendents and other production offi- 
 cials find it hard, as William M. Leiserson, of 
 Rochester, one of the most experienced of labour 
 experts, has testified, "to give up their tradi- 
 tional authority to what they consider imprac- 
 tical young men with new-fangled notions of 
 kindness and consideration in the treatment of 
 labour." 
 
 No, the old system dies hard! 
 
 Enterprises where the labour manager has 
 been introduced, and where the new co-operative 
 spirit has begun to express itself, find immedi- 
 ate results in increased production, says Morris 
 
216 THE NEW INDUSTWAL UNREST 
 
 L. Cooke, one of the foremost of American 
 efficiency engineers: 
 
 " Permanent success in increasing produc- 
 tiveness is invariably accompanied by an inten- 
 sive cultivation of the personnel problem. The 
 manufacturing plant seeking increased output 
 should have as its purpose ' the highest develop- 
 ment — mental, moral and spiritual — of each and 
 every person connected with the organization/ " 
 
 One of the greatest causes of inefficiency in 
 industry is a high labour turn-over: and the kind 
 of sabotage in which the workers hold back on 
 production. The labour manager who devotes 
 his whole time to the study of these problems 
 and to ways for curing them, has been found to 
 be of the greatest service. 
 
 In fact, the increased efficiency resulting from 
 a genuine effort to study the personnel prob- 
 lems in a shop or mill is so evident that many 
 employers have introduced the system with the 
 idea that it will solve all the problems of labour. 
 But it is no cure-all. It is only the beginning 
 of the long process of co-operation: the begin- 
 ning of a new relationship: and unless the em- 
 ployer is willing to go forward with the intro- 
 duction of more democratic methods of manage- 
 ment throughout, he wiU not for long reap the 
 rewards of the new experiment. 
 
 Specialization in labour management is of no 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 217 
 
 sporadic growth, nor does it represent mere 
 ideaUstic experimentation: it is now firmly 
 rooted in many branches of American industry. 
 Among the membership of the new National 
 Association of employment managers are repre- 
 sented many of the most progressive industries 
 in America. The President is Philip J. Reilly 
 of the Dennison Manufacturing Company, now 
 connected with the Retail Research Association, 
 the vice-president is John C. Bower of the 
 Westinghouse Electric Company, the secretary 
 is Mark M. Jones of the Thomas A. Edison 
 Industries of Orange, N. J. 
 
 Some industries are very cautious and have 
 not gone far in trusting their labour managers, 
 nor in introducing even the rudiments of the 
 new co-operative spirit: in others the labour 
 manager has become the most important official 
 of the company. Of all the openings in industry 
 to-day for able young men, especially those who 
 are infused with something of the new spirit of 
 social service and desire to go into business not 
 for mere profit but because there is also a genu- 
 ine opportunity to serve, none is more promising 
 than the profession of labour manager. And the 
 demand for experts in this line during the next 
 few years will be extensive. 
 
 It is this professional attitude toward in- 
 dustry, with its new sense of the untapped re- 
 
218 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 sources of the human element in production, 
 which gives one such confidence in the stability 
 of the " shop-councils " movement, the new effort 
 .to secure employees' representation, the new 
 methods of co-operating with labour unions, and 
 the whole trend toward more democracy in in- 
 dustry. It is the best warrant that they will 
 " stand the test of hard times." 
 
 This movement, and the remarkable recent re- 
 vival of interest of the labour organizations in 
 co-operative trading enterprises among working 
 men — ^such as stores — and even banks and fac- 
 tories—are perhaps the most hopeful signs upon 
 a rather gloomy industrial horizon. 
 
 "We and all the nations perceive, as never 
 before," says Professor John R. Commons in his 
 book, "Industrial Good-will," "that the next 
 stage in industrial progress is not that economic 
 revolution which Karl Marx predicted, it is not 
 even development in machinery and tools, but it 
 is the increased production and increased wealth 
 of the world which are now dependent upon the 
 health, intelligence, goodwill of labour. That 
 nation which is foremost in giving heed to the 
 health and housing, the vocational education, 
 security, and wages of its working people will 
 be the nation which will survive even in time of 
 peace." 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 AUTOCEACY AND DEMOCRACY STRUGGLE FOR 
 
 Industrial Control — Some Results of 
 THE New Co-operative Experiments 
 
 IN this final chapter I wish to gather certain 
 loose ends, and suggest certain general con- 
 clusions. 
 
 Boiled down, the present crisis in America — 
 and for that matter in the world — represents a 
 struggle to escape from the chaos of industrial 
 warfare, with the waste and inefficiency which 
 characterize war, into a new reign of law and 
 order. " Law and order," however much the 
 term may be abused, is to-day the passionate 
 desire, the deep need, of the whole world. It is 
 desired and needed in international affairs: still 
 more desired and needed in the great field of 
 industry. 
 
 Three methods are proposed for attaining 
 law and order in industry. 
 
 The first is that of the extreme conservatives 
 like Judge Gary of the United States Steel 
 Corporation, who would enforce law and order 
 from above by virtue of maintaining a de- 
 termined autocracy of capital. While power- 
 
 219 
 
220 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 fully organized themselves, employers who hold 
 to this point of view use every device to keep 
 labour disorganized. Judge Gary will neither 
 meet nor deal with outside representatives of 
 union labour, nor will he recognize organizations 
 within his mills. 
 
 If employers of this type are forced by the 
 growing power of labour to deal with the unions 
 it is in no real spirit of co-operation : they merely 
 sign a truce, and the attitude on both sides re- 
 mains one of suspicion and hostility which may at 
 any moment flame up in open war (strikes, lock- 
 outs). 
 
 The second method is that of the extreme 
 radicals. An examination of the extreme radical 
 movements among American workers will show 
 that most of them have for their central purpose, 
 however vaguely expressed, however veiled, the 
 imposition of law and order upon industry 
 through autocratic control by labour. They see 
 only injustice, suppression, inefBciency, in the 
 autocracy of capital— and they fly to the other 
 extreme. " Labour must rule," is the slogan of 
 revolutionary radicalism. Extreme conservatism 
 thus breeds extreme radicalism: Czarism breeds 
 Bolshevism. The exemplification of this ex- 
 treme point of view is found in the " dictatorship 
 of the proletariat" now existing in Russia. 
 While the great masses of labom- in America 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 221 
 
 to-day are not yet touched with this extreme 
 spirit, nevertheless labour unions are growing 
 now as never before : they are penetrating many 
 industries formerly unorganized: like the steel 
 mills and the textile industries. They have al- 
 ready conquered the packing-house industries. 
 They are going into politics as never before — 
 with the successes of the Labour Party in 
 England to cheer them on. They are undertak- 
 ing with a fresh spirit of determination co-opera- 
 tive enterprises designed to serve the sole needs 
 of the workers. 
 
 To any honest observer who surveys the de- 
 velopment of the past twenty-five years it is 
 clear that while they have lost battles the 
 workers are winning the war. One need only 
 recall as evidence of this advance the immense 
 body of labour legislation passed during the last 
 few years in America and the fact that labour 
 is now represented in the President's cabinet; 
 one need only recall the part which labour 
 leaders played during the war: and, finally, the 
 power exhibited recently by labour organizations 
 in the steel and coal strikes and in the railroad 
 controversy. While the masses of American 
 labour may not subscribe to the outright pro- 
 gram of the extreme radicals that " labour must 
 rule," yet the whole drift of the labour move- 
 ment is in that direction. 
 
222 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 The third method represents a vigorous rejec- 
 tion of the whole idea of autocracy — either the 
 blind and greedy autocracy of capital, or the 
 rough autocracy of labour. A sturdy and 
 wholesome voice is rising powerfully in America 
 —not clear yet and rather angry, but full of 
 vitality— that says: 
 
 ••A%l.g„e o'bolh yo„ h„„».. We will 
 be bossed neither by Gary nor by Haywood: 
 nor by the ideas they personify. Get together 
 now and do your job! Give us production: give 
 us clothes and coal and steel and food— and stop 
 your fighting about it! » 
 
 Out of this spirit, and out of the intolerable 
 chaos which long-continued conditions of inci- 
 pient civil war in industry have produced, has 
 sprung the remarkable movement which I have 
 already described, toward a new co-operative 
 relationship between employers and workers: 
 and 8 gradual substitution of democratic for 
 autocratic control of industry. It represents a 
 right-about-face: a new spirit, a new attitude. 
 It is opposed by both extremes : both the old hard- 
 set employer-class and the wilder radicals: but 
 it is being accepted by the younger, more pro- 
 gressive leaders among both employers and 
 workers, and is spreading with great rapidity. 
 
 To-day the two ideas-democracy versus au- 
 tocracy — are struggling for mastery in Ameri- 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 223 
 
 can industry: upon the issue hangs, to a large 
 extent, the future welfare and progress of the 
 nation. 
 
 The great need of a world that is short of 
 clothing, food, housing, manufactm-ed materials 
 of all kinds, is more production. 
 
 The old autocratic method of control has 
 been weighed in the balance and found want- 
 ing as an agency for increasing production. 
 It has been inefficient and wasteful to a 
 degree that few people realize. Scientists in in- 
 dustry have declared that our industrial plants 
 are producing only about a quarter as much as 
 they might produce, without a cent of additional 
 capital, if methods of handling both machinery 
 and personnel were perfected. Morale in in- 
 dustry has dropped below zero. Autocratic em- 
 ployers think sometimes that when they have 
 prevented labour organization or held it back 
 that they have prevented strikes and secured 
 efficiency; but as a matter of fact they suffer 
 continually from a kind of chronic disease of 
 striking. Experienced men leave their jobs : and 
 new and inefficient men have to be brought in 
 and trained — a very expensive process. The 
 "labour turn-over" to-day in American in- 
 dustry is appalling: and labour turn-over is only 
 a chronic phase of the disease of striking. It is 
 as though a general were trying to fight a battle 
 
224 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 with half or two-thirds of his trained men desert- 
 ing all the tune, with raw recruits taking their 
 places! Another element of crass inefficiency 
 is to be found in intermittent employment, as in 
 the coal-mining industry; another in the want of 
 any systematic effort to train and educate workers 
 to do then* work well instead of carelessly. Of 
 course, with labour changing all the time any 
 systematic training is impossible. Under the 
 old system no loyalty is developed, no team- 
 spirit, no enthusiasm. 
 
 Under the new plan of co-operative effort 
 production increases with the new spirit of the 
 shop. Team-play becomes as important to in- 
 dustry as to baseball — team-play and sacrifice 
 hittmg. And with honest co-operation, the 
 worker will share in the rewards of the increased 
 production resulting from common effort. Some 
 form of profit-sharing eventually appears in 
 industries where the new system is introduced: 
 and this adds further stimulation to efficiency. 
 The autocratic employer often complains bit- 
 terly that the worker does not produce as much 
 as he could. 
 
 " Why should I? " asks the worker. " I get 
 nothing out of it. None of the profit of added 
 production comes to me. The employer takes it 
 all." 
 
 One of the questions that is always fired 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 225 
 
 straight at the advocate of the new system by 
 the employer who is still sceptical about it is 
 this: 
 
 " Now, that's all right in the clothing trades 
 — or at Wappingers Falls — or in the Dennison 
 Manufacturing Company — but it won't work 
 with us " — and he begins to tell of his peculiar 
 difliculties, and of how unusually ignorant his 
 workers are, and how atrocious the labour 
 leaders he has to deal with. Or he says that the 
 owner of such-and-such a plant is rich and can 
 afford to experiment. The trouble with many 
 employers is that they want to be absolutely 
 assured of success before they venture : and that 
 isn't the way the world is built. 
 
 Nevertheless it is a fact that a scheme which 
 succeeds in one industry may fail in another. 
 There is the hackneyed contrast between a 
 water-power plant with an enormous investment 
 of capital and a labour force of half a dozen 
 men— and a laundry with little or no capital in- 
 vested and a large number of workers. No 
 mechanical plan can fit both cases. 
 
 Industry is as various as life itself: wholly 
 different groups of conditions present themselves, 
 for example, in the building trades, in public 
 service corporations like railroads, in government 
 or municipal employment. Small-town and 
 small factory conditions are wholly different 
 
226 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 from those in the great steel and textUe indus- 
 tries. 
 
 No mere mechanism — especially no patent- 
 panacea, and there are patent-panaceas in this 
 department of life as in any other— will solve 
 the problem. Everything depends upon the 
 spirit of approach : the attitude of employer and 
 worker: if there is a real desire for co-operation, 
 a genuine wish to substitute a democratic for an 
 autocratic point of view, the method will soon 
 appear. Each situation must be studied for 
 itself. It is a wholesome sign in America that 
 we are taking hold of the problem in the Ameri- 
 can way— experimentally, locally, with small 
 respect for former experience and with httle 
 attention to theories — a method which irritates 
 some critics who want us to " think through " 
 and to " have a program "—like the Germans or 
 the British. The variety and enthusiasm of the 
 experimentation in America seems to the ob- 
 server a sign of health: we are going about it 
 with the same spirit of inventiveness and in- 
 geniousness — ^with the same disregard for gov- 
 ernment commissions and government advice — 
 which has always marked the most vigorous and 
 original American development. 
 
 One of the chief dangers now confronting the 
 new movement is the evident effort upon the 
 part of some employers to use the new device 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 227 
 
 
 with the intent of forestalling the organization 
 of labour. They put in th^ form of the system, 
 perhaps call it " democracy," but have not the 
 spirit by which it can reaUy be made to work. 
 There is a type of employer, as H. F. J. Porter 
 remarks, " who talks co-operation but wants 
 the other fellow to do all the co-operating." No 
 class of men are harder to fool than the workers: 
 and many of them to-day are suspicious of the 
 new system because they are not convinced that 
 it is genuine. One of the demands of the steel 
 workers in the recent strike was for *' abolition of 
 company unions." There is danger in every 
 case where the system is " put in " by the em- 
 ployer, as he would put in a new machine, with- 
 out encouraging a firm and independent organi- 
 zation of the workers. There can be real co- 
 operation only where the co-operators both have 
 the sense of being free. Goodwill must be 
 reciprocal: it can never be all on one side. I 
 know of employers who have put in various 
 forms of welfare work with a real intent to ex- 
 press their goodwill and have been tragically 
 disappointed when it evoked no return: but 
 goodwill comes not out of gifts, but out of asso- 
 ciation. It is for this reason that the best ex- 
 ample of the development of the whole idea is 
 in the men's clothing trades (as I have already 
 described), in which both sides are firmly organ- 
 
\\\ 
 
 228 THE NEW INDUSTKIAL UNREST 
 
 ized: and approach each other face to face as 
 up-standing equals. , 
 
 There must also be open diplomacy between 
 the co-operators: there is nothing that so allays 
 suspicion and feeds the spirit of common effort 
 as frankness in taking the workers into full con- 
 fidence. In several industries in America repre- 
 sentatives of labour now sit on the boards of 
 directors and are fully informed of the entire 
 state of the business. Real publicity— which 
 is simple truth telling— would solve a large pro- 
 portion of the ills the world now suffers from. 
 
 One great value of the new system is that it 
 must more and more set up standards of em- 
 ployment—for once the old system under which 
 labour was a purchasable commodity is shaken, 
 new methods of determining standards of work, 
 standards of living, standards of pay, must be 
 devised. In the clothing industry research 
 bureaus have abeady been established by both 
 employers and workers and the work of investi- 
 gation has begun: but probably most of this 
 task will eventually have to be done by outside, 
 impartial government agencies. 
 
 Another important development— perhaps the 
 most important of all— is the gradual upbuilding 
 of a common law for industry, through the re- 
 curring decisions of shop councils and boards of 
 arbitration. Industrial democracy is thus emerg- 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 229 
 
 ing just as did political democracy through a 
 steady accretion of principles of control and 
 adjustment: a veritable common law. . 
 
 Dean J. H. Wigmore of the Northwestern 
 University Law School, in commenting upon 
 this growth of law in Jhe clothing trades of 
 Chicago has this to say: 
 
 The significant thing is that general principles are be- 
 ginning to be formulated. And the moment you have gen- 
 eral principles^ used for deciding particular cases^ you 
 have justice in the form of law, as distinguished from the 
 arbitrary justice of a Turkish caliph, or from private 
 struggle decided by private force. 
 
 Industrial controversy will become as justiciable as prop- 
 erty controversy. And a new field will have been gained 
 for systematic justice. 
 
 Another tendency apparent in the new move- 
 ment is a renewed interest in education. Just as 
 a great wave of educational enthusiasm, which 
 found its best expression in the common school 
 system of America, followed the introduction of 
 real political democracy, so a wave of a new 
 kind of education is coming in with the ap- 
 proach to industrial democracy. Autocracy 
 thrives upon ignorance as it does to-day in the 
 steel industry: but education is the very life- 
 blood of democracy. In every case where the 
 new system has been genuinely introduced there 
 is a tremendous urge toward classes, clubs, 
 
t 
 
 I. 
 
 f 
 
 Uiti 
 mm 
 
 230 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 schools. Both employers and workers are in- 
 terested. The Amalgamated Clothing Workers 
 have a regular department of education: and 
 the shop school, or the training-class is a charac- 
 teristic feature of these new movements. For 
 with goodwill comes a new loyalty to the shop 
 or mill: that new loyalty tends to reduce the 
 labour turn-over and make for steadier employ- 
 ment: and steadier employment means the 
 opportunity and the encouragement for better 
 training of the workers. I can only touch upon 
 this important subject here: it deserves an entire 
 chapter. 
 
 One other point is of great importance: the 
 support of public opinion in demanding that the 
 two parties to the industrial warfare which is 
 now paralysing our whole Ufe get together and 
 stay together. The public must more and more 
 keep in touch, not necessarily with the details 
 of the problems involved, but with the general 
 currents of progress. 
 
 I received a rather impatient letter the other 
 day from a correspondent who said he had read 
 my presentation of some of the rather dis- 
 couraging aspects of American industry. 
 
 "What is the solution of the problem?" he 
 demanded. 
 
 Well, I felt like asking in return: 
 
 "What is the solution of life?" 
 
 REASONS AND REMEDIES 
 
 231 
 
 For the labour problem is the greatest con- 
 tinuing process of life. In it are involved the 
 myriad human relationships under which men 
 work together here upon the earth to produce 
 food, clothing, shelter— and a few beautiful 
 things — for themselves and their children. Is 
 there any "solution" for that? 
 
 The trouble is that men get tired and want 
 things settled: they want a formula; or they 
 find a warm and comfortable corner and hate 
 to be disturbed in it. But life and the labour 
 problem do not get tired: they go on! 
 
 In another sense, there is a solution. It con- 
 sists in the attitude, the spirit, which one main- 
 tains toward the labour problem — an adventur- 
 ous, inquiring, experimental attitude, ever hos- 
 pitable toward new facts: and a generous and 
 democratic spirit. I wonder if men can find 
 this solution in its completeness without some 
 high faith in God, and some vital interest in 
 their fellowmen. 
 
 THE END 
 
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