The American situation is peculiar to itself. It can only be approached
from one point of view, that of the employer. The employee has only so
much power as the employer may consider wise to yield him. This might
not seem like a very successful starting point for an idea that is
supposed to be leading to industrial peace, but at that it appears to be
so doing. At any rate it is a very important move in the history of
American industry, and, whatever it may be leading to, it is going to
have a far-reaching effect.
It may, for one thing, put an end to unionism, or render it much less
important. It is pretty sure to interfere with the organization of
industrial unionism, which might prove to be the road to revolution.
While union leaders in England favor the idea because they can approach
it on an equality with the employers, in America, union leaders fear it.
Instead of stabilizing unionism as it is doing in England, here it is
choking unionism out.
“Chattel-slavery,” said John Fitzpatrick, President of the Chicago
Federation of Labor, when I mentioned the industrial conference. “A way
to get men into such a position of humble obedience that they belong
body and soul to their employer.”
What the I. W. W. has to say against it is worse. It is, whatever may be
the means, easing off on the social unrest, and the I. W. W. thrives on
discontent.
Big Industries Independent.
On the other side the heavy industries, coal, steel and copper, refuse
to have anything to do with it. The United States Steel Corporation has
not even an industrial manager. Similar great industries in Europe
cannot take so independent an attitude, but here it is obvious that
neither now nor in the immediate future can the great masses of factory
workers get together and force recognition. They will eventually, of
course, if the situation demands, but they are, on account of their lack
of organization, for the time being helpless.
This makes the American experiments in “industrial councils” the more
interesting. While they have been motived often by an expensive strike
that set employers to thinking, the actual development of the system
comes from a sense of the practical. It is also growing rapidly enough
to make it appear American industry may be soon dominated by the idea. A
year and a half ago there were perhaps fifty concerns working with shop
committees. Now there are at least 700, and there may be many more.
Impersonal Capital.
To give a list of the important concerns is like reading the Stock
Exchange list, General Electric, Westinghouse, du Pont, General Motors,
International Harvester. These are concerns of a similar type. Most of
the money invested is from the outside, mere impersonal capital. The
managements have grown up from within the plants. The labor is in much
closer human relationship to the management than the capital. If capital
earns big dividends it is satisfied, but the other two elements,
management and labor, live and work together every day. Once an
industrial council is established reuniting the management and the
workshops, it is rarely let drop. It eases up the day to day
difficulties. No matter what system is used the daily contact is certain
to avoid some strikes. There are three systems, generally speaking, in
vogue:
To organize the industrial councils on the same plan as the Federal
Government, with Senate, House and President the employees elect the
House, the Senate is made up of superintendents and the President and
his managers are the Cabinet. This plan is popular in the textile
trades. It keeps firm control in the hands of the management.
A second plan, which also keeps the control firmly in hand is arrived at
by the management asking the employees in a factory to form a “shop
committee,” which will recommend, but has no vote.
Third Plan Outlined.
The third plan, the one that best expresses the spirit of the movement,
provides for a joint council with definite voting powers. This council
usually handles everything relating to what goes on within the factories
up to and including wages. It has nothing to do with the outside
business, buying or selling, and, in the final analysis, does not settle
the general scale of wages. But, within the factories, under these
limitations, it comes to agreement about every detail, or there is an
appeal to the manager or President of the company. Arbitration boards
are even provided for, but that is hardly necessary, as the whole affair
is only a domestic arrangement.
All these plans are mere devices for smoothing out the daily industrial
life, and have nothing to do with large economic questions. But it is
extraordinary how much trouble they avoid. When it comes to a showdown
they can prevent neither strikes nor the lowering of wages. That is not
their importance. They prevent the misunderstandings which grow out of
the lack of human contact, and experience is beginning to show that most
industrial trouble comes from minor considerations.
In one case an effort is being made to utilize the idea to a far greater
extent. It has been brought into use to control a whole industry,
lumber, in the Pacific Northwest. The movement has a peculiar history
which needs to be explained.
Handling of Migratory Worker.
The lumber workers and loggers are mostly migratory. They had no unions
to speak of until the I. W. W. began working among them during the war.
It met with quick response and by the summer of 1917 was able to carry
on a serious strike, which the Government had to settle, as fir and
spruce were badly needed in the manufacture of ships and aeroplanes.
With war on, it was impossible to use extraordinary repression and make
unusual appeals. Gen. Brice P. Disque, who was in command, induced an
agreement by which both the employers and the employees were to leave
the settlement of all labor questions, including wages, to the
Government. The men agreed not to strike.
The movement got a certain momentum while the war was on, and when the
armistice came, it continued to function by agreement. Its very name,
Loyal Legion of Loggers and Lumbermen, indicates the circumstances
behind it, but, nevertheless, it was found to be a workable arrangement.
It controlled, and still controls, 75 per cent. of the lumber production
in Oregon, Washington and Idaho. These three States, which produce half
the lumber of the country, are divided into twelve districts, each with
representatives from both the lumbermen and the loggers on an equal
basis, and they settle all questions under the Chairmanship of Norman F.
Coleman, President of the “Four L’s,” as the organization is called for
short.
Such a body could hardly have been created without the unusual
conditions of war, but its progress since is interesting. It has had to
keep the good will of the loggers on a falling market.
First Crisis Is Avoided.
When I was in Oregon a few weeks ago, it had just weathered its first
crisis. It was one of the principles of the organization that,
regardless of the minimum wage, $4.40 per day, the “going wage” was to
be determined “on the job.” In the Coos Bay District in Oregon, wages
last May, June and July went to $5.30. On Aug. 1 the lumbermen asked to
go back to $4.80. A district council of the “Four L’s” was held, the
operators producing figures to show why wages must come down and the
loggers showing the cost of living was too high to permit it. An
agreement was reached by which the loggers agreed to increase production
sufficiently to earn the extra 50 cents a day, and did it.
But the lumber market went steadily down and the operators appealed
again for a lower wage. This time it was admitted by both sides that the
price of everything would have to come down this winter to a lower
level, and they would find a way to let down wages and living costs at
the same time. So they called in the local merchants of Coos Bay, who
agreed to the same facts and promised to make a 15 per cent. cut at
once. This was sufficient to cover the cut in wages, and the only
persons affected were the merchants, who admitted they had to pocket the
loss anyhow.
This instance is illuminating, because it shows how far this idea can be
carried and how much trouble can be avoided by men getting together with
those to whom they pay wages and coming to an understanding.
Works in Unsteady Market.
If the lumber market should be bad all winter it is apparent the strain
would be too great for even so elastic an organization as the “Four
L’s,” but by what it has already done it has proved what can be done by
human contact. If it can work at all in the lumber industry, which is
subject to a very unsteady market, it could certainly work in any other
industry. Nor is lumbering a kid-glove industry. The average lumber
operator is a plunger, and until the “Four L’s” got started it was
always a question of whether the operators were going to “break the
back” of labor or whether the loggers were going to “break the back” of
the operators.
None of the concerns which have seriously adopted the “industrial
council” system pretend they have solved everything. They say they are
simply restoring the human relationship which was lost through the
growth of industry. They pretend to have found no new principle. Some go
in for profit-sharing as a stimulus, others say it is not desirable.
That is a matter of opinion. The important consideration is the spirit
with which the problem is approached. The mere fact that the management
of a factory wishes to introduce such a system would indicate it has not
a pinchpenny attitude. But those who oppose it, mostly labor leaders,
hold that it is a farsighted scheme to get a bunch of faithful slaves
who acquiesce in the smooth arrangements prepared in council, so that
they become wage-slaves of the most hopeless kind. They also say, and
with justice, that the system removes the incentive for joining labor
unions, and, even though the management plays perfectly fair with union
men, unions wither up and die, as they get no nourishment.
Makes Men Feel Safer.
At the rate at which the “industrial council” idea is catching on it can
be safely predicted that it is going to interfere with the growth of
industrial unionism which would otherwise begin to show itself. It has a
tendency to make men feel surer of their jobs, which induces them to buy
homes and unite their destinies with the industries they serve. It makes
them feel they have a stake in the industry. If the spirit behind the
movement is wrong this could, as Mr. Fitzpatrick said, lead to a sort of
chattel-slavery. But I have noticed in the few plants with “industrial
councils” which I have been in that there was a spirit of service. I
notice that the bigger American plants have become in a sense
institutions, they have a code of conduct developed out of the special
world which the institutions create. The people who get the dividends
are far away, but the management and the plant are in intimate daily
contact.
As I wandered through these plants, each with its own life, it occurred
to me that within these plants was developing what the modern
sociologists call the social conscience. If it has not such a spirit it
does not succeed. The calculating employer who is only pretending mutual
interest will not get the service in return.
These same modern sociologists hold that the present era is chiefly
remarkable for having created the individual conscience, and the next
era will produce the social conscience. They point to Russia and
maintain that the theories of Lenine develop the social conscience. Any
one will go so far as to say that a social conscience is necessary if
Lenine’s ideas are to have a fair show. It would be ironic if the social
conscience were to develop quicker in the despised American bourgeois
republic than in Bolshevik Russia.