T CHAPTER VII THE INDIVIDUALISTIC ATTITUDE TO LABOUR HE prevailing industrial practice is one in which the employer, counting the wages of his labourers as labour cost—which, like other costs, are to be kept as low as possible,1—conducts his business with a view to private profits. Impelled by the quest of profits employers have claimed the right to manage their business as they might see fit,2 and to consider labour in the same light as raw materials or machinery, in the interest of private profits. This right, when applied to particular situations, differentiates into particular rights, as the right to employ and discharge at will, and exclusively to decide matters pertaining to the business. Workmen must submit to the orders of employers. In this relation of authority-subordination, those in authority easily become dominating if their authority, no matter how arbitrarily exercised, is questioned: The development of large-scale production has facilitated this capitalistic control. Great corporations are, for several reasons, in a very favourable position to exercise control over workmen and to repress organized effort to improve conditions. They have ample financial resources; they employ a large mass of unskilled labour, which it is difficult to organize; often they can transfer work to be done from a factory in which there is a strike to other factories; their 1 Mitchell, Business Cycles, 465-466. 2 Pigou, Principles and Methods of Industrial Peace, 12; Stockton, The Closed Shop in American Trade Unions, J. H. U. S. H. P. S., Series XXIX, No. 3, 165; Tead, Instincts in Industry, 73. 3 A professor of engineering recently reminded his class that it is a business principle not to introduce an expensive machine to do the work of cheap labor because, in case of unforeseen changes, the labour can be scrapped without loss but not the machine. 4 Fitch, The Steel Workers, Pts. II-IV; Taussig, Inventors and Money-Makers, 84-94; Wolfe, Works Committees and Joint Industrial Councils, as a report prepared for the United States Shipping Board, 1919, 26. 5 Weyforth, The Organizability of Labor, J. H. U. S. P. S., Series XXXV, No. 2, Ch. XII. 6 Wolman, The Extent of Trade Unionism, Annals Amer. Acad. Pol. Soc. Sc., Pub. No. 1092, 6. 7 Wolman, The Extent of Labour Organization in the United States in 1910, Quart. Jour. Econ., May, 1916, 507. very size and power intimidates workmen; the policy of a monopolistic corporation of diminishing the output to raise the price decreases the demand for labour and hence tends to lower the wage; a decrease in the number of establishments under a régime of consolidation lessens the opportunity of striking workmen to find work elsewhere. When only a little capital was required to become an employer, the more vigorous and ambitious workmen, who resented what they regarded as the making of large profits at their expense, went into business for themselves and competed with their erstwhile employer. Today the starting of an independent business is much more difficult than formerly. The man with a strong impulse to make money, who can no longer satisfy his impulse by going into business for himself, is offered a tempting salary as the price of his complete devotion to the interests of a corporation. Men whose dispositions do not permit this subservient attitude become forces in the progressive political and labour movements. Labour organization is not apt to develop among a body of workmen in whom the forceful dispositions are weak. Compare, for instance, mercantile establishments, which contain a vast body of listless, inefficient workers, with railroad transportation, in which "exacting entrance requirements insure a type of employés which, for physical fitness, mental alertness, and ability to handle difficult situations is unsurpassed in any industry."9 The work is exacting and requires extreme caution, good judgment and decisive action.10 The result is that men engaged in railroading develop a group character which makes their unions among the most aggressive and effective in the country,11 while department store employés lack the characteristics necessary for effective unionization.12 The aggressive unionism of bridge and structural iron workers is due to the hazardous character of their occupation, which selects only the most resolute and daring men and confirms these traits in the course of the vocational practice. 18 Labour, neither unorganized nor organized, disputes the necessity of recognizing authority in production. Workmen admit that reO'Leary, Department Store Occupations, 84-87. • Fleming, Railroad and Street Transportation, 14. 10 Ibid. 20-25. 11 Ibid. 26. 12 Wolman, The Extent of Labor Organization in the United States in 1910, Quart. Jour. Econ., May, 1916, 502. 13 Grant, The National Erectors' Association and International Association of Bridge and Structural Iron Workers, 9. sponsibility calls for sufficient authority to protect the responsibility. Responsibility includes the necessity of making decisions and taking the consequences of decisions when put into effect. Authority involves the power to make use of all the agents necessary to carry out the decision and insure its having the result intended. Workmen recognize the necessity of authority and subordination and admit that it is not possible for the industrial relation, under any system, to become one entirely of co-operation between management and workmen on a plane of complete personal equality. Whether the employer is a manager hired by private owners or a government official or a manager elected by a co-operating group of workmen, there must be authority and subordination in the industrial relation. Those most capable of industrial leadership must direct the work of others; the directed must act according to the instructions of the directors. It is, therefore, an evidence of intelligence in industrial relations that the subordinate accepts the subordination necessary to the efficiency of the organization. Exactly the same intelligence is required of one who occupies a position of authority. He is required to perform the duties of that position without thinking of his position as giving him authority impulsively to dominate subordinates. The elimination of this impulsive relation depends on bringing into the financial and industrial leadership the men most capable of leadership and on developing the intelligence of workmen. Пntelligent workmen follow the leadership of those who show themselves able to lead, but they resent an assumption of authority without ability. Incompetence of managers is, then, one cause of the antagonism between labour and capital. Another cause is more fundamental, being inherent in the industrial system as at present constituted. That system has developed out of the profit-seeking motive, and that motive involves the use of labour, as of raw materials for private profit. High productivity and the lowest wages consistent therewith is the aim of the profit-seeking employer. His ultimate aim is not to increase the efficiency of labour in the long run, but to make large profits for the time being, even at the sacrifice ultimately of the vitality and morale of workmen on which productivity depends.14 Furthermore, this profit-seeking motive usually actuates not only the ultimate employer but extends through the entire management, inasmuch as, in most cases, the higher officials of an enter14 Webb, The Restoration of Trade Union Conditions, 76. prise have a direct stake in the business beyond their fixed salaries.15 This aim to use labour for private profit makes inevitable an antagonism between capital and labour. It involves domination of labour -a subconscious attitude of domination in the ordinary course of business, a conscious attempt to dominate if workmen jointly resist and insist on higher wages or improved conditions of labour. Individual employers may feel little or none of this domination toward workmen, may simply conform to the prevailing business practice, and, in case of a difference of opinion, may intelligently discuss grievances with their workmen. But the system itself is based on domination-submission, or domination-resistance—mutual antagonism - and the men who reach the positions of power and influence in the system are apt to be those who excel in dominating power. Hence the reactionary aspect of the capitalistic system. As Justice Higgins, President of the Australian Court of Conciliation and Arbitration, said: "There is a very real antinomy in the wages system between profits and humanity. The law of profits prescribes greater receipts and less expenditures—including expenditures on wages and on the protection of human life from deterioration. Humanity forbids that reduction of expenditure should be obtained on such lines. Other things being equal, the more wages, the less profits; the less wages the more profits. It is folly not to admit the fact and face it. Moreover the economies which are the easiest to adopt in expenditure tend to waste and degradation of human life-the most valuable thing in the world; therefore so long as the wage system continues there is need of some impartial regulating authority."16 The individualistic employer lacks the social point of view in production; his narrow vision intensifies his impulsive action. Domination-submission is so prevalent in the industrial relation because it is the easy relation for the superior. It is easy to yield to a strong impulse. Such action requires no thought. It is seen not only between employers and workmen but also between different grades of workmen: "I doubt whether there is any authority in the industrial world more absolute than that of the mechanic over his helpers; and as for arbitrariness in the use of authority, give me every time the manner of a mechanic in telling a helper to pass a wrench, or shoulder a piece of pipe. If a foreman should speak in such a manner to 15 Knight, Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit, 349. 16 Higgins, A New Province for Law and Order, II, Harv. L. Rev., XXXII: 216-217. a mechanic, he would quit." 17 The dominating attitude is prevalent because of the natural strength of the dominating disposition and because this attitude has been fostered by the form taken by social institutions. In the family the bread-winner is the ultimate boss. In industry the employer who owns the instruments of production is the acknowledged boss. In the state the propertied classes are the implicitly recognized rulers. The impulse to dominate is strengthened by the sense of power due to ownership of property, and by the impulse to protect ownership, hence the assurance of propertied classes and their impulse to maintain their political as well as their industrial control. The dominating attitude is not usually conspicuous in a business enterprise; domination is apt to be the final resort when other appeals have failed. The other forms of appeal are, therefore, most in evidence. For instance, in some factories the policy is to keep in the lower managing positions, in close touch with workmen, men of unusual power to win admiration of workmen. Then, at the other end, the general manager may be a person of rough and ready generosity, 18 perhaps something of an idealist, who makes a hobby of profit sharing as a possible policy of the future, or of something else that serves as a lure to the loyalty of subordinates. This general manager may delegate to subordinates the work that makes a man disliked, for instance, the handling of requests for increases of pay. The function of this subordinate, is then, that of a sort of chancellor who "shields the Emperor." He assumes entire responsibility in those matters that inevitably call forth criticism.19 Thus the management is so shaped as to appeal to workmen's admiration for ability and devotion to generosity, with only as much domination as seems absolutely necessary to maintain control. The dominating attitude of the individualistic employer may be veiled because while workmen are submissive the dominating disposition is satisfied and other dispositions assert themselves. The employer may become benevolent and conduct welfare work. But any resistance after employers have launched welfare enterprises is termed "base ingratitude," and the essential attitude of domination is apt to become more pronounced than ever. 17 Colburn, A Foreman's Responsibility and Authority, Industrial Management, June, 1917, 350. 18 "Human-Being Management," Industrial Management, Dec., 1916, 398-400. 19 The same arrangement is seen in the state. A President of the United States takes out a union card and professes sympathy with the aims of unionism while his attorney general takes measures to crush a threatened railway strike. |