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everywhere. Finally, there are the observers of liberal or radical predilections, who also view the success of these unions with distinct approval. In their zeal to rescue the American labor movement from the slough of stagnation and inertia into which it has fallen and to set it upon the road of peaceful industrial and political reconstruction, they have seized upon the first faint signs of change on the trade-union horizon to magnify them into prophecies of a regenerated labor movement realizing their own ideals of what trade unionism ought to be.

This fourth group represents substantially the bias of the authors of The New Unionism, who have presented us in this volume of three hundred pages with a survey of that part of the field of labor organization in the garment and textile industries which occupies the progressive middle ground between the craft unionism of the American Federation of Labor and the revolutionary syndicalism of the Industrial Workers of the World. The title of the book serves to designate those characteristics of structure, aims, policies, and methods which differentiate the immigrant unions in the manufacture of clothing from the traditional forms of labor organization still dominant in this country. Stated briefly, these distinguishing marks are those of an industrial union of avowedly socialistic orientation, whose ultimate program contemplates workers' control of the industry, but whose specific tactics are essentially conciliatory and business-like, and whose reaction upon the industry is one making for greater production and stability of operation in the present, even while preparing the workers concerned to assume an increased share of responsibility for the productive process in future. For purposes of collective bargaining as well as for open contests of strength with the employers, these unions enjoy a distinct superiority over the old craft union by virtue of their industrial structure, i. e., their inclusion of all groups of "direct labor" engaged in an industry like men's or women's clothing, regardless of occupational differences. This superiority is further enhanced by their achievement of a high degree of organization and a correspondingly effective control over the labor supply in their respective industries. This success has been made possible, as the authors point out, not by a matter-of-fact appeal to the workers to organize for present betterment, but by playing upon their more or less conscious hopes for the eventual complete displacement of the employing class through their own combined power. It was this revolutionary motive that served first to bring and then to hold the masses together in their difficult struggle toward emancipation, and which accounts not only for the success of a union like the Amalgamated

Clothing Workers where the United Garment Workers had failed, but also for the class-conscious solidarity of the workers in the needle trades extending beyond their own industries to the labor movement as a whole.

If, now, we raise the question as to why such an emotional appeal should have called out an almost immediate response on the part of these immigrant masses, while, judging by experience, it would have fallen on deaf ears if addressed to American workers more comfortably adjusted as individuals to their social and industrial environment, we get no satisfactory answer. Our authors' explanation runs on the logical fallacy of post hoc, ergo propter hoc by referring to the "weakness and backwardness of the industrial structure in the manufacture of clothing, the very difficulties which the labor organizations had to face," as the compelling reasons for their adoption of revolutionary principles. A more adequate explanation would have pointed on the economic side to the weakness and backwardness of the unions themselves, their incapacity during many years for enforcing even such bargains as they succeeded in making with the employers. This weakness and incapacity resulted partly from the seasonal character of the industry and partly from the low degree of craft skill required in most of its processes, with the consequent inability of the unions to protect hard-won standards against the continual undermining tides of immigration. The success of the revolutionary appeal rested, furthermore, on the psychological predisposition of the workers themselves. By virtue of much repression in their European homes their exposure even before emigration to socialistic agitation, and their exaggerated hopes for freedom in America, they easily fell in with, or created for themselves, a type of unionism that promised emancipation. Nevertheless, it must be conceded as one of the distinct merits of this essay that the authors have broken away from the conventional procedure of accounting for the rise and character of unionism in terms of the supposed motives and ideas of the unionists themselves, and instead have sought a principle of explanation in the economic organization and necessities of the industry within which the union functions.

Viewed from the standpoint of an effective contribution to knowledge, the principal weakness of the book lies in attempting to cover too much ground, with the inevitable result of losing in value for the student or the labor leader whatever it may gain in popular appeal. Indeed, one cannot escape an impression of superficiality and unevenness, despite much excellent speculative thinking, particularly in the final chapter on "Outlook." A journalistic emphasis upon dramatic episodes, as exemplified

in the chapter on "Decisive Victories" and more or less throughout the book, is but a corollary of this sketchy manner. It carries with it a neglect of aspects less striking but hardly less significant for a balanced appraisal of the career and present character of the unions. The volume consists in about equal parts of narrative and description and of discursive interpretation. The reader might legitimately expect that the two portions be so intimately knitted up as to provide both an adequate background of historical information and a realistic basis for the generalizations advanced. As it stands, the book fails to meet this expectation. A chapter is devoted, properly enough, to a consideration of the "Human Element." The authors presumably meant by it to throw light upon the institutional and cultural heritages of the dominant racial groups composing the clothing unions and upon the influence exerted by these heritages upon the course of development of the unions.

What we are offered in this connection is an extremely summary review of immigration statistics, of legal, social, and economic disabilities of Jews in eastern Europe, of their occupations, their communal traditions, and their associations and early manifestations of unionism in this country. A still more cursory treatment is accorded to Italian immigration, while other nationalities are merely enumerated. A few concluding paragraphs emphasize the conservative character and influence of the racial heritage of all these groups in the clothing industries.

The authors simply set forth their opinion that the radicalism of the mass of immigrant clothing workers is an acquired attitude, derived directly from their social and economic experience in this country, and is not to be attributed to any old-world background of political revolutionism. One looks in vain, here, for an illuminating treatment of the economic and political psychology and outlook of the various immigrant groups, of the manner in which their traditional trends and attitudes determine their readjustment to the new environment and are, in turn, transformed by these new contacts and interests.

Notwithstanding the authors' effort to maintain throughout the detachment of disinterested observers, the careful reader cannot avoid an uneasy sense of partiality on their part, that leads them consciously or unconsciously to heighten the colors of the picture and to gloss over the less edifying facts and phases of the subject. The argument would seem to be addressed primarily to a middle-class public of liberal and radical propensities whose enthusiasm for the "new unionism" must not be dampened by too realistic an account of its operation and tactics. The emphasis placed upon the revolutionary idealism of these unions,

that esteems ultimate victory over the capitalist regime far beyond those mere material and present benefits which are supposed to constitute the sole objective for the older unionism; the stress laid upon the liberal character of the unions' policy as regards such matters as immigration, admission to membership, etc.; upon its constructive character with reference to productive efficiency, continuity and stability, co-operation, education, etc.; upon its conservatism in relation to strikes and sabotage; upon its democratic structure and government—all this eulogistic characterization of the "new unionism," while portraying indubitable tendencies or aspirations on one group or another within the movement, is none the less misleading so far as the divergence of the new from the old unions in these respects may be too slight or too transitory in practice to carry more than superficial significance.

The optimistic bias of the book appears, finally, in the sort of points that are slurred over or entirely omitted from consideration. Thus, in the chapter on "Beginnings and Growth," no reference is made to the existence or rôle of violent tactics, as applied to either persons or property, in the emergence of these organizations to power. Nor do we get any hint of the reactive effect on the leaders of the progressive concentration of power and responsibility in their hands, of their natural endeavor to perpetuate themselves in power, of their habituation to business relations and bargaining with the employers; of a growing tendency toward restricting immigration and the labor supply; or of the growing body of vested interests-whether in the form of high wages, labor temples, or co-operative banks-which the organizations of labor themselves in time acquire. It is possible, of course, to explain these and similar omissions whose net effect upon the argument is distorting, upon the ground that our authors have failed to appreciate either the reality or the relevance of existing tendencies even within the new unionism toward what philosophers style the "hypostasis of the instrument." But it is at least desirable to know something of the manifestations of those tendencies and whether or not they are likely to be offset in the long run or to become dominant over the other forces making for revolutionary policy and democratic control of the organizations.

If the authors have not been wholly successful in rendering the soul of the socialist labor movement in the clothing industry, it is due to their too great reliance upon official sources of information, as over against first-hand observation of the actual workaday union practice. To say this, however, is not to deny them the credit of having given us the first

coherent attempt to interpret this movement as a whole in the light of the industrial situation and from the standpoint of its possible significance for an eventual democratization of industry. The task now is for a series of trained investigators with special access to the sources to address themselves to an intensive study of the various individual unions whose general characteristics and trends have been set forth, and to bring together a sufficient array of significant data to serve as a basis for a truly genetic understanding of these organizations.

NEW SCHOOL FOR SOCIAL RESEARCH

PAUL WANDER

Traveling Publicity Campaigns. By MARY SWAIN ROUTZAHN. New York: Russel Sage Foundation, 1920. Pp. xi+151. $1.50.

Elements of a Social Publicity Program. By E. G. ROUTZAHN.
New York: Russel Sage Foundation, 1920. Pp. 17.
The Health Show Comes to Town. By EVART G. ROUTZAHN.
New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1920.

The ABC of Exhibit Planning. By EVART G. ROUTZAHN and MARY SWAIN ROUTZAHN. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1918. Pp. xiv+234. $1.50.

This is a very busy country, but one of our most important social problems is the disposition of our leisure time. An enormous amount of time is expended by the people of the United States in reading the daily papers, going to church and to the movies, electing people to public office, and reading the Saturday Evening Post. A good deal of this time is wasted. Some years ago the Sage Foundation undertook to interest the American public in making social surveys, studying the needs of their local communities, and seeking to improve them. They succeeded in creating a great deal of enthusiasm and surveys became popular. It was a new form of recreating, a new form of politics. But the information collected through these surveys did not always reach the whole community. It did not sink in and it did not change habits. It was not adequately advertised and the efforts that were started in this way were not properly directed. It has become necessary to devise some more adequate method of popular education. It is necessary to give the public more simple and specific direction as to the way to go about the matter of local improvement. It is important to keep the local agencies united and on the job.

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