SECTION II ORGANIZED LABOR AND CAPITAL AND INDUSTRIAL PROBLEMS INTRODUCTION Chapter I. Trade Union Organization in the United States, The American Federation of Labor.... II. Organized Labor and Politics... III. Organized Labor and Socialism. IV. Socialism in Politics.... 2106 2133 2148 2151 V. International Relations of American Organized Labor.. 2154 VIII. Employers' Views of Industrial Relations. Welfare 2166 2174 IX. Industrial Democracy. Whitley Scheme. John Leitch 2180 X. Labor's Solutions. Collective Bargaining. Co-operatives 2193 2204 2216 XIII. Arbitration in Labor Disputes. Compulsory Arbitration. 2226 2238 XV. The Plumb Plan...... 2244 XVI. Political Programs of the American Federation of Labor and of the Farmers.. 2251 [2095] SECTION II ORGANIZED LABOR AND CAPITAL AND INDUSTRIAL PROBLEMS INTRODUCTION A most important part of this report is considered by the Committee to be that which relates to the constructive elements in the problems which it has been obliged to consider, and of these constructive elements those that relate to the problems of industry are the most complex as well as the most radically vital. In considering tlm we must view them from three angles: from the angle of organized labor; from that of organized capital of the employer; and, finally, from the point of view of the public. There are apparently irreconcilable elements in this survey, if one takes merely the viewpoint of one of these parties to the problem. What the Committee hopes will result from a disinterested examination of the most obvious of these problems, in their essential features, is that no such irreconcilable clash of interests exists, and that a thorough education in the character and history of these problems will help to mitigate present differences of opinion. These and cognate problems require the most careful consideration of members of the Legislature, if they are to appreciate the fields in which radical pressure is being exerted. As a detailed study will be impossible within these limits, and as any expression of opinion in disputed questions of this sort would be inadvisable, the Committee confines itself to selecting a few central topics illustrating the present preoccupations of labor and capital and the public. But if we are to face the full problem of labor psychology we must make clear the attitude of organized labor toward practical politics, as well as its attitude toward the introduction of economic pressure and mass action. All over the world at present looms the menace to the present political order of a super-government by means of the menace and the actual use. of the strike in industries vital to the public welfare. We have seen what the program and tactics of the revolutionary elements are in this field. It is necessary for a complete survey that we should show what is the attitude of the evolutionary elements, especially as represented by the American Federation of Labor. Our survey will include a brief history of the organization and activities of the American Federation of Labor. It will give its attitude toward the important labor problems, and will publish the text of the principal documents issued by the Federation, beginning with its reconstruction program of 1918 and ending with its pronouncements in connection with the present Presidential campaign. There are, of course, certain big questions in the relations between Labor and Capital that are a perennial source of discussion, and therefore questions that members of the Legislature should particularly familiarize themselves with. Of these we have selected for elucidation: The Open and Closed Shop; Collective Bargaining; Voluntary and Compulsory Arbitration; Shop Committees and Shop Stewards and their relation to the Unions; Industrial Democracy in its various phases, especially its evolutionary phases; Revolutionary Reconstruction as exemplified in the Guild system; Welfare and Educational Plans by the more enlightened employers, and their attempts to give various forms of representation in business to their employes. The plan has been to present impartially the differing points of view, without passing judgment. Back of these problems there lurk two fundamental issues. The first is the general fact recognized by an increasing number of persons as a necessity in any reconstruction program for industry, that is, the duty to give the employe some form of representation in the business in which he is engaged. The second is: To whom shall the workmen entrust the leadership of their cause? Shall it be to a big labor union of the type of the American Federation of Labor, or to a shop committee or group of shop committees ? It seems quite natural to many that the workmen in any shop should feel that they are at a disadvantage in their relations with their employer unless they are at liberty to call in from the outside expert advisers, just as their employer is at liberty to call in his lawyer. In fact, workmen, being intellectually less trained and of more limited experience than the men representing the management, are thought to have reason to consider that even in ordinary business relations they should be represented by an experienced labor leader, not necessarily a member of the shop itself. The fact upon which this report wishes to lay emphasis is the necessity of a different point of view from that which has been underlying recent industrial disputes. In a somewhat sketchy volume by Julius H. Cohen, "An American Labor Policy," a brief survey of this very field is full of suggestiveness. He quotes from a speech of the Italian Premier Orlando in supporting the resolutions for a League of Nations, in Paris, on January 25, 1919: "The principle of law is not only the principle of protection and of justice against violence it is the form guaranteed by the state of what is a vital principle to humanity social co-operation and solidarity among men." This idea of "social co-operation and solidarity among men is the cornerstone for any system of right industrial policy in opposition to the revolutionary keynote of hate, distrust and class war which has ruined Russia and if applied would ruin the rest of the world. If, as Cohen does, we compare the situation in the industrial world to the situation in the political world, we find that at present we are in a state of industrial war. This is the keynote of the situation. It is a fatal keynote. What the groups in our nation should aim at, is, through "social co-operation and solidarity," to pass from the condition of industrial war to the condition of industrial solidarity. Military strategy is at the basis of the present relations. At a hearing in 1917 before the Public Service Commission, a labor leader said: "I want to be fair and I will say that I do not think it is a good idea to tell the other fellow what you are going to do, and to give him thirty days, more or less, to make preparation to get ready to fight you." The occasion for this statement was a clause in the Canadian Disputes Act, which obliged labor to give thirty days' notice before striking. A few of the plans recently presented as offering a practical guide for carrying out the idea of co-operation and solidarity will now be quoted. Mr. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., presented ten articles of an industrial creed to the War Emergency and Reconstruction Conference at Atlantic City, by which it was unanimously adopted. He believed that all four parties to industry could subscribe to them. These Articles are as follows: "(1) I believe that labor and capital are partners, not enemies; that their interests are common interests, not |