There is a way to peace, at least comparative peace, in industry. The warfare that is forever being carried on through the open shop, the closed shop, the strike and the lockout, is coming to be considered just as uncivilized as any other form of warfare. All that is considered necessary is the give-and-take of “industrial councils.”
The idea is being worked out in one way in England and in another way here. The English have had to come to it, forced by the fact that their factory workers are organized in industrial unions. Here it is voluntary, for the industrial workers are not organized in America. The British factory workers are organized because they are all, or nearly all, British. The American factory workers are largely foreign. In England it is a question of Englishmen dealing with Englishmen. Here it is Americans dealing with foreigners.
The British have tried to get down to a uniform system or “industrial conference,” known as the Whitley system. There it is an even game, with organization and intelligent leadership on both sides. Here the homogeneous leadership is all on one side. The industrial workers are at such a disadvantage, in the fact of their not being all Americans, that they cannot get together and hold together, like the workers of England, France, Belgium or Germany, where industrial unionism is already traditional.
American Employee Has Powers Which Boss Thinks Best for Him
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.
FARMERS’ GROUPS PORTEND FAR-REACHING CHANGES IN NATION’S ECONOMICS
American farmers are organizing industrial unions. The wheat men are getting together in one union, cotton in another, wool in another. They may not call their organizations “unions,” but it is a part of the new industrial alignment. They are organizing for mutual backing, and the wheat farmers have gone so far they are carrying on a strike.
Labor has not made much headway in organizing industrially because there are too many difficulties in the way. These are principally the American Federation of Labor, and the associations of manufacturers. The organizers of industrial unionism also stand in their own light, as they try to organize labor industrially and cry revolution at the same time. And there is no revolutionary spirit in America.
Certainly there is no such spirit among the farmers, but what they have in mind means such a decided change in national economy as to be a real revolution, one that may make a decided change in the life of the country and carried on by effective organization, instead of by the silly parade of arms and loud talk about the proletariat, the way it is done in Europe.
The revolution the farmers have in mind is this: They refuse longer to be dominated by the cities; it is their purpose to dictate terms to the cities. As it is, they are held under what they consider a financial tyranny directed by the powerful interests of the country. They purpose organizing so effectively that, jointly, they will not only be as powerful as the financial interests, but having the staff of life in their hands they will be able to force their will.
The wheat farmers are right now in revolutionary foment. They are carrying on industrial strike. They refuse to sell their wheat. They are asking a high price, but that is merely symbolic. What they want is to get the price at which the wheat is finally sold. They are striking for the profits now made by the operators, the elevator owners, the speculators and the shippers. They have not yet carried their strike to the point of refusing to plant more wheat unless they get the full profit they demand, but it is not beyond the bounds of possibility.
Kansas and North Dakota Non-Partisan League Centres
The strike is being carried on most effectively in North Dakota, where the Non-Partisan League has been actively organizing the farmers for several years, and in Kansas, where the Wheat Growers’ Association of America is busy. The Non-Partisan League, while active politically, has as its principal purpose the uniting of farmers into a group that can get governmental action. Its chief field of operations is the Northwest, North and South Dakota, Minnesota and Wisconsin, but it is also spreading further and was concentrating its attention on Nebraska when I was out there a short time ago. The Wheat Growers’ Association of America is also operating in Nebraska and is spreading its influence over Oklahoma and Texas as well as Kansas. It claims 100,000 membership.
Between the two they control the wheat producing States, and if there were not a big idea behind the revolt it might prove to be a serious kind of industrial strike.
The story of the revolt was best told to me by Senator Edwin F. Ladd of North Dakota. He is the original champion of the wheat growers in North Dakota, and as head of the chemistry department of the North Dakota Agricultural College, went out years ago and told the farmers they were not getting their share. He is a born agitator, it was his work that made the Non-Partisan League possible, and he has just been elected on the Non-Partisan League to the Senate of the United States. He is going to Congress to represent wheat. I saw him recently in Fargo, N. D., where he was laying his plans for his revolutionary coup in favor of the farmers.
I went to him to talk about the Non-Partisan League, but, though he had just acquired his seat in the Senate on the Non-Partisan ticket, he talked perhaps ten minutes on the league, and an hour or so on the revolt of the wheat growers and the other farmers.
Farmers Realize Situation
“The farmers who grow wheat,” he said, “are in revolt because they have come to understand their position in the economic life of the country. They know they do the work of growing the wheat and the profit is largely taken by others. Here in North Dakota the situation is so simple it is easy to grasp, and once seen, cannot be forgotten. The rich city of Minneapolis is exceedingly prosperous on the money it made out of the wheat grown in North Dakota. There stands Minneapolis and here are the North Dakota farmers who realize they are not richer on account of the wheat operators.
“The method of handling the wheat crop is also simple enough for any farmer to understand. During the spring and summer the banks lend money to the farmers to grow and harvest the crop. Their notes fall due early in the fall, when they are supposed to sell their crops. The small banks, which did the lending, backed by bigger banks in the bigger cities, reassemble this money, ship it back to the big city banks, which lend it over again to the operators and speculators who handle the wheat through its second period. They are in turn supposed to make the turnover in a few months, to sell and repay the banks, which lend the same money for a third time to the shippers who finally dispose of the wheat.
“The farmer now asks why he should be forced to liquidate his crop so quickly. Is it only so other men can clean up fortunes yearly on the manipulation of the crop he has raised? He wants to know why. He sees no reason why he should let this process continue. So he is making the only protest possible. He is sitting on his wheat and refuses to play the game as it has always been played. He will not hasten to liquidate his crop right away in order to finance the wheat speculator.”
North Dakota Banks Close
“Here in North Dakota the refusal of the farmers to sell has closed thirty or more banks. These banks are not insolvent, but they have no money. It is all in the wheat upon which the farmers are sitting and refusing to budge. When they decide to sell they will pay their notes and the banks will again be able to resume business.
“It is a strike, if you want to call it so. It is a protest against the economic system and shows the spirit that is moving. The Non-Partisan League has been voicing this protest and organizing it. That is why it has grown and is growing now faster than ever in spite of the political fight that has been put up against it. It may look for a harder fight as the organized bankers and wheat manipulators see their profits threatened by the preparations the farmers are making to voice their protest even more effectively through the American Farm Bureau.
“This is what is really happening among farmers. One way or another they are beginning to understand they have been the victims of disorganization. They have marketed all together and have bred speculation. Now they intend to change. They do not mean to hold up the country, but to force a change, so they are organizing, the wheat men in one group, the corn in another, the cotton and wool in still further groups, &c. There are dozens of different organizations all working to the same end, and their strength is being united in the Farm Bureau. They wish to sell through their own organizations and make the full profit.
“So far in the United States only the raisin growers of California and the prune growers have organized effectively. They sell their crops co-operatively.”
Canada’s Wheat Financing
“The wheat growers and the others mean to do the same thing. The method is simple. It is only necessary to get the different groups organized and the banks will have to finance us. I have just been making a study of how it is being done, and how it has been done for the past six years, in the three wheat provinces of Canada. There it was operated through the Canadian Government during the war, but it is now being operated by the banks. There are some 700 co-operative elevators where the farmers can store their wheat, and from which it is finally disposed of.
“The method there, which we shall adopt, is to pay the farmer a price on delivering the wheat and giving him a receipt which entitles him to a share in the future operations. Last year when the wheat was placed in the elevators the farmer was paid per bushel $2.15 in cash. When the price was more definitely fixed he was paid another 30 cents, and when the transaction for the year was ended another 18 cents. So he got all that was coming to him. According to the system in vogue here he would have got the $2.15 perhaps, and that is all he ever would have got. The other 48 cents per bushel, which totals up on the year’s crop to millions of dollars, would have gone to enrich the speculators and wheat manipulators, ‘Minneapolis,’ as we say here.”
“What we need to do is to organize ourselves as they have done in Canada, store our wheat in our own co-operative elevators and make the banks finance us through the different periods in the handling of the crop. There are three periods now, the farming, the holding and the handling of the wheat. It only needs co-operation for the farmer to share in all three periods.
“In this period of unrest following the war is beginning a new era in agriculture. Following the Civil War came the growth of manufacturing. After this war comes the reorganization of agriculture. For years now two-thirds of the population has been dependent on one-third. The cities have dominated. Now the country is going to share equally with the cities.”
Senator Ladd has vision. There are others too, but there is danger in vision. The farmers, being in revolt, want to do everything at once. They want to develop the Farm Bureau into an economic machine that would rival the power of the Federal Government. They want to centre the selling of the whole agricultural crop in a single body. It would be much more successful for each type of farmer to organize apart and go forward slowly as the raisin and prune growers they emulate have done.
League Voices Protest
I wish to say just a word about the Non-Partisan League. It is a farmers’ organization, but it has been developed largely by the energy of a single man, A. G. Townley. It has, in consequence, made many mistakes, mostly political. But its enemies, fighting by fair means and foul, have not been able to kill it off. As a league it is chiefly important because it expresses the protest. That is also why nothing can kill it. The one convincing thing about it, to any one, is the way the farmers will unhesitatingly pay the $18 dues it demands. Farmers are not so notably open-handed they would cheerfully hand over $18 if they were not after something the league was working for. It is economic independence.
The League’s purpose, and its only excuse for existence, is the establishing of a new and fairer method of marketing wheat, but where it is at work politically it is always fought on other issues—because it is “socialistic,” because “Townley is radical”—anything but the real issue. It was defeated in Minnesota this fall because it was declared to be a movement in favor of free love. It appears some books of Ellen Key, bearing on sex problems, were found in the North Dakota public school reference library. Promptly its enemies cried down these books and virtuously declared against the “free love movement.” In Minnesota its enemies quickly seized upon the party cry. The wheat manipulators of Minneapolis, who, being rich, dominated socially, sent their wives out to tell the women of Minnesota to vote against this “free love” party. These ladies, being rich and powerful socially, went with the virtuous plea into every town in Minnesota and, being known as rich and prominent socially, swept the woman vote of Minnesota with them. The Non-Partisan League, that organization of free-loving North Dakota Scandinavian farmers, was not allowed to pollute the virtuous State of Minnesota.
It is ironic, but it cannot stop the farmers’ protest. If Senator Ladd is right, the protest will be organized so effectively that the farmers will all be in industrial unions long before the industrial workers.