r-NRLF 
 
 IT..U IN 
 
 r 
 
 

 EXCHANGE 
 
 m . 
 
VITA 
 
 John Herman Randall, Jr., was born in Grand Rapids, 
 Michigan, February 14, 1899. Attended school in Grand 
 Rapids and New York City. Received B.A., June, 1918, and 
 M.A., June, 1919, from Columbia University. Since 1920 
 Instructor in Philosophy in Columbia University. 
 
THE PROBLEM OF 
 
 GROUP RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 TO SOCIETY 
 
 AN INTERPRETATION OF THE HISTORY OF 
 AMERICAN LABOR 
 
 SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS 
 
 FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY, IN THE 
 
 FACULTY OF PHILOSOPHY, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 
 
 JOHN HERMAN RANDALL, JR., A.B., M.A. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 1922 
 
EXCHANGE 
 
CONTENTS 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 PAGE 
 
 *i. The Problem of Group Responsibility i 
 
 PART I 
 
 THE AIMS AND MOTIVES OF LABOR ORGANIZATIONS IN THE 
 
 UNITED STATES 
 
 The Place of Social Theory and Programs in the American Labor 
 
 Movement 23 
 
 3. The Characteristics of the American ^ losophy of Democracy 33 
 
 4. The Mechanics' Movement of the Twenties and the Thirties 54 
 
 -5. The Double Strain in the American Labor Movement 76 
 
 6. The Effects of the Industrial Revolution 93 
 
 T. The Conflict of Theories and the Triumph of Business Unionism 113 
 
 8. Business Unionism Relations within the Group 148 
 
 9. Business Unionism The Relation of the Group to other Groups 166 
 
 10. Business Unionism Its Ideal and Its Implications 185 
 
 11. Infidels and Heretics Alien Philosophies and their Effects on the 
 
 American Labor Movement 200 
 
 12. The Growth of Class Solidarity and the New Unionism 215 
 
 PART II 
 GROUP RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 13. Group Responsibility The Problem 239 
 
 14. The Problem as an Essay in Education 256 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
I. THE PROBLEM OF GROUP RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 WHEN we look abroad upon the world today, at the close of a war 
 fought because of the conflicting and irresponsible ambitions of the 
 various groups of mankind; when we behold the dissensions, the strife of 
 interests and impulses, the selfish nationalisms and the bitterness and 
 hostility which mark the present "peace"; when we look within the 
 nations to class wars, prejudices, and hatreds, and observe group warring 
 against group, capital against labor, skilled labor against unskilled, craft 
 against craft, and see strikes of the utmost seriousness to the common 
 welfare threatened and fought with a reckless disregard of social con- 
 sequences surpassed only by the irresponsible profiteering and manipula- 
 tion of the manufacturers and producers of necessities; in a word, when 
 we look upon the seething, boiling mass of contemporary civilization 
 some two years after the world was supposedly absolutely at one hi the 
 accomplishment of a single aim, we are disposed to agree with Mr. Gra- 
 ham Wallas that the amalgam seems to have dropped out of present-day . 
 society, leaving all its various discordant elements free to pursue their I 
 reckless and unthinking courses to their mutual destruction.' When we 
 look closer at the industrial conflict in those nations, like Britain and the 
 United States, where the industrial revolution has advanced furthest, and 
 observe the refusal of the workers of the community to perform their 
 wonted tasks, even when tempted by wages higher than they have ever 
 before known, we may also agree with Mr. H. J. Laski that the very main- 
 spring of the industrial system of the last century, the willingness of the 
 worker to produce as much as he possibly can for a low wage, seems tb 
 have broken; and with Mr. Arthur Gleason that large sections of the 
 workers refuse any longer to operate the system of private enterprise and 
 private profits. Our agreement will be all the more probable if we realize 
 that the war, far from being the direct cause of all our present discontents, 
 has but hastened a state of affairs which long ago was foreseen as the 
 inevitable result of our reckless disregard of the social consequences of 
 our ways. 
 
 Most of us have not yet awakened from the bewilderment these sudden 
 and stupefying events have induced, and are still hoping to "get things 
 back to normal," "to restore pre-war conditions." But there are some 
 who have realized that even the election of a second McKinley can not 
 
 
 
4 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 bring things back to where they were before the war, even as the restora- 
 tion of Louis XVIII could not undo the work of the Revolution, spread 
 far and wide through the European fabric by the armies of Napoleon. 
 Such men, and they are growing in number every day, are busy asking 
 themselves, " Why? " What is the cause of all this unsettling scramble? 
 Whither are we as a civilization tending? And they are patiently seeking, 
 in the very framework and structure of our modern society, the answer to 
 these questions. 
 
 The most striking difference between the society of today and that of 
 the pre-industrial period lies in the far-reaching and intricate economic 
 structure which has taken the place of the old simple agricultural com- 
 munity. In the old society the single family was the economic unit; all 
 essentials were produced in the household itself, and there was very little 
 need to bother about the families who lived in the next valley. Whatever 
 exchange of commodities took place was limited to the village; and there 
 was really small reason why if one of these self-sufficient communities had 
 been shut off by impenetrable walls from the rest of mankind, it could 
 not, with never a thought of the others, have thriven and prospered 
 greatly. 
 
 j The industrial revolution has been changing all that. It has taken 
 these little communities, spread at random over the surface of the land, 
 and made of them one enormous and intricate machine for the satisfaction 
 of human needs. One by one the various functions which the farmer used 
 to perform for himself have been absorbed by highly specialized indus- 
 tries; and each further specialization has made the rest of the community 
 more and more dependent upon those who control the physical means and 
 the technical skill necessary for the performance of their chosen function 
 in industrial life. Men formerly cut their fuel in the neighboring forest; 
 now they are dependent upon the distant coal-mine. Men formerly grew 
 wool, spun it, wove it into cloth, and sewed it into garments, all in their 
 own household; now they are dependent upon the Western sheep-raiser, 
 the New England mill, the New York tailor. Today even the farmer, and 
 still more the city-dweller, would be utterly helpless if any breakdown in 
 the great industrial machine forced him to rely upon himself for the 
 necessities of life. Each of the functions necessary to the carrying on of 
 life has been assumed by a specialized type of worker, and all depend upon 
 the intricate system of transportation and exchange whereby products are 
 transferred from those who have made them to those who can use them. 
 This growing interdependence of society, this welding into one great 
 <. organism of what formerly were separate and rather unrelated units, has 
 
The Problem of Group Responsibility 5 
 
 long been a commonplace of the economist; but it has been forced home to 
 every man by the experience of the war. Those who had not realized the 
 extent to which society had become one great machine embracing every 
 man learned that it was no longer possible to direct the national purpose 
 to some great common end without including in that end every productive 
 factor in the industrial system. No longer was it possible to regard the 
 army as the fighting-machine par excellence; even more important than 
 the soldiers in the trenches was the great.industrial system behind the 
 lines which made possible those soldiers. \JHie war revealed a society so 
 
 unified by its very differentiation, so completely interdependent, one part 
 upon another, that only as a unit, as a completely integrated whole, could 
 it prosecute the common purpose. It was no longer simply a question of > 
 calling an army to the colors; it was rather a problem of mobilizing an 
 entire nation! Thus it was impressed upon every man in every calling 
 that his particular work was an integral and necessary part of the ef- 
 ficient functioning of the great organization fighting the enemy. 
 
 This industrial system has its invaluable advantages in enabling a 
 large population to live in comfort where in the old society there was 
 but a scanty subsistence for a meagre people; but upon them it is not per- 
 tinent to dwell. It has one great disadvantage: the very delicacy of 
 structure necessary to produce the wonders of modern industry exposes 
 society to a thousand and one dangers undreamed of in former days. 
 Every disturbance, however slight, is caught up in a vast network of re- 
 lations and transmitted throughout the whole system; a single failure of 
 a single cog will throw out of gear the entire machine. In the lower or- 
 ganisms it is possible to destroy most of the animal without injuring it ,^ 
 permanently; but in the higher mammals a slight injury in the right place 
 will render the whole body helpless. Just so the older society could en- 
 dure almost complete devastation, and those portions left untouched 
 could continue relatively unchanged; in modern society there are small 
 groups of individuals whose destruction would bring about the disinte- 
 gration of the community. In the city of New York there are any number 
 of groups upon whom has devolved the performance of a particular func- 
 tion which they alone are able to fulfill. Should anything occasion the 
 withdrawal of the transportation industry, or the means of getting food 
 to the city; should the public service utilities, the purveyors of light and 
 heat^ suddenly fail, the whole city would find itself in desperate straits. X 
 
 {The essential requisite for any highly functionalized society is that all s \^-' 
 the various parts, all those individuals who perform a particular task in 1 
 
 the great machine, should fulfill their functions with a minimum of fric- 
 
 jj ^~ 
 

 6 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 tion and a maximum of efficiency and harmony. l Where the life of the 
 whole cannot tolerate any interruption or any~mefficiency in the pro- 
 viding of those services upon which it depends for its continuance, it is 
 of prime importance that there be some power, some force, some principle 
 of cohesion compelling the elements making up society to work together 
 for the common good. Only when they are thoroughly habituated to 
 performing their part in the great engine of society will it function at all; 
 recalcitrancy on the part of any group immediately upsets the delicate 
 balance and, unless speedily overcome, ruins the whole machine. (For 
 that reason the fundamental problem of social organization today as never^X 
 before is at bottom one of education; it is the development of social ways 
 of acting, of character and responsibility, individual and collective. The 
 well-ordered state is that whose institutions foster the formation of habits 
 of social cooperation, and provide channels through which the energies of 
 man can be so liberated that they directly enhance the life of the whole. ~\ 
 Without in any sense accepting the static and permanently stratified" 
 nature of Plato's Republic, we must take the harmonizing and ordering 
 principle of Platonic Justice as both the ideal end and the indispensable 
 condition of any state which is to serve the good life; and we can strive to 
 attain that form of political organization which will permit and require of 
 the members of society an individual and group responsibility for the 
 efficient performance of their necessary functions in the life of the whole. 
 ^Nevertheless, this force binding and welding into one organic union 
 
 / the manifold elements making UD the modern industrial state has been 
 and is today conspicuously absent A Despite the close interdependence of 
 the modern economic structure, which makes well-nigh imperative such 
 a harmonious and cooperative functioning, it seems, as one surveys the 
 bitter struggles at present in progress both between and within nations in 
 every corner of the globe, as if Mr. Wallas were right in asserting that the 
 amalgam has dropped out of present-day society. The simple facts of the 
 case are that those cohesive forces which under the old agricultural 
 society were fairly adequate to secure the comparatively slight coopera- 
 tion then necessary between the various classes of society, the authority 
 of religion, the power of the king's army, and perhaps above all the time- 
 honored habituation to ancient custom and the inertia of a stable com- 
 munity, have, with the rapid growth of the Great Society, largely lost 
 
 j their force and disappeared; and as yet there has arisen little to take their 
 
 p place. V\A society which depends for its very existence upon the harmoni- 
 
 ous cooperation of all its members is at the prey of groups whose purposes 
 
 are far more apt to be the callous pursuit of their own private interests, 
 
The Problem of Group Responsibility ^ 
 
 and so far the sense of mutual dependence has not proved strong enough 
 to control the anti-social motives]:^ 
 
 The necessity of securing cooperation between those who do not as 
 yet realize the extent of their mutual dependence, of building up, as John 
 Stuart Mill phrased it, individual and collective moral character, is in 
 no sense a new one. It was recognized by Greek thinkers, and it is to the 
 glory of Greece that in her political We she achieved something of that 
 harmonious functioning which has been the envy and the inspiration of 
 succeeding ages. But it is a problem which modern economic conditions 
 have made peculiarly urgent, and it is also a problem whose very existence 
 has been obscured by the economic and political theories upon which 
 modern civilization rests and in accordance with which it acts. That 
 theory, assailed at its birth even by those thinkers who gave it greatest 
 popularity, from Bentham down, has nevertheless managed to retain, 
 with slight modifications, its position at the basis of our legal structure 
 and our economic system; and it is at present receiving renewed bondage 
 even from the theorists, who had of late years almost all deserted it.\ The 
 philosophy practically followed in the law courts and the marts of trade 
 today, the same, with one modification, as that delivered by the Fathers a 
 century ago, can, perhaps, be best described as individualism tempered by 
 democracy; and its chief characteristic is just this lack of recognition of 
 the organic nature of modern society, this refusal to think in terms and 
 concepts which imply a community of units functioning in the life of the 
 whole, tjjis emphasis on the conflicting rights and powers of individuals 
 and of another entity, the state, set over against them, and this failure to 
 acknowledge the mutual and reciprocal duties of its members in the 
 common pursuit of life. 
 
 True, there has of late years occurred somewhat of a collectivist 
 reaction; it was inevitable that the palpable inadequacies and the gross 
 failures of the individualistic system when brought into contact with a 
 highly industrialized society should develop some antagonistic theory. 
 But when the collectivists tried to foster among the citizens of the state 
 a sense of responsibility for the welfare of the whole, when they tried 
 to get all men to come together to utilize the machinery of the state for 
 the purpose of achieving social ends, they failed lamentably; and they 
 failed because the structure of society is by no means so simple as they 
 had supposed. No longer can men be regarded as the isolated units, the 
 simple citizens, which both the individualistic and the collectivistic 
 theory presupposes; the functionalization of the economic system has pro- 
 ceeded at such a pace that in place of individuals there are now for the 
 
8 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 x- 
 
 most part groups, and it is to these groups that men today owe their pri- 
 mary allegiance. [The business man or manufacturer, when he votes or 
 participates in any way in political life, thinks first, not of the good of 
 society in general, but of his own economic and group interests^ and even 
 more is it true that the average worker finds that economic group to which 
 he belongs, and in which he feels that he is playing a real part, to be 
 a much more real thing than some distant and jrather shadowy legislature 
 representing the state, or society as a whole. When men today turn to the 
 state, it is merely as one of the means through which they^can effect the 
 X. purposes of the group with which their interests are bound up^\ 
 
 And so it is that those qualities of loyalty and fidelity to one's fellows, 
 of civic pride and responsibility, without which no society can endure, 
 have for the most part been developed within certain specified and 
 limited groups; while these groups themselves have taken their places 
 in the framework of the old individualistic system of relationships with 
 very little more sense of social solidarity and responsibility than the 
 older biological units possessed. Within the groups, the individualistic 
 philosophy has generally been superseded by something more adequate 
 and more effective, more suited to actual conditions; in the hard school of 
 experience men have been forced to learn to cooperate with one another, 
 to stand by each other and fulfill their mutual duties. Participation 
 in group life has been a most valuable educative process, leading through 
 prolonged self-discipline to a very real sense of solidarity and reciprocal 
 responsibility. There has been developed a group spirit, an esprit de 
 corps, a set of group standards and ideals which no member would will- 
 ingly violate. Yet between groups, in the relations which the groups 
 . hold to one another and especially to that group which represents the 
 power of society as a whole, the state, just as in the further relations into 
 I ^ which national groups enter with their fellows, there has been developed 
 V little corresponding sense of a larger social responsibility. The labor 
 unionist will faithfully subordinate his own private interests to the 
 interests of his union; the corporation official is inspired often by a real 
 devotion to the company, and will stand by it through thick and thin. 
 But of neither union nor corporation can it be said that it is actively 
 aware of the duty which it owes to the whole in which it functions/ So 
 far as the relations between groups are concerned, modern society is still 
 conducted upon an individualistic basis; and though the exigencies of in- 
 dustrial organization have enlarged the terms in the older theory from 
 the single employer and the single workman to the great corporation and 
 the powerful trade union, the essence of the relation between them re- 
 
The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 mains unchanged. The present-day community, despite the socialized 
 
 aracter of its industrial structure, is still endeavoring to function upon 
 the basis of group-individualism. 
 
 But not only is the spirit which actually obtains in the manifold 
 struggles and competitions of the industrial field fundamentally opposed 
 to the needs and conditions of social life; of late years that spirit has 
 come consciously to the fore in the writings of social theorists, and both 
 legal philosophers like M. Duguit and Mr. Laski and economic idealists 
 like the syndicalists and the guild-socialists have adopted group-individ- 
 ualism as the philosophy which is to solve the problems of social organi- 
 zation. Under the name of "pluralism" the tacit assumptions upon 
 which the unionist and the monopolist have been acting have been 
 rationalized into a theory of society and opposed to the tenets of state 
 socialism or collectivism. A brief analysis will make clear the funda- 
 mental similarity between this social theory and the older conception of 
 individualism. 
 
 The essence of the old individualism which reigned during the nine- 
 teenth century is briefly as follows: Society is composed of a number of 
 equal units, each separate and distinct from all the others, each endowed 
 with a private and individual will or purpose to further his own ends, each 
 indifferent to the ends of all the rest. These units possess on.e aud-oniy v^ 
 one purpose in common, the desire to remain free from interference by the 
 otherunits. ThiS'end is Served by an organization caTTecTQie State, which, 
 "however it may have originated, at present embodies this general will or / 
 purpose of, first, protecting the units from agression from outside the 
 community, and, secondly, of curtailing with blindfolded and impartial 
 justice the activities of each unit in such a way that no one will be en- 
 croached upon any more than he encroaches upon others. Since the 
 function of the state is fundamentally to limit the will and rights of each 
 unit, it is to the interests of the units that the state function no more than 
 is absolutely necessary. To this end each unit preserves against the state 
 certain rights; that is, certain powers of enforcing its will upon other 
 wills when it wills something not prohibited by law. 1 
 
 Now this conception makes of society, not a whole in which each of the 
 parts performs its own function smoothly, but an aggregate of conflicting 
 wills whose interests are all, above a certain minimum, antagonistic. 
 Over against these individual wills is placed a higher will of the state, 
 to restrain them, combat them, and keep them within bounds. This 
 higher will of the state is assumed to be the general or social will; not the 
 1 This analysis follows in general the lines of M. Duguit's. 
 
 \ 
 
io The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 will of all the members, for no such entity can possibly exist, but the 
 will which purposes the general good. Only upon such an assumption can 
 the acts of the state hi restraining its members be justified, for only 
 t % in order to achieve the general good have they surrendered absolute inde- 
 ^ pendence. As it practically works out, the all-important function of 
 determining this general will is left to the majority which can enforce its 
 desires, and the determination of the will of the majority is again left 
 to those powerful and interested groups who are willing to put forward the 
 efforts necessary to secure success in a modern election. Thus, under 
 color of the fiction (necessary though it be on the given premises) that 
 the acts of the state embody the real will of all the people, certain power- 
 ful groups are enabled to impose, by force or by threat of force, their will 
 and interest upon their fellows. And, theoretically at least, the larger the 
 minority the more justification does the state have in employing force to 
 uphold the majesty of the law. Such, for example, was the theory of our 
 Civil War. 
 
 ^ / j The modern pluralists recognize this situation, that sovereignty, 
 which is the power to make the other fellow do what you want, does not 
 reside in the people as a whole, nor in the majority, nor in the state, 
 but is to be found wherever there exists the power to enforce the will of 
 a group. Some, like Mr. Laski, seem quite satisfied with this conclusion, 
 and regard with imperturbable equanimity the reintroduction, in theory 
 as in fact, of the bellum omnium contra omnes of Hobbes. Others, more 
 disturbed at the prospect of powerful economic groups, each with special 
 interests and with the power to enforce them, desire a federal state upon 
 an economic and industrial basis, overlooking, perhaps, how a divergence 
 in economic interest came near wrecking hi the Civil War the most 
 successful federal state. These latter thinkers desire a state which, in the 
 words of Professor John Dewey, as one of the many organizations func- 
 tioning in society, shall check and regulate the other groups and preserve 
 a proper harmony between them. And these men are bringing in, to- 
 gether with their Benthamite passive policeman state, the whole struc- 
 J ture of the individualistic social philosophy, merely substituting therein 
 f f* groups for single human beings. 
 
 The entire system is there. The old individualism depended upon the 
 primacy of self-interest and the consequent conflict of wills. Now while 
 psychology has thrown grave doubts upon the validity of this as a univer- 
 sal motive with the human being, it certainly seems as though groups 
 which acted with disinterested benevolence were rare. We are familiar 
 with the "soulless corporation"; and, for the matter of that, labor unions 
 
The Problem of Group Responsibility n 
 
 are not famed for the generous regard which they show either to their 
 fellow unions or to those dependent upon their toil. Nor are national 
 groups calculated to impress by their disdain of their own interests. In- 
 deed ^experience would lead to the conclusion that only when groups 
 foundTheir interests clearly and unmistakably identical, as with unions 
 engaged in a common struggle against their employers or with allied 
 nations in wartime, are they able to transcend their purely individual 
 aims. Thus strikes are commonly praised as developing solidarity 
 amongst labor, and the recent war was formerly supposed to have brought "i 
 the Allied and Associated Powers to a mutual brotherly understanding. 
 But the disappearance of more petty quarrels hardly compensates for the 
 existence of struggles of such magnitude. 
 
 xste 
 
 (Thi 
 
 This ^nnflir^ ftf will, thfi ha^jfi of indJVJHiiftfern. 
 
 other elements all follow logically. It is again necessary to bring in J 
 some organization with a superior will and power to enforce harmony / 
 amongst conflicting groups. .The problem becomes once more the en- 
 forcing of responsibility from above; and instead of our harmoniously 
 functioning state we are confronted with thejJternatwg^of , on the one 
 hand, a bureaucratic and efficient autocracy wisely but firmly keeping 
 every group in its proper place and necessarily supported by a strong 
 military force, the Prussian ideal, which, curiously enough, seems to have 
 been approximated in present-day Soviet Russia; or, on the other hand, 
 of a weak and ineffectual congress merely placing the stamp of legal 
 approval on the balance of power produced by the conflicting groups 
 themselves, the ideal of the Holy Roman Empire and the Germanic 
 Confederation. And since, as the pluralists have pointed out, there do 
 exist in an industrial society, unlike Russia, innumerable economic 
 groups which possess the power of not only resisting the state, but, should 
 self-defense follow its usual slippery path, of becoming predatory upon 
 society, it is probable that the second alternative would in practice result. 
 This, then, is the situation to which social thinkers would have men 
 look forward; strange contrast, indeed, to the society of harmonious coop- 
 eration which the intricacy of the modern industrial machine demands! 
 In such a society, where every group were free to place its individual 
 interests and desires above the welfare of the community, where the most 
 powerful and the most strategically located unions were able to bring the 
 entire nation to the verge of starvation to effect a slightly higher rate 
 of remuneration, the delicate organization built up by a century of indus- 
 trial growth would rapidly disintegrate; and such a collapse of the very 
 bases of civilization might well mean the extinguishing of everything 
 
12 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 which man has prized and cherished in his long pilgrimage through 
 history, if indeed it did not presage his total disappearance from the face 
 of the earth. 
 
 Thus modern social theory has indeed performed a great service in 
 pointing out the changed situation which the industrialization of society 
 has brought about. It has shown one-half of the new condition which 
 
 (functional organization has effected; overlooking the increased need of 
 cooperation, it has portrayed in striking colors the growth of new imperia 
 in imperio, of powerful and irresponsible groups within the state. This 
 is a fact of political and economic life which assuredly any social philos- 
 ophy which cares to commune with actual conditions must assume as 
 part of the data with which it has to work. It is at least a portion of that 
 natural basis whose disregard has led previous social theory to become 
 increasingly unreal and unfruitful of solution for the difficult problems of 
 
 (social organization. But when it goes on to ask men not only to recognize 
 the extent of group-individualism, but also to accept it as permanent and 
 to idealize it as best they may; when it asks them to construct a new 
 philosophy extolling, in the optimistic spirit of Adam Smith, the marvel- 
 lous way in which the self-interest of the various groups making up society 
 works together for the greatest good of the greatest number, or deploring 
 in the Ricardian spirit of disillusionment the sad but inevitable laws of 
 group activity which necessitate that society remain a bloody field of 
 combat: then it is for men to point out that it has left untouched the 
 primary problem of social organization, and confronts in silence the 
 demand of the modern industrial system for a society in which the same 
 relations of functional service which obtain within groups shall also sub- 
 L.sist between them. It has after all made little or no advance upon its 
 immediate predecessor toward securing that harmonious and cooperative 
 liberation of human energies, and it has fallen far below those wondrous 
 Greeks, who, despairing perhaps of the tumultuous realities of political 
 struggle, were yet able to erect on high for the inspiration of future ages 
 their splendid vision of what the ideal state should be. That problem 
 remains for the modern age, as it remained for the Benthamite liberal, as 
 it remained for the political thinker of whatever age or clime; and hi re- 
 doubled insistence it presses upon the world today as the problem of 
 securing virtuous individuals and virtuous groups, virtuous in the fine old 
 Greek sense of fulfilling to the best of their abilities that function which it 
 is theirs to perform in the community, and hi that service to their fellows 
 of developing ever new sources of power and potentialities of spirit. 
 To one who with an unprejudiced eye surveys the industrial havoc 
 
The Problem of Group Responsibility 13 
 
 which the war spread throughout Central and Eastern Europe, and who 
 realizes the precarious situation in which even the Western powers, 
 England and France, have been placed as a result of the interference of 
 relatively external causes with the industrial and economic structure 
 that has grown up with modern society;! to one who has any understand- 
 ing of the forces motivating groups of labor today, and realizes that it is 
 not only in England that what Mr. Gleason points out is true, that the 
 workers care much more about other ends than they do about securing 
 the maximum of production even for high wages that Mr. Laski voiced 
 much more than a half-truth when he said that the profit motive inspir- 
 ing the modern industrial system seems dangerously near to breaking 
 down to such a one it seems entirely within the range of possibility that 
 the present technique of industry the machine technique of the indus- 
 trial revolution might itself have to give way to a society of agriculture . / 
 and handicraft, even as it has in certain localities of Central and Eastern 
 Europe. It is undoubtedly true that the average member of Western 
 civilization finds this a ludicrous, a ridiculous prospect. Only a lunatic 
 could possibly doubt the inevitability of the industrial revolution and the 
 machine process continuing and growing till the earth itself is extin- 
 guished in cosmic blacknessj 
 
 So, indeed, it must have seemed, while the barbarians were even then 
 at their very gates, to the citizens of that proud empire they worshipped 
 as Eternal Rome. But it was not the incursion of the Teuton tribes that 
 extinguished Hellenistic civilization; that was only the external symptom 
 of a long process of internal decay. Who can say whether such a process 
 be not even now at work in our society our society which but recently 
 ridiculously elevated its hope in progress into a cosmic principle? It 
 might surprise the self-complacent member of Western civilization to 
 realize that the majority of the human race, the millions of China and of 
 India, do not today accept this basic axiom of the West, and would 
 greatly rejoice if the European and his machines should disappear 
 entirely from the earth. [Nay, hi the very heart of European society there 
 are great numbers who would rejoice at the entire overthrow of the 
 machine, which to them stands only for drudgery and servitude^ 
 
 Samuel Butler depicted in his Erewhon a society which, perceiving that 
 the machine had become its master, forthwith rejected it entirely in favor 
 of more "primitive" habits of life. In the Victorian age in which the 
 work was penned it was received as an amusing whimsicality. But 
 Butler was in earnest, and there are those today, after the rude shattering 
 of the Victorian faith in progress, who regard his words as somewhat 
 
14 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 prophetic. But it appears more probable that if such an unheard-of 
 state of affairs should come to pass, it would be not because man refused 
 to allow the machine to become his master, but because he proved unable 
 to master himself. 
 
 It will do no harm, and it may be productive of much good, for men to 
 stop to ask themselves why the continuance of the machine process is 
 inevitable. Assuredly no man can stop it; but if, as the apostles of prog- 
 ress would have it, such mighty forces rest on the lap of the gods, what 
 knowledge have we that we presume to know the inscrutable minds of the 
 divinities? It might well be that in this world where so many things are 
 born and run their course and die, the industrial revolution might share 
 the common lot, and have even now advanced far in its old age. 
 
 Ah, but man will not permit it! Man will control his destiny; some- 
 how he will conquer and find his way out! 
 
 Why? Such an attitude might have been possible ten years ago; but 
 this false optimism was irretrievably shattered by the war. Many and 
 wise men foresaw that cataclysm, and strove to avert it; but the collective 
 wisdom of mankind proved impotent against its collective passion and 
 folly. The cynic can today plead a well-nigh irrefutable case. Nor does 
 the world seem to have learned much from its mistakes; so far as one can 
 judge it appears content to proceed in the same old muddle-headed 
 fashion to a repetition of its disasters. And if our present system of 
 
 II machine production should disappear, it is at least an open question 
 It whether humanity, purified and made clean by such a terrific purge, 
 J| released from all those things which have constituted for it progress, 
 
 x-might not enjoy a greater measure of collective well-being. 
 Y I do not, however, share these opinions, nor these expectations, 
 v / gloomy or joyful. I believe that the machine process, when properly 
 made the servant of man, is an inestimable and priceless boon. And 
 A I believe that man will find his way out of his present discontents to a 
 ^ larger measure of social well-being. But I also believe that if a way out 
 is found, it will be found, not by trusting to a beneficent providence, 
 nor yet to a cosmic process of evolution, but solely through the patient 
 and persistent application of human intelligence to the solution of the 
 manifold problems facing human society. And I believe that if through 
 any reason that intelligence slackens in its application, it is entirely 
 possible that the destiny of man may be quite different from that con- 
 templated by the optimistic apostles of perfectibilitarianism. 
 
 In this particular and specific problem of the securing of a society 
 whose functioning shall not tear it to pieces, whose centripetal shall ^X 
 
The Problem of Group Responsibility 15 
 
 outbalance its centrifugal tendencies, no one contemplates the eventual 
 avoiding of a pluralistic community, or the reduction of social life to a 
 
 / single-minded adherence to a single purpose, however inclusive. That 
 might indeed be a desirable end, though that question remains highly 
 dubious; but it certainly is an end never to be attained. Mankind is 
 too different, too richly endowed with manifold and conflicting tenden- 
 cies, ever to make possible the attainment of a single-minded society, 
 or ever to avoid the generous complexity of its variegated interests and 
 desires. Yet the disclaimer of any such aim does not involve the si- 
 multaneous rejection of any possible adjustment between conflicting in- 
 terests and impulses. To^conserve individuality it is not necessary to 
 evoke a bellum omnium centra omnes, nor to preserve initiative is it req- 
 uisite to institute a state of complete anarchy. What society does nee3\ 
 is sufficient unity of purpose, sufficient harmonization and reconcilia- :*\ 
 tion of conflicting interests, to enable it to work together for the attain- 
 ment of those varying ends. Conflicting impulses have always been in the 
 world, and will always be; but in the old agricultural society there was, 
 on the whole, enough of common purpose to hold the state together and 
 prevent its disruption. The Great Society has as yet hardly achieved this 
 binding principle; and it needs, intensely and profoundly needs, a motive 
 
 I sufficient to cause its component members to work together with a rea- 
 sonable degree of efficiency and to prevent them from running amuck 
 and bringing the whole social structure toppling down upon their heads. 
 The examination of this problem, the discovery of some such cohesive 
 principle, it is the purpose of this volume to undertake. 
 
 There are two general modes of approach to the problem, and 
 of them shed much light on the conditions necessary for a solution. 
 The one is that which has been assumed by the Hobbists and their sym- 
 pathizers: it phrases the end to be obtained as political obedience, and 
 seeks by the aid of force and penalties imposed by the state to create a 
 wholesome respect for constituted authority. It aims to secure social j 
 coherence through a sense of fear engendered by a firm central govern- 
 ment. The other mode of approach would like to discard fear entirely 
 as the basis of political obligation, and seeks rather to build up from 
 the bottom a habit of social cooperation resting upon consent and vol- 
 untary performance of duty. This is the ideal of the philosophical an- 
 archist, of a Godwin or a Proudhon, who would found society solely 
 upon the basis of voluntary associations; but it is also the ideal hesita- 
 tingly approached by Liberalism, that Liberalism that appeals to rea- 
 son and decries the exercise of compulsion. The one method empha- 
 
 
16 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 sizes obedience, the other, obligation; the one aims at binding society 
 together by bonds of steel applied from without, the other at fostering 
 and developing within society itself a desire and a will which shall weld 
 into one all discordant elements. Obviously, both methods have under- 
 lain all states up to the present; there has not existed one which was not 
 supported by a measure of executive force, yet likewise there has ex- 
 isted none which has not ultimately rested upon the passive assent, if 
 not the active consent, of its members. The second type of society, 
 that in which every citizen is imbued with a desire to act wholly in ac- 
 cord with political virtue, is, of course, ideally preferable to a society 
 
 , held in restraint by external force; every Utopia is peopled by just such 
 virtuous citizens. Yet somehow actual states have tended to resemble 
 more the first type; men have needed restraint and fear to hold them 
 in check, and it is quite futile to blame faulty conditions and arrange- 
 ments for the failings of those men who, after all, are responsible for 
 producing that social structure. The theorists of the second type have 
 been almost exclusively idealists; they have elevated into universal 
 terms what they desired to see in the state. Those of the first have cor- 
 respondingly been political realists, aiming solely at describing com- 
 munities as they are. Rare indeed have been those who have envisaged 
 
 . the problem as one of education,^of so molding social machinery that 
 it would cultivate a spirit of active cooperation among the members of 
 the state, and advance gradually from enforced to voluntary cohesion. 
 The answer of the advocate of force and authority to the particular 
 problem of group responsibility facing contemporary society is simple. 
 There exist powerful groups within the bosom of the state, too power- 
 ful to be extirpated. Let the state then recognize their existence, as it 
 does not at present; but let it hold them to strict accountability for 
 their actions. Let it carefully limit and define the fields of their activity, 
 and proscribe with rigid penalties any overstepping of the legal restric- 
 tions it imposes. Let it place stringent regulations about the monopoly 
 and extend to all industries the power enjoyed now by the Inter- 
 state Commerce Commission over the railroads, or by any public service 
 commission over the public utilities within its jurisdiction. Let it also 
 prohibit strikes, by injunction or by courts of compulsory arbitration; 
 and let it, if need be, call out the troops or mobilize the strikers in case 
 of disobedience of the government's mandates. 
 Upon the feasibility of this solution the discussion need not enter 
 
 j here. Everything put forward by the pluralists has been evidence of 
 
 i the extreme difficulty the modern state experiences in enforcing its will 
 
The Problem of Group Responsibility 17 
 
 against functional groups. Unquestionably, if sovereignty be the power 
 to force others to do your will, the modern trust or the modern trade 
 union certainly possesses a considerable measure of sovereignty; and 
 with the existence of many such imperia in imperio within its jurisdic- 
 tion the industrial state is apt to find itself in the plight of the Cape- 
 tian kings before their great feudatories. Mr. Laski is undoubtedly 
 right in saying, "The fact is that a unity produced by terror is at best 
 but artificial; and where the deepest convictions of men are attacked 
 terror must prove ultimately worthless." l The most absolutistic gov- 
 ernment can endure only so long as it is tolerated by its subjects; the 
 aim of a state resting primarily upon force must be, so far as possible, 
 to obtain the support of its citizens. If the modern state is to rely upon 
 its police power to secure the efficient functioning of its members, it 
 must utilize that power to foster habits of group responsibility. It 
 must endeavor to bring home to the component groups the duty they 
 are under of contributing their share to the life of the whole. 
 
 Thus even the rigid authoritarian faces grave difficulties in the pur- 
 suit of his solution to the problem, and is ultimately forced to acknowl- 
 edge that his is but one method of education in group responsibility. 
 And the measure of his success is just that degree in which the educa- 
 tive process makes unnecessary the use of force to compel political obe- 
 dience. It is upon this common ground that he can meet the advocate 
 of the development of a voluntary sense of group responsibility, of an 
 attitude of mind predisposing toward harmonious cooperation rather 
 than discordant individualism. 
 
 The latter, equally with the authoritarian, recognizes the necessity 
 of requiring social functioning from the various groups upon which the 
 community depends; but he believes that that unity can come to pass only 
 when there has grown up a real cohesive force, a real principle of social 
 responsibility permeating every nook and cranny of the state. He feels 
 that society cannot attain that smoothness of functioning which mod- 
 ern industrial organization demands and without which it cannot con- 
 tinue until the component groups have become habituated to directing 
 their energies not in purely private, but also in social channels. He 
 uses force, not as the bond which is to prevent the disruption of the en- 
 tire system, but as a means of guiding and controlling this educative 
 process. With Plato he holds that the perfect state must be schooled 
 in self-discipline until its parts are dominated by the harmonizing and 
 cooperative principle of Justice. 
 
 1 Laski, Authority in the Modern State, p. 34. 
 
 -^ 
 ) 
 </ 
 
i8 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 In so recognizing that the coercive force of the government can in no 
 sense be conceived as ultimate, he does not minimize the difficulty of 
 his problem. Rather is it the pure authoritarian who assumes a too 
 easy solution to the attainment of group responsibility. He imagines 
 that injunctions and courts of arbitration, laws against strikes and the 
 mobilization of troops can of themselves provide a proper lubrication 
 for the industrial machine. He believes the wise government to be that 
 which is continually proclaiming in strident tones, "Off with his head!" 
 The advocate of educative measures perceives clearly the difficulties in 
 the way of such an attempted solution; but he also sees enormous diffi- 
 culties in his own path. He looks abroad upon society today, with all 
 its warring classes and groups, its pluralistic purposes and its indiffer- 
 ence to larger responsibilities, and he does indeed feel the magnitude of 
 the task before him. But he realizes that no solution will stand which 
 is built upon the sand of military power, and he knows that the future 
 of civilization and of the human race depends upon an answer being 
 found. Therefore it is that he envisages the problem in terms of educa- 
 tion and will, of building up those habits of response to the needs of 
 society which constitute the essense of political virtue. 
 
 The obstacles in the way of creating and fostering this sense of re- 
 sponsibility are great. How, for instance, is it possible to expect that 
 a public service industry (and all are rapidly approaching this category; 
 he is wise indeed who can even today draw the line) will have as its pri- 
 mary aim the service of the public, when it has been created and is con- 
 trolled by men whose motive is avowedly private profit? And if it is 
 difficult to develop a sense of social responsibility hi a group whose func- 
 tion is directly productive, how much more so is it hi the case of the 
 union, where social responsibility means first of all responsibility to a 
 group whose interests are in many respects fundamentally opposed to 
 theirs! Such considerations raise the further question of whether the 
 solution will not entail fundamental changes hi the administrative sys- 
 tem of modern industry that its productive technique may be preserved. 
 
 Before, however, these questions can be even intelligently propounded, 
 there is required a careful examination of the prevailing conditions, so- 
 cial, economic and human, from which any solution to the problem must 
 start. There are many evidences that society is at present dominated 
 by what was been called the habit and attitude of group-individualism, 
 and the task is to change this attitude, to develop out of it, if possible, 
 a truly social vision. Such a change in attitude, in purpose, in philosophy, 
 implies an exact knowledge of the possibilities inherent in the present 
 
The Problem of Group Responsibility 19 
 
 ^situation, and of the causes which have made that situation what it is. 
 What conditions have led to the present dominance of the habits of 
 group-individualism? Is this the sole motive underlying the action of 
 industrial groups, and what grounds are there, in their past history, to 
 suppose that any other can be made prominent? What have been the 
 conditions that have militated against the development of habits of so- 
 cial responsibility? 
 
 The question then is primarily one of understanding the motives of*v 
 human beings in the industrial machine, and of so ordering conditions jf 
 that these motives may be modified and turned into other and social / 
 channels. What are the springs of action of the trade unionist, his aims, / 
 his desires, his beliefs, his theories? What conditions have produced 
 them, and not others, in his life? Why is he not commonly predisposed 
 to look beyond his own group in his policies and actions? And what is 
 there hi the mind of the trade-unionist to lead one to suspect that under 
 other conditions he will find his aim in cooperating with the whole body 
 of society as well as with his fellow unionists? 
 
 All these questions necessitate an examination of the motives and the- 
 ories underlying the various efforts men have made at industrial organi- 
 zation, and the reaction between them and the growing economic machine. 
 Such a task it is the aim of the succeeding section to attempt, always 
 with the end in view of discerning the bearing of this record upon the 
 problem which the last section will endeavor to clarify. With this 
 mind it is proposed to examine the ideals and aspirations which have| 
 lifted the workers above their sordid surroundings and held out to them 
 the promise of a better day to come. For the record of the progress of 
 the aims and purposes of American labor organizations is the story of 
 repeated attempts of certain groups to bring about a more harmonious 
 state, and of their repeated failure to make their way against the dead- 
 ening grip of the habits, the attitudes, the philosophy whence they 
 themselves sprang and which dominated the life of the nation whose 
 spirit they were renouncing. From their brief moments of success there 
 can, mayhap, be gleaned hope for the eventual development of group 
 responsibility out of group individualism; from their manifold failures 
 there can be discerned, if men but will, those elements in the system of 
 organized social life which have prevented the emergence of the sense 
 of group obligation which the preservation of the nation from disintigra- 
 tion demands. J Only in the light of such knowledge of the wanderings 
 of the human spirit can man approach the most difficult problem of 
 social organization. 
 
PART I 
 
 THE AIMS AND MOTIVES OF LABOR ORGANIZATIONS IN 
 THE UNITED STATES 
 
2. THE PLACE OF SOCIAL THEORY AND PROGRAMS IN THE 
 AMERICAN LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 BEFORE we can proceed to an examination of the theories and the phi- 
 losophy underlying the movement of the American workers toward 
 organization, we must make clear just what we mean to do hi such a proc- 
 ess. In what sense, indeed, can we speak of any particular philosophy, 
 any particular view of society, as claiming the allegiance of the American 
 working man? Onlookers have felt, and, as a perusal of the columns of -, 
 almost any of our metropolitan journals will convince, still feel today 
 that the only aim of labor organizations is the purpose of certain agitators 
 to fill their own pocketbooks and live upon the fat of the land. Even 
 those who realize that this ideal would scarcely appeal to the thousands 
 of workmen who, assuredly not under compulsion, elect to undergo the 
 terrible hardships of a prolonged strike rather than to continue to do 
 an honest day's work for generous wages in a model and hygienic factory, 
 are prone to explain the motives of the labor movement solely in terms 
 of^reed and Ia7.ine.ss. , In what sense, then, can we claim that the actions 
 of labor unions are governed by any theories or preconceived notions, 
 or have their basis in a social ideal and a definite plan for attaining that 
 end? 
 
 In the first place, if by social theory we understand a fully elaborated, 
 carefully worked out and scientifically stated explanation of the present 
 system of social organization; if we expect a detailed Utopia, graphically 
 delineated, an apocalyptic vision of the good tune coming, then assuredly 
 we cannot claim that any such system is to be discovered animating 
 American labor; though there have indeed been individual leaders who 
 have worked out such philosophies. In this respect America differs from 
 most European countries. Such a definite Weltanschauung is to be dis- 
 covered in the history of German Social Democracy; in Karl Marx the ^. 
 German workman discovered not only the inspired prophet of the new 
 day, but even an authoritative Bible to serve as a guide in all the affairs 
 of economic life. To this day those who owe their inspiration to Marx r / 
 have been for the most part dogmatic and doctrinaire; and these are 
 which have never been imputed to the Ajnericanjabor movement. 
 philosophy, if Ebikisaphy it has, has been unsystematic, fragmentary, 
 and hi general subordinated to the economic realities o? 3aily Hie. 
 
 / 
 
24 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 Nor, again, if by the social theory underlying American labor we 
 mean any one habit of thinking, any one set of mind and orientation 
 which can be traced throughout its history and which is unchallenged 
 today, can we fairly attribute such an attitude to American labor. It has 
 been dominated by various aims and various ideals at various times hi 
 its history, and even at the same period there have always been con- 
 flicting theories and programs struggling for the place of influence, each 
 called forth hi response to the needs of certain specific and varying situa- 
 tions. Never has this struggle been more severe nor the contesting 
 theories more diverse than at the present moment. To attempt to dis- 
 cover any single theory, any single thread of purpose which will explain 
 the various phases through which labor organization has passed, is to 
 attempt that undue simplification which is always a falsification of the 
 facts. 
 
 If, then, we can look neither for any systematic philosophy nor for 
 any one set or habit or attitude of thought, what can we expect to find 
 in American labor? Has it had no ideals beyond the immediate aim of 
 securing subsistence and avoiding starvation? Has it been inspired 
 solely by the spirit of the leader who recently brushed away all considera- 
 tion of the social consequences of strikes and of soaring prices with the 
 j succinct answer, " But we must somehow get enough to live on ! " 
 
 We can, I think, answer with Hoxie: "If the history of unionism 
 seems to admit of any positive generalizations, they are that unionists 
 have been prone to act first and formulate theories afterward, and that 
 they have acted habitually to meet the problems thrust upon them by 
 immediate circumstances. Everywhere they have done the thing which 
 under the particular circumstances has seemed most likely to produce 
 results immediately desired. Modes of action which have failed, when 
 measured by this standard, have been rejected and other means sought. 
 Methods that have worked have been preserved and extended, the 
 standards of judgment being always most largely the needs and experi- 
 
 I ences of the group concerned. So that, prevailingly, whatever theory 
 J unionists have possessed has been in the nature of group generalization, 
 
 * slowly developed on the basis of concrete experience. " 1 
 
 "The hopes and fears (of the wageworker) center primarily about 
 such matters as employment, wages and hours, conditions of work, modes 
 of remuneration hi short, the most vital concerns which immediately 
 touch his present and future well-being and the economic, ethical, and 
 juridical conditions, standards, and forces that practically determine these 
 1 Hoxie, Trade Unionism in the United States, p. 34. 
 
Social Theory in The American Labor Movement 25 
 
 matters; and his mind focusses on the problem of living as presented in 
 these terms. In his attempt to comprehend and solve this problem he 
 also develops some sort of social viewpoint an interpretation of the 
 social situation as viewed from the standpoint of his peculiar experi- 
 ences and needs and a set of beliefs concerning what should and can 
 be done to better the situation, especially as it bears upon the conditions 
 of living which he faces. ' ' * X V 
 
 Now, in so far as Hoxie implies that the social philosophy of the 
 unions has grown up gradually and experimentally, and has ever re- 
 mained a flexible instrument serving the purposes of those who have 
 formulated it, he is undoubtedly right. But he overlooks sever 
 important considerations. In the first place^this process of gradi 
 development occurs in the minds of the leaders, amongst that srm 
 group of men to wnom American labor must look with gratitude for 
 progress it has made. But for the mass of the workers there does not / 
 arise this interpretation of social forces and this program for action. / 
 \ The history of labor is the history of prophets, preachers of glad tidings 
 prophets who derive their importance indeed from the conditions which 
 made their message acceptable, and the eagerness with which their 
 appeals were met by their fellow workers but prophets nevertheless, 
 men like Skidmore and George Henry Evans, like Sylvis and Trevel- 
 lick, like Stephens and Powderly, like Steward and Gun ton, like Gompers 
 and Haywood men who had caught a certain vision of better things 
 for the toilers and who went about the country gathering men around 
 their standards. The story of American labor is, in one sense, a story 
 of organizers and of agitators, a story of small groups of men, inspired 
 with an ideal, who were able to collect around them disciples and be- 
 lievers in the new gospel of organization. And every preacher must 
 have some definite ground on which to appeal, every prophet some in- 
 spiration from on high, some message of deliverance. It was this ne- 
 cessity of finding something around which to rally, of justifying one's 
 own notions hi the light of constant criticism and hostility from without, 
 that led the unions to the formulation of their platforms, as it led the 
 early church to the definition of its creed. 
 
 Then again, the unions were driven Jo their theories by the -necessity j /> 
 of defending themselves before the manifest hostility of the employers 
 and of the courts of law. Thus the early unionism emphasized the ami 
 of securing to its members the opportunity to prepare themselves for 
 the many duties of good citizenship, and the later, in its struggle for 
 1 Hoxie, Trade Unionism in the United States, p. 56. 
 

 26 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 the eight-hour day, endeavored to prove the advantage such a change 
 would bring to the employer himself. Nor is this apologetic development 
 of social theory an altogether hypocritical piece of hoodwinking the un- 
 sophisticated. For, as will be seen, theories first developed in self-justi- 
 fication, and perhaps remaining mere camouflage for a number of un- 
 ionists, have by the sheer force of their appeal become the means of 
 inspiring their partisans with that very social vision whose lack they C) 
 were developed to conceal. For this is but another phase of the response 
 . the unions have ever been ready to make to an honest appeal to their 
 *\ sense of social duty. 
 
 X. ,*j But the most important factor which Hoxie's view seems to neglect 
 115 the impossibility of isolating the unions from the society in which 
 they are placed. After all, those men who developed the theories of 
 unionism were Americans before they were unionists, and upon political 
 and social matters they thought very much as did their compatriots. 
 Schooled in the ideas and thoughts that found permanent form in the 
 great documents left by the Fathers, accustomed to hear them ex- 
 pressed in every political campaign and on every occasion of patriotic 
 festivity, to say nothing of the lessons they learned under whatever 
 teachers they may have attended, the men of the last century who as- 
 sisted at the birth of unionism were already imbued with a full-fledged 
 political and social system long before they approached the particular 
 problems awaiting them as craftsmen. 
 
 It was not a question with them, therefore, of gaining some sort of 
 social viewpoint in their economic struggles; it was rather a question of 
 the modification, slowly and painfully under the influence of bitter dis- 
 illusionment, of those theories which they had come to regard as sacro- 
 sanct. Indeed, it is impossible to read the records of the early attempts 
 at organization without feeling that, far from believing they were pro- 
 pounding new doctrines, the unionists believed rather that they alone 
 were upholding the traditions of pure Americanism; and they called 
 upon their compatriots to assist them in returning to the Constitution 
 and the Declaration of Independence, whose message they felt had 
 somehow been lost sight of. 
 
 The story of the development of the theories underlying labor organiza- 
 tion, then, is not so much one of the first emergence of ideas about social 
 questions as it is of the formation of a new sense of distinctness from 
 the rest of the community and special solidarity, in theory at least, with 
 a certain group. It is in the process of growing group consciousness that 
 habits of mind and thought, group ways of looking at problems, be- 
 
Social Theory in the American Labor Movement 27 
 
 came engrafted upon those conceptions which the entire community 
 held, and built up, by gradual accretion rather than by any conscious 
 rejection of the dominant philosophy and spirit, an individual and 
 characteristic mental attitude peculiar to the group. 
 
 It is, indeed, this singularly American habit of the workers of re- 
 garding themselves as, individually, primarily citizens of the United; 
 Slates and only secondarily, in so far as their interests are concerned, t 
 as trade unionists or even as workingmen, that goes far to explain the 
 / contrast between the American and the British labor movements. In 
 England society is stratified from top to bottom; every man, even though 
 he be able to pass easily from class to class, is nevertheless always keenly 
 conscious of to just what class he happens at any particular moment 
 to belong. The workingman generally has a distinctive garb by which 
 he can be recognized, even in places of public amusement; he is al- 
 ways aware of the gulf separating him from the "black-coated" clerk 
 whose actual economic status may be below his own. He is not 
 a British citizen who happens to be engaged in manual labor; he is 
 first and foremost a British workingman. Moreover, his economic 
 status and his trade organization had been practically developed be- 
 fore he was enfranchised and given to feel, in that vivid sense which 
 only a feeling of personal responsibility can induce, that he was func- 
 tioning as a citizen. He was an ardent unionist long before he was 
 permitted to think, in the characteristically British expression, that he 
 had "a stake in the country"; and when this latter favor was conferred 
 upon him it was specifically as a class that he was enfranchised. He 
 already had leaders whom he trusted and followed, and he could decide, 
 with considerable assurance that his decision would become really 
 effective, to throw his forces in with whatsoever party he chose, as a 
 body. And when he became convinced that neither of the existing parties 
 would achieve his ends, he was able to form a party for' himself which 
 easily attracted to it the organized workers. In a word, the British 
 workingman, has from the beginning felt in politics as he has in 
 dustry, and has consistently shown himself class-conscious. 
 
 In America it has been very different. Until quite recently there 
 existed very little social stratification in the United States. At its 
 foundation the American republic recognized no separate classes or 
 interests, and truly, as will be seen, there was in fact little social differ- 
 entiation. The lowest member of an Eastern community was always 
 aware that in a very few years he could if he would make his fortune in 
 the West. He was enfranchised before the industrial revolution had 
 
 hich 
 
 itish 1 
 
 i in- 
 
28 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 even made its appearance, and had experienced all the vicissitudes of 
 active political life long before he was called upon to organize as a crafts- 
 man. Indeed, labor organization generally took place just that he might 
 retain the indispensable economic prerequisites to a proper fulfilling of 
 his proud position as American citizen. While in England the ballot 
 has always been a means for attaining the especial aims of organized 
 labor, in America men have organized generally to preserve all those 
 things which are symbolized by the ballot. Hence it has been that, 
 despite the urgent appeals, time and again, on the part of their leaders, 
 American workmen have never given up the proud position of being 
 able to feel that they are in some real way arbiters of the nation's 
 destiny on the important issues they see everywhere discussed in the 
 press, for the more humble sense of being out to secure their own 
 group interests. American politics, even when it has been most under 
 the influence of moneyed interests, has always preserved a distinctly 
 national character; divisions have generally been along lines of methods 
 of achieving the general' welfare of the whole country, not, as in Europe, 
 on the basis of 'real conflicting interests. And labor leaders have never 
 been able to deprive for long the unionist of his inalienable right to vote 
 as an American citizen for one of the two great parties. 
 
 This determination to keep political and industrial matters separate 
 does not imply any syndicalistic distrust of legislative action. The un- 
 ionist has always been the first to turn to Congress and the state legis- 
 latures to secure a remedy for his ills; for him bourgeois parliaments 
 hold no terrors. But it is always like any other citizen, through a lobby, 
 or through the acceptance of a labor plank by one of the two major 
 parties, that he has desired to gain his political ends. Not as labor, not 
 as a special group with special interests antagonistic to other sections 
 of the community, but as any other business enterprise whose prosperity 
 directly affects the prosperity of the nation, the unionist has demanded 
 that he be considered. The regulation and exclusion of immigration, 
 for instance, has always been argued on the analogy of any tariff pro- 
 tection for infant industries. The Pennsylvania steel manufacturers 
 ask that British steel be heavily taxed; just so do unionists demand 
 the exclusion of the Chinese. 
 
 This separation of political and industrial interests has had two re- 
 sults. First, it has undoubtedly led to a strong sense of national feeling 
 on the part of the individual, a national feeling which manifests itself 
 in innumerable unexpected ways, perhaps strangest of all in the in- 
 tolerance of dissenting minorities; and, secondly, and for our purposes 
 
Social Theory in the American Labor Movement 29 
 
 more important, there has been a refusal to regard the political or na- 
 tional interest called forth in the exercise of the franchise as in any way 
 extending also to economic life. English unions, organized in a political 
 party, are coming to recognize the part they play in the national life, 
 and the social duties incumbent upon them, just because they may at 
 any moment be entrusted with the carrying-on of the government, of 
 acting with the responsibility of the national well-being in view; and 
 this political and social responsibility, being in nowise separated from 
 their economic function, easily passes back into industrial life, so that 
 they can consider political action as a means of obtaining their individual 
 economic interests, or direct economic action as a means to a purely 
 political and national end. But American unionists have felt that their 
 responsibility _tO-the community and to its well-being was entirely ex- 
 hausted in their acts as individual voters, and conversely that trade 
 union activities were not in the province of the government that per- 
 sisted in unwarrantedly intermeddling with them. 
 
 For these reasons it is of the utmost importance to recognize 
 large part which tn\ national political philosophy has played in all labor 
 union theories; and to conceive the successive and simultaneous inter- 
 pretations of social institutions and their corresponding suggestions for 
 change, not as separate and isolated manifestations of group conscious- 
 ness, but as so many variations upon the main body of American social 
 theory. But in thus emphasizing the central core of agreement that has 
 persisted thoughout American labor history, we must not blind our 
 eyes to the fact that there always have existed very real differences 
 between unionists and the rest of the community, and between the con- 
 flicting types of unionism itself, differences which from small beginnings 
 with the increasing group spirit are accentuated until they may indeed 
 work a transformation in the entire social theory of the group. These 
 differences betray themselves in expressions, terms, concepts, in the 
 habit of thought and attitude of mind they reveal. There are certain 
 beliefs which to the average unionist appear axiomatic, which he meets 
 constantly in the addresses of his officers and in the columns of his trade 
 paper, and which would certainly be challenged by those outside union 
 circles. These principles form the ultimate rules upon which he bases 
 his actions; to prove to him that it is desirable to follow a certain course 
 it is only necessary to show that it is based upon one of these deeply 
 rooted principles. Most workers would be unable to explain the rea- 
 sonings upon which they are based; but if pressed they would probably 
 be able to give some kind of justification. And the more intelligent 
 
30 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 among the leaders would be sure to be ready with complete justification 
 of all the group ways and habits, just such a plausible and convincing 
 apologia as John Mitchel wrote in his admirable Organized Labor. 
 
 Moreover, the union furnishes an admirable forum for the intelligent 
 workman to develop his ideas through discussion and argument. It is so 
 rarely in the life of the laborer that there is an opportunity for him to 
 display his intellectual powers that, if machine drudgery has not en- 
 tirely quenched the rational spark and led him to seek diversion in the 
 movies or the dance-halls, he welcomes his union as the one opportunity 
 to find an intellectual outlet. He displays a sometimes really astonish- 
 ing knowledge of economic and social theory, a knowledge which would 
 put to shame most middle-class business men, and if young he is always 
 prone to challenge the methods and aims of the older leaders. Hence 
 there is wrought out in shop and in meeting a compromise between the 
 theories of the radicals and the wisdom born of the long and hard ex- 
 perience of the leaders, whom responsibility and disillusionment with 
 human nature have often transformed from men radical in their day to 
 conservatives. There is always going on this intellectual struggle be- 
 tween the government and the opposition, and unless the government 
 is able to justify itself in theory as in achievement it is apt to succumb 
 to those who offer a new and hitherto untried but appealing remedy for 
 the old evils. Moreover, the ranks of the leaders are constantly being 
 recruited from these younger men; they are elected largely on the basis 
 of what they can promise in theory and in new aim, and they are suc- 
 cessful in proportion as their views prove sound in practice. 
 
 Thus it is that the actions of the leaders are nearly always based on 
 considerations much more theoretical than those of the men in following 
 them. On the basis of well thought out theories they devise slogans 
 and rules of action which are taken over by the rank and file and be- 
 come the principles guiding them in their everyday dealings with their 
 employers. Sentiments are thus enunciated in convention and in the 
 preambles to constitutions and programs of action which may never be 
 understood by the majority of the unionists, and which yet are the real 
 foundation of many of their methods and objectives. The reason for 
 their insertion may even be entirely forgotten, and with the rise of new 
 ways of thinking they may be expunged; yet when first they were in- 
 serted they truly represented vital currents in the workers' philosophy. 
 
 Take, for example, that assertion so common in all constitutions and 
 programs which have come down practically unchanged from the eight- 
 ies and nineties, that the interests of the workers are one with those of 
 
Social Theory in the American Labor Movement 31 
 
 their employers. Few unionists today believe that; they have forgotten 
 entirely the very real reasons which led the framers of those constitutions 
 to insert that clause, and probably attribute it to a desire to mollify the 
 employers. Their philosophy is now entirely different; yet during the 
 eighties the philosophy of Ira Steward and George Gunton, whose 
 very names would probably mean little to the present-day worker, and 
 of which this is but one phase, played a tremendous part in molding 
 those principles and axioms upon which trade unionism until very re- 
 cently has entirely depended. No policy is so prominently identified 
 with the American Federation of Labor as that of the eight-hour day; 
 yet very few realize the fact that only by understanding Steward's 
 theory can we understand the slogan which has gained thousands of 
 recruits to the Federation standard: 
 \ 
 
 "Whether you work by the piece 
 
 Or work by the day, 
 Decreasing the hours 
 
 Increases the pay." 
 
 In answering, then, our question, in what sense can we speak of a 
 philosophy underlying American labor, we must endeavor to steer a 
 middle course between those who see one simple set of theories as the 
 all-explaining principle, and those who regard the movement as a mere 
 impulsive and generally unintelligent response to certain inherent in- 
 stincts, the action of men who obey their innate tendencies first and 
 then later rationalize their impulses with a theoretical explanation. On 
 either hypothesis an intelligent understanding of the spirit back of 
 American labor is impossible; but if anything it makes matters the more 
 unintelligible to treat unionism solely as the product of economic con- 
 ditions reacting upon inherited instincts. Out of the ground supplied 
 by such forces thefe"~have grown conscious aims and ideals, conscious 
 attempts to penetrate the mysteries of social organization from the 
 peculiar standpoint of the underdog; and these have in their turn given 
 us that struggle of conflicting philosophies which marks the field of 
 labor today^ It is with these, thenT^that we are concerned: with these 
 intellectual clarifications of purpose developed in the labor movement 
 and controlling its activities and methods, with those theories, formulated 
 by leaders, which have been seized upon by the rank and file and have 
 become actually efficient in society, and, most of all, with those ideals 
 which, however submerged and obscured in the exigencies of daily 
 
'II 
 
 32 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 struggle, have nevertheless remained as the objectives for which the 
 workers are striving. 
 
 If our view be correct, we have in this gradual evolution of social 
 theories the record of the educative process to which labor has been 
 disciplining itself; we have the growing consciousness by groups of their 
 function in society and their responsibility for its performance. If this 
 process seems disheartening, if the primacy of group interests over social 
 interests appears at times too ingrained to promise aught of value or 
 hope for the future, let us not forget that just so do individuals develop: 
 the egotistic and self-centered adolescent is undergoing the necessary 
 process of individuation preliminary to his later development of real 
 moral character. Let us then regard these plans and programs, this 
 union of selfish motives with generous ideals, in the same sympathetic 
 spirit hi which we would regard the self-education of a youth in the 
 school of life; and let us endeavor to penetrate into those mysteries which 
 are so often hidden from the man himself, into those underlying as- 
 sumptions and conceptions which he is continually revising with added 
 experience. 
 
3. THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY 
 OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 BEFORE we can intelligently consider those variations upon the funda- 
 mental core of social philosophy peculiar to early American theory, it 
 is necessary to gain a clear notion of what that Hftrnin^^rncr philosophy 
 was. At first blush it seems a comparatively easy task to discover those 
 underlying attitudes and conceptions, those theories of the nature and 
 purpose of social organization, which made up the national philosophy 
 in the first days of the Republic. When asked what the United States 
 then preeminently stood for, and what were its ideals and practices, 
 there are few now, as there were few then, who could not confidently 
 answer, "Why, the characteristic American ideal, the peculiar con- 
 tribution of the United States to the social experience of the world, is 
 Democracy" and some, perhaps, focussing their attention on the 
 contrast between early conditions and later developments, might be 
 tempted to add, "pure democracy." Some, indeed, with social and 
 economic as well as political facts in view, would probably hasten to 
 add that the American spirit was primarily self-reliant and individualistic. 
 
 Now it is very well to answer "Democracy" or "Individualism," but 
 such vague and indefinite terms hardly satisfy our purposes. Democ- 
 racy is one of those comfortable concepts which, on being applied to a 
 given set of conditions or a new proposal, while adding considerably to 
 the aura of approbation surrounding it, scarcely furnishes much in- 
 tellectual illumination and clarity. When, for instance, we are told in 
 turn that France, drawing upon the period of her great Revolution, is 
 inspired by the true principles of democracy; that only in England and 
 the English tradition of representative government and liberty is de- 
 mocracy to be found; that democracy is so nearly identical with the 
 capitalistic industrial system that no one can be true to the democratic 
 constitution of America without giving capitalism hearty support; 
 that the only democracy in the world is to be found in the Russia of 
 Lenin; that to discover a democratic nation it is necessary to return to 
 the happy days of the thirteenth century; and finally, that democracy 
 exists at its best in China; it certainly seems that "Democracy" is more 
 a term of laudation and praise than a definition of any principle with a 
 discoverable extension and intention. Whether this be so or no, whether 
 
34 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 there be any "essence of democracy" or not, is hardly pertinent to the 
 present investigation; but it is most clearly our duty to draw distinctions 
 in this somewhat amorphous mass of material, to endeavor to delimit 
 and describe the exact philosophy pertaining to American experience, 
 and then, calling it, if we will, "Democracy," to pick out those elements 
 which render it peculiar to the particular time and place under con- 
 sideration. What did " Democracy" mean for those men who first 
 started labor organizations in this country, and for their compatriots? 
 Before we can hope to point out the especial and peculiar meaning it 
 came to have for the workers we must answer this more general question. 
 
 Excluding all those conceptions of democracy which have developed 
 out of dissatisfaction with the older notions, and all purely laudatory 
 applications of the term to conditions quite innocent of the proud dis- 
 tinction placed upon them, it is possible to point to a certain body of 
 opinions, a certain mass of doctrines and theories, which arose in Western 
 European civilization toward the close of the eighteenth century. 
 First in England, then in America, and finally in France men developed 
 these principles into a theory of social organization and a social ideal 
 which amongst Utopias has enjoyed the rather dubious distinction of 
 having been more nearly realized than any other. It is within this com- 
 paratively limited field that we may confine ourselves, and endeavor to 
 point out those particulars in which American democracy is differentiated 
 from the contemporaneous philosophy of both England and France. 
 
 It was in England that this eighteenth century democracy was born, 
 in the England primarily of the parliamentary revolutions of the preced- 
 ing age; and it achieved its theoretical defense in the writings of John 
 Locke. This English democracy was not, strictly speaking, a theory of 
 social organization, although it did enshrine a social ideal; it was rather 
 a practical expedient for getting along with a traditional and slightly 
 faded but eminently respected organization of society. Its two princirjal 
 features, liberty and representative government, had indeed both been 
 developed primarily to check and render innocuous^ a self-seeking execu- 
 Jtrve. No one thought seriously of changing that government; such a 
 proposal would have been sacrilegious, and even such an iconoclast as 
 Cromwell had hardly attempted it. His half-hearted efforts met with no 
 success. The problem was rather how to keep it from interfering with the 
 affairs of country gentlemen and city merchants; and the happy expedient 
 of diverting its attention to the management of the uncivilized portions of 
 the globe had hardly been put into effect. Therefore Englishmen were 
 occupied mainly with building walls about themselves to prevent the 
 
The Characteristics of the American Philosophy of Democracy 35 
 
 king's men from coming too close; and this enforced fortification natu- 
 rally kept off other intruders as well. The spirit of this English liberty is 
 well contained in the old principle, "Every Englishman's home is his 
 castle " ; and once he has withdrawn into his private premises nor king nor 
 peasant can enter against his will. The great documents securing British 
 liberty, from Magna Charta down, have contained, not principles of 
 government, but guarantees of good behavior and promises of forbear- 
 ance from the government. 
 
 And the most effective of these guarantees was representative govern- 
 ment. Get control of the king's purse and let him have an allowance only 
 during good behavior, and you have cornered him. He can do no more 
 harm; you can even pick out his officials for him, and they will be doubly 
 powerless. It does not even matter who carries on the government; safe 
 within your castle you can with equanimity watch the squabbles of those 
 who have undertaken to keep the king in check, confident that while they 
 will be strong enough to encounter the king's men they will still be weak 
 enough through their constant quarrels to fear to attack your walls. 
 
 Such then were the democratic elements which England contributed: 
 an insistence on the rights and liberties of every man to build a castle 
 (if he could find the money), and a genial conspiracy on the part of the 
 castle owners to keep the government from becoming too officious and 
 interfering and to divert its attention to the other side of the world. They 
 were scarcely counsels of perfection, nor yet the ideal way of getting 
 along together; but they had the pragmatic advantage that they worked 
 and kept the castle-owners so busy that they were content to let less 
 fortunate individuals amass the requisites for starting buildings of their 
 own; which after all was as much as could well be expected. 
 
 French democracy was entirely different. It was no expedient for get- 
 ting along with tradition; it was rather an apocalyptic vision of the 
 millennium, an assertion that all that is is illusion and wrong and that 
 by concentration on the mystic signs it will vanish and leave in its 
 place reality. And this concentration certainly did produce a startling 
 change, rather to the surprise of its own advocates: for it blew off the 
 top of society and released such an immense amount of energy that it 
 spread its lava-streams on all sides. Just as the characteristic feature of 
 British democracy was castle-building against encroachments of any sort, 
 so that of the French was this hurried pushing up of men on all sides. 
 Where the Briton withdrew within his shell, the Frenchman rushed out of 
 his and endeavored to capture by force majeure the government itself. 
 The Briton cared little who was on top so long as he was undisturbed; the 
 
( 
 
 36 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 Frenchman wanted to be on top himself. The watchwords of the Revolu- 
 tion were "EgalitS," "I'll be as good as you," and " Fraternite," "Come 
 on, brothers, let us rise together." Liberty itself no longer retained 
 its English meaning of "You keep off!" It became transmuted into 
 the right of equal suffrage, something quite alien to the English mind. 
 The Frenchman was happy to be thrown into prison if he were only sure 
 that he had freely elected his gaoler. Perhaps the attitude toward the 
 
 I army forms as suggestive a contrast as any. The Briton had a demo- 
 cratic army if he were free to stay out of it; the Frenchman, if he and all 
 his fellows were forced into it in one great brotherhood of equality. 
 
 American democracy bears little resemblance to either the French or 
 , the British doctrine. The fundamental difference is that whereas in 
 Europe democracy was a philosophy of revolt, a Utopian^cry for some- 
 ! thing better, the writing in universal terms of what was first and foremost 
 Van imperative, in America it was indigenous and of the soil. It was not a 
 clarion call for a new social order, but rather the idealization of an exist- 
 ent situation. The doctrines of equality and liberty seized hold of the 
 Frenchman's heart because all about him he saw inequality and oppres- 
 sion; they struck the American as eminently sane and reasonable because 
 they coincided so closely with the society in which he lived. Or, to put 
 the contrast in another way, the French developed their democracy as an 
 instrument in the revolt against feudalism, while the Americans left the 
 old feudalistic society to shift for itself, came to a virgin land, and devel- 
 oped their democracy as a justification for what they had already done. 
 England invented the theory as a practical expedient; America was an 
 enterprise founded on that theory, which necessarily gave birth to other 
 elements in the erecting of a totally new social order; and France, gazing 
 enviously upon England and America, tried to remake its ancient insti- 
 tutions on the new model. 
 
 In analyzing American democracy, it is convenient to adopt the French 
 formula of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, which received its classic 
 American statement in the words, "All men are created free and equal.' V 
 In England this would have been received as a palpable untruth; in 
 France, as a witty paradox needing metaphysical justification; but in 
 America it seemed axiomatic, ijhe two most striking features of Ameri- 
 can life were freedom and equality ; never, perhaps, has a society existed in 
 which there was a more equal distribution of both worldly and intellectual 
 goods, nor in which the individual was by the necessities of his position as 
 a pioneer in a new land thrown more upon his own resources.^ This 
 equality was no political abstraction, no theory upon which a constitution 
 
The Characteristics of the American Philosophy of Democracy 37 
 
 might be based; it was a fact, a datum, with which all political organiza- 
 tion and theorizing had to begin. Likewise, this liberty was no well 
 thought out doctrine as to the social advantages of allowing every individ- 
 ual to follow his own self-interest; it was also a fact, a condition and a 
 
 habitj 
 
 Tms approximate equality of social conditions in the United States 
 was what struck all visitors to the country. De Tocqueville, so late 
 as 1831, was so impressed that he began his great work, Democracy in 
 America, with the words: " Amongst the novel objects that attracted my 
 attention during my stay in the United States, nothing struck me more 
 forcibly than the general equality of condition among the people. I 
 readily discovered the prodigious influence which this primary fact 
 exercises on the whole course of society; it gives a peculiar direction to 
 public opinion, and a peculiar tenor to the laws; it imparts new maxims to 
 the governing authorities, and peculiar habits to the governed. 
 
 "I soon perceived that the influence of this fact extends far beyond 
 the political character and laws of the country, and that it has no less 
 empire over civil society than over the government; it creates opinions, 
 gives birth to new sentiments, founds novel customs, and modifies what- 
 ever it does not produce. The more I advanced in the study of American 
 society, the more I perceived that this equality of condition is the fun- 
 damental fact from which all others seem to be derived, and the central 
 point at which all my observations constantly terminated." * 
 
 De Tocqueville goes on to account for this equality of condition. 
 America was first colonized by men who had no notion of superiority over 
 each other. In New England the colonists were all of the same social \ 
 class, and were bound together by the common tie of religious persecu- \ 
 tion. In the other colonies, the main incentives to emigration were 
 poverty and misfortune, and these soon destroy all pretensions at superi- j 
 ority in rank. Moreover, whatever of social distinction was transported ' 
 across the sea soon vanished amidst the necessary conditions of existence 
 in the new country. There was in the New England colonies no room for 
 men who lived upon the toil of others; the poverty of the soil demanded 
 that every man who could should cultivate it in order to make a living for 
 the community. 
 
 In those states where, as in New York, the land had formed the basis 
 for a colonial aristocracy, the revision of the inheritance laws during 
 the Revolutionary period and the abandonment of the English principle 
 of primogeniture soon broke up the large holdings and prevented the con- \ 
 1 De Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Century Co., p. i. 
 
38 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 tinned dominance of certain families; by the time of De Tocqueville only 
 two of the patroons were left. But far more important even than the 
 equal inheritance laws was the presence of constant supplies of new and 
 unappropriated land to the westward, to which any one forced down in 
 the struggle on the seaboard, or any younger son who did not receive the 
 old farm or was not needed to till it, could always escape with the confi- 
 dence of himself becoming independent in a very few years. America 
 stood preeminently for equality of opportunity; there was no one who 
 could not by his labors become the equal of any other in the community. 
 There was no American lower class, no peasantry or proletariat; for all 
 who hi a European country would have been forced into such a class, had 
 hi this country the opportunity always crying out to them to go west and 
 make their fortunes. This was the true influence of the frontier on 
 American society; by affording an outlet to any surplus population it 
 preserved the essential equality of condition. 
 
 The West was constantly in danger, however, of expropriation; 
 throughout the nineteenth century it was a constant struggle to keep out 
 speculators and land-grabbers who would speedily have made prevail in 
 America the same conditions as in Australia, where the feudal estates of 
 the ranchmen kept the population crowded into overgrown urban centers 
 and reintroduced into a comparatively sparsely peopled land in an even 
 more exaggerated form the problems of Europe. There is no labor pro- 
 gram during the last century which does not include as an important 
 feature of its aim the opening of the public lands of the West to all on 
 equal terms and the rooting out of all special holders, be they speculators 
 or railroads. The importance of this factor in the bringing about of the 
 essential equality of American democracy can scarcely be overesti- 
 mated. 
 
 Moreover, the equality of American lif e did not mean merely a general 
 level of wealth and a common standard of living; it meant also a remark- 
 able similarity of abilities and function. Equality does not in any sense 
 necessarily imply identity or likeness; the employees of a great industry 
 might well be equal in the sense of receiving equal wages and an equal 
 participation in the control of the works while their peculiar functions 
 remained most diverse and called for the most varying degree of skill. 
 But in America there was not this differentiation and division of function. 
 The colonists were overwhelmingly agriculturalists; they were all farmers 
 who depended to a remarkable extent solely upon their own efforts for all 
 the goods they needed. Every man did everything that had to be done 
 for himself; from his dwelling to his clothing he made all that he required 
 
The Characteristics of the American Philosophy of Democracy 39 
 
 upon his own farm. And every farmer developed a characteristic, hard- 
 headed, Yankee shrewdness, an ability to meet all the exigencies of life 
 himself, a knack at penetrating to the heart of any difficulty, no matter 
 what the field. Hence arose the general persuasion that any man was as 
 good as any other for any job, a feeling quite natural and perhaps quite 
 justified in those conditions when it was just that ability and jack-of-all- 
 trades talent which was developed from birth, but a feeling quite alien to 
 a society where ninety-nine per cent, for instance, can gaze with wonder 
 upon the strange and alien skill displayed in swinging a pick-axe. 
 
 Never, perhaps, was intelligence and all around ability so equally 
 developed; never was there such justification for believing that all men 
 are born equal. 
 
 It must not, of course, be supposed that this general social equality 
 brooked no exceptions. There was always the South and its plantations 
 to point to, and the moneyed interests, the merchants and bankers, of the 
 towns. It was, in fact, precisely upon these lines that in the early days 
 of the Republic parties were formed; and the party representing those 
 elements which were not participants in the general equality actually 
 formulated the constitution and erected the national government. But 
 this party was always a minority; its prominence was due solely to its 
 leaders, and when these disappeared from the scene the democratic 
 elements swept triumphantly into power. The complete collapse of the 
 Federalists before the Jeffersonian Democracy and its heir of Jackson's 
 day indicates the extent to which society was built upon this egalitarian 
 basis. And those principles which originally arose out of the conditions of 
 New England and were kept ever warm by the frontier soon penetrated 
 even into the different strata of the South. But this scarcely concerns us, 
 for it was in the North and West that labor organizations arose, and in the 
 North and West society was fundamentally equal. It required a war to 
 break up the landed aristocracy of the South, but as the door of opportu- 
 nity was kept wide open to every aspirant, the moneyed interests of 
 the North were continually changing in personnel. 
 
 The theorists of the Jeffersonian Democracy recognized clearly this 
 dependence of democratic institutions upon a real social equality. Thus 
 John Taylor, of Caroline County, Virginia, in his pamphlet An Inquiry 
 into the Principles and Tendencies of Certain Public Measures, in 1794, 
 assailed the pet scheme of the Federalists, the United States Bank, as 
 subversive of the democratic principles upon which the government was 
 founded. "A democratic republic," he says, "is endangered by an V 
 immense disproportion in wealth. In a state of nature, enormous 
 
40 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 strength possessed by one or several individuals would constitute a 
 monarchy or aristocracy in a state of civilization similar consequences 
 will result irom enormous wealth. . . . The acquisitions of honest 
 industry can seldom become dangerous to public or private happiness 
 whereas the accumulations of fraud and violence constantly diminish 
 both." And Jefferson himself regarded with horror any increase of 
 wealth in the hands of a few individuals or a single class. 
 
 Thus there was a very real equality of intellect and of possessions in 
 the early republic; just as striking is the actual habit of liberty. The 
 colonists had left England schooled in the British tradition of liberty, 
 of curtailing the powers of the government and allowing it only a certain 
 definite and circumscribed field in which to act. They had left largely 
 out of a desire to get away from a government which was interfering too 
 much with them. Their traditional theories of the function of govern- 
 ment and the primary importance of guaranteeing their persons and 
 property against its actions were only enhanced by the long struggles with 
 the royal governors culminating in the Revolution, and the lapse into the 
 executive weakness of the Articles of Confederation shows clearly the 
 feelings of the majority upon the evils of too great governmental effi- 
 ciency. The fact that their oppressors had been no alien monarch or 
 foreign power, but Englishmen like themselves, only made them all the 
 more distrustful of placing authority in any one's hands. 
 
 Joined to this general traditional predilection for liberty were the 
 conditions under which they were living. The farmer is the man who 
 comes least of all into contact with the agencies of organized society, and 
 the Americans were not only nine- tenths of them farmers but for the most 
 part actual pioneers, dwellers in lonely cabins where they could scarcely 
 look to either governmental aid or restraint. Habits of independence and 
 self-reliance, of following their own desires and impulses without inter- 
 ference, were bred in them by the experience of a lifetime. For them, 
 doing what they pleased in so far as it did not encroach upon their 
 neighbors' liberty was equivalent to almost unlimited control of their 
 action; for there were few ways in which they could encroach upon the 
 freedom of neighbors miles away. The government scarcely touched 
 them at all; for the frequent meetings in which they came together to 
 arrange all matters of common interest might be an association of men for 
 an important purpose, but it certainly was not government in the tradi- 
 tional British sense, That, they were nearly always fighting: it meant 
 unpleasant things like taxes for the king, and might, indeed, vanish 
 entirely out of their lives without leaving any regret. To many it must 
 
The Characteristics of the American Philosophy of Democracy 41 
 
 have seemed as though the Revolution had been fought primarily to get 
 rid of government. 
 
 This general feeling and attitude was the basis of American liberty. / 
 It was a conception far different from that reasoned liberalism of Victor- l 
 ian England that held that the most harmonious society was achieved 
 through allowing every man to follow his own inclinations. This was a 
 theory developed to justify the methods of rising capitalists; the former 
 was a temper of mind which needed not to justify itself. It was a temper 
 transmuted into theory through the conception of " natural rights": < 
 that, in the doing of which men instinctively felt they should be free from 
 meddling, became endowed with the quasi-legal quality of inalienable 
 " right." That which men had always done, it became ipso facto their 
 "right" to do; having long lived pretty much without interference they 
 insensibly came to feel that such was their natural "right." Thus in its 
 origin the conception of a " right" is intensely conservative, an appeal to 
 traditional custom. To become revolutionary it must first become reac- 
 tionary. It must go back of present custom to an assumed past custom 
 now fallen into desuetude. That is precisely why some conception of a 
 primitive "state of nature" is necessary as the traditional time in which 
 men were allowed to do what they now desire to do. "Natural," in the 
 phrase "natural rights," in France meant "rational," but in America, to 
 a far greater extent than one might suppose, it preserved its characteris- 
 tically English sense of "habitual." Right dwelt in that middle region 
 between custom and recognized law; partaking somewhat of the nature of 
 both, it stretched so far back into the past that it quite easily came to be 
 felt that "rights" were not only customs crowned with the halo of 
 immemorial antiquity, but had even existed for men before there had 
 been any organized society at all. This interpretation had in its favor 
 precisely those elements which made the Roman j us gentium or natural 
 law so attractive. It provided a methodology for introducing ethical 
 criticism of legal institutions which, in common law especially, were 
 assumed to be impervious to change. By seizing upon recognized 
 "rights" it became possible to deduce therefrom further privileges 
 which should be granted to the individual that he might exercise those 
 rights, and this process could go on until the conflict of rights resulted 
 in a deadlock. 
 
 Thus those habits of liberty and independence which the primitive 
 and undeveloped state of the country had instilled into the minds of 
 the American farmer and pioneer were transmuted first into rights le- 
 gally recognized and finally were hypostasized as eternal and inalien- 
 
42 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 able possessions of the individuals. Once raised above the level of 
 custom they became sacrosanct, and could be appealed to as final au- 
 thority by any man who found it to his interest so to do. 
 
 One of the most firmly established of these rights was that of private 
 property, for here custom and tradition had been strongest. In the 
 words of Samuel Adams, "The security of right and property is the 
 great end of government. Such measures as tend to render right and 
 property precarious tend to destroy both property and government." 1 
 In a society where property depended upon the personal exertions of 
 individuals in clearing and cultivating land, and was always associated 
 with the actual labor of the owner; in a society where any one could ac- 
 quire it for the work it involved, and consequently where everyone did 
 own property, the right of property was erected upon the firmest of 
 bases. As De Tocqueville says, "In America, the most democratic of 
 nations, those complaints against property in general, which are so fre- 
 quent in Europe, are never heard, because in America there are no pau- 
 pers. As every one has property of his own to defend, every one recog- 
 nizes the principle upon which he holds it." 2 And in another passage, 
 obviously based directly on American observation, he practically iden- 
 tifies democracy with the equal and general distribution of private prop- 
 erty. " I am aware that, amongst a great democratic people, there will 
 always be some members of the community in great poverty, and others 
 in great opulence; but the poor, instead of forming the immense majority 
 of the nation, as is always the case in aristocratic communities, are com- 
 paratively few in number, and the laws do not bind them together by 
 ties of irremediable and hereditary penury. . . . 
 
 "Between these two extremes of democratic communities stand an 
 innumerable multitude of men almost alike, who, without being exactly 
 either rich or poor, are possessed of sufficient property to desire the 
 maintenance of order, yet not enough to excite envy. Such men are the 
 natural enemies of violent commotions; their stillness keeps all beneath 
 them and above them still, and secures the balances of the fabric of 
 society. 
 
 "Not, indeed, that even these men are contented with what they 
 have got, or that they feel a natural abhorrence for a revolution in which 
 they might share the spoil without sharing the calamity; on the con- 
 trary, they desire with unexampled ardor to get rich, but the difficulty 
 is to know from whom riches can be taken. The same state of society 
 
 1 Merriam, History of American Political Theories, p. 62. 
 a De Tocqueville, I, p. 312. 
 
The Characteristics of the American Philosophy of Democracy 43 
 
 which constantly prompts desires, restrains these desires within neces- 
 sary limits; it gives men more liberty of changing and less interest in 
 change." * 
 
 This widespread distribution of property in America and the conse- 
 quent general belief in the right of property contrast strongly with mod- 
 ern English democracy. When the working classes were about to be 
 enfranchised in 1867, Lord Shaftesbury warned the Conservative party 
 who were letting down the bars that the English worker did not believe 
 in the sacred right of private property and would not respect it. Ex- 
 perience has fully justified his warning. British workers, never having 
 possessed any property to speak of, allow those who do to retain their 
 possessions only on tolerance; hence while nationalization and other 
 schemes of expropriation of the landed and moneyed interests of Great 
 Britain appeal very naturally to British Labor, they are still entirely 
 alien to the ways of thought of Americans brought up in the tradition 
 of small individual holdings. Nothing can be more important in study- 
 ing American labor organizations than to recognize that their conserva- 
 tism is the product of the very traditional equal distribution of prop- 
 erty which they exist to restore. 
 
 Thus those habits of independence and liberty naturally engendered 
 in the primitive society of the colonies, fortified by the long struggle 
 against governmental authority, received their legal sanction in the 
 various bills of rights attached to the Federal and State constitutions 
 shortly after the Revolution, and took their place in the social philos- 
 ophy of democracy. Based on deep instincts and sentiments rather 
 than on theoretical deductions from experience, this American liberty 
 was able to resist the changed conditions of industrialism much longer 
 than the more rational liberalism of England simply because it was so 
 irrational; and Bryce could say in 1880, "So far as there can be said to 
 be any theory on the subject, in a land which gets on without theories, 
 laisser oiler is the orthodox and accepted doctrine in the sphere of both 
 Federal and State legislation." 2 
 
 We have thus analyzed the American conceptions of equality and of 
 liberty; it remains to consider whether we find any exemplification of 
 the third traditional ingredient of democracy, fraternity. What this 
 meant to the Frenchman is clear. It was that brotherhood of arms, of 
 soldiers battling side by side to defend their newly erected institutions, 
 that flaming spirit of nationalism which, called into being by the tocsin 
 
 1 De Tocqueville, II, p. 421. 
 
 2 Bryce, American Commonwealth, II, p. 421. 
 
44 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 of alarm at foreign invasion, carried French grenadiers to every corner 
 of Europe, and took the new gospel to the sands of Egypt, the plat- 
 eaus of Spain, and the steppes of Russia. Compounded of idealistic 
 humanitarianism and the French yearning for la gloire mtiitaire, it over- 
 threw the complacent cosmopolitanism of the Enlightenment, and 
 proved one of the most potent forces in the nineteenth century. 
 
 There was no such nationalistic spirit in America. Even the patriot- 
 ism of the Revolution was purely defensive, and the jingoes of 1812 
 were unable to awaken general response. Historians have, in fact, been 
 prone to regard fraternity as an element totally lacking in American 
 life, and have based their criticism of our democracy largely upon this 
 assumed failing. But the mere fact that in America fraternity did not 
 take the form of European nationalism by no means proves that this, 
 the one solidifying and cohesive force in democracy, found no exempli- 
 fication hi American life and theory. On the contrary, fraternity in our 
 country led to a type of social cohesion which, if less spectacular and 
 awe-inspiring, was certainly more productive of immediate good it 
 caused the formation of voluntary associations. 
 
 "Americans of all ages, all conditions, and all dispositions," says 
 De Tocqueville, " constantly form associations. They have not only 
 commercial and manufacturing companies, in which all take part, but 
 associations of a thousand other kinds, religious, moral, serious, futile, 
 general or restricted, enormous or diminutive. The Americans make 
 associations to give entertainments, to found seminaries, to build inns, 
 to construct churches, to diffuse books, to send missionaries to the 
 antipodes; they found in this manner hospitals, prisons, schools. If it 
 be proposed to inculcate some truth, or to foster some feeling, by the 
 encouragement of a great example, they form a society. Wherever, at 
 the head of some new undertaking, you see the government hi France, 
 . or a man of rank in England, in the United States you will be sure to 
 find an association. . . . Thus the most democratic country on the 
 face of the earth is that in which men have, in our tune, carried to the 
 highest perfection the art of pursuing in common the objects of their 
 common desires, and have applied this new science to the greatest number 
 of purposes." 1 
 
 This ready resort to voluntary associations is the direct outgrowth 
 
 of the practical liberty men enjoyed. Schooled from birth to rely upon 
 
 their own exertions, and to regard the encroachments of the government 
 
 with a suspicious and a hostile eye, when they desired to effect special 
 
 1 De Tocqueville, II, pp. 129-130. 
 
The Characteristics of the American Philosophy of Democracy 45 
 
 G\ RlO U P N ' \ IV- 
 
 purposes men naturally turned to voluntary group action. The very- 
 equality of conditions made them incapable singly and individually of 
 accomplishing any large ends, and forced them to unite with others of 
 like minds in order to make their individual efforts efficacious. There 
 were few figures of outstanding power and influence to whom could be 
 entrusted any considerable undertaking. Moreover, there was another 
 condition which powerfully promoted the growth of associations and 
 habituated men to employ them as a means to achieving social purposes, 
 that fear which impressed nearly every disinterested observer the 
 tyranny of the majority. 
 
 We have seen how the American habit of liberty was a traditional 
 and irrational feeling, not a carefully elaborated theory of politics or 
 economics. Hence, while for all ordinary purposes it sufficed to keep the 
 acts of government within certain definite limits, whenever men were 
 deeply stirred in the more emotional parts of their nature, whenever a 
 question presented itself, not as one of mere political expediency, but as a 
 great moral issue, they realized that they did possess a most powerful 
 weapon for attaining their tremendously vital aims in the political 
 power of the majority. They were not bound by a theory, but they 
 acted from a habit; and thus, paradoxical as it may seem, that very 
 liberty and independence which individually led them to fight against 
 any restriction of their attempts to enforce their own wills, led them 
 collectively to enforce upon a minority their collective will. Their 
 liberty consisted in having their own way; why should not they as a 
 majority have their own way with their fellows? In this respect American 
 liberty takes after the French rather than the English conception; the 
 latter nation, long trained in opposition to a hostile government, has 
 preserved such a wholesome fear for the invasion of the magic circle 
 every individual drew around himself that it still hesitates to operate 
 socially through political means. 
 
 The fact that the restraint placed upon the action of the majority in 
 this country is rather customary than legal and rational, coupled with 
 the fact that the American form of government provides for no responsible \ 
 executive and no recognized opposition, has necessitated the organiza- ' 
 tion of all minorities that they may most effectively provide against 
 such attacks. The political decentralization of the country and the 
 great emphasis placed upon local self-government have been the mos 
 effective legal methods of opposing the tyranny of the majority; 
 the Southern states have been able to nullify the Fifteenth Amendment' 1 ' c 
 in a way that would have been impossible in centralized France. But 
 
46 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 these constitutional provisions have naturally been supplemented by 
 innumerable associations for resisting and if possible changing through 
 persuasion the will of the majority; and this habit of organizing to pro- 
 tect one's habitual rights against the government has naturally fortified 
 the other strong motive toward the formation of groups for particular 
 purposes. 
 
 Moreover, in all of the newly settled portions of the country the 
 government itself was largely entrusted to just such private associations; 
 the early days in California, the vigilante committees, and even more 
 significant, the practical formulation of an entire code of mining laws 
 and rights through voluntary cooperation, bear witness to the ease with 
 which Americans accustomed to a large amount of practical liberty 
 combine to further common purposes. The town-meeting differed very 
 little from the church meeting or the political club; and for the American 
 it was quite natural to regard government as merely that association in 
 which he united with his fellows for certain definite and particular ends. 
 It was but one of the many groups to which he belonged. Each of these 
 groups had some definite purpose and restricted its operations to the 
 attainment of this purpose; government performed some peculiar func- 
 tions, but there was nothing to lead one to think that it either ought or 
 was able to perform any others than those it had always done. 
 
 What was this peculiar purpose of government? The early Americans 
 quite clearly recognized that it was to take care of those interests which 
 all the members of the community had in common. The constitution 
 of Vermont, for instance, urged "that the common benefit, protection, 
 and security of the people, nation, or community, and not the particular 
 emolument or advantage of any single man, family, or set of men who 
 are a part only of that community," is the proper aim of government. 
 The constitution of Massachusetts carefully contrasted the function of 
 the government as the guardian of the general interest with the special 
 privilege idea, and declared its aim to be the common good and happi- 
 ness of the entire people, "not for the profit, honor, or private interest 
 of any one man, family, or class of men." * Any interest less general 
 than that of the entire community was wholly beyond the sphere of the 
 particular association of government. For all such purposes men must 
 form other groups and help themselves. And for the* Fathers there was 
 only one interest which the nation did possess in common. John Han- 
 cock phrased it: "Security to the persons and property of the governed 
 is so obviously the design and end of civil government, that to attempt a 
 
 1 Merriam, pp. 6 1, 75. 
 
The Characteristics of the American Philosophy of Democracy 47 
 
 logical proof of it would be like burning tapers at noonday to assist 
 the sun in enlightening the world." 1 The purpose of government was, 
 not to interfere with the rights of the citizens and to keep every one 
 from interfering with those of his neighbor while guaranteeing his own; 
 only in time of dire calamity would a man think of calling upon it for 
 positive aid. Indeed, the Fathers were much clearer and more definite 
 in their ideas of the powers that government had wrongfully usurped 
 than they were of those which it ought to exercise; and the dominance of 
 the commercial Federalists at the outset of the republic's history, while 
 it gave a strong government to the nation, only served to confirm the 
 mass of the people in their conviction of the wrongness of allowing the 
 political power to serve the private interests of any particular class or 
 group of the community. Jeffersonian democracy stood for the closest 
 restriction of executive and legislative power to those interests which 
 were beyond perad venture of doubt common and general; and it neces- 
 sarily gave a strong impetus toward the formation of other associations 
 that should attain group aims not including the entire community. 
 
 Fraternity thus found expression in American democracy as the tend- 
 ency of free and equal citizens to unite together for the promotion of the 
 interests that appealed to the group; instead of as in France being the 
 cooperation of all the members of the nation in a common political or 
 military enterprise, it was the voluntary cooperation of certain groups 
 to serve their own private interests. It was the inevitable result of an 
 individualistic society; the social interests and impulses constantly 
 brought about the formation of larger and larger individuals. The im- 
 portance of such a habit and attitude of approaching social problems 
 when men are brought into contact with the changed conditions of an 
 industrial age are apparent; labor organizations sprang up to express 
 the interests^ the laborers in just the same way as political or religious 
 organizations or purely benevolent associations might have come into 
 being! 
 
 Having completed our examination of the three elements making upi 
 American democracy, equality or the independent Yankee-farmer- 
 ideal, liberty or the habit of self-reliance and having one's own way 
 without interference, and fraternity or the tendency to unite with one's 
 fellows in the pursuit of group interests, and having contrasted them 
 with the similar conceptions in English and French democracy, we have- 
 arrived at the point where we can sketch the social ideal of the early 
 American republic. Nothing is so illuminating in trying to discover the 
 
 1 Merriam, p. 62. 
 
48 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 theories and conceptions actuating the past as to find out what were 
 its ideals, what was its Utopia: for a clue to the society men wished to 
 attain, even though they actually fell far short of realizing it, is an in- 
 sight into their inmost thoughts and motives. There was developed, 
 in the period between the downfall of the Federalists and the beginning 
 of the slavery contest, in the era of the democracy of Jefferson and of 
 his successor and heir Jackson, a social ideal which has remained until 
 very recently, amidst all the changes of industrial expansion, the goal 
 at the bottom of all forms of labor organization, and the goal even now 
 inspiring the majority of the American Federation of Labor. 
 
 The ideal of democracy, that which to later generations of workers 
 seemed a truly golden age, was the ideal of the simple, frugal agricul- 
 tural community as it was known hi New England. It was that of a 
 society of farmers, each owning and tilling his own land, each working 
 largely upon his own initiative, yet coming together with his fellows 
 upon a basis of equality in town meeting and contributing his share of 
 the shrewd wisdom born of a lifetime of sturdy independence. Educated 
 in the common school, equally intelligent and fully able to hold their 
 own in argument with the parson, possessing not very much more and 
 not very much less than their neighbors, they would live their lives in 
 this new world untroubled by the inequalities and injustices of the 
 feudal estates and the industrial centers of Europe, happy and contented 
 in their rural community. It was in 'a society approximately realizing 
 such an ideal that democracy was born in America; it was only in such a 
 society that democratic institutions could hope to flourish. The history 
 of the labor movement of the century is the history of the attempts of 
 men to struggle against the inevitable, to retain, under rapidly trans- 
 jforming conditions, that same status which they had enjoyed as equal 
 jmembers of a free society of farmers. 
 
 This specific nature of the democratic community was recognized by 
 some of the most penetrating men of the time. Thus in the great con- 
 troversy between the Republicans and the Federalists, John Taylor 
 declared that "land was the real basis of democracy." J J. T. Mercer 
 made the same claim in a speech in Congress declaring that the de- 
 mocracy of the Republican opponents of Hamilton was the democracy of 
 the farmer. The opponents of the Republicans recognized the same 
 fact. John Adams declared the conflict to be between the rich and the 
 poor, the seaboard merchants and the farmers. Marcellus, author of 
 
 1 John Taylor, Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United 
 States. 
 
The Characteristics of the American Philosophy of Democracy 49 
 
 Letters from the Virginia Gazette, declared specifically that what democ- 
 racy really meant was that society of New England founded on free 
 labor and small land holdings. 1 
 
 But it is to Jefferson himself that we must go to see this most clearly. 
 He hated cities and the conditions which industry brought about; al- 
 though he appealed to city laborers for support he hoped to keep their 
 number as low as possible. As Beard says, "His very democracy was 
 founded on an economic system of small land-owning farmers, upon 
 that wide distribution of property that Was possible only where land 
 was cheap and plentiful. It did not embrace a working class, as that 
 term is conceived in modern life. The incompatibility of an immense 
 proletariat and an equalitarian political democracy he clearly realized, 
 but he never attempted to solve the problem which it presented. In 
 fact, he apparently believed that the problem was insoluble and the 
 only hope of American democracy was to escape from it, by preventing 
 its appearance in the society of the United States. " 2 In his Notes on 
 Virginia he bids manufacturers keep away from America. " Those who " 
 labor on the earth," he says, "are the chosen people of God, if ever he 
 had a chosen people, whose breasts he has made his peculiar deposit for 
 substantial and genuine virtue. It is the focus in which he keeps alive 
 that sacred fire, which otherwise might escape from the face of the earth. 
 Corruption of morals in the mass of the cultivators is a phenomenon 
 of which no age nor nation has furnished an example. . . . Dependence 
 begets subservience and venality, suffocates thQ^n^^yyrt^^Qiid^^ 
 prepares fit_tools for the designs of ambition? 7 " 5 ^ And Beard concludes, 
 "Jeffersonian Democracy simply meant the possession of the federal 
 government by the agrarian masses led by an aristocracy of slave- 
 holding planters, and the theoretical repudiation of the right to use 
 the government for the benefit of any capitalistic group, fiscal, banking, 
 or manufacturing." 4 And Jacksonian Democracy, in substituting far- 
 mer for planter leadership, simply removed the Jefferson aristocracy 
 in favor of a purer form of the agricultural community. 
 
 This was the ideal, this was the meaning of American democracy 
 during that period when it is acknowledged to have persisted in its 
 purest form; and a recognition of this fact will throw a great light on 
 the meaning which has been given to "democracy" by American labor. 
 
 1 Beard, Jeffersonian Democracy, p. 237 S. 
 
 2 Beard, op. ait., p. 422. 
 
 8 Jefferson, Washington ed., v. 8, p. 405 ff. 
 4 Beard, op. cU. t p. 467. 
 
50 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 Just so soon as the program of a trade union has risen above mere self- 
 defense it has endeavored in some way to cope with the problem of 
 creating in an industrial society so much of the old agricultural ideal as 
 can possibly be recovered: primarily, the equality of condition which 
 existed in that golden age, and, perhaps just as important, those habits 
 of independence, of self-reliance and self-respect and general position 
 in the community, which made the life of the American farmer worth 
 living. It is an ideal which persisted as long as the frontier was there 
 to keep it green; and it is an ideal at the very basis of the notions of 
 those who yearn after "industrial democracy." Thus Mr. Graham 
 Wallas recently declared that the essential requisite of any truly demo- 
 cratic society was a practical equality amongst its members and he 
 pointed, as those countries where the democratic spirit was today most 
 in evidence, to Norway, to Switzerland, and to New Zealand and what 
 are they but those lands where the old agricultural civilization, having 
 rid itself of feudalism, has not yet succumbed to the industrial revolution? 
 There were, however, certain other elements introduced into American 
 democracy which, though in reality but the logical development of the 
 ideas of Jefferson's period, nevertheless did add new and characteristi- 
 cally American notions that played a great part in the development of 
 the labor movement. It was in the period of Jackson that the theory 
 received its elaboration, and it was in the period of Jackson that we 
 first find labor organizations springing into existence. What, then, 
 were these new ideas? 
 
 ^ They were the product of two new conditions first and foremost, 
 j ' the growth of the frontier and pioneering element, secondly, the rise of an 
 n urban and quasi-industrial population. During the period immediately 
 ft succeeding the Revolution America had been occupied mainly with con- 
 solidating those portions of her land that had already been staked out, 
 with developing rural and farming lands where the pioneer had already 
 blazed the trail. Jefferson was the spokesman of these older agricultural 
 interests. But beginning about 1800 there was a tremendous emigration 
 over the Appalachians into the Northwest and into Louisiana. By 1830 
 nine new states had been added to the union, seven of them from beyond 
 the mountains; by 1850, sixteen. Jackson of Tennessee and his followers 
 represented this new and more primitive society, this society in which 
 those elements of equality and liberty we have found characteristic of 
 the Revolutionary period were even more accentuated. And simultane- 
 ous with this growth of the west was theorise of handicrafts in the cities of 
 the East, and the consequent increase of the poorer classes. During 
 
The Characteristics of the American Philosophy of Democracy 51 
 
 the decade 1820-1830 these propertyless men were nearly all enfranchised: 
 the states revised their old constitutions, New York in 1821, Massachu- 
 setts in 1820, Virginia in 1829-30. For the first time they were an im- 
 portant political factor; and we shall see how they made use of their new 
 ballot. 
 
 The most important modification these new elements made in the 
 Jeffersonian democracy was to sweep away the old landed leaders of 
 the South. The previous era had been one of power to the legislatures, 
 who were left to govern the country, not according to its will, but as 
 they themselves thought best. These aristocratic bodies had served 
 the interests of the planters in the South and the merchants in the North, 
 no matter how devoted they might also have been in a benevolent way 
 to the sturdy farmer. The plain people of the west and of the cities now 
 sought to break down this legislative aristocracy and to curb it through 
 a strong executive. Jackson was elected as the tribune of the people 
 against the patrician legislators, and the blows he so doughtily dealt 
 at the moneyed and slave interests were inspired by a sense of his public 
 trust. The governors of the states also received an immense accretion 
 of power; as Merriam says, "One pronounced feature of the democratic 
 movement in the first half of the century was the elevation of the execu- 
 tive and the degradation of the legislative power. The early distrust of 
 the executive, which once took the form of a fear that monarchy might 
 return, had disappeared, and also the early confidence in the legislature. 
 Popular suspicion seemed to be directed, not so much against a tyrannical 
 monarchy, as against ' encroaching aristocracy.'" * Together with this 
 increased responsibility of the executive went the abandonment of the 
 old theory that the people's representatives were to legislate as they 
 thought best. The electoral college lost its meaning; legislators came 
 to bind themselves to their constituents; their terms were shortened, 
 and property qualifications, with the aim of securing the cultured gentle- 
 man, were abandoned. Rotation in office, on the theory (a by-product, 
 as we have seen, of the Yankee-farmer age) that one man was as good 
 as another for any position, and that too long tenure of office made 
 one unresponsive to popular needs, took the place of permanent ap- 
 pointments. Everything tended toward a democracy in which one 
 strong, responsible head was chosen by all the people and was held ac- 
 countable to them for his act. 
 
 This ideal of the strong but responsible executive has become a very 
 important part of American democracy. Other countries Russia, for 
 1 Merriam, op. cit., p. 186. 
 
52 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 instance, have developed a form of consultative, deliberative, and 
 cooperative action, on the model of the village mir. Such has been the 
 general tendency in most European lands witness the supremacy of the 
 legislature in France, of Parliament in England. A cabinet jointly re- 
 sponsible for its actions, where policies are worked out in collaboration, 
 indicates just such a conception of cooperative democracy. In America 
 the pioneering, liberty-loving habit has proved too strong; our ideal is 
 the business ideal, the ideal of the board of directors who give their man- 
 ager carte blanche but require him to "produce the goods." General 
 Goethal's erection of the Panama Canal illustrates admirably this no- 
 tion of the responsible executive. It has been our habit to idealize strong 
 leaders, like Roosevelt, and then when they no longer please us to throw 
 them into the discard. We abolish city councils and install commissions 
 of a few men; we advocate the short ballot and its implied increase of 
 executive powers. But we also demand the recall. We require that 
 our officials be red-blooded men, but we desire to keep an eye on them. 
 The effects of this policy are today apparent in our political life, when 
 we have failed to discover any leaders; we are driven to the entire aban- 
 donment of legislative action in favor of direct enactment through the 
 initiative and the referendum. 
 
 This characteristic is markedly apparent when we come to consider 
 labor organizations. There has undoubtedly been a tendency to leave 
 everything to the leader, and to " fire him if he doesn't produce the goods. " 
 This has led to much of the complaints against labor leaders; fearful of 
 losing their prestige, they have been continuously exposed to the insid- 
 ious dangers confronting the Bonapartist. Confident that if they could 
 only "put it across " their men would not inquire too closely into methods, 
 they have at times both precipitated unnecessary strikes, and they have 
 resorted to means which have only discredited their organization in the 
 public eye. For there has been likewise a loyalty to every successful 
 but persecuted leader, no matter what he has done; witness the persist- 
 ence of the Bridge Workers in reelecting the officers who have been con- 
 victed of dynamiting. But this habit of mind and action is also respon- 
 sible for the difficulty with which American labor has been persuaded 
 to adopt any of the forms of "industrial democracy " which appeal to 
 their European brothers; the very idea of "works-councils," of collective 
 participation in the management of industry, which to the Russian is 
 perfectly natural and strikes the Englishman with no shock, involves a 
 totally new orientation for the American worker. He has been for so 
 long trained to let his employer do the directing while he has been con- 
 
The Characteristics of the American Philosophy of Democracy 53 
 
 tent to glean the harvest that it is only in recent years that he has be- 
 gun to outgrow this product of old American conditions. 
 
 We have now completed our sketch of the dominant social philosophy 
 of the Jeffersonian and Jacksonian periods, the truly formative era in 
 American history. It was an idealization of existent conditions, not a 
 philosophy of revolt save in so far as those very conditions were in 
 themselves the products of revolution against feudal and aristocratic 
 Europe. It offered an ideal which for a brief interval seemed fairly at- 
 tained, and then gradually and imperceptibly slipped away into the 
 background, and ascended to the heavens, whence it might cast its cheer- 
 ing beacon, but whither man could scarcely hope to follow it. It held 
 out the ideal of the peaceful, virtuous, idyllic rural community, suffi- 
 ciently elevated above the state of nature to have attained the civiliza- 
 tion of thought and art, but sufficiently remote from the iniquities of the 
 city to preserve itself from the contaminating influences of urban life. 
 A society of free and independent farmers, self-reliant and intelligent, 
 uniting freely for the furtherance of their common purposes, be they 
 religious, educational, benevolent, or political; a society which utilized 
 national politics rather as a fascinating intellectual diversion than as a 
 serious part of daily life, and which consequently preferred a single 
 responsible representative who could be counted upon to do the acting 
 while he left the discussing to the home circle, such was the ideal dem- 
 ocratic community of the first half of the last century. It never actu- 
 ally existed anywhere, of course; but in the villages of New England it 
 was closely approximated, and the plain living and high thinking of a 
 Concord, was the inspiration and hope of many a mind that would oth- 
 erwise have given up in despair the struggle for a more complete de- 
 mocracy. Here was democracy : here at least every man had a fair chance 
 to show what was in him; and in the succeeding years, as men in the 
 rising factory towns looked back upon the age of the country village, it 
 was this ideal which led them to combine, it was this vision which in- 
 spired them with a desire to recreate it anew. 
 
4. THE MECHANICS' MOVEMENT OF THE TWENTIES AND 
 
 THE THIRTIES 
 
 WE have seen the very definite ideal which permeated the American 
 society of the first half of the last century, and which represented, es- 
 pecially to those who had not quite attained it, a state of affairs that 
 could hi no wise be unproved upon. But no sooner had the new repub- 
 lic been established upon these political and social principles than cer- 
 tain members of the community found themselves in a position quite 
 different from the equality laid down in the Declaration of Independ- 
 ence. And as time went on, particularly during the industrial depres- 
 sion following the close of the Napoleonic wars, this class of men found 
 themselves dropping lower and lower in the social scale, losing their sta- 
 tus in the farmer community. The men who thus saw their ideal slip- 
 ping away from them, and regarded it all the more tenderly because it 
 represented a something that had obtained in the "good old days" but 
 seemed gradually to have receded, were the "mechanics" of the towns 
 of the eastern seaboard, the handicraftsmen and skilled artisans who 
 manufactured those products that in increasing numbers were no longer 
 made upon the farm or in the home. Their status hi society was being 
 lost; their standard of living, which had placed them on an approximate 
 level with the other members of the agricultural community, was being 
 forced down. There were those who feared the emergence of conditions 
 resembling the old-world squalor and poverty; and the men who thus 
 found themselves sinking turned to the only philosophy of which they 
 knew and phrased their grievances in the ideology of natural rights, of 
 equality and freedom. 
 
 Thus arose what, if we except what fragments of guilds had ever been 
 imported from English life, were the first labor organizations in America; 
 and they arose hi response to the very definite questions, "How can we 
 retain our old status? how can we maintain ourselves in a condition 
 wherein we shall be truly free and equal? how, hi the face of these ad- 
 verse circumstances, can we gain the rights which, as members of a de- 
 mocratic community that has once and for all recognized that all men 
 are created free and equal, are assuredly ours?" In answering these 
 questions, inspired as they were by the typically American ideal of de- 
 mocracy, and confident as they felt themselves to be in merely calling the 
 
The Mechanics' Movement of the Twenties and Thirties 55 
 
 nation back to her former state, the mechanics of the cities really con- 
 tributed much to the modification and further development of that 
 ideal. 
 
 The first general movement in which laborers can be said to have 
 formed themselves into groups as a distinct class took its rise in the ra- 
 ther ephemeral associations and sporadic strikes that are revealed in 
 the records as having existed between 1792 and 1827, but it only assumed 
 importance with an individual aim and a generally accepted theory in 
 the decade between 1827 and 1837. It ended abruptly in the panic of 
 the latter year, and did not really begin again until the fifties; and it is 
 thus a fairly isolated development with a definite beginning and a clearly 
 marked growth of aim and philosophy. Its importance for our pur- 
 poses, apart from the fact that it represents the first emergence of a dis- 
 tinctive philosophy of American labor, lies in the interesting fact that 
 hi its brief course it reveals nearly all of those characteristic tendencies 
 and ways of thinking that we shall find on a much greater scale in the 
 larger movement springing directly out of the industrial revolution; 
 and upon this small stage it will be possible for us to pick out with 
 some ease threads of purpose, bits of attitude and character, tenden- 
 cies of theory and bents of philosophy, that will serve us in very good 
 stead when we come to trace our way through the far more complex 
 drama of conflicting ideals that emerges after the Civil War. It will 
 be our aim, then, in the present chapter to deal with the motives and 
 theories, the purposes and ideals revealed in this first American labor 
 movement, and in the next, using the material herein discovered as a 
 basis, to form generalizations and hypotheses which we can later verify 
 in the strictly industrial movement. 
 
 It is important at the outset to bear clearly in mind that this move- 
 ment of the thirties was in no sense an industrial movement, nor did it 
 concern the few factory operatives even then in existence. Unlike the 
 formation of labor organizations in England, their formation in this 
 country was not called forth by conditions arising out of the industrial 
 revolution, and the growth of the factory system. It was not till the 
 period just preceding the Civil War that America was appreciably in- 
 fluenced by the rise of factories, and it was only during that struggle 
 itself that they assumed great importance. "Labor organization and 
 the ' class-struggle ' of wage-earners in America preceded by many years 
 the factory system which finally separated the worker from the owner- 
 ship of the tools," says Saposs. 1 It was not till the Trades' Union of 
 1 Commons and Associates, History of Labour in the United States, I, 26. 
 
56 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 Pennsylvania was organized in the autumn of 1833 that we find factory 
 operatives playing any considerable part in labor organizations; and 
 it was in the same movement that extended warnings against the dangers 
 of the factory system as developed in England were first seriously made 
 a part of an American program. Even the New England Association, 
 which had its stronghold in that part of the country where factories 
 were most numerous, found in 1833 that it could not count upon the 
 operatives for much support. " The absence of delegates from the 
 factory villages," it found in its 1833 convention, "gives reason to fear 
 that the operatives in the factories are already subdued to the bidding 
 of the employers that they are already sold to the oppressor, that they 
 have felt the chains riveted upon themselves and their children, and 
 despair of redemption. The Farmers and Mechanics, then, are the last 
 hope of the American people." * And in the convention of the National 
 Trades' Union in the next year the delegates could only look with dread 
 upon the fearsome spectre of English conditions and commiserate the 
 fate of the Lowell women operatives as a problem analogous to their 
 own but nevertheless not touching them directly. 2 
 
 No, this early movement was preeminently a movement of the skilled 
 mechanics and handicraftsmen, of printers and shoemakers, carpenters, 
 tailors, and the like. These were just the men most able to set up in 
 business for themselves. The unskilled workers were not interested, 
 largely because they found their wages were rising; and it was to the 
 body of unskilled labor that the factory appealed. Thus the wages of 
 common laborers had risen from less than $4 a week in 1784 to $7 or $8 
 in 1810, while those of the skilled had remained stationary and had in 
 real wages considerably declined. 3 It was against this falling standard 
 of life, this growing inequality in a society whose ideal it was to preserve 
 an approximate equality, that the skilled artisans protested. The 
 movement of the twenties and thirties was primarily a movement of 
 men who felt, "I am as good as you are; I am your equal"; and it was a 
 protest against a capitalistic system, though not against one erected on 
 an industrial foundation. The fall in the status of the mechanic was 
 primarily due to the enlargement of the market brought about by the 
 improved means of transportation, to the consequent intensifying and 
 widening of the field of competition, and the growth of a class of so- 
 called "merchant capitalists" or wholesale investors to cope with the 
 
 1 Carey's Select Excerpta, IV, 435. 
 
 2 Commons, A Documentary History of American Industrial Society, VI, 216 ff. 
 8 Commons, I, 105. 
 
The Mechanics' Movement of the Twenties and Thirties 57 
 
 credit situation. Steamboat transportation and the frenzied building 
 of canals were probably the immediate physical causes of the grip the 
 merchant capitalists were able to get upon the artisans in all the large 
 cities. 1 
 
 But the detailed economic reasons for the lowering of the condition 
 of the artisan, the inevitability of sweating conditions with the growth 
 of a handicraft system upon an individualistic premise, were not known 
 to the mechanic himself. He felt his old assured position in society, 
 economic, social, even political, with the growth of party machinery 
 and bossism, unaccountably slipping away from him, and he clutched 
 at the means nearest at hand and most natural: he formed an associa- 
 tion with his fellows to regain his lost status. Thus the preamble of 
 the Mechanics' Union states that the object of the organization is "for 
 the purpose of affording to each other mutual protection from oppres- 
 sion," and continues, "We, the Journeyman Mechanics of the City and 
 County of Philadelphia, conscious that our condition in Society is lower 
 than justice demands it should be, and feeling our inability, individually, 
 to ward off from ourselves and families those numerous evils which 
 result from an unequal and very excessive accumulation of wealth and 
 power into the hands of a few, are desirous of forming an association 
 which shall avert as much as possible those evils with which poverty 
 and incessant toil have already inflicted, and which threaten ultimately 
 to overwhelm and destroy us. ... Are we, who confer almost every 
 blessing on society, never to be treated as freemen and equals and 
 never be accounted worthy of an equivalent in return for the products 
 of our industry?" Again, the platform of the New England Associa- 
 tion asserts, " that we are determined by all fair and honorable means 
 to exalt the character and promote the cause of those who by their 
 productive industry add riches to the state and strength to our political 
 institutions . . . that we regard all attempts to degrade the working 
 classes as so many blows aimed at the destruction of popular virtue 
 without which no human government can long subsist." 3 The call 
 issued for the formation of the General Trades' Union of New York and 
 Vicinity announces, "The time has now arrived for the mechanics of 
 our city to arise in their strength and determine that they will no longer 
 submit to the thralldom which they have patiently borne for many 
 years, nor suffer employers to appropriate an undue share of the avails 
 
 1 Commons, 1, 105. 
 
 2 Mechanics 1 Free Press, October 25, 1828. 
 
 3 Boston Courier, August 28, 1830. 
 
58 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 of the laborer to his disadvantage. . . . They have now become 
 alive to the necessity of combined efforts for the purposes of self- 
 protection." 1 
 
 This motive of self-protection was partly economic; it found expression 
 as a desire for security of wage and continuity of employment. Thus 
 the striking carpenters of Philadelphia in 1827 declared that the real 
 objection of their masters to the ten-hour day was "because they are 
 aware that if this alteration takes place, it will deprive them of the 
 power they have hitherto had of employing a man during the summer, 
 in the long days, and either discharging him in the winter or reducing 
 his wages, as it will make a journeyman of nearly as much value in the 
 winter as in the summer." 2 But it was also something far more than 
 merely economic security that the men desired: it was the restoration 
 of that position in the community, that social status, so imponderable 
 yet so profound in its effect, which as honest artisans they had once 
 possessed. The chief grievance of the New England Association was 
 " the low estimation in which useful labor is held by many whose station 
 in society enable (sic) them to give the tone to public opinion. . . . 
 All who can do so resort to some means of living without hard work, 
 the learned professions are crowded, and combinations are formed by 
 that portion of society who have money and leisure, or who live by their 
 wits, to increase and maintain their own relative importance, whilst 
 the more industrious and useful portion of the country, who are too 
 intent upon their daily occupation to form combinations for mutual 
 a dvantage, or to guard against the devices of their better informed or 
 more enterprising neighbors, are reduced to constant toil, stripped of 
 the better share of their earnings, holding a subordinate if not degraded 
 situation in society, and frequently despised by the very men and women 
 and children who live at ease upon the fruits of their labor. There is 
 no consideration more discouraging, and at the same time more destitute 
 of foundation, than a prevailing opinion that the industrious and un- 
 learned portion of the community cannot govern themselves." 3 
 
 The general ideal of the movement as it finally emerged in the thir- 
 ties with its humanitarian interests rudely shattered, is that of the 
 Philadelphia Trades' Union: "There is an institution now forming for 
 the maintenance of a fair price for labor. . . . Each individual would 
 
 1 Finch, Rise and Progress of the General Trades' Union of the City of New York and 
 Its Vicinity. 
 
 2 Democratic Press, June 20, 1827. 
 
 3 To the Workingmen of New England, pamphlet, Boston, 1832. 
 
The Mechanics' Movement of the Twenties and Thirties 59 
 
 then receive a compensation that would enable him with economy to 
 provide a comfortable subsistence for his family; to give his children 
 an education that would enable them to become useful and respectable 
 members of the community to provide against dull seasons and sick- 
 ness, and lay by a fund that would support him when the infirmities of 
 age should render him unable to work." l In a word, the men who en- 
 gaged upon this new movement desired that same security from want, 
 that same assured and recognized position in society, which fell to the 
 lot of the hardworking in any farming community. It was the old ideal 
 of democracy that was inspiring them; and thus the writer in the Me- 
 chanics' Free Press was right when he offered hope after the set-back of 
 the election of 1830. "Meetings have already taken place and com- 
 mittees have been appointed to carry into effect our principles, and we 
 look forward, from the zeal manifested by our friends thus early, that 
 the principles of practical democracy, and those of the revered Jefferson, 
 will assuredly triumph at the next election." 2 
 
 This, then, was the motive inspiring the entire handicrafts movement 
 of the twenties and thirties; but the methods which were employed, and 
 the immediate objectives, as well as the general theoretical justification 
 for such action, naturally changed and varied. The first and longest 
 period, beginning in fact in the nineties of the previous century, was 
 one of simple self-defense against the encroachments on the position 
 of the workers. It was marked almost exclusively by sporadic " turn- 
 outs" or strikes, concerted attempts at preserving their economic status 
 carried on by men with no previous organization, and followed by speedy 
 dissolution of whatever associations had sprung up at the conclusion, 
 successful or unsuccessful, of the turn-out. Indeed, it was in only two 
 trades, the shoemakers and the printers, that any organization at all 
 was kept up between strikes, until i8i8. 3 The Philadelphia shoemakers 
 formed a society in 1792, which soon disappeared; they formed again as 
 the Journeyman Cordwainers two years later, and existed until the 
 conspiracy trials of 1806. They conducted in 1799 a ten weeks' strike, 
 the first "organized" strike on record. A Typographical Society was 
 formed in New York in 1794, and persisted with interruptions. 4 Various 
 other bodies are recorded which limited themselves strictly to endeavor- 
 ing to preserve wages and shorten hours. The weapon was always the 
 
 1 Pennsylvanian, Jan. 9, 1834. 
 
 2 Commons, op. cit., I, 214. 
 
 3 Ibid., I, 109. 
 * Ibid., I, 109. 
 
60 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 turn-out; the immediate aim was to prevent a reduction of wages, to 
 protest at an invasion of customary and therefore "right" standards. 
 The workers would be notified that a reduction in wages would take 
 place, and the immediate response would be an indignation meeting, 
 usually culminating in a disorderly quitting of work and a refusal to 
 come back save at the old wages. There was no reasoned theory as to 
 why the men should receive what they had always been receiving; 
 there was merely a feeling of outrage that time-honored customs were 
 being violated by the new masters, with perhaps a connecting of the 
 phenomena with the "monopolists" and the holders of United States 
 Bank bonds, whom political agitation and election campaigns had 
 taught them were a new aristocracy seeking to corrupt the purity of 
 American democracy and introduce aristocratic elements into the 
 country. There was not even much comprehension of the position of 
 the master workman at the mercy of the rising merchant capitalists: 
 and there was not, of course, the remotest notion that anything was 
 wrong with the prevailing economic system. Since every journeyman 
 still hoped to become a master, assuredly no organization of journeymen 
 would advocate any measure tending to make the position they hoped 
 eventually to obtain any less desirable; but nevertheless it was not 
 "right," with all of the unreasoning obstinacy and clinging to traditions 
 which the word implies, for the masters to interfere with established 
 rates of wages. 
 
 This attitude on the part of the journeymen is further evidenced by 
 the other method which, when unsuccessful by turning out to force 
 the masters to continue their old wages, they employed in this early 
 period. This alternative was cooperation; but it was not undertaken, 
 as in the forties, with any idea of remodeling the social structure. It 
 simply meant that journeymen who felt that to continue at their low 
 wages was impossible and who had not the means to set up immediately 
 for themselves as masters would band together to make up the necessary 
 capital between them and thus enable each other to enter the group of 
 masters. And when they had entered the latter group they announced 
 that they would show the public how it was possible to earn profits and 
 at the same time to preserve the old scale of wages; they would thus 
 prove that the masters had been guilty of unfairness, and that the old 
 system if carried on by just men was entirely just. Thus in 1791 the 
 Philadelphia carpenters, after a strike, proposed to undertake building 
 operations at 25% less than the current rate, as a rebuke to the master 
 carpenters; and in 1806, when the outcome of the cordwainers' conspiracy 
 
The Mechanics' Movement of the Twenties and Thirties 61 
 
 trial made combinations to better their conditions illegal, the shoe- 
 makers of Philadelphia announced that they themselves would open a 
 shoe warehouse. "They have been compelled to resort to this under- 
 taking as the only expedient left them to maintain themselves and fami- 
 lies from the most abject dependence. They have had no other alter- 
 native but adopting this course or submitting to employers who could 
 take away or lessen their wages whenever their caprice or avarice might 
 prompt them. . . . The wages, which they claimed themselves, and 
 for asking which they were punished, they intend to give to those who 
 may be employed by them. They have therefore engaged the best work- 
 men in the city, and will spare no means to give satisfaction to such as 
 will favor them with their custom. Their work shall be made of the 
 very best materials and sold at the most moderate prices." l 
 
 There was thus in all these early sporadic strikes and abortive at- 
 tempts at organization no feeling that those who engaged in them were 
 in any way modifying the dominant theory of society or the tenets of 
 American democracy. They were concerned solely with hours and 
 wages, with conditions so traditional as to have become of the nature 
 of rights, and the journeymen had no idea that the public were in any- 
 wise implicated or needed to be considered in this private altercation 
 between them and their treacherous masters. True, there were certain 
 moneyed interests in the country who themselves were striving to de- 
 stroy American ideals, and to fight these men they would at the polls 
 vote the Jeffersonian ticket; it was these men and the creatures they had 
 placed upon the bench who were responsible for the conspiracy trials and 
 the obvious unfairness of the court in those episodes. It was only when 
 the early strikers thus came into direct conflict with the courts that 
 they felt the necessity of any theoretical defense of their position, which 
 to them seemed so obviously a case of simple justice. Here the Jeffer- 
 sonian party some to their rescue with its powerful organs, like the 
 Philadelphia Aurora, 2 and made of their grievances part of the general 
 outcry against the commercial Federalists. This support by the great 
 political democracy both won the workers all the more closely to the 
 Jeffersonian ideals and precluded any independent development of 
 social or political policy. 
 
 These early efforts at maintaining their position hi society collapsed 
 with the close of the Napoleonic wars; English merchants dumped upon 
 the American markets great quantities of goods they had been storing 
 
 1 Commons, I, 129. 
 1 Ibid, 1, 142. 
 
62 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 up, and well-nigh destroyed the American manufacturers whose business 
 war conditions had fostered. Unemployment was the order of the 
 day; crafts employing 9672 workmen in 1816 in Philadelphia three 
 years later had discharged all but some 2000. In 1819, according to 
 Niles' Register, there were some 20,000 unemployed in Philadelphia, 
 20,000 in New York, and almost 10,000 in Baltimore. 1 Those trades in 
 which organization had survived, the printers and the cordwainers, 
 were too busy endeavoring to find places for their menbers to bother 
 about the conditions under which they worked or their social position. 
 The printers had established benefit funds, and by this means managed to 
 keep above water; the cordwainers, whose power had depended solely 
 on strikes, were forced to disband. 
 
 But this depression had by 1820 reached its lowest point; from that 
 time on there was a rapid improvement in conditions. But the merchant 
 capitalists had taken the advantage of the breakdown of all opposition 
 on the part of the laborers to extend their influence over the whole 
 country; and in this they were aided by the great public improvements 
 hi transportation. The Erie canal was built in 1825, and was speedily 
 followed by many others; steamboat transportation had extended to 
 the vast network of rivers in the Mississippi Valley. All these extensions 
 of the market opened the way for the merchant with a plentiful supply 
 of credit and capital, while they at the same time led to a much keener 
 competition than had hitherto obtained; for the merchant capitalist 
 not only had to compete with the English markets and goods, but was 
 exposed to the attacks of all those within the widened transportation 
 area. In the absence of strong opposition, his labor cost was that item 
 of his expenditures most easy to cut down. He turned eagerly to the 
 employment of convicts and cheap labor, and he so dominated the market 
 that he gradually came to force over to his side the small manufacturers, 
 the master workmen, who were more and more clearly differentiated 
 from the journeymen or laborers. 
 
 These prosperous times, moreover, naturally caused a rise in prices, 
 and the workmen soon were once more forced to organize to protect 
 their position; this time they demanded higher wages, but what they 
 were in reality doing was to prevent inroads upon their real wages. 
 Hence the early twenties display once more on a more extended scale 
 the same characteristics of unorganized strikes giving place to more 
 permanent organizations: this time other trades enter the lists, such as 
 the weavers, painters, hatters, stone-cutters, nailers, in addition to the 
 
 1 Commons, I, 135. 
 
The Mechanics' Movement of the Twenties and Thirties 63 
 
 older printers, shoemakers, carpenters, and tailors. By 1825 this gen- 
 eral prosperity and the consequent success of the labor movement had 
 reached its height; 1 men, feeling that there was some prospect of hope 
 for the alleviation of their conditions, began to think in terms larger 
 than their individual grievances; those who stood at the top of the in- 
 dustrial scale, the skilled mechanics, came to have a feeling of social in- 
 terest in advancing the interests of the less fortunate workers. The in- 
 dustrial class had largely grown, for this was the period in which our 
 cities were making their most remarkable advances. Those laborers 
 who had been somewhat successful in organizing were led to reflect upon 
 the why and the wherefore of their existence, and thus there arose in 
 the late twenties the first attempts at what could be called specifically 
 workers ' theories or conceptions of society and of their place in it. 
 
 It was the extension of the franchise in the twenties that gave the 
 impetus to the new attitude. Men were just beginning to realize that 
 the old Jeffersonian party had hardly kept true to its original ideals. 
 Success in 1800 had proved disastrous to it, and had led, not directly 
 to the Jeffersonian ideal of the agricultural community, but rather to 
 the substitution of a planting for a commercial aristocracy. Moreover, 
 the merchants had by this time had opportunity to leave the old Fed- 
 eralist party and win the new Republicans over to their own side. All 
 things considered, the time was ripe for another recrudescence of the 
 democratic urge, and another temporary setback to the forces of ine- 
 quality. This, in fact, was the especial mission of Jacksonian democ- 
 racy; and it was but natural that this new revolt on the part of the dom- 
 inant small farmers should find peculiar and individual expression 
 amongst the laboring classes of the seaboard cities. Fully alive at last to 
 the economic inequalities that the new order had forced upon them, they 
 were finally aroused, partly by the responsibilities of full citizenship, 
 partly by the new feeling of solidarity with their fellows, to the failure 
 of the old parties to bring about actual social equality. Hence in the 
 years 1827-1831 we notice a sudden broadening of interest and scope, 
 on the part of laboring men everywhere, the formation of central un- 
 ions in the large cities, and the rapid passing over of these unions into 
 politics. Everywhere there is the claim of the labor organization, no 
 longer to be merely fighting for its own individual rights, but to stand 
 for the true interests of America and the American democracy. Against 
 the merchant capitalists and the new factory owners, the bankers and 
 money interests of the cities, the new movement poses as the champion 
 
 1 Commons, I, 157. 
 
64 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 of the older ideal of complete equality, and it carries that ideal to fur- 
 ther limits than had before been necessary. It feels that something 
 must be wrong with American institutions if they can be so perverted 
 from the ideals of the Declaration of Independence. And it eagerly 
 sets to work to destroy the most obvious abuses which in its opinion 
 can be remedied by legislation. Throughout this period of four years, 
 we must not forget, the mechanics were busy in their separate trade 
 groups maintaining their economic rights; consequently the motives 
 and aims which appear in the federations and the political parties do 
 not supplant, but merely supplement the old method of the turn-out. 
 And when the object of the workers is achieved, when they have en- 
 grafted their demands upon the platforms of the regular parties, and 
 the Jacksonians have arisen to combine the small minority of the cities 
 with the immense group of the farmers and backwoodsmen, they re- 
 turn once more to the pursuit of their economic ends confident in the 
 substantial achievement of the demands they have made, yet somehow 
 having failed to secure that reversion to primitive equality they felt 
 would of necessity follow. 
 
 The characteristic note of this second stage of the mechanics' labor 
 movement is the demand it makes, not so much for economic equality 
 and security this had inspired the first stage, and this was to domin- 
 ate the last but for social and political equality. It was not a protest 
 of the wage worker against the employer, but rather of the producer 
 against the capitalist, of the poor against the rich; it was the last at- 
 tempt to realize the ideal of Jefferson by a direct appeal to the princi- 
 ples of the Revolution, to destroy the power of that sinister force of 
 capitalism which had been the bane of the Democrats from Washing- 
 ton's day down. When we next behold a labor movement, we find in- 
 dustry accepted and the doctrine of natural rights supplanted by other 
 and more efficacious theoretical considerations. 
 
 The second and broadly social phase of the mechanics' movement 
 arose almost simultaneously in New York and Philadelphia, in the 
 latter city during the summer of 1827. Springing out of an unsuccess- 
 ful attempt of the carpenters to establish a ten-hour day with more reg- 
 ular employment, it created first a central union of trade societies, and 
 then, as the demand of leisure, the first requisite of equal citizenship, 
 called up its second, popular education, it passed into a workingman 's 
 party. The economic demand was the ten-hour day, the political, free 
 schools. It is significant of the spirit of this Philadelphia movement 
 that it was ushered in by a pamphlet on education, and that its most 
 
The Mechanics' Movement of the Twenties and Thirties 65 
 
 enduring monument has been the Mechanics' Library. "It is true," 
 said the pamphlet, "in this favored nation we enjoy the inestimable 
 blessing of * universal suffrage/ and constituting as we everywhere do, 
 a very great majority, we have the power to choose our own legislators, 
 but . . . this blessing . . . can be of no further benefit to us than as 
 we possess sufficient knowledge to make a proper use of it." 1 And later 
 it was claimed that "real liberty and equality have no foundation but 
 in universal and equal instruction." 2 "When the committee contem- 
 plate their own condition, and that of the great mass of their fellow- 
 laborers; when they look around on the glaring inequality of society, 
 they are constrained to believe that until the means of equal in- 
 struction shall be equally secured to all, liberty is but an unmeaning 
 word, whose substance, to be realized, must first be planted by an equal 
 education and a proper training in the minds, hi the habits, in the man- 
 ners, and in the feelings of the community." 3 And it can hardly be 
 maintained that a movement in any sense failed that resulted directly 
 in the establishment of our system of popular schools. 
 
 In June the carpenters turned out for the ten-hour day. " We believe," 
 they announced, " that a man of common constitution is unable to per- 
 form more than ten hours' faithful labor in one day, and that men in the 
 habit of laboring from sunrise until dark are generally subject to nervous 
 and other complaints arising from continued hard labor, and (we) believe 
 that all men have a just right, derived from their Creator, to have suffi- 
 cient time in each day for the cultivation of their mind and for self- 
 improvement; therefore, resolved, that we think ten hours industriously 
 employed are sufficient for a day's labor." 4 The masters had been in the 
 habit of having all their work done in the long summer days, and leaving 
 the journeymen idle in winter; and the strike was in part caused by the 
 desire to force the masters to employ them all the year round. Thus early 
 the characteristic desire of the worker for continuity of employment 
 makes its appearance. The carpenters received the support and sym- 
 pathy of the house-painters, the bricklayers, and other trade societies, 
 and it was soon determined to unite in one body for mutual aid and pro- 
 tection. Thus was born in the autumn of 1827 the first union of crafts 
 the Mechanics' Union of Trade Societies as a protest against the degra- 
 dation of the worker. 
 
 1 Mechanics' Free Press, June 21, 1828. 
 
 2 Ibid., Jan. 21, 1829. 
 
 3 Working Man's Advocate, March 6, 1830. 
 
 4 Democratic Press, June 14, 1827. 
 
1 
 
 r 
 
 66 The Problem of Grqup Responsibility 
 
 The mechanics felt that in uniting with other trades* they were tran- 
 scending the limits of individual interest and were acting as trustees 
 for the common welfare. " Believing that whatever is conducive to the 
 real prosperity of the greatest numbers must in the nature of things 
 conduce to the happiness of all, we cannot desire to injure, nor take the 
 smallest unjust advantage, either of that class of the community called 
 employers or of any other portion. . . . If as members of the community 
 they (the capitalists) are desirous to prosper, in vain will they expect to 
 succeed, unless the great body of the community is kept in a healthy, 
 vigorous, and prosperous condition. . . . The real object, therefore, of 
 this association is, ... to promote, equally, the happiness, prosperity, 
 and welfare of the whole community to aid in conferring a due and full 
 proportion of that invaluable promoter of happiness, leisure, upon all its 
 useful members; and to assist, hi conjunction with such other institutions 
 of this nature as shall hereafter be formed throughout the union, in 
 establishing a just balance of power, both mental, moral, political, and 
 scientific, between all the various classes and individuals which constitute 
 society at large." * There hovered before the workingmen the spectre of 
 European conditions, fondly believed to be forever banished by the 
 Declaration of Independence, and they undertook the task of preserving 
 the old America of liberty and equality. " We are fast approaching those 
 extremes of wealth and extravagance on the one hand," they declared, 
 "and ignorance, poverty, and wretchedness on the other, which will 
 eventually terminate in those oppressive and unnatural distinctions which 
 exist hi the corrupt governments of the old world." 2 
 
 And quite naturally, in view of the social and political aims of the 
 movement, it turned to political action. The broadly social nature of its 
 program, hi fact, was the source both of its strength and its weakness; 
 for it enabled the Jacksonian Democrats to take up its measures and 
 incorporate them into their platform, and thus they soon passed into the 
 common heritage of American institutions. The workmen thus gamed 
 their immediate demands, but only at the expense of their own organiza- 
 tion and of their most vital economic interests. After electing a number 
 of candidates who had also been endorsed by other parties in four-cor- 
 nered fights in 1828 and 1829, the Working Men's Party disintegrated 
 after its defeat in 1820. But the ends it sought were soon achieved; and 
 the importance of the movement lies in the light it throws on the nature 
 of the ideals of the mechanics. Rather than wonder at the generally 
 
 1 Mechanics' Free Press, Oct. 25, 1828. 
 *Ibid, May i, 1830. 
 
The Mechanics' Movement of the Twenties and Thirties 67 
 
 interested actions of trade unions when performing their functions as 
 business organizations, the observer should rather marvel at the appar- 
 ently unquenchable zeal of the worker to act on occasion directly against 
 his own immediate advantage in following now one, now another, scheme 
 for reforming society at large. 
 
 The chief aim of the Working Men's Party, and the one upon which the 
 campaign of 1829 and 1830 was based, was the establishment of free 
 schools for all. But in addition they protested against the banking 
 monopolies and the issuance of banknotes, the lottery system, compulsory 
 service in the militia, and other blemishes upon the purity of American 
 democracy. All these were measures which appealed to the poorer por- 
 tions of the community, indeed, but they had little direct connection with 
 trade union activities. These latter were steadily progressing; and when 
 the political party collapsed, carrying with it the Mechanics' Union, the 
 trade societies were left to pursue their economic policies and to unite 
 again on another basis. 
 
 The political phase of the mechanics' movement in New York was 
 marked by much dissension between the various radical leaders who 
 placed themselves at its head and gave it the appearance, at any rate, of 
 supporting " agrarianism " or the equal redistribution of land. It sprang, 
 like the Philadelphia movement, out of a ten-hour agitation, this time 
 against the lengthening of a day already won, and at bottom, despite sur- 
 face differences, it was dominated by the same motives of protection, 
 equality, and education for citizenship. On April 23, 1829, a meeting of 
 mechanics, called to protest against encroachment on the ten-hour day, 
 was induced by Thomas Skidmore, a machinist and an earnest follower of 
 Tom Paine, and somewhat of a philosophical radical, to adopt resolutions 
 questioning the right of private property. They are by no means repre- 
 sentative of popular ideas in their conclusions, but in their mode of reason- 
 ing they show the easy connection between the national philosophy of the 
 social contract and the Declaration of Independence and the "rights" of 
 the workers. " Resolved, that all men hold their property by the consent 
 of the great mass of the community, and by no other title; that a great 
 portion of the latter hold no property at all; that in society they have 
 given up what in a state of nature they would have equal right to with 
 others; and that in lieu thereof, they have the right to an equal participa- 
 tion with others, through the means of their labor, of the enjoyments of a 
 comfortable subsistence. Therefore, resolved, that if those in whose 
 power it is to give employment withhold such employment, or will give it 
 only in such a manner as to exact excessive toil, and at a price which does 
 
68 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 not give a just return, such persons contravene the first law of society, 
 and subject themselves to the displeasure of a just community." l 
 
 Five days later a large meeting was held which appointed a Committee 
 of Fifty to consult and adopted resolutions against the eleven-hour day, 
 among them one as follows: "Resolved, that in the first formation of 
 government, no man gives up to others his original right of soil, and be- 
 comes a weaver, a builder, or other mechanic or laborer, without receiving 
 a guarantee that reasonable toil shall enable him to live as comfortable as 
 others." 2 In reality, Skidmore only went a little further than the major- 
 ity of democrats in developing the theory of agricultural equality, and 
 in just the same direction. On Oct. 19 the Committee of Fifty submitted 
 a report that advocated the abolition of debts and the division of all 
 property. This report was hurriedly adopted, and served as the basis of 
 a new party which had considerable success in the ensuing election. But 
 on December 29, another large meeting dissolved the Committee of 
 Fifty, which had become involved in political quarrels, and rejecting its 
 report resolved that it had "no desire or intention of disturbing the rights 
 of property in individuals or in the public." 3 The mechanics, in fact, so 
 soon as they fully comprehended them showed violent antipathy to 
 Skidmore's agrarian views, and they substituted for them demands for 
 general education and the abolition of the lien and militia laws, much hi 
 the spirit of the Philadelphia movement. Skidmore's book, The Rights of 
 Man to Property, had meanwhile appeared, and on second thought his 
 communism appeared incompatible with the American ideals for which 
 the mechanics above all stood. He himself accordingly withdrew from 
 the party with some followers and started another of his own. 
 
 The attention of the Working Men's Party was now turned to educa- 
 tion, and soon a new source of friction was there discovered. Robert 
 Dale Owen, son of the famous English socialist, desired to establish 
 "State Guardianship" schools, in which the children would be fed and 
 clothed as well as educated at public expense; he believed social regenera- 
 tion was possible only when the children were caught while still very 
 young. "Public education," said the advocates of this plan, " will 
 regenerate America in one generation. It will make but one class out of 
 the many that now envy and despise each other. It will make American 
 citizens what they once declared themselves, 'Free and Equal. ' " 4 The 
 
 1 New York Morning Courier, April 25, 1827. 
 1 Morning Courier, April 30, 1829. 
 
 3 Working Man's Advocate, Jan. 16, 1830. 
 
 4 Ibid., June 19, 1830. 
 
The Mechanics' Movement of the Twenties and Thirties 69 
 
 party split again on this issue, and there thus being three factions in 1830 
 it of course lost. Thereafter the movement, as in Philadelphia, was 
 absorbed into the regular political parties, and the workers, their social 
 and legal reforms either accomplished or well on the way toward accom- 
 plishment, turned their attention once more to their purely economic 
 grievances and their trade society activities. The nineteenth century 
 faith in universal education, to solve every problem of political democ- 
 racy, burned strong within them; this achieved, they waited confidently 
 the restoration of the older colonial equality. 
 
 The Working Men's Parties in Philadelphia and in New York were only 
 the outstanding examples in a movement that spread everywhere 
 throughout the eastern and northern parts of the country. The aims 
 were fundamentally the same: the establishment of free and popular 
 education, and the removal of those political restrictions that bore 
 heavily upon the lower portions of the community. The strike had little 
 place; when employed it was to secure or maintain the ten-hour day. 
 And the argument for universal popular education was nearly always the 
 civic one: popular sovereignty demanded popular knowledge, together 
 with the natural rights theory; an equal education would of necessity 
 secure equal ability. It was the orthodox liberal theory of democracy; 
 the workers merely insisted on removing it from the realms of theory and 
 actually putting it into practice, and giving a trial to the panacea which 
 the official philosophers were everywhere proposing. 
 
 In New England the movement took the interesting and peculiar form 
 of a general labor association with political and social aims a form 
 destined to be revived fifty years later by the Knights of Labor. It was 
 neither an industrial or a trade society; it was not even limited to wage- 
 earners, but included all those who would naturally be opposed to "privi- 
 lege and monopoly," farmers, mechanics, small tradesmen, and the new 
 class of factory workers. Like the other movements it started in a ten- 
 hour strike, which led to the calling of a convention and the formation of 
 the New England Association of Farmers, Mechanics, and Other Work- 
 ingmen, in 1832. Its chief aim was the establishment of universal educa- 
 tion as the means of raising and restoring the social status of these lower 
 sections of the community; the rising factories of New England are 
 reflected in the great emphasis laid upon child labor and the education of 
 factory children. "Children should not be allowed to labor in the 
 factories," it was resolved, "from morning till night, without any time for 
 healthy recreation and mental culture; as it not only endangers their own 
 well-being and health, but ensures to the country the existence of a 
 
70 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 population, in the approaching generation, unfitted to enjoy the privileges 
 and to exercise the duties of freemen and citizens." 1 The New England 
 Association naturally turned to politics, waging campaigns hi 1832, 1833, 
 and 1834, and as naturally was absorbed by the Jacksonians. Its appeal 
 was too general to gather much strength, and the factories were not yet 
 organized sufficiently to make them good field for labor developments. 
 
 The second phase of the mechanics' movement lasted in general some 
 two or three years; but even before it had entirely died out there was a 
 sharp reaction away from the political and social point of view to strictly 
 economic associations to what later came to be known as "pure and 
 simple trade unionism." The third and final stage saw the great increase 
 in strength and number of the craft societies, and the successive federa- 
 tion of these strong units into city and finally into a national trades' 
 union. The workers had at last discovered where their immediate ad- 
 vantage lay; they organized, not on some theory of education, but on 
 sound business principles. They had sought to bring back the old colonial 
 society of the farmer and the settler, and to transplant to the city the 
 intelligent and self-respecting farmer of the Revolution. When they 
 found that both merchants and farmers were too much interested in their 
 own advancement to care anything about restoring this happy state of 
 affairs, they fell back upon the methods they had never forgotten nor 
 allowed to fall wholly into disuse, and set about improving their immedi- 
 ate condition with little thought for anything else. National politics, too, 
 were just entering upon their most exciting period, and industrialization 
 had not yet advanced sufficiently to make any workingmens' question a 
 national issue. 
 
 The turn of the tide is shown in the changed character of the oldest 
 trade societies. The New York Typographical Society, since its founda- 
 tion in 1809 largely a benevolent society, was in 1831 supplanted by the 
 New York Typographical Association, whose new purpose was "to 
 elevate the character and advance the interests of the profession, by 
 maintaining a just and uniform scale of prices for their labor." The 
 Philadelphia society, founded in 1802, was also superseded in 1833. 
 Other societies, like the Pennsylvania Society of Journeymen Cabinet- 
 Makers in 1829 and the New York Benevolent Society of Journeymen 
 Tailors in 1833, revised their constitutions and took up strictly trade 
 union activities. The merchant capitalist was, with the increased mar- 
 kets both for goods and for labor opened up by the transportation projects 
 
 1 Carey's Select Excerpta, IV, 435. 
 
 2 Stewart, Documentary Hist, of the Early Organizations of Printers. 
 
The Mechanics' Movement of the Twenties and Thirties 71 
 
 of the twenties and thirties, constantly driven into keener and keener 
 competition, and constantly seeking to reduce his labor expenses by apply- 
 ing to women, young apprentices, and convicts as a source of cheap work. 
 Moreover, the years from 1834 to 1837 were marked by wild speculation, 
 inflated currency, and a consequent rise in the prices of all commodi- 
 ties. Flour went up from five to twelve dollars a barrel from 1834 to 
 1837; pork, from thirteen to thirty dollars; rents were enormously in- 
 creased. As a consequence of all these conditions, the workers' real 
 wages, even when there were no general wages reductions, were con- 
 tinually being lowered. The standard of living was rapidly sinking; 
 there was no longer time to trust to the beneficent effects of universal 
 education or to the remote results of legislative action. Trade societies 
 and turn-outs would alone be able to meet the crisis. From 1833 to 1836 
 the number of such societies in Philadelphia alone increased from 21 to 
 53, from 29 to 52 in New York, and in other cities in proportion. 1 In 
 1834, it is estimated there were some 26,000 organized workmen in 
 the country; by 1836, almost 3oo,ooo. 2 Almost every skilled craft was 
 represented. 
 
 It was natural that the various crafts in a single city should unite 
 for mutual support and protection, and thus grew up the "trades' unions" 
 so characteristic of the time. The first was formed in New York in 
 August, 1833; Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Washington followed the 
 same year. Boston formed one in 1834, and by 1836 there were at 
 least thirteen trades' unions, as far west as Louisville. 3 These new unions 
 fell over one another to repudiate all connection with the earlier working 
 men's parties, and with the various suspicions of agrarianism, atheism, and 
 men's polygamy which the leaders had drawn down upon them, particu- 
 larly in New York. In Philadelphia the union declared in its constitution 
 that "no party, political, or religious questions shall at any time be 
 agitated in, or acted upon, by this union. " 4 Time and again the various 
 unions were forced to repudiate political meetings called in their name 
 by ambitious politicians. They remained, however, save in Baltimore, 
 steadfast in their resolution not to turn to "panaceas or crack-brained 
 schemes," and to devote all their energies to questions of wages and 
 hours. 
 
 The New York Trades' Union originated in the combined support 
 
 1 National Laborer, Nov. 12, 1836; Commons, 351, 352, 1. 
 
 2 Ibid., June 4, 1836. 
 
 3 Commons, I, 360. 
 
72 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 some fifteen trades gave to a strike of carpenters for higher wages in 
 1833. The printers took the initiative, and the first president, Ely 
 Moore, belonged to that craft. The records of the meetings reveal 
 little discussion save over the difficulties and turn-outs the various mem- 
 bers were engaged in. The suppression of convict labor, in which the 
 president took an especial interest, marks the only other issue brought 
 up. It was not that the workers had lost all interest in the larger schemes 
 of the preceding years, but rather that they had learned not to intrude 
 them into union matters. Their restraint was crowned by distinguished 
 success in raising wages until they became involved in a conspiracy case. 
 
 The Trades' Union of Pennsylvania was formed in the summer of 
 1833 of factory workers around Philadelphia, as a protest against a 20 
 per cent wage reduction. This is the first example of factory operatives 
 organizing, and also the first direct attack upon the factory system and 
 warning against English conditions; but it proved abortive, as did all 
 attempts at organizing these early factory workers. It was succeeded 
 by the Trades Union of the City and County of Philadelphia, on the New 
 York model. At first made up exclusively of mechanics, it later took 
 in factory hands and unskilled labor. It was exceedingly successful, 
 having by 1836, under its able president, John Ferral, some 48 trade 
 societies. 1 More than half of these had struck and won their demands 
 in the last six months; and the union was chiefly concerned with the 
 support of various authorized strikes. 
 
 These numerous strikes were from 1833 to 1835 largely directed at the 
 ten-hour day, demanded on the familiar grounds of citizenship. This 
 generally achieved, the workers turned to wage increases. The old 
 basis of a natural right to social equality, the traditional ideology of 
 the Declaration of Independence, still formed the basis of their justi- 
 fication. The spirit lying back of this movement nowhere finds better 
 expression than in this statement of the Philadelphia cordwainers, in 
 
 "The Declaration of Independence 'holds these truths to be self- 
 evident, that all men are created free and equal,' how can we be free 
 when we have no control over the prices of the only commodity we 
 have to dispose of our labor?. . . True, we assemble on the Fourth of 
 July and mingle our shouts of approbation as we hear the invaluable 
 Declaration of Independence read, we may join the multitude in 
 paying fulsome adulation to some popular orator as he descants on the 
 blessings we enjoy in the land of Liberty, and flatter ourselves for the 
 1 Pennsylvania, Feb. 4, 1836. 
 
The Mechanics' Movement of the Twenties and Thirties 73 
 
 time, that what he says is true, that we do enjoy to the fullest extent 
 the liberties the blood of our Revolutionary fathers bequeathed to us: 
 but when we leave the festive board, and return to our humble homes; 
 when the thrilling accents of eloquence have ceased to vibrate on the 
 ear, and sober reason resumes her sway then, fellow-mechanics, do 
 we awaken to the sad reality of our condition then is the flimsy veil 
 which blinded us to our true interest, drawn aside, and we behold our- 
 selves in our real characters, humble, dependent, and miserable we 
 behold ourselves, perhaps, the slaves of some haughty tyrant, who to 
 augment his already overflowing coffers, is perhaps at that very moment, 
 framing some pretext for reducing our scanty wages; and secretly re- 
 joicing, that the dollar we have spent on our country's natal day, enables 
 him the better to accomplish his object. Let us then set about making 
 ourselves free indeed before we boast of our freedom let us take 
 measures to enjoy, and secure the freedom after it is obtained. " 1 
 
 In less eloquent but no less indignant words, the Boston carpenters 
 make the same complaint. " If our employers had used us like men 
 and had not been so overbearing, we should not have spent so much 
 time in having our grievances redressed. We were all born free and equal, 
 and we do not ask to have our grievances redressed as a favor, but we 
 demand it as a right. " 2 Something is wrong with American society, 
 but the workman is not quite sure what it is. The good old days were 
 never like this. 
 
 From the organization of city trades' unions it was but a step to a 
 national Trades' Union. The New York union accordingly called in 
 March, 1834, for delegates from every union to assemble " to advance\ 
 the moral and intellectual dignity of the laboring classes, sustain their j 
 pecuniary interests, succor the oppressed, and by all just means maintain 
 the honor and the respectability of the merchanical profession. " 3 When 
 they gathered from six unions under Ely Moore, they declared their 
 aim to be " to prevent a reduction of wages and secure a proper number 
 of hours for labor. " There ensued a vigorous debate on the question of 
 political action, finally decided in the negative; and the union contented 
 itself with advisory and educational powers. It discussed the factory 
 system, the conditions of the Lowell women operatives, and other 
 similar matters, and resolved to attempt the organization of the factory 
 workers. During the four years of its existence it did valuable propaganda 
 
 1 Pennsylvanian, April 4, 1835. 
 
 2 Independent Chronicle and Boston Patriot, May 23, 1832. 
 
 3 The Man, May 3, 1834. 
 
74 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 work, but was not strong enough to extend its activities to anything 
 further then discussion and agitation. 
 
 More important than the National Trades' Union were the craft 
 unions which at this time were organized on a national basis, the 
 cordwainers, the printers, the comb makers, the carpenters and the 
 hand loom weavers. Transportation had brought different cities into 
 competition, and it was becoming necessary to act together. In 1836 
 the cordwainers called a convention " to endeavor to equalize the wages as 
 nearly as possible to create that concert of action necessary to insure a 
 steady and sufficient price for our labor. " * This union desplayed all 
 the earmarks of the strictly business union. It declared for shorter 
 hours in order to "make work," limited apprentices, asked for the or- 
 ganization of women to prevent ruinous competition, asked the pro- 
 hibition of foreign imports, and provided for a strong protective fund. 
 Its statement in regard to the ten-hour day is particularly interesting 
 hi the light it throws on the various citizenship arguments commonly 
 advanced in behalf of shorter hours. " Whereas, a surplus of the products 
 of labor is calculated in almost all cases to reduce the wages of labor; 
 and whereas the evils of excessive competition among the journeymen 
 bears particularly heavy on those of our own trade; and whereas a re- 
 duction in the hours of labor has been productive of beneficial results 
 in the character and condition of other mechanics; with a view to enable 
 the Journeymen Cordwainers of all branches to enjoy the advantages 
 pecuniarily, intellectually, and physically resulting from a reduction in 
 the number of the hours of labor be it resolved, that it is seriously 
 recommended to the journeymen comprising the various Societies rep- 
 resented on this Convention, to reduce the number of their working 
 hours so as to conform as near as practicable to the rules adopted by 
 outdoor mechanics, believing that by so doing they will be better en- 
 abled to obtain a proper compensation for their labor. " 2 This theory 
 of " making work " probably represented a good deal of the unexpressed 
 reasons for the enthusiasm with which the ten-hour day movement was 
 received. 
 
 Perhaps the statement of the aims of the National Typographical 
 Society best sums up all the threads that entered into this final phase of 
 / I the mechanics' movement. " Our Association, as societies, is not to 
 oppress others but for self-defense. To secure a living compensation 
 for our labor, and to sustain the generous, liberal employer who is willing 
 
 1 National Trades' Union, Feb. 6, 1836. 
 
The Mechanics' Movement of the Twenties and Thirties 75 
 
 to allow such compensation. To defend ourselves from undermining 
 and base-spirited journeymen, and thereby protect our friends among 
 employers from those of their number who would take advantage of 
 their liberality who would underwork masters' prices, by dispensing 
 a beggarly pittance to their journeymen. We have still another and 
 higher motive it is benevolence. " 1 
 
 In 1837 came the panic and the end of prosperous times. In the face 
 of unemployment the trades unions crumbled away; a few of the stronger 
 turned to cooperation, but for the most part unionism disappeared. It 
 was not for twenty years that the workers were again able to organize 
 a really strong movement; and then it was the factory workers of the 
 industrial era and not the mechanics and skilled artisans of the thirties 
 who led the way. 
 
 1 National Trades' Union, October 17, 1835. 
 
 I 1 
 
5. THE DOUBLE STRAIN IN THE AMERICAN LABOR 
 MOVEMENT 
 
 SHARPLY defined as it was, the mechanics' movement offers an excel- 
 lent opportunity for the analysis of the motives and tendencies of labor 
 activities. Although it appeared and ran its course before America had 
 advanced far on the road to industrialism, it nevertheless contained 
 within itself .all of the basic features that have since marked the American 
 labor movement. The problems confronting the worker, however 
 much social environment may necessitate varying technique in the 
 attempt to solve them, remain, like the fundamental problems of ex- 
 istence in which they play so basic a part, throughout the years essen- 
 tially the same; and the manifold complexity with which the state of 
 the industrial arts and the organization of the social and economic and 
 political superstructure compel the toiler to approach his problem 
 serves only to set off in bold relief the essential simplicity of his ultimate 
 aim. The merchant capitalist has given way to the huge corporation, 
 the tool of the skilled artisan to the machine of the specialized factory 
 hand; but the questions that arose a hundred years ago differ only in 
 degree from those that rise today, and the leader of the thirties could 
 take his place in a modern union debate and find the issues changed 
 ly in intensity. 
 
 The fundamental aim of labor, revealed as the motive back of the 
 mechanics' movement and equally potent today, is the desire for a 
 secure and equal position in society a position of freedom from the 
 fear of want and unemployment, and an enjoyment of the goods of life 
 
 \gpt markedly disproportionate to that of one's neighbor. In certain con- 
 ditions, slavery or serfdom, for instance, the worker is willing to 
 give up one of these amis for the sake of attaining the other; but both 
 are in the long run essential, and both have played their part in the 
 American labor movement. Equality of status is perhaps the more 
 fundamental; it is, as we have seen, the essential component of 
 the American ideal of democracy, and it hearkens back to the day of the 
 
 ^settler and the frontiersman. It motivated the outcry against the 
 monopolist and banker of a century ago, and it lies at the bottom of 
 the present indignation against the profiteer and the "capitalist." It is 
 significant that in the early days the unionists were called by their enemies 
 
The Double Strain in the American Labor Movement 77 
 
 "ievelers"; though since what they wanted was so obviously a leveling 
 up they could never understand the accusations of wishing to level 
 down. By the common man this equality has never been considered, 
 unless under the influence of some Tom Paine, as a metaphysical and 
 mathematically equal state of affairs; even the agrarians who wished to 
 divide up the land did not feel the force of the argument that new in- 
 equality would speedily ensue. For the common man has always recog- 
 nized differences in ability, and concurred in their reward ; some have a 
 knack of getting along, others are naturally shiftless, and the good 
 workman has always despised his lazy brother. Of course some will be 
 better off than others; but that some should be better off because they 
 are privileged to use their power in spoiling the chances of konest workers, 
 that, labor has never admitted, and it is just that fact which lies at the 
 bottom of American democracy. 
 
 But if equality is the basic aim, security always accompanies it 
 often becomes of far greater pressing immediacy. The greatest fear 
 that haunts the modern worker is the fear of losing his job. There is a^/ 
 custom in the coal-fields of Pennsylvania that aptly symbolizes the ad- 
 vance modern progress has made over medieval superstition. Every 
 evening at sunset as the workers emerge from their underground burrows 
 a bell is rung; and just as of old the peasant was wont to look forward 
 to the vesper bell of his parish church, to cross himself as he heard its 
 tones and to pray for the safety of his soul, so the present-day worker 
 anxiously awaits this modern angelus. When its first stroke rings out a 
 breathless hush falls on all the grimy mining town, and men and women 
 everywhere pause to count its peals. For by their number they are told 
 whether or no there will be work for the morrow, whether or no there 
 will be another day's pay in the weekly envelope. Thus has the fear 
 that men used to have lest they lose their souls been by modern prog- 
 ress transmuted into the fear lest they lose their work; for in our 
 modern up-to-date methods of mining there is little bothering about 
 men's souls. 
 
 It is this haunting fear of unemployment and destitution, the poign- 
 ancy no description can bring home, that has led to most of the actions 
 of labor condemned off-hand by the superficial observer. The worker 
 has ever been prone to seize upon any course of action that promised to 
 "make work," however loath at times he may be to admit it; and hence 
 follows, as the very natural result of the desire to escape starvation, the >* 
 opposition to machinery, the shortening of hours, the curtailment of 
 production, and the various other sins that cause the editor of the 
 
78 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 metropolitan daily, secure in the possession of a generous and assured 
 salary, to hold up his hands in editorial horror. Thus in what is probably 
 the most advanced of all unions today, the Amalgamated Clothing 
 Workers, the proposal to secure the 44-hour week was carried by the 
 plea of a delegate that the many refugees of Europe would soon be with 
 their friends seeking work. A dreadful act, no doubt; yet unfortunately 
 men do not come into the world in accordance with the law of supply 
 and demand, and some of them obstinately prefer to increase the cost 
 of clothing rather than to starve to death. 
 
 An equal and secure position hi society this was the aim of the 
 I mechanics of a hundred years ago. To obtain it they employed two dis- 
 tinct methods. They organized trade societies, they turned out, and 
 they demanded higher wages and shorter hours for themselves. But 
 they also pursued another course; haltingly, perhaps, and with no such 
 measure of success, but nevertheless they pursued it. They endeavored, 
 by forming a general class organization, and by using their newly ac- 
 quired political power, to secure their aim, not primarily as an individual 
 (Bright, but rather as a social condition. They sought to restore the 
 America of their Fathers. What mattered it that that America had, 
 strictly speaking, never existed? In their characteristic Anglo-Saxon 
 fashion they were trying to reform society through idealizing the past. 
 They demanded education for fulfilling the duties of citizenship. They 
 demanded leisure to pursue that education. In exercising the rights of 
 citizens they thought as citizens about the society in which they found 
 tj^ejnselves. 
 
 /(Corresponding to these two methods of securing the aim of labor, and 
 
 I determining their employment, are two distinct motives. The first is 
 
 \ self-interest, individual economic advantage; the second, in that it is 
 
 jj relatively objective and apart from immediate gain, can best be described 
 
 I as social idealism, as a desire for a better organization of society in all 
 
 ^/ its parts. * Neither, of course, existed exclusively, in either the political 
 
 ^ or the economic stages of the movement; there was probably no single 
 
 / individual in whom the two motives were not hopelessly mixed. Yet 
 
 / nevertheless it is apparent that in strictly trade society activities the 
 
 motive of economic interest predominated, while hi the political 
 
 campaign^ for education social idealism played a very conspicuous 
 
 XtrSeT 3 
 
 These two motives will be found to run jointly throughout the labor 
 movement. Both are prominent at the present day, and both will un- 
 doubtedly continue as the springs of social action. They stand as the 
 

 
 The Double Strain in the American Labor Movement 79 
 
 two limits between which the labor movement vibrates. The character 
 of any particular organization depends primarily upon the relative 
 emphasis placed upon each. Both are always present: no labor move- 
 ment is ever disinterested, though its leaders often are, and even the 
 most self -centered has always a justifying philosophy that its actions 
 result in the general welfare of society. There is, indeed, far from being 
 any necessary antagonism between the two motives, the closest possible 
 relation; and the problem of social organization is just that of securing 
 a harmonious blend of social and individual interests. And it must not 
 be forgotten that the fundamental postulate of nineteenth century 
 economic theory and the society erected upon it has been that social^ 1 -^ 
 welfare is best secured through every individual's seeking his own in- 
 terest. Men have but lately come to question this theory, and to realize 
 that it implies as actual a state of affairs that in reality is but a hope and 
 a goal for the future; that it is far too optimistic to fit the present state 
 of mankind. This theory holds still well-nigh absolute sway in the 
 world of industry: it is, in fact, only to labor activities that it ever oc- 
 curs to men to apply any other standard than that of prosperity and 
 business success. 
 
 It is, then, all things considered, quite remarkable the extent to which 
 the labor movement has at times pursued a course which when the two 
 were at variance followed social rather than individual interests, and 
 has persisted in seeking the larger aim when the lesser would clearly 
 have redounded more to its advantage. It indicates that the analysis 
 that economic liberalism made of the springs of human action was far 
 from exhaustive, and suggests the point of view toward which social-, 
 psychology is painfully struggling. For nothing is more clear to the/ 
 observer of the development of the American labor movement than 
 the struggle, the persistence, the successive emergence of now, one, now \ 
 the other, as the dominating motive of the workers' efforts. The ri- 
 valry appears in the mechanics' movement; it will be apparent through- 
 out its successors. 
 
 These two motives, individual interest and social interest, produced 
 two distinct types of general aim. The former is conservative: it ac- 
 cepts things as they are, it is "realistic," it is "practical," it despises 
 "theories". It takes the social situation in which it finds itself for ) 
 granted, and bends its efforts toward making the most of what it has 
 to start with. In the measure in which it succeeds it rejects change; 
 for it too has become a vested interest. It acquires the attitudes and i 
 the reactions of the common business man. It is playing the game as it 
 
8o The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 finds it, and playing it well; far too well, indeed, for many of the other 
 
 \ participants. And, just like the business man, in its indifference to any 
 larger considerations than its own individual advantage it often hap- 
 
 ^pens that its activities become definitely anti-social. When circumstan- 
 ces give it the power to hold up the community to fill its own pocket, 
 it is apt to use that power; just as the broker on the corn-exchange or 
 the monopolizer of some necessity like sugar might raise his price and 
 cause a nation to starve. The motive of individual interest is indeed 
 found at its purest in the criminal, who is at once the most conserva- 
 and the most anti-social force in society. 
 
 /.- "The other motive tends to produce a quite different type of ami. 
 
 : It is necessarily more revolutionary; it does not accept conditions as 
 they are. It questions the social situation in which it finds itself; it im- 
 agines others in which those things it dislikes have no place. It seeks 
 
 (to change conditions rather than to make the best of them. It does 
 not adapt itself to its environment, it tries to make that environment 
 conform to what it considers right. At times it elaborates imposing 
 edifices of theory and hypothesis to guide it and to justify its cravings 
 for change. It does not play the game. It refuses, so it seems, even to 
 "play fair," because it questions the justice of the rules. And it often 
 happens that to those who have become skillful players under the old 
 rules the new seem abhorrent; for at the first they certainly are con- 
 fusing. It is thus definitely subversive of the old order, but it is never 
 what the other type of aim readily becomes, anti-social. Ignorant, 
 "impractical," yes, dangerous, oftentimes, yet inspired with a noble 
 aim and of priceless worth withal, it seeks to bring about conditions 
 that shall make anti-social action impossible. 
 
 oth of these motives may naturally employ either political or ec- 
 onomic means to achieve their respective ends. In politics individual 
 terest seeks no fundamental changes, but rather works for "reforms; 
 desiring only to achieve certain definite legislative measures r it does _ 
 not bother to form and manipulate a political party. That would nec- 
 essarily involve it in considerations of social policy for which it has no 
 stomach. Instead it endeavors to utilize for its purposes existing par- 
 ties. It tries to hold the balance of power between the two, and by 
 threats of "rewarding its friends" and "punishing its enemies" to se- 
 cure the recognition that politicians accord to well-organized blocks of 
 voters. It employs large and powerful lobbies at the seats of legisla- 
 tive dispensation. It favors log-rolling and all of those highly intricate 
 and ingenious methods whereby modern law-makers transform bills 
 
The Double Strain in the American Labor Movement 81 
 
 into laws. Its political method is opportunistic, to adopt the most effi-J 
 cient means of getting its measures through. 
 
 In the economic field it strikes for higher wages, for shorter hours! 
 (primarily to make work) and for better conditions. It prefers, how- 
 ever, the peaceful path of collective bargaining, of wage-scales and 
 agreements with employers; its strikes are strategic incidents in its cam- 
 paign for more and more bargaining power. In accordance with its de-y 
 sire to observe the rules of the business game it makes contracts and re- 
 ligiously abides by them. It deprecates sympathetic strikes; as in the 
 case of the United Garment Workers and the Amalgamated Clothing 
 Workers, if it is to its own advantage it is willing to scab on another 
 union. It jealously preserves its craft lines, and engages in jurisdic- 
 tional disputes with other crafts for members. Its representatives are 
 fittingly called business agents they tend to be of the politician type, 
 they are kept in power so long as they are successful, and they occupy 
 the place of go-betweens between their constitutents and their employ- 
 ers. They could hardly be called leaders, for they are rather professional 
 men retained to look after the union's interests. Yet they are often 
 inspired by an intense devotion to their clients, and their vision is on 
 the whole more broadly social than that of the average unionist. 
 
 Social idealism as a motive tends to emphasize the political method. 
 Thinking in terms of social reconstruction, it naturally turns to the po- 
 litical means whereby alone such reforms can be peaceably effected. 
 It favors a labor party and independent action; it disdains opportunis- 
 tic tactics and piece-meal reforms, and seeks rather the power to re- 
 constitute society. Incidentally it creates as many parties and as many 
 planks as there are differing visions of a better community. Often in- 
 transigeant, it is apt to succumb to trained and unscrupulous politi- 
 cians. 
 
 In the economic field its strikes always have a further import than 
 their immediate objects. They are often used as political weapons; 
 even when their chance of success is slight they are favored as creating 
 solidarity among the workers. They are employed not so much to in- 
 crease effective bargaining power as to serve as incidents in a larger 
 campaign for social ends. Social interest is apt to lead to strikes in 
 sympathy with other trades; it rather overlooks the nice points of the 
 customs of contracts. It seeks inclusiveness rather than exclusiveness. 
 Its leaders are apt to be real leaders, followed perhaps with a blind de- 
 votion when they are wrong as when they are right. 
 
 Robert F. Hoxie has made a most suggestive attempt to classify the 
 
82 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 labor organizations that appear in American history on the basis of their 
 aims and methods; he has discovered four general functional types, two of 
 which have subdivisions. He recognizes first, business unionism, the 
 type we have seen approached in the later development of the mechanics' 
 movement; second, friendly or uplift unionism, emphasizing mutual 
 benefits; third, revolutionary unionism, which may be either socialistic or 
 syndicalistic according as it emphasizes the political or the economic 
 method; and fourth, predatory unionism, which may be either guerilla or 
 hold-up, sincere or corrupt, in its activity. Hoxie inclines to consider 
 .*) these types as ultimate, the product of certain distinctive situations; 
 
 \-^ V and undoubtedly their historical genesis is so to be explained^ But it is 
 
 -^ apparent that these four types can be regarded as resultantsjolthe vary- 
 
 ,- , -\wjng combinations of the two fundamental motives or strains, individual 
 
 ,*>'*' \~aTujjuyia.l interests. According as "tHemte or the other becomes dominant 
 
 ' ^ g. or as the relative emphasis which certain conditions cause to be placed 
 on now one and now the other shifts, the organization will tend to con- 
 form more or less closely to one of Hoxie's four types. By going back of 
 the four functional forms to the more ultimate motives inspiring them it 
 is possible not only to arrive at a bond of union, but also to explain how 
 a single organization, in the course of its history and as the result of 
 varying conditions and leaders, may pass rapidly from one type to 
 another, and even run the entire gamut from extremely conservative 
 business unionism to extreme revolutionary unionism. It shows how it is 
 possible at a single bound for the Railroad Brotherhoods, for instance, to 
 throw the Plumb Plan enthusiastically into the midst of an amazed 
 wprld/For it is the very essence of the double strain that both strains are 
 always present, that it is fundamentally double that the passage from 
 one to the other involves only a very slight alteration of emphasis the 
 shifting of a few votes in convention, the election of a new leader, the 
 necessity of meeting a specific situation. 
 Thus Hoxie's four types might well be arranged in a square as follows: 
 
 f 
 
 Business Unionism Uplift Unionism 
 
 ) 
 I 
 \ 
 
 x 
 
 Indi- 
 vid- 
 
 So- 
 
 cial 
 
 ual In- Predatory Unionism Revolutionary Unionism In- 
 
 Hold-up -- Guerilla _ Syndicalistic - Socialistic terest 
 
 The scale from left to right would indicate the amount of emphasis 
 given the social motive, that from top to bottom the relative conserva- 
 
The Double Strain in the American Labor Movement 83 
 
 tism. The diagram is not, of course, accurate, but it reveals some inter- 
 esting relationships. It will be seen that the business and the predatory 
 union possess in common the emphasis on the individual interest and the 
 disregard of social consequences; and this makes the passage from one to 
 the other easy. Likewise the predatory and the revolutionary union are 
 bound together by their similarity of methods, which makes it clear how 
 an organization like the I. W. W. really can exemplify in its personnel and . 
 tactics both types. It is well, however, to insist with Hoxie that these A 
 are but ideal types, never found in their purity in any union and but_J 
 -rarely in any individual. 
 
 But not only does a study of the American labor movement reveal 
 presence of this double strain it also seems to show a somewhat recur- 
 rent cycle of emphasis, a career of progress from a period when one is in 
 the ascendant to the other and then back again. Like all attemptsfoj 
 trace any regularity in the immensely pluralistic fabric of human affairs as 
 they are spread out through time, this cycle at once fails when too closely 
 pressed; if there be indeed any laws which obtain in history, they are 
 far too complex for statement in any simple formula. Yet the attempt to 
 draw the parallel between different periods of labor history is as illumi- 
 nating in the differences it reveals as in the similarities. It is clarifying 
 to observe the way in which history, superficially at least, appears at 
 times to repeat itself. 
 
 It has already been noted that the mechanics' movement was an iso- 
 lated event that had a definite career of three stages. It is possible to 
 observe these three stages in the far more important movement that 
 began with the Civil War and reached its maturity in the nineties; and it 
 is even possible to observe the beginnings of a third cycle with the un- 
 skilled. This cyclical movement starts as a crude protest against intoler^ V**^ 
 able conditions; at its outset it has little ultimate aim beyond the imme- 
 diate one of making life a little more bearable, and even less of theory and 
 philosophy. But it rapidly becomes critical of its aims and methods; the 
 original motive of self-interest persists and grows stronger, but there 
 springs up in addition the desire to reach more fundamental causes, to t 
 alter underlying conditions. The scope broadens rapidly a-nH hpcnmpj^. 
 more and more social: the unionists develop a theory of society that. 
 appeal to their fellow-citizens to join them fa a movement of mutual 
 advantage. Thinking in terms of society as a whole, they, are apt to 
 adopt political means to alter the structure of the state. They call on the 
 majority to unite with them to vindicate American democracy. But the 
 majority repels their advances; it is not willing to risk its own varied 
 
84 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 interests in attempting any social reconstruction. Rebuffed and de- 
 feated the workers accept the philosophy of the majority and seek once 
 more the most effective means of maintaining their own status. They 
 take their place in the business life of the nation to engage in the competi- 
 tive struggle that has thus far marked the industrial age. 
 N Thus the mechanics' movement started as a protest and a revolt against 
 the violation of the status of the artisan in the early American democracy. 
 At the outset it emphasized individual rights, seeking to arouse the work- 
 ers to an assertion of their power against individual men whom it imag- 
 ined had willfully taken from them what was their rightful due. Sponta- 
 neous turn-outs directed against specific reductions in wages or excessive 
 hours marked this stage. 
 
 Then the movement became more reflective and critical. It passed 
 over into a protest, not against the individual primarily, but against those 
 features of the social system which permitted his acts. Where before it 
 had emphasized rights it now turned to justice justice being, in one 
 aspect, " rights" viewed from the standpoint of the community as a 
 whole. It became political in its methods and broadly social in its aims, 
 attacking monopolies, debt-laws, currency systems, and privilege in 
 general. Education and its prerequisite leisure, for the sake of citizenship 
 and the general welfare, tended to supplant higher wages as the primary 
 demand; and even the economic desire for an improved social status was 
 advocated for its effect upon the nation at large. The workers at least 
 thought in terms of social values political duties, citizens' responsi- 
 bilities, intellectual development. 
 
 Its immediate aims largely achieved, it was left without a distinctive 
 program, and it as yet represented too small a portion of the community 
 to appeal successfully for a more thoroughgoing revision of the social 
 structure. The special interests it was combatting were strong and 
 unscrupulous. The agricultural population, still wedded to the frontiers- 
 man's love of independence and hatred of social interference, were 
 definitely unsympathetic. Nowhere meeting any response to its appeal 
 for the purging of democracy of the corruption that had crept into it, it is 
 little wonder that it turned to less exalted but more practical policies. 
 America of the thirties and forties was indeed full of "reformers"; it was 
 the golden age of Utopian schemes for the complete regeneration of 
 society. But the estimable gentlemen who flocked to the numerous 
 communities and phalanges that dotted the western prairies, who re- 
 sponded to the visions of Fourier eloquently put forward by Albert 
 Brisbane, had no desire to engage upon the laborious modification of 
 
The Double Strain in the American Labor Movement 85 
 
 existing institutions. They wished to journey into the primeval forest 
 and build from the very bottom up an entirely new society; for them 
 civilization was already hopelessly corrupt. And it is entirely possible 
 that the pilgrims of Brook Farm preferred not to jeopardize their secure 
 incomes while they were experimenting with new forms of social existence. 
 So long as there was an untold wealth of land lying idle to the west tfi2 
 best minds were loath to put forward the sustained intelligence necessary 
 for a real grappling with social problems. Not until the western lands 
 were all gone was the situation acute enough to call for really drastic / 
 measures. 
 
 But be the cause what it may, there came in the thirties a rapid re- 
 action to strict business unionism. The social idealism that had secured 
 universal education did not at once evaporate; the workers sought a social 
 justification for their efforts at collective bargaining, and secured a 
 recognized place in society. But they soon adopted the prevailing ide- 
 ology of competition, and were absorbed into the general business life of 
 the nation as units. The fundamental aim of the movement the 
 achievement of a definite and secure status in society was, they thought, 
 in some measure obtained. Their position was indeed far from equal, and 
 security was rather precarious, as 1837 proved, but in the steady growth 
 of their bargaining power there opened before them a vista of further 
 advance. The labor movement had reached a condition of relative 
 stability which only some radical change in social conditions could upset. 
 That change did not come until the twentieth century, and then only with 
 the slow growth of industrialism. 
 
 When the labor movement sprang into* being once more in the late 
 fifties the same cycle was repeated with slight variations. {At first there 
 grew up organizations of individual protest and revolt whose aim was 
 self -protection, organizations which improved transportation made 
 national and which previous experience rendered in a measure less spon- 
 taneous and unguided. Then the purely individual motive was once' 
 more supplemented by social idealism, the workers made another appeal* 1 "! 
 to the community to engage in serious social control. Once more at- 
 tempts were made at a humanitarian and class-conscious organization 
 opposed to the "interests" and in behalf of the " common people." 
 ^Economic advantage was supplemented by social aims. First the Na- 
 tional Labor Union, then the Knights of Labor, arose and drifted into 
 political activity; and at the outset they too were relatively successful. 
 But the same influences that had swamped the working men's parties 
 fifty years previously destroyed them: the hostility of the employers and 
 
86 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 the apathy of the public. Once again immediate interest conquered; 
 strict business unionism again proved its advantages from the economic 
 standpoint, and the American Federation of Labor waxed while the 
 Knights of Labor waned. They had their philosophy of social justifica- 
 tion at first, the theory of Ira Steward, which by dint of much educational 
 work in the early nineties had become ingrained in the older unions; but 
 that philosophy has been forgotten now, and survives only among the 
 older members and in the underlying presuppositions upon which the 
 leaders act. Once again the labor movement had reached a state of 
 relative stability. 
 
 But by this time industrialism had progressed sufficiently to change 
 the situation. As will be seen later, under modern conditions there has 
 grown up a great number of unskilled workers who have little with which 
 to bargain except their manual labor. Their monopoly of skilled crafts- 
 manship has been stolen by the machine. Among them there arose the 
 familiar revolts and protests, revolts which have been in some instances 
 incorporated by organizations such as the I. W. W. Amongst western 
 lumbermen and miners, and the textile workers of the east, these revolts 
 have partaken of the same lack of aim, the same spontaneous character as 
 those occurring at the beginning of each of the two former cycles. And 
 these unskilled have likewise developed social aims and theories that 
 have found fruit in a new kind of unionism, perhaps best represented by 
 the industrialism of the clothing workers. Because of the persistence of 
 the craftsman's business union, the development is not clear; for it has 
 taken place as much within the older organizations as without them. 
 What will be the further course, it is impossible to say; it is with a con- 
 sideration of probable and possible developments that this book attempts 
 to deal. It is entirely within the bounds of possibility that the hostility of 
 public and employer will cause the cycle to pursue its wonted course, and 
 that the so-called "new unionism" of the unskilled will merge into a new 
 form of business unionism in which the motive of individual advantage 
 has overcome that of social idealism into something between the busi- 
 ness and the predatory union. But many considerations which will be 
 developed later make it at least doubtful whether the conditions that 
 favored this type before have not radically changed, and whether it will 
 not be likely that this time the appeal to men to alter their social structure 
 will meet with a more favorable response. It is at least significant that 
 this newer, more sodally-minded movement is at present appearing 
 rapidly in the very heart of the older business unionism. This important 
 question, however, must be postponed for later consideration. 
 
The Double Strain in the American Labor Movement 87 
 
 There is thus evident this alternation between emphasis upon the 
 individual and upon the larger social interest permeating the history of 
 American labor. But lest it appear that the two strains are opposed, that 
 one must overcome or supersede the other; lest it seem necessary to 
 choose between the two, let us approach the matter from another angle. 
 Hitherto we have contrasted the two, and remarked upon their successive 
 rise and fall. ^Tow let us examine the history of labor with a view to the 
 remarkable simultaneous persistence and permanence of both. For every 
 action of labor, every decisive step it has advocated, has been supported 
 by both these motives together. There has been to an extraordinary 
 degree a blending and interaction between these two strains. Measures 
 advocated by far-seeing leaders because of their beneficial social conse- 
 quences have secured support from the rank and file because of the 
 immediate interests to which they also appealed. And as those measures 
 were put into force, those same workers have come to see the social side of 
 their activities and to advocate further measures in which the immediate 
 individual gain is not so apparent. The labor movement has thus proved 
 of immense educative value to the workers in developing social-minded- 
 ness, as will be seen later. 
 
 Let us examine some of the leading features of unionism. Consider 
 first the outstanding fact of the cooperation of the workers to secure a 
 common end, the actual bond of union between them. The great right] 
 of free contract is undoubtedly in certain situations a privilege to be 
 battled for and loyally guarded; it is indeed, as we have so often been 
 told, a great moral principle. Nevertheless trade unionists are cold 
 it; they build their societies on the basic principle of each one giving up ' 
 his individual freedom of contract and submitting rather to collective i 
 agreement. What leads men thus to give up their liberty of action? 
 
 At first and at bottom, of course, it is because in so doing they gam a 
 larger freedom. Economic conditions have placed the individual worker 
 at the mercy of the employer in bargaining power; since a free contract 
 necessarily implies an agreement between equals, it is essential for the 
 worker to combine with his fellows to place his collective bargaining 
 power upon a basis of approximate equality with that of the employer.^ 
 This is the very essence of labor unionism; it is the cornerstone upon^ 
 which the whole structure of trade union activities is builded. The| 
 worker eventually gains more through surrendering an individual 
 privilege; hence for reasons of his private advantage he unites with his < 
 fellows. 
 
 But that association into which he enters itself imposes upon him 
 
88 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 a very definite social viewpoint and attitude. Suppose he has joined 
 solely in order to gain the benefit of the higher wages in a certain union 
 shop. In working with his fellow-unionists, in meeting and in shop, he 
 perhaps unconsciously comes to absorb their point of view. He grows 
 loyal to his fellows, and to the association which means so much to 
 them. He comes to feel their abhorrence for the scab, the man who 
 puts his individual advantage first, the upholder of the great principle 
 of the freedom of contract. Perhaps he is tested in the fire of a strike; 
 he feels the spirit of determination to win for his union. He uses his 
 savings to aid the families of his less fortunate fellows. And when the 
 test comes, he will refuse to accept a job at high wages if to do so he must 
 forsake his union; he will engage in a sympathetic strike which to him 
 can mean only loss of money, he will even make large contributions to 
 fellow-strikers elsewhere upon which he knows he can get no possible 
 return. Anyone who knows aught of trade unions knows of the re- 
 markable spirit of loyalty to the group and of personal responsibility 
 for its success or failure that permeates every member and makes im- 
 mediate personal advantage a secondary consideration. It is the spirit 
 of the crusader; in our modern civilization it replaces that disinterested 
 devotion that has characterized religious bodies hi the past. It is in 
 many respects even more remarkable; for the martyr went to his death 
 in the full confidence that he was about to be received into the com- 
 munion of the saints. 
 
 In this cardinal instance 'it is clear that both strains, both the motive 
 of individual advantage and that of social idealism, are inextricably 
 
 ' united in the labor movement, that policies begun instinctively in self- 
 preservation have broadened into means for the attainment of a social 
 purpose. It is no less apparent in other phases of labor activity. Closely 
 allied to the cooperation that unionism develops is the equalization of 
 the general standard of living toward which it tends. In the business 
 life of the community the theory upon which men operate is that of 
 
 / "plenty of room at the top." Every man seeks to raise himself above 
 his fellows in the economic scale in the simple confidence that there is a 
 position of eminence awaiting him. So there is just as the presidency 
 awaits every boy. Unfortunately there can be only a small number 
 of presidents in each generation. This truth has impressed itself upon 
 the workers, and their aim is thus to raise all, the great mass of the 
 community, to a higher status, rather than take their chances on in- 
 dividual preeminence. Hence the creation of maximum standards, the 
 dislike of the piece-system and its consequent pace-setter, the discourage- 
 
The Double Strain in the American Labor Movement 89 
 
 ment of too great "individual initiative" when it results in forcing down 
 the standards of the less skilled. In countless ways labor has gradually 
 learned that in the long run it is to the advantage of all its members/ 
 taken as a whole to reduce the difference between the best paid and 
 the worst paid worker. The "aristocrats of labor," the skilled crafts- 
 men, have as machinery replaced handiwork seen their skill grow less 
 and less valuable; they have beheld the constant approach of the lower 
 grades of labor to their own standard as organization of the less skilled 
 has proceeded. In a time of rising prices it is the lowest paid who, if 
 strongly organized, gam the greatest increase in wages. Each broaden- 
 ing of the craft basis has brought a greater proportional advantage to 
 the lower grades. 
 
 This tendency toward equalization has been directly inspired by the ( 
 individual advantage it brings to the unionists, once they have given up 
 the notion of "plenty of room at the top." Its wisdom is apparent in 
 the greatly increased bargaining power of the union. Yet here too what 
 began for personal advantage has been expanded into a very real ideal 
 for the working class. The same group loyalty that grows up withig^ 
 the craft union has overleaped its bounds and tends to include ever 
 larger units. The workers are the best friends of the lowest paid laborers; 
 they are the bitterest opponents of sweating, they lead the way in or- 
 ganizing other trades. Where others are content to commiserate, they 
 are prepared to go on a sympathetic strike, to contribute money, to 
 help in that best of ways, through organizing activity. When the 
 Amalgamated Clothing Workers contributed to the fund of the steel 
 strike in the fall of 1919 one hundred thousand dollars, they merely 
 symbolized in a spectacular fashion the solidarity which is binding all 
 classes of labor together in a social ideal of approximate equality that 
 ideal which the mechanics of the thirties saw as the older Jeffersonian 
 democracy. 
 
 Or take the allied question of the inclusion of various groups within 
 a given labor organization, women, foreigners, negroes, et cetera. The 
 impulse has been at first to exclude them; keep them if possible from 
 engaging in the trade, that the group already organized may not meet 
 their competition. Women have been told to retire to their proper 
 sphere of activity, the home; negroes have been kept in the commonest 
 class of labor. But it soon becomes apparent that it is to the true in- 
 terests of the union, not to exclude, but to include them, not to attempt 
 to drive them from the industry, but to eliminate their competition 
 through securing for them the same wages, and admitting them on a 
 
90 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 basis of equality. From the enemies of these oppressed groups the 
 unions have become their strongest supporters at first largely to 
 
 /secure their own gain. But here once more the motive of individual 
 advantage is speedily supplemented by that of social interest, and the 
 same men who first voted to admit women to their union to secure 
 their own wages are the very ones who later insist on organizing and 
 helping them for their own sakes. Such a policy, originating in a de- 
 sire to increase bargaining power, soon grows into a social ideal advocated 
 
 .and fought for on its own account. 
 
 p Voluntary arbitration is another policy that has secured the support 
 
 \ol both motives of the double strain. It is usually the weaker side to 
 an industrial dispute that proposes arbitration by an impartial third 
 party; that side which trusts to its own strength complains of un- 
 warranted interference in its affairs. Labor seizes upon arbitration 
 when it is weak; yet it also has come to embody an impartial settlement 
 of disputes in its ideal as a social measure. It is the same with that 
 other instrument of orderly progress, the collective agreement. Self- 
 interest advises the keeping of contracts; without a guarantee of ful- 
 fillment collective bargaining becomes obviously impossible. Yet all 
 but the most revolutionary unions jealousy regard their reputation for 
 honesty in abiding by their contracts. If they feel that the employer 
 is attempting to worm out of his agreement, they have no compunction 
 in breaking theirs; it is the spirit and not the letter that claims their 
 allegiance. But if they feel that they are being treated fairly they will 
 play square even to their own loss. Contrary to the popular and care- 
 fully educated public opinion, in the vast majority of cases it is the 
 employer and not the union at all which first violates a collective con- 
 tract. 
 
 Or consider the question of industrial rather than craft unionism 
 of organizing all the workers in an entire industry into one large union 
 rather than breaking them up into numerous small craft groups on the 
 
 * basis of the particular tool they use. With the growth of the subdivision 
 of labor in the machine process and the consequent reduction of the 
 task of every hand to a relatively simple performance, so that strike- 
 breaking is very easy, and with the growth of large combinations of 
 capital controlling entire industries, there is a great bargaining ad- 
 
 [jyantage in being able to mobilize every plant as a unit. From the 
 standpoint of bargaining-power industrial unionism is the most effective 
 
 \ type of organization. It has developed as a fighting weapon, as it alone 
 can control a great mass of relatively unskilled workers. tBut even more 
 
The Double Strain in the American Labor Movement 91 
 
 clear in this case than in the others is the emergence of the social motive: 
 industrial unionism is the best type of union for fighting, but it is at the 
 same time the only type suitable for purposes of production and par- 
 ticipation in the control and management of the industry. Only whe^n^ 
 organized as an industry can the workers learn to think of their union 
 activities as a part of that industry, and to regard themselves as in any 
 sense responsible for furnishing society with the product. It is significant 
 that amongst far-seeing workers it is this consideration even more than 
 that of increased bargaining power that is leading to the rapid spread 
 of industrial unionism. 
 
 These instances are sufficient to indicate the interplay between the 
 two motives; they make plain how actions originating spontaneously 
 for private advantage come to possess social significance and are con- 
 sciously advocated in its behalf. To nearly every policy of the unions 
 both motives have applied. Some men, indeed, have been and will 
 remain actuated almost wholly by the first alone; others place great_ 
 emphasis on the second. ^The relative intensity oi the two at different 
 times of American history Has depended to a large extent upon social v' 
 conditions. When the workers have met the active hostility of the ( 
 employers aided and abetted by the apathy and indifference of the 
 general public, if not its actual enmity, they have naturally tended to 
 fight for their status and to disregard, unless impelled by some magnetic 
 leader, the larger social consequences of their acts. When public interest , 
 has proved more favorable, when strength of organization or weakness 
 of capital has left them a brief respite in their fight for existence, they 
 have uniformly developed an interest in the better functioning of societyj 
 and a regard for far-reaching plans of social modification and control 
 that lends much color to the contention that the labor movement needs 
 but half a chance to become the most forward-looking element of the 
 community, and to surprise even omniscient editors with the breadth f 
 of its sympathies. 
 
 The significance of this interpretation for our main problem is ob- | 
 vious. It means, hi short, that to secure that general feeling of social 
 responsibility, that habit of response, not to pecuniary gain at the ex- 
 pense, tacit or conscious, of the rest of the community, but to the re- 
 quirements of society; to develop an attitude that will make functional 
 service to the community the primary motive in economic life, it is not 
 necessary to attempt the impossible task of creating in the workers' 
 minds something which at present has no existence. Were that the_j( 
 case, were man in no sense a social animal, the future would indeed be as 
 
 
92 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 as we have painteditj The task that actually remains is surely 
 hard^nougn. it is to ioster^what has always been, to a greater or less 
 extent, present in the life of labor groups; it is to endeavor to create 
 conditions favorable to the emergence of the second or socially-visioned 
 strain that has always beein in evidence in the labor movement, to the 
 .end that it may take its proper place beside the first in our economic 
 I life. It is only when the two are entirely merged into one, when there 
 is no longer any question of choice between private advantage and 
 public weal, that man can be said to have reached the ideal set for him 
 by the theorists of nineteenth-century economics. That state is hardly 
 even within sight at present; yet the persistence of the social motive 
 throughout the history of American labor, and especially its vigor at 
 the present moment, give adequate ground for at least setting forth on 
 the difficult road of social readjustment. 
 
6. THE EFFECTS OF THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 
 
 THROUGHOUT the mechanics' movement there was evident beneath 
 the surface, rising now and again to a brief moment of prominence and 
 then sinking back once more to its wonted quiet, the swell of a new 
 factor in industry. It appears in the speeches of delegates to conven- 
 tions as something ominous in the distance, something which their 
 methods failed to touch; and one has the feeling, as one listens to im- 
 passioned demands for the restoration of the good old times of the Dec- 
 laration of Independence, that the more thoughtful workers pause now 
 and again to glance over their shoulders into the misty future, only to 
 hasten to their work lest it be accomplished too late lest this strange 
 new peril arrives before the mechanics have strengthened the bulwarks 
 of democracy. For it seemed as though Jefferson's prescience were in 
 danger of verification; in the outlying towns of New England, in the 
 districts about Philadelphia, there was appearing the advance guard of 
 an enemy far stronger and far more deadly than any the workers or 
 their cherished agricultural democracy had yet encountered, an enemy 
 whose ravages in England caused the American laborer to shudder 
 and pray that by the grace of God he be spared its visitations the 
 factory system. 
 
 No organization existed among the early factory workers; what 
 labor difficulties arose were in the nature of sponteanous turn-outs 
 against some reduction in wages or other interference with wonted 
 custom. Labor was too abundant and skill too little required to give 
 the few employers who were operating mills much trouble. Moreover, 
 the industrial revolution made no very real headway in American life 
 until the fifties, and large scale production did not become general until 
 the Civil War and the industrial era succeeding it. Our internal struggle, 
 which settled the political questions that for so long had been occupy- 
 ing the attention of the nation, marked the real turning point in our 
 economic development; thereafter business enterprise and manufactur- 
 ing initiative became the order of the day. Jefferson's vision of a nation 
 of contented farmers immune from the cities and mill towns of Europe 
 had definitely and irrevocably vanished. Industry had come to stay; 
 if democracy in the older sense were also to remain, it must find some 
 means of reconciling itself with the machine. 
 
94 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 The romantic tale of the industrial revolution has been often re- 
 counted; the grim facts lying behind man's triumphant march of con- 
 quest over the secrets and the treasure-houses of Nature are also known 
 to those who care for such unpleasant details. With them we are not 
 concerned. Our task is rather to examine the changes that were effected 
 in the social situation in which the workers found themselves, changes 
 that made their earlier theories and methods largely irrelevant. We 
 have seen how the mechanics' movement was fought through on a social 
 philosophy that had originated in the mid-eighteenth century; we have 
 seen how it reached before its demise a form that promised to remain 
 stable until some profound change produced an entire realignment of 
 the forces of society. That change came in the industrial revolution; 
 and it is with that realignment that we must now deal. 
 
 The fundamental effect of the industrial revolution was to take the 
 great mass of the people, comparatively undifferentiated and homo- 
 geneous, predominantly agricultural, which in the eighteenth century 
 comprised the overwhelming bulk of the world's population, and to in- 
 troduce within that mass a differentiation of function and a division 
 of labor that made irrelevant the remnants of special classes that hung 
 over from an earlier civilization. In a word, within a body of men which 
 existed with very few relations between its members, which consisted 
 of innumerable small units set down in villages and upon farms through- 
 out the world, all capable of self-support without the aid of their fellows 
 from other units, the industrial revolution effected upon a nation-wide 
 and even a world-wide scale a complete social integration and organiza- 
 tion. The important effect, socially speaking, of the invention of the 
 machine was not the automobile, the telephone, airplane those features 
 of modern civilization which bulk so largely in our imaginations. It 
 was the division of labor and the consequent organization of society into 
 a single unit a unit infinitely larger and infinitely more complex than 
 that ideal of ancient times, the Greek city state. 
 
 But the industrial revolution produced not one, but two entirely dif- 
 ferent bases of differentiation. First, it subdivided the community into 
 a number of industrial groups or vocations on the basis of their function 
 in production; and secondly, it produced a marked stratification into 
 classes on the ground of their relation to the market. The one division 
 runs on lines of industrial technique; it is determined by the machine, 
 by those physical processes necessary to turn raw materials into finished 
 products. The other runs on lines of economic and legal control; it is 
 determined by the laws of property. The one is fixed by man's knowl- 
 
The Effects of the Industrial Revolution 95 
 
 edge of nature, the other, by his social conventions, his experience of 
 human nature. The one is responsive to the trained technical expert; 
 the other, to the collective social will of mankind. 
 
 The first basis of differentiation, the industrial organization and in- 
 terdependence of society, we have already considered. Industrial so- 
 ciety is rapidly approaching the stage when it will become, if indeed it 
 is not already, a single machine in which no part can live isolated from 
 the rest. The elements are functionally differentiated, and therefore 
 are all integral parts of the whole. Certain elements are indeed more 
 fundamental than others: a man can live without arms or legs, but not 
 without a head. Yet such a piece of living flesh is hardly a man; and 
 a society restricted entirely to its so-called "essential industries" for 
 any length of time would resemble a bee-hive rather than a human 
 community. The loss of any single part is a direct loss to the whole; 
 the loss of many parts makes the life of the whole impossible. 
 
 There thus exist exceedingly powerful common interests in favor of 
 the harmonious functioning of all parts of society; otherwise the entire 
 machine disintegrates. Were this the only type of division that existed 
 in society, the vision of perfect and harmonious cooperation that hovered 
 before the eyes of the early political economists and their liberal followers 
 might long ago have been achieved. 
 
 But in striking contrast to the industrial technique that demands 
 unity of purpose and cooperation is the economic system that reflects 
 the most divergent of opposing and conflicting interests. This cuts 
 squarely across the other division lines and creates great classes of men 
 upon the basis of the relative distribution of the spoils of man's cam- 
 paign against nature. These classes are three in number: the employers, 
 or "capital"; the wageworkers, or "labor"; and that much misunder- 
 stood group, the "public. " As members of the community organized 
 as a machine for the production of the necessities of civilization, all 
 these classes of course have the great common interest of aiding and 
 forwarding the cooperation of all that the social machine may function 
 efficiently; but as members of their respective classes, their interests are 
 at times diametrically opposed. Let us examine these conflicts of in- 
 terest in some detail. 
 
 The interests of the employers are at bottom to sell their products 
 in the market at such a price as to make the largest possible profit. 
 The profit depends upon the difference between the cost of the article 
 and the price at which it can be sold. Hence it is their interest to re- 
 duce costs to the minimum and to raise prices to the maximum possible. 
 
96 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 In a competitive market this margin of profit tends to become as slight 
 as will induce men to engage in the industry, and they aim to increase their 
 gain by producing more articles upon which to make this small profit. 
 But there is a practical limit to the amount of any commodity which 
 any community can, under given conditions, absorb; and this limit is 
 in practice soon approached. The employer then finds it to his interest 
 to increase his price; and to do so he must either agree with or combine 
 with his competitors to secure a price that will give them a "fair profit. " 
 This combination, whether it takes the form of a monopoly or not, by 
 relieving the individual manufacturer from competition at the same 
 time makes it possible for him to increase his price to what he thinks 
 "the traffic will bear." That this course of action is pursued, and 
 pursued to the marked gain of the employer and the expense of every- 
 one else, needs no proof in these post-war days of the profiteers. All 
 that must be pointed out is the exceeding difficulty of deciding when a 
 "fair price" becomes "profiteering." 
 
 So long as the market is a strongly competitive one, the interests of 
 the employer are pretty much one with those of the consumer in pro- 
 ducing excellent goods at the lowest profits and prices. But no one 
 thrives on "cut-rates" and "price- wars"; some effective form of agree- 
 ment is bound to result, and in the measure that it does the interest of 
 the employer diverges from that of the public. "It is a fundamental 
 law that production is always a question of profit," authoritatively 
 announces the president of the United States Steel Corporation, and he 
 ought to know. 1 It is carried on first, last, and all the time, not for the 
 needs of the community, but for the market. Profit is primary, service 
 secondary. The higher the price, the greater the profit to an industry 
 that has eliminated competition if its product be a necessity. And 
 since by a well-known principle of economics prices can be raised either 
 by increasing the demand or by reducing the supply, the capitalist does 
 not hesitate to employ both methods indiscriminately. Hence modern 
 advertising; and hence the interesting device of curtailing production, 
 shutting down the plant, in order to "steady the market" and keep 
 prices up. 
 
 The interests of the employer, who produces for the market, are thus 
 often if not fundamentally opposed to those of the public of consumers. 
 They lie in increasing prices; whereas the latter's lie in reducing them. 
 It is needless to add, also, the inefficiency and waste, from the stand- 
 point of production, entailed by a system which takes no account of the 
 1 J. A. Farrell, quoted in Gleason, What the Workers Want, 9. 
 
The Effects of the Industrial Revolution 97 
 
 varied needs of consumers, but throws upon the market products which 
 bring good profits rather than products which are required. Thus, for 
 instance, farmers everywhere are flocking into automobile factories 
 while the cost of food rises higher and higher. This lack of intelligent 
 adaptation of means to end is another instance of the disparity of in- 
 terests between employer and public. 
 
 But the interests of the capitalist were twofold: not only to increase 
 prices, but also to reduce costs. It is of the essence of the present in- 
 dustrial system that it regards labor as an element in the costs rather 
 than in the profits. Consequently it is the employers' interest to pay 
 their employees the lowest possible wage consonant with the maximum 
 of productivity; to get the most for the least cost, the greatest return 
 for the smallest wage. In general, it has been found that higher 
 wages give the more efficient results, though this is by no means fully 
 conceded and in many industries is not true. Slavery, for instance, 
 insures a supply of cheap labor, but that labor is not efficient and re- 
 quires expenses for upkeep when it is not needed as well as when it is. 
 Production for the market necessitates periods of full operation and 
 periods of small output, good times followed by periodic depressions. 
 It is therefore to the interests of the employer to have a very flexible 
 supply of labor to which he can turn at once when he needs help but 
 which shall be no expense to him when he does not. The free man has 
 the advantage over the slave of not requiring any upkeep unless he is 
 actually employed, besides being more productive when he is working 
 (if not made lazy with too high pay). Hence the employer wants a la- 
 bor market plentifully supplied with men willing to work at the wages 
 offered; and this inevitably entails a mass of unemployed when business 
 is not at its peak. The hordes of migratory laborers in the west who 
 drift from mine to farm and from farm to lumber camp are only an ex- 
 treme example of a situation to gladden the heart of any employer. 
 
 But great an improvement as the free laborer is over the slave, and 
 valuable as is his advantage over the machine of not tieing up capital 
 when he is not being used, he does have certain disadvantages. He is 
 prone to hearken to agitators, to become restless and cause annoying 
 difficulties; a machine is always docile and dependable. Hence of late 
 it has seemed worth while to take measures to keep the workers con- 
 tented; it does seem extravagant, of course, but hi the long run it in- 
 creases efficiency and reduces costs. After all, men require as great 
 care and attention as machines; and so the most up-to-date employers 
 have installed labor managers to cultivate the human machine, and 
 
98 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 through scientifically managing their workers seek to produce contented 
 and dependable machine-tenders, an enterprise perhaps most exten- 
 sively carried on at Gary, Indiana. 
 
 In general, then, the interests of the employer as against those of his 
 employees are to obtain at the lowest prices consonant with efficiency 
 reliable machines that will not tie up capital when not working but can 
 be secured in a well-stocked market at the desired low cost. 
 
 The second class that has resulted from the industrial revolution is 
 that of the wage-workers. Dependent upon the wage-system for their 
 existence, living from hand to mouth, at the employer's mercy in bar- 
 gaining for a wage since they know that if they reject the wages he offers 
 someone else will snap up the opportunity, they are always on the brink 
 of unemployment, always fearful lest they lose their jobs and face star- 
 vation. They have very little reserve to fall back upon; when wages 
 stop they are at the employer's mercy as soon as their week's credit 
 runs out. In April, 1920, the average weekly wage for factory workers 
 hi New York State was $28.45, which, even were unemployment abso- 
 lutely eliminated, and work continuous, which it never is, would amount 
 to but $1491.40 a year and the minimum amount necessary to sup- 
 port a family in decency in that month was calculated as $2250, a year. 1 
 The labor turn-over, besides, is immense, in some plants as high as two 
 and three hundred per cent a year, which means that a job lasts no lon- 
 ger than a few months. 
 
 No longer is the bulk of the working class made up of the skilled ar- 
 tisan. The subdivision of function and the increasing application of 
 machinery has not yet eliminated all skill from the worker's life, but 
 its result has been to create a mass of machine tenders men and 
 women whose sole duty is to stand by a whirring machine hour after hour 
 and with monotonous regularity make a few simple motions over and 
 over again. Highly specialized and differentiated, with perhaps hun- 
 dreds of distinct operations necessary to produce the finished product, 
 the workers are yet coming to be all equally unskilled and every day 
 a new machine is installed to eliminate some process requiring intel- 
 lectual effort and "save labor," which means to save wages. 
 
 Moreover the industrial revolution has in America called forth a flood 
 of cheap alien labor, in part imported to keep the labor market well 
 supplied, in part attracted by promises of the golden age. These aliens 
 have commonly lacked the old American native spirit of social equal- 
 ity; they have brought with them a habit of class consciousness and 
 1 Bureau of Statistics, State Industrial Commission, N. Y. Times, July 3, 1920. 
 
The Effects of the Industrial Revolution 99 
 
 solidarity within the class which is weighty with both good and ill for 
 the future. They have brought foreign philosophies, foreign reactions, 
 foreign ways of thinking. All of these things are profoundly important 
 when we remember that in our basic industries some 60% of the work- 
 ers are foreign-born. 
 
 The interests of this great class do not, it is true, in the long run 
 clash with those of the public; they themselves form too large a portion 
 of the public to permit that. But at times and in groups they seem to 
 oppose them the public at least feels itself immediately attacked. 
 They demand first of all a living wage, a wage that may increase the 
 price of the product for the consumer; and though it ought to be obvi- 
 ous that it is to the advantage of society to produce its commodities at 
 a sufficient remuneration to the workers to preserve their social well- 
 being, it seldom strikes the public in this light. An increase in wages 
 does generally mean an increase in prices; this the public cannot forgive. 
 
 Moreover, it is the interest of the wage-earner to raise his standard 
 of living; and more leisure may mean lessened production, scarcity, 
 and perhaps famine prices. The solution is of course to divert more 
 men into that industry; but the inefficient system of social control and 
 the interconnection of this with other problems seems at times to pre- 
 clude such a course. An eight-hour day rather than a twelve in the 
 steel industry, just when the public finds its immediate interest in re- 
 ducing the cost of motor cars and structural steel for building houses, 
 just when the world so urgently needs steel the public has little sym- 
 pathy with the steel- workers ' desire to raise their standards. 
 
 But the sharpest clash comes over the means and not over the end. 
 The weapon of labor is the strike war, industrial dislocation, the curtail- 
 ment of production and the consequent inconveniencing of the public. It 
 may be to the ultimate advantage of the consumer to raise the workers' 
 standards; it is never to his advantage to suffer from a strike. The public 
 at best only tolerates strikes; if they touch it in any vital spot, it at once 
 becomes more hostile than the employers. It will force a settlement in 
 the quickest manner possible. The workers strike, knowing that the 
 public will force a settlement and believing it will be easier to coerce the 
 employers than themselves. 
 
 But the fundamental opposition is that between wage-earners and 
 employers. In the modern economic organization it is easy to prove that 
 the employer can under no circumstances get along without the worker, 
 that the interests of capital and labor are one to the extent that it is 
 capital's interest to give the worker what he wants and get his profit from 
 
ioo The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 the consumer. But it is far more difficult to show how the capitalist is 
 necessary to the worker. Capital, indeed, is as necessary as labor, capital 
 as the machine and the raw material, the physical side of industry, capital 
 as the knowledge of the technique of organization and production. But 
 the capitalist as the one and only source of the necessary capital that 
 involves a long and laborious justification in intricate economic theory, 
 and even then it fails to appeal with the sense of a priori necessity. 
 
 If it is to the employer's advantages to pay his workers as small a 
 wage as possible with high efficiency, it is to the workers' to receive as 
 much as possible. The issue is direct. There are limits, of course; just as 
 it seems unwise to reduce wages to a point where no men will accept work, 
 so it is foolish, under our modern system, to raise them to a point where 
 no men will furnish capital. But within limits the two interests are 
 mutually exclusive; and there is the further disquieting thought that 
 while the capitalist may be the best source of capital, he is by no means 
 the only one. There appears, indeed, no theoretical reason why one man 
 or one group of men should not combine in their persons the function of 
 both workers and capitalists, and thereby add to the wages of the laborer 
 the profit of the capitalist. In the measure that this theoretical possi- 
 bility becomes practicable, the very existence of the capitalist grows 
 inimical to the interest of labor. 
 
 Labor thus seeks an ever larger share of the product of industry, an 
 ever rising standard of living. It also demands permanency and security 
 of employment, thus conflicting with another of capital's interests, a very 
 elastic labor supply. So long as production is carried on for the market, 
 with its periodic fluctuations, its surpluses and its depressions, the de- 
 mand for security will oppose the desire to lay off workers in slack season, 
 to reduce wages, and to force overtime at the peak. 
 
 There is a third point of conflict: capital requires complete docility and 
 obedience. The more closely a laborer can be made to resemble a ma- 
 chine, the greater the consequent profit. Hence the recent vogue of 
 "scientific management," the reduction of the few remaining elements of 
 skill and personal initiative that machine tending has left the worker to a 
 routine-like monotony of repetition. The elimination of the unreliable 
 human factor just so far as possible this is the ideal of the modern 
 factory and its owner. To this the worker flatly opposes a demand for 
 the opportunity of self-expression, a refusal to become mechanized and 
 to be made the slave of any system. A recent advertisement urges the 
 installation of water-coolers throughout offices so as to do away with the 
 wasteful habit of conversation and relaxation in a trip to the washroom. 
 
The Effects of the Industrial Revolution 101 
 
 If this spirit typifies even our office procedure, how much more do we seek 
 to destroy in our factories this inefficient failing of the human being to 
 attain the perfection of iron and steel! The worker is willing to sacrifice 
 great financial gain to preserve some remnant of his personality; the 
 employer has little interest but his profit. 
 
 The third class to which we have referred was not, strictly speaking, 
 a direct product of the industrial revolution. The best definition of that 
 elusive entity, "the public," is that it consists of those who are left 
 over when capitalist and laborer have been subtracted. In any specific 
 sense it comprises, first, the farmers, then the professional and salaried 
 classes, the artists, writers, and "intellectuals," and a portion of the 
 business and commercial classes the clerks, the tradesmen, and other 
 miscellaneous categories coming under what the French call la petite 
 bourgeoisie. In general, " the public " consists of all those varied elements 
 of society not yet caught up directly in the industrial machine, including 
 most of those engaged in our manifold machinery of distribution. It is 
 the "middle class" between the employer and the wage-earner. By 
 definition, with the advance of the industrial revolution it is constantly 
 decreasing, as tenant farming or the application of capitalism to agricul- 
 ture grows, as industrial unionism with its constant inclusion of hitherto 
 unattached classes gains power. As this process continues "the public" 
 ceases to be composed of distinct individuals, and tends more and more to 
 give place to the community considered in the light of one of its interests, 
 consumption. Even today the term "the public" as commonly used 
 implies "the consumer"; its individual members are usually allied 
 indirectly in interest and directly in sympathy with either capital or 
 labor. 
 
 The interest of "the public" or the community as consumer is simple: 
 the uninterrupted production of the greatest possible number of com- 
 modities at the cheapest possible prices. Since in a competitive market, 
 this interest merges into that of the capitalist, the public favors "trust 
 busting " and the " good old days." But in agreeing with the capitalist it 
 clashes violently with labor; and since labor is increasingly becoming 
 identical with the public, a conflict of class interest tends to merge into a 
 conflict of motives within the individual. And in so far as the public is 
 composed of a distinct class, its interests are opposed to both high prices 
 and high wages, and irrevocably to strikes. 
 
 We have now completed our survey of the conflicts of interest between 
 the three classes produced by the industrial revolution. But while such 
 an analysis of interests is most suggestive, it by no means follows that 
 
102 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 these interests play the only or even the main part in social life. The 
 one fact that the nineteenth century taught the eighteenth in social 
 theory, and that our modern social psychology seems to be establishing 
 upon a firm basis, is that men's actions rarely proceed from a rational 
 consideration of their interests; that they often, in fact, run directly 
 counter to their personal advantage. Interest, it is true, does play a most 
 important part, but only as it forms the foundation for what men believe 
 their interests to be; here as so often in man's life the belief is practically 
 far more significant than the actual fact. Moreover there are a thousand 
 considerations that enter into the humanistic logic of the industrial 
 situation to modify or even to nullify some of the considerations already 
 alleged; and hence it will be necessary to examine once again these three 
 classes, this time with a view, not to what the objective facts of the 
 situation are, but to what the very human individuals concerned imagine 
 them to be and how they react to them. Let us consider the psychological 
 effects of the industrial revolution upon the three economic classes it 
 produced. And here again we cannot do more than represent typical 
 states of mind, which in their entirety probably find exemplification hi no 
 single individual. 
 
 The employer has, in general, preserved both the method and the 
 accompanying state of mind of the early American pioneer. When the 
 frontiersman could look around his clearing in the forest and reflect upon 
 the riches that his individual strength and skill had been able to wring 
 from the reluctant grasp of Nature, he assuredly had that strongest of all 
 psychological bases for affirming the divine right of property, the con- 
 sciousness of wealth entirely the product of work well done. What 
 wonder that a Jim Hill, surveying the empire of the Northwest, should 
 feel that even though the capital he started in with was considerably less 
 than nothing, he had well earned the right to consider most of the North- 
 west as his property, morally as well as legally? And the history of 
 American industry was in the last century largely just such a story of 
 huge raids upon nature conducted by men of "masterful personality." 
 That type of industrial enterprise has today largely disappeared, but the 
 attitude of mind that went with it is still the dominant attitude of Jim 
 Hill's successors. 
 
 The strongest factor in the employer's mind is his profound sense of 
 property rights. "This is my own business," he feels, " I have created it 
 and built it up, and it belongs to me to do with as I will. Ask me humbly 
 for what you want, and I may give it to you if I feel like it; demand any- 
 thing of mine as a right, and I'll show you who has the law on his side 
 
The Effects of the Industrial Revolution 103 
 
 when it comes to rights! " He resents any interference on the part of the 
 public and its politicians. " Think of crack-brained theorists coming 
 around to tell me how to run my own business! Let the public keep off ! " 
 And even more incensed is he at similar attempts on the part of "his 
 men." "What right have my men got to interfere with the conduct of 
 my business? They owe their support to the wages I give them, and then 
 they dare prescribe to me how I shall run my plant! " There is no single 
 worker he needs; they all need him. "If you don't like the pay, get out! 
 There are plenty of other jobs for you." But of course not in that indus- 
 try; "undesirables" are well provided against. What angers him more 
 than anything else, however, is to be told whom he shall and whom he 
 shall not employ. The right of discharge, the right of "hiring and firing," 
 is, with reason, the most precious of all to him : for he has by it absolute 
 power over the income of his employees. It is to him what the right to 
 strike is to the worker, except that it is immensely stronger. 
 
 It is true that in these days of great corporations, of boards of directors 
 and of "public service," few employers care to give vent publicly to 
 such sentiments. Nowadays it is not the rights of the business man that 
 are aired; industry has become instead one great charitable enterprise 
 wholeheartedly devoted to the support of indigent widows and orphans. 
 Though it break their hearts the men at the head of modern corporations 
 are unable to grant the demands of their men and of the public; they have 
 a great sacred trust to think always of the wolf at the door of the lone 
 widow. And probably a large part of their solicitude is quite genuine; 
 though one wishes it were more in evidence during transactions in high 
 finance upon the stock-market. But in the case of the men at the head of 
 industries the position of trustee has not altered their basic sense of 
 personal proprietorship. The determining motives lying back of their 
 actions are fundamentally those more candidly expressed a generation 
 ago. 
 
 Second only to this sense of ownership is the desire to secure the 
 maximum of production, both in hours and by the piece, at the minimum 
 cost. This translates itself into a feeling of the sanctity of conditions 
 established at an earlier period. It is not "right" for men to want to 
 stop work when the machines are willing to go on turning out salable 
 products. It is not " right " for them to want more time oft for lunch, and 
 as for the five-day week such blasphemy against the moral laws of the 
 universe is stupefying. Every minute taken from possible work is a 
 minute robbed from the employer's profits. 
 
 Nor is it right for a wage-earner to receive more than a certain amount 
 
104 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 a week. That men who work with their hands should be able to afford 
 diamonds, to dress as well as their employers, to enjoy the luxury of an 
 auto such a state of affairs is utterly subversive of the moral order. 
 Workingmen have always been accustomed to a certain standard; if a rise 
 in prices necessitates a rise in wages to preserve a standard, that, while 
 foolish and to be opposed, is nevertheless understandable. But that a 
 common workingman should desire to improve his standard, to live 
 better than he is living, that is far too revolutionary for any employing 
 mind to grasp. Not that the owner of the mill would deny to any man 
 the right to rise in the world, to reach the stupendous success of million- 
 airedom; that is the goal still freely offered to all Americans. But the rise 
 to luxury must be by way of the approved "up from the masses" path; 
 the worker must himself become an employer. That he should achieve 
 a measure of luxury and still remain a worker is not to be tolerated; that 
 the masses themselves should rise is unthinkable. 
 
 Firm as is the conviction of the ultimate Tightness of " reasonable 
 wages " and "honest work " to keep the cosmos in order, the obvious facts 
 of the increase of efficiency that comes with a higher standard have 
 finally managed to penetrate most minds. Overwork, under-nourish- 
 ment, and ill-health are qualities that men can be taught to regard as 
 undesirable in employees as in other cattle. The striking success of 
 ventures like Robert Owen's and Henry Ford's aids a latent sense of 
 humanitarianism, although there exists the lurking suspicion that it is not 
 "right" to treat mere laborers so well: it is sooner or later bound to 
 "spoil" them. There is indeed much experience to fortify such a con- 
 clusion. "Welfare work" and high wages rarely succeed in keeping men 
 "contented." They tend rather to provoke thought and to lead to new 
 demands; hence, thinks the employer, a compromise had best be struck' 
 somewhere between sweatshop methods and lavish paternalism. 
 
 This eternal Tightness of the established distinctions rests upon a 
 generally frank and candid acceptance of an aristocratic absolutism as 
 the only method for governing industry. No employer can understand 
 the charge that he is seeking to "oppress" his men, to keep them down 
 and deprive them of opportunities for advancement. He knows he is 
 always eagerly searching for "good men," for men who have in them the 
 stuff of employers like himself. The employer is on the lookout for 
 "strong men," executives, bosses, foreman, managers, and other capable 
 exponents of his ideas and masterful lieutenants for his purposes. These 
 he is willing to aid by promoting them to his own class; and in the past 
 the men perhaps most able to direct and guide the forces of labor, some- 
 
The Effects of the Industrial Revolution 105 
 
 ics unconsciously, sometimes with conscious purpose, have been 
 drawn off in just such a manner. 
 
 But together with the willingness to recognize native ability wherever 
 found is coupled the equally firm conviction that the great mass of work- 
 ers are distinctly inferior men, capable only of being led and directed. 
 Immigration has added racial to economic prejudice; the workers are 
 foreigners, hunkies, dagoes, hardly human beings. Americans and able 
 men in general are alone able to carry on industry; without this leaven in 
 the mass the country would crumble to ruins. What use is it to talk 
 about other "systems" of economic life? No system could alter the fact 
 that the many must toil and suffer while the few control, direct, and reap 
 the advantage. The city states of ancient times had no firmer supporter 
 of the theory of natural aristocracy than the magnates of the industrial 
 age. The best are on top; the rest owe them implicit obedience. 
 
 But this faith in aristocracy has not yet become attached to a heredi- 
 tary institution. It is tempered by a strong belief in the efficacy of 
 natural selection. Let things work out for themselves; provided no one 
 interferes, the good will be bound to rise to the surface. The honest 
 and capable workman will succeed; at least, the workman possessed of 
 the energy and personal initiative requisite to be a leader in the modern 
 age. " I succeeded. Why not other good men? " There is a sincere 
 belief in the moral duty of laisser-faire and of competition to weed out 
 the unfit. Yet at the same time the sancity of private property is firmly 
 upheld, and men are ever ready to resort to the courts and to the govern- 
 ment when a too generous policy of laisser-faire seems to be going against 
 them. For the widows and orphans, of course, require careful protection. 
 And lastly there is a sense of benevolent paternalism which every 
 employer feels to some extent towards his employees. It is to him as 
 though somehow he is conducting a great philanthropic enterprise for 
 the sake of his mill-hands. "I am giving (sic) them work; they ought to 
 be profoundly grateful to me for it. Where would they be if I had not 
 taken them in, clothed them and fed them? And now they show no 
 gratitude at all they want more! With all I'm doing for them, with 
 my new rest-room and the sanitary wash-room, they must be thoroughly 
 contented!" And although in his heart he knows he would never have 
 provided better working conditions had not his expert proved how 
 greatly they would increase his output, he regards every outlay made on 
 the health and well-being of his employees as somehow a direct gift to 
 them. In the face of the most direct testimony he cannot conceive that 
 his men are discontented. "They have absolutely no grievance; I am 
 
io6 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 doing everything for them." All labor unrest is due to malicious inter- 
 ference from the outside: self-seeking labor agitators, walking-delegates, 
 foreign gold, alien spies there is nothing too extreme or too fantastic 
 for him to assign as the cause of the otherwise quite unaccountable 
 unrest among his men. Perhaps he is seeking to salve his own conscience 
 and arguing as much to convince himself as anyone else. For the sake 
 of his workers themselves and their own interests, which he alone knows 
 best, he seeks, like the coal companies of West Viriginia or like the Steel 
 Corporation to build a wall around his plant and keep the men pure 
 and undefiled. Keep off the agitator, and he will be glad to improve the 
 lot of his men in any way than will not affect his profits. 
 
 Such is the portrait of the type "employer," repeated with variations 
 in countless factories, and happily already disappearing in many. Es- 
 sentially a product of the industrial revolution, he is confronted by 
 another product, the worker. In the life of the worker the fundamental 
 fact is insecurity insecurity and instability. From a society founded 
 on status, said Maine, we have progressed to one founded on contract. 
 This progress means for the worker that no longer can he count, as once 
 he did, upon nature to furnish her crops with approximate regularity* 
 He must always have a job; when he has none he must get one, when he 
 has got one he must keep it. Any moment he may fall from the ranks 
 of the wage-earners and join the want of the unemployed. Fear is his 
 dominant motive fear of losing his job. It is little wonder the motive 
 to "make work" to produce less than he otherwise might so as to 
 stretch out his job is very strong; mistaken as it may be, it is the 
 workers' form of thrift and providing for the morrow. The future hangs 
 over him threateningly like a dark cloud not the future of old age, or 
 even of next year, but the future of next month, of next week, of tomorrow. 
 Everything must give way to the course of immediate advantage. Only 
 as he gains a more settled position is he able to take a longer and more 
 comprehensive view. Hence his readiness to snatch at any stabilizing 
 factor offered him. Benefits, workman's insurance, pensions if only 
 they be immediate enough he eagerly grasps them. Old-age pensions, 
 being more remote, make less appeal. 
 
 The worker fears nothing so much as losing his job; he hates nothing 
 so much as working on it. His loathing for the machine and for the daily 
 task of tending it becomes at time unbearable. Fortunately stern 
 necessity usually soon dulls his sensibilities. No one who has not worked 
 nine or ten hours in a modern factory, with its ceaseless whirring of 
 machinery, its unending noise, its atmosphere of monotonous repetition, 
 
The Effects of the Industrial Revolution 107 
 
 above all the impression it gives of never ceasing or altering its pace for 
 a single minute; no one who does not know what it is to feel that you 
 cannot stop, cannot slow down, cannot spurt a little and then rest, that 
 you must become another creature of tireless iron limbs like your pace- 
 maker, can realize the horror with which men come to regard the fac- 
 tory. The moment the worker enters the door his personality departs 
 and his individuality, whatever remnants he is able to preserve outside, 
 oozes away, leaving him worse than a machine a machine's slave. 
 Most workers manage to achieve a patient endurance; with the years 
 their first rebellion is deadened. But many can never adapt themselves 
 to it; their natures demand some change and excitement, they remain 
 on one job for a new months, then drift away to another. Hence in 
 part our tremendous labor turn-over. Hatred of machine-tending can 
 overcome even fear of losing one's job. 
 
 Modern civilization has yet to meet the human problem of the ma- 
 chine. The worker can think only in terms of shorter hours, more 
 lesiure for relaxation; how to get away from the machine as long as 
 possible. His individual initiative and responsibility are slowly crushed 
 and atrophied; they are not required to watch machines. He develops 
 oftentimes a dull stolid sense of despair; of the utter futility of attempting 
 to think ahead to the morrow. The machines will go on on on , 
 and he will go on on on with them until he is no longer wanted. 
 What can a man do against those iron masters? It is useless to attempt 
 to change the " system " ; it is irrevocably fixed by a malignant destiny. 
 It will go on and on until and it is just in this attitude of mind that the 
 Marxian sweep of history finds its strongest support among the 
 workers until something happens. The machines finally break; 
 will not the Great Machine break too, with a resounding crash? 
 Until then we must push, pull, screw, push, pull, screw, push, pull, 
 screw, 
 
 This is the usual result among the older men and women; with the 
 young folks nature is stronger. A day's life must be crowded into a few 
 hours of evening; when work is at last over flesh and blood rebounds 
 all the more strongly. Excitement, artificial pleasure, the movie, the 
 dance-hall these are the only available outlets. What wonder that 
 carpe diem reigns as the philosophy of most young workers that im- 
 providence and extravagance are the dominant strain in their lives? 
 It is at least better than the dull despair of their elders. 
 
 One determination is left not to allow any decrease in their standard 
 of life if it can possibly be avoided, not to sink any lower into the pit. 
 
 
io8 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 And coupled with this is an intense yearning for improvement, a dim 
 hope of eventually rising above their squalid surroundings. As despair 
 of ever lifting themselves out alone takes possession of them, their 
 hopes and desires pass over into a great passion for social change. The 
 father will toil and save "that my children may not have to go through 
 what I have gone through"; but when he fails he turns, and even more 
 his children turn, to rising riot above but with their fellows. Apocalyptic 
 visions of a future life on earth appeal to the young; they at least fur- 
 nish an outlet for the pent-up emotions and the suppressed desires 
 crushed by the machine. Utopias arise again and again as a way of 
 relief and a dream of consolidation. Some men prefer the romance of 
 Marx to the romance of the movies. It is indeed strange how much of 
 patient thought is left over for devotion to practicable schemes for 
 action. 
 
 Gradually the hatred of the machine crystallizes into a hatred of the 
 entire system; it comes to be symbolized in hatred of the "capitalist," 
 regarded as the devilish fiend who invented and applied the system 
 rather than as the entirely unintentional profiter by it. The impersonal 
 economic conflict becomes personalized; it is treated in terms of love 
 and hate, of will and purpose, when both sides are largely irresponsible 
 for their actions. Against the "capitalist" the worker unites in mind 
 if not in fact. The group loyalty that arises within a small body of 
 workers, with its deep hatred of the crime of scabbing or treason and its 
 substitution of cooperation for competition, gradually spreads to larger 
 and larger groups, while at the same time the forces of social loyalty 
 and patriotism seem to shrink to the same compass, and the two unite 
 in devotion to class. As society comes to be regarded as a battle-field, 
 and life a struggle against the capitalists, more and more stress is laid 
 on the virtues of combat: treachery, treason, failure to cooperate, be- 
 come the supreme crimes, and loyalty and self-sacrifice the supreme 
 virtues. The solidarity of labor increases; class consciousness comes to 
 dominate its actions. Within the group, individual aims are subordinated 
 to group aims; outside, the latter are supreme. And they are a desire 
 for security and for improved and eventually equal status. 
 
 In describing the attitude of "the public" the peculiar indefiniteness 
 surrounding that body makes generalizing difficult. If it be regarded as 
 the entire community taken as consumer, its mind is obviously pro- 
 foundly modified by its other interests. Perhaps the largest single item 
 going to make up the attitude of "the public" is the oracular voice of 
 the metropolitan editor; for those whose business does not lead them to 
 
The Effects of the Industrial Revolution 109 
 
 take sides directly it is the molding force. It has taught them that 
 they have paramount interests that are apt to coincide with those of 
 the capitalists. 
 
 But in so far as "the public" represents an independent attitude, it 
 is in general one of absolute indifference to industrial struggles. Es- 
 pecially is this true of the farmer, who in economic disputes does not 
 usually suffer any inconvenience. But at times the public gives an im- 
 pulsive, unreasoning, and usually not very long sustained approbation 
 to the efforts of the "oppressed" to obtain "justice" to the desire of 
 the classes worst off to rise to the level of their fellow-workers. Its hu- 
 manitarian motives are easily aroused and as easily extinguished; and 
 it is of course the aim of both employer and employee to manipulate 
 this impulse to his own advantage. For while capital can win a strike 
 against public opinion, such an achievement is very difficult indeed for 
 labor. And while the public will support labor so long as it thinks it is 
 trying to approximate the standards of the better-paid workers, when 
 any attempt is made to raise those standards themselves the public at 
 once ceases to sympathize and regards the union as a monopoly bent 
 on raising prices. It is this fact that in a strike forms the basis of the 
 propaganda campaigns on both sides; if the workers can make it appear 
 that they have been markedly worse off than most of their fellows, the 
 sympathy of the public is assured. 
 
 But when once the interests or the convenience of the public them- 
 selves are touched, which with the growing industrialization and organ- 
 ization of society is bound to become increasingly frequent, the public 
 is aroused to a self-interest far surpassing that of the capitalist him- 
 self, a self-interest all the stronger in its supreme and unintelligent short- 
 sightedness. It demands cheapness and low prices for the present, no 
 matter what the ultimate results; the treatment of government em- 
 ployees is a significant case in point. The postal clerks, the federal em- 
 ployees, the school-teachers, are all woefully underpaid, and the future 
 of the country is jeopardized to save a cent or two on the tax-rate. 
 That its passion for cheapness is not partial, but falls alike on the em- 
 ployer and the laborer, is shown by its attitude toward street-car fares. 
 It is willing to disrupt service and drive companies into bankruptcy 
 and suspension before it will consent to a rise in fares. 
 
 The supreme disregard the public displays of other interests has a 
 most important bearing on the state-ownership plans of the socialists. 
 President Gompers was right in the Montreal convention of the A. F. 
 L. in calling attention to the danger that confronts workers under 
 
no The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 this type of government ownership. It may not be so conclusive 
 as he imagines, but it should at least give pause to too eager 
 reformers. 
 
 But where the public is most concerned is in the industrial disputes 
 growing out of the use of labor 's weapon, the strike. As strikes become 
 more and more inconveniencing, as all industries increasingly take on 
 the nature of public service utilities, the public 's wrath is aroused. It 
 demands unconditional peace, peace at any price. "Settle the strike 
 at once, and let none ever happen again," is its immediate verdict, un- 
 tainted by any knowledge of actual conditions. Of all the vast and in- 
 tricate problems of economic adjustment that makes strikes at times 
 the lesser of two evils, it knows not a whit and cares less. Of the justice 
 or injustice of the contentions of the two disputants, it is quite oblivi- 
 ous; it is equally willing to pass Adamson laws or enjoin coal-miners, 
 if it can only preserve the peace. 
 
 This powerful engine will serve those who are able to manipulate it. 
 The strategy is to make it appear that it is the other side that is pre- 
 venting a settlement, or that is the easier to bludgeon into quietude. 
 So far the employers have generally been able to utilize this desire for 
 peace at all costs in their own interests, but it is equally possible for 
 labor, as it increases in strength, to compel an outraged public to force 
 the acceptance of its demands. The difficulty of coercing a functional 
 group will make it easier and easier to compel the employers to give way 
 for the public weal. For the public is ever crying, "Peace! Peace! 
 Peace at any price!" 
 
 This, then, has been the most important social consequence of the 
 industrial revolution: this stratification of society into great classes 
 whose interests are far from identical and whose frequent clashes fre- 
 quently upset the delicate workings of that other great organization, 
 the industrial machine. Without a knowledge of these classes and their 
 attitudes it is impossible to understand the modern labor movement 
 or its aims. But before preceding to the activities which men facing 
 these conditions have been led to engage in, let us pause to ask what 
 the effect has been on the traditional American social ideal. An agri- 
 cultural democracy was what our country first aimed to be; an 
 agricultural democracy was the goal of the mechanics' movement. 
 How has that ideal been modified? What is left of the old farmer 
 equality? 
 
 Assuredly the Yankee farmer type has almost disappeared; industry 
 demands specialization, differentiation, the antithesis of the all-around 
 
The Effects of the Industrial Revolution 1 1 1 
 
 jack-of-all-trades. And between the classes, between different capi- 
 talists and between the various members of "the public" there are 
 chasms so wide that it seems sheer folly even to mention equality. The 
 goods of life were probably never so unevenly distributed as today. 
 Yet nevertheless we have seen how within the laboring class this ap- 
 proximate equality is steadily growing equality no longer of simi- 
 larity but equality of the parts of an organic whole. And as an ideal it 
 is more potent than ever, because it has been stripped of the elements 
 of sameness and identity of function to become one of equality of value 
 and of worth. And already the gap formerly existing between the 
 "public" as a whole and the worker has been closed in; doctors and 
 bricklayers enjoy not dissimilar incomes. 
 
 Liberty, essentially a relation between equals, has suffered more se- 
 riously from the disparity between the classes. It has tended to relapse 
 into the older "liberty" of the bellum omnium contra omnes; economic 
 aristocracy has played havoc with the pioneer's freedom. The liberty of 
 doing as one likes has disappeared with industrial organization, and as 
 yet little of the liberty of free cooperation has taken its place. The older 
 "rights", notably the "freedom of contract", have been kept alive 
 largely in the interests of the stronger party; they are otherwise paid a lip- 
 homage, but have been gradually deprived of their reality. The old 
 freedom has indeed suffered a decline, while the new has hardly yet 
 been born. 
 
 Fraternity as a general social cohesive, binding all citizens together, 
 has probably lessened, though in great crises, like the war, it has shown 
 remarkable vitality. But as a tendency to act in concert, to cooperate 
 rather than to go it alone, as a really strong group motive, fraternity 
 has vastly increased. Seldom have men been so closely bound together 
 as they are in their union groups; even the employers have found count- 
 less associations for joint activity. And within the classes an increasing 
 class-consciousness is welding men into a single purpose. Between 
 classes, however, there is little but bitterness and strife. It almost 
 seems as though the increase within groups had been made at the expense 
 of the larger social solidarity. 
 
 Yet, in spite of these modifications, there has been a marked persist- 
 ence, albeit in an altered form, of the old American ideal of Democracy. 
 The workers in increasing numbers are demanding a more equal status 
 in society, a more secure position. The fanning ideal has been trans- \ 
 lated into industrial terms. Liberty has remained as an ideal of group ' 
 rather than of individual activity, of free cooperation within and be- 
 
ii2 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 tween groups. And fraternity, as group and class solidarity, as a longed- 
 for social aim, has never ceased to inspire the workers. 
 
 The industrial revolution has both united society in inextricable 
 bonds and split it far asunder. The great social problem is how to bridge 
 the chasm between the industrial organization and the economic stratifi- 
 cation of modern civilization. What has labor succeeded in doing to 
 solve it? 
 
7, THE CONFLICT OF THEORIES AND THE TRIUMPH OF 
 BUSINESS UNIONISM 
 
 panic of 1837, so disastrous to the mechanics' movement, in- 
 augurated a period of hard times that did not end until about 1850, 
 when the gold of California revived trade. During this interval the 
 constant fear of unemployment, scarcely removed by the growing influx 
 of Irish laborers, kept the workers' organizations weak and concentrated 
 their efforts on retaining any job they might have. Until the brief 
 period of prosperity from 1851 to 1855 they kept their own counsel, 
 seeking as best they could to remain above water. In industrial questions 
 unions were superseded by a great number of enthusiastic and rather vis- 
 ionary middle-class "reformers " who with the confidence of the Utopian 
 offered their various panaceas for social ills. These plans of social re- 
 generation made quite a stir hi the advanced press and in the drawing- 
 rooms of Boston and New York. But they failed to arouse either en- 
 thusiasm or emulation amongst the wage-earners. Amidst all the 
 welter of theories and philosophies, when every congress called together 
 proceeded duly to discuss at least a dozen entirely different theories of 
 building society anew, there can hardly be said to have been any real 
 labor movement. The worker was an abstract entity to be saved and 
 reformed; as to what he himself might want, he was never consulted. 
 Horace Greeley, the shepherd of the whole flock, was strongly opposed 
 to the strike and to trade unions in general. Hence the "windy forties" 
 hardly concern us here. The following quotation reveals the general 
 attitude of the associationist follower of Owen or Fourier toward the 
 "miserable compromise of the Working Men's Movements": "We wish 
 however that we could impress upon this country the degrading little- 
 ness and insufficiency of this attempt at a compromise of their rights, 
 for it is neither more nor less than a demeaning compromise and dastardly 
 sacrifice of their rights for them to make terms which only modifies the 
 condition but does not change the terms of dependence upon masters. 
 In wretched England, where the laborer is indeed a poor degraded 
 helpless being it is well that any amelioration can be ob tamed; but 
 here, where the laboring classes are intelligent and generally possess 
 the ability to do full justice to themselves, it does appear to us to be 
 excessively weak and trifling, for them to talk about a reform which 
 
1 14 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 at the most can relieve them temporarily of a few hours' oppressive 
 toil can convert them from 12 and 14 to lo-hour slaves but cannot 
 elevate them to the dignity of true independence! What a force is 
 boasted American freedom, if free men are reduced to such beggarly 
 shifts? Do they not see that they exhibit the badge of slavery in the 
 very effort to mitigate its oppression? Free men would not talk about 
 terms which involve only a question of time of subjection to the au- 
 thority and will of another they would consult and act for their own 
 good in all things without let or hindrance!" 1 
 
 Occasionally, indeed, a few mechanics, like the Cincinnati iron-molders 
 or like several of the German trades, would seek hi cooperative enter- 
 prises to imitate the associationists, but with little success and with 
 less permanence. Only two movements, in fact, in this period really 
 concern the workers themselves: the movement for the ten-hour day by 
 legislation among the factory workers of New England, and the move- 
 ment for land reform. 
 
 The ten-hour movement was really a hangover from the earlier period. 
 President Van Buren had established it for federal employees in 1840; it 
 was now sought from state legislatures. But at most of the conventions 
 called to agitate the question, in Fall River in 1844, in the New England 
 Working Men's Association, in Lowell among the factory workers, in 
 Lynn, the reformers and associationists gained control and passed 
 resolutions in favor of their plans; and it is little wonder that the workers 
 took small interest in such efforts. New Hampshire passed a ten-hour 
 law in 1847, Pennsylvania in 1848; but not being compulsory these had 
 little effect. 
 
 Land reform was a much more important issue. We have already 
 seen how the question of keeping the public lands open so that any 
 man, defeated in the economic contest in the East, could go West and 
 realize at once the agricultural ideal, at the same time relieving the 
 pressure in the East, was of primary importance for the American labor 
 movement. The workers' success was of great advantage to them in- 
 dividually, but it also retarded their organization. The land reform 
 movement of the forties grew out of the agrarian agitation of the pre- 
 vious decade, but its real roots were in the old agricultural ideal of 
 Jeffersonian democracy. George Henry Evans secured support for his 
 "new agrarianism" because he founded it firmly in the traditional 
 philosophy of natural rights. In 1830 he had advocated" a division of 
 private property as a consequence of the social contract theory; now he 
 1 Phalanx, May 18, 1844. 
 
 
Conflict of Theories and Triumph of Business Unionism 115 
 
 turned his attention to public land, and sought to give every man his 
 equal share of it. The National Reform Association which he founded 
 sought freedom of the public lands, together with homestead exemption 
 from debt laws, and a limitation of the amount of land one man could 
 own. These latter aims, and the elaborate deductions of the whole 
 theory from the natural rights premises, found little acceptance among 
 the workers themselves, but the belief that there were enough public 
 lands to last at least a thousand years made Evans's impassioned ap- 
 peals to "Vote yourself a farm" quite alluring. 1 The National In- 
 dustrial Congresses which met annually from 1845 to 1856 carried on 
 considerable land reform agitation, which finally bore lasting fruit in 
 the Homestead Law of 1862. The kinship between this land reform 
 movement and the early agricultural ideal the desire, as it were, to 
 seize the last chance offered to man by Nature's bounty in this western 
 hemisphere is revealed in a resolution of the New York Industrial 
 Congress in 1850: "That all men are created equal that they are en- 
 dowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among which 
 are the right to life and liberty, to the fruits of their labor, to the use of 
 such a portion of the earth and the other elements as^shall suffice to 
 provide them with the means of subsistence and comfort, to education 
 and paternal protection from society." : 
 
 But with the revival of prosperity following the discovery of gold in 
 California the workers themselves began to take heart, and, forsaking the 
 many well-intentioned but quite irrelevant schemes of those who came 
 to them as with authority, started to reconstruct some semblance of 
 the organization they had enjoyed prior to 1837. When it was proposed 
 to create in New York a city industrial congress, after the model of the 
 national congress of the land reformers, there were a number of locals 
 that received the call with hopes of a city federation. Some fifty groups 
 took part in the meeting and adopted a preamble resolving to use "all 
 available means to promote their moral, intellectual, and social eleva- 
 tion." 3 But the control was in the hands of reformers of all shades of 
 opinion; many unions, distrustful from the first, had not joined, and 
 when it became evident that a general trades' union was not to result, 
 most of the others withdrew in disgust. The workers were unwilling to 
 forsake the tried and intelligible method of the strike for vaster 
 schemes. 
 
 1 True Workingman, Jan. 24, 1846. 
 * New York Tribune, July 3, 1850. 
 3 Ibid., July 3, 1850. 
 
n6 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 In the brief period of prosperity before the depression of 1855, which 
 culminated in the panic of 1857, set in, the craftsmen who had so dis- 
 trusted the plans of the reformers adhered religiously to their "pure and 
 simple" business unionism; strikes, not of the trade but of the single 
 shop, efforts at collective bargaining, and the establishment of minimum 
 wages with employers were its distinguishing features. In 1853 and 
 1854, when the movement was at its height, there occurred some 400 
 strikes. The older societies like the printers and the cordwainers, re- 
 organized upon a strictly " protective" basis. But all in all the unionism 
 of the early fifties was but a belated revival of the earlier mechanics' 
 movement: it was in the hands of the skilled artisans, it was local, and 
 it pursued the same policies that had proved successful in 1835 and 
 1836, and had persisted under the surface ever since. Even the at- 
 tempts at nationalization, in emulation of the printers, who had formed 
 a national union in 1852, are carried on by the local mechanics; they 
 are neither the results of the advancing industrial revolution nor are 
 they the unions which are later to take the initiative. 
 
 The very first real national unions of the new era were in the iron 
 trades, symbolic of the industrial age; in 1859 were organized the Molders 
 International Union and the National Union of Mechanics and Black- 
 smiths. Both originated, in characteristic union fashion, as efforts of 
 self-protection against the attempts of the employers to force down 
 wages and standards. William H. Sylvis, the great leader of the molders, 
 tells how the competition induced by the consolidation of the east and 
 west trunk lines in the fifties forced the employers in Pennsylvania to 
 make determined efforts. They reduced their prices and their margin 
 of profits to the minimum; they then started reducing wages, required 
 the men to furnish their own tools, introduced division of labor and 
 boys as " helpers. " " Thus this system went on until it became custom- 
 ary for each man to have one to five boys; and . . . prices became so 
 low that men were obliged to increase the hours of labor, and work much 
 harder; and then could scarcely obtain the plainest necessaries of life. J>1 
 Similar conditions obtained among the machinists. " Unfair dealing 
 on the part of the employers had long been a grievance with the men. 
 The baneful system of paying in orders was common. The taking on 
 of as many apprentices as could possibly be worked was considered the in- 
 dubitable right of every employer. ... As the business came to be more 
 fully developed, it was found that more capital must be employed and 
 the authority and supervision of the owner or owners must be delegated 
 1 Fincher's Trades' Review, July 18, 1863. 
 
Conflict of Theories and Triumph of Business Unionism 117 
 
 to superintendents and under-foreman. In this manner men and mas- 
 ters became estranged and the gulf could only be bridged by a strike, 
 when, perhaps, the representatives of the workingmen might be admitted 
 to the office and allowed to state their case. It was to resist this com- 
 bination of capital, which had so changed the character of the employers, 
 that led to the formation of the union. " 
 
 In both these cases it is the industrial revolution that through chang- 
 ing conditions has made organization in self -protection inevitable; 
 1859 was not a year of prosperity and good prices; the workers demanded 
 a livelihood, not an increased standard. It was a spontaneous protest 
 that effected national organization, and neither a vision of social im- 
 provement nor a far-sighted attempt to improve status. Hence the 
 aims which it set itself were purely protective, that fundamental strain 
 of self-interest dominating the workers ' minds. In the next decade the 
 other strain came to the front again with success. Powderly, looking 
 back from 1889, said: "The organization of labor means far more in 
 1889 than it even shadowed in 1859; then the supplication was: 'Give 
 us an advance in wages and shorter hours of toil, and we will be con- 
 tent with our stay on earth. ' Today the demand is: ' Give us the earth 
 and all that it can produce, for to no man, or set of men, belongs the 
 right to monopolize it or its products. " 2 Elsewhere he states that de- 
 spite the wider ideas of their leaders, the men at this time were interested 
 in but two things, wages and the regulation of the number of the ap- 
 prentices. 3 These were the immediate problems; the workers were 
 still suspicious of the extravagant theories of the forties. 
 
 The machinists thus stated their aims: " Whereas, in the present 
 organization of society, capital and labor being, as a matter of necessity, 
 united in all kinds of productive industry (and, as is generally the case, 
 represented by differing parties), it has come to pass: That, in conse- 
 quence of the smallness of the number representing capital, their com- 
 parative independence and power, their ample leisure to study their 
 own interests, their prompt cooperation, together with aid of legislation, 
 and last, but not least, the culpable negligence of the working classes 
 themselves; that notwithstanding their joint production is amply suffi- 
 cient to furnish both parties the necessaries, comforts, and luxuries of 
 life, yet the fact is indisputable that while the former enjoy more than 
 their share, the latter are correspondingly depressed ..." resolved, 
 
 1 Machinists' and Blacksmiths' International Journal, Feb. and March, 1872. 
 
 2 Powderly, Thirty Years of Labor, 5. 
 
 3 Ibid., 42. 
 
n8 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 that we hereby form our union. 1 "And we hereby proclaim to the 
 world, that so far from encouraging a spirit of hostility to employers, 
 all properly organized unions recognize an identity of interests between 
 employer and employee, and we give no countenance or support to any 
 project or enterprise that will interfere with the promotion of perfect 
 harmony between them." Sylvis expressed the same ideas at greater 
 length in a speech adopted as the preamble of the Holders Union: "In 
 all countries and at all times capital has been used by those possessing 
 it to monopolize particular branches of business, until the vast and 
 varied industrial pursuits of the world have been brought under the 
 immediate control of a comparatively small portion of mankind. Al- 
 though an unequal distribution of the world's wealth, it is perhaps 
 necessary that it should be so. To attain to the highest degree of suc- 
 cess in any undertaking, it is necessary to have the most perfect and 
 systematic arrangement possible; to acquire such a system, it requires 
 the management of a business to be placed as nearly as practicable 
 under the control of one mind; thus concentration of wealth and business 
 tact conduces to the most perfect working of the vast machinery of the 
 world. . . ." Capitalism is necessary; only its greed is bad. "There 
 is, perhaps, no other organization of society so well calculated to benefit 
 the laborer and advance the moral and social condition of the mechanic 
 of this country, if those possessed of wealth were all actuated by those 
 pure and philanthropic principles necessary to the happiness of all; but, 
 alas! for the poor of humanity, such is not the case. . . . What position 
 are we, the mechanics of America, to hold in Society? Are we to receive 
 an equivalent for our labor sufficient to maintain us in comparative in- 
 dependence and respectability, to procure the means with which to 
 educate our children and qualify them to play their part in the world's 
 drama; or must we be forced to bow the suppliant knee to wealth, and 
 earn by unprofitable toil a life too void of solace to confirm the very 
 chains that bind us to our doom? . . . There is not, there cannot be, any 
 good reason why they should not pay us a fair price for our labor. If 
 the profits of their business are not sufficient to remunerate them 
 for the trouble of doing business, let the consumer make up the 
 balance." 2 
 
 There is evident here a wistful glance backward at the agricultural 
 equality, and a very reluctant acceptance of the new order. There 
 must be rich men; but let the masses at least preserve their old status. 
 
 ^owderly, Thirty Years of Labor, 35. 
 2 Ibid., 37-40. 
 
Conflict of Theories and Triumph of Business Unionism 119 
 
 If men are to gain wealth by the new order, they can divide that wealth 
 among the workers. Labor can have at least a minor share in the proc- 
 ess. It is the voice of those temporarily beaten and overwhelmed by 
 the strangeness of the transformation. 
 
 Soon, however, jthe Civil War prosperity overtook the country; prices 
 rose and wages with them. Men had but to ask to be granted. In the 
 fall of 1862 many new locals were formed; from December, 1863, to- 
 December of the next year the number rose from 79 to 270. At the 
 same time there reappeared the older trades' assemblies of the late 
 thirties; beginning with Rochester, in March, 1863, they had by the 
 close of the war spread to every important city, and they devoted their 
 time to organization and agitation, to boycotts and publicity work, 
 but not to aiding strikes directly. The unit was still, despite national 
 organization in some trades, the city; when a central national body was 
 to be formed there was a contest beteween the city assemblies and the 
 growing national unions for its control. The employers, too, were busy 
 organizing at this time, though as yet there were no collective agreements 
 between them and the unions. 
 
 In 1864 the Louisville Trades' Assembly summoned a national trades' 
 assembly to combat these employers' organizations. With a personal-- 
 izing tendency comparable to the masters' hatred of "agitators" the 
 convention accused the capitalists of banding together " for the express 
 purpose of crushing out our manhood" and of assuming "to arrogate 
 to itself the right to own and control labor. " 1 and formed the Interna- 
 tional Industrial Assembly of North America to foil these attempts. 
 They demanded an equal share of the wealth they created, favored con- 
 ciliation and trade agreements rather than strikes, but provided for a 
 generous strike fund. The assembly failed through lack of interest from 
 the trades' assemblies on which it was based and through the hostility 
 of the national unions, which preferred another individual unit of or- 
 ganization; but it illustrated the growing success of the unions. Mean- 
 while the number and strength of the national bodies was rapidly in- 
 creasing; in addition to the molders, the machinists, and the printers, 
 there were formed in the sixties strong organizations of locomotive 
 engineers, cigar-makers, coopers, shoe-makers, and iron puddlers. 
 
 Before considering the successive attempts made to unite all these 
 
 unions on differing bases of aim and of organization, and the struggle for 
 
 dominance between the two persistent strains, let us stop to examine 
 
 the general theories back of all this labor activity. The movement had 
 
 1 Pinchers' Trades' Review, Oct. 15, 1864. 
 
I2O The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 by this time reached a position of comparative success; no longer a mere 
 spontaneous protest against degradation, it could afford the luxury of 
 a somewhat reflective and critical examination of its methods and aims. 
 It was ready and eager to consider the social implications of its activi- 
 ties, with a view to extending them beyond the narrow limits of a living 
 wage. Hitherto the social and political philosophy of the workers had 
 been merely an application and adaptation of the natural rights theory 
 of the Revolution; now their need was a philosophy that would furnish 
 a social justification for labor activities in terms of the welfare of the 
 community as a whole. Nor was it wholly a case of justification after 
 the fact; nowhere is the presence of the second or social strain in Ameri- 
 can labor so noticeable as hi the continued dissatisfaction expressed 
 with the pure and simple unionism of private gain in economic competi- 
 tion, and the groping after an idealism to give a social significance to 
 the workers' struggles. This philosophy was supplied in the nick of 
 time by Ira Steward and his eight-hour theory, the dominant intellectual 
 force in American labor down to the eve of the Great War. As John 
 R. Commons says, ''Steward's philosophy is what may be called the 
 first philosophy springing from the American labor movement. Stew- 
 ard's contribution, in giving justification and shape to American labor's 
 most characteristic demand, can not be overestimated and has not been 
 sufficiently recognized. " 1 The factor that causecjfrthe wide acceptance 
 of this theory is the remarkable manner in which he combined the two 
 characteristic strains, and formulated a program which while satisfy- 
 ing completely all those desires for individual improvement appealed 
 also to the social interests of the workers with the assurance that 
 thus, and thus alone, was the true welfare of society as a whole to be 
 forwarded. All the more remarkable is it that in that age of abstract 
 economic theory Steward was able to appreciate the importance of 
 psychological considerations; it gives his theory a strikingly modern 
 note. His acceptance of the wage-system, and even more the adoption 
 of his ideas as the official philosophy of the A. F. L. have told against 
 him for the modern worker, however. 
 
 The theory back of the revival of unionism in the fifties had been 
 that which persistently reappears when the fear of unemployment is 
 very strong. It is the theory the plumber goes on when he spends two 
 hours upon a job requiring only one, or when he mends a leak in such a 
 way that it will recur again in a short time. To economists it is known 
 as the lump of labor theory; to workers, as the theory of "making 
 
 1 Doc. Hist., IX, 24. 
 

 Conflict of Theories and Triumph of Business Unionism 121 
 
 work." It assumes that there is a certain definite and fixed amount 
 of employment to be had which must in the workers' interest be made 
 to last as long as possible and go around amongst as many as possible. 
 It is well expressed in the resolution of a ten-hour convention held in 
 Boston in 1852: "Wages are governed by the great law of trade the 
 law of supply and demand. . . . There is a certain amount of the pro- 
 ductions of labor demanded by the wants of the community, and there 
 are a certain number of laborers ready for employment to supply the 
 demand. As the demand or the supply of laborers is in excess, wages 
 will rise or fall. ... A reduction of hours would be equivalent to di- 
 minishing the supply of labor." * This would at least keep wages up in 
 the face of increasing immigration; if restrictions of another nature 
 could be placed on the supply of labor, wages might even rise. Hence 
 together with demands for shorter hours went limitation of the number 
 of apprentices, efforts at keeping women and negroes from competing 
 with the unionists, and attempts at restricting immigration. Such a 
 policy worked to the immediate advantage of the unionists, but it ob- 
 viously appeared detrimental to the interests of all others concerned. 
 Just so soon as they felt they were no longer fighting for their very ex- 
 istence this troubled the consciences of the workers. And it was at- 
 tacked with considerable success by the economists upon purely eco- 
 nomic grounds. 
 
 Hence it was that the machinists, for instance, who in their first con- 
 vention had resolved on shorter hours for the purpose of " making 
 work," adopted Steward's justification for that policy in 1863 with 
 great enthusiasm. For Steward proclaimed that reducing the number 
 of hours not only benefited the men concerned; it also worked to the 
 advantage both of the employer and of the community as a whole. 
 And he inextricably knitted the individual and the social motives by 
 pointing out that no workers could hope to improve their own condi- 
 tion until they also improved that of then- poorest fellow-workers. One 
 of the immediate effects of Stewardism was to transform the selfish /, 
 trade-conscious unionism of the fifties into the class-conscious and bar- 
 rier-breaking movement of the sixties. 
 
 Instead of making wages depend upon the supply, or capital, Stew- 
 ard emphasized the side of demand. It is the standard of living of the 
 worker that dictates his wage, his wants and his desires, not any wage- 
 fund. So long as this is low, wages will be low for all laborers. The 
 problem is, how to raise this standard for the poorer workers. The an- 
 
 1 Doc. Hist., VIII, 131. 
 
122 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 swer is through granting them leisure to develop new wants; through 
 shorter hours. Hence a compulsory eight-hour day. 
 
 1 'You are receiving," says Steward, "your scanty pay precisely be- 
 cause you work so many hours a day. My point now is to show why 
 this is true, and why reducing the hours for the masses will eventually 
 increase their wages. . . . The truth is, as a rule, that men who labor 
 excessively are robbed of all ambition to ask for anything more than 
 will satisfy their bodily necessities, while those who labor moderately 
 have time to cultivate tastes and create wants in addition to mere phys- 
 ical comforts. How can men be stimulated to demand higher wages 
 when they have little or no time or strength to use the advantages which 
 higher wages can buy or procure?" As George Gunton, Steward's 
 foremost disciple, puts it, "Other things being the same, the cost of 
 (the worker's) living will be determined by the number of his habitual 
 wants. Thus the cost of producing labor is ultimately determined by 
 the socially accepted standard of living; that is to say, the state of ma- 
 terial comfort and social refinement which is customary in, and thus is 
 determined by, the social status of the class to which he belongs, and 
 below which he cannot permanently go without being put to social dis- 
 advantages." 2 The problem, then, is "How can the social opportu- 
 nities of the masses be enlarged?" 
 
 "My theory," answered Steward, "is, first, that more leisure will 
 create motives and temptations for the common people to ask for more 
 wages. Secondly, that where all ask for more wages there will be no 
 motive for refusing, since employers will all fare alike. Thirdly, that 
 where all demand more wages the demand can not be resisted. Fourthly, 
 that resistance would amount to the folly of a 'strike' by employers 
 themselves against the strongest power in the world, viz., the 
 habits, customs, and opinions of the masses. Fifthly, that the change 
 in the habits and opinions of the people through more leisure will be 
 too gradual to disturb and jar the commercial enterprise of capital. 
 Sixthly, that the increase in wages will fall upon the wastes of society, 
 in its crimes, idleness, fashions, and monopolies as well as the more le- 
 gitimate profits of capital, in the production and distribution of 
 wealth. Seventhly, in the mechanical fact, that the cost of making 
 an article depends almost entirely upon the number manufactured, 
 is a practical increase in wages, by tempting the workers through 
 their new leisure to unite in buying luxuries now confined to 
 
 1 A Reduction of hours an increase of wages, Steward, pamphlet, 1865. 
 
 2 Gunton, The Economic and Social Importance of the Eight-Hour Movement, 1889. 
 
Conflict of Theories and Triumph of Business Unionism 123 
 
 the wealthy, and thus more costly because bought only by the 
 wealthy." 1 
 
 Thus it is to the interest of the employer and the public to unite in 
 reducing the number of hours for the worker. "The increase in wages 
 does not mean an increase in the price of the article produced, as do the 
 'strike' for higher wages when successful." As Gunton puts it, "Ec- 
 onomic production absolutely depends upon social consumption, and 
 the success of the employing class depends upon the extent of the con- 
 suming class. . . . Capital can yield increasing returns, i. e., become 
 a cheaper productive force than labor only when it can produce on an 
 extensive scale. . . . Since the laboring classes constitute seven or 
 eight-tenths of the consumers, it is upon increasing their consumption 
 by means of raising the social life and wages of the laborer that the 
 market for capitalistic productions finally depends. ... It will thus 
 be seen that the economic interests of the employing classes are not op- 
 posed to, but are bound up with and dependent upon the social well- 
 being of the laborer; that the success of the modern factory depends 
 upon the comforts of the average laborer's home, and that the profitable 
 employment of capital can only be promoted as the general rate of wages 
 is advanced." 2 
 
 In fact, ultimately "wages will continue to increase till the capitalist 
 and the laborer are one. . . . The capitalist, as we now understand him, 
 is to pass away with the kings and royalties of the past. In America 
 every man is king in theory, and will be in practke eventually and in the 
 good time coming every man will be a capitalist. The capitalist of today, 
 however, is as necessary as was the king once, to preserve order. Nothing 
 but a higher standard of popular intelligence can supersede the necessity 
 of the one man power." But in the meanwhile Steward offers the tradi- 
 tional American ideal. "Without attempting to settle definitely how 
 much common labor is worth, for it is a broad question, I will make 
 the claim that no man's compensation should be so low that it will not 
 secure for himself and family a comfortable home education for his 
 children, and all of the influence to which he is entitled by his capacity, 
 virtue, and industry." 3 
 
 But first and foremost the worker must remember that his wage de- 
 pends upon the wage of his poorest fellow. The only path to self-help is 
 through helping others. "Think of it, you mechanics, who affect social 
 
 1 Steward, op. cit. 
 1 Gunton, op. cit. 
 8 Steward, Pamphlet, cited. 
 
124 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 distinctions between the uncultivated laborer and yourself; on election 
 day the capitalist and the common laborer unite to vote you down, and 
 the rest of the year you and the shrewder capitalist unite and keep down 
 and away from you the 'common, unclean laborer.' ... In the pro- 
 duction of wealth there is a king fact or law that rules all others and 
 which may be called the north star of political economy; and it is this: 
 that cheaper ways of doing things will always succeed against dearer 
 ways. . . . Human muscular force must be made dearest, so that it can 
 be driven out of the market and out of the world. ... In the simple 
 power of the cheaper over the dearer is contained the Divine or natural 
 plan for making the selfishness of men serve each other, as soon as the 
 wealth and intelligence of the more advanced part of them have given 
 them the power to lift up the rest of the race. When selfishness is suffi- 
 ciently enlightened, it discovers that its own personal interests can not 
 be very well served without serving others. The universal power of the 
 cheapest makes it absolutely impossible for any part of the human race to 
 rise very much higher than the rest. . . . It is somewhat troublesome for 
 the highest to pause in their pleasures and lift up the lowest; but they will 
 be rewarded with more wealth if they do, and be punished with more 
 poverty if they don't." 1 
 
 It will at once be seen that this philosophy of Steward's is far more 
 than a mere theory justifying shorter hours. It is a social philosophy: 
 it lifts labor groups out of their comparatively isolated round of selfish 
 strikes and trade exclusiveness and places them in closest possible relation 
 to the wider group of workers, wherever they may be, of employers, and 
 of the consuming public as a whole. It proclaims .that not alone, but only 
 in a group, as a united and cooperating body, can the workers hope to 
 improve their position and secure their desired goal of an assured and 
 relatively equal social status. It thus extended to a broader field that 
 fundamental tenet of unionism, that in union there is strength, that some 
 must forego immediate gain for the sake of the greater ultimate gain of all. 
 
 Hence it proved as successful as Marxianism in Europe in uniting and 
 solidifying the laboring class. For Stewardism is essentially a gospel, 
 a missionary philosophy; its only hope of success lies in awakening the 
 workers everywhere to demand a higher standard. The early emphasis 
 placed on an eight-hour day imposed by legislation soon passed; the 
 eight-hour day itself was but a single means for raising that standard of 
 living upon which social improvement depended. Hitherto one trade 
 had sought to organize itself to increase its own bargaining power; now 
 
 1 Steward, op. cit., and The Power of the Cheaper over the Dearer, Doc. Hist., VIII. 
 
Conflict of Theories and Triumph of Business Unionism 125 
 
 it was clearly seen that it was necessary to organize all trades, even the 
 lowest, before any could rise very far. Thus it was that both of the great 
 national bodies, the Knights of Labor and the American Federation of 
 Labor, assumed as their most important task the organization of as many 
 trades as possible; hence it was that the K. of L. was particularly inter- 
 ested in the common laborer, as that "cheapest" upon which the price of 
 all labor depended. 
 
 Moreover, Stewardism was essentially optimistic. It believed that 
 society was governed by a great "divine law" whereby all men if they 
 resolved to help each other would ipso facto be raising themselves to the 
 heights of prosperity. There was no limit to the goods to be achieved. 
 The higher the wants, the greater the wages, the larger the scale of pro- 
 duction, the cheaper the products; all in increasing ratio, it was believed. 
 To start the ball rolling was bound to be hardest; once the eight-hour day 
 prevailed, it would be easy to advance further. Steward had, indeed, no 
 logical ground for stopping at eight hours; but then it is entirely mis- 
 construing the force and the effect of Steward's philosophy to see in the 
 emphasis on the eight-hour day, or, as some writers have done, in the 
 legislative means to secure it, its most important aspect. 
 
 Stewardism was not revolutionary; it preserved the capitalistic system 
 of production, and identified the interests of the employer with those 
 of the worker. Most of the preambles to the constitutions of the unions 
 of the present day, drawn up during the period when Stewardism was 
 dominant, contain in some form this insistence on the identity of interest 
 of the two parties, an insistence which seems strange to many contempo- 
 rary unionists. But this did not mean what the modern employer means 
 by the phrase, that the real interest of the worker is for the employer to 
 make as large profits as possible; it meant that the controlling interest 
 was that of labor, not that of capital. Whatever labor wanted was really 
 best for capital, even though the latter was generally so obtuse as to 
 desire some other end. 
 
 Finally, the most important factor in Stewardism for the present 
 investigation is the remarkable way in which it succeeded in blending 
 both of the tendencies that motivate American labor, the desire for 
 individual advantage and the s desire for social well-being. The workers 
 must pursue the policy of strikes for shorter hours and higher wages, just 
 as they had done before, while at the same time they could feel that they 
 were satisfying their impulse to advance society as a whole which had 
 hitherto proved rather disastrous to their private interests. Or, to look 
 at the other side, they could go forth to aid all workers through organiza- 
 
J26 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 tion and the institution of higher standards with the feeling that in so 
 doing they were really improving their own position. Moreover, both 
 types of men, those who were most interested in social as well as those 
 interested entirely in private interests, could unite upon a common pro- 
 gram and a common method. It is doubtful whether a social philosophy 
 better calculated to appeal to the American labor movement in the stage 
 in which it then was, that of a small minority that could hardly hope for 
 any direct control of the ends of social action, could possibly have been 
 devised: for it succeeded in combining those two forces that must be 
 combined in any movement that hopes to achieve success. 
 
 The practical emphasis placed by the A. F. L. on Steward's philosophy 
 is evidenced in the prominence in its literature of eight-hour doctrines. 
 George Gunton, Steward's chief follower, author of Wealth and Progress, 
 The Economic Philosophy of the Eight-Hour Movement, wrote in 1889 a 
 pamphlet widely circulated as The Economic and Social Importance of 
 the Eighth-Hour Movement. George E. MacNeill in 1890 wrote The 
 Eight-Hour Primer, in 1893 the pamphlet The Philosophy of the Labor 
 Movement. Lemuel Danryid produced The History and Philosophy of 
 the Eight-Hour Movement in 1890. During the nineties the eight-hour 
 movement was especially emphasized, and the fundamentals of Steward- 
 ism were so impressed into the workers' minds that they have largely 
 continued to operate until the present day. Today the publications of 
 the Federation bear the legend, "8 hours for work, 8 hours for rest, 8 
 hours for what we will," and the jingle composed by Steward's wife, 
 "Whether you work by the piece or work by the day, decreasing the 
 hours increases the pay." And even though the eight-hour day be now 
 largely achieved, and the direct influence of Steward's gospel have sub- 
 sided, the indirect and broader effects of it have been incalculably 
 widespread. 
 
 It was just as this philosophy was gaining wide popularity that the 
 labor movement took on its characteristic modern form, and became 
 national in scope. We have seen how the International Industrial 
 Assembly, founded on the local trades' assemblies, failed to materialize in 
 1864. Two years later another congress met at Baltimore, this time 
 under the auspices of the national unions, and formed a National Labor 
 Union. Powderly tells us that the leaders wished to engage in political 
 activity, but realized that the men would not have it; they were concerned 
 solely with the eight-hour question, then at the height of its agitation. 1 
 They deprecated strikes, seeking the "mutual confidence" of the einploy- 
 
 1 Powderly, op. tit., 66. 
 
Conflict of Theories and Triumph of Business Unionism 127 
 
 ers, provided for the expenses of the Union, sought to further organiza- 
 tion, and to reduce the number of the " botch apprentices." Next year 
 they adopted a platform, and they held conventions until 1870. 
 
 At first the eight-hour day was paramount in the convention; it seems 
 to have remained so with the members, for as the Union turned to political 
 action it lost the interest and support of its members. In 1866, 1867, and 
 again in 1870, the convention approved cooperation, but without en- 
 thusiasm. The significant note in the conventions was the solidarity felt 
 with the whole laboring class, influenced already by Steward's philosophy. 
 In an address in 1867 A. C. Cameron of Chicago said, "What is wanted, 
 then, is for every union to help inculcate the grand and ennobling idea 
 that the interests of labor are one; that there should be no distinctions of 
 race or nationality, no classifications of Jew or Gentile, Christian or 
 infidel that that which separates mankind into two great classes, the 
 class that labors and the class that lives by others' labor. ... If these 
 principles be true, we must seek the cooperation of the African race in 
 America." l The Union accordingly not only welcomed colored and 
 foreign workers; it extended sympathy to "the sewing women and 
 daughters of toil of the United States," advocating "the same rate of 
 wages for equal work for women," and resolving "to do all in our power 
 to open many of the closed avenues of industry to women, and welcome 
 her entering into just competition with men in the industrial race of 
 life." 2 There was even a resolution inviting the fanners to join, and the 
 "common and unskilled labor to cooperate in our efforts to improve the 
 conditions of the producing classes." 3 This broadly class-conscious 
 policy included even adherence to the recently organized International 
 Workingmen's Society of Marx; it apparently broke down only where 
 immigration and coolie labor were concerned. 
 
 The old American tradition was still strong. In the platform of 1867 
 it was stated: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are 
 created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain 
 inalienable rights, that among these are lif e, liberty, and the pursuit of 
 happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among 
 men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that 
 there are but two forms of government, the autocratic and the dem- 
 ocratic . . . that the design of the founders of the republic was to 
 institute a government upon the principle of absolute inherent sover- 
 
 1 Cameron, Address of the Nat. Labor Congress to the Workingmen of the U. S. 1867. 
 
 2 Workingman's Advocate, Aug. 27, 1870. 
 8 Ibid. 
 
128 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 eignty in the people, and that would give to each citizen the largest 
 political and religious liberty compatible with the good order of society, 
 and secure to each the right to enjoy the fruit of his labor and talents, 
 that when laws are enacted destructive of these ends they are without 
 moral binding force, and it is the right and duty of a people to alter 
 and amend or abolish them, and institute such others, founding them 
 upon the principles of equity, as to them may seem most likely to effect 
 their prosperity and happiness. . . . We further hold that all property 
 or wealth is the product of physical or intellectual labor employed in 
 productive industry, and in the distribution of the products of labor. 
 That laborers ought of right, and would under a just monetary system, 
 receive or retain the larger proportion of their productions: that the 
 wrongs, oppressions, and destitutions which laborers are suffering in 
 most departments of legitimate enterprise and useful occupations, do 
 not result from insufficiency of production but from the unfair distribu- 
 tion of the products of labor between non-producing capital and labor." 
 They accordingly advocated banking reform hi the spirit of the early 
 or Eastern greenbackism; and other reforms, such as education and 
 the ever-present land problem. 
 
 But all these questions stirred the workers themselves but slightly. 
 The leaders' persistence in running into politics finally drove them away. 
 In 1866, after much discussion and opposition, a resolution for political 
 action had been forced through: "Whereas the history and legislation 
 of the past has demonstrated the fact that no confidence whatever can 
 be placed in the pledges or professions of the representatives of existing 
 political parties so far as the interests of the industrial classes are con- 
 cerned; therefore be it resolved, that the time has come when the work- 
 ingmen of the United States should cut themselves aloof from party 
 ties and predilections, and organize themselves into a National Labor 
 Party, the object of which shall be to secure the enactment of a law 
 to make ' eight hours ' a legal day's work by the National Congress, and 
 the several state legislatures, and the election of men pledged to sustain 
 and represent the interests of the industrial classes. . . . Where a 
 workingman is found available for the office, the preference should in- 
 variably be given to such a person." 2 Political action was indeed tried, 
 for the eight-hour day, where a lobby secured a law from Congress in 
 1868, for banking reform, and for other objects, with little success or 
 result save the alienation of the trade unionists. In 1871 the Union 
 
 1 Doc. Hist., IX, 176. 
 
 2 Workingman' s Advocate, Sept. i, 1866. 
 
Conflict of Theories and Triumph of Business Unionism 129 
 
 dissolved into a pure political party. A contemporary comment runs: 
 "The leaders of the National Labor Union have learned nothing and 
 it is to be feared will never learn to understand the labor question. All 
 the great trades organizations having withdrawn previously, with the 
 single exception of the miners, the congress can hardly be called a work- 
 ingman's convention." 1 American workingmen, continues the ob- 
 server, simply will not go into politics. This is confirmed by Powderly, 
 who claims that demagogues and cheap politicians had repelled the 
 workers from the National Labor Union. 2 
 
 The history of the National Labor Union epitomizes the struggle that 
 took place in the labor movement from 1870 to 1890. On the one side 
 were those who, serving their apprenticeship during the sixties and 
 seventies, had absorbed much of the spirit of that time, its general 
 faith in reform by political action, in panaceas and in cooperation; this 
 group comprised most of the leaders and a large minority of the workers, 
 particularly the less skilled. On the other side were the great mass of 
 the workers, still predominantly skilled craftsmen, for whom unionism 
 meant solely more pay and shorter hours; this group took in the great 
 national unions and their officials. Yet it must not be thought that the 
 struggle can be phrased in terms of the social against the individual 
 tendency; it was a question rather of method than principle that fur- 
 nished the source of contention. The great strikes of 1877, and even 
 more those of 1885-6, made it plain to the workers that in an industrial- 
 ized community it was useless for them to rely upon either public or 
 governmental support, or upon the compassion of the employers; there- 
 after the methods of business unionism steadily gained, while at the 
 same time the self-centered craft unions came more and more to realize 
 the necessity of organizing all the workers.vThe eighties, which witnessed 
 the duel of the Knights and the Federation, saw a struggle, not between 
 a humanitarian and a strictly selfish form of organization, but rather 
 between an organization which attempted to combine a philosophy of 
 cooperation, education, and general "reform," and a machinery designed 
 with those ends in view, with the practical aims and methods of business 
 unionism, and an organization whose philosophy and method were in 
 close harmony. /In the Knights the bond between those who wanted 
 more pay and those who wanted to reform society was entirely artificial; 
 to accomplish one end the worker had to forego the other, and the 
 attempt to work for both resulted inevitably in failure. In the Federa- 
 
 1 Copybook of Central Com., N. A. Fed., Doc. Hist., IX, 360. 
 
 2 Powderly, op. cit., 90 ff. 
 
130 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 tion, on the other hand, there was a natural and very easy progress 
 from strict business unionism to the improvement of the conditions of 
 the whole working class; it was necessary, not to turn about and face 
 in another direction, but only to push those policies a little further 
 which had already been successfully employed, in order to pass from 
 the smaller to the larger goal. In the Knights, after a strike for a living 
 wage, one was expected to engage in cooperation and in politics; in the 
 Federation, one had only to go on and strike for the eight-hour day. 
 And the event has proved how even those benefits which the Knights 
 promised and which the Federation ignored if it did not oppose, have 
 come about with the gradual development and unf olding of the principles 
 lying back of the seemingly reactionary successful organization?^ 
 
 The National Labor Union had traveled further and further away 
 from the immediate ends of the workers until it became in 1871 a po- 
 litical party; it marked the height of that second or crudely optimistic 
 phase which we have seen recur in the history of the labor movement. 
 It was but natural that the reaction should come upon its failure. The 
 menace of industrialism, which had prompted the N. L. U., had only 
 increased since 1866; consequently the great national unions, the Molders, 
 the Machinists, the Coopers, and the Printers, united in 1873 in calling 
 for a new convention that they might, "profiting by our dear bought 
 experience, build up and perfect an organization such as was contem- 
 plated hi Baltimore in 1866." 1 The new congress was to be a protection 
 against "the rapid and alarming concentration of capital, placed under 
 the control of a few men," which was bringing about "a rapid decrease 
 of our power as Trade Unions in comparison with that of Capital," : 
 and it was promised that it would not degenerate into a politician's 
 paradise, but would "remain purely an Industrial Association, having 
 for its sole and only object the securing to the producer the full share 
 of all he produces." In the platform adopted when the Congress met 
 hi July the delegates protested against the "pauperization and degrada- 
 tion of the masses," advocated "a system which will insure to the laborer 
 the fruits of his toil," and the "organization, consolidation, and coopera- 
 tive effort of the producing masses, as a stepping-stone to that education 
 that will in the future lead to more advanced action." 3 The congress 
 shunned those questions which had led to the fall of the National Labor 
 Union, restricting its attention to purely trade union matters such as 
 
 1 Workingman's Advocate, May 3, 1873. 
 
 2 Ibid. 
 
 8 Powderly, op. cit., no. 
 
Conflict of Theories and Triumph of Business Unionism 131 
 
 apprenticeship, prison labor, and immigration. Although preferring 
 arbitration to strikes, it made a provision, through financial support 
 and effective publicity, for a strong protective policy by the congress. 
 
 What would have been the fate of this attempt at centralized business 
 unionism had not the panic of 1873 occurred two months later it is im- 
 possible to conjecture. The Industrial Congress bravely held a meeting 
 the next year at Rochester, and changed its name to the Industrial 
 Brotherhood, but by 1875 there were few delegates left; the unions were 
 too busy fighting their foes to think of federation. But the 1874 meeting 
 is memorable for the adoption of a preamble so well expressing the 
 spirit of the leaders of labor in the seventies that it was later annexed 
 by the Knights of Labor as their own. 
 
 "The recent alarming development and aggression of aggregate wealth, 
 which, unless checked, will inevitably lead to the pauperization and 
 degradation of the toiling masses, renders it imperative, if we desire to 
 enjoy the blessings of life, that a check should be placed upon this power 
 and upon unjust accumulation, and a system adopted which will secure 
 to the laborer the fruits of his toil, and as this much desired object can 
 be accomplished only by the thorough unification of labor, and the 
 united efforts of those who obey the divine injunction that ' in the sweat 
 of thy brow shalt thou eat thy bread/ we have formed the Industrial 
 Brotherhood with a view to securing the organization, direction, by 
 cooperative effort, of the power of the industrial classes; and we submit 
 to the world the objects sought to be accomplished by our organization, 
 calling upon all who believe in securing ' the greatest good of the greatest 
 number' to aid and assist us. I. To bring within the folds of organiza- 
 tion every department of productive industry, making knowledge the 
 standpoint for action, and industrial and moral worth, not wealth, the 
 true standard of individual and national greatness. II. To secure to the 
 toilers a proper share of the wealth that they create; more of the leisure 
 that rightfully belongs to them; more society advantages; more of the 
 benefits, privileges and emoluments of the world, in a word, all those 
 rights and privileges necessary to make them capable of enjoying, ap- 
 preciating, defending, and perpetuating the blessings of republican in- 
 stitutions." 1 
 
 The persistent desire to retain the old status comes out in the ritual, 
 where it is stated that "the great aim and object of our organization 
 is to secure for the industrial classes that position in the world and in 
 society to which they are entitled as the producers of the necessaries 
 
 1 Powderly, 117. 
 
132 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 and comforts of life;" the new Stewardism and solidarity of labor, in 
 the statement, "The conditions of one part of our class can not be im- 
 proved permanently unless all are improved together." 1 The indomitable 
 idealistic spirit had crept in here, and as a result the trade unionists, 
 still struggling to keep their heads above water, were far from enthu- 
 siastic. In summarizing these efforts to effect a national body Powderly 
 interprets for us the general feeling of the average unionist: "It's no 
 use in having so many organizations; we have our trade union and 
 that is enough; we are not in favor of allowing our affairs to be discussed 
 by those who know nothing about them, and we will not associate with 
 the common every day laborers in any organization of labor; we do not 
 object to meeting with them elsewhere, but to place them on the same 
 level with ourselves is asking too much. Pretty soon they will want to 
 take our places at the bench, and it is time to nip this thing hi the bud." 2 
 The significant phrase here is "at the bench;" the skilled workers were 
 soon to see the common laborer taking their places, not at the bench, 
 but at the machine, which made a world of difference. 
 
 The hard times that set in with the panic of 1873 lasted till 1879; for 
 the labor movement it was a tune of stress and great searching of heart. 
 Reduction of wages everywhere, if not actual unemployment, threat- 
 ened to engulf the old national unions; the employers seized the wel- 
 come opportunity to attempt to break them up entirely through 
 lockouts, blacklists, and other persecution. The movement was prac- 
 tically driven underground; this was the great period of secrecy and 
 hidden rituals, for no man dared openly to lead in union activities when 
 it meant virtual exclusion from employment at the hands of every mas- 
 ter. Some it drove to predatory acts, to murder and arson. This was 
 the time when the Molly Maguires, who speedily for the general pub- 
 lic became the stock type of unionist, were pursuing their course of crime 
 in the Pennsylvania coal fields. Others it forced into Marxianism and 
 revolutionary socialism; still others into greenbackism and political re- 
 form. And some it led to abandon hope of securing any aid from the 
 public at large, either in a general organization or a "people's party, 
 and to concentrate then* efforts upon building up a strong business 
 unionism upon a "practical, non- theoretical basis." 
 
 It was in these years that the Knights of Labor, formed by Uriah 
 Stephens amongst the Philadelphia garment workers hi 1868, took shape 
 and developed its "First Principles." There were many locals still hi 
 
 1 Powderly, 121. 
 9 Ibid., 127. 
 
Conflict of Theories and Triumph of Business Unionism 133 
 
 existence, remnants of the national unions of 1873, and locals which had 
 never formed national organizations; out of this material Stephens was 
 able to build up local and district assemblies, although, since he did not 
 propose by immediate strikes to secure higher wages the members often 
 left after a few months of seemingly ineffectual activities. The orig- 
 inal aims of the Knights, although kept secret, were very moderate. 
 "It was not the intention to create an antagonism between labor and 
 capital. No conflict with legitimate enterprise was contemplated. " 1 
 The first and greatest aim was education, and the formation of "a 
 healthy public opinion on the subject of labor (the only creator of val- 
 ues or capital) and the justice of its receiving a full, just share of the 
 values or capital it has created." The second aim was legislation har- 
 monizing the interests of capital and labor, and making for better work- 
 ing conditions. In accordance with these broadly social aims, the form 
 of the organization was the antithesis of the exclusive craft union. 
 This had failed to recognize "the right of all to have a say in the af- 
 fairs of one. It was because the trade union failed to recognize the 
 rights of man, and looked only to the rights of the trades man, that the 
 Knights of Labor became a possibility." 2 
 
 "Jhe Knights recognized no craft, trade, or even industrial lines; it 
 included all men, save doctors, bankers, and liquor-dealers, and was 
 founded upon geographical, not functional, lines. It thus appealed to 
 the unskilled laborer, and just as surely tended to repel the craftsman; 
 in this early period the only successful strike it could hold was in a 
 locality like a mining camp where functional and geographical distribu- 
 tion coincided. Otherwise it was only by political action, or by a gen- 
 eral strike of all workers, that it could hope to secure results. But this 
 was to the founders an advantage, for they scarcely counted the strike 
 as one of their weapons.X 
 
 Stephens declared his ideals thus: "There should be a greater partic- 
 ipation in the profits of labor by the industrious and intelligent laborer. 
 In the present arrangement of labor and capital the condition of the 
 employee is simply that of wage-slavery, capital dictating, labor sub- 
 mitting; capital superior, labor inferior. This is an artificial and man- 
 created condition, not God's arrangement and order, for it degrades 
 man and ennobles mere pelf; it demeans those who live by useful labor 
 . . . What is the remedy? Cultivate Friendship among the great 
 brotherhood of toil; learn to respect industry in the person of the intel- 
 
 1 Powderly, 149. 
 
 2 Ibid., 156. 
 
134 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 ligent worker; unmake the shams of life by deference to the humble but 
 useful craftsman; beget concert of action by conciliation; confidence 
 by just and upright conduct towards each other; mutual respect by 
 dignified deportment, and wise counsel by what of wisdom or ability 
 God in his wisdom and goodness may have endowed us with . . . The 
 Knights of Labor builds upon the immutable basis of the Fatherhood 
 of God, and the logical principle of the Brotherhood of Man. Its work 
 is the complete emancipation of wealth-producers from the thralldom 
 of wage-slavery.' u 
 
 These were the broad, idealistic, if not visionary, and generally so- 
 cial principles upon which the Knights set forth to aid the workers hi 
 a contemplated campaign of education and legislative reform, culmin- 
 ating in a political party as the various local assemblies made the num- 
 bers sufficient. With a few modifications the" first principles" of the 
 Knights, like the preamble they borrowed from the Industrial Brother- 
 hood, represented the spirit of the late sixties when the first successes 
 of the new unions had given great impetus to the ever ready spirit of 
 social idealism. But Powderly, the successor of Stephens as Grand 
 Master Workman, was destined to have many rude shocks from the 
 capitalists and the public whose philanthropic cooperation he sought, 
 and even more from the oppressed workers, who, beholding hi his Order, 
 a champion in armor come to deliver them, flocked to his banner and 
 eagerly placed powerful weapons hi his hands. 
 
 The first rude awakening came in 1877. The preceding year a conven- 
 tion of socialists, greenbackers, and Knights had been held in Pittsburg 
 to attempt the federation of all the elements in the labor world, trade 
 unionists, Marxian socialists, political reformers and the rest, which had 
 naturally come to naught through the effort of embodying these con- 
 tradictory aims in one group. In the summer of 1877, however, the 
 industrial depression reached its lowest ebb; wages, already reduced to 
 the breaking point, were lowered one step further. The result was a 
 spontaneous outbreak of strikes, starting with the unskilled railroad 
 workers and spreading like wildfire throughout the land, culminating in 
 three days of rioting and destruction of railroad property at Pittsburgh; 
 the militia were everywhere called out to put down the workmen, and for 
 the first time in American history Federal troops battled with strikers in 
 city streets. The effect was instantaneous. Stephens, and the leaders of 
 the workers in general, who since the sixties had been dallying with the 
 various social reforms in the confidence that they were championing 
 
 1 Powderly, 161, 168. 
 
Conflict of Theories and Triumph of Business Unionism 135 
 
 " the people " against the tyranny of the newly-created capitalistic class, 
 and that they had but to raise the banners for all good Americans to rally 
 to the defence of the national tradition, had been offering the hand of 
 reconciliation even to the capitalists. The answer they received was the 
 erection of huge fortress-like armories throughout the industrial cities, the 
 revival of conspiracy laws, and a willing acquiescence in the repressive 
 measures of the blacklist and the lockout. 
 
 The result upon the worker was threefold. Immediately it sent a wave 
 of solidarity and class-consciousness throughout the ranks; never was 
 hatred of the capitalist and sympathy with fellow- worker so wide-spread 
 in American history as in the next decade. Labor, which had been urged 
 again and again to turn to politics, with no avail, united eagerly with the 
 farmers' greenback party and in the next two years achieved substantial 
 victories at the polls. But this political expression of the resentment of 
 the workers soon burnt itself out; the greenback platform that bound 
 them to the farmers became meaningless with the disappearance in 1878 
 of the premium on gold and the resumption of specie payment, the 
 Democratic politicians managed to corral the positions and machinery of 
 the Greenback Labor Party, and, perhaps most important of all, pros- 
 perity set in in 1879 and made economic action once more profitable. 
 
 More important ultimately than the immediate political direction given 
 by the strikes of 1877 was the great impetus imparted to business union- 
 ism, that is, to an opportunist policy of rejecting the appeal to the public 
 and to the reason of the capitalist in favor of taking all possible measures 
 to increase the bargaining power of labor itself. The appeal of the work- 
 ers had been met by bayonets; it was obviously impossible to put faith in 
 generous policies which could not hope to be effective until a long process 
 of education had taken place. These ultimate aims were not rejected; 
 they were merely postponed while the workers were insuring a roof over 
 their heads. Indeed the "first principles" of the Knights, retained many 
 loyal adherents even while they were being relegated to the background as 
 practical measures of immediate protection and relief. But it cannot be 
 gainsaid that, in spite of the persistence officially of the social philosophy 
 of the Knights, the strikes of 1877 marked the turning point at which the 
 mass of the workers definitely foreswore a primary interest in social 
 reform for the grinding business of pulling themselves up slowly by their 
 own efforts. Not until they had made a clear and a secure place for 
 themselves within American business itself, until they could stand up to 
 the capitalist and say him nay, would they again, as a settled policy, seek 
 to transcend the framework of business life. 
 
136 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 The attitude which thus became ascendent, in its resolve to proceed 
 one step at a time as well as in its note of some further aim lying hid, 
 biding its time, is to be found in the testimony of Strasser of the Cigar- 
 makers before a Senate Committee. Strasser had been a Marxian; he 
 was with Samuel Gompers the leader of the "new" or business unionism. 
 
 Q. You are seeking to improve home matters first? 
 
 A. Yes, sir, I look first to the trade I represent; I look first to cigars, to the 
 interests of the men who employ me to represent their interest. 
 
 Chairman: I was only asking you in regard to your ultimate ends. 
 
 Witness: We have no ultimate ends. We are going on from day to day. We 
 are fighting only for immediate objects objects that can be realized in a few 
 years. 
 
 By Mr. Call: You want something better to eat and to wear, and better 
 houses to live in? 
 
 A. Yes, we want to dress better and to live better, and become better citizens 
 generally. 
 
 The Chairman: I see that you are a little sensitive lest it should be thought 
 that you are a mere theorizer. I do not look upon you in that light at all. 
 
 The Witness: Well, we say in our constitution that we are opposed to theo- 
 rists, and I have to represent the organization here. We are all practical 
 
 When in Rome do as the Romans do, especially if one be bent upon 
 overthrowing the Roman citadel! 
 
 Though as we shall see this business unionism ultimately captured the 
 Knights, it was in the new and the reorganized older national trade unions 
 that it first became powerful. It is significant that Strasser was elected 
 president of the Cigarmakers in the very year of the great strikes. He 
 and the president of the New York local, Samuel Gompers, impressed by 
 the failure of a strike of their own in 1877 against the tenement house 
 system, resolved to recreate their union, and later if possible the entire 
 labor movement, upon the lines of the strong British trade unions. In 
 the convention of 1879 they had their way. The international officers 
 were given complete control over the local unions; an immediate gain in 
 members was sacrificed, through the institution of high membership dues, 
 to a large protective fund; and an extensive benefit system was introduced 
 to hold the union together when hard times, hitherto the death of all 
 previous American organizations, had made the prospect of immediate 
 advancement uncertain. Moreover, the central officers were empowered 
 to transfer funds from a strong to a weak local. As a consequence of this 
 1 Quoted in Commons, II, 309. 
 

 Conflict of Theories and Triumph of Business Unionism 137 
 
 policy, the union increased from 2,729 in 1879 to 14,604 in iSSi. 1 Slowly 
 but surely, although it was not until the emergence of the A. F. L. in the 
 late eighties that the movement became general, the national unions reor- 
 ganized upon the model of the cigarmakers, encouraged as they were by the 
 good times following 1879 to extend their policy of strikes and boycotts. 
 
 Meanwhile the effect of the 1877 strikes upon the Knights of Labor 
 had been more doubtful. Officially the Order denied all connection with 
 the strikes; they played no large part in their methods. Actually many 
 members took part in them, and thereafter, for all its high principles, 
 the Knights became an aggressive and protective body. Moreover, for 
 those strikers who were largely unskilled and unconnected with any 
 national organization, it was the easiest course for them to declare their 
 adhesion to the Order in a body, though their motives might not include a 
 single one of the rather middle-class aims for which the Order ostensibly 
 stood. Throughout its history the Knights were recruited largely from 
 such locals, which passed within and without the fold with equal celerity 
 and facility; the usual procedure was first to declare a strike, and then 
 afterwards, as a source of strength and prestige, to join the Knights for 
 such period as might be advisable. ; Theoretically a highly centralized 
 body, the Order never seems to have maintained the firm hold upon its 
 members which the elaborate benefit systems and the fairly representa- 
 tive character of the conventions of the national unions gave them. The 
 whole organization, in fact, was modeled somewhat on the lines of the 
 soviet system of Russia : Local Assemblies, comprising all the trades in a 
 given locality, sent delegates to the District Assemblies, and these in turn 
 were represented in the General Assembly, which thus, lacking any direct 
 contact with the locals, could not appreciably influence their action. 
 This state of affairs made for sudden and large accretions in membership 
 in time of stress and just as rapid falling off when no more was to be 
 gained; but, and herein lies its importance, it was the only method 
 whereby, outside of strong industrial unions, the semi-skilled and the 
 unskilled could be reached. 
 
 The direct result of the 1877 strikes upon the Knights of Labor was 
 to bring about that national organization that rivalry between the Phila- 
 delphia and Pittsburgh District Assemblies had hitherto prevented. A 
 convention at Reading in 1878 became the first General Assembly, 
 adopted the preamble of the Industrial Brotherhood, and declared for the 
 lifting of the veil of secrecy, which was finally done in 1 88 1. The specific 
 measures proposed were, the establishment of bureaus of labor statistics, 
 1 Quoted in Commons, II, 308. 
 
138 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 the establishment of cooperative institutions, productive and distributive, 
 the freedom of the public lands, employers' liability, the weekly wage, 
 mechanics' lien laws, " the substitution of arbitration for strikes, where- 
 ever employers and employees are willing to meet on equitable grounds," 
 the abolition of child labor under fourteen, of prison labor, the securing of 
 equal pay for equal work for both sexes, the eight-hour day, and financial 
 reform. These measures all obtained a certain allegiance from the 
 workers, who would undoubtedly have welcomed them all; yet Powderly 
 confesses that the whole preamble and its hangover of ideas from the 
 sixties represented the notions of the founders and leaders, and not those 
 of the men themselves. They advocated pure trade unionism as much 
 more successful in strikes, whereas Stephens and Powderly placed all 
 their faith in educative measures. 1 Almost the only point of the " first 
 principles" that really attracted the workers was its class-consciousness, 
 typified in its mottoes: "That is the most perfect government in which an 
 injury to one is the concern of all" 2 and, "When bad men combine, the 
 good must associate, else they will fall, one by one, the unpitied sacrifice 
 in a contemptible struggle." 3 The Knights were strong, when they were 
 strong, because of this universality of appeal; yet their strength was 
 exerted rather upon the unskilled who looked eagerly upon them from 
 without than upon those who from within realized the structural weak- 
 ness of the Order. 
 
 The years following the centralization were mainly occupied with 
 strikes conducted by the District Assemblies. Growth was comparatively 
 slow, from 20,000 in 1879 to 50,000 in 1883, 4 with almost as many with- 
 drawals each year as new members. The question of politics as a method 
 of carrying out the legislative ends of the Order, was finally and charac- 
 teristically disposed of by leaving the decision to the local assemblies. 
 During this period old unions were reorganized and new ones formed, 
 which, on attaining maturity, left the mother order and formed national 
 trade unions of their own. The strikes, despite the obvious unsuitability 
 of the Knights' structure for such tests, were largely confined to a single 
 trade, and were almost uniformly unsuccessful; the Telegraphers' strike 
 of 1883 was typical. The fact that this was a period of prosperity when 
 the national trade unions were generally gaining their demands made 
 this a particularly heavy blow at the Order's popularity. Powderly, who 
 
 1 Powderly, op. cii., 272. 
 
 3 Constitution of the Knights of Labor, 1878. 
 
 4 Commons, II, 343~344- 
 
Conflict of Theories and Triumph of Business Unionism 139 
 
 had succeeded Stephens, though personally bent on putting into practice 
 his cooperative ideas, was compelled in 1883 to confess that not coopera- 
 tion but strikes was what the members wanted. And when these failed it 
 was to the boycott that the Order turned. 
 
 The industrial revolution first made its appearance on a large scale 
 during the Civil War; yet it was productive, in the labor movement, of 
 organization largely in the semi-skilled trades. For thirty years there- 
 after the craft unions were practically dominant. It was not till the 
 eighties that the country became really industrialized, that railroads were 
 extended to every hamlet, and that factories sprang up in great numbers. 
 And it was not till the eighties that labor organization and industrial 
 unrest became a really potent factor in our national life. After the great 
 outburst of the mid-decade labor settled back into the relatively stable 
 form from which it has but recently started to emerge. 
 
 The prosperity of the early eighties waned in 1884, and did not recover 
 until three years later. Wages were on every hand reduced, but, unlike 
 earlier depressions, not very much unemployment resulted. This, to- 
 gether with the increased strength of the unions, resulting in part from 
 the adoption of the benefit system and in part from the natural growth 
 of industry, sufficed to keep the organizations above water and to give 
 them great fighting strength. \ Many strikes, the first resort, having 
 failed in 1884, the Knights turned to boycotting and achieved consider- 
 able success with this formidable weapon: But in 1885 conditions im- 
 proved a trifle, and at once strikes broke out spontaneously throughout 
 the country. It was the unskilled, the lumbermen, the lowest-paid raiL- 
 road workers, those whom no trade union would accept, who burst forth 
 in a universal outcry for better conditions. It could hardly be said that 
 the Knights of Labor, though the direct gainer, was the cause of these 
 industrial conflicts; they rather came as spontaneous protests, and then, 
 after the men had struck, they affiliated with the Knights. The em- 
 ployers, taking alarm, generally forced a second strike to beat the newly 
 formed union. Thus the shopmen of the Union Pacific Railroad pre- 
 vented a wage reduction in 1884, joined the Knights, and had to strike 
 again. A similar strike, supported by the railroad brotherhoods, occurred 
 on the roads controlled by the notorious Jay Gould. The next year 
 would have seen a further general strike had not Gould met the Knights 
 and concluded a bargain with them. This dramatic event, in which 
 Powderly conferred on equal terms with the most powerful and the most 
 feared capitalist in the country, inspired among the workingmen in all 
 parts of the country respect and delirious admiration for the Knights of 
 
140 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 Labor. Here at last was a powerful protector; at once they struck and 
 appealed to the Order for aid. It was estimated that the Order probably 
 contained as many as five million members ! Congress and the state-legis- 
 latures went out of their way to conciliate this labor vote. Never, not 
 even in 1877, had such a wave of solidarity and hatred for the "capital- 
 ists" passed through the labor ranks of the country; men declared them- 
 selves ready to give sympathy, money, even their lives to aid their fellows. 
 They spurned the very idea of arbitrating when they belonged to such a 
 powerful organization. 
 
 \ To the outsider the Knights of Labor seemed destined to become the 
 dominant and exclusive labor organization in the country. With an 
 actual membership in 1886 of over half a million, and a reputation worthy 
 of ten times that size, the Order seemed invincible. But none knew better 
 than Powderly himself, in the midst of his pride over becoming a figure of 
 national importance, that at bottom the Order was far from a success. 
 None of the new members cared the slightest for the principles for which it 
 stood, principles that hesitated to employ the strike at all; few of them 
 had any direct or lasting connection with the Knights. It was just at this 
 crisis that the Order proved its inherent unfitness: in spite of all the 
 emphasis it placed upon education, it was unable to accomplish any real 
 discipline or training of the thousands who had literally forced themselves 
 into its ranks. There was nothing to bridge the gap between the pure 
 self-interest, which had led the men to join, and the social idealism of the 
 leaders and their first principles. The two strains would not merge; and 
 so the Knights gave way to another organization in which they would. 
 Even in 1886, at the very height of the power of the Order, the workers 
 had repudiated such a baseless social idealism and clung to the methods 
 of business unionism; it was but a question of time before they would 
 desert to an organization whose structure corresponded more closely 
 with their aim. 
 
 That structure had already been started. In 1881 there had met at 
 Pittsburgh a small body of delegates to form the Federation of Organized 
 Trades and Labor Unions of the United States and Canada, all members 
 of trade unions and some of them disgusted with the poor showing of 
 the Knights. The body was organized on the model of the Trades Union- 
 Congress of Great Britain; its amis were to be, like that body, an organ 
 of publicity and propaganda, and it was hoped to establish an American 
 replica of the Parliamentary Committee of the British congfess. 1 The 
 call had emanated from the same men who had already undertaken to 
 
 1 Commons, II, 319. 
 
Conflict of Theories and Triumph of Business Unionism 141 
 
 reconstruct American unionism on the British basis; Gompers took a 
 prominent part, ran for president, and was defeated only because of his 
 intimate association with the socialists. But, far more important, he 
 was made chairman of the Committee in the Plan of Organization. 
 A contemporary writer in the Pittsburgh Commercial Gazette, with parti- 
 san intent, states: "Mr. Gompers is the leader of the Socialistic element, 
 which is pretty well represented in the Congress, and one of the smartest 
 men present. It is thought that the attempt will be made to capture 
 the organization for Mr. Gompers (for president) as the representative 
 of the Socialists, and'if such an attempt is made, whether it succeeds or 
 not, there will likely be some lively work, as the delegates opposed to 
 Socialism are determined not to be controlled by it. If the Socialists 
 do not have their own way, they may bolt, as they have always done in 
 the past. If they do bolt, the power of the proposed organization will 
 be so seriously crippled as almost to destroy its usefulness." * 
 
 But Gompers withdrew to save the organization, and it adopted a 
 declaration of principles that has to this day remained in the constitution 
 of the American Federation of Labor. "Whereas, a struggle is going 
 on in the nations of the civilized world between the oppressors and the 
 oppressed in all countries, a struggle between capital, and labor, which 
 must grow in intensity from year to year and work disastrous results to 
 the toiling millions of all nations if not combined for mutual protection 
 and benefit; the history of the wage-workers of all countries is the 
 history of constant struggle and misery engendered by ignorance and 
 disunion; whereas the history of the non-producers of all ages proves 
 that the minority, throughly organized, may work wonders for good or 
 evil; it behooves the representatives of the workers of North America, in 
 Congress assembled, to adopt such measures and disseminate such 
 principles among the people of our country as will unite them for all 
 time to come and to secure the recognition of the rights to which they 
 are justly entitled, and conforming to the old adage, 'In Union there is 
 strength/ the formation of a Federation embracing every trade and 
 labor organization in North America, a union founded upon a basis as 
 broad as the land we live in, is our only hope. The past history of trade 
 unions proves that small organizations, well conducted, have accom- 
 plished great good, though their efforts have not been of that lasting 
 character which a thorough unification of all the different branches of 
 industrial workers is bound to secure." 2 
 
 1 Proceedings, First Session, Fed. of Org. Trades and Labor Unions. 
 
142 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 The objects were declared to be the encouragement and formation of 
 trades and labor unions, of national and international trade unions, and 
 of trade and labor assemblies and councils, and to secure legislation 
 favorable to the interests of the industrial classes. To this latter end 
 there was instituted a legislative committee to serve as a lobby, on the 
 British model. The platform included incorporation of unions, to 
 protect their property, compulsory education, abolition of child labor, 
 uniform apprentice laws, the eight-hour day, (" Grasp one idea, less 
 hours better pay") protection from prison labor, from immigrants, and 
 from the truck system. 1 
 
 But the congress had little success with legislation, and by 1884 it 
 was decided to abandon British inspiration and to embark on an ex- 
 tensive eight-hour program. The report stated: "This much has been 
 determined by the history of the national eight-hour law it is useless 
 to wait for legislation in this matter. In the world of economic reforrh 
 the working classes must depend upon themselves for the enforcement 
 of measures as well as for their conception. A united demand for a 
 shorter working day, backed by thorough organization, will prove vastly 
 more effective than the enactment of a thousand laws depending for 
 their enforcement upon the pleasure of aspiring politicians or syco- 
 phantic department officials." Accordingly the congress abandoned 
 its purely advisory character by resolving on a general eight-hour strike 
 for May i ,1886, and called upon the Knights of Labor to cooperate 
 with them. 2 
 
 The reasons for this resolution put through in spite of the smallness 
 and the general indifference of the members, were complex. The 
 \ Knights, first of all, gained their power through strikes for a retention 
 of wage rates; if the trade unions took up the eight-hour strike, so popular 
 a few years before, they could greatly increase their prestige^ That 
 this actually resulted is shown by the great increase in membership and 
 in locals in the next two years. For the majority, the eight-hour day 
 appealed as an aid in "making work;" but Stewardism was rapidly 
 gaining strength at this time, and it is of the essence of Stewardism that 
 it merges, in practice, with the make- work theories. Thus in 1882 the 
 two motives were blended in a speech hi the convention: "The eight-hour 
 day will furnish more work at increased wages. We declare it will 
 permit the possession and enjoyment of more wealth by those who 
 create it. It will dimmish the power of the rich over the poor, not by 
 
 1 A. F. L., Proceedings, ist Convention. 
 *Ibid., Fourth Convention. 
 
Conflict of Theories and Triumph of Business Unionism 143 
 
 making the rich poorer and the poor richer. It will create the conditions 
 necessary for the education and the intellectual advancement of the 
 masses. It will not disturb, jar, confuse, or throw out of order the 
 present wage system of labor. It is a measure that will permanently 
 increase wages without at the same time increasing the cost of produc- 
 tion of wealth. It will decrease the poverty and increase the wealth 
 of all wage laborers. And it will, after a few years, gradually merge the 
 wage system into a system of industrial cooperation in which wages 
 will represent the earnings and not (as now) the necessities of the wage 
 .laborer." l 
 
 The Knights of Labor was at the height of its meteoric career. Pow- 
 derly had little faith in Stewardism, or the eight-hour in general; he was, 
 besides, rather jealous of the Federation. Nothing was done about 
 cooperating in the general strike, and just before May i, 1886, he sent 
 out a secret circular advising against it. But the workers in general 
 knew nothing of this secret disapproval, and flocked to the Knights in 
 greater numbers than ever. In March a great strike broke out on the 
 Gould lines, marked by almost as much violence as those of 1877; before 
 this had been settled, the eight-hour strike began. The unions, de- 
 serted by the officials of the Knights, were nevertheless successful in 
 securing large reductions in hours in many trades; but they never forgave 
 Powderly for his lack of support. And on May 3 occurred the Hay- 
 market bombing in Chicago, which caused an instant revulsion, not 
 only on the part of the great mass of the American people, but on the 
 part of the workers themselves. As Gompers put it, "The effect of that 
 bomb was that it not only killed the policemen, but it killed our eight- 
 hour movement for that year and for a few years after, notwithstanding 
 we had absolutely no connection with these people." ! 
 
 The Knights of Labor subsided almost as rapidly as it had grown. 
 In the beginning of 1887 it had grown to 70x3,000 members; in 1890, but 
 ioo,ooo. 3 By 1887, too, the bulk of the membership had shifted from 
 the unskilled workers of the cities to the small tradesmen and artisans 
 of the country towns, those who were attracted more by its general 
 policy of uplift than by the benefit offered by strikes; and in the early 
 nineties it became allied with the Farmers' Alliance and the Populist^, 
 replacing Powderly in 1893 with J. R. Sovereign, an Iowa farmer. Mn 
 its decline it remained true to its "first principles;" and the fact that it 
 
 1 A. F. L., History, Encyclopedia, and Reference Book, 215. 
 
 2 Industrial Commission, Report, VII, 623. 
 1 Commons, 482, II. 
 
144 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 was to the farmers that it made its appeal reveals not only the persis- 
 tence of the ideal of Jeffersonian democracy, but even more how this 
 ideal, in its original form, had ceased to be, as it had been in the eighties, 
 the aim of the workerXThe effect of the industrial revolution and of 
 the great mass of foreign labor, which had no traditional affiliations with 
 Jeffersonianism, could not be better illustrated than in the strangeness 
 with which the following statement of the traditional American ideal, 
 which in 1865 would have aroused a burst of enthusiasm, fell upon the 
 ears of the unionists of the nineties: 
 
 "The order of the Knights of Labor is not so much intended to adjust 
 the relationship between the employer and the employee as to adjust 
 natural resources and productive facilities to the common interests of 
 the whole people, that all who wish may work for themselves, inde- 
 pendent of large employing corporations and companies. It is not 
 founded on the question of adjusting wages, but on the question of 
 abolishing the wage-system and the establishment of a cooperative 
 industrial system. When its real mission is accomplished, poverty 
 will be reduced to a minimum, and the land dotted over with 
 peaceful, happy homes. Then, and not till then, will the Order 
 die." 1 
 
 \The workers preferred the more immediate gams to be had from the 
 national trade unions; they flocked to them in increasing numbers, anc 
 the history of the decade from 1885 to 1895 is a history of the growth o: 
 the American Federation of Labor, which had changed its name from 
 that of Federation of Organized Trades in 1886, at the expense of the 
 Knights.X 
 
 The rapid decline of the Knights of Labor did not mean that all the 
 workers lost returned to a state of disorganization. Rather it signified 
 that they had withdrawn bodily from the Order to found national un- 
 ions of their own, on the Federation model. The Knights, as we have 
 seen, had recruited its membership from men to whom not its first 
 principles but its strike policy had appealed, and these men furnished 
 a fertile soil for business unionism. Back in 1879 permission had been 
 given to "sojourners" to join one local assembly that they might later 
 organize assemblies "of their own trade." Moreover, it was resolved 
 that " trades organized as trades may select an executive officer of their 
 own, who may have charge of their organization, and organize local 
 assemblies of the trade in any part of the country, and attach them to 
 the D. A. controlling said trade . . . that trades^so organized be allowed 
 2 General Assembly, Proceedings, 1894, i. 
 
Conflict of Theories and Triumph of Business Unionism 145 
 
 hold delegate conventions on matters pertaining to their trades. " 1 
 meant that business trade unionism was allowed to form national 
 unions within the Knights; and as time went on the strictly workingman 
 membership came to be organized in District Assemblies which were all 
 but in name trade unions. The first of these was the window-glass 
 workers, but soon other trades, in addition to those which like the 
 miners were by their nature industrial and not general, joined the order 
 in a bodA Old trades unions, like the Knights of St. Crispin, the strong 
 shoemakers' union of the sixties which had been greatly weakened by 
 the introduction of machinery, were taken over and reorganized. In 
 1881 D. M. W. Thompson wrote: "I am sorry to say that I found very 
 few of the principles of our Order in practice. In fact, there seems to 
 be a general ignorance, or disregard of the principles of our organization. 
 The older ideas of the former trade associations seem to predominate 
 and^ontrol the actions of the locals generally. " 2 
 
 Tin 1884 permission was given to form national trade assemblies, and, 
 after a set-back with the rush of the unskilled in the next two years, 
 this movement proceeded rapidly. By 1887 there were at least 27 
 national Trade Assemblies, 3 and P. J. McGuire of the Federation 
 could rightly say, "The Knights of Labor are now taking lessons from 
 the trade unions, and are forming themselves on National Trade Dis- 
 trict lines, which are simply the skeletons of trade unions without their 
 flesh and blood. " 4 As business unionism thus grew in great strides in 
 the heart of the Knights, the Trade Assemblies one by one broke loose, 
 formed international unions, and joined the A. F. L. This movement was 
 caused both by a natural affinity to the Federation unions and by a 
 growing disaffection for the Knights' principles, and by the bad name 
 which the Order had gained from the events of 1886. Moreover, the 
 Knights of Labor by their aggressive tactics drove the Federation into 
 open warfare and scabbing, and when it became impossible to belong 
 to both organizations there was little doubt which side the trades would 
 espouse. By the early nineties, when the Knights definitely disappeared 
 as a labor organization, it was no longer a question of business unionism 
 versus social idealism; it was merely which type of organization was 
 best suited to the universal spirit of business unionism.^ 
 What, then, are the reasons for the non-success of the Knights of La- 
 
 1 Proceedings, 1879, 7 2. 
 
 * Philadelphia Journal of United Labor, May, x88x. 
 
 * Commons, II, 428. 
 
 4 Carpenter, Oct., 1887. 
 
146 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 bor? Are they that the craft and not the industrial union must be the 
 basis of a strong labor movement? Are they that the workers prefer 
 their private advantage and the gains which exclusive craft business 
 unionism gives them to the more social and disinterested aims of improv- 
 ing the conditions of the entire community? Both answers have been 
 given, but neither, it appears after a careful investigation, is justified. 
 As to the first the Order never stood for industrial unionism in any 
 sense; the local assembly was not made up of all the workers employed 
 in a given industry, but was mixed and corresponded to what is known 
 in the Federation as a "labor union," a body of workers made up with- 
 out regard to either craft or industrial lines. The only organization 
 within the knights, before the growth of the trade assemblies, which 
 was made industrial by its regional distribution, was the assembly of 
 the coalminers; and far from proving that the industrial union is value- 
 less, this union, which joined the A. F. L. in 1896 as the United Mine 
 Workers of America, has become the strongest union in the Federation. 
 
 As to the second answer, we have seen that the basic fault with the 
 Knights of Labor was not that it tried to combine the self-interest of 
 the workers' desire to gain a more stable and more equal status in society 
 with the idealistic aim of raising every one to a better position through 
 general political and social reform, but rather that it made no attempt 
 at all to combine and merge them, and to create an educative situation 
 in which the broader would inevitably develop out of the narrower 
 motive. This the A. F. L. with its underlying principle of Stewardism, 
 which linked the good of one group up directly with the good of all, 
 was able to effect, though only after a long and arduous training. \The 
 Knights' structure failed because, like the cosmopolitanism of the eight- 
 eenth century in international relations, it failed to take into account 
 the solid foundation of group interests and group loyalties upon which 
 it must ground itself. The industrial structure is not centralized, but 
 federalized; and to control it effectually labor must organize on parallel 
 lines. The only state of industry with which the Knights of Labor 
 was equipped to cope was the homogeneous farming community, or 
 else, by a political general strike, with society as a whole. 
 
 Not only had not the industrial revolution progressed far enough to 
 bring about a real solidarity of interests in all classes of labor, but even 
 if it had the structure was unsuited. The unskilled could not be effectually 
 organized until the growth of large bodies of capital and the subdivi- 
 sion of labor had brought vividly home to the craft unions the truth 
 of Steward's contention that only by raising the lowest could the high- 
 
Conflict of Theories and Triumph of Business Unionism 147 
 
 est hope to raise themselves. The Knights' structure was thus either 
 belated or premature. 
 
 Moreover, we must not overlook what was brought forward by knights 
 themselves as the gravest defect of their order, the extreme central- 
 ization which concentrated great power in the hands of executives who, 
 as it happened, were out of touch with the wishes of the rank and fi 
 The District Assembly was given supreme power over its Local Assem- 
 blies, and the General Assembly over the District Assemblies; while 
 the general officers were elected at two removes from the workers. 
 Consequently, in view of a situation affording little flexibility to adjust 
 specific situations (there was the same constitution for every local and 
 district assembly) and but slightly democratic and responsive to the 
 control of the membership, it was to be expected that serious internal 
 troubles would arise. Thus in 1894 a large number of delegates, includ- 
 ing National Trades Assembly 135, the miners, were locked out of the 
 General Assembly and withdrew to form a rival Independent Order of 
 the Knights of Labor of their own, adopting a constitution " which was 
 so framed as to prevent the general officers from exercising autocratic 
 power, as they have been and are doing in the old Knights of Labor, 
 for the purpose of continuing themselves in office." l Powderly was 
 severely attacked for a number of his actions, and in general a strong 
 reaction against a central body with great powers favored the looser 
 structure of the Federation. 
 
 We have thus far traced the general development of ideas in the labor 
 movement from its industrial beginnings in the Civil War period until 
 the American Federation of Labor arose into a dominating position in 
 1890. Thereafter, interesting and varied as we re the events that marked 
 the history of the unions, the type tended to remain quite stable; every- 
 where business unionism under the aegis of Samuel Gompers was dom- 
 inant. Inasmuch as it can hardly be claimed that even today the type 
 has been superseded, and as such business unionism seems to repre- 
 sent a fairly permanent stage in American labor history, it is requisite 
 to pause here and undertake, more fully than has hitherto been done, 
 a careful consideration of the aims, the philosophy, and the implications 
 contained in the activities of that type of group individualism we haye 
 called business unionism. 
 
 1 Official Handbook, Independent Order of the Knights of Labor, 1896. 
 
8. BUSINESS UNIONISM RELATIONS WITHIN THE GROUP 
 
 OUR modern industrial civilization rests largely upon the theory of 
 the freedom of contract. When a man has a piece of goods which he 
 has made he takes it to another, and the two freely bargain upon the 
 price to be paid for it; what that price shall be is determined by the 
 amount of the commodity available and the eagerness with which the 
 second individual desires to secure it, and must under no conditions be 
 the subject of political interferences on the part of the government, 
 under penalty of entirely disorganizing the machinery. of production. 
 This theory has been also applied by those who desire to employ work- 
 men, with the approval of the vast majority of the community, to the 
 commodity which those workmen have to dispose of. Those consider- 
 ations which govern the price and purchase of the raw materials neces- 
 sary to the process of manufacture have been kept in view with regard 
 to that essential raw material, human labor. In buying bales of cotton 
 the purcashing agents of a textile mill secure the lowest quotations for 
 the quality they desire, while the cotton brokers seek to dispose of their 
 cotton to the highest bidder. Likewise the boss in charge of hiring 
 hands gives jobs to those who will accept the lowest wages, while work- 
 ers, if they are in a position to choose, secure employment at the fac- 
 tory that offers highest wages. If the price of cotton rises so high that 
 it is no longer profitable to manufacture cloth, the demand is stopped 
 and brokers with cotton on their hands are forced to lower their prices. 
 If they fall so low that it becomes unprofitable to grow it, the growers 
 cease to supply any, and the manufacturers are obliged to increase their 
 offers. Similarly, if a man asks too high wages, mills are free to shut 
 down until he will accept lower pay; whereas if the mills offer too low 
 wages, the men are free to withdraw their labor individually until 
 the offer is raised. This so runs the theory would result in the per- 
 manent withdrawal of a number of workers from the industrial field 
 and from this world, did they not have the foresight, imitating the 
 planter who hi similar circumstances reduces his acreage and the sup- 
 ply of cotton, to reduce the supply of laborers through abstention from 
 the consequences of marriage. Thus automatically the supply of raw 
 material is adjusted to the demand, and a free bargain necessarily 
 being to the advantage of all parties concerned else why should they 
 
Business Unionism Relations within the Group 149 
 
 enter into it? the general welfare is promoted by the beneficent laws 
 of political economy. It was advantageous to the cotton planter to 
 sell his cotton at the price he did, else why did he engage in the busi- 
 ness of growing it? It was of advantage to the worker to sell his labor 
 for the wages offered, rather than to starve, else why did he not starve? 
 To suggest, as some did for there are unfortunately always malcon- 
 tents that a divine plan whereby most men could not afford to pur- 
 chase cotton shirts might not be preferable to a more human arrange- 
 ment whereby the amount of cotton grown and manufactured was 
 adjusted to the number of cotton garments required to clothe the 
 community properly, was almost as blasphemous as to suggest that 
 the wages paid might bear some relation to the cost of living. 
 
 Unfortunately for this theory, cotton brokers, desiring neither to 
 accept prices offered nor to engage in another occupation, found it to their 
 advantage to engage in agreements among themselves to keep the price 
 of cotton at a certain level; and in other commodities the same consid- 
 erations prompted the formation of corporations to control the entire 
 supply of that commodity and thus secure higher prices. This policy 
 has been in America notably successful, from the point of view of those 
 who initiated it, in the raw materials of iron, copper, and anthracite 
 coal, for example, to say nothing of manufactured products. Hence 
 in this particular the theory has been forced to give way before facts, 
 and the Supreme Court has lately authoritatively established the new 
 principle as an integral part of that body of practices known as "good 
 business. " 
 
 This principle, even then quite familiar in industrial life, was the^pol- 
 icy which triumphed with the American Federation of Labor. VThe 
 first principles of the Knights of Labor had been pushed aside as ir- 
 relevant to the realities of American economic life by the rising industri- 
 alism of the seventies and eighties; the workers, then, would adopt a 
 policy that was "practical" and in accord with good business.\ They 
 would accept the business regime, and seek by approved business tac- 
 tics to acquire just as good a place in the business structure as they pos- 
 sibly could. Their antagonists had no scruples about their duties to 
 the community at large, or to any particular portion of it; for this, it 
 must be remembered, was the era of "The public be damned." To 
 the newly arrived immigrants, who flocked to our shores in such num- 
 bers in the eighties, true Americanism seemed to mean the forgetting 
 of those amenities of life which had softened the daily toil of the 
 peasant in Europe, and the impatient plunge into that orgy of business 
 
150 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 enterprise and perilous rate-wars and price-cutting which makes the 
 eighties stand out as in some respects the most typical and least 
 creditable era of American industrialism. With the captains of industry 
 and finance, who were at that period enjoying perhaps more of public 
 favor than ever before or since, regarded everywhere as the truly great 
 citizens of the Republic, it is not hard to understand how the workers, 
 after a last lingering glance at the agricultural democracy vanishing 
 over the western horizon, should feel rather a just pride than a sense 
 of disappointment that they were at last becoming hard-headed busi- 
 ness men. For the worker has ever desired to be equal to the majority 
 of his fellows; and when the psychology of America had changed from 
 that of the thrifty farmer to that of the enterprising business man, the 
 ami of the worker underwent a quite similar transformation. It was 
 in this very decade that the American labor movement took shape and 
 became what it is today; and no observer can afford to overlook the 
 fact that the modern worker has a priceless heritage of victories and 
 set-backs, of patient tiresome organization crowned by a grudging 
 recognition in collective bargaining. He has risen, as assuredly as ever 
 did a Rockefeller or a Carnegie, to his present position solely by his 
 own unaided efforts; it is he who should be the true hero of "Up from 
 the Depths." And today, even though he recognize that changed 
 times demand changed policies, he will not do aught hi word or deed 
 to reflect upon the acts of those who in the formative period of modern 
 unionism won for him that measure of economic freedom he may now 
 enjoy. 
 
 Nothing in a sense can be more typical of the general spirit of labor 
 during this generation than the address with which President J. W. 
 SuUivan, of the New York City C. F. U., welcomed the A. F. L. con- 
 vention of 1895. And nothing could be more typically "American" 
 in the sense of the word that calls to mind mushroom boom towns, 
 Western boasters, and the push and go of business enterprise. "We run 
 the largest local business enterprise in the American continent. This 
 enterprise is to 'bull' our labor market. We succeed. We keep wages 
 up right along, 25% above the level they would be were employers to 
 have their way. In some cases we put them up 50%. We thus retain 
 for our own use half a million dollars which without our unions would 
 go to enrich capitalists and monopolists. $26,000,000 a year! That's 
 our joint dividend, no less. We retain this wealth justly because we 
 produce it. We retain it because we have the power to do it. We are 
 well-organized, well-disciplined, well-led. We boast therefore in our 
 
Business Unionism Relations within the Group 151 
 
 chosen leaders the greatest Captains of Industry in this metropolitan 
 center. Their equals in this community can not be named." 1 
 
 This revelation may not especially appeal to those today who do not 
 find bulling any market a particularly inspiring act, yet it marks a 
 distinct epoch in labor history. The "same note, with a greater emphasis, 
 however, on the purposes for which this process is being carried on, 
 appears in a pamphlet of the early nineties, Dyer D. Lum's Philosophy 
 of Trade Unions. "The trade union is a business, matter-of-fact in- 
 stitution, responding to personal needs, living in the present for the 
 present, and not concerned about its status in the millennium. Born of 
 the New, it instinctively opposes the Old Civilization. . . . Trades 
 unions are not system-builders sufficient unto the day is the evil 
 thereof, and tomorrow will find a new relief for picket-duty. Self- 
 interest is not only the fundamental law of our being, but it is the in- 
 centive which has lifted man from the animal into the sphere of the 
 human. . . . The present struggle for shorter days of toil is not based 
 on any sentimental desire 'for the other fellow/ but for self alone. We 
 want a higher standard of living, and to secure this self-interest be- 
 comes mutual interest, to wring from privilege a greater opportunity. . . . 
 Our selfishness has broadened into mutualism." 
 
 And looking back upon the history of the movement to which he had 
 given so much unselfish toil and of which he could rightfully claim the 
 proud title of leader, Samuel Gompers in 1915 epitomized that spirit 
 when he said: "The American Federation of Labor is guided by the f 
 history of the past. It draws lessons from history in order to interpret 
 conditions which confront working people so that it may work along 
 the lines of least resistance to accomplish the best results in improving 
 the conditions of the working men, women, and children, today, to- 
 morrow, and tomorrow's tomorrow, making each day a better day than 
 the one which went before. This is the guiding principle, philosophy, 
 and aim of the labor movement. 
 
 " We do not set any particular standard, but work for the best possible 
 conditions immediately attainable for the workers. When these are 
 obtained then we strive for better. The working people will not stop 
 when any particular point is reached; they will never stop in their 
 efforts to obtain a better life for themselves, for their wives, for their 
 children, for all humanity. The object to attain is complete social 
 justice." 2 
 
 1 A. F. L., Proceedings, 1895 Convention. 
 
 2 Gompers, The American Labor Movement, 1915. 
 
152 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 Thus it was that business unionism came into the ascendant in the 
 American labor movement, and has for some thirty years remained 
 fairly stable and permanent. Yet there are elements contained within 
 the very heart of business unionism which as time has gone on have 
 so increased in importance that they seem about to force a readjust- 
 ment and a realignment of forces. What these elements are it shall be 
 the purpose of the present analysis to bring out. 
 
 Business unionism regards itself as a great corporation which has one 
 valuable commodity to sell, the labor of its members. This labor it is 
 its aim to sell at the highest possible price, a price including not merely 
 money wages, but also returns in shorter days and improved working 
 conditions in general. Thus the primary aim of the business union is to 
 engage in a business transaction with the employer, and in that trans- 
 action to secure the best possible terms. All other activities carried 
 on, though they may also possess attractiveness and utility on their 
 own account, are at bottom valued chiefly as a means toward the 
 attainment of strong bargaining power. The employer has on his side 
 the power of discharging individuals, of depriving them of the means 
 of securing a livelihood; the workers have the power to withdraw their 
 labor, and to deprive the employer of the chance to make profits on his 
 manufactures. These are the forces manipulated by the leaders on both 
 sides; the employer can threaten discharge, and can keep as large 
 supply of labor available as possible, while the worker can see to it that 
 all labor acts as a unit, and thus force the employer to come to his unioi 
 for his hands. Around this simple basis revolve nearly all of the measui 
 and policies which have characterized the activities of both capital anc 
 labor throughout the era of business unionism. 
 
 The situation thus closely resembles the armed peace which has b( 
 the basis of international relations. In the everlasting jockeying f< 
 position the leaders on both sides, just as the diplomats of Europe, ai 
 constantly demanding more and more preparedness, greater and greatei 
 armies, more and more powerful fighting machines. Neither industri< 
 leaders nor diplomats actually desire conflict; neither consider a strike 
 or a war as good in itself. Yet their whole strategy depends upoi 
 being able to threaten such conflict, to show that in case it shoul 
 eventuate they would possess the advantage; and it cannot be 
 that either industrial leaders or diplomats have any profound antipathy 
 to that state of affairs which so much occupies their thoughts. Specific 
 ally, the strike is not valued in itself by the leader of the business unioi 
 and if he can get what he desires without it, he most assuredly 
 
Business Unionism Relations within the Group 153 
 
 accept a peaceful settlement of the bargain. Strikes are but incidents 
 in the jockeying for power; they are entered upon by one side or 
 the other, when victory seems assured, for the sake of improving their 
 bargaining power. Yet the leader of a business union would be utterly 
 at a loss if he were not assured that, even though he never need to strike, 
 back of him there lay the power of the organized workers; just as in the 
 war of steel and gold no diplomat of China or of Peru, however astute, 
 can hope to secure great advantages for his country. What the worker 
 has won, he has perhaps won justly; but he has won it, not because his 
 demands were just, but because he had the power to enforce them. This 
 truth, albeit subject to considerable limitations, has been at once the 
 basis and the lesson of business unionism, indelibly burned into the 
 mind of the worker through long years of bitter struggle. 
 
 The aim of the business union, to attain a strong bargaining power, 
 to become a fighting machine that can be used by its leaders to 
 enforce its demands, has naturally called into being a type and struc- 
 ture of organization admirably suited to just that purpose. This aim 
 implies a well-disciplined army that can be called upon to act as a unit 
 when necessary, to fight, when necessary, to preserve the peace and keep 
 its agreements, and to be ready at all times to enforce a diplomatic 
 victory through action on the economic field. This function to which 
 business unionism has adapted itself has determined the relations which 
 obtain within the union group, and has raised the old problem of dem- 
 ocratic control versus efficiency of action. For the same body of workers 
 who must serve as the disciplined army is also the body that has for- 
 mulated the demands and that stands to win or lose in the conflict. 
 There is thus a constantly recurring struggle between the forces of 
 discipline and authority and the popular will, a conflict punctuated by 
 the insurgence of the rank and file and the installation of new and more 
 responsive leaders. Nevertheless, as will be seen, it does not appear 
 that on the premises of business unionism any permanent solution to 
 this problem can be found assuredly none has yet been discovered 
 and this is one of the factors which bodes ill for the permanence of 
 business unionism as a type. It seems impossible to reconcile demo- 
 cratic control with any kind of army. 
 
 To lead such an army as the typical business union presents there 
 have naturally come to the front leaders peculiarly fitted by nature and 
 temperament to perform the functions required of them. Thus it is 
 manifestly impossible to form a correct judgment as to the real desires 
 and aims, the real wishes of the workers from a consideration of the 
 
154 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 type of leaders who are developed, and to judge the purposes of the 
 entire group by those of the captains. The function, not the free desires 
 of the workers, has led to the survival of a certain type; and the whole 
 purport of this volume has been to maintain that the function depends 
 quite as much upon the industrial structure and upon the aims of the 
 employers and of society in general, in short, upon factors hitherto 
 quite beyond the workers' control, as upon the desires of the workers 
 themselves. 
 
 To lead an army, to haggle with powerful employers on the basis of 
 threats of force, requires an aggressive leader, a close bargainer, a shrewd 
 diplomat, a dominating personality, capable and perhaps quite fond of 
 exercising personal authority in a word, it requires a man remarkably 
 similar to those captains of industry who by their exercise of the same 
 qualities have elevated themselves in the industrial struggle. To the 
 qualities necessary to wrest a fortune from nature with one hand while 
 fighting off one's fellows with the other, however, the leader of the 
 business union must add a facility in oratory and persuasion, a talent 
 for winning the support of the workers and their personal loyalty; he 
 must approximate those arts by which the politician appeals for public 
 approval. Hence it is not surprising that labor history reveals some 
 leaders who have forsaken the workers for the business game, or who 
 have become politicians and aspirants for public office; nor that the 
 desire to lead their fellows to victory at the polls should always appeal 
 more strongly to the leaders than to the rank and file. It is not 
 surprising that some leaders have even conformed to the type of the 
 despised "demagogue," and have sought their own advantage rather 
 than that of their men. The genuine cases of such action have, of course, 
 been seized upon by the employer as typical of the whole number, and 
 nothing is more common than for our press to treat the labor leader and 
 the "self-seeking agitator" as synonymous terms. It would be unkind 
 to suggest that possibly the employer, at a loss to comprehend the 
 motive of disinterested service to one's fellows, interprets the state of 
 mind of the labor leader on lines smilar to that of his own, and being 
 out to win for himself at all costs naturally supposes that all other men 
 would do what he would do in their places; it would be cruel to question 
 whether possibly those labor-leaders whom he regards as "good" and 
 moderate and fair-minded might not possibly be those who had proved 
 themselves most susceptible to official flattery and promises of private 
 advancement. Taking all these factors into consideration, we may 
 hazard the opinion that the small number of genuine demagogues and 
 
Business Unionism Relations within the Group 155 
 
 the great majority of disinterested leaders and patient self-sacrificing 
 personalities to be found at the head of the labor movement is a real 
 tribute to the persistence of the social idealism to be found therein. Nor 
 must we forget that all labor leaders are ultimately responsible to the 
 workers whose representatives they are, and that no one is quicker than 
 the worker to detect sham and trickery and any trace of disloyalty. It 
 is true that occasionally a union will keep in power a man who has been 
 proved venal; but no such man, however useful he may be as a military 
 leader, receives any personal respect or loyalty from his union. And 
 how many large corporations can with a clear conscience deny the im- 
 putation of any trickery in their own counsels? The business union, we 
 must remember, is proud of being an American business organization. 
 
 But after all it is never the dishonest and insincere who merit the 
 honor of condemnation; it is the sincere man who is mistaken and 
 wrong. Those workers most opposed to the policies of some of the 
 present leaders of the Federation do not question their sincere attach- 
 ment to the interests of their fellow- workers as they see them. They 
 claim rather that the function which the business union performs has 
 tended to develop leaders peculiarly adapted to the conditions amidst 
 which the business union was generated, and that now that these con- 
 ditions have been considerably altered those leaders are by inertia of 
 office continued in power when they might, with greater advantage to 
 the workers, be replaced by other and younger men who would be more 
 responsive to new situations. It is in fact incontestable that many 
 leaders of the Federation and of some of its unions are "war horses," 
 men who have grown grey in the service of their fellows, trained in the 
 bitter struggles of industrial warfare, habituated to certain types of 
 activity and policy and unable to visualize any other state of affairs 
 than that in which the fighting of their younger days has been spent. 
 They are, claim the younger men, victims of a war-psychology which 
 makes them unable to imagine a state of peace or the policies necessary 
 to one. 
 
 Such leaders are continued in office largely from a sense of personal 
 loyalty and obligation; it would be shameful to turn out a man who had 
 given his best years to the service of his fellows when he might have risen 
 high in the industrial world. And quite naturally they use the large 
 powers which the constitutions of most unions give them to further those 
 policies which they feel to be best and to keep down and suppress those 
 workers who they feel are foolishly counseling courses which cannot but 
 result in harm to themselves and their fellows. It is but little wonder 
 
1 56 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 that Mr. Gompers, whose early associates were Marxians, who spent 
 years struggling against the desires of his small body of followers to break 
 into the political field, who sees the American labor movement at its 
 present strength largely as a result of just such wisdom, should look with 
 disfavor upon efforts to form a distinct labor party, even though it might 
 well be that the very growth of organized labor and other industrial 
 changes had materially altered the situation. Moreover, a labor leader 
 is not and cannot be an actual worker at the bench or in the shop ; he is 
 somewhat elevated above the level of the men who have to struggle for 
 their daily bread, and while this eminence undoubtedly gives a broader 
 view and a more philosophic outlook upon society as a whole, it at the 
 same time necessarily causes the loss of some of that sympathetic insight 
 into what are the basic desires and aspirations of the workers' hearts. 
 The responsibility of an executive position rather dampens the desire of 
 the young worker to rush into battle and hazard all on one chance ; the 
 leader is apt to have a tremendous respect for the power of his capitalist 
 opponents, and to tend to overestimate rather than to underestimate the 
 weakness of his own side. 
 
 All of these considerations will serve, for example, to explain the 
 conduct of the officials of the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel, 
 and Tin workers, whose action, or rather whose lack of activity, was the 
 immediate cause of the failure of the great steel strike of iQig. 1 Their 
 experience had included probably the bitterest struggle which has ever 
 been waged in between organized labor and organized capital, and they 
 displayed the results in their most extreme form. 
 
 With this type of leader developed through the natural demands of 
 business unionism, the business union has not really known what to do 
 with the accretions of power which have constantly been coming to it. 
 It is rapidly approaching the time when it will hold within its hands the 
 power to determine general social policies, if indeed it does not already do 
 so; in an industrial country like England it is the great unions which seem 
 to be the seats of real political authority in those matters in which they 
 care to intervene. The British trade unions decide on matters of foreign 
 policy, and Lloyd George wisely decides to adopt the same course. At 
 the Spa conference, in July, 1920, it is significant to note, it was neither 
 the skillful arguments of Herr von Simon, the diplomat and politician, 
 nor the economic reasoning of Herr Stinnes the coal king, but the blunt 
 ultimatum of Herr Hue, the leader of the coal miners which had final 
 weight with the Allies. This growing power of organized labor is no- 
 1 W. Z. Foster, The Great Steel Strike. 
 
Business Unionism Relations within the Group 157 
 
 where realized, least of ail by the leaders of business unionism in America. 
 They have been trained in but one field, and as their weapon grows in 
 power and range they do not know how to use it in any other. It is as 
 though the President of Switzerland, in the midst of vexatious boundary 
 disputes with Italy, should suddenly find at his disposal the combined 
 armies of Russia and Germany. Small wonder if under such circum- 
 stances he persisted in annexing Italian territory, even though in so doing 
 he precipitated a world cataclysm. The business leader instinctively pre- 
 serves the rules of the game he is playing, but with his added power he 
 plays it to the very limit he is conservative in that he does not desire to 
 alter the general economic structure, but he is ready to press more and 
 more exhorbitant demands which cannot but eventuate in the economic 
 change he deprecates. 
 
 Such is the typical leader of a business union. The type of group 
 relation developed is quite suited to him; it is that type we have already 
 noticed as characteristic of American institutions and as dominant in 
 American business organization, the responsible executive relation. It 
 implies leaders with large powers of discretion and of action, but equally 
 weighted with the burden of heavy personal responsibility. Pick a man 
 and give him full control, carry your union card and pay your dues; but 
 let him know that if he fails to deliver the goods he will be ruthlessly dis- 
 carded. This is the pioneer, the fighting type of organization; and 
 competitive business is essentially of a fighting nature. It is the Andrew 
 Jackson type, the tribune of the people; it underlies the popular move- 
 ments for the commission form of government, for the short ballot with 
 executive appointments, for the recall of elected officials, for the replace- 
 ment of judicial officers with commissioners endowed with great discre- 
 tionary powers, in a word, it is that theory of government which Roose- 
 velt represented and which goes under the general name of "progressive." 
 And the world has but just been treated to a supreme example of the way 
 in which America rejects those who after accepting authority and respon- 
 sibility fail to live up to their promises, in the person of her Chief Execu- 
 tive himself. President Wilson's largely personal rule was quite in accord 
 with the principles of American progressivism, or responsible executivism; 
 and had he succeeded the country would have resounded with his praises. 
 But for divers reasons he failed, and seemingly no one is too poor to add to 
 his opprobrium. Indeed, the fate of President Wilson, great as he is, 
 might suggest to the critic the limitations of the theory upon which he 
 acted. 
 
 Be that as it may, this is the type of internal relation which has 
 
158 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 obtained in business unionism: a willing obedience so long as the leader 
 got what the workers demanded of him, an angry revolt when he failed. 
 The first result of this policy is that the leader strives earnestly to get 
 what the workers want; and the second is that he is quite apt to use all of 
 his powers of persuasion to make them want what he can get. Particu- 
 larly in times of transition, when perhaps a large minority seriously 
 questions the aims of the leader, he is prone to pursue those aims all the 
 more vigorously, just as the reply of the leaders of Germany during the 
 war to those who questioned whether peace might not be preferable to 
 conquest was to pursue with increased vigor a policy of military con- 
 quest. It is much easier to engineer a strike for increased wages than to 
 elaborate all the tiresome details of a real plan of social reconstruction, or 
 even of permanent collective bargaining, just as it is much easier to 
 secure peace with victory than a real league of nations. 
 
 To the executives thus elected to carry out their demands the workers 
 entrust great power over the formulation of policy, and even greater 
 powers of influencing public opinion have been assumed. In the matter 
 of collective bargaining, the leaders have almost a free hand; in the vital 
 matter of strikes, it is usual to entrust to them the power both to call and 
 to end them. Most unions indeed require a strike vote to be taken before 
 a strike can be called; but no strike benefits can be obtained, which means 
 that no strike can be successful, if the president and the executive com- 
 mittee do not approve, while it is customary to vote for a strike and leave 
 the declaration to the president when he may judge the time to be ripe. 
 And in most of the older unions, such as the railroad brotherhoods, the 
 president can order men back to work at his own discretion. As a result, 
 once a strike has received general approbation the matter has definitely 
 left the hands of the workers and depends almost entirely upon the 
 wisdom of their leaders; the army, resolved upon war, divests itself of its 
 democratic control, and loyally submits to the will of its captains. 
 
 Moreover, the officers enjoy considerable power over the conventions 
 through their ability to decide upon the eligibility of delegates and to 
 exclude those from locals which they can declare, for financial or other 
 reasons, not to be in good standing. This furnishes a convenient method 
 for getting rid of men who may possibly cause trouble on the convention 
 floor; it was used at ftie Nashville convention of the United Garment 
 Workers, and resulted in the withdrawal of the excluded delegates and the 
 formation of a new union. The executive committee, usually made up of 
 men of the type described, can generally revoke the charter of any local 
 which it disapproves, particularly in case of an unauthorized strike. -Be- 
 
Business Unionism Relations within the Group 159 
 
 sides this direct power, it is the custom to send as delegates to the conven- 
 tions and to the A. F. L. conventions the officers and leaders of the local 
 unions, from motives of loyalty and of habit; and these are apt to form a 
 willing support for the officials and to crush any opposition from the 
 younger and newer men. Moreover the elaborate systems of benefits 
 most business unions have built up, generally with the conscious inten- 
 tion of strengthening the organization and holding the membership to- 
 gether in unfavorable times, are only too successful in accomplishing their 
 purpose, and in preventing action on the part of locals which might meet 
 with opposition from headquarters. The radical worker derides such 
 unions as "coffin societies," and will have in his organization no stabiliz- 
 ing benefits; but he pays the penalty in shifting and temporary member- 
 ship, and has to resort to constant strikes to hold any men at all. 
 
 In spite of this great power exercised by the officers over the members 
 of the union, in large part perhaps because of it, there is a constant 
 struggle going on between the leaders backed up by the older and less 
 aggressive members, and the younger and more active "rank and file," a 
 struggle which has become more and more acute with the growth of a new 
 spirit and a longing for new methods and measures among the latter. 
 Periodic revolts and the election to office of the leaders of the opposition 
 are common occurrences; yet it is no less common for the new leaders soon 
 to become as conservative as the old ones, and with office to assume the 
 vices of authority. A case in point is the International Association of 
 Machinists, of which the present (1920) administration, elected as radicals 
 over the "conservative" incumbents, are now being themselves assailed 
 by a large minority, which in many locals is a majority, as too conserva- 
 tive. It appears exceedingly hard in one man to unite the qualities of a 
 successful general and strategist and a humble representative of the 
 wishes of the majority; only exceptional individuals like Sidney Hillman 
 seem able to do it. 
 
 If one is led to the comparison of a great army by the type of leader 
 which business unionism elevates to power, and by the relations which he 
 enjoys with the group, the analogy becomes irresistible when one con- 
 templates the men themselves and their spirit of group solidarity. The 
 success of an army depends fundamentally upon that elusive something, 
 its morale; upon the amount of cohesion and unity and fixity of purpose 
 which it displays, the amount of whole-hearted cooperation and mutual 
 confidence and trust which permeate its members. Similarly the success 
 of a business union depends upon the amount of group cohesion and 
 solidarity. And this spirit, this morale, can be developed, just as in an 
 
160 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 army, through two radically different policies: through the authority 
 and the external discipline of the central organization, and through the 
 subtler and more elusive spontaneous spirit coming from the whole 
 membership. 
 
 The first method, that of authority and external discipline, has been 
 often tried by labor leaders; it is perhaps natural to the dominant type 
 of personality which we have seen emerges in the business union. Hence 
 we have seen how the business union has developed an elaborate ma- 
 chinery well fitted for giving those in power control over the policies 
 and the opinions of the members, and methods of securing support from 
 every local. The disciplining of unruly members, outlawry and ex- 
 pulsion, the revocation of the charter of a local which will not agree 
 with the others or the president, or its suspension, refusal to allow its 
 delegates a voice in convention, treatment of members not in good 
 standing as scabs with no rights, exclusion from closed shops, all those 
 methods built up to protect the union worker against the lower stan- 
 dard of the non-union man which can be turned against an unruly mem- 
 ber of the group these and many other methods are employed by the 
 leaders to secure solidarity and discipline. Revolt of a large number 
 and the formation of a new union is seldom resorted to, since it gives 
 too excellent a chance to the employer to play one union off against 
 the other and profit by the division amongst the workers. This was 
 tried in the mines of the West between the A. F. L. and the Western 
 Federation of Miners when it was affiliated with the I. W. W., and has 
 recently been resorted to by employers in the split between the Amal- 
 gamated Clothing Workers and the United Garment Workers, an in- 
 significant A. F. L. organization. The length to which the leaders of 
 business unionism will go to endeavor to enforce discipline was shown 
 in the outlaw railroad strike of the spring of 1920, when Mr. W. G. Lee 
 of the Trainmen actually united with the employers to call for an in- 
 junction against the men he claimed to represent, and suspended many 
 locals with thousands of members. 
 
 Yet despite all this machinery of authority and discipline, in time 
 of real crisis the officers discover how powerless they are to force co- 
 hesion on their men from above. When a local has been strong enough 
 to develop a system of strike benefits of its own, as many of the large 
 and radical locals have done with precisely this end in view, it can 
 safely defy its national officials and disregard their frantic efforts to 
 remain in control of the situation. This has been well evidenced in the 
 series of so-called "outlaw" or unauthorized strikes following the arm- 
 
Business Unionism Relations within the Group 161 
 
 istice, in which the rank and file revolted against leaders who no longer 
 represented their own aspirations, and struck on their own accord. 
 
 The longshoremen, the printers, the coal-miners, the railroad work- 
 ers, to name but the most prominent, were able to revolt with impunity, 
 even in the highly disciplined railroad brotherhoods, for they well knew 
 that no officer would long allow to remain outside of his union such 
 large and essential bodies of the workers in the industry. For labor 
 leaders with no one to lead make a sad and sorry spectacle, and many 
 an officer who would otherwise be tempted to get rid of unruly followers 
 is reminded that after all he owes his position solely to the fact that he 
 represents the workers who retain him to look out for their interests. 
 Moreover, when locals are expelled from their national body and from 
 the A. F. L. the state and city federations are quite apt to disregard 
 this action entirely and extend aid and fellowship to those whose dis- 
 grace they well know will be but temporary. 
 
 No, morale, 'in a union as in an army, is hardly to be forced from 
 above. No^methods of German discipline were able to restore the lost 
 morale of the Austrian troops in the last years of the war; no policies 
 of discipline and expulsion are going to develop that solidarity of labor 
 upon which the ultimate success of its aims depends. The morale of 
 a labor organization is a natural and spontaneous outgrowth of the 
 unity of purpose and the community of interests which binds all the 
 workers together against their common antagonist. No army, unless 
 it be an army fighting to defend its very hearth and families from the 
 desecrating invader, can equal the solidarity and group-mindness of 
 the labor union. Where the aim is such as all the members instinct- 
 ively recognize to be their own, there is no need of any external dis- 
 cipline; so powerful is the social impulse even among the despised and 
 unlettered " foreigners" and "hunkies" that they would no more think 
 of preferring their immediate private advantage to the good of the 
 group, and of proving traitor to the confidence placed in them, than 
 the soldier would of deserting to the enemy for increased pay. When, 
 as in the recent steel strike, the issue is clear beyond peradventure of 
 doubt, Republican and Socialist, craft unionist and industrialist, A. 
 F. L. leader and Sidney Hillman, join against the common foe and share 
 their money and their strength. It is such experiences, such waves of 
 sympathy transcending the ordinary limitations of petty quarrels, that 
 make many workers believe that even an unsuccessful strike is of in- 
 estimable advantage to the labor movement and thus pave the way 
 for the transformation of business unionism. That individual respon- 
 
162 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 sibility for the welfare of the group, that moral indignation at the traitor 
 or scab, which business unionism calls forth for its own fighting pur- 
 poses, is so strong that it is futile to attempt to restrain it or hold it 
 within bonds. It is sweeping business unionism irresisibly along to- 
 wards something far broader and more inclusive. 
 
 In brief, it can be said that the business union displays all of the 
 military virtues, loyalty, comradeship, courage, mutual sympathy and 
 aid, and, it must be added, many of the military vices. It is at bottom 
 an army, an army which gives orders to its leaders and follows those 
 leaders so long as they lead it to victory and no longer. 
 
 Even such a cursory survey of the type of relations obtaining within 
 the business union reveals the essential instability of its general status, 
 and the elements that are at work in its very heart bidding fair to trans- 
 form it into something else. The business union in accordance with 
 its function tends to assume the structure of the compact and well- 
 disciplined army; yet the business union is vastly more than an army, it 
 is a body of men seeking greater freedom and greater opportunity, 
 banded together to help one another in their quest. Its leaders, its aims, 
 its methods, are all ultimately determined by the rank and file. The 
 motive of self-interest alone might counsel the perfect development of 
 the army, but the motive of social idealism, fostered and strengthened 
 by the development of those very virtues necessary to the army's 
 success, comes into conflict again and again with the strictly military 
 organization; and on such occasions it is not the motive of social idealism 
 that gives way. 
 
 There is thus at the present time a marked tendency away from 
 excessive centralization to a more democratic control, and at the same 
 time a shift in emphasis from the fighting function of business unionism 
 to a function more directly applicable to the industrial structure. The 
 type of labor leader now in the ascendent is not the type made promi- 
 nent by the fights of the nineties; that generation has for the most part 
 passed away. The J. W. Sullivan who boasted of bulling the labor 
 market would not be received today with loud applause by any union. 
 Leaders are coming to regard themselves as the representatives and 
 spokesmen of their men, not as their rulers. The work of officers in 
 former days was largely to organize and create their union, but now 
 that unions are large and flourishing and the founders have disappeared 
 from the scene the sense of proprietorship or paternal regard has vanished. 
 The old convention, held once a year to give the successful organizer 
 backing and popularity, the convention that was often hand-picked by 
 
Business Unionism Relations within the Group 163 
 
 the president, is in most unions becoming more and more infrequent. 
 This tendency is well typified in the Firemen, which held annual con- 
 ventions from 1873 to 1888, then changed to biennial conventions, and in 
 1910, shifted to triennial ones. Some unions have not held a convention 
 for twenty years. The legislative function is at the same time vested in 
 the entire membership, who have a referendum on all important ques- 
 tions and in some cases elect their officers directly. New measures are 
 introduced by individual locals, and thus cannot be railroaded off the 
 convention floor. Those leaders who have not recognized the coming 
 of the new day have been suddenly enlightened by the revolt of the 
 rank and file, and, in most cases, they have come to realize the necessity 
 of voicing the aspirations of the workers if they are to retain their posi- 
 tions of leadership. The development, under various names, of shop 
 committees, with its consequent bringing of unionism nearer to the 
 atmosphere of the daily toil, has been influential in a more democratic 
 direction. And finally the so-called "new unionism" of the garment 
 trades, which arose as a revolt against all those features in business 
 unionism which were least democratic and least adaptable to the general 
 sense of social idealism, is by its example exerting a powerful influence 
 in favor of control directly by the workers of all union -matters, and the 
 development in the workers of the power and ability to handle success- 
 fully even larger questions. 
 
 Coincident with this shift away from the exclusively military organi- 
 zation is a tendency towards relinquishing the purely military aim of 
 business unionism. The industrial organizations against which war 
 must be waged are constantly extending their sphere of influence, and 
 the organization of employers is proceeding with great rapidity. Thus 
 self-interest dictates an ever widening and ever more inclusive organ- 
 ization, while the spirit of class solidarity is every day receiving new im- 
 petus. It is characteristic of the labor movement that the change from 
 craft to industrial unionism is urged not only by strategic necessity, but 
 also by the ever widening area of cooperation and loyalty. And the 
 resulting industrialization of the business union makes possible a func- 
 tion which the old union never contemplated and could not have ac- 
 complished if it had, the development of more and more of actual control 
 over the operations of the industry itself. It is perhaps too early to 
 hazard a prediction, but recent events and tendencies seem to point to 
 a gradual shifting of stress from primary interest in fighting to secure 
 higher profits on the sale of labor the business motive to interest in 
 problems of industrial function and production, in the actual control of 
 
1 64 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 the industry. Many unions have become interested in educational 
 problems along industrial lines, and are desirous of replacing the present 
 chaotic system of new workers by some plan which will insure greater 
 skill. Some have gone so far as to envisage the necessity of training 
 their workers for the assumption of more and more responsibility as they 
 are given larger and larger shares of control over industrial conditions. 
 One can even see traces of the development of a new type of leader 
 the industrial expert, not the mere fighter, the man who can discuss 
 with coal operators the complex problems of coal production and dis- 
 tribution, or with railroad managers the best methods of efficient oper- 
 ation, or with clothing manufacturers the means of getting rid of the 
 seasonal nature of that industry to insure steady production. The 
 miners, the railroad men, and the clothing workers have already secured 
 the services of such experts. And with the new leader is coming a new 
 organization for fulfilling industrial function, not merely for bargain- 
 ing power alone. But the most significant factor about this new tendency 
 is that it does not involve, as all such more social and productive ten- 
 dencies, like, for instance, the cooperation of the sixties, did in the past, 
 the abandonment of trade unionism, the turning away from tried and 
 successful methods, the suppression of the root instinct of the labor 
 movement, the desire for immediate improvement of status; but that it 
 is the natural outgrowth of the normal and almost inevitable develop- 
 ment of business unionism itself. As we shall later, as labor organiza- 
 tion grows more and more complete, such a transformation seems bound 
 to follow, and nothing short of an almost unthinkable eradication of 
 the labor movement itself seems to stop it. As the propounders of the 
 Plumb plan said, such developments seem the only possible policy from 
 a business standpoint. 
 
 Of course, such a development will be very slow, and may very likely 
 be influenced in its course by other and at present unforeseen factors. 
 For instance, if the employers unite to crush the labor movement, and 
 follow the lead of the Steel Corporation in their anti-labor policy, the 
 union will be forced back into a purely military organization, and all 
 considerations will have to give way to those of fighting strength. There 
 are certainly very few industries today where the workers are in any 
 degree fitted to assume any great share of control of the larger aspects 
 of the business. Yet that growth of knowledge of the processes of pro- 
 duction is not utterly remote; the modern movement among employers 
 to give a large amount of shop autonomy, undertaken at -the behest of 
 efficiency engineers with a view to increased production, will undoubtedly 
 
Business Unionism Relations within the Group 165 
 
 greatly hasten the development of a sense of responsibility. In fact, 
 the double strain, by no means confined to the workers, is bound to 
 operate in the future increasingly on the side of the employers also; and 
 in some such cooperation as seems to be approaching in England it is 
 probable that the new unionism will develop cooperation forced by 
 the power of labor, but at the same time voluntarily accepted by the 
 employer. Nor have recent experiences tended wholly to confirm the 
 traditional belief in the superhuman sagacity and efficiency of the Ameri- 
 can business man, which would make his replacement impossible. How 
 long it may take, no one can tell; but that sooner or later some such 
 state of affairs will come to pas is a prediction as safe as any that can 
 be made in the complex processes of human affairs. 
 
9. BUSINESS UNIONISM THE RELATION OF THE GROUP TO 
 OTHER GROUPS 
 
 So far we have been considering the relations which obtain within 
 the business union, between its members, and between the rank and 
 file and the leaders. But important as these are for an understanding 
 of the labor movement, it is the larger social relations, the relations 
 between the union group and other groups, and between the union and 
 society as a whole, that are of primary importance for our fundamental 
 problem of social responsibility. And here also while examining the 
 business union we may discover within its aims and policies the germs 
 of new and different purposes. 
 
 If the analogy of the business union to the business corporation be 
 correct, then in its relations to other groups it will tend to approach 
 the same type; its aim will be that of any business body, to corner, so 
 nearly as possible, the entire supply of the commodity in which it deals 
 and to boost prices to "all the traffic will bear," for the profit of its 
 members. This monopolization of labor, and, if you will, the consequent 
 "labor profiteering," is the aim of all business unionism, in so far as it 
 is business unionism and nothing more, just as it is the aim of every 
 business enterprise in the country; that is, just in so far as it remains 
 "respectable" and "American." And just as the business man is 
 amazed when he is accused of profiteering, and in bewilderment asks 
 since when it has become wrong for a man to make as big profits as he 
 possibly can and at just what point a fair profit becomes profiteering 
 for has not the ability and the standing of the business man from time 
 immemorial (which means from the time of the introduction of free 
 competition some two centuries ago) been judged solely by the size of 
 the profit he can obtain? just so the business union is at a loss to under- 
 stand criticism which seems to misjudge the basic principles of business 
 use and wont, and to be utterly subversive of the foundations of true 
 American initiative and enterprise. And it can hardly be gainsaid 
 that one who does not thus admit the right of a labor union to obtain 
 what wages it can through economic pressure, one who believes that 
 " the public " has preeminent right to protection againsjt excessive wages 
 such a one must also admit that the profits of business corporations and 
 even the august law of supply and demand itself must submit to social 
 
Business Unionism Relation of the Group to other Groups 167 
 
 regulation and control. For better or worse such a one questions the 
 entire economic system erected upon the basis of private profit. 
 
 For out of the individualism which is the basis of modern economic 
 theory has grown a new individualism, an individualism in which the 
 unit or individual is no longer a single man, as it was in the days of Adam 
 Smith or Jeremy Bentham, but a group of men forming a single legal 
 person. These bodies of men are the real units in industrial life; society 
 toclay is far too large and far too complex and integrated for the single 
 individual apart from some group to count for much. No man would 
 think of setting up a steel mill in opposition to the U. S. Steel Corpora- 
 tion; no single individual would think of setting up one at all. Similarly 
 no man would hope alone to get a higher wage or shorter hours from 
 that company. Industrial relations today obtain between great aggrega- 
 tions, between the Steel Corporation and the A. F. L., not between 
 isolated individuals. 
 
 Nevertheless, while the unit has radically altered since the heydey 
 of economic liberalism, the type of relation has remained the same. It 
 is still an individualism in the sense that each group is out to serve its 
 own interests with little thought for those of any other, save as they 
 entertain the optimistic and comforting belief that what is best for the 
 individual is ipso facto best for society in general. The business man 
 points with pride at his affluence as betokening the prosperity of an 
 entire country; similarly the unionist maintains that anything increas- 
 ing the well-being of his group ipso facto is of advantage to society. 
 This may well be true; but a robber chieftain might easily make the 
 same claim for his band Robin Hood did. 
 
 Yet the business union is not inspired exclusively by this spirit of 
 group individualism; its purposes are constantly transcending the narrow 
 group aims which consistency would require, and are stretching out to 
 include more and more of society. All those influences at work within 
 the industrial field, which have been exhibited above in their relation 
 to the internal organization of the union, are exerting even greater 
 pressure toward the enlargement of the area within which individualism 
 has given way to group cooperation. The history of trade unions, in 
 fact, is in great measure the history of the enlargement of the scope and 
 jurisdiction of the union, an enlargement which, hi accordance with 
 the dual strain of the labor movement, usually starts from reasons of 
 self-interest, and then grows greater to include social idealism also. 
 
 It must not be understood that within the group self-interest has been 
 in any sense replaced by or abandoned for a social and cooperative 
 
1 68 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 motive; that the worker has agreed to disregard his own advancement 
 and immolate himself that his group may prosper, after the manner of 
 patriotic devotion to a mystical State. Such men there assuredly are; 
 but if such men were all there would be no labor movement. So to 
 interpret our contention were totally to misread the basic principle we 
 are advancing. It is rather that modern conditions have made it neces- 
 sary, in order to serve best the interests of the individual, to serve also, 
 and perhaps first, those of the group. Within the external frame of 
 individualistic relations there has come to be a merging of the individual 
 and the social, so that instead of being at cross purposes the two are in 
 fundamental harmony. What conflict remains is between immediate 
 and permanent interest; just as in an army it is to the ultimate safety 
 of the soldier to obey his commander's orders, though at times his im- 
 mediate security may seem to lie in flight. There is a constantly growing 
 field within which this identification of interests holds. This is the 
 lesson of business unionism, even as it is the theory of Steward. 
 
 The essential individualism that has inspired the external policy of 
 the business union is clear when one investigates the history of its re- 
 lation to other groups. Primarily this comes out in the attitude of the 
 business unionist toward membership. Whom would they admit to their 
 body to enjoy the fruits of their exertions? In almost every case, with 
 , women, with negroes, with foreigners and aliens, the first impulse was 
 to exclude them entirely and retain for themselves the jobs and the 
 wages; this springs from the instinctive make- work philosophy of the 
 insecure laborer. But in every case it soon became apparent that they 
 would be far better off if they retained their monopoly by absorbing 
 competitors than if they left them outside; they could hardly hope to 
 exclude them from all employment. Self-interest finally impelled in- 
 clusion; and then, in accordance with the principle of the double strain, 
 those very men who had most opposed such inclusion became most eager 
 to aid all those possible. Where self-interest did not say nay, social 
 sympathy was quick to express itself. 
 
 Consider the question of admitting women. Back in the convention 
 of the National Trades' Union in 1836 a committee on female labor 
 reported that woman's place was in the home, and that indulgence in 
 factory work injured both themselves and the male operatives. "As 
 an evidence of the injurious tendencies the female system has upon the 
 male operatives, we will take the societies composing the Union of 
 Philadelphia and Vicinity; for example, of 58 societies, 24 are seriously 
 affected by female labor, to the impoverishing of whole factories, and 
 
Business Unionism Relation of the Group to other Groups 169 
 
 benefit of none but the employers. It is presumed that this is a fair 
 criterion to judge of other sections of the union; and from all these cal- 
 culations there is evident reason to believe, that some of the different 
 branches of operative mechanics will hi time be superseded by female 
 operatives to the entire exclusion of the males, and the consequent in- 
 troduction of dissipation, indolence, and crime." l From the thirties 
 to the sixties the bulk of the factory operatives in New England were 
 women, and no attempt was seriously made to organize them; where 
 women tried to enter men's trades they usually met with similar attempts 
 at exclusion or even with strikes. As late as 1850 the cordwainers of 
 New York provided in their constitution that no woman should work 
 in any of the shops they controlled unless she were a member's wife or 
 daughter, although in general the New England cotton and shoe trades 
 were so largely in the hands of women that organization was forced, to 
 prevent competition with the men. 
 
 But when it became apparent that women could not be kept in the 
 home the more far-seeing organizations urged their inclusion, the na- 
 tional officers usually having to force the matter upon reluctant locals. 
 In 1867 the printers recommended to their locals the organization of 
 separate locals for women; in 1875 the Cigarmakers' convention ad- 
 mitted women. The Knights of Labor, for all its inclusive humani- 
 tarianism, did not admit them till 1880; while the Federation both ad- 
 mitted them and encouraged their organization from the very beginning. 
 Of late years the old antagonism has almost entirely passed away, and 
 the slogan " equal pay for equal work" has become popular, not only 
 because of its advantage to the men, but even more because of genuine 
 sympathy and solidarity with the woman worker. In 1912 the only 
 unions specifically excluding women were the Barbers, the Switchmen, 
 the Holders, the Potters, the Upholsterers, and the Paper Makers; 
 though in the nature of the case many others were exclusively male. 2 
 
 Precisely the same general tendency may be observed with regard to 
 the admission of negroes, though here the question is somewhat com- 
 plicated by Southern race prejudice and the desire of the Northerners 
 to fraternize with the blacks after the Civil War. They were excluded 
 until their use as strike-breakers and their general low wages necessitated 
 their organization; then a real desire to improve their condition mani- 
 fests itself. In New Orleans, Galveston, and Savannah unions of colored 
 workmen engaged along the waterfronts were in the early eighties ad- 
 
 1 National Laborer, Nov. 12, 1836. 
 
 2 See F. E. Wolfe, Admission to American Trade Unions , 1912. 
 
170 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 mitted to the city trades assemblies on an equal footing with white 
 unions. 1 The idealistic movements of the sixties and seventies, and the 
 Knights which grew out of them, declared of course for solidarity with 
 the negroes; the Knights' convention at Richmond in 1886 was enlivened 
 by many manoeuvres of the Northerners to force this equality on their 
 Southern confreres. Powderly combined with a genuine humanitarian 
 interest in the blacks an intelligent appraisal of the workers' best in- 
 terests when he said: "Southern cheap labor is more a menace to the 
 American toiler than the Chinese, and this labor must be educated." 2 
 The Federation admitted the negro from the beginning, but the difficulty 
 of organizing the unskilled Southern worker and the prejudices of the 
 local unions, which in all matters of admission are most conservative 
 and most short-sighted, united to keep him out until fairly recently. 
 In 1910 the unions which excluded negroes were the Wire Weavers, 
 the Shipbuilders, the Switchmen, the Maintenance of Way Employees, 
 the Telegraphers, the Railway Clerks, and the four Brotherhoods; but 
 constant efforts are made in the A. F. L. convention to secure the aban- 
 donment of these restrictions. 
 
 What has obtained with women and with negroes has also obtained 
 with foreigners and alien immigrants; the policy has been to keep them 
 out if possible, to organize them if they are already here competing with 
 American workers. Where a union like those amongst the glass trades is 
 highly organized and through the closed shop can exclude whomsoever it 
 will, and is much troubled by the importation of foreign workmen, it may 
 impose initiation fees as high as $500 upon the alien; others exclude him 
 entirely. Ever since the Albany molders in 1858 united to import Euro- 
 pean strike-breakers, the history of American labor has been full of 
 struggles to keep the market from being flooded by unskilled workers at 
 the instigation of employers to whose advantage it is, in the words of a 
 recent writer in the New York Evening Post, to have "something like 105 
 men for every hundred jobs," men with no aspirations after an American 
 standard. 3 
 
 In 1869 the anthracite operators threatened to put an end to their 
 labor troubles by importing coolies from China; a shoe manufacturer in 
 North Adams, Massachusetts, actually did bring over Chinese cobblers 
 who cost but a dollar instead of three dollars a day. The National Labor 
 Union naturally protested; and largely as a result the Burlingame treaty 
 
 1 Commons, II, 310. 
 
 2 Powderly, op. cit., 658. 
 'July 12, 1920. 
 
Business Unionism Relation of the Group to other Groups 171 
 
 was negotiated. Three years later a cutlery works brought over coolies at 
 $18 a month; but these attempts were all too patently subversive of 
 American standards to succeed in the East. Yet it is suggestive that at 
 the time the agitation for exclusion was at its height, District Assembly 
 49, the radical and advanced New York organization of the Knights of 
 Labor, presented in the General Assembly a resolution that "special 
 efforts be made to organize the Chinese," which was rejected by a vote of 
 only 95 to 42. 1 Chinese were formally excluded in 1882. 
 
 The idealism which persisted in regarding America as the home of the 
 oppressed overcame self-interest in 1878, when the section of the old 
 preamble of the Knights opposing "servile races" was omitted, on the 
 ground that it was "best not to insert anything in the preamble which 
 could be construed as opposing any section of humanity." Powderly's 
 comment is typical. " While it was a beautiful sentiment which actuated 
 the men who gathered at the first General Assembly, and while it appealed 
 to the best instincts of the membership at large, it was found to be in 
 direct opposition to the best interests of the members of the order. The 
 basic principle on which the order was founded was protection, not pro- 
 tection from the manufacturer or employer, alone, but from our own 
 avarice, our weakness, and from cheap workmen also. Theoretically it 
 sounded very well to extend a welcome to all to share in the protection to 
 be derived from organization, but it was discovered that to carry out this 
 practice would load the country down with men to whom the American 
 laborer could extend no aid, and who were too ignorant to help them- 
 selves." 2 
 
 But while the workers had general support in their efforts to exclude 
 Orientals, they could not hope to keep out Europeans also. In 1869 
 manufacturers began advertising abroad for labor; in 1872 Polish immi- 
 gration on a large scale started, in 1877 after the great strikes Hungary 
 was canvassed, and in the eighties commenced the flow from eastern and 
 southern Europe. At first the worker, in his desire to emulate the busi- 
 ness man and prove himself a good American, demanded a "high protec- 
 *tive tariff on labor"; but the gentlemen who upheld protection for 
 manufactured articles waxed eloquent over the shame of destroying the 
 sacred asylum of liberty, confident that labor was no simple commodity 
 like steel or cloth. The Knights managed in 1885 to get a law, modified 
 two years later, prohibiting the importation of contract labor; but other- 
 wise the unionists, unable to prevent the influx of foreign workers, turned 
 
 1 Powderly, 426. 
 
172 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 to the next best policy and decided to organize them. The futility of 
 attempting exclusion when we realize that even by 1886 but 21% of the 
 workers of Illinois were Americans of the old stock, 1 and that today in our 
 basic trades like steel and coal over sixty per cent of the workers are aliens, 
 is quite obvious. So, save in a few highly skilled trades, the unionists 
 have long ago abandoned the hope of keeping the foreigner either out of 
 the country or out of their union; and have set to work to carry to the 
 ignorant worker from southeastern Europe the gospel of unionism. So 
 successful has this policy been that today the very men brought over by 
 large corporations to furnish a willing and docile supply of labor are de- 
 nounced as foreigners, aliens, and revolutionaries, and they have proved 
 themselves, in struggles like the steel strike of 1919, fully the equals of the 
 native Americans in loyalty and solidarity. Indeed, it is hardly too much 
 to say that it is with these newer workers that the most vital force in the 
 entire labor movement is to be found today. 
 
 In each case, then, the business union has at first sought to down its 
 rivals, and then, finding it more advantageous, has admitted them to 
 partnership and cooperation. Hence in this particular the business union 
 has come to be unlike its prototype, the business corporation. The latter 
 strives to absorb or amalgamate into a trust or monopoly, and then to 
 put down and destroy any competitor; but the union throws wide its 
 doors and allows, nay, implores, all workers in a given industry, and all 
 those who desire to work in it, to come into the fold. If it be a monopoly, 
 it is not an exclusive monopoly; sad experience has taught it the futility of 
 exclusion, which injures those who exclude as much as those excluded. 
 
 Has the business union, then, escaped the danger to which the medieval 
 guild succumbed, of becoming a closed corporation to deprive others of 
 the chance to make a livelihood? Despite tendencies and conditions 
 which have made the danger very great, up to the present it has, and 
 there seems to be little likelihood that as time goes on it will become more 
 exclusive. The crucial question, of course, is that of the relation to the 
 new and younger worker, the question of apprenticeship. We have seen 
 how the masters of the last century utilized the old craft apprenticeship 
 laws to dispense with the highly paid journeymen, and how they excited 
 the antagonism of the skilled artisan through their dependence upon 
 11 botch mechanics and apprentices." This abuse of the apprentice 
 system by the masters in the early days provoked a strong and a natural 
 reaction and a strict regulation by the union of the numbers of appren- 
 tices; and it was this question that formed perhaps the most powerful 
 1 Illinois Bureau of Labor, Report, 1886, 227. 
 
Business Unionism Relation of the Group to other Groups 173 
 
 incentive toward the collective agreements and conciliation that mark 
 business unionism. This limitation is at bottom based on the make- work 
 philosophy, but there are other elements involved. The Industrial 
 Commission of 1901 reported "the chief motive which influences the 
 unions in shaping their apprentice rules is the desire to maintain their 
 wages by diminishing competition within the trades. The only other 
 motive which is not included within this formulation is the desire, for 
 reasons which may be classed as artistic, to prevent the lowering of the 
 standard of skill. This feeling can not be supposed to exert more than a 
 minor influence upon actual policies." 1 Motley, however, in his study of 
 the apprentice system, believes the latter motive, " the instinct for 
 workmanship," to be much stronger than was supposed in the days 
 before the application of social psychology to the workers. 2 
 
 But what has contributed more than anything else to the breakdown of 
 the apprentice regulations has been the growing industrialization and 
 specialization of work, which has replaced the old skilled craftsman with 
 the unskilled machine-tender, who needs no arduous training to become a 
 strike-breaker. Here again limitation of membership spells ultimate 
 ruin; and perhaps the dominating spirit today is that expressed by the 
 Amalgamated Clothing Workers when they voted, not to restrict mem- 
 bership, but to seek the 44-hour week that their friends and relatives in 
 Eastern Europe might be able to come to America to get work. 
 
 Indeed, there is even growing the recognition that the union must do 
 more than merely admit the workers to its ranks; it must substitute for 
 the old apprentice system a modern method of technical education. 
 Among many of the older skilled unions the man or boy who desired to 
 learn the trade or advance in it had to leave the union and become a scab 
 until he had acquired sufficient proficiency to meet the union regulations; 
 but in the newer industries, particularly among the garment makers, 
 efforts are being made to train and educate the members after they have 
 joined the union. The establishment of labor colleges at Boston, at 
 Seattle, and elsewhere indicates the trend of the times. That the admis- 
 sion of new members to a trade needs some sort of social regulation is 
 admitted by most observers; it is within the realm of possibility that 
 industrial education will in the future be placed in the hands of the 
 unions themselves. 
 
 In their relation, then, to other groups seeking membership within 
 the union the business unions have gradually abandoned strictly business 
 
 1 Report, v. 17, p. 53. 
 
 2 J. M. Motley, Apprenticeship in American Trade Unions, 1907. 
 
174 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 principles because it has proved better business policy to do so. The same 
 can be said of its relations with other groups with whom it comes into 
 contact. Take for instance the bitter jurisdictional disputes that from 
 time immemorial have marked craft unionism, disputes between crafts 
 with conflicting claims over certain branches of work. These have in the 
 past often led to scabbing on the strikes of fellow-workers in the most 
 callous disregard of union standards; they have generally resulted from 
 changed processes and the improvement of industrial technique, and 
 occur whenever, for instance steel ships replace wooden ones, or electric 
 locomotives steam engines. Here selfish group interest certainly operates 
 to the exclusion of wider sympathies and ideals; it is largely because of 
 such a dispute between the trainmen and the maintenance of way workers 
 that the Brotherhoods have withheld their strength from the A. F. L. 
 Yet this is one of the most potent causes making for industrial unionism, 
 either openly, or disguised as "blanket agreements" or trade depart- 
 ments. Craft rivalry has served only to discredit the business union in 
 the eyes of the younger worker; for the area within which group coopera- 
 tion and loyalty now obtains far surpasses the small limits of any one 
 craft. 
 
 Even graver charges of regard only for group interest can be brought 
 against those highly skilled business trades which employ helpers or 
 assistants and pay them directly; in these cases it is not too much to say 
 that the worker thus placed in the position of employer to some one be- 
 neath him has behaved precisely as the employer he censures, and has 
 passed on with interest the ruthless treatment he has received. It was 
 formerly the practice, before machinery revolutionized the trade, for 
 every glass bottle-blower to furnish a boy to help him at his work; and it 
 is to the shame of the workers that they vigorously opposed the applica- 
 tion of child labor laws to these helpers. Moreover, the treatment 
 accorded by unions to the labor in their own offices has not always been 
 such as they would desire to have meted out to them. Such phenomena 
 are marks of the dominance of the business ideal and of the selfish motive 
 to the exclusion of all other considerations. 
 
 Finally there is the attitude of the craft unionist toward the unskilled; 
 nor is it very different from what we have already observed. The inter- 
 ests of the latter have generally been protected only when economic cir- 
 cumstances have forced it as a measure of protection to the skilled. Yet 
 there have always been waves of sympathy that have extended far outside 
 the single trade. As we have already seen, the business unionism of the 
 eighties and nineties developed under the aegis of Steward's philosophy 
 
Business Unionism Relation of the Group to other Groups 175 
 
 because that philosophy so well represented the merging of the desire to 
 improve the workers' own condition with the desire to aid their fellows. 
 It became the essence of union principles that only by raising all could any 
 one be raised; and, though in practice often disregarded, this principle has 
 with the development of flavoring industrial conditions come to have 
 more and more appeal. 
 
 \li is claimed that the Knights of Labor failed because it sought to 
 enroll the unskilled; but while to some extent the case this is not strictly 
 true. Not because it tried to interest skilled workers in men about 
 whom they cared little, but because the unskilled were not strong enough 
 for successful organization this is the truth in the contention; and had 
 the Knights organized industrial rather than mere labor unions it is 
 still a question whether it might not have succeeded. Its failure, hi 
 spreading the conviction that the unskilled were impossible of successful 
 organization, undoubtedly set back their cause. . 
 
 The Federation, too, has latterly shown much concern for the un- 
 skilled, both in its large industrial unions and in smaller so-called fed- 
 eral labor unions. Particular activity followed the challenge of the I. W. 
 W. But in general, as a part of the growing tendency toward industrial- 
 ism, the unskilled are being absorbed into unions as rapidly as they can 
 successfully menace the organized workers; and once in they become 
 part and parcel of the great army of loyal workers. 
 
 Finally business unionism betrays its essential group individualism 
 in its relations to political parties. Here it is its policy to utilize them 
 as means to the attainment of its own group ends; to develop efficient 
 lobbies, and while disclaiming any broader social outlook to vote for 
 one candidate and oppose the other according as he favors or opposes 
 the measures labor desires. But this is but typical of the American 
 political system which regards parties as the means whereby individual 
 and group interests can be harmonized into socially effective organiza- 
 tions. 
 
 These examples of the relations between the business union and other 
 groups in the community are sufficient to make clear the nature of that 
 group individualism in accordance with which its actions are regulated. 
 But the most important relations of all are those that concern business 
 unionism and society as a whole, and which obtain between it and " the 
 public", taken in its most general significance as society organized for 
 purposes other than production, the chief of which economically is 
 consumption. And here the business union acts just as do other busi- 
 ness corporations; when weak it is quite willing to implore public aid 
 
176 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 and sympathy, just as weak industries crave either large grants of land, 
 like the railroads, or high protective tariffs, like the steel mills. But 
 when the union has grown strong and powerful, while still preserving 
 its special protection where its interests are thereby furthered, it is prone 
 to insist on its private rights and independence where such interference 
 by society would militate against them again in a way not entirely 
 dissimilar from a business corporation. Thus the unions of Australia 
 when they were weak demanded compulsory arbitration, or the inter- 
 ference of "the public" in industrial disputes to enforce upon employers 
 higher wages and standards; and so long as this resulted in the lifting 
 of sweated trades to the level of the general laboring population, they 
 were most enthusiastic in favor of this new instrument of securing their 
 interests. But when the arbitrators refused to grant standards higher 
 than those generally observed, the unionists went back to their own 
 method of strike and indifference to public arbitration, and as a con- 
 sequence in Australasian industry, just as in Canada and wherever they 
 have been tried, compulsory arbitration laws are unenforceable. 
 
 While not monoplies in then: attitude toward other groups of workers, 
 seeking to include all competitors where business corporations seek to 
 exclude and destroy them, the business unions are monopolies in their 
 attitude toward employers and "the public." In comparison with 
 other monopolies, they are apt to be more powerful and considerably 
 less vulnerable than all but the very strongest trusts. Legally the 
 latter seem almost impregnable, while against unions injunctions are 
 easily obtained, but legal and actual vulnerability are two very differ- 
 ent things, and it is considerably easier to force a small group of em- 
 ployers to surrender their property and their means of production should 
 they refuse to serve the public (a course actually taken recently in Italy) 
 than it is to force a great body of workers to become productive. This 
 question verges on our fundamental problem, and will receive later 
 consideration; here we but point out the monopolistic nature of the 
 business union. 
 
 We have already seen the attitude both sellers and buyers of labor 
 take toward outside mediation and arbitration accepting it when it 
 strengthens their position, rejecting it when, as hi the case of Mr. Gary 
 in the 1919 steel strike, it bids fair to weaken it. This attitude is typi- 
 cal; the business union, like the business man in general, operates for 
 profit and not for any "sentimental" desire to serve the community. 
 That would hardly be "good business." Hence the business unionists 
 aim to get what they can and let the consumer pay; as one leader re- 
 
Business Unionism Relation of the Group to other Groups 177 
 
 cently expressed it, if the employers do not make enough money they 
 can easily "pass the buck" to the public. Most workers now recognize 
 that a continual rise of wages which the employer can use to send prices 
 up is useless as a permanent measure of relief; but even the most in- 
 telligent and enlightened know that by strikes they can manage to keep 
 themselves a little ahead of the game, and until other relief is at hand 
 they persist in the tactics of business unionism. 
 
 Business disregard of the welfare of the community resulting from an 
 eye on the main chance may even develop into that extreme type known 
 as predatory unionism, in which the workers in a monopoly unite with 
 the employers to boost prices. The activities of "Skinny" Madden 
 and Brindell of the building trades form a good example; others are the 
 willingness of transportation corporations and other public utilities to 
 utilize the increased pay they offer their workers as an argument toward 
 the securing of higher fares and rates. Such a policy is merely an of- 
 fensive and defensive alliance between business organizations for the 
 better control of the trade. 
 
 This attitude finds further exemplification in the readiness of some 
 business unions to find an excuse for breaking their contracts when it is 
 no longer advantageous to them to keep them. In general of course the 
 sanctity of contracts as a cardinal business principle is rigorously ad- 
 hered to, as the only possible basis upon which collective bargaining 
 can operate; but certain discrepancies between labor and other com- 
 modities prevents a too rigorous application of contract law and custom. 
 Labor, unlike other articles for whose supply contracts are made, can 
 not, as yet, at least, be attached for debt, or non-fulfillment of agree- 
 ment. And whereas the business man who undertakes obligations 
 which subsequent conditions render impossible to fulfill can always 
 clear himself by declaring himself insolvent and going through bank- 
 ruptcy procedure, the labor union which makes an agreement to work 
 at a wage which a rapid rise in prices later reduces to less then suffi- 
 cient to support its members has no means of liquidating its assets and 
 starting out afresh. If contracts between unions and employers were 
 made enforceable by law, as many advocate, this would be tantamount 
 to reviving in new form the old imprisonment for debt. One solution 
 might possibly lie in the establishment of a bankruptcy court for labor 
 contracts; another, in making real instead of monetary wages the basis 
 of collective agreement. Be that as it may, the lack of any means of 
 freeing the union of obligations which it has become impossible to fulfill 
 is the direct cause of nine-tenths of the so-called "broken contracts" 
 
178 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 which have not first been broken by bad faith on the part of the employer. 
 That there does exist a residue of cases where group interest and free- 
 dom from penalty lead unions to violate contracts can not, however, be 
 denied; it is one of the consequences of group individualism. 
 
 But the direct clash between the interest of the business union and 
 that of society occurs hi the use of labor's main weapon, the strike. 
 The worker never strikes against "the public" or the consumer; but 
 the nature of his weapon obliges him to injure the employer through 
 the consumer. Direct injury or sabotage he rarely resorts to; but his 
 weapon by its very indirectness necessitates the injury of the public. 
 Thus the contention is true that every strike is to the immediate dis- 
 advantage of the consumer, and that its use is always attended by loss 
 to the community. But in placing responsibility it is not so clearly 
 recognized that it is not the side that begins the strike or lock-out that 
 is alone to blame for the cessation of production. Preference of indi- 
 vidual group interests to the interests of the community is the direct 
 cause of industrial warfare, but the employer who prefers higher profits 
 to granting any demands of his workers is placing his own interests ahead 
 of the public need for production just as surely as is the group of workers 
 who prefer higher wages to that same production. A strike and its 
 resultant loss to the consumer is caused and continued just as much by 
 refusal to accede to demands as it is by persistence in making them, 
 and for precisely the same reasons: the worker prefers to see the public 
 suffer rather than accept or continue a low standard of living, and the 
 _w ) employer prefers it to accepting lower profits. This holds true in both 
 strikes and lockouts, and is entirely independent of the particular group 
 whose demands precipitated the conflict. The strike is the logical 
 result of the system of group individualism ; it can pass away only when 
 that system does. In this similarity established between the actions 
 of capital and labor, no invidious comparison, of course, is intended, nor 
 any justification; the condemnation often bestowed upon the course 
 of labor by the editors of public opinion is merited, so far as it goes, 
 and is a promising sign. But it must be clearly realized that this con- 
 demnation cannot be voiced against the members of the unions with- 
 out at the same time applying to every business man and organization; 
 for it is a condemnation, not of individuals, but of the entire theoretical 
 basis of modern business structure. The union that strikes to prevent 
 a reduction of real wages is doing precisely what the mill does which 
 shuts down when further operation would be unprofitable; and the same 
 approbation or condemnation visited upon the business man who, run- 
 
Business Unionism Relation of the Group to other Groups 179 
 
 ning the chances of periodical hard times and losses, makes as high 
 profits as he can while he can, must be applied also to the union which, 
 exposed to the same danger of unemployment in bad times, extorts 
 what is can from employer and public while it can. Neither workers nor 
 employer wants to curtail production; yet in the modern economic or- 
 ganization he must. 
 
 Public opinion has today reached the stage where in certain industries 
 it calls "public utilities" it refuses to allow the employer, even to his 
 loss, to curtail his service to the public. Municipal transportation and 
 power supply is supposed to belong to this class, as of course do all 
 those services carried on directly by the government; and it has been 
 suggested that a similar enforcement be directed against the workers 
 in such public utilities. Aside from the non-existence of bankruptcy 
 laws for labor, it is exceedingly difficult to find any line of demarka- 
 tion between, say, the supplying of light and the supplying of moving 
 pictures, which will define just when an industry is a public utility and 
 when it is not. Why, for example, is it more essential that men in the 
 post office be not allowed to strike than men in the coal mines? or that 
 trolley lines be forced to supply service than woolen mills clothing? 
 The nature of the employer and the form of organization in the indus- 
 try bears no relevance to the necessity of the service to the public. 
 
 Thus in this most important of all relations the business union re- 
 veals its dominance by the philosophy and ideology and methods of 
 group individualism. It is like any other respectable corporation. 
 "The steel industry," runs the recent Interchurch report on the 1919 
 steel strike, 1 "is being run for the making of profit, and not primarily 
 for the making of steel as the country needs it, and it favors (a) spells 
 of idleness during which the country and the steel workers pay for the 
 maintenance of idle machinery and later (b) spurts of long hours, high 
 speed labor." Without pausing to ask who on earth ever supposed 
 the steel industry was being run "primarily for the making of steel as 
 the country needs it," we could add, "The business union is being run 
 for profit, and not primarily for the production of commodities as the 
 country needs them, and it favors (a) periods of enforced shut-down 
 during which the public suffers and (b) high wages which add to the 
 cost of living for everyone." 
 
 "But," say the loyal members of the Federation who do not yet 
 realize this similarity of aim, (though they are growing fewer every 
 day) "you forget that the worker is acting only in self-defense." As- 
 1 New York Times, July 28, 1920. 
 
i8o The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 suredly, the worker would starve if through strikes he did not enforce 
 a living wage; but so by the same token would the employer who made 
 I no profits. When does a fair profit become profiteering? When does 
 self-defense become depredation against the public? The man who 
 admitted that in prosperous times the business man who is not making 
 huge profits and the laborer who is not making huge wages are incom- 
 petent, was but drawing the logical conclusions from our system of 
 group individualism. 
 
 What, then, is the cause of this general sense of irresponsibility 
 towards the community or its needs, of the absence of any sense of 
 obligation toward society, which is the characteristic note of business 
 unionism? Why has group individualism become dominant, threaten- 
 ing the very basis of social and industrial existence and eating the heart 
 out of the great industrial machine which the last century created in 
 Western civilization? We have now arrived at a position where we 
 are able to analyze the causes of the condition we regard as dangerous. 
 At bottom it is the very necessity of the individualistic economic sys- 
 tem upon which that civilization rests; capitalism, fully developed, 
 would thus seem to be cutting its own throat. The purpose determin- 
 ing the structure and methods of the union is the same as that deter- 
 mining all business and economic activity everywhere: the desire for 
 profits, if possible with resulting benefit to society, but first and last, 
 for good or for ill, the desire for profits^ ^ 
 
 Yet there is a still further reason why the business union is irrespon- 
 sible: whereas the capitalist is directly responsible to the community, 
 in that he possesses the power and control of the physical means of pro- 
 duction, the worker is primarily responsible to, and is urged to be loyal 
 to, his employer's profits, and only secondarily to the community or 
 its needs. Whether or not production will continue or will be suspended 
 is vested legally in the capitalist and owner of the factory; that is the 
 meaning of the great principle of private property on which contem- 
 porary civilization rests. If a strike threatens it is for the employer 
 to decide whether the loss to his pocket-book or the loss to the public 
 will be preferred; but for the workers the decision is between loss to 
 their pay-rolls or loss to dividends. The employer is in direct relations 
 with the consumer, he receives his remuneration from that consumer. 
 The worker is but indirectly related to the consumer; not the purchaser 
 but the employer remunerates him. It is exceedingly difficult to build 
 up or to expect a feeling of loyalty and responsibility to be developed 
 between two parties whose interests, as are those of employer and em- 
 
Business Unionism Relation of the Group to other Groups 181 
 
 ployee, are in many respects antithetical. And if the worker sees that 
 the community does not hold the employer, who is in direct relations 
 with it, responsible for failure to supply service; if he sees Mr. Gary 
 lauded and praised instead of being charged with deliberately curtail- 
 ing the production of steel, if he sees no complaint against the mill- 
 owners who shut down because they cannot get the prices they want, 
 he is not likely to be over-solicitous of restraining his demands and re- 
 fraining from securing them by strike, of "loyally" helping his em- 
 ployer make large profits, on the plea that he must operate the industry 
 for the good of the community. Efforts to create a feeling of loyalty 
 and responsibility to the employer are, in fact, regarded by the work- 
 ers, and generally, it must be confessed, quite correctly, though some- 
 times inadequately, as the efforts of the employers to save themselves 
 and their profits. 
 
 For it is to his profits, not to the public, that the capitalist wants the 
 worker to be responsible. That would imply making of the worker a 
 partner in the industry, and granting him real control over its direc- 
 tion; and it is one of the cardinal tenets of good business that the worker 
 is in no wise a sharer in the enterprise. The business belongs to the 
 Company or the owner, not to the workers in it; and the former alone 
 are responsible for its conduct. The employee has been carefully made 
 to feel that his personal fate is negligible and of no account. "You're 
 fired," says the foreman; "it's easy enough to fill your place." "If 
 you do not wish to accept these wages," says the suaver superinten- 
 dent, "there are plenty of men who do." Raw materials to be had in 
 one market are useless if there is more in another cheaper one. Under 
 such conditions, with labor just as responsible and just as capable of 
 responsibility for the conduct of the industry as the pig-iron or the 
 coal, it is not much wonder that the workers do not develop a loyalty 
 to the interests of the public or of anybody outside themselves. Before 
 they can be expected to regard themselves as cooperating in the effi- 
 cient service of the community they must be given some opportunity 
 to cooperate and serve. 
 
 Yet, in spite of all these unfavorable conditions, if there exist some 
 strong general social purpose the business union will respond. The 
 impulse is not lacking; it is the opportunity which rarely comes. During 
 the war the unionists of every land, hardened and practical business 
 men though they were, responded almost to a man to the call made upon 
 them. They would work efficienctly and well so soon as they felt that 
 the object of their endeavor was to further aims far greater than the 
 
182 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 
 
 swelling of dividends. In countless speeches and articles they learned 
 that they were the men behind the men behind the guns, that upon 
 them ultimately rested the safety of their friends and relatives in the 
 trenches and their own homes and families. The whole community 
 suddenly awoke to perceive that they, the workers, were important and 
 indispensable members. It was no longer, "If you don't like it you're 
 fired." It was "Men wanted at high wages with good conditions." 
 The community expected the workers to do their duty and gave them 
 an adequate remuneration for doing it; it is no wonder that they re- 
 sponded nobly and well. Despite all the conditions militating against 
 such efficient functioning, as the need increased the workers loyally 
 outstripped it. 
 
 But when peace broke out, it was no longer a question of "making the 
 world safe for democracy" or working "for King and Country" or 
 " Pour la France "; instead it was a question of " getting back to normal." 
 Perhaps just because of their taste of efficient production for service as a 
 motive rather than the profit of the stock-holder, the workers in all 
 lands are far from enthusiastic about swelling their employers' dividends. 
 No longer does the press speak of "rewarding the faithful worker"; 
 its tune has changed to an exhortation to all good citizens to come out 
 and put down through strike-breaking the "autocracy of labor." At- 
 tempts like the Plumb plan to formulate a method, however imperfectly, 
 whereby the railway men may work together toward the efficient opera- 
 tion of the roads as a public utility, and thus carry over into peace times 
 the stimulus and spur of the war period when they were operated on 
 that basis, are met with the cry of "rank Bolshevism." It is no wonder 
 that the unionists do not feel the same enthusiasm in "ensuring the 
 supremacy of American business" as they did in fighting the armies of 
 the Kaiser; it is no wonder that they see little incentive to work hard for 
 their employers if they can have a good tune without it. To many com- 
 petent observers it has indeed appeared, as Mr. Laski said, that the 
 mainspring of the capitalistic system, the willingness of the worker to 
 work for the gain of the capitalist, has indeed snapped. 
 
 The experience of war tune teaches again the old lesson that any 
 knowledge of the history of the labor movement can not fail to cor- 
 roborate, that the workers are eager arid anxious to do their work faith- 
 fully and well, with a view to the well-being of the community as well 
 as to their own interests, if the community will but respond to their 
 overtures and grant them the conditions of efficient functioning. During 
 the war nothing was too good for our munition-makers and ship-builders, 
 
Business Unionism Relation of the Group to other Groups 183 
 
 because we realized that the better their conditions the better they 
 would work and produce. Today it is "pampered labor " and " unwonted 
 luxury." When responsibility is expected of the workers, they have 
 responded; when the community has rejected their social idealism and 
 scornfully delivered them over to the mercy of their employer, disil- 
 lusioned they have been forced to conform to the group individualism 
 which rules society. 
 
 For the public feels no reciprocal responsibility to labor for the re- 
 sponsibility it demands of it. When it fears for its supply of some 
 commodity it threatens troops and injunction, and swarms out to put 
 down strikes to the great joy of the employer; but has it ever done 
 anything for the worker which he has not forced it to do by his own 
 exertions? It protects any employer who wishes to start a new business 
 against the competition of foreign manufacturers, even though in so 
 doing it may double or treble the cost to itself; but has it ever protected 
 the weak laborer from the competition of unskilled immigrants? 
 
 Frank Morrison, Secretary of the American Federation of Labor, and 
 a staunch business unionist if there ever was one, said recently: " The 
 workers will not concede that the community has any purpose or inten- 
 tion to render justice to the workers should it force itself into participa- 
 tion in industrial relations. On the contrary, its only object in forcing 
 itself into these relations is to prevent the workers from taking advantage 
 of natural conditions to better their economic condition ... a right 
 which the community holds sacred when applied to property. . . . 
 The community's interest in the worker is founded upon its own desire 
 for the worker's commodities, and not upon any belief in the rights of 
 the worker; its concern is not with the wages paid to the workers or the 
 conditions under which they work, but rather with the continuous 
 operation of industry so that its wants may be supplied without inter- 
 ruption. After these wants have been supplied it is a matter of no 
 concern to the community what becomes of the worker." 1 
 
 This is the worker's conception of the community, based solely upon 
 the bitter experience of the past. This is the "community" in the sense 
 denned, society organized as consumers, the political machinery through 
 which society functions. It is incontestable that this "community" 
 is controlled by capitalistic interests which through legislature, court, 
 and press secure that the interests of those with a stake in the country, 
 business men and employers, shall be followed. The "community" 
 also claims that this at the same time makes for the best interest of all 
 1 New York Times, July 18, 1920. 
 
1 84 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 the workers. The latter doubt this. They honestly believe that the 
 dice are loaded against them, that the government is hostile to them 
 and has no concern for their interests. They believe that the "com- 
 munity" desires low prices even if it means starvation wages. They 
 believe that it desires the stoppage of strikes no matter what the justice 
 of the strikers' claims. They believe that it cares not a whit what 
 becomes of them so long as its wants are cheaply rilled. And it would 
 indeed be very hard to prove that the workers are not right. 
 
 The blame, if blame there be, for the irresponsibility and selfish re- 
 gard for group interests which the business union in common with the 
 business man displays on occasion must be laid squarely at the door of 
 society at large. It has acquiesced in a social philosophy that has 
 made such things possible; it cannot assail labor unions without as- 
 sailing its own standards and its own acts. \ And that small professional 
 group who are comparatively detached from industrial conflict, that 
 remnant left over when labor and capital have been subtracted, to 
 whom editors and professors appeal with sublime hope for impartiality, 
 the "community" in this sense has only its own selfish disregard of 
 the workers' desires and hopes and its unthinking subservience to the 
 interests of the employing and business classes to thank if the workers 
 in their struggle to improve their conditions are too busy to consider 
 the inconvenience their acts may cause for the clerk or the preacher. 
 
io. BUSINESS UNIONISM ITS IDEAL AND ITS IMPLICATIONS 
 
 THE ultimate aim of the labor movement is the attainment of security 
 and an equal status in society; business unionism seeks to realize this 
 aim through the organization of a monopoly in labor and the selling of 
 this labor, as a business proposition, to employers in exchange for a 
 secure and improved status. Business unionism thus has a special 
 ideal and aim of its own toward which it is tacitly if not consciously 
 working, a state of affairs which if achieved would represent for it the 
 best possible society. 
 
 This ultimate aim includes, first of all, the complete organization 
 of the trade. Collective bargaining is successful just so far as it is in the 
 power of the union to control all the workers hi a given field. If any 
 large proportion remain outside, the union is exposed to their compe- 
 tition, and finds it impossible to carry on a successful strike so long as 
 the employer can secure as many men as he wants at his own pay. Bar- 
 gaining power is effective only as it is effectively backed up by the 
 power to withdraw services. The aim of every union, no matter what 
 its conscious philosophy, if it desires to secure any concessions from 
 the employers, is to attain that ideal of the unionist's heart, the fully 
 organized trade. Revolutionary or predatory unionism, which, like 
 the I. W. W. repudiates all contracts and agreements, of course does 
 not find this essential; the I. W. W. aims rather by swift forays and 
 guerilla attacks to force the employer out of business. Even the I. W. W., 
 however, hope eventually to attain complete organization, and in busi- 
 ness unionism this is the goal of the workers' hopes. This does not 
 necessarily mean the closed shop; the closed shop is not an end in it- 
 self, but a means to the attainment of organization. A union which 
 like the railway brotherhoods, or the clothing unions, has practically 
 organized the whole of its trade cares very little indeed whether the 
 shop be closed or open, whether, since there are scarcely any non-union- 
 ists, they be discriminated against or no. Such a union knows that 
 every worker will want to join the union, and that a genuine open shop, 
 a shop in which there is no discrimination against the unionist, speedily 
 becomes a union shop. 
 
 But complete organization necessarily means far more than the or- 
 
1 86 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 ganization of a single trade. When the worker was still a skilled artisan 
 the craft was the important division; the cobbler, the carpenter, the 
 mason these were the economic units, and the cobbler's outfit, the car- 
 penter's kit, were the tools and means of production. But today the 
 cobbler is replaced by the great shoe factory, subdivided into thirty or 
 forty distinct trades; and for the production of shoes not one but all of 
 these processes are necessary. The modern tool is not the instrument 
 of the handicraftsman, but the great factory and all that concerns its 
 supply. The organization of the worker to control it must follow the 
 tool; and today hi most indus tries the tool is rapidly broadening out 
 from the single machine to the entire factory. The persistence in these 
 conditions of the older separate trade unions, organized hi days when 
 trade distinctions were far more vital than they are today, each trade 
 with its separate agreements well-timed by the employer to terminate 
 at different intervals, and thus prevent the occurrence of a strike of all 
 his hands at one time; all these conditions weaken the separate trades, 
 and give rise to that situation in which half the workers are "scabbing 
 on the job" while the other half are out on strike. Suppose that the 
 collective agreement in the coal mining industry expires, and the opera- 
 ators refuse to renew it save on lower terms: a situation which normally 
 produces a strike. The miners down tools, but the operators rush more 
 or less skilled strike-breakers from all parts of the country and manage 
 to get out some coal. If the stationary or hoist engineers will only 
 strike too, the affair will be a success, because the engineers will be 
 exceedingly difficult to replace. But they have a contract that runs for 
 two more years; they will not go out, and the strike is lost. After such 
 an experience the miners recognize the great advantage they would 
 gain if the engineers were only in their union and could if necessary be 
 withdrawn to increase their bargaining power. Is it any wonder, there- 
 fore, that the coal miners have organized an industrial union that in- 
 cludes all those who work in or around coal mines? 
 
 All industries, of course, are not yet so fully industrialized in struc- 
 ture as coal mining; in most the separate trade lines persist in a signif- 
 icant form. But in order to organize an industry completely into one 
 great group it is not necessary for all craft distinctions thereby to be 
 obliterated. Precisely the same result can be obtained if the industrial 
 union is a federation instead of a highly homogeneous body. To all 
 intents and purposes the four railroad brotherhoods act as a single 
 unit in any important question; during the war they united with the 
 ten A. F. L. unions of the less skilled railroad workers to form what is 
 
Business Unionism 7/5 Ideal and Its Implication 187 
 
 known as the fourteen railway unions, and it is clear that while not sac- 
 rificing their autonomy these fourteen trades for all practical purposes 
 form a single industrial group like the National Union of Railwaymen 
 of Great Britain. The garment workers, though industrially organ- 
 ized and including even the office clerks and the draymen and truck- 
 drivers who handle their product, preserve for certain purposes the 
 separate trade divisions of cutter, presser, baster, and so on. The 
 building trades have become a unit with their "building trades coun- 
 cils"; the past year saw the most "craft autonomous" of the A. F. L. 
 unions unite in a joint national committee to manage the steel strike 
 as a unit. The A. F. L. Trades Departments are increasing in impor- 
 tance. The "blanket agreement," in which all the crafts in a given in- 
 dustry bargain and strike in unison and combine their grievances is 
 growing more and more popular. All of these are signs of the realiza- 
 tion of labor that in order to carry out their ultimate aim of complete 
 organization and effective bargaining power they must in some way 
 organize themselves with the entire industry as a basis. 
 
 This is the first aim of business unionism; the second, paradoxical 
 as it may seem, is for the complete industrial organization of the em- 
 ployers. The latter have in most fields been quick enough to organize 
 for themselves; we saw, for instance, how the blacksmiths' and mol- 
 ders' unions of 1859 were called forth directly by employers organizing 
 against labor. Many industries are in the hands of so-called trusts; 
 that is, not every mill or factory is amalgamated into one large cor- 
 poration, but in the industry there is one great company that by its 
 size and power dominates all other and acts as their spokesman in all 
 important matters. Such is the U. S. Steel Corporation, for example. 
 Most other industries are united into trade associations that exercise 
 a controlling influence over their members, speak for them in time of 
 strike or labor difficulty, and effectually if not legally limit prices by 
 agreement. These range all the way from the close concert of action 
 in the meat-packing and the anthracite coal trade to the less organic 
 and more competitive trades. Natural economic reasons, the unprofit- 
 ableness of unrestricted competition primarily, have prompted this 
 virtual centralization. These associations have taken over the func- 
 tion of bargaining with the union that on its side controls the industry; 
 collective agreements are generally made between associations of 
 workers and associations of employers, not with individual employers. 
 No single company can afford to grant better conditions and higher 
 wages than others; the competition would kill it. And no single com- 
 
 
1 88 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 pany is strong enough to get better terms from the union; if it were, 
 they would be speedily enjoyed by all the others. 
 
 But there are some industries where the unit is relatively small, 
 and here the union itself desires an employers' organization with which 
 to deal. In the clothing trade, in the soft coal trade, for example, shops 
 and mines are fairly small and competition is bitter; a separate bar- 
 gain with each would be wearisome, and a series of never-ending shop 
 strikes would not be worth the small advantage that might be gained 
 in some places. In collective bargaining it is thus to the interests of 
 both sides to organize completely and deal as units with the drawing 
 up and acceptance of wage-scales and other agreements. The garment 
 unions have thus forced organization on the reluctant employers; but 
 now that it has come, few would care to return to the ruinous days of 
 cut-throat competition for labor. The building trades similarly have 
 forced organization for builders for purposes of collective bargaining. 
 
 The development, then, of business unionism according to the lines 
 it has marked out for itself, provided that development could continue 
 in the direction of least resistance with no outside interference, would 
 logically result in the formation in every important national industry 
 of a group comprising all the employers and another group comprising 
 all the workers, bargaining together on a basis of equality, mak- 
 ing treaties and concluding agreements. It would be a balance 
 of power in which the undue growth in strength on either side would 
 cause dislocation and friction. It would be a business partnership be- 
 tween two groups for the continuance of the industry, in which one, 
 as it were, would be the active and the other the sleeping partner. 
 Such an ideal has already been practically formulated in England as 
 the Whitley Joint National Councils; incidentally, what it might mean 
 for the rest of the community is foreshadowed in the provision in the 
 constitutions of a number of the Whitley councils already established 
 in England of means "for the joint maintenance of selling-prices." 1 
 
 Within this structure the aims of business unionism would continue to 
 function. Security of employment the first great end of the labor move- 
 ment, the only safeguard against the haunting dread of starvation would 
 be the first achievement the unionists would seek. To obtain this, the 
 unionists would insist, as they grew in power, on taking over all con- 
 trol over the "hiring and firing" of men; on allowing their dismissal 
 only for proved incompetency or dishonesty, and then only if some 
 other provision were made by the employer or society whereby it would 
 1 American Labor Yearbook, 1920, 358. 
 
Business Unionism Its Ideal and Its Implication 189 
 
 be certain they would not suffer. The lack of any such provision and 
 the working class consciousness and solidarity, together with sad ex- 
 perience, in industries like the garment trades where the union has a 
 certain amount of control over dismissal, are the direct causes of the 
 unions at tunes forcing the retention of inefficient or incompetent 
 workers; as in the federal service the lack of any pension system has 
 led humane department officials to retain on the pay-roll men whose 
 years of faithful service have made them incapable of further labor. 
 
 But in addition to this virtual assumption of control over the hiring 
 and firing of individuals, business unionism in its search for security 
 from unemployment as it grows stronger will vigorously protest against 
 the business methods of laying off hands when trade conditions slump 
 or prices and demand falls off. In the history of the labor movement 
 the great strikes have always taken place in 1877, i* 1 1886, when the 
 employers at the close of a period of prosperity have sought to reduce 
 their labor force; and it is not too much to say that the greatest gain the 
 labor movement has ever made, commonly overlooked in the presence 
 of more spectacular considerations, is the way in which the unions have 
 forced the mills to keep on their men in slack times. The modern su- 
 perintendent shows that a large reduction is sure to mean a strike; he 
 realizes that it will cost less to keep his men on than to precipitate a 
 complete shutdown. As business unionism with greater organization 
 attains greater real control over industry, it will demand that the supply 
 of labor be no longer considered as a raw material to be bought and 
 sold in smaller quantities in time of decreased output, but rather as a 
 fixed charge upon the industry. The capitalist does not burn down his 
 factory or allow it to rust and rot during hard times; just so, the business 
 union claims, he must maintain his labor force in good condition also. 
 
 Not only does the union object to hard times; it condemns the seasonal 
 character of all trades which run by spurts and starts. Already the 
 coal miners and the garment workers are protesting against the type of 
 management that allows high speed overtime production when prices 
 are best, followed by unemployment and idleness when they decline; 
 the system that postpones as late as possible the production of coal until 
 the fall and winter when men will pay more for it than in spring and 
 summer. And of course in thus calling for continuous employment and 
 production the worker is directly contravening the interests of his em- 
 ployer, which as we have seen lie in a very flexible labor supply capable 
 of delicate adjustment to the state of the market. Compelled to main- 
 tain a fixed amount of labor, the employer will lose great opportunities 
 
190 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 for the sudden amassing of profits in time of need or the freedom from 
 the charges of supporting men in time of surplus. Many employers do 
 not like to throw their men out of work, especially if they adopt the 
 benevolent paternalism which regards the giving of employment as a 
 laudable charity; and some even hesitate to dismiss them at a direct 
 loss to themselves. But no employer today ever carries this benevo- 
 lence very far; in the words of a recent trust president when shutting 
 down his woolen mills, u We can not afford to keep men on without a 
 certain number of orders." 
 
 Finally, with continuous steady employment assured, the business 
 union will seek a high standard of living, just as high as it can extort 
 when it comes to making treaties with the employers' organization. No 
 business man ever voluntarily curtailed the golden inflow of profits so 
 long as they lasted; no business man, though he might assert, and 
 assert it truly, that he was " making so much money he didn't know what 
 to do with it," ever thought of making less. He rather went on to 
 prove his assertion by inordinate luxury. Not even Henry Ford, philan- 
 thropic and well-disposed as he is, inclined to let his employees share to 
 some extent the gold mine he has discovered, has yet proposed to make 
 machines at cost. And no business unionist will ever stop, if he has the 
 power, raising his wages just as high as he possibly can. The only limit 
 to the size of the "fair day's pay" he asks is the limit to his power to 
 secure it. Labor is insatiable; it will never stop in its demands until 
 it is forced to by some outside power. 
 
 Such is the ideal of respectable and conservative labor unions, an 
 ideal not clearly seen as yet by all advocates of economic opportunism, 
 but yet the ideal to which all the tendencies of business unionism point 
 as its logical development and full flowering. This is the ideal type of 
 the business union, the " perfect" union. Partnership with capital, 
 security of tenure, ever increasing wages such is the outcome of col- 
 lective bargaining. But it is not the whole picture. Such an apotheosis 
 of the business union has several further and highly edifying implica- 
 tions, implications which on the whole do not tend to relieve a scene 
 otherwise fairly sombre enough. 
 
 For the Utopia of the business unionist is a rigid and static society, 
 a society made up of dozens of great antagonists in pairs, eyeing each 
 other in every industry jealously and bitterly, a society incapable of 
 adaptation either to the genuine needs of the community or to any 
 changed process of industrial technique. It is a society based on a 
 precarious balance of power which renders any change possible only 
 
Business Unionism 7/5 Ideal and Us Implication 191 
 
 at the price of a terrific industrial struggle. Just as for the past century 
 the map of Europe could be changed to correspond with newly awakened 
 nationalistic and commercial exigencies which had been wholly dormant 
 in 1815 when it was laid out, only through the dreaded course of war; 
 just as the seething mass of eastern Europe and the Hapsburg Empire 
 could only attain that realignment without which life was intolerable 
 to its inhabitants through precipitating a deadly and destructive struggle 
 over the entire globe: just so the Utopia of the business union would 
 prove an iron cage preventing the free development of social and eco- 
 nomic forces. 
 
 For business unionism ultimately means stagnation. As both sides, 
 organized labor and organized capital, grow in power, collective bar- 
 gaining is extended to more and more minute details. Agreements 
 necessitate a more and more complicated regulation of rates, wages, 
 scales, and conditions, a regulation exceedingly difficult to work out 
 and agree upon, and even more difficult to change. Hoxie gives an 
 excellent account of the increasing elaborateness of these details. " The 
 employer is constantly endeavoring to reintroduce individual bar- 
 gaining and to force down the wage rate and to increase the exertion 
 and output for a given wage by indirect and specific encroachments on 
 the existing status, for instance, by slight changes in method and process, 
 by creating conditions which require slightly greater exertion or ir- 
 regular home work and overtime; by division of processes and redis- 
 tribution of work, by changes hi tools, by changes in mode of pay- 
 ment, and by arbitrary fines and exactions. These changes for the 
 most part have the effect of increasing work or reducing pay. In the 
 absence of clearly defined standards they are easy to introduce and are 
 often introduced so as to result in reductions without knowledge of 
 this effect by the workers, and the individual worker alone is usually 
 too weak, even if he does recognize their effect, to resist them. It is a 
 method of f orcing workers to compete against one another without their 
 knowledge. These encroachments mean, therefore, undercutting and a 
 progressive reduction of wage rates, and conditions of employment. 1 
 
 "The only way to prevent this is to have all the incidents of work 
 and pay most minutely and clearly specified and this specification 
 rigorously maintained. . . . Many minute and harassing specifications 
 are laid down especially in regard to kinds of work that may be done, 
 by each worker, modes of doing work, times and modes of payment, 
 deductions and exactions, times of beginning and ending of work, ma- 
 1 Hoxie, Trade Unionism in the United States, 257. 
 
19 2 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 chinery, materials, objectionable work, etc. ... It is evident that 
 these standards can not be maintained effectively so far as all the 
 workers are concerned if the employer is allowed to adopt at will changes 
 in methods and processes of work. Such changes make it possible for 
 the employer to create new tasks and jobs for which no standards or 
 uniformities have been established, to lop off parts of the work from 
 the old standardized classes, along with laying off the workman him- 
 self, and hi both ways to create new classes of workers with new con- 
 ditions of work, and perhaps lower rates of pay for all the members of 
 the group, to prevent the degradation of skilled workers and the in- 
 troduction into their midst of subgroups in which competition exists, 
 they must prevent the introduction of such new conditions of work 
 the creation of new tasks and jobs and new classification of the workers 
 except under their control and under conditions that will secure on the 
 new jobs conditions of work and pay uniform with the old. . . . Hence, 
 in part, the union tendency to resist new trades, new machinery, new 
 methods and processes." 1 
 
 The agreements in some industries today are the product of months of 
 labor and comprise whole volumes of figures and stipulations; it is said 
 that in the Lancashire cotton trade experts give their entire lives to the 
 working out of such scales, and even then but imperfectly understand the 
 great mass of detail. When it is remembered that each major provision 
 represents a compromise arrived at only after hours of argument and 
 expostulation; that at any time disagreement in the formulation of a new 
 contract may mean a complete tie-up of the industry; that any new 
 process or method would irrevocably wreck the entire list; it is no 
 wonder that both employer and worker come to the conclusion that new 
 inventions or changes would cost far more in the process of readjustment 
 than they would ever be worth. Such a condition means of course the 
 curbing of the initiative of both worker and manager, the rejection of 
 \ new inventions and more efficient methods, and in general the reestablish- 
 ] ment of all those restrictive and deadening regulations which marked the 
 decay of the guild control of industry. The only way out of this economic 
 stagnation would be the replacement of collective agreement, which is a 
 treaty making process, with all of the faults and none of the virtues 
 diplomacy displays, by a process of genuine legislation: the careful ad- 
 justment of new conditions and new processes to the needs of the worker. 
 But such a process implies a genuine control by the worker over the actual 
 conduct of industry, and that industrial control far transcends the limits 
 
 1 Hoxie, op. cit., 290. 
 
Business Unionism Its Ideal and Its Implication 193 
 
 of business unionism. Here again business unionism contains within 
 itself the tendencies which will make it inevitably develop into something 
 quite different. With all the processes and standards minutely deter- 
 mined, the workers would subside into a state of contentment and self- 
 satisfaction; the determining of complicated agreements would not 
 interest them. All such matters the business agent would tend to, and 
 insure the steady supply of wages whether the worker was busy or idle, 
 whether times were good or bad. His union would of necessity become a 
 bureaucracy which denied him any effective voice or responsibility; and 
 the employer, with every interest in keeping him from demanding more 
 and more, would probably adapt a policy of benevolent paternalism and 
 charge the cost up to the community. Visions of a capitalistic state on 
 some such model levying tribute on the more undeveloped portions of the 
 globe are quite familiar, thanks to Mr. Hilaire Belloc and others; if the 
 days of the grandeur (and decline) of Rome were imitated in this respect, 
 history might well repeat itself also in the panem et cir censes to the 
 unionists. The unions would be the most conservative groups in the 
 country, as they were when the guilds reigned, with no social idealism, no 
 sympathy or regard for any group outside their own small circle. Status 
 they would have achieved, status equal to their fellows; like the French 
 rentier peasantry they would be permanently satisfied with the status 
 quo so long as they could suck more and more profits out of the owner of 
 the industry. Equality, yes but no liberty and no social or even class 
 solidarity nothing but prejudices. 
 
 This picture is purposely extreme; not for a moment do we believe 
 that such a state of affairs is either desired by any man, unionist or 
 capitalist, or that it could ever come to pass. Surely in our exposition 
 the inconsistencies, the opposing tendencies, must be already apparent. 
 Yet such a state has been closely enough approached in a very few con- 
 servative unions, notably the glass workers, the pattern makers, and, till 
 a few years ago, the railroad brotherhoods, to give us food for thought. 
 The purpose in thus sketching an ideal or completely developed business 
 unionism, by following the logical implications of the aims and principles 
 on which the business union of today operates, has been to reveal both 
 the inadequacy of those ideals and the impossibility of business unionism 
 developing very much further along the lines it has hitherto traversed. 
 
 For this has been the sum and substance of our contention throughout 
 the examination of the conservative or business trade union. It can never 
 achieve the ideal which it has set for itself, because in the very progress 
 toward that goal it is bound to transform itself into something very 
 
iQ4 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 different indeed. Business unionism, in fact, carries within itself the seed 
 of its own destruction, and it is now our task to sum up those tendencies 
 which make it not only possible but highly probable that the group 
 individualism which to a large extent characterizes the union movement 
 of today is through the fuller development of its present motives and aims 
 destined to be transformed. 
 
 Business unionism is based on a balance of bargaining power. Bargains 
 can only take place between equals. That is why the unions have insisted 
 on collective rather than individual bargains, in which the employer's 
 power is so markedly disproportionate to that of the worker that to use 
 the word bargain at all is a mere travesty. But suppose the power of the 
 organized workers grows until it is the employer who is the weaker; 
 suppose he becomes so much the weaker that his function is but to agree 
 to whatever terms the workers are willing to grant? What then becomes 
 of the collective bargain, and of the business ideal founded thereon? 
 Many manufacturers are already complaining of what they call the 
 "autocracy of labor," by which they mean of course that control of the 
 industry is passing from their hands to their employees, and that they 
 can no longer run their own business to suit themselves. As a matter of 
 fact, with each new advance towards its business goal, with each new 
 accretion of strength, the business union tends to upset the balance of 
 bargaining power upon which, like the peace of the system of theoretically 
 equal and independent European states, its treaty power and processes 
 depends. 
 
 In the first place, complete organization, that goal of the business 
 union, implies, as has been seen, under modern industrial conditions, if 
 not a single great industrial union, at least a single federation of unions 
 acting as a unit for each large industry or vocation. This means that the 
 workers would cease to think and act in terms of their particular job or 
 trade, which necessarily tends to obscure their vision of the industrial 
 process as a whole, and think and plan rather for the entire productive 
 unit. The hoist engineer, organized as a separate craft, thinks only in 
 terms of the hours, wages, and conditions pertaining to that craft; but 
 organized as a part of all the other workers in or about the coal mine, 
 the whole body of United Mine Workers, in the normal course of con- 
 sidering wages and hours, is led to regard them as they affect and are 
 affected by coal mining as a whole. Hence they have been naturally 
 drawn to consider the further and more fundamental causes of their 
 insecurity and low standard of living, and to assail the inefficiency and 
 waste entailed by methods of operation in jumps and spurts. A single 
 
Business Unionism Its Ideal and Its Implication 195 
 
 craft neither desires nor can presume to dictate any general industrial 
 policies; but a union organized on the industrial basis is not only brought 
 face to face with the necessity of exercising direct control over the conduct 
 of the enterprise, but as it grows in power it will inevitably be led, what- 
 ever its proclamation of adherence to the pure milk of business unionism, 
 to assume more and more of the functions of the present employer. 
 Under these conditions it is not surprising that thousands of unionists at 
 the present day are consciously abandoning business unionism, and 
 instead of a simple demand for a division of the profits are putting for- 
 ward a demand for an increasing control and regulation of the conduct of 
 the industry. And with the motive of individual advantage thus necessi- 
 tating a great emphasis on the purposes and processes of production, the 
 double strain is placing greater and greater emphasis on the social conse- 
 quences and implications of production. 
 
 Thus it can confidently be predicted that if the unions increase in 
 power they will of necessity tend to assume more and more of direct con- 
 trol over the industry; just as confidently it can be said there is no limit 
 to their demand for a higher standard of living. Mr. Gompers has said, 
 as has already been quoted, " We do not set any particular standard, but 
 work for the best possible conditions immediately obtainable for the 
 workers. When these are obtained then we strive for better. The work- 
 ing people will not stop when any particular point is reached; they will 
 never stop in their efforts to obtain a better life for themselves, for their 
 wives, for their children, for all humanity." 1 In this opinion he finds 
 himself at one with William Z. Foster, secretary treasurer of the National 
 Committee for Organizing Iron and Steel Workers during the recent steel 
 strike. " It is idle to say that the trade unions will rest content with any- 
 thing short of actual emancipation. For they are as insatiable as the 
 veriest so-called revolutionary unions. In the measure that their strength 
 increases, so do their demands. They have sent wages up: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 
 8, dollars per day, and hours down: 12, n, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, per day with all 
 kinds of other concessions sandwiched in between. And now they are 
 more radical in their demands than ever before in their history. Perma- 
 nently satisfied trade unions under capitalism would be the eighth wonder 
 of the world, outrivalling in interest the famous hanging gardens of 
 Babylon. They would be impossible. With its growing power, Organ- 
 ized Labor will go on winning greater and greater concessions, regardless 
 of how profound they may be." 2 
 
 1 Gompers, The American Labor Movement. 
 
 2 Foster, The Great Steel Strike, 257. 
 
196 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 With these two men, the leader of the so-called conservative wing of 
 the American labor movement and a representative of the more radical 
 section of the orthodox body, in perfect agreement as to the real meaning 
 of the slogan " A fair day's work for a fair day's pay," any notion that the 
 business union would ever stop if it had the power to extort more from the 
 employer is quite futile. Even if, as was suggested above, the employers' 
 and the workers' organizations united to increase joint profits, with every 
 gain of strength the workers would demand the lion's share. And with 
 this insatiable appetite for more meeting them at every turn, with all 
 control of " their own business" taken out of their hands, through minute 
 regulation or through actual control by the worker: it would indeed be 
 foolish for the capitalists if they did not urge some form of nationalization 
 or other scheme that would give them a secure and permanent income. It 
 is a question at present whether most of the stock-holders in the railroads 
 of this country really would not prefer government operation and control 
 with a guaranteed rate of interest to the present prospects of increasing 
 rate regulation and ''labor domination." In England, where the labor 
 movement has attained much greater power, there are many industries 
 that would thus welcome the advent of what is called " state capitalism." 
 Those captains of industry who have latterly become rather captains of 
 finance would lose interest in the operations of the stock markets so soon 
 as the demand of the worker for security had put a stop to the possibility 
 of flexibly adapting industrial conditions to the business market. And 
 any such proposal for nationab'zation with or without control by the 
 unions would of necessity entirely transform the aims and functions of 
 the business union. 
 
 The growing power of the business union and of the labor movement 
 in general will either continue to be exercised solely for the interests of 
 the group, or it will broaden its amis so as to include in addition to 
 the group interest the comprehension of the needs of society as a whole, 
 of the consumers in general. If this power were exercised for purely 
 selfish interests, society would be forced to place upon it some sort of 
 restrictions and limitations, such as are now thrown about public utili- 
 ties. It might even go so far as to penalize strikes solely for group in- 
 terests. But where the worker is denied the right to strike, the most 
 conservative business unions becomes ipso facto revolutionary and law- 
 breaking, seeking to change at least certain aspects of the social system; 
 and once shaken out of its shell the business union would be forced to 
 embark either politically or otherwise into still further policies which, 
 inasmuch as they could necessarily be social rather than group, would 
 
Business Unionism 7/5 Ideal and Its Implication 197 
 
 so transform the business union as to make its features unrecognizable. 
 This is the penalty for attempting to curb by legal means the actions 
 of the labor movement; when all activities and policies become ''sub- 
 versive," the workers will naturally have no scruples in choosing the 
 most advantageous, and thus legal assaults upon radicalism prove only 
 to be boomerangs. 
 
 On the other hand, even if the political government made no such at- 
 tempt at social regulation, the possession of power is an almost irresist- 
 ible temptation to use it. It is an immensely salutary educative force, 
 tending to call out aims much more fundamental than those comprised 
 in collective bargaining. With the interest and thought of the worker 
 centered on production as a social function, he will, if it seems more 
 advantageous to himself and to the consumer, stop at no change in the 
 economic structure of society that he has the power to effect. If the 
 wage-system meets with his disapproval, he will replace it by some other 
 more efficient method of production; if the private ownership of the 
 means of production and the right of property itself fall under his 
 censure, he will supersede them with other forms of control and other 
 types of rights. 
 
 That even the most conservative unions are in no sense bound to the 
 safe and sane principles of business unionism it requires but a slight 
 acquaintance with the events of recent years to convince. The unions 
 of Great Britain, especially the so-called "Big Three" or " Triple Alli- 
 ance," of the railwaymen, the mine workers, and the transport workers, 
 are at present enjoying so much power that they literally have not 
 awakened to its potentialities. Relying on general public disgust with 
 parliamentary government as carried on by khaki elections and coali- 
 tions, they have appointed themselves the tribunes of the people, and 
 sought by direct action to attain purely political ends. They have 
 attempted to make their voice felt in both the foreign and the domestic 
 policies of the British Empire; and, it is edifying to note, the British 
 government generally decides to abopt a certain course of action fairly 
 soon after the Big Three have demanded it in a pronunciamento. To 
 many, even to those who approve the individual policies which the 
 British unionists are seeking to enforce, this seems fraught with the ut- 
 most danger; but its significance here is merely to make plain how the 
 control of very large power can lead business unions outside their own 
 private interests to demand sweeping changes in the social structure. 
 For it was but ten years ago that the British unions were notoriously 
 conservative and dominated by group individualism, even more so 
 
igS The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 than those of our own country. But then occurred reorganization and 
 new inspiration from the industrialists, and today the British unionists 
 hold in their hands inestimable opportunity for either good or ill. 
 
 Or take the example of Germany. After the Kapp revolution it was 
 Karl Legien and the conservative unions who held the only real power 
 in the country. The Ebert government was preserved, but it was pre- 
 served only because the unionists wanted it. The general strike that 
 defeated Kapp put in Legien's hands the virtual dictatorship of Germany; 
 he gave the power back to Ebert, but he realized, and the German un- 
 ionists realized, that it was he and not Ebert who dominated the situa- 
 tion. 
 
 Or if we turn to America itself, where the relatively slighter strength 
 of the labor movement has tended to restrain both the assumption 
 and the exercise of power, we have but to consider how the Plumb Plan, 
 worked out by Mr. Glenn Plumb and his associates as a purely "business " 
 and "practical" solution to the railroad problem, with never a thought as 
 to possible underlying social theories, was taken up by the conservative 
 railroad brotherhoods, hi America the very type of the business union, 
 and adopted by a ninety per cent majority. The conscious aim of effi- 
 cient and economic operation for the fulfillment of the needs of the 
 community is assuredly a far cry from the older aims of business 
 unionism. 
 
 Therefore, from all these causes, from the assumption of more and 
 more control over the actual conduct of industry, from the demand 
 for greater and greater returns that will make it more profitable to the 
 employer to submit to social regulation and its attendant social guaran- 
 tee of income, from the simple growth of power itself, the business union 
 will find itself hi a situation where its original aim of collective bar- 
 gaining for the profits of industry will be far transcended. Just as surely 
 as the community is bound to become more and more industrialized, 
 the labor movement is bound to grow in strength, in numbers, and in 
 power. We are prone, perhaps, to regard the industrial revolution as 
 an event that occurred in England in the century between 1750 and 1850, 
 and later took place hi other lands in a much shorter time. This im- 
 pression is totally erroneous.' The industrial revolution did indeed 
 start in England about 1750; but it has kept up ever since, growing 
 more and more extensive, more and more intensive, and more and more 
 rapid in its movement with every year. Far from slowing up, the in- 
 dustrial revolution is proceeding with greater and greater acceleration. 
 And until that revolution halts the labor movement will continue to 
 
Business Unionism Its Ideal and Its Implication 199 
 
 grow in numbers and in power; and with its growth the transformation 
 of business unionism will be inevitable. 
 
 The business union, then, according to all present indications, will 
 continue to grow in strength. That strength will be exerted in channels 
 that are anti-social unless it is allowed to function through channels 
 socially directed toward social ends. This is the sum and substance of ( 
 our investigation of the typical union of the last twenty years, the busi- 
 ness trade union. 
 
ii. INFIDELS AND HERETICS ALIEN PHILOSOPHIES AND 
 THEIR EFFECTS ON THE AMERICAN LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 BEFORE continuing with our examination of the new unionism to which 
 the typical business union of the last generation seems to be approach- 
 ing, both hi order to comprehend it fully and to make our survey of 
 the various philosophies and attitudes that have come into prominence 
 in the American labor movement at all adequate, we must pause for a 
 moment to consider the effect on the old traditional American agricul- 
 tural ideal of democracy of the great mass of foreigners from other lands 
 and other intellectual atmospheres and traditions, and of the alien 
 philosophies originally developed to meet conditions quite different 
 from those obtaining in the United States. These are the infidels 
 those who, born in another faith, steadfastly refuse to be converted to 
 the true doctrine of the Fathers of the constitution, the faith which, 
 for all the higher criticism bestowed upon it in recent years, certainly 
 remains in its fundamental dogmas the faith of the great body of Ameri- 
 can workers. Then there are also the heretics those whom, just be- 
 cause they have turned apostate and after having once been in the fold 
 have gone astray, the mother church persecutes even more bitterly 
 than the infidel who, after all, is hardly to blame for his misfortune of 
 being born in another community. 
 
 In general the great and tremendous influx of foreign immigration, 
 a labor phenomenon that no other country has ever experienced in such 
 a diversity and to such an extent, has exerted little direct but great in- 
 direct influence on the development of labor ideals and ways of think- 
 ing. The absorption of the great stream of aliens into the native Ameri- 
 can movement has been most remarkable, when the fact is considered 
 that some sixty per cent of the workers in our basic industries have been 
 born in other lands. There is already little discoverable difference be- 
 tween the attitude of the descendents of the immigrants from Northern 
 Europe, the Irish, Scotch, German, and Scandinavian, and that of New 
 Englanders who came over in the Mayflower; and, alarmists to the 
 contrary notwithstanding, the younger generation, and the great ma- 
 jority of the older generation, of workers from the south and east of 
 Europe have already adopted most of the virtues, together with most of 
 the vices, of the American type of mind. But in certain of our great 
 
Infidels and Heretics 201 
 
 cities, where the foreign-born congregate together in colonies of their 
 own, there is enough group sentiment left to cause the development of 
 philosophies that have become rooted in the homeland whence the group 
 has come. 
 
 The immigrant comes from a stratified society in which class con- 
 sciousness has been drilled into him for centuries back. He belongs to 
 the lower class, to the peasantry, generally; not for him is it to aspire 
 to take his place as an equal among the lords of the earth. He must 
 toil and labor as his forbears toiled and labored; he may, indeed, cherish 
 hopes of raising his entire class to a somewhat better position, but that 
 he should rise out of his class is unthinkable. But when he arrives in 
 America he believes all this will be changed. There are there no classes, 
 no peasants, no masters; he does not exactly expect to pick up gold in 
 the streets, of course, but he still looks upon America as the land of 
 wonderful opportunities. American democracy is seen through a rosy 
 haze which, perhaps, leads the simple peasant of Sicily or the harassed 
 Jew of Poland to expect more than it can possibly give. Of late years 
 there have come, of course, disturbing reports back home that all is 
 not quite so glorious as it has been painted; but nevertheless the im- 
 migrant still feels, and feels rightly, that in certain respects at least 
 America must be preferable to the conditions under which he has 
 been living. 
 
 But when he arrives in the slums of our great cities, or in some squalid 
 mining or mill town, he is doomed to the disillusionment that follows 
 every too optimistic hope. The real benefits America offers, those 
 intangible things that only time can bring home, seem to him remote, 
 and may even fade away in the distance with his disappointment in 
 the hope of material prosperity. His wages are indeed more in a week 
 than he formerly earned in a month; but so are prices, and in exchange 
 for the free life of the peasant he has the unceasing monotony of factory 
 or mine labor. True, he is immune from the incursions of the Tsar's 
 Cossacks, free to do what he will; but if perchance he live in Western 
 Pennsylvania this freedom may seem somewhat unreal. If he has not 
 expected too much, he will assuredly be satisfied, and voice, as so many 
 of our newly made Americans have voiced, the gratitude which he feels 
 toward a land that, with all its faults, offers opportunities undreamed 
 of in Eastern Europe; but if he has, and most immigrants fall into the 
 latter class, he will be the prey of disillusion. 
 
 This disillusion can have two effects. It can breed a frank and some- 
 what Bitter cynicism, which determines him to play the -game as Ameri- 
 
202 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 cans play it, to beat them if possible, and to rise to the top in the ruthless 
 methods of business. Thus he becomes absorbed in the American labor 
 movement, follows its shrewd business methods, and extracts all he can 
 from his employer. If he is successful, he rises, in some small way at 
 first, to the employing class himself, and far outdoes the native American 
 in grasping and driving oppression; the sweatshop contractors were 
 nearly all just this type of successful immigrant. 
 
 Or the sense of disillusionment instead of throwing the foreigner 
 headlong into the business struggle, may lead to a total rejection of the 
 whole American theory, in its business or its trade union formulation, 
 and send him to radical theories born of the conditions of the lands he 
 has left and well nourished in his new country. In industrial matters, 
 he says, America is far worse than the monarchy I came from; all gov- 
 ernments are alike, and must give way to something else. His foreign 
 birth emphasizes the class consciousness he already feels; if he is an 
 Italian or a Jew or a "Hunky" he knows that the people on top regard 
 him as of almost another species from themselves, and with an ill-con- 
 cealed disgust despise him for being different. He becomes, quite 
 naturally, a revolutionary, inspired by a fanatical doctrinaire social 
 idealism. It is the "system" that is to blame, the great, impersonal 
 octopus reaching out everywhere to seize him with its tentacles; some- 
 how, he feels certain, if only the system were thrown off or destroyed 
 or broken up (he is not quite certain just which term applies) than all 
 his problems would solve themselves. Just a simple remedy, a single 
 law or two, and his vision of America as the land of golden opportunity 
 would then come true. Since the solution seems so utterly and abso- 
 lutely simple to him, he cannot but feel that those who do not enthusi- 
 astically embrace it are conspiring with the system to keep him down; 
 organized labor, in its indifference to his remedy, must be corrupt and 
 bought by the capitalists. 
 
 So the more intelligent young foreign-born worker may become a 
 revolutionary of one persuasion or another, and sets off on his crusade 
 only to be confirmed by opposition in the Tightness of his views. But 
 the majority of the workers are perhaps too unintelligent to do more 
 than follow any leader who appears to offer them hope of relief from 
 their present discontents, and thus are readily absorbed into whatever 
 orthodox business union thinks it worth the trouble to organize them. 
 The immigrant, it must be remembered, is not apt to be the skilled 
 laborer from the foreign city; the purveyors of hands for American 
 industry have generally been careful to make sure that he is the simple 
 
Infidels and Heretics 203 
 
 peasant. And workers tinged with revolutionary ideas are not apt to 
 emigrate; they are too much interested in effecting social change in 
 their own land. Yet by the same token when the unskilled workers 
 are approached by a radical leader they willingly respond; they are in 
 no wise attached to the principles of the constitution or to any other 
 foundation of the modern society. 
 
 For all these reasons alien philosophies, and in particular the class 
 conscious theories of Marx, appeal mainly to those already class con- 
 scious, and gain a foothold in the fairly homogeneous immigrant centers 
 rather than in localities where native American stock is predominant; 
 though, it must be confessed, certain revolutionary philosophies are a 
 marked exception. But these are quite different from orthodox Marxi- 
 anism, and represent an indigenous growth. The history of Marxian 
 socialism in the United States is the history of the attempted " Ameri- 
 canization" of a philosophy that from the start was recognized as 
 something alien to the tradition of the great body of American workers. 
 "In Europe," says one of the foremost of its leaders, " the socialist move- 
 ment sprang up in the midst of the native population and adjusted itself 
 to the economic and political conditions of each country quite mechan- 
 ically and without effort. But in the United States the situation was 
 altogether different. It is estimated that no more than ten per cent 
 of the members of the Socialist Labor Party, during the period described 
 (1877-1900) were native Americans. All the rest, including the most 
 active and influential leaders, were men of foreign birth, insufficiently 
 acquainted with the institutions, customs, and habits of the country 
 of their adoption, and frequently ignorant of its very language. 
 
 "In these circumstances the pioneers of the movement soon realized 
 the hopelessness of their task to effect radical social and economic 
 changes in this country by their own efforts, and henceforward they 
 considered it their special mission to acclimatize the movement, and to 
 leave its further development to the American working men. The en- 
 deavor to 'Americanize' the socialist movement is the main key-note 
 of the activity of the Socialist Labor Party throughout its entire career." 1 
 
 In fact, socialism appeared in the United States as a German product, 
 and found by far its largest support here among the German element. 
 Of late years the Jews, for whose welfare and aid the Socialists alone 
 seemed to have any genuine care, have likewise become its enthusiastic 
 followers. And, although its members are eager to deny it, and point 
 to the fact that at the first convention of the present Socialist Party 
 1 Hillquit, History of Socialism in the United States, 5th ed., 193. 
 
204 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 in 1901 only 25 out of 124 delegates were foreign born, and that the 
 average of enrolled membership is 71% native, 1 it is impossible not to 
 admit that socialism, or at any rate the Socialist party, has hitherto 
 had no special appeal for the worker of American stock. The very fact 
 that its strongholds are in New York and in Milwaukee, and in mining 
 and mill communities of the East, all places where the foreign-born are 
 very strong, emphasizes the distinction between Marxianism and the 
 American democratic tradition. But the Socialists are also quite right 
 in insisting upon the "American" nature of their theories and their 
 following; for if to be "American" means to have the support of a great 
 body of American workmen today, then Socialism assuredly can make 
 good its claim. It is American industry itself that has become foreign- 
 born, until there has almost developed a servile race in the country. 
 
 Of course, the leaders of Socialism are by no means in the same sit- 
 uation as their followers. They are, for the most part, intellectuals 
 inspired with a passion for social justice, and they naturally comprise 
 some of those whose ancestors were suckled on the pure milk of Ameri- 
 canism; they regard Socialism, with perhaps certain modifications, as 
 the consummation of American democracy. They are sincere converts 
 of whom Socialism is very proud, and they have been of inestimable 
 service to her. Moreover, perhaps the majority of the million voters 
 whom the Socialists have been able to attract vote as they do, not from 
 a conviction of the inherent truth of the Socialist dogmas, but largely 
 as a matter of protest and resentment against the other large parties. 
 The same could probably be said, with less assurance, of large sections 
 of the trade unionists. Socialism during the last twenty years has been 
 the one possible alternative to the continuance of things as they are 
 upon which any large number of men have agreed. The convinced 
 Socialist, who worships his Marxian Bible, is even today largely confined 
 to the worker out of touch with the main body of the American Labor 
 movement. Nothing can make this more plain than the respective 
 attitudes which the A. F. L. and the Socialist Party adopted towards 
 American participation in the war. 
 
 The socialist movement in the United States falls naturally into three 
 periods, before 1877, the period of the Socialist Labor Party, 1877-1901, 
 and that of the present Socialist Party. The first two periods represent 
 almost entirely agitation among the German-speaking workers. Before 
 the Civil War, Weitling, a refugee of 1848 and a combination of Marxian 
 and Utopian, carried on a paper and spread certain Marxian ideas; 
 ^illquit, History of Socialism in the United States, 5th ed., 309, 357. 
 
Infidels and Heretics 205 
 
 and in 1857 a Communistic Club was formed in New York. With the 
 International Working-Men's Association, founded in 1864 by British 
 unionists to regulate the international labor supply, and the scene of 
 much of Marx's work, the National Labor Union, under the influence 
 of Sylvis and with the motion of restricting the evils of free immigration, 
 expressed its sympathy, and even elected Sylvis as a delegate; but he 
 could not go without funds, and his death in 1869 stopped all further 
 interchange between American and European labor. In 1868 the 
 German workers in New York formed a General German Workers' 
 Union, which first joined the National Labor Union, but in the next 
 year joined the International as Section i of New York, and adopted 
 Marxian principles. Soon there were sections in Chicago and San 
 Francisco, of various foreign nationalities; in 1870 there were over 30 
 sections and some 5000 enrolled members, which, to gain the attention 
 of the American movement, supported a number of strikes then in 
 progress. In 1872 the North American Federation of the International 
 was formed, and the next year the General Council was transferred to 
 New York. The last conference of the great International at Philadel- 
 phia in 1876 was a perfect failure. The truth is that the Germans were 
 quarreling among themselves, while alarm at the Commune of 1871 
 and the amusing antics of Section 12 under two feminist agitators, 
 Victoria Woodhull and Tennessee Claflin, had either scared or laughed 
 away the American support that at one time seemed about to attach 
 itself to the Socialists. 
 
 Nevertheless, in 1874 A. Strasser, the cigar-maker who was later to 
 figure as a pioneer of pure and simple business unionism, formed the 
 Social Democratic Working-Men's Party out of several of the old sec- 
 tions of the International; this organization participated in and cap- 
 tured the Industrial Congress of 1876, and in the same year formed a 
 national party which in the next took the name of the Socialist Labor 
 Party, with doctrines of strictest Marxianism. In 1879 this party had 
 almost 10,000 members, which, however, had shrunk four years later 
 to a bare isoo. 1 The anarchist movement of the eighties drew from 
 their ranks, and had almost annihilated them at its collapse in 1886, 
 The Socialists, too, looking with envious eyes on the success of the Knights 
 of Labor and the American Federation, sought both to get their aid in 
 political action and to gain control of them; but, for all their dallying 
 with the Socialists in tunes of depression, such as the 1886 Henry George 
 campaign in New York, the unionists, so soon as business picked up, 
 
 1 Hillquit, op. cit., 207. 
 
206 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 turned a deaf ear to them. By 1896, however, the Socialists had 200 
 sections, and had managed to secure control of several city federations, 
 notably the Central Labor Union of New York, the United German 
 Trades, and the United Hebrew Trades. These latter had been or- 
 ganized through the efforts of the Socialists in the spontaneous revolt 
 of the Jewish garment workers in New York against sweatshop condi- 
 tions; in gratitude they have remained largely socialist ever since. In 
 1893 the Socialists captured District Assembly 49, the New York branch 
 of the Knights, and helped defeat Powderly; but a quarrel soon broke 
 out between the essentially rural Knights and the Socialists. 
 
 In the Federation socialism was represented by a respectable mi- 
 nority. In 1 88 1 six out of the hundred and seven delegates had been 
 declared socialists; but the great struggle did not come till 1893, when 
 Gompers was defeated for reelection and a plank calling for " the col- 
 lective ownership by the people of all means of production and distri- 
 bution" was referred to the constituent unions. Next year it was 
 quietly dropped in the midst of heated discussion over Socialism, and 
 thereafter the Socialists averaged about one quarter of the member- 
 ship of the conventions. By 1895 the Socialists, having antagonized 
 both Knights and Federation, sought to form a trade union of their 
 own, and set up the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance, modeled ex- 
 actly on the type of the Knights. While they were able to gain at the 
 outset the Central Labor Federation of New York, and the United He- 
 brew Trades, the Alliance, as an attempt to utilize the trade union 
 movement for political purposes, was an utter fizzle. The total vote 
 in 1898 was 82,204; the movement had no influence on the American 
 workers. 
 
 In 1899 a split occurred in the Socialist Labor Party; the seceding 
 majority joined several other groups under Eugene V. Debs, and after 
 a little difficulty with Utopian colonizers formed in 1901 the Socialist 
 Party. By abandoning the strict impossibilism of the older organiza- 
 tion and adopting more opportunistic and reformist tactics, the social- 
 ists have been able to secure as many as a million votes. 
 
 Why has the socialist movement in the United States remained a 
 thing apart from the general movement, having, indeed, many adher- 
 ents even within the business unions, but depending mainly upon the 
 immigrant populations of our great cities? Why has it remained more 
 doctrinaire and orthodox than almost any other socialist party, so much 
 so that during the war it was left almost alone to adhere to the anti- 
 militaristic principles of the International? It has the proud distinc- 
 
Infidels and Heretics 207 
 
 tion of remaining faithful to its principles in time of peril, but that very 
 loyalty meant that it was out of touch with the main body of Amer- 
 ican labor. Why has not socialism taken on American form and fea- 
 ture, as it has been acclimated in England? Why, since America is the 
 land where capitalism has traveled further on its Marxian path than 
 in any other, has socialism so failed here? 
 
 Fundamentally, it is because its ideology and its aims are quite for- 
 eign to the American spirit and tradition of a democracy of equality. 
 To accept Marxianism, it must be swallowed whole ; and though Amer- 
 ican labor readily accepts the class struggle, it is quite unable to con- 
 template the utopia of the orthodox socialist. The American distrusts 
 the state and all its ways with the bitterness of a century and a half's 
 rule by politicians; the efficient German bureaucracy, with its nicely 
 graded and adjusted scales of ability, is to him incomprehensible. He 
 is not at all averse to a collectivism; group enterprise, from the days 
 of de Tocqueville, has been a characteristic of America. But that the 
 group to take over the means of production should be the government 
 for he recognizes no such entity as the "State" those cheap poli- 
 ticians, those unsuccessful lawyers well, a Shonts may be bad enough, 
 but he is not going to take his chances with a Tammany Mayor. So- 
 cialism, as government operation, leaves him utterly cold because he 
 has never in his experience met with such a thing as the German bu- 
 reaucracy or the British Civil service, and if he had he would reject a 
 system that merely substituted an aristocracy of ability for an aristoc- 
 racy of wealth or birth. He wants no aristocracy whatsoever. Hence 
 it is that, while he may advocate collective ownership and operation, 
 he is indifferent to any proposal to make the group the government. 
 In this the American worker is at bottom syndicalistic, as the A. F. L. 
 conventions have repeatedly revealed; and syndicalism, we may re- 
 member, originated in a country which has enjoyed some fifty years 
 of rule by politicians. Socialism will never be able to conquer the 
 American tradition unless it abandons or greatly weakens its emphasis 
 on the "State." 
 
 But if the American is not a national socialist, neither is he an an- 
 archist in the sense in which the Latins of Europe may become. Not 
 that he is particularly averse to the use of force (to which, strange 
 irony, are committed those who are revolting against the employment 
 of all force!) but he has no stomach for that particular variety which 
 comprises stealth and conspiracy and dynamite. He prefers force open 
 and above-board, a few broken heads, perhaps, but essentially the ec- 
 
208 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 onomic force of the strike. Occasionally workers will suffer from the 
 delusion that the bomb is their only recourse, as happened a few years 
 ago with the bridge workers; but that is the exception that proves the 
 rule, and is invariably the result of the influence of a particular leader. 
 
 In the eighties, indeed, there arose a real anarchist movement; but 
 it comprised only those elements which the Socialist Labor Party then 
 drew from, together with a few intellectuals. In 1881 there was formed 
 in Chicago a branch of the International Working People's Associa- 
 tion, the so-called "black international," composed of seceding sec- 
 tions of the S. L. P., under the leadership of Johann Most. It held a 
 convention in Pittsburgh in 1883 which issued a most inflammatory 
 proclamation calling on workers to employ all means, especially force. 
 It achieved national importance as a result of the Haymarket bomb of 
 1886, which, though almost certainly exploded without the knowledge 
 or the consent of the I. W. P. A. officers, was certainly the logical de- 
 duction from their proclamations. The Black International, and with 
 it anarchism, disappeared utterly from American labor; and the net 
 result was to turn the conservative business unions, whose eight-hour 
 strike was directly ruined by it, as far as possible from revolutionary 
 sentiments. 
 
 At this point it might be well to mention the most recent of the al- 
 ien philosophies, the Communist and the Communist Labor Parties, 
 splits from the emergency convention of the Socialist Party at Chicago 
 in August, 1919. They are slight organizations produced by the reac- 
 tion of Russian events on souls too impatient with the conservativeness 
 and opportunism of the orthodox Socialist Party; the latter is merely an 
 organization of discontented "left-wingers" who want more action 
 and excitement, mainly from the northwest, (Minnesota, Oregon, Cali- 
 fornia, and Ohio) but whose principles differ very little from orthodox 
 Maraanism they are merely reformers seeking the pure gospel. The 
 former is or was composed of about 30,000 members of the seven Slavic 
 federations of the Socialist Party, Russians whose leaders desired to 
 emulate their countrymen, and the Michigan delegation which, after 
 calling the new party, found itself hopelessly overruled. These leaders 
 who did not bother to consult their "followers," drew up a platform 
 calling, in a little stronger language than usual, for the socialist aims, 
 and preferred the "mass strike" to political campaigning. Obviously, 
 neither group is worthy of serious thought as part of the labor movement. 
 
 What, then, has been the net result upon the American labor move- 
 ment of these various foreign philosophies? Undoubtedly the greatest 
 
Infidels and Heretics 209 
 
 effect has been to increase class consciousness and class solidarity. 
 The theory of the class struggle has been that part of Marxianism that 
 has made the strongest appeal to the American worker; and the feeling 
 of class consciousness marks nearly all the newer unions today. So- 
 cialism, besides, has probably done much, in the hold it has been able 
 to get in the A. F. L., to aid in the tendency toward the breaking down 
 of craft lines. 
 
 Moreover, socialism and collectivism have made it easy for the worker 
 to favor the application of a certain amount of state socialism mini- 
 mum wages, health insurance, pensions, and the like which without 
 its influence would probably still be regarded by the workers with the 
 same suspicious eye the employer preserves for it. From legislation 
 freeing labor from special disabilities the A. F. L. lobby has thus been 
 easily led to legislation directly in its favor. 
 
 But, on the other hand, these foreign radicalisms have undoubtedly 
 increased the general conservatism of the American labor movement. 
 It has often been afraid to adopt and propose policies that it otherwise 
 would have enthusiastically endorsed for fear of being branded with 
 the stigma of "socialistic." This fear of "socialistic tendencies" has 
 been all the more potent in that they are generally identified with the 
 clearly alien element of the community who seem not yet thoroughly 
 "Americanized." For the native worker of older stock, socialism or 
 radicalism of any sort has come to be identified with the squalid slum 
 and the unskilled labor which in his pride he is apt to despise. As dis- 
 tinct from these "ignorant foreigners" he is a business man, and he 
 prides himself on his ability to vote the Republican ticket with the most 
 successful business man in the land. And, it must be confessed, a good 
 deal of this attitude has crept into the immigrants themselves. They 
 have everywhere been taught, and in many cases they have finally come 
 to believe, that socialism is one of the things that along with the full 
 beard and the peasant shawl must be discarded in the process of Ameri- 
 canization: to become a conservative business man is somehow much 
 more " American " than to remain a radical. 
 
 If the history of American labor has revealed any lesson, it is that 
 the American, while quite willing to embark upon political action to 
 secure the aims and needs of his trade union, is utterly opposed to any 
 political action seeking to accomplish primarily political control of 
 economic conditions and disregarding those unions. Any political 
 party that he will whole-heartedly support must be the servant of the 
 union movement, must supplement it, not take its place. The efforts 
 
210 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 of the Socialists in their Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance to imital 
 Germany in making of the unions an instrument for the furtherii 
 of party aims came to a sudden and complete collapse. If American 
 workers are to remain what they have been in the past, any labor party 
 they form must be firmly based upon and completely controlled by the 
 strong unions, and its program must emphasize primarily trade union 
 control and organization. 
 
 Hence the radical philosophies based on Marx have almost entirely 
 remained in the hands of foreigners who, however they may have be- 
 come a very large factor in American industry, have remained as yet 
 outside the traditions of the American labor movement. They have 
 remained essentially a philosophy of protest and revolt, and it is hardly 
 too much to say that as yet they have presented no program, political 
 or industrial, at all practicable in the face of American conditions and 
 the psychology of the American worker. 
 
 But while orthodox Marxianism has never gained a real hold on the 
 American labor movement, there has been a spirited native revolt 
 against the business union a revolt taking its beginnings in the West- 
 ern Federation of Miners, and developing into the I. W. W. The pres- 
 ence of the I. W. W. and its failure to transform the American labor 
 movement directly are alike significant. So intriguing in theory with 
 its doctrines of the industrial state and its generous social unionism, so 
 revolting in practice to minds brought up in traditional ways of think- 
 ing, by reason of its extreme predatory character, it has nevertheless 
 exerted, and probably will continue to exert, an important if indirect 
 influence on the older business unionism. 
 
 The Western Federation of Miners was organized in 1893 as a result 
 of the Coeur d'Alene outbreak among the metal miners of the west. 
 These sturdy pioneers were for the most part Americans of the old 
 stock, bred in the old frontier tradition and impatient of the restraints 
 of Eastern industrialism. They had been engaged in independent gold 
 and lead mining, and when the advent of capitalism created large com- 
 panies and reduced them' to wageworkers, they banded together, in the 
 spirit of the Vigilance Committees, to protect their rights from aggres- 
 sion. On their side were all the traditions of the wild and woolly west; 
 on the other, all the strength that capitalism can gain in newly devel- 
 oped lands, like South Africa. Strikes of extreme bitterness and deadli- 
 ness followed swift upon each other: Coeur d'Alene in 1893, Cripple 
 
 
Infidels and Heretics 211 
 
 Creek in 1894, Leadville in 1896-97, Salt Lake and Coeur d' Alene again 
 in 1899, Telluride in 1901, Idaho Springs in 1903, and Cripple Creek 
 again in 1903-04. The state governments were wholly in the hands of 
 the mine-owners, and this heightened in the miners the profound dis- 
 gust with political government that pioneering conditions had fostered. 
 They thought at first of capturing the state legislatures, and used much 
 of the ideology of socialism; but they put more trust in economic action, 
 and seriously discussed the purchase and operation of mines. They 
 had done well enough before the advent of the capitalist, and they would 
 do well enough without him again. 1 Their union, which took in all 
 workers, waiters, lumbermen, and the rest, in some respects recalls a 
 union of ''all good citizens" to clean up the disreputable elements; for 
 the Western Federation organized a Western Labor Union of which it 
 was by far the largest member. Their methods were rough and ready, 
 and involved none of the business tactics of the older unions; William 
 D. Haywood boasted in the first I. W. W. convention: "We have not 
 got an agreement existing with any mine manager, superintendent, or 
 operator at the present time. We have got a minimum scale of wages 
 and the eight-hour day, and we did not have a legislative lobby to ac- 
 complish it. " 2 They were out to fight and get what they could. 
 
 In 1905 this group of western miners, with their new American Labor 
 Union, joined with Daniel De Leon and the remnants of the old Social- 
 ist Labor Party, together with several other leaders and minor unions, 
 in a convention at Chicago that called itself the Industrial Workers of 
 the World and was bound together by the common hatred of the Ameri- 
 can Federation and "pure and simple trade unionism." The group 
 consisted mainly of socialists from the Western Federation of Miners, 
 under Sherman, who was elected president; Socialist laborites, the so- 
 called "impossiblists" or "fanatic Jesuits" of the socialist tradition; a 
 small handful under De Leon; and revolutionary unionists under Hay- 
 wood and Vincent St. John of the Western Federation. Personal squab- 
 bles split off Sherman and the Miners in 1906; and in 1908 De Leon 
 and the advocates of political as well as revolutionary economic action 
 were excluded by the so-called "bummery crowd," which left the I. W. 
 W. in the hands of Haywood, St. John, and the revolutionary direct 
 actionists. 
 
 The successive quarrels and splits that mark the history of the organ- 
 ization are unimportant; they merely signify the disgust with which 
 
 1 Brissenden, The I. W. W., 42. 
 
 2 Proceedings, ist I. W. W. Convention, 154. 
 
212 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 the strong central leadership of the business unions was regarded by 
 these rebels. The subsequent history of the I. W. W. is well-known: 
 how they organized that class of homeless and womanless migratory 
 workers which the capitalists' need for " a good labor market" has called 
 into being in the Northwest, and found among the wandering agricul- 
 tural laborers, the miners, and above all the lumbermen, staunch sup- 
 porters in their campaign for livable conditions. They have even in- 
 vaded the East, coming into Lawrence in 1912 and other textile centers 
 after the unorganized unskilled have been driven to revolt. The men they 
 have appealed to have been the men no other labor organization con- 
 sidered worth while the very lowest of the low. But their principles 
 forbade any efficient organization; their fields do not stay organized, 
 and although aided by persecution they have not gained nor are they 
 likely to gain any considerable membership. They claim at the present 
 time only 70,000 members, nearly all in the Northwest, and this num- 
 ber is far in excess of their real strength. Brissenden estimates that the 
 government figure of 200,000 probably represents the number of those 
 who at one time or 'another have carried I. W. W. cards. But it is not 
 upon their membership, but upon discontented and desperate workers 
 driven to sudden revolt, that the I. W. W. depends for its fighting 
 strength. 
 
 Despite its analogies to French syndicalism, despite the international 
 relations upon which they have in the last decade prided themselves, the 
 I. W. W. was a purely indigenous organization, born of the union of the 
 Western pioneering atmosphere and a fully developed capitalism. And 
 despite its elaborate and detailed social theory, which it has of late years 
 worked out on foreign models, the I. W. W. can scarcely be said to have a 
 philosophy or even to be descended from Marxian forbears. Its leaders 
 indeed started with a smattering of the great socialist, and have latterly 
 developed their genealogy; but they stopped with the class struggle. Of 
 economic determinism, of collective state ownership, to say nothing of the 
 intricacies of surplus value and the other dogmas of the Master, in which 
 every true socialist is at home, the average Wobbly lumberjack knows 
 nothing and cares less; but that there is a big fight going on and that he 
 must see that his side wins, that is perfectly obvious. And the typical 
 Wobbly, when he says "class struggle" and the "overthrow of the 
 capitalist," means it in a sense in which few revolutionaries have ever 
 meant their stereotyped phrases. A struggle is an active physical com- 
 bat, an overthrow is a real crash; it is not merely a persuasive labor 
 lieutenant to the captain of industry, with his "You've got my sym- 
 
Infidels and Heretics 213 
 
 pa thy," or a tiresome political campaign with an efficient bureaucracy. 
 As Carleton Parker so well explained, the I. W. W. movement in the rank 
 and file owed its popularity to deep-seated and instinctive needs of the 
 migratory worker, and not at all to the carefully developed industrial 
 departments and technique of future production which the leaders 
 developed. 
 
 The only immediate result on the Federation was the half-hearted 
 attempt, since abandoned, to organize the unskilled among whom the 
 I. W. W. worked into local or "federal" labor unions. But the indirect 
 influence has^come through other channels. Besides their tactics of the 
 general strike and sabotage the I. W. W. gradually developed an interest- 
 ing syndicalistic social "theory, in which the political state was to be 
 abolished and industrial unions were to take over all the functions of 
 production and government the typical syndicalistic economic federal- 
 ism. Many of the younger and more intellectual leaders have also 
 occupied their time with elaborating the plans for such direct control of 
 production by the workers, and the I. W. W. has been a pioneer in em- 
 phasizing industrial education and training with a view to eventually 
 " capturing" and administering the means of production. These leaders 
 have come to feel that their aim can best be achieved, not in a miscellane- 
 ous rabble such as constitutes the rank and file of the Wobblies, but 
 through the older business unions and the orthodox labor movement, 
 which has recently been exhibiting remarkable signs of transformation. 
 Hence many of them have come to favor an educational propaganda 
 through the " coffin societies" themselves, and the now celebrated policy 
 of "boring from within"; and in the process their earlier views are 
 of necessity being modified. They believe that a steady and prolonged 
 training and education in responsibility is required before the workers can 
 ever hope to capture industry, and that training they see possible only in 
 the unions of the A. F. L. They also do not utterly give up the ballot as 
 an instrument of transformation. It was for this reason that De Leon 
 left the I. W. W. and set up a rival I. W. W. in Detroit, since renamed, the 
 Worker's International Industrial Union; he had come to desire above all 
 the discarding of political representation and the organization of workers 
 along industrial lines, and he could not but feel that sabotage and destruc- 
 tive methods were the worst possible kind of training for the eventual 
 management of industry. 
 
 These influences, which may foretell a turning of the extreme radicals 
 back into the regular labor movement and towards the building up of a 
 trade unionism which shall be far more than business unionism has 
 
214 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 hitherto been, readily join forces with the tendencies we have already 
 observed within the heart of business unionism itself, and serve but to 
 hasten its change. It is to the outcome to the New Unionism, as it 
 already is and as it appears likely to become in the near future, that we 
 must now turn our attention. 
 
 
12. THE GROWTH OF CLASS SOLIDARITY AND THE NEW 
 
 UNIONISM 
 
 THE progress of the industrial revolution has at length reached the 
 point where common class interests are tending to break down particular 
 group interests, and weld the labor movement into one great whole; or, to 
 be more correct, where particular group interests can no longer reach their 
 realization without combining into larger and mutually interdependent 
 groups. This, of course, is a generalization, and like all generalizations 
 it has many exceptions: there still are and probably for some time will 
 remain a certain number of groups which, either by reason of the purely 
 technical persistence of a considerable degree of skilled craftsmanship, 
 or for some other special reason not germane to the labor movement as a 
 whole, preserve the skilled craftsman's aristocratic sense of elevation 
 above the general struggles of the mass of the laboring classes. But all 
 indications point toward a marked tendency in the labor movement, 
 taken by and large, toward the replacement of wage-consciousness by 
 class-consciousness. 
 
 The primary cause, of course, is the technological one of the progress 
 of invention; trie introduction of machines everywhere to replace the 
 simple tool of the manual laborer. With the increasing strength of the 
 business union and its consequent greater demand for wages, the em- 
 ployer will be more and more driven to supplant processes depending 
 upon skilled workmen with elaborate and intricate machines that work 
 automatically; and it is highly probable that as the union reaches a 
 position where it will be able to regulate the introduction and assure the 
 retention, in some other capacity, of the workers, and the employer seeks 
 gain in increased production rather than in discarding workers, the 
 unions will not only permit but welcome new labor-saving devices. For 
 it is, of course, not the new machine itself, but only the fact that its 
 introduction in the past has so often led to a dismissal of most of the 
 workmen, that has led to the hostility of the worker. This advance in 
 technique will, on the whole, slightly raise the skill required by the lowest 
 grade of unskilled labor; machine tending requires the exercise of slightly 
 more intelligence than ditch-digging or wheeling barrows. But on the 
 other hand all the higher branches of skilled craftmanship will give way 
 to the common level of the machine tender; and though the minimum be 
 
216 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 raised, the reduction of the whole body of workers to one common rather 
 low level will result. The knowledge of processes and of the designing 
 and construction of the machines will come more and more to be con- 
 centrated in the hands of the highly trained technological experts form- 
 ing the major portion of the management group. An example of the 
 resulting economic condition was given recently in the trade of glass 
 blowing, which had from its inception remained in the hands of a highly 
 skilled, highly conservative, and typically business union of hand work- 
 ers. About 1906 a machine for blowing bottles was widely introduced, 
 completely disrupting the bottle-blowers' schedules and plans and reduc- 
 ing them at one stroke to an only moderately skilled union. In many 
 industries the exigencies of the war operated in a similar way, and only 
 the strength of the unions and their ability to control the situation was 
 able to save their ruin. But even where such unions are able to secure 
 very favorable terms, every such occurrence brings them more and more 
 immediately into contact with the rest of the labor movement as it 
 destroys their special monopoly of skill. To put it concretely, although 
 the locomotive firemen, to save themselves the back-breaking labor, are 
 demanding the introduction of mechanical stokers on all the larger 
 engines, it is indisputable that it is much easier to secure a strike-breaker 
 who can stoke a fire with such a device than one who knows just how to 
 place a shovel-full of coal where it will count most. And this sudden 
 identification of interests with the less skilled labor everywhere, even 
 where it does not give rise to strong industrial unions, leads inevitably to 
 cooperation and joint action with the unskilled. 
 
 In addition to this purely technological reason for the growth of 
 class solidarity, there is another and economic one. With the increasing 
 organization of labor the employer too has been driven to organize; for, 
 as we have already seen, any general collective bargaining presupposes an 
 employers' association with which to conclude agreements. On the other 
 hand there are many economic forces tending toward centralization of 
 industrial enterprises. In addition to the desire to avoid through price 
 agreement the evils of competition, and of the natural tendency toward 
 the formation of single great monopolies or trusts in the basic industries, 
 there is the necessity of great modern corporations seeking further credit 
 and capital in the large banking houses, in Wall Street. Mr. Veblen's 
 keen analysis has revealed how the typical figure of the present age is no 
 longer the captain of nidus try who built up a great business, but the 
 investment banker who sits in his counting-house, loans money to the 
 industrial enterprise which he considers profitable, and is able through his 
 
Growth of Class Solidarity and the New Unionism 217 
 
 control of credit to hold the entire country in the hollow of his hand. 
 Even where there is no agreement between competing enterprises, the fact 
 that their stock is pretty much owned by the same individuals is a quite 
 effective guarantee against excessive differences of policy and attitude. 
 Thus, while the traditional Marxian prediction of the concentration of all 
 wealth into the hands of a very small group seems as far from verification 
 as ever, if there has not actually been a great increase in the number of 
 investors, it nevertheless remains true that the control of wealth is daily 
 passing into fewer and fewer hands; and the great army of widows and 
 orphans is gradually awakening to the fact that high finance is conducted 
 for the profit of those who control, and not for that of the small investor. 
 
 Hence organized labor is facing a greater and stronger organization 
 of capital which also is forgetting its competitive differences in the 
 common class-consciousness. And recent events have revealed how 
 strong that class-consciousness is and how determined a stand it is going 
 to make. In the face of such opposition the laborer is driven to forget the 
 petty differences that divide him from his less skilled brother, and to join 
 hand and soul with him in the great struggle against the capitalist. When 
 the power of the Steel Trust lifts its head, and Western Pennsylvania 
 takes on the air of a country at war, conservative and radical, skilled 
 craftsman and common laborer, A. F. L. executives and Amalgamated 
 Clothing Workers, all forget their differences and band together against 
 the common foe. And, from present indications, the necessity for such 
 concerted action is going to become more and more frequent. 
 
 Partly as a result of the above two tendencies, partly, perhaps, as 
 their cause, there is the increasing prevalence amongst the workers of the 
 Marxian theory of the class struggle and of the corresponding fact of 
 general class-consciousness. The old preambles written back in the 
 eighties and nineties under the influence of Stewardism are becoming 
 meaningless to the worker brought up in a modern environment; he needs 
 stronger meat than the conciliatory phrases of that era. As a sign of the 
 times, for instance, the Firemen's Brotherhood in 1918 expunged that 
 section of their preamble that declared that the interests of employer and 
 employee were identical, and substituted for it the aim to make them so 
 a pious hope in place of a now obvious misstatement. Marxianism as a 
 whole, as we have seen, the American worker will not accept; but the 
 experience of the Western Federation of Miners and the I. W. W. and the 
 great increase in socialist strength hi the Federation proves that he will 
 eagerly embrace the theory of the class struggle and class consciousness. 
 He is especially apt to do so if he finds the employers, whom in all his 
 
2i 8 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 opposition he has hitherto rather secretly admired and envied, on their 
 side through concerted action and political instruments endeavoring to 
 bring that class struggle very close home to him in all its bitter reality. 
 
 The first outcome of these tendencies has been the growth of industrial 
 unionism. Business unionism depends upon the development of bargain- 
 ing power. To develop this to keep pace with the increased strength of 
 the employers and to get rid of the competition of the unskilled industrial- 
 ization has been imperative. But industrialization, meaning the forma- 
 tion of unions embracing the unskilled as well as the skilled, the complete 
 organization of industry, can mean very different things. It can mean, 
 as it means to some of the I. W. W., one big union of all the workers, in 
 which unskilled predominate; in this sense the Knights of Labor was an 
 industrial union. Or it can mean the organization of all the workers in a 
 particular material such, as metal or wood, as it means to the German 
 industrialist and as is represented in this country by the Metal Trades 
 Department of the A. F. L. Or it can mean, as it meant to De Leon and 
 the Socialist Laborites, the organization of workers according to the tool 
 they use. And finally, it can mean the organization of workers according 
 to the product and the productive unit or plant. 
 
 It is indeed a question just what constitutes an "industry." Some 
 industries, like mining, clothing making, or meat-packing, stand out 
 clearly and unmistakably. It is in these that industrial unionism has 
 already proceeded furthest. Others, like the work of the machinists, 
 are very hard indeed to classify; do the machinists belong with the 
 metal trades if, say, they are employed about mines, and do the metal 
 trades, strictly speaking, constitute an industry at all? These questions 
 seem to preclude the possibility of an absolutely simple and clear-cut 
 division of the basic industries; and, as a matter of fact, all theoretically 
 complete schemes of the industrial state do include either an extensive 
 system of transfers from one union to another, or a subsidiary persist- 
 ence of trade lines within industrial ones, and some such solution would 
 seem necessary as industrialization advances. 
 
 But the significant point is that the form of industrialism that the 
 development of business unionism forces is necessarily the last type 
 mentioned. Business unions exist to fight or bargain with employers; 
 hence they are inevitably developing in conformity with the employers' 
 organization, which is that of productive units or plants. From the 
 earliest days the workers have been led naturally to parallel the masters, 
 growing in scope as the latter grew; and hence today their very function 
 excludes the possibility of their organizing along the lines of the one big 
 
Growth of Class Solidarity and the New Unionism 219 
 
 union, the material, or the tool. For the tool today has become the 
 entire factory in all its ramifications. 
 
 The importance of the fact that it is this particular type of indus- 
 trialism and not one of the others that is developing, is profound. For 
 while conceivably one of the other forms of organization might be suc- 
 cessful as a labor trust for the selling of labor, none other could possibly 
 serve as a basis for production, and hence none other could possibly 
 release the second or social strain of labor in productive and\socially 
 advantageous channels. Only the union organized around thie plant 
 as the basis could possibly enter into and share or assume the control of 
 industry. \^ 
 
 Some writers, notably Selig Perlman in Commons' History of Lbfyour 
 in the United States, have divided industrial unionism into that of the 
 skilled and that of the moderately skilled. These are not really two 
 types, but merely the result of the impulse to industrialism meeting 
 varied technological situations. The A. F. L. has always stood for 
 what it called craft autonomy, and in 1901 at Scranton took a firm 
 stand against industrial unionism. But nevertheless it was forced in 
 1908 to recognize the Structural Building Trades Alliance, which had 
 been since 1897 endeavoring to form a national organization of the 
 highly effective local Building Trades Councils which dealt as a body 
 with contractors and builders, and formed it into the Building Trades 
 Department of the A. F. L., followed in the same year by the Railway 
 Employes' Department, in the next by the Metal Trades Department, 
 and in 1912 by the Mining Department. The latter is a true industrial 
 organization, brought about by Moyer, president of the Western Federa- 
 tion of Miners, which had joined the A. F. L. the preceding year. The 
 building trades are also organized industrially, with autonomy over the 
 building trades sections and authority to charter new ones. But the 
 railway unions went furthest when in 1912 they abandoned their original 
 purely advisory plan with voluntary membership for a federation of 
 federations with a convention, salaried officers, and full authority. 1 
 These ten A. F. L. railway unions, it may be added have from their 
 union acted in close harmony and concert with the four brotherhoods, 
 so that while each preserves its autonomy, for all practical purposes the 
 railroads are organized on an industrial basis and in important crises 
 act as a unit. 
 
 The principal function of the departments so far has been to decide 
 jurisdictional disputes, that bugbear of craft unionism; and in the settle- 
 t 1 A. F. L., Encyclopedia, 431, 432. 
 
vi 
 : its 
 
 220 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 ment the opposition to "dual unions" and the almost invariable prefer- 
 ence given to unions of the strong "basic trades" in the industries has 
 gravely compromised the official A. F. L. doctrine of craft autonomy. 
 Thus the woodworkers were in 1912 absorbed by the strong carpenters 
 and joiners, and the steamfitters by the strong plumbers; and the 
 A. F. L. convention practically gave its official sanction to the new in- 
 dustrial principle of basic trades. 
 
 In addition to these industrial combinations of the strong craft unions 
 the principle of joint action and blanket agreement, particularly spon- 
 sored by the Metal Trades Council, in which a number of craft unions 
 in an industry join in their demands and threaten a common strike, has 
 received considerable vogue, not only in the steel strike, but also in the 
 Northwest, in Portland and in the Seattle strike of 1919. The A. F. L., 
 despite the fact that its strongest union, the miners, has from its be- 
 ginning in 1890 been completely industrialized, has for so long opposed 
 industrialism with craft unionism that it is necessarily loath to change 
 its professions, but no one who is not blind can fail to see the gains for 
 the industrial idea that are daily .being made in the heart of the Federa- 
 tion. 
 
 All of these considerations taken together have made for the rise of 
 a new and more radical form of union an industrial union which has 
 come to feel that the tactics of the traditional business union have se- 
 cured much for the worker, and cannot be dropped or discarded as the 
 intransigeant revolutionary would desire, but that at the same time 
 they are in themselves by no means sufficient to secure for the worker 
 that security from unemployment and that practical equality of position 
 in society which has from the beginning been his great aim. This new 
 unionism differs from the revolutionary unionism of the I. W. W. and 
 the radicalism of the socialists in its perfect willingness, nay, in its con- 
 viction, to serve the workers' ultimate interests through developing to 
 its fullest extent the machinery of collective agreements with the em- 
 ployers' associations. But it also differs from business unionism in 
 working with a clear prescience of whither its business tactics are taking 
 it, and with the realization that in the interests of society as a whole, 
 and of the workers as the major part thereof, the policy of group in- 
 dividualism is inadequate and must be superseded. It thus admirably 
 combines, in a manner as suited to the present situation and state of 
 the industrial arts as was that of Stewardism in the seventies and eighties, 
 the two strains of group advantage and social idealism, making the 
 second spring naturally and continuously out of the first, and uniting 
 
Growth of Class Solidarity and the New U monism 221 
 
 in one policy the advantage of the individual group and that of society 
 as a whole. And, because this new unionism seems so well adapted to 
 the exigencies of the present situation, and because it seems a natural 
 growth out of and not an impatient revolt against and away from the 
 main body of the orthodox business labor movement of America, and, 
 finally, because it seems fully in accord with the present tendencies 
 in labor in the other parts of the industrial world, it seems wholly prob- 
 able that, allowance being made for different situations in different 
 industries, the new unionism represents the prevailing tendencies in 
 American labor today, and will in the future assume increasing impor- 
 tance. 
 
 The general causes of the rise of the new unionism, the progress of 
 the industrial arts and the increase in the strength of the capitalists, 
 have been supplemented by other more immediate factors. Perhaps the 
 most striking, in its way, is the gradual realization that the era of rapidly 
 rising prices since 1914 has forced upon the workers that no matter how 
 successful they may be in raising wages, when the entire labor move- 
 ment has successively struck and the capitalists have added their private 
 profit, their real wages and their standard of living have not materially 
 altered. Consequently they have been led to search for some other 
 alternative. It is, of course, not true, as the press delights to point out, 
 that the worker gains nothing from strikes for higher wages; he does 
 gain materially for the time being, and that is all he has hitherto been 
 in a position to take into account. But it is true that as the community 
 becomes more and more completely industrialized the gain of the single 
 group becomes less and less, until, theoretically, if all consumers were 
 wage-earners, the added cost to the consumer would precisely balance 
 the added wage. And long before that state is reached, the employer 
 by multiplying his increased labor cost five or ten fold, (which seems to 
 be the popular figure these days) can bring about the same result, and 
 thus hasten the struggle. Thus as a direct result of the war a large body 
 of workers has become convinced of the futility of wage raising as in- 
 dustry approaches complete organization. But, unlike the professors 
 of economics whose theories they have thus finally come to accept, they 
 do not advance to the further orthodox inference that since raising ^^ 
 wages availeth naught there is nothing for the worker to do save to work 
 harder and persist in thrift until he too can become a capitalist. They 
 propose instead to work for a gradual abolition of the wage-system it- 
 self, with a view to eventually controlling the industries. It is signif- 
 icant that bodies seemingly as far apart as the radical garment workers 
 
222 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 and the conservative railroad brotherhoods have both come to the same 
 conclusion, that the raising of wages is a mere temporary expedient. 
 
 Added to this result of the war experience has been the disgust that 
 the more reflecting workmen have felt at the failure of the present 
 management of industry to meet the test of war and of the universal 
 lessening of output in other lands and consequent greatly increased 
 demand here. The complete collapse of the railroads under war pres- 
 sure, and the incontestable proof that government control, whatever 
 its eventual merits, not only did not end in complete disaster but was 
 even able in many ways to improve the efficiency of the public service, 
 coming, as it did, very shortly after the scandalous revelations of the 
 methods of high finance on the New Haven, the Rock Island, and many 
 other systems revelations which "the public" is prone to forget but 
 which the workers remember this situation produced in the railway 
 workers, whose pride in their work and whose craftsman-like habits are 
 proverbial, a natural disgust with capitalistic control, and an assertion, 
 in the popular Plumb Plan, that if they were only allowed to they could 
 show the country how its railroad systems really ought to be run. And 
 the coal miners, in the face of the tragic maladjustment of production 
 to demand and to distributive facilities, in the last few years, have as- 
 sailed in strenuous terms the inefficiency and waste of the present man- 
 agement. A story is told of an English shipyard during the war where 
 the workers, angered at the profiteering and delaying methods of the 
 owners, took over the contracts themselves and delivered them long 
 before the specified time. This spirit is of course by no means as yet 
 general; indeed, the counter-charge of the employer, that the prime cause 
 of his inefficiency is the failure of his workmen to do all that they might, 
 is probably not utterly devoid of truth. It only makes plain, however, 
 how the worker is becoming unwilling to continue working for his em- 
 ployer's profits. 
 
 There is, moreover, with the growth in strength consequent upon the 
 war, an increasing desire for some more efficient means than the old 
 collective bargaining for the translation of existing power into industrial 
 control. Collective bargaining is at best diplomacy and armed peace; 
 it is a form of treaty making between distrustful and suspicious armed 
 groups, usually occurring at the conclusion of or on threats of a strike, 
 and very rigid and irresponsive to changed conditions and needs. What 
 more natural than to replace the collective agreement, arranged between 
 envoys at relatively long intervals, with a standing body or board with 
 legislative rather than mere treaty functions, a board on which both 
 
Growth of Class Solidarity and the New Unionism 223 
 
 employers and employees would be represented and which would pro- 
 vide for continuous adjustment rather than intermittent conflicts 
 which, in a word, would aim to prevent strikes by making them unnec- 
 essary rather than settling them after they had arisen? This is the 
 change which has been, more or less fully, introduced into the clothing 
 trades, which has been proposed by the railways, and which is effected 
 in various forms, more or less sincerely and well, of shop organization. 
 One other tendency, not directly due to the war, has operated to bring 
 matters to a head. This is the growth in interest among the more in- 
 telligent workers and their leaders in problems of production and in- 
 dustrial control. As a result of our increased insight into the springs of 
 human actions, and the abandonment, under the influence of pioneers in 
 social psychology, notably of Mr. Graham Wallas, of the older over- 
 intellectualized conception of human conduct for a realization of the in- 
 finite complexity of the human mind and the great variety of mysterious 
 traits or ways of acting we call instincts, the intellectual leaders of the 
 workers on the one hand, and the trained employment managers of the 
 companies on the other have come to realize the necessity of giving the 
 workers some opportunity to release their inheritance of productive 
 force and energy. The increasing mechanization of industry and the 
 reduction of the skilled laborer to the mere machine-tender demand a 
 substitute for handicraft work as a channel through which creative 
 energy can function, and both leaders and employers are more and 
 more seeking this channel in control of the processes of production. 
 Hence the growth of shop-committees to share in the administration 
 of plants and to supervise conditions. The employer for the most part, 
 it is true, is fostering the various forms of so-called "industrial de- 
 mocracy," among which a complicated system modeled upon the federal 
 government is probably most popular, both because of the increased 
 interest and production this effects and because he hopes thereby to 
 keep out the dangerous national union. But the more far-seeing worker, 
 even when he realizes the impossibility of such shop organization ever 
 supplanting the large trade union, sees also that the worker is through 
 such participation in the control of industry, meagre as it may be, de- 
 veloping habits of thought and interest in methods and problems of 
 producion that will be invaluable for him if, as the worker hopes, he 
 eventually acquires a much more important control over industry. He 
 knows the employer is deceiving himself if he believes he can thus bribe 
 the worker to forget his own interest; but he also knows the employer 
 is unwittingly giving the worker training the union most probably could 
 
224 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 not now give him, and that the business activities of the unions need 
 supplementing along just such lines as the shop-committees indicate. 
 
 Together with this interest in the control of production there goes 
 an interest hi industrial education and training, which finds expression 
 in the United Labor Education Committee of the New York needle 
 trades, the Workers' University of the Ladies' Garment Workers, 
 such enterprises as the Boston Trades Union College, established by 
 the Boston Central Federation, and the Seattle Labor College of the 
 Seattle Federation; and the Workers' Education Bureau, designed to 
 coordinate all these agencies. Everywhere efforts are being made by 
 leaders to provide training in industrial technique to labor leaders, and 
 the workers themselves, where long hours do not make this impossible, 
 and expert advisers and industrial engineers are being consulted by 
 executive committees. The demand of the capitalists that at all costs 
 production must be kept up and the public efficiently served are being 
 met with specific proposals for increased efficiency and production 
 that hardly meet with the capitalists' approval, but do indicate that 
 the whole country has been driven by the war to think in terms of so- 
 cial production, social consumption, and social needs. 
 
 These especial factors have united with the general tendencies of 
 the development of business unionism, as outlined in Chapter 10, to 
 produce a new type of union with a new type of leader a type ap- 
 proached both by hitherto conservative business unions, like the rail- 
 road brotherhoods, that have come to transcend their own aims and 
 functions, and by radical and socialistic organizations like the cloth- 
 ing unions: the industrial union participating in the control of industry, 
 the democratic, responsible union for production. Let us examine a 
 few of the specific indications that such a unionism is really devel- 
 oping hi the American labor movement. 
 
 First of all there are the railway unions. Since the seventies there 
 have been in existence four powerful organizations of the skilled work- 
 ers on the railroads, the Engineers, the Firemen, the Conductors, and 
 the Trainmen. They have been the aristocrats of the labor world. They 
 have been too conservative to join the A. F. L. For a long time they 
 refused to adopt a "protective" policy; they would not even threaten 
 to strike. They have built up the most elaborate system of benefits of 
 any American unions, a system supposed to insure obedience and do- 
 cility. They have elected the most conservative leaders and kept them 
 in power for long periods. They have not troubled themselves about 
 the other workers on the railroads, the switchmen and the section- 
 
Growth of Class Solidarity and the New Unionism 225 
 
 gangs and all the rest. They refused to aid them in their strike on the 
 Gould system in 1886. They have not had a real strike themselves 
 since the Burlington strike of 1888. They have preserved the typi- 
 cal attitude of the small business man, as well they might, for after 
 the July, 1920, award of wages their pay runs from 2500 to 3500 dollars 
 a year. 
 
 Yet in the summer of 1919, when various plans of railway recon- 
 struction were being proposed and talked of, by an overwhelming ma- 
 jority in a referendum over 90% they voted to advocate and if 
 necessary enforce a proposition for government ownership of the roads 
 and for operation by a joint board of employees, management, and 
 government officials a plan rightly considered as radical as any prop- 
 osition yet put forward by any of the extremest unions, and differing 
 not in essentials from the theories of the I. W. W. and the Communist 
 Parties. 
 
 How is this change to be explained? The answer is simple. About 
 ten years ago the less skilled workers were, through the foundation of 
 the Railway Employe's Department of the A. F. L., seriously taken 
 in hand and brought together. The Brotherhoods had been making 
 agreements and acting in closer and closer harmony. During the sum- 
 mer of 1916 they cooperated in agitating for and securing the eight- 
 hour day from Congress. And then came the war, government control, 
 and the mushroom growth of the organizations of unskilled like the 
 shopmen and the maintenance of way men. For the first time all the 
 railway workers were brought together in dealing with government 
 labor agencies. All of these things led to a close harmony of purpose 
 and attitude between the fourteen railway unions, which has resulted 
 hi a virtual industrial federation an industrialism that by virtue of 
 the persistence of highly skilled crafts on the railways does not resem- 
 ble the homogeneous industrialism of the miners, for instance, but is 
 none the less a genuine industrialism. But government control meant 
 more than merely bringing the workers together for self -protection; 
 for perhaps the first time hi their experience the aim of their labor was 
 to produce a service to the public and to the aims of the nation. For 
 the first time all pretense at competition was given up and efficiency 
 and economy of service made the prime consideration. And, for the 
 first time, and in return for loyal and productive work, the employees' 
 contention was recognized that to produce well they must be furnished 
 with the means and the conditions of good production. President 
 Garretson of the Conductors told the Senate Interstate Commerce 
 
226 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 Committee that the majority of the men had previously been advo- 
 cates of private control, but that the experience of government control 
 had led them to change their minds. 1 
 
 But the railway workers had not been blinded by generous wage 
 awards to an uncritical acceptance of Government ownership on the 
 old lines. Wages, hi fact, were not advanced to meet the increased 
 cost of living. From May 25, 1918, to October i, wages for the lower 
 paid workers were raised fairly adequately; aside from an advance to 
 members of the brotherhoods in April, 1919, nothing more was done, 
 in spite of the rapidly mounting cost of living. In 1920 wages had ad- 
 vanced 73% over the pre-war level, and the cost of living was rising 
 from 100 to 114%. And none but the brotherhoods had received any 
 advance since the armistice. No, the Railroad Administration was 
 not perfect. In the summer of 1919 the workers were very far indeed 
 from being satisfied with it, as the general complaints and the shop- 
 men's strike indicated. Only President Wilson's plea that Mr. Pal- 
 mer's anti-profiteering campaign be allowed to bring down the cost of 
 living saved the country from a railroad strike then. 
 
 Instead of urging the continuance of the Railroad Administration, so 
 soon as the armistice was signed the leaders of the fourteen unions got 
 together with their joint counsel, Mr. Glenn Plumb, to work out a prac- 
 ticable business plan for managing the railroads with all the benefits for 
 public service of centralized control, yet without the dangers of bureau- 
 cratic inefficiency so real to every American. These officials knew 
 nothing of any radical philosophies or plans for the control of industry 
 by the workers. They had never heard of the British national guild 
 movement. Officers of railway unions are too busy handling the busi- 
 ness affairs of the men they represent to waste any time on radical 
 social theorizing. But they realized that the old system of railway 
 management in this country had broken down, and they were going to 
 devise a new one to propose to Congress. They carefully considered 
 the condition and the needs of the railroad business, and they gradually 
 and thoughtfully worked out a new plan. This plan was presented to 
 the Senate Interstate Commerce Committee in February, 1919, long 
 before any other constructive proposal, as a business proposition that 
 would protect and further the interests of all concerned, stockholders, 
 employees, and general public. 
 
 This plan, though it received little publicity, was considerably talked 
 about by the employees themselves. At the same time discontent at 
 1 American Labor Year Book, 1920, 65. 
 
 
Growth of Class Solidarity and the New Unionism 227 
 
 the failure of the Railroad Administration to effect another wage ad- 
 justment was rapidly growing. Men were becoming restive and were 
 liable to strike without authorization from headquarters. The officers 
 resolved to take a referendum on whether they would willingly strike 
 for the Plumb Plan, in the hopes that they might thus secure its pas- 
 sage by Congress, or at least use it to effect some wage increase for 
 at this time the men who devised the plan, and Mr. Plumb himself, were 
 very dubious about the reception it would get from their own men. 
 And they secured in the referendum an astounding surprise. The rail- 
 way workers had been thinking over the Plumb Plan, and they had 
 come to favor it to favor it enough to strike for it over 90 per cent 
 of them. 
 
 The public and the capitalists were horrified. "Bolshevism" was 
 the only term fit to apply to such a revolutionary proposal. Lenin or 
 the I. W. W. must be back of it. So ran the press editorials, and the 
 leaders, who probably knew no more than the editors of Bolshevism's 
 economic program, were frightened. They feared that public opposition 
 would overwhelm the workers, and so they immediately shifted their 
 attack to other ground. Mr. Gompers, fearing the wave of economic 
 reaction sweeping across the country, drew back in alarm. And Con- 
 gress passed the Esch-Cummins Bill, after a hard struggle on the part 
 of labor to prevent an anti-strike clause. 
 
 The essence of the Plumb Plan is production for service efficient 
 service of a public utility for the public welfare by public servants who 
 are given responsibility for that service and are rewarded as that service 
 is successful. The country rejected the Plumb Plan in favor of the old 
 methods of collective bargaining and sound business principles. The 
 railway workers are willing to accept the decision, to take all they can 
 get in wages from the wage board of the Esch-Cummins Act and then, 
 when the government has withdrawn its support of the stockholders, to 
 strike for more, and get it. That they are none too well satisfied, how- 
 ever, with the officials who failed to enforce their demand for the Plumb 
 Plan was revealed by the outlaw strike against them in the spring of 
 1920. They have not forgotten the Plumb Plan. Nor has the labor 
 movement as a whole, when even the hand-picked delegates of the A. F. L. 
 convention, against a vigorous opposition by Mr. Gompers and the 
 whole Executive Committee with the exception of Mr. Frank Morrison, 
 can vote by a large majority to support and demand it. 
 
 Once again the efforts of the workers to allow their second motive 
 the strain of social idealism to come to the front have been defeated 
 
228 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 by the hostility of the public. It evidently still prefers a labor trust 
 that will raise wage as high as it possibly can and it certainly has the 
 power to raise them pretty high. But the railroad workers have still the 
 Plumb Plan, and when they offer it again they may strike for it and se- 
 cure it. 
 
 Or take the coal miners. They have long been since 1890 struc- 
 turally the model of an industrial union, a model to which even the I. W. 
 W. can only point with admiration. But in policy they have been the 
 very type of business union, highly conservative and proceeding by collec- 
 tive agreements and the rigid keeping of contracts. The anthracite work- 
 ers have been operating since the strike and settlement of 1902-3 with a 
 system of permanent boards of conciliation; the bituminous workers, fac- 
 ing a highly decentralized group of competing employers, have made in- 
 dividual and regional agreements interspersed with frequent strikes. 
 Soft-coal mining is highly competitive, production depends largely on 
 fluctuations in the market conditions, and the price must be high enough 
 to enable the least efficient mines to make a profit, which of course re- 
 sults in exorbitant returns from the better equipped mines. Under 
 the Fuel Administration some attempt was made to secure organiza- 
 tion and continuity of production; production for the relatively steady 
 public demand was made the aim, not production for the highly unstable 
 market. The miners of course benefited by anything that increased the 
 most highly prized desideratum of their life, continuity of employment. 
 As a result of this war-time experience with the possibility of greater 
 efficiency, and of another motive than private profit, and, to some ex- 
 tent, as an imitation of the similar British movement, the rank and 
 file of the miners became disgusted with the old methods of business 
 unionism and of business inefficiency, and voted overwhehningly, in 
 their convention in March, 1919, and again in their special conven- 
 tion in the fall, for the nationalization of the mines under democratic 
 control, and for a thirty-hour week, five days of six hours each, to pre- 
 vent the annual employment of only 233 days out of the year. The in- 
 efficient and fluctuating management of the bituminous mines is the 
 special grievance of the workers, and they have employed experts to in- 
 vestigate the whole field and reveal just where the system of private com- 
 petition has proved itself wasteful and harmful to worker and to public. 
 
 The miners, then, seem at last to be waking to the possibilities of the 
 use of their extensive power as an industrial union to secure an actual 
 control over the industry. It is highly significant that in the nego- 
 tiations in the spring of 1920 between the United Mine Workers and 
 
Growth of Class Solidarity and the New Unionism 229 
 
 the anthracite operators for a renewal of the agreement expiring in 1920 
 the claim of the operators that the breakdown of the coal supply is due 
 primarily to the inefficency and slacking on the job of the miners was 
 met with detailed and imforming analyses of the entire industry which 
 completely turned the tables upon the operators and established their in- 
 efficiency and their pursuit of profits as the real cause of the trouble. It is 
 merely another instance of the importance that production and the ser- 
 vice of the needs of the community has been assuming in the workers' 
 minds. 
 
 But the most advanced, the most highly developed, and the most 
 interesting example of the new unionism is to be found among the cloth- 
 ing workers. Ten years ago the making of garments was still carried 
 on under the most primitive sweatshop conditions in the slums of our 
 great cities; the garment trade was without rival as an example of the 
 horrors to which modern civilization in its insistence on cheap commodi- 
 ties can descend. Today sweatshops have been abolished, the workers 
 have the 44-hour week, a living wage, a permanent board of conciliation, 
 and are advancing towards the abolition of unemployment and the 
 eventual control of the industry. This result has been obtained wholly 
 by the efforts of the workers themselves in their spontaneous and sus- 
 tained revolt against conditions as they were; they could have come 
 about through only the loyal cooperation of all, but the outstanding 
 figure and spokesman of the movement has been the brilliant leader 
 of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, Sidney Hillman. 
 
 It is not the place here to relate in detail the series of great strikes 
 and lockouts that were the outward mark of this transformation. It 
 is rather to analyze the changes in ideas and philosophies, and to at- 
 tempt to appraise the tendencies that have been revealed. For no- 
 where has the labor movement more clearly grasped the underlying 
 realities of the present industrial situation and its probable future 
 developments than in these garment trades. 
 
 Although the International Ladies' Garment Workers does not differ 
 greatly in either spirit, attitude, or achievement from the Amalgamated 
 (the union of workers in the men's clothing trade), the latter organ- 
 ization has indisputably led the way since 1914, and it occupies today 
 the center of attraction in the eyes of all interested in the labor move- 
 ment, largely because it possesses Sidney Hillman, although where it 
 leads the Ladies' Garment Workers are not far behind. 
 
 The Amalgamated was formed by those workers whose delegates 
 were shut out of the 1914 convention of the United Garment 
 
230 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 Workers, an A. F. L. union of the approved business type with a member- 
 ship among the overall workers and not much elsewhere. The Amal- 
 gamated elected as President Sidney Hillman, cutter in the Hart 
 Schaffner and Marx shops in Chicago and representative of the workers 
 in the shop agreement that firm made after the great strike of 1910. 
 That epoch-making agreement had caused the workers, and above all 
 Hillman, to organize themselves and to think and act in terms of their 
 shop, the productive unit, not of the union formed to sell labor. It com- 
 prised fellow-workers democratically elected by all the employees in the 
 shop, not from several skilled crafts to the exclusion of all the rest. 
 Hillman organized the Amalgamated on analogous lines. It became a 
 true industrial union and took in all who worked in or about the shop, 
 clerks and draymen as well as cutters and pressers. In contradistinc- 
 tion to the old United Garment Workers, it requires a referendum for 
 every important decision. The Executive Board is elected by referendum ; 
 no strike can be either called or settled without one. And it stands 
 definitely for peace in the industry, not armed peace marked by fre- 
 quent battles and truces, but long time agreements for the establishment 
 of permanent legislative bodies, Joint Boards and Boards of Arbitration 
 with impartial chairmen in each field, and it is working for a national 
 agreement of the same nature. This plan has met with unqualified 
 success wherever it has been put into effect; the only trouble has come 
 from individual employers who refused to enter into the general agree- 
 ment, but these have nearly all come into line, until now there are but 
 four large plants in the country that have no agreement with the Amal- 
 gamated. It can truly boast that it has brought law and order and 
 peace into an industry where during the last generation there has been 
 very little of anything save strife. And the peace it has brought 
 is not the peace of stagnation a long persistence of unchanged con- 
 ditions; it is the peace of active growth and advance, going forward 
 to a new gain for workers so soon as an old one has been consummated. 
 The impartial chairman of the Chicago district, Professor James H. 
 Tufts, has laid down the epoch-making principle that the workers 
 are entitled not merely to the maintenance of their standard of living 
 but to an actual raising of that standard. It is the peace which elimin- 
 ates friction in the process of change, not the peace which prevents that 
 change. The New Unionism thus distinguishes itself most sharply 
 from the revolutionary unionism of the I. W. W. or the Western Federa- 
 tion of Miners, which refuses to make any agreements at all. It is the 
 substitution for guerilla warfare of progressive legislation. 
 
Growth of Class Solidarity and the New Unionism 231 
 
 To the old demand for equality of condition it has replied with a 
 practical leveling up of wages an equalization hastened by the neces- 
 sity in a rising market of raising the poorest paid most. Though the 
 craft divisions are preserved for administrative purposes, there is no 
 longer the wide gulf between the highly skilled and the less skilled. 
 The old system of piece-work, resulting in the terrible sweating condi- 
 tions and at times the sixteen-hour day of the old rule, has been 
 abolished in favor of the weekly wage on the basis of the 44-hour week 
 secured as the result of a lockout by the employers on armistice day. 
 And to the demand for security and continuity of employment a 
 demand which because of the highly seasonal nature of the clothing 
 trades is especially pressing it has voted, in its 1920 convention at 
 Boston, for the establishment by the employers of an unemployment 
 fund a fund to be used to support workers during slack seasons, and 
 indirectly a tremendous incentive to the employer to arrange for con- 
 tinuous production in his industry. For the Amalgamated has at 
 length openly expressed the underlying notion of the worker every- 
 where, that unemployment incident to fluctuations in the market for 
 profit has nothing to do with the worker, and that he must be supported 
 by the employer in dull periods just as the machine and the factory are 
 supported, no matter what the demand for goods. The worker who en- 
 gages in a particular industry must be supported by that industry, 
 either by continuous employment if the employers care enough to ar- 
 range it, or by an unemployment fund contributed by them if they don't. 
 Every other union, if it were strong enough, would make just such a 
 demand, and every other union as it grows stronger will make it. 
 
 At the same convention the Amalgamated voted to establish cooper- 
 ative institutions also under way by the Ladies' Garment Workers 
 for the distribution of clothing, and a cooperative bank; it is significant 
 that this step has been paralleled by the railway brotherhoods. 
 
 But the most significant factor of all in the new unionism is its growing 
 interest in production. Hitherto radical movements have like the 
 I. W. W. advocated sabotage and the "conscientious withdrawal of 
 efficiency" as a weapon against the capitalist. The Amalgamated, 
 largely under the influence of Hillman and his fellow officers, has steadily 
 kept in mind its eventual aim of taking over complete control of the 
 industry and complete responsibility for production, and is constantly 
 working toward that goal. The organization of the union, built up as 
 it is about the shop and not the craft, concerned as it is with shop con- 
 ditions and shop practices, cultivates a direct sense of responsibility in 
 
232 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 and consequently responsibility for the production of clothing. In the 
 Boston convention the question of the establishment of standards of 
 production measurements of work and requirements of output came 
 up for discussion, and though the old slavery of the task system of the 
 sweatshops still rankled in the minds of the workers, and there was a 
 good deal of opposition, a substantial majority for the grading of all 
 workers into certain classes and their demotion if their weekly output 
 fell below that of their class, with a consequent decrease in wages, was 
 secured by Hillman's appeals. This system of standard had already 
 been established in the large Sonneborn shops in Baltimore, instituted 
 by the workers and under the workers' control; and Hillman, Schloss- 
 berg, and the other officers were firmly convinced of its value a value 
 not to the worker alone, in preparing him and educating him for the 
 assumption of greater control, but above all a value to the industry, and 
 to the industry as a public service. Mr. Hillman said: "We officers 
 understand that the principle of our organization is to deal with the 
 employers so that the rights of our people will always be protected. 
 But it is not our purpose to protect them against work. Employers 
 demand safeguards against decreased production when we demand 
 increased wages. And we stand for production; we want shorter hours 
 to give you more leisure and more money to ensure better living con- 
 ditions, but I refuse to be a party to a vicious campaign of labor against 
 production. The greatest enemies of our organization are those who 
 speak against production. For such a policy would ultimately be our 
 downfall." l 
 
 And to prove the sincerity of this attitude, the officers have succeeded 
 in enforcing discipline upon their members, a disciplinary power 
 freely granted them by vote, and not a discipline assumed by them to 
 keep their authority and upon that bane of the clothing trades, the 
 minor labor official who is seeking to aggrandize himself at the expense 
 of the workers and the employer. Several such were recently tried and 
 removed in New York; three were expelled from the union. In Chicago, 
 where the collective agreement is much older, the "bad" leader is al- 
 most unknown. A New York shop recently suffered badly from sabotage : 
 the officers investigated and gave the employers permission to dismiss 
 the entire force. In other days this would have meant at once a general 
 strike. No leader would employ such tactics if he were not sure of the 
 support of his followers, and if he were not firmly impressed with the 
 importance of production. 
 
 1 New York Evening Post, May 13, 1920. 
 
Growth of Class Solidarity and the New Unionism 233 
 
 For Hillman and the Amalgamated, while they are radical even 
 revolutionary in their advocacy of the overthrow of the capitalistic 
 system and the control and administration of the means of production 
 by the workers the body is quite solidly socialistic, and voted its 
 sympathy with the Russian Republic do not consider that the Revo- 
 lution will usher in the millennium. In fact, they do not pay much at- 
 tention to the Revolution at all. They are too busy trying to develop 
 in their workers the habits of responsibility, the technical knowledge, 
 the genuine ability, to assume under collective agreements greater and 
 greater control of the industry as it is now. They would not welcome 
 any responsibility placed upon the worker before he is ready for it. But 
 their every move is always made, not only in the light of its immediate 
 beneficial effect, but also in the light of its influence in educating the 
 worker for the assumption of greater responsibilities. They do not 
 disclaim political action, they consider it necessary as the legal system 
 is outgrown; but they are not national socialists, they look forward, 
 with the miners and the railroad workers, and with far greater foresight 
 and realization of the burdens involved than either, to the eventual 
 national ownership of industry with democratic control through the 
 unions. 
 
 The Ladies' Garment Workers has not yet secured the permanent 
 establishment of collective agreement machinery, as has the Amalgam- 
 ated. Agreement with employers' organizations still comes at the end 
 of the strikes and runs till new strikes break out; and shop strikes are 
 frequent. The 44-hour week, and the substitution of weekly wage for 
 piece-work has been effected in imitation of the Amalgamated; and the 
 union is trying to build up an " American standard" psychology amongst 
 the week workers so that they will give a day's work for a day's wage. 
 But the union has not yet taken the momentous step of compelling its 
 members to live up to standards of output. 
 
 But hi all other particulars, in democratic organization, in indus- 
 trialization, in general philosophy and spirit, it closely approximates 
 the men's clothing union. And since 1910 it has had a permanent or- 
 ganization with the employers, the Joint Board of Sanitary Control, 
 that has eliminated the sweatshop and greatly improved working con- 
 ditions. And it is just as much interested in production, and the social 
 value of learning its technique. It has employed production engineers 
 to devise more efficient methods. Both it and the Amalgamated have 
 done remarkable work in the education of their members, in genuine 
 Americanization. 
 
234 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 These few outstanding examples of the New Unionism by no means 
 exhaust the number that might be cited. There are very few unions 
 indeed that have not in then* rank and file come to demand something 
 more than the traditional amis and methods of business unionism. What 
 the future will bring forth, no one can say; but it is difficult to under- 
 stand how these tendencies, born as they are out of technological con- 
 ditions dependent upon the progress of the industrial revolution, can 
 fail of eventual fruition. 
 
 To summarize, the aims of the New Unionism, then, are: i. To secure 
 the greatest possible bargaining power through industrial organization, 
 as a means to the attainment of further ends. 2. To work for the ends 
 of business unionism as temporary and immediate expedients, higher 
 wages and shorter hours. 3. To secure continuity of employment and 
 an assured position hi the industrial system. 4. To prepare themselves 
 to assume a larger and larger share hi the control of industry, and hence, 
 in accordance with the double strain, to tram themselves to think in 
 terms of production and industrial technique, and of social responsibil- 
 ity. 5. Thus to realize the old democratic ideal of an approximate 
 equality of status and remuneration together with differentiation of 
 function, of liberty of fulfilling their creative impulses through the 
 directing of their own activities, and of fraternity and cooperation in 
 the social community. 
 
 And, to serve this newer tendency, that has been in progress much 
 longer in Europe than in this country, there has arisen a new social 
 philosophy a philosophy of economic and industrial federalism which 
 under various names guild socialism, syndicalism, democratic control, 
 industrial democracy is coming more and more to express the aspira- 
 tions, not only of the more thoughtful workers, but also of the intelligent 
 and professional classes everywhere. Vlt is Utopian all social philosophies 
 are Utopian, none more so than the dreamings of the economic liberalism 
 and individualism which is still the orthodox philosophy of today. It 
 portrays an ideal which in its very definiteness is too selective and 
 limited to include the rich and complex fabric of human existence. 
 Like all such Utopian ventures, it must not be taken too literally; its 
 value lies rather in the iUumination and clarification it can furnish to 
 the particular and specific problems of economic organization and 
 industrial technique than hi the immediate practical possibility of ever 
 realizing any such social structure, or, indeed, in the desirability of 
 doing so \i we could. The main features of the ideal commonwealth 
 its great industrial units of workers banded together to produce com- 
 
 
Growth of Class Solidarity and the New Unionism 235 
 
 modities through a democratic organization, with a central governing 
 and adjusting body composed of representatives from all industries, 
 either alone or in connection with a political congress of consumers 
 these are familiar today to all well-informed people.j^The details re- 
 main just as vague as the main lines are distinct; and critics to the 
 contrary notwithstanding, that really doesn't matter. For the signifi- 
 cance of such a vision is rather its imperative force, its driving power 
 when burned into the hearts and minds of the workers throughout the 
 lands of the world. Whatever of approach is ever made to such an 
 ideal can not depend upon the theoretical working out of an abstract 
 plan into the very last detail. If it needed such a lesson at all, the world 
 learned it in the celerity with which the Russian revolutionists forgot 
 most of the Marx they ever knew and faced realities. It can only come 
 as the result of patient, laborious, and repeated experience with the 
 concrete problems of particular industries, and of harmonizations and 
 adjustments between conflicting interests worked out in the very toil 
 and moil of economic life hi a word, it can come only as the result of 
 some such educative process as the New Unionism seems to be developing. 
 
PART II 
 GROUP RESPONSIBILITY 
 
f GROUP RESPONSIBILITY THE PROBLEM 
 
 IN our examination of the present industrial situation we have seen 
 that society today is rapidly approaching a state wherein it is economically 
 organized into a number of great industrial groups, groups essentially 
 monopolistic and as yet at least socially quite irresponsible. In contrast 
 with this prevailing state of affairs it has become apparent that coincident 
 with the formation of these great groups, society has developed an 
 increasing need for efficient and continuous service from each of these 
 component groups. 
 
 The history of the growth of these groups has revealed a double tend- 
 ency: a tendency to think solely in terms of particular group interests, 
 to the exclusion of the interests of other groups or of wider interests; 
 this tendency has been called group individualism, and has been explained 
 as the old traditional philosophy of individualism and economic liberal- 
 ism revised and brought up to date through the substitution of the mod- 
 ern unit, the group, for the older and original unit, the single human 
 being: and a tendency to be concerned with social problems, social needs, 
 and social aims, and to merge group interests into those of the community 
 as a whole. Both tendencies have become accentuated of late, group 
 interest leading to huge industrial struggles in which those not directly 
 concerned suffer almost as much as the participants themselves, and social 
 idealism leading to class-conscious revolutionary efforts at the alteration 
 of the structure of the economic regulation of industry. And between 
 them both tendencies threaten the complete overthrow of the industrial 
 system as we know it today, the first through a catastrophic break-down 
 of the actual technique of production itself, and the bringing about of a 
 chaotic state somewhat resembling that which the war effected in 
 Central and especially East Central Europe; the second, through a 
 radical overturn of the legal and economic structure through which that 
 indus trial technique is controlled, which has its parallel in the situation 
 obtaining in Russia after the November revolution. 
 
 With the second of these tendencies, and with the dangers it presents, 
 we do not purpose to deal here; for in America this danger is remote 
 indeed. There is in this country no problem of an extreme social idealism 
 that might exemplify here the strong as well as the weak points of a 
 
240 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 fanaticism which, like that of Cromwell and that of Lenin, verges upon 
 the theocratic rule of the chosen vessels of the Lord. The problem of 
 social idealism in America is not the problem of reconciling its too-zealous 
 impulses with the patient and realistic appreciation of the psychological 
 needs of the prevailing situation. The American problem of social ideal- 
 ism is rather how to fill what at present appears to be a yawning, gaping 
 void. 
 
 But the first of the tendencies presents a quite different aspect. The 
 experience of the nation in the post-armistice days, the many strikes 
 and industrial conflicts that threatened the continuance of certain very 
 vital public utilities, and the certainty that when the era of business 
 prosperity subsides such strikes will become much more serious and 
 bitter|Xior it has always been in the face of a reduction hi wages during a 
 business depression that, as in 1877, in 1885-6, and in 1893-4, labor has 
 fought most fiercely) and the even more serious prospect of probable 
 future increases in wages to higher and higher levels, perhaps in collusion 
 with the employer, have made it imperative that some way be found out 
 of this general group individualism to a group social responsibility. Nu- 
 merous attempts at devising some such plan for securing the account- 
 ability of labor groups to society as a whole have been put forward, 
 ranging from the official A. F. L. solution of forthwith giving the workers 
 everything they demand to the official pronouncements of chambers of 
 commerce to declare all strikes illegal and enforce production at "reason- 
 able" wages by the strong arm of the law. Despite the generally inter- 
 ested nature of the loud heralding of " the rights of the public to uninter- 
 rupted and efficient service" by press and business man, the emphasis 
 thus placed on efficient production not only serves to illuminate a problem 
 of the utmost consequence, but it can also hardly fail to have its effect 
 upon the workers themselves in transforming them hi their eyes from 
 useless "hands" to necessary public servants. Unfortunately if such an 
 emphasis becomes too patently subservient to the interests of the em- 
 ployers, the workers may unwisely but quite naturally be driven all the 
 further into their own group individualism. 
 
 This state of affairs has already given rise to a new social theory, 
 that of "pluralism." It has been developed both by legalists seeking to 
 make jurisprudence conform more closely to the social interests it should 
 serve, and by economic Utopians in search of a new social order. This 
 theory, while exceedingly interesting and illuminating, unfortunately has 
 not as yet given much practical knowledge that will enable society to 
 meet the problem of securing social responsibility in the component 
 
Group Responsibility The Problem 241 
 
 groups that make up the community. And the basic reason for the 
 inadequacy that has hitherto in greater or less degree marked the theories 
 of the pluralists has been the practical non-existence, under any theory of 
 individualism, be its unit the man or the group, of any such concept as 
 social responsibility. 
 
 Tb^the individualist there is but one kind of social responsibility it is 
 the responsibility of the government to those who have elected it, its 
 responsibility to dispense justice, to protect from external aggression, 
 and, in general, to furnish certain services to individuals. It is a responsi- 
 bility in typical utilitarian vein to serve the greatest good of the greatest 
 number. In America, in France, and in practice if not in theory in 
 England, the individualist theory is, in the terms of the Declaration 
 of Independence, that governments exist to secure the rights of individ- 
 uals, and endure only so long as they do secure them. They are respon- 
 sible to the people for thus securing them. 
 
 Of course, in the very limited sphere of activity that the government 
 was supposed and permitted to serve, the individual had a reciprocal 
 obligation and responsibility. He was obliged to assist in the defense of 
 the country, he was obliged to contribute taxes to the support of the 
 government, and he was obliged to refrain from that interference with the 
 rights of other men known as crime. But aside from this very definite and 
 rigorously circumscribed obligation, the individualistic theory recognized 
 no such thing as obligation to society. Society, in so far as such a concept 
 of the whole as distinct from its constituent parts is at all comprised in 
 the individualistic theory, has, in the vast range of social activity known 
 as economic, only a responsibility to keep each man free from intrusion 
 by his neighbor; there is no reciprocal responsibility on the part of the 
 individuals to do anything for society. 
 
 This being the case, it is not surprising that the apologists for group 
 individualism and pluralism similarly tend to overlook the question of 
 the responsibility of their groups to society. This comes out in the case 
 of Mr. Laski, who favors a society composed of economic groups, the 
 differences between which are to be adjudicated through impartial courts 
 whose establishment and maintenance he regards as the essential function 
 of the state. This plan, in strict conformity with the individualistic 
 theory, and with the liberalism of which he is so able an advocate, recog- 
 nizes perfectly the obligation of the state to keep one group from infring- 
 ing upon the prerogatives of another; the court is the best instrument 
 for securing a careful determination and adjustment of rights. But his 
 plan disregards, and his courts hardly touch, the important question of 
 
242 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 the determination and the fulfillment of duties and obligations of the 
 groups to that collective whole called society. 
 
 On the whole, then, it must be confessed that of those pluralists who 
 approach the problem from the standpoint of jurisprudence, Mr. Laski, 
 while giving an admirable survey and analysis of the present situation, 
 and clearly revealing the large measure of irresponsible power or " sover- 
 eignty" that resides today in various groups, economic and otherwise, 
 against which, to say the least, the government, as the organized instru- 
 ment of society as a whole, finds it exceedingly inopportune to proceed, 
 nevertheless does not offer any clearly defined program for meeting such a 
 situation, and does not in fact seem to regard it as a situation which 
 particularly needs to be met otherwise than by a recognition of its exis- 
 tence and an adjustment of legal theory to fait accompli. M. Duguit, the 
 great jurist of Bordeaux, can not be accused of falling into the same error; 
 but, it seems to the candid reader, however great his admiration be for the 
 glowing ideal M. Duguit holds out of a society of functional groups whose 
 sole thought shall be of the service they are rendering to the community, 
 and whose only rights are those privileges granted by the community 
 that it may be the more efficiently served, the French savant has, after 
 the way of legalists, and especially of French ones, rather overlooked the 
 psychological nature of man and the obstacles it presents to a realization 
 of such an ideal. Between M. Duguit's wholly admirable but rather 
 remote ideal and Mr. Laski's penetrating analysis of a not entirely admir- 
 able state of affairs, the social observer, and, it may be, the practical 
 statesman, desire some intermediate step, some method or at least some 
 faint indications of how to formulate a method for the passage from the 
 one state to the other. Jurists, great as their ability may be, do not and 
 perhaps should not be called upon to descend to such practical con- 
 siderations. 
 
 The economic reformers have, it is true, given more of consideration 
 to this important question of how the admittedly group individualistic 
 society of today can be brought nearer to the admittedly desirable and 
 necessary society in which groups are actuated by a sense of their social 
 responsibility; but, after the manner and wont of radicals, they have been 
 too prone to consider it entirely in the light of conditions that are to 
 obtain after The Revolution, a light which, however theoretically inter- 
 esting, hardly suffices to illumine the gloom of these pre-revolutionary 
 days. Syndicalists, guild socialists, economic federalists of all sorts and 
 varieties, have in general taken one of two courses: they have assumed 
 that in those idyllic times after The Day there will be an impartial and 
 
 
Group Responsibility The Problem 243 
 
 wholly just central authority or state, which will enforce social interests 
 on any particularly recalcitrant and self -seeking group; or, if they be very 
 radical indeed, and very much incensed against the state, they have 
 assumed that with a central authority entirely abolished men will just 
 naturally prefer the good and interest of all to their own private group 
 interests, and will not think of using their economic power to aggrandize 
 themselves at their fellows' expense. Both types assume that the real 
 class solidarity and cohesion necessary to bring about The Revolution 
 will naturally persist after the great enemy who has called it forth is 
 utterly overthrown and vanquished. 
 
 Now these claims may possess considerable of truth, but at the same 
 time they betray the characteristic faults of too great utopianism a 
 one-sidedness bred of undivided and earnest vision, an impatience with 
 irritating details like human nature born of an abiding faith in general 
 principles, and a consequent tendency to slur over the real and vital 
 problems. Moreover, they remain strictly hypothetical, dependent upon 
 The Revolution for their verification. Unfortunately the problem will 
 not also obligingly wait. Let us, therefore, proceed to an examination 
 of the problem as it presents itself to society at the present stage of its 
 development, without reference to possible future transformations, 
 and let us take it up as it is phrased by the two schools of social control 
 and of free development, of socialism and anarchism, if you will, or of 
 autocracy and liberalism, if you so prefer. 
 
 The most natural and probably the first formulation of the problem 
 of securing social responsibility in the groups comprising the community 
 is that which regards it as one of enforcing, by the government and 
 through suitable penalties, the efficient functioning of groups from with- 
 out. This is the recognition by law that groups are legally responsible 
 to the will of the majority who control the government. It is the in- 
 stinctive reaction of the irate householder who, finding himself unable 
 on the eve of winter to obtain coal and all the miners out on strike for 
 iiigher wages, quite naturally wants to send somebody "to make 'em 
 ]lig coal." Now this way of approaching the problem would certainly 
 / >e revolutionary, for the very basis of our civilization has been that a 
 man had the right to do what he likes with his own, whether that own 
 be labor or property. And when such an outcry is raised against, say, 
 the packers, and the same householder grumbles, " The government 
 ought to make 'em put their prices down," the law in all its majesty 
 intervenes and protects the sacred rights of property against even the 
 duly elected Congress and President of the United States, which cannot 
 
244 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 confiscate property "without due process of law." To recognize, then, 
 that the majority can thus legally and effectually enforce production 
 of commodities which may be assumed to be necessities, is to alter pro- 
 foundly our legal and economic system and to deny that a man may do 
 what he likes with his own; 
 
 But assume that this radical procedure is adopted; the assumption 
 is far from rash, for chambers of commerce, editors, and a considerable 
 portion of "the public" is already quite willing to enforce production 
 upon labor unions, at least what can we say of its efficacy and its prob- 
 able results? How will it operate to secure that steady and efficient 
 production that society needs? 
 
 It is a comparatively simple affair to enforce the will of a majority 
 upon a territorial unit; the world has just finished with a tremendous 
 example of just such enforcement, though, to be sure, it is somewhat of 
 a question whether the results in central and eastern Europe represent 
 the will of the majority of the Allies. Military power, bullets and 
 machine guns can generally accomplish it, or the mere threat and cer- 
 tainty that they will be used. So long as it is a question of preventing 
 a minority from doing something, and is thus essentially a problem of 
 suppression and repression, the majority can eventually have its way. 
 But when the desire of a majority is to compel the minority to do some- 
 thing positive, the outcome is far more dubious. Thus it is compara- 
 tively easy to suppress a Sinn Fein government in Ireland, but all 
 the power of the British Empire had a hard time of it to compel the 
 Irish people to obey and live under a British government. Quite sim- 
 ilarly it is simple, if you have enough power, to force Germans out of 
 France and to force the cession of Alsace-Lorraine; but when it comes 
 to getting as much coal as you want, or as large an indemnity, you 
 find innumerable annoying obstacles in your way. 
 
 And when the problem shifts from a territorial minority that can be 
 conquered in a military sense to a minority which is a functional group, 
 the difficulty becomes even more acute. To force a functional group 
 to do something positive which they are resolved not to do is a task 
 to test the ability of the firmest dictator. As the old adage has it, " You 
 can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. " The Ger- 
 mans found it out in Belgium, the Northerners found it out in the 
 South, and the French are finding it out in Germany. 
 
 Of course it is possible to secure results of a sort if you are determined 
 enough. Most miners would rather mine coal than be shot, and if you 
 have enough bayonets coal can certainly be got out. But such methods, 
 
Group Responsibility The Problem 245 
 
 though undoubtedly entirely possible, are not of a nature to prove 
 widely practicable. Entirely apart from any psychological considera- 
 tions as to whether a majority of Americans would permit the adoption 
 of such tactics, it seems, on the face of it, that as a remedy for the in- 
 sufficient or inefficient production of coal it would not in the long run 
 be practicable. This is admittedly a very extreme case, but it is cru- 
 cial, for it makes plain that mere power to enforce the will of a ma- 
 jority upon a functional group is not the only, and perhaps not the 
 most important, element necessary for the securing of social responsi- 
 bility. 
 
 In fact, the greatest contribution of the pluralists like Mr. Laski is 
 just this fact of the ultimate "sovereignty" or ability to resist com- 
 pulsion resident in groups. The same householder who wanted govern- 
 ment to apply pressure to the miners and the packers, whenever he 
 desires a remedy for a certain ill, immediately thinks first of all of "pas- 
 sing a law against it. " He is unaware of the profound truth the liberals 
 have recognized, and which the socialists and other apostles of "social 
 control" have not yet learned, that there are many, many things that 
 legislation and direct social control cannot effect. Bismarck found it out 
 when the Catholics and the Social Democrats beat him and forced him to 
 go to Canossa. The Bolsheviki are finding it out; and the American 
 Congress would find it out if, for instance, it passed a law breaking up 
 the family. It is a commonplace that the prohibition of liquor be- 
 longs in the same category; if there be anywhere a large minority se- 
 riously desirous of a drink of whiskey, no army of inspectors can pre- 
 vent them from getting it. 
 
 It would seem that the efficient production of commodities is to be 
 placed in the same category of actions which no legislative fiat can 
 effect, and government authority can enforce only with the utmost 
 difficulty. For while the mere working the mere tending of machines 
 is quite possible to enforce by sufficient penalties, the efficient produc- 
 tion of a large supply is infinitely more difficult. Sabotage not the 
 sabotage of destruction, but the sabotage practiced by conservative 
 business unionists as the "deliberate withdrawal of efficiency" sabot- 
 age and lowered output is bound to result. The French government, 
 by calling all railway workers to the colors and making striking a court- 
 martial offense, succeeded in crushing the great railway strike of 1910. 
 And forthwith the French railways lapsed into a most woeful state of 
 inefficiency. Accidents would happen; cars would turn up hundreds of 
 miles from their proper destination; men would insist on obeying every 
 
246 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 rule in the book literally when a little discretion might have prevented 
 a wreck or a tie-up. And in this case the government, by waving the 
 flag of German invasion, applied an exceedingly powerful patriotic 
 motive as well as mere force. The government was indeed vindicated; 
 but it still remains a question whether the country as a whole would 
 not have been infinitely better off had the demands of the strikers been 
 granted. 
 
 It is significant that in those countries where the greatest restrictions 
 are placed upon the labor unions and upon strikes, like France, Italy, 
 and Spain, revolutionary unionism employing sabotage and violence is 
 most strong and dangerous. It is a tenet of the American tradition 
 that repression of grievances, whether those grievances be just or whether 
 they be unjust, is the sure road to revolt; and the candid observer of 
 history is forced to admit that there is considerable evidence in its 
 support. It may then be fairly predicted that recourse to the enforce- 
 ment of the will of the majority upon a functional group, even if it were 
 successfully effected, would but drive union activities underneath the 
 surface, to break out in sporadic revolts. 
 
 Moreover, to be at all successful, the method of repressing and en- 
 forcing responsibility implies the presence of an impartial state a 
 state in which all concerned, both parties to any grievance, can repose 
 the utmost confidence that it will decide questions and adopt policies 
 only after the most painstaking and unbiassed research, and that its 
 decisions will be based on premises which all parties admit to start with. 
 The present government, in all criminal and in the overwhelming ma- 
 jority of civil cases, is such an impartial adjudicator. The few exceptions 
 are the faults and dishonesties inevitable in any human institution. 
 And our criminal and civil law is accepted as just by the parties whom 
 it most concerns. 
 
 But when it comes to a question of the economic interests of groups, 
 it is just as unquestionable that the present state is certainly not im- 
 partial. With the presence in the economic fabric of various great 
 conflicting interests, it is too much to ask any human individual to 
 preserve a frigid impartiality. When, for instance, there come to trial 
 men who do not accept the basic hypotheses upon which the present 
 state and the judge who loyally supports it proceed, that judge can 
 not be impartial. It is like asking a loyal and patriotic citizen to judge 
 impartially of the reports of the enemy's atrocities. Human nature, 
 save in very rare cases, simply is not cast in such heroic mold. The best 
 the state can do in the face of conflicting economic interests is to side 
 
Group Responsibility The Problem 247 
 
 with that side which the individual judge thinks right, and endeavor, so 
 far as in him lies, to be fair to the other side. 
 
 Precisely an analogous case is that of any international tribunal, any 
 supreme court of a league of nations whose decrees are to be enforced. 
 Where disputes of minor importance are to be brought up, it is easy to 
 be impartial, and firm hi integrity; but where vital national interests 
 are concerned, where "national honor," that illusory but highly im- 
 portant entity, is at stake, no international court can possibly be ex- 
 pected to render absolutely just decisions, and hence no international 
 police to enforce peace is as yet at all possible. 
 
 It must be admitted by detached observers that even the highest 
 courts in the land are today dominated by conflicting class interests, 
 that judges of different antecedents necessarily proceed upon different 
 hypotheses, and that, for instance, while a judge whose social philos- 
 ophy derived from Herbert Spencer and one who got his from Karl 
 Marx can be trusted to agree perfectly and to render a quite just de- 
 cision on the merits of a plea to grant retrial in a murder case, they 
 will of necessity differ radically in their interpretation and application 
 of the Fourteenth Amendment. In the middle of the last century the 
 United States Supreme Court undoubtedly enjoyed a much higher rep- 
 utation for impartiality than it has throughout the country today; yet 
 at the present time there are few so blind as to deny that during the 
 whole slavery struggle the Supreme Court was anything but impartial. 
 When the supposedly impartial court handed down its crucial Dred 
 Scott decision, almost the entire North absolutely rejected it, and six 
 years later by force effected a sweeping reversal of its principles. Is 
 it reasonable to expect that the passions aroused by economic con- 
 flicts, just as bitter and vital, are to be calmed by an impartial state, 
 a state which claims, and probably sincerely believes, that it is act- 
 ing for the best interests of the entire community? The Dred Scott 
 decision was not enforced, and it is dubious whether any decision to- 
 day that seemed as unrighteous as that one did to the North could be 
 enforced. 
 
 The possibility of enforcement appears to be dependent upon the 
 confidence which those to be coerced have in the essential impartiality 
 of the government. That confidence and that impartiality, as regards 
 economic interests, are certainly lacking today; nor does it seem at all 
 possible that in any post-revolutionary state they would be present 
 to any greater degree. Certainly Russia and Hungary, the only two 
 examples we have to date, do not seem to have advanced especially on 
 
248 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 "capitalistic" governments in their impartiality towards men of all 
 economic interests and faiths. 
 
 Moreover, even if it did exist, it would be well-nigh impossible to 
 convince the workers of such an impartiality so long as the enforcement 
 of responsibility meant first of all and primarily the enforcement of 
 responsibility to the employer, and deprived the worker, to the open 
 glee of the capitalist, of the only weapon he possesses to advance his 
 own interests. With such a complete coincidence of the employer's 
 interest and the assumed interest of the community at large, it is dif- 
 ficult to see how the unionists could regard the enforcement as a matter 
 of good faith. 
 
 In fact, the employment of coercive means for the enforcing of re- 
 sponsibility is exceedingly apt to increase resentment at the selfish "pub- 
 lic, " and to provoke far more of disorganization, inefficiency, discord, 
 and group selfishness than it could possibly eradicate and suppress. 
 As a single instance, the passage of the Kansas law to prevent strikes 
 resulted in a great strike of miners who had not before dreamt of strik- 
 ing at all. This could hardly be considered a successful increase in pro- 
 ductivity in a public utility. 
 
 Moreover, if the method of enforcing responsibility is to have any 
 success, it must succeed by educating the workers to a position in which 
 they will not need the actual application or even the threat of force to 
 secure their obedience. If the average citizen needed a bayonet to keep 
 him from breaking the criminal statutes, those statutes could not fairly 
 be called practicable. And it is quite apparent that the issuing of in- 
 junctions broadcast, the quelling of strikes with troops, and other tac- 
 tics of a like nature, however successful they may be in preventing open 
 industrial warfare, are scarcely methods likely to result in the ed^ 
 ucation of the worker toward social responsibility. It is indeed the 
 worst possible course that could be adopted to effect such an 
 end. 
 
 '' r Thus our general examination of the first of the two suggested lines 
 of approach to the problem has resulted in the conclusion that though 
 the enforcement of responsibility is perhaps ultimately possible, its 
 employment is fraught with so many perils and difficulties that it is 
 exceedingly dubious whether, save in cases of extreme emergency, and 
 as a measure of the very last resort, it would prove in any sense prac- 
 ticable; and that it is certain to result in defeating the very aim toward 
 which it is directed, the ultimate development of an attitude of social 
 responsibility in place of the present group individualism. If there is 
 
Group Responsibility The Problem 249 
 
 any other possible method of achieving this end, it is certainly deserv- 
 ing of the most careful examination. 
 
 But let us proceed to consider several more concrete proposals of 
 those who pin their faith in the enforcement of responsibility through 
 the political government. Though for obvious reasons not often ad- 
 vocated as a permanent method of settling anything, the means most 
 popular and most frequently employed in practice has been the in- 
 junction. This is a legal instrument, devised in an age when labor un- 
 ions were yet undreamed of, for protecting property rights from irrepar- 
 able injury for which there is no remedy at law. It was invented to restrain 
 parties in dispute about title or damages to property from interfering 
 with the property before the courts had passed on the title. It has 
 since, in contradiction to many fundamental legal principles, been ex- 
 panded in scope to enforce criminal law and to abridge personal rights 
 and liberties. It is not a criminal, but a civil instrument, which means 
 that the offense in disobeying it is contempt of court, and that offense 
 requires no jury trial. The penalty for disobeying it is not great; but 
 the value of the injunction as a means of preventing a strike lies in its 
 power to nip such a movement in the bud; it introduces delays into a 
 situation where every movement counts. Hence it has been frequently 
 employed by the employer everywhere to crush strikes and labor ac- 
 tivity; and its complete identification with the employer and the cap- 
 italist serves to render it all the more damning and odious in the work- 
 ers' eyes when employed in behalf of "the public." 
 
 The injunction as a method of enforcing social responsibility is thus 
 liable to every disadvantage to which any method of enforcement is 
 subject, it has none of the possible advantages of other methods, and 
 in addition it has the special demerits of a very doubtful foundation 
 in legal principles and of being applied without investigation of any 
 sort by a single judge. It is a method to which organized labor is al- 
 ready bitterly opposed. It is the very height of the "public's" attitude 
 of peace at any price; for it is adapted to secure nothing but immediate 
 peace, and the price is continuous warfare. 
 
 Another proposal is that of incorporating the unions and making 
 them liable at law to keep their contracts and to pay damages in case 
 of non-fulfillment. This proposal overlooks the absence of any means 
 of the union going into bankruptcy if it finds performance of the agreed 
 services impossible. It has the additional disadvantage of making the 
 responsibility exclusively to the employer, and providing no stimulus 
 whatever to the growth of social obligation. There would be no social 
 
250 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 control over the nature of the contract; it would be the apotheosis of 
 business unionism with all its faults. It seems, indeed, as though the 
 unions will increasingly observe their agreements without any such 
 elaborate safeguards, if our conjectures as to the New Unionism be 
 at all verified. The making of union funds subject to damage suits 
 could only result in the carrying on of union activities with very small 
 funds in a word, in the introduction into business unionism of the 
 tactics of the I. W. W.: violence, destruction, and "striking on the job." 
 But the remedy most popular just now, and which is indeed in- 
 finitely preferable to the other suggested, is that of compulsory arbitra- 
 tion. It recognizes the obligation of the labor groups to the community 
 as a whole, and it also recognizes the reciprocal obligation of the com- 
 munity to the labor group to see that it secures fair treatment. Under 
 an impartial administration, an administration whole-heartedly devoted 
 to the welfare of every member of the community and hence whole- 
 heartedly devoted to the welfare of the workers also, such a plan of en- 
 forced responsibility, if greatly aided by other conditions, might have a 
 chance of succeeding. But where can an impartial administration which 
 shares the workers' aim of practical equality and security of position 
 for every member of society be found, and could such an administra- 
 tion, strictly speaking, be impartial? Moreover, the very fact that 
 such a body would legally have the power to prevent a strike so preju- 
 dices the worker against it that it could hardly attain the universal 
 confidence necessary for success. And it is excessively undemocratic; 
 it entrusts to a small body of men who it assumes will "do the right 
 thing" absolute power. It asks the workers to hand over their only 
 weapon, and promises they can get what is good for them without it. 
 The workers, already sadly disillusioned as to the promises of govern- 
 ment authorities, are not going to do any such thing. It may well be 
 benevolent, very benevolent and paternalistic, but it is despotism never- 
 theless. No body of men is good enough to entrust such momentous 
 power to. The American worker, even if he thought that from their 
 hands he would receive precious gifts, instinctively would reject such 
 offerings and though it cost him much would prefer to rely on his own 
 exertions. Hence, as an expedient for the enforcement of social responsi- 
 bility, compulsory arbitration is not successful; where it has been tried, 
 in Canada and in Australasia, it has either been discarded or remained 
 a dead letter. Both workers and business men, in centering their at- 
 tention upon the strike-prevention side and overlooking the arbitration 
 features, are probably not very far wrong. 
 
Group Responsibility The Problem 251 
 
 Foreign experience has proved that such a board of arbitration has an 
 equalizing effect upon working conditions: it tends to raise all workers 
 to a single standard, and hence is of great benefit to the lower class of 
 sweated workers. But that standard, upon which all decisions are 
 made, becomes fixed and stationary; and the workers, growing in power 
 and vision, become intensely dissatisfied with the whole scheme and 
 strike anyway. When the workers once decide to strike, well, the whole 
 dubious impracticability of enforcing decisions upon them is brought 
 home. Any system which allows things to reach the stage in which the 
 workers are resolved to strike is a foregone failure. 
 
 Yet if compulsory arbitration is not the answer to the problem, it 
 has nevertheless within it the germs of great good. It can become, with 
 certain modifications, an immensely valuable educative instrument; 
 and it can, if administered with sympathy and integrity, do much to 
 secure that social responsibility at which it aims. To achieve such an 
 effect, its compulsory features must first be entirely abandoned; only 
 thus can the all-important confidence of the workers be obtained. The 
 success achieved by Canada's arbitration act has been due entirely to 
 the virtual abandonment of the anti-strike feature. Then, it must 
 cease to be a judicial tribunal and become an administrative and legisla- 
 tive council, in which not a judge or arbitrator alone makes decisions, 
 but in which the democratically elected representatives of the two 
 parties are allowed to act together. The Kansas Industrial Court plan 
 is fundamentally wrong, not only in its compulsory features, but even 
 more in regarding its function as judicial. Its crowning folly is to be 
 governed by the rules of evidence a provision making intelligent 
 decision by the industrially inexpert judges almost impossible. For a 
 court is essentially retrospective; it interprets past agreements and 
 standards, and exists only to settle disputes after they have once risen. 
 Industry demands instead a council that will erect new standards, that 
 will plan for the future, adjust rates and scales and conditions as need 
 for their change arises, that will eliminate the causes of disputes before 
 they are generated, and, in general, administer and legislate for the 
 industry. The Industrial Court has all the faults and all the pitiful 
 futility of the International Court of Arbitration at The Hague; a court 
 without a legislator and an administrator is a monstrosity. But for 
 such a genuine cooperative administration of industry, such a council 
 would needs be made up of experts in that field, with perhaps an impartial 
 chairman representing the interests of the consumer. And so we have 
 arrived, not at compulsory arbitration, but at something very different 
 
 
2$ 2 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 indeed something very similar to the boards and councils in the men's 
 clothing trade, and just what the new unionism stands for. And en- 
 forced responsibility it has vanished in the process. 
 
 Thus none of the specific methods for enforcing social responsibility 
 contains anything to alter the conclusion that such enforcement is of 
 highly dubious practicability, and the most promising of them, on being 
 followed up, leads to an entirely different method. We are thus driven 
 to a further examination of the very bases of political and social ob- 
 ligation, and to a search for the reason why men obey "authorities." 
 
 The question of group responsibility can not be settled, as the irate 
 householder thought, merely by making a law against it. That may 
 be necessary. But that alone is bound to be hopelessly inadequate. 
 The question of responsibility depends ultimately on the grounds on 
 which men obey constituted authorities of any kind, political, religious, 
 economic. These have never been adequately determined, and it is 
 probable that until our social psychology has made such more progress 
 over its present crude state they never will be. But one thing at least 
 is certain: that the police power of the state, its power to enforce its 
 will, or the will of those who have captured it, is not the primary basis 
 of political obligation. If not the active consent, at least the passive 
 assent of those governed is essential to the continuance of that govern- 
 ment. Men must feel that it is to some extent representative of their 
 desires and purposes, at least sufficiently representative to keep them 
 from going to the exertion of throwing it off. In large measure this 
 feeling of assent and acceptance is the result of habit and the inertia of 
 established ways and customs persisting after their most efficient work 
 is done habit drilled into the individual from his birth by every in- 
 strumentality of education and social life. 
 
 Political obligation is thus at bottom the result of education and 
 trained habituation. All the agencies of collective existence are con- 
 stantly impressing upon the individual the importance of law and order, 
 the importance of observing the ordained social rules and regulations. 
 Hence the normal individual is so habituated and trained to act in con- 
 formity with certain standards and rules that he simply does not think 
 of anything else. The normal citizen does not break the law, and he 
 fails to break it, not because the police would prevent him, not even 
 because he is afraid the police will get him if he does, but simply be- 
 cause he has formed the habit of obeying the law. Why he formed the 
 habit is immaterial; it may have been because of the fear of the penalty, 
 it may have been because of religious tabus and the fear of future tor- 
 
Group Responsibility The Problem 253 
 
 ments, it may have been because he came to recognize as good certain 
 moral ideals, it may have been because everybody about him obeyed 
 the law, or it may have been because of a mixture of all these. The 
 important thing is that these are all differing means, more or less effi- 
 cacious, toward the education of the individual and the development 
 of moral habits, moral ways of acting. Man obeys constituted authority 
 because he has been trained to do so; the best way to secure his obedience 
 is to employ the best way of educating him in habits of obedience and 
 response to social rules. Anything that will develop in him fixed re- 
 sponses to social demands is bound to lead naturally to his becoming a 
 good citizen; anything which, even though like the bayonet of the 
 tyrant's mercenaries it secured present acquiescence in the will of the 
 government, does not so tend to develop moral habits of social response, 
 is at best but artificial and must be applied continually and with in- 
 creasing intensity to secure that social response that has not become 
 habitual. 
 
 All groups thus tend to educate their members into habitual response 
 to the chosen mores or codes of those groups: the doctor acts in accord 
 with medical ethics, the lawyer in accord with the standards of his 
 profession, church members in accord with the customs of their par- 
 ticular sect. Nowhere is this habitual response to the demands of 
 the group stronger than in the case of labor unions; and this same habitua- 
 tion is rapidly growing among the entire body of workers as a class. 
 This habitual loyalty is also, in the average individual, directed toward 
 the nation or community as a whole in certain channels which from long 
 custom have been impressed upon all men: in the field of legal regula- 
 tion, patriotism, and the like. It has not appeared in the field of eco- 
 nomic production, because society has not here recognized any standard 
 of production for social needs, any production for the sake of "the 
 public." Since the triumph of economic liberalism business and in- 
 dustry have been divorced from every thought of social responsibility. 
 It has not as yet occurred to any one to expect it. The business man 
 has not had such a principle hi his code, the trade unionist certainly 
 has not, and until very recently no one even expected it in the name 
 of the " public" or the community. We had all been taught that the 
 correct thing was to obey the law and do as well as we could for our- 
 selves in a business way. We succeeded in this fairly well because there 
 were very few laws in the realm in which we were advancing ourselves 
 that we could disobey. We never thought of our responsibility to the 
 community because we did not realize the necessity of social obligation. 
 
254 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 Today in a crude and blundering way we are beginning to recognize 
 this necessity if our civilization is not to crumble away; but we are not 
 at all used to the thought, and we are very prone to follow our old habits 
 of group individualism. 
 
 The problem of the social responsibility of groups, then, it is clear, is 
 not fundamentally a problem of how to enforce a new standard and 
 aim upon groups that have become accustomed to far different ones. 
 It is not what kind of a law we can pass against group individualism, 
 how we can put down its now unpleasant manifestations. Such a view 
 is superficial in the extreme. ' The problem of group responsibility is at 
 bottom a problem in the education of the entire community toward the 
 adoption of a relatively new social principle new, that is, to those 
 brought up in the chaotic competitive system of individualism and 
 economic liberalism, though in jeality as old as Plato, who wrote his 
 wonderful Republic about it/It is to develop a new habit of mind, a 
 new way of responding to our social environment, a new way of 
 thinking and acting or to rediscover an old one. 
 
 If the problem thus be at bottom, as in truth most really important 
 social problems are, a problem of education, then the immediate question 
 is, what means are the best for so training ourselves? When economic 
 groups follow their own interests too exclusively, the solution we must 
 seek must be approached always with the educative value of whatever 
 measures we adopt in the foreground. If we contemplate the use of force 
 on refractory bodies of men, we must employ it solely as a means to our 
 larger end of educating those bodies in habits of social responsibility, else 
 we shall have sacrificed permanent good for a brief temporary respite, and 
 have bought immediate peace at the price of an unending succession of 
 further wars. Force applied for the sake of the immediate attainment of 
 our object is autocratic and can get us nowhere; but force applied in the 
 process of education is often essential. This must be our final answer to 
 those who advocate the immediate suppression of strikes. 
 fTThe problem with which we set out has thus in essence become one of 
 ' education in the broadest sense, of what social institutions and what 
 measures of social control will best seize upon the social aims and social 
 responsibility already present or still dormant in the labor movement and 
 increase and foster them. The problem is thus not the simple one of de- 
 vising a new law or a new government instrumentality; it is immensely 
 more difficult than that. It implies the necessity of a psychological 
 change of attitude and a moral change of heart in the various conflicting 
 groups of present day society. It implies a gradual turning away from the 
 
 7 
 
Group Responsibility The Problem 255 
 
 old and a turning toward the new. To those individuals looking for 
 panaceas to cure at one dose all the ills of society, to those reformers who 
 imagine that legislative enactments can in themselves bring social sal- 
 vation, to those optimistic radicals who believe that the destruction of any 
 institution, even though it be the great institution of the "capitalistic 
 system" itself, can bring about the millennium and create on earth the 
 New Jerusalem to such men the problem may well appear insuperable 
 as they hurry off to their far easier tasky But if our industrial civiliza- 
 tion, dependent as it is upon the efficient functioning of all its component 
 groups, is to continue as an industrial civilization, some solution must be 
 found, and that at no very remote time. That some solution will be 
 found, those who as a result of the last six years' brutal futility are not 
 grown profoundly pessimistic over the entire body of mankind will be 
 confident. But that solution is not going to be easy. We have as yet 
 discovered hardly any fragments of a solution. It is only as political 
 invention and social philosophy, doffing their gay but useless holiday 
 garb of optimism and complacency, descend to the economic field where 
 the battle for the future of the world is now being fought back and forth 
 and there patiently, persistently, and painstakingly labor and experiment 
 at the tremendous task, that the body of society, grown sick with the 
 cancer of malignant and self-centered irresponsibility, can ever hope 
 to be healed. 
 
 
i 4 . THE PROBLEM AS AN ESSAY IN EDUCATION 
 
 IN this final chapter, having envisaged the problem of the attainment 
 of group responsibility as essentially a problem in education, the most 
 that can be done is to point out certain tendencies in the social situation 
 that make that problem seem a not wholly impossible task. It will thus 
 be a stock-taking of resources rather than an attempt, even the slightest, 
 at a formulated method, a stock-taking based on what evidences of social 
 responsibility have appeared in the history of the American labor move- 
 ment and of its attempts at organization, and on the forces and tendencies 
 at work in the present industrial and economic ferment which seem to be 
 making for the education of industrial groups in habits of social obliga- 
 tion. 
 
 In general, it would seem that in every situation which is to develop 
 and train responsibility five factors are necessary, five factors which, 
 though in varying degree, must nevertheless to some extent all be present 
 to make the process truly educative and productive of responsible habits.- 
 The first of these is a situation in which cooperative endeavor is abso- 
 lutely essential to the fulfillment of individual purposes. This is apparent 
 in all cases of team-work, where the individual, to fulfill his private pur- 
 pose of winning and winning for his team, must cooperate effectively with 
 the other members. The desire to make brilliant plays cannot lead such a 
 team member to neglect this cooperative effort, because no play can be 
 really brilliant if it neglects the essential quality of aiding the work of the 
 team. The futility of attempting cooperation where this necessity for 
 mutual aid and assistance is lacking is obvious. 
 
 But not only must this social action be necessary; the individuals, by 
 group opinion or by some system of rewards and penalties, must be held 
 responsible for the performance of the tasks which, within their power of 
 accomplishment, it is their portion to perform. No matter how necessary 
 the cooperation of the members of a team may be, unless they realize that 
 necessity, hold individual members to a strict accountability for their 
 actions, and create such a sentiment and group opinion that offenders 
 against it are promptly censured and lose caste and group standing, that 
 team will never be a success. The necessity for cooperation must be 
 present, and it must be consciously present, crystallized into group 
 opinion. 
 
The Problem as an Essay in Education 257 
 
 But it must not only be present in the group at large; every individual 
 member must have a clear recognition of that necessity, and a clear 
 knowledge of just what is expected of him. The man who can not do 
 team-work is the man who does not recognize that team-work is neces- 
 sary, and does not realize the part he must play in the actions of his group. 
 When his individual responsibility is clearly brought home to him, it is 
 usually as though a new light had dawned upon his mind; the transfor- 
 mation is at times surprisingly rapid. Mr. Thomas Mott Osborne has 
 recently given some most astounding demonstrations of the possibility of 
 thus awakening in those who previously had had the least sense of respon- 
 sibility of any in the community, the professional criminals, a very real 
 and a very strong sense of responsibility to the group when they are 
 placed in a situation where their cooperation is required and expected. 
 
 Such cooperation, moreover, must be a mutual attitude of give and 
 take the responsibility can not be directed solely to the group without a 
 recognition of a reciprocal obligation toward the members. In a team the 
 individuals are required to give their best to the team's aims, but in 
 return they demand that the rest of the team stand by them. A member 
 who feels that his fellows are not playing fair with him not giving him 
 the opportunity to do the best he can, not supporting him and giving his 
 own advice and opinions careful consideration such a member will not 
 be loyal to the team. Loyalty can not be one-sided; it can not thrive 
 unless it is mutual. As directed toward persons it is an inheritance 
 from feudalism and chivalry, and in its original form the loyalty of the 
 vassal to the lord imposed upon the lord an obligation to protect that 
 vassal. In the more modern form of loyalty to a group, it necessarily im- 
 poses upon that group the obligation of protecting the loyal members. 
 This mutual responsibility is well expressed in the saying of Solon which, 
 significantly enough, has won great popularity in the ranks of the labor 
 movement, "An injury to one is an injury to all." 
 
 Finally, for the development of social habits of response, there is 
 necessary a dominant and clear group purpose a common group aim, not 
 in any sense superseding or contradicting the private aims of the mem- 
 bers, but become a very part and parcel of those individual aims, merging 
 imperceptibly into them and extending them further. It is for the sake 
 of this group aim that cooperation is necessary; it is to the attainment of 
 this group aim that men are loyal, that they play their parts, and unite 
 with their fellows in mutual loyalty and cooperative endeavor. It is 
 where this group aim is clearest and most appealing, as in the desire of an 
 athletic team to win a contest, or in the desire of a great army to win a 
 
258 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 war for a high ideal defense of hearth and home, overthrow of autoc- 
 racy, securing of national independence that the situation develops the 
 strongest sense of group loyalty and responsibility. 
 
 Such is the situation that must prevail if habits of social responsibility 
 are to be developed and fostered. It is, to some extent of course, present 
 in every group and community of men; that is what Aristotle meant 
 when he said, "Man is by nature an animal who forms states." The 
 ability of men to respond to group aims and group ends is what deter- 
 mines his existence in society, and is in turn reciprocally determined by 
 it. Social responsibility is thus something inherent in the very nature of 
 mankind; without it he would not be man. It is not, as egoistic and 
 individualistic theorists have argued, something totally alien to man's 
 nature, something artificial that can only be evoked by appealing to the 
 motives of self-interest through reward and punishment. Fortunately 
 our better knowledge of the springs of human action has overthrown so 
 erroneous a view. 
 
 Such a situation prevails within the labor union, and has succeeded 
 remarkably in breaking down the old attitude of irresponsible individual- 
 ism in favor of a real and habitual group activity. A dominant group 
 purpose, cooperation absolutely necessary to attain it, the conscious 
 realization of the necessity of this cooperation, the recognition by the 
 individual of what he must do to help attain it, an attitude of mutual 
 loyalty and responsibility all these are present in the struggle of 
 groups to better their social and economic position. This has perhaps 
 been the chief social value of the labor movement to date its profound 
 educative influence on the development of a social spirit within the 
 group. And in time of war in the recent great struggle somewhat 
 of such a situation has been approached in the community as a whole, 
 between as well as within groups. In war-time there is a dominant 
 national purpose, an intense necessity for cooperative endeavor, and 
 the nation largely recognizes this, calls for loyalty, receives it, and 
 truly seeks to protect all its members. This fact has not only proved 
 the possibility, under certain conditions, of evoking this general sense of 
 social responsibility in groups and individuals who otherwise seem wholly 
 to lack it, but it has led many, who felt the value and the thrill for 
 such cooperation includes as by no means the least of its advantages a 
 very general emotional satisfaction who rejoiced in the presence at 
 last of national solidarity, to believe that such solidarity marked the 
 birth of a new spirit that would continue to function in time of peace. 
 These optimistic or perhaps, since they are our militarists, we had 
 
The Problem as an Essay in Education 259 
 
 better say pessimistic individuals utterly overlooked the fact that the 
 war situation is intensely artificial, that it is sustained by the most 
 vicious and insidious of propaganda, that it tends, if continued for any 
 length of time, to destroy the nations that indulge in it, and to sacrifice 
 upon the altar of futile greed the very nation whose solidarity it may 
 achieve. The war "spirit of service" was for the most part genuine 
 enough, and it is highly revealing as indicating the potentialities resi- 
 dent in human nature hitherto unsuspected by most men of today; 
 but it cannot continue into the weak piping days of peace because the 
 situation in peace time is, or has been to the present, a very different 
 situation from that in time of war. The former is not a situation calling 
 for education in social responsibility; the latter is. 
 
 But let us examine more closely this social situation in time of peace. 
 What elements does it contain of the situation in which social respon- 
 sibility is developed? 
 
 In the first place, the development of industrial technique and the 
 consequent division of labor and integration of society have made a 
 considerable degree of group cooperation absolutely essential. When 
 the industrial revolution was just starting, and the theories and habits 
 upon which we have acted ever since were first developed, this was not 
 at all the case; but especially of late years such cooperation and rea- 
 sonably efficient service of community needs has become a matter of 
 the utmost necessity for the continuance of that industrial revolution 
 and the civilization it has created. Thus the first factor in the situation 
 is certainly present today. 
 
 There has been, moreover, in the recent decrease in productivity 
 throughout the world directly attributable to the war, an increasing 
 realization of the necessity of holding groups responsible for community 
 service. The present agitation in favor of the extension of the idea and 
 the attitude of the public utility, and the stress laid upon the needs of 
 "the public" in addition to the demands of struggling workers and 
 employers, whatever its motives may be, and their sincerity is cer- 
 tainly in many cases highly dubious, can not fail to have a very bene- 
 ficial effect in hastening this realization. Unfortunately, as yet industrial 
 groups are not organized upon a basis which permits the performance 
 of these socially expected responsibilities; and those upon whom the 
 ultimate control of production now depends legally and to a great ex- 
 tent actually, the employers and the "capitalists," are not yet comprised 
 within this demand for social responsibility. The public conscience 
 is quick to rebuke striking miners, but it quite overlooks the inefficient 
 
1 
 
 260 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 methods and the exorbitant profiteering of the coal-operators, which 
 are socially even more undesirable. As the brilliant English economist 
 R. H. Tawney says, "To recommend an increase hi productivity as the 
 solution to the industrial problem is like offering spectacles to a man 
 with a broken leg, or trying to atone for putting a bad sixpence hi the 
 plate one Sunday by putting a bad shilling hi it the next. ... A 
 functional society would extinguish mercilessly those property rights 
 which yield income without service. There would be an end of the 
 property rights hi virtue of which the industries on which the welfare 
 of whole populations depends are administered by the agents and for 
 the profit of absentee shareholders." 1 
 
 Accordingly, there is a general lack of recognition by industrial groups 
 of any social obligations, a lack of recognition bred of a century of busi- 
 ness philosophy. Where this responsibility has not been demanded by 
 public opinion and social custom, but has rather been expressly dis- 
 couraged and overlaid by the competitive business principle of making 
 profit, it is not surprising that industrial groups have not given voice to 
 much sense of social obligation. Yet the persistence of the second strain 
 throughout the labor movement, its return again and again after re- 
 peated rebuffs and hi the face of deep public hostility, as well as the 
 remarkable response which the recent demands for efficient production 
 have met a response that has gone much further than the protectors 
 of "the public" dreamed or desired it would, to the demand for the 
 total reorganization of industry upon a more efficient basis of serving 
 needs than private profits the rise and spread of the New Unionism, 
 all betoken the readiness with which the worker is willing to meet this 
 social obligation half-way. If this second strain leads the workers, as 
 hi England, to champion a social order which will be an advance from 
 an acquisitive toward a functional society, if it becomes the conscious 
 aim of the labor movement hi their struggles upward from the depths 
 into which the industrial revolution hurled them to create a new and 
 more harmonious society, as indeed it has always been their more or less 
 articulate endeavor, then there can be no question as to the attitude 
 which those as yet preserving the calm of neutrality hi the industrial 
 struggle must assume. 
 
 As yet there is little answering sense of responsibility by society 
 
 to the single group. Our whole political theory, in fact, has deprecated 
 
 "class legislation" and "group interests" and demanded that every 
 
 social measure must work for the benefit and advantage of the entire 
 
 1 The Hibbert Journal, April, 1919. 
 
The Problem as an Essay in Education 261 
 
 population. On this ground all laws designed to benefit and protect 
 certain groups, giving them privileges and rights not accorded to all 
 members of the nation, such as minimum wages, limitation of hours, 
 insurance and pensions, and the like, have been vigorously denounced 
 as " class legislation", as though it were not to the benefit of the com- 
 munity as a whole for its members to enjoy improved conditions. It 
 is difficult to reconcile this attitude, however, with the perfect willing- 
 ness to protect certain industries and special classes through the tariff 
 especially since the argument in its favor has been precisely this one, 
 that the prosperity of the small group redounded to the benefit of the 
 community as a whole, and since the particular application is in this 
 case much more dubious than in the other. Nevertheless the community 
 is gradually coming to a recognition that it has a duty and an obligation 
 to its component groups, especially to the most oppressed and sweated 
 of them, as the enactment of much "welfare legislation" betokens. The 
 hostility, however, with which the impartial representatives of "the 
 public's" interests at Albany regarded such legislation in 1920 makes 
 it plain that "the public" which supported those representatives cer- 
 tainly has still far to go before it recognizes its full obligations. 
 
 And finally, in time of peace there is very little common national 
 and social purpose. The recent efforts made to replace the war purpose 
 of "making the world safe for democracy" a purpose very powerful 
 indeed, and quite sincere if you interpret "democracy" according to its 
 differing meanings for different individuals with the peace aim of 
 "securing the supremacy of American Business," are bound to be a 
 failure, because no one is much interested in the supremacy of American 
 Business except the American business man. Such an aim can scarcely 
 serve as the rallying cry of a real national solidarity. Yet for all that 
 there does exist a very powerful social motive in civic feeling and patriot- 
 ism a motive usually latent, but capable in time of crisis of sweeping 
 everything before it. 
 
 From this examination, then, we can conclude that there certainly 
 do exist tendencies favorable to the creation of a situation in which social 
 responsibility can and will be developed, but that the modern organiza- 
 tion of industry for the most part fails to foster them if it is not actually 
 hostile. The problem, then, becomes two-fold: in order to create a 
 situation in which habits and standards of social responsibility 
 will be naturally developed and will increasingly function, it is neces- 
 sary, first, to create favorable social conditions through the modifica- 
 tion of the present economic and legal system of controlling and ad- 
 
262 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 ministering industrial production and technique, and secondly, it is 
 necessary to build up the new attitude of expecting and granting social 
 responsibility in production through actual educational propaganda, 
 in school, in press, in every means of social training, supplemented, 
 where necessary, by the judicial application of social pressure as an 
 instrumentality of education. Both of these methods must be em- 
 ployed simultaneously, because neither is possible alone. 
 
 What, then, are those changes in the social structure which appear 
 likely to lead to a situation more favorable to the development of habits 
 of social response? It is at this point that the average radical reformer 
 of society fails, and fails miserably. There is no single system of Utopian 
 reform adequate to meet the infinite complexity of even the industrial 
 side of modern civilization, to say nothing of the multitude of non- 
 industrial factors that must be considered. No plan, no theoretically 
 elaborated ideal social structure, however great its value and import- 
 ance as a spur to new achievement and as such a spur the creation 
 of Utopias is admittedly an invaluable function of the human spirit 
 no "solution" or panacea, can be propounded as a practicable program 
 of accomplishment. The value of such imaginative constructions of 
 the spirit lies in the light they throw upon practical problems, in the 
 illumination and clarification of purposes and standards that can be 
 applied as criteria of future achievement, and in their utility as regulative 
 ideas, ideals to inspire men and to be worked toward until in that very 
 process of realization they are themselves modified, readjusted to new 
 needs, and transcended. Just such an ideal is the picture of a society 
 hi which all component groups cooperate toward a genuine social pur- 
 pose, each contributing its share to the enhancing and enriching of the 
 whole, each sympathizing with and making its own the aims and in- 
 terests of its fellows. It stands as the type of social organization that 
 contemporary conditions demand. But the realization of such a society, 
 nay, any progress whatever toward it, can come about only through 
 the patient and laborious application of intelligence to the specific social 
 and economic problems, through experiment, through trial and error, 
 mayhap through failure and success. 
 
 Nevertheless our examination has resulted in the emerging of several 
 general principles, which, provisional as they be, still may serve to in- 
 dicate the general trend which the reorganization of industrial life must 
 take if it is to create a situation in which social responsibility will thrive 
 and wax strong. In the first place, we must conclude that for such a 
 situation to result, both the present business unions and the industries 
 
The Problem as an Essay in Education 263 
 
 of which they are a part must in some way be organized upon a basis of 
 production to serve the needs of the community. This may mean 
 "Whitley Councils" of a sort, joint councils of the employers and em- 
 ployees in an entire industry invested with administrative powers; it 
 may mean the development of shop committees and plans involving the 
 cooperation of employer and employee in the actual business of pro- 
 duction. But it must also comprise some method for the regulation of 
 the profit motive through the salutary influence of an awakened public 
 opinion that will demand service, and will allow reward only for service 
 well done. Or, it may mean in certain industries, like the railroads and 
 the mines, actual government ownership and industrial management, 
 with direct public participation in the control, as tentatively outlined 
 in the Plumb Plan. In fact, it does not seem probable that without the 
 elimination of the profit motive, and of domination by the market, any 
 organization of industry can ultimately insure the supremacy of the 
 motive of public service. But such a thoroughgoing reorganization is 
 not yet applicable to very many industries, and if it come, it can come 
 only as the result of a gradual and somewhat prolonged education in 
 responsible power through less complete participation in the control of 
 industry. The railway workers, cooperating with the railway managers, 
 could, it seems probable, assume such control today, and with not too 
 great transitional disorder transform the railroad system from the 
 servant of the shareholder and of the expert in high finance to the servant 
 of national distribution; but it is difficult to point to many other in- 
 dustries where today a like ability exists. 
 
 Whatever method is evolved will necessarily be adopted slowly and 
 with considerable hesitation; our knowledge is at present entirely in- 
 adequate to justify more than a purely experimental point of view. 
 What does appear certain, however, is that the steps that are taken must 
 come with the cooperation of and grow out of the present organiza- 
 tions of labor, and that they must secure at least the consent and 
 honest acquiescence of the employer. The attempt at any ill-advised 
 plan of " public ownership" in accord with the strict Marxian theory, 
 which would antagonize both the ousted capitalists and the existent 
 labor organizations/ hallowed through the struggles and achievements 
 of the past, would necessarily fail miserably. The nation can not stand 
 any more post offices. The most fruitful path, on the whole, would 
 appear to be the sympathetic fostering of the spirit of the New Unionism 
 wherever it appears, and a cordial willingness on the part of employer 
 and government to meet it half-way and cooperate with it. To many, 
 
264 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 such is the bitterness of the economic conflict, and so irreconcilable 
 appear the attitudes of both parties today. Such a cordial cooperation 
 seems utterly impossible, and they see hope only in a cataclysmic revo- 
 lution. This may indeed be true; but there are few who would not be 
 loath, in this ostensibly free and democratic land of America, to be 
 compelled to admit it. Whether it is so or not will depend largely upon 
 the employers and the public and the attitude which they adopt. Or- 
 ganized labor is determined to have what it wants, a secure and equal 
 position in society, and it is going to change the entire nature of our 
 state and our industrial civilization to secure it. It will be the part of 
 wisdom for "capital" and "the public" to accept this fact and aid labor 
 to secure its aims with as little friction as possible. The employer, like 
 the British aristocrat, and, it now seems, like the British capitalist, must 
 realize when it is time to retire gracefully from the lid of the kettle when 
 the pressure gets too great. He must be willing to give up what he has 
 hitherto regarded as his inalienable rights the right to run his business 
 as he pleases, and the right to make just as much profit as he pleases. 
 There are many individual employers who are quite willing thus to assist 
 in the revocation of their own privileges, for they realize that social 
 advantage must in the long run take precedence over their immediate 
 private interests; and, may we not add, they have the example of Russia 
 to edify them if they do not. ! 
 
 But if the unions and industry in general must be reorganized on the 
 lines toward which the New Unionism is working, there must also be 
 a recognition by society of its reciprocal obligation to the groups it 
 expects to serve its needs. The old theory that government exists only 
 to serve the interests that are common to all citizens, and which under 
 those conditions included only the administration of justice and the 
 public defense, must be revised in accordance with the present situa- 
 tion in which the interests of groups have become inextricably inter- 
 twined. This taking into account of the manifold special interests of 
 various industrial groups may even extend to the provision for indus- 
 trial representation in the central legislative body, as a measure to 
 secure the adequate social consideration of group interests. In any 
 case, there must be social guarantees of a reasonably equal status and 
 position, with minimum and possibly maximum determined, the latter 
 through a graduated income tax, and effective provision against unem- 
 ployment. In other words, the society must guarantee the main aims of 
 the workers, stability and security from want. This also, to judge from 
 present tendencies, does not seem a wholly impossible development. 
 
The Problem as an Essay in Education 265 
 
 Finally, industries must be definitely held responsible, both employ- 
 ers and employees, if that distinction remains, to the performance of 
 their social function efficiently and well, with the expectation enforced 
 through a rigorous public opinion, of securing a response. Group 
 individualism must cease to be the dominant philosophy, the habits 
 it has engendered must cease to control, and "public" and govern- 
 ment alike must expect and demand efficient functioning. 
 
 What are the prospects that in such a changed social situation eco- 
 nomic groups would respect community interests instead of regarding 
 merely their group advantage, would merge the two into one? There 
 would indeed be created a situation in which group responsibility might 
 naturally arise and flourish, and the obvious obstacles presented by the 
 present situation would be removed; but what would be the chances 
 of its actual development? There are several considerations which 
 make it appear that they are not unfavorable. 
 
 First, there is the probable psychological result of the change within 
 the union itself. The union has already altered the workers' domi- 
 nant attitude from one of individualism to one of group cooperation; 
 the worker now thinks not merely in terms of his own interests, but 
 also in terms of the group interests that he identifies with his own. 
 This is certainly a change significant enough. The old pioneering self- 
 reliance has been supplanted, by a confidence and a reliance upon group 
 cooperation, in itself a profound psychological change. But the pur- 
 pose of the union has remained individualistic; at best, it has been 
 expanded to take in the working class. As in the process of develop- 
 ment and reorganization this purpose changes and comes more and 
 more to emphasize production, as the New Unionism betokens, it will 
 find the men to whom it appeals accustomed more and more to think 
 in terms of cooperation; it will face the problem, not of creating an 
 entirely new type of response, which problem, difficult as it is, the union 
 has already accomplished in organizing the frontier American, but 
 rather of extending the scope and applicability of the old one. The 
 task before the society that proposes to bring about such an extension 
 of previously acquired habits is not, apparently, so great as the task 
 it has already accomplished in producing a relatively unfamiliar habit 
 of response within the union. 
 
 Moreover, another important psychological trait will come to the 
 aid of the cooperative one. There exists a tendency, an impulse, an 
 instinct, a way of acting call it what you will that impels 
 men to creative and productive endeavor, to desire to do what they 
 
266 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 do well. At present the habits and training in cooperative group action 
 run directly counter to this impulse; the union bids the unionist work 
 so as to get the most wages, even at the expense of sabotage and ineffi- 
 cient production. With the industrialism of the union and the partici- 
 pation in and emphasis on the processes of production, this creative 
 tendency or impulse will directly coincide with and reinforce the ten- 
 dency toward efficient functioning as a social organization, and the 
 two most powerful tendencies in the life of the worker, the instinct of 
 workmanship and the desire to make money, will strengthen instead 
 of as at present negating each other. This is already appearing in the 
 new unionism of the railway workers, the miners, and the clothing 
 makers. 
 
 There is still another reason for believing that social responsibility 
 will develop in the situation we have described. The chief source of 
 dispute between groups at present, between skilled and unskilled work- 
 ers, between workers and capitalists, is the disparity of social position 
 between them. The lower group desires to rise to the level of the higher, 
 the higher wants to keep above the lower. The increasing tendency 
 towards a more equal social status of all members of society, one of the 
 developments of union organization, the gradual movement already 
 considerably advanced toward the equalization of income, to which 
 the war, in lowering the salaried and professional classes almost to the 
 level of the wage-worker, has powerfully contributed, will remove one 
 of the chief causes of group dispute. The intense longing for "equal- 
 ity" is important and strong only in a situation in which there is great 
 and obvious inequality, just as it never occurs to any man to proclaim, 
 "I'm just as good as you are," unless in some particular he obviously 
 isn 't. In a society of relatively equal citizens, such as the development 
 of the labor movement is tending towared, and such as the three general 
 principles we have formulated would tend to bring about, men would 
 probably be too busy improving and developing their qualitatively and 
 individually different excellencies to worry much about small quantita- 
 tive differences. Class and group bitterness and rivalry finds little 
 food in a farming community. Such a society would probably even 
 tolerate without bitterness and probably with much pride the greater 
 rewards it accorded to those men obviously expert in fields where they 
 could appreciate genius and skill, even as today the very workers who 
 bitterly rail against the "capitalists" and the "plutes" take great pride 
 in the immense incomes of their well appreciated movie stars, and 
 cherish no rancor against (striking bedfellow!) Mr. Henry Ford. 
 
The Problem as an Essay in Education 267 
 
 And finally, economic groups do not exist in vacuo, but have their 
 place within nations which are very much indeed collective wholes. 
 Though the groups are not as such very consciously part of the nation, 
 the individuals who compose them certainly are. Every unionist is a 
 citizen of his country as well as a member of his own group, and if it 
 came to a genuine conflict between group and patriotic motives, would 
 probably follovTthiiJatter. The way in which the employers have util- 
 ized the patriotic motive to their own advantage is notorious, and shows 
 how influential that motive is. If systematically thus misused, it will 
 fall into disrepute, as it has in some European lands where the throne 
 has been wont to rally the workers to its support through rumors of 
 foreign aggression. But intelligently and honestly applied through a 
 social agency, it can be made to stimulate powerfully the sense of social 
 obligation of a disgruntled group. 
 
 So far patriotism has not been very successfully used in developing 
 group responsibility, and it does not appear as though it could well be, 
 because responsibility, while ultimately to society, has been legally and 
 actually first of all to the employer and to his interests. The worker 
 knows that submission on his part will increase profits and dividends, but 
 he does not see how it may also benefit the community. He thinks that 
 better conditions for himself and his fellows will benefit the community 
 just as directly, and probably more. But if industry is organized for 
 production, with cooperative participation in the service of human needs 
 as its expected and wonted aim, if the producers thus came to coincide 
 completely with the consumers, so that they could feel that the govern- 
 ment really represented them because they were society, then the soli- 
 darity of the class would be merged with and not antagonistic to the 
 national solidarity or patriotism. 
 
 Moreover, there remains the possibility of developing the national 
 purpose itself so that instead of being fitful and largely bellicose it might 
 take its place amongst the nations of the earth in the performance in that 
 larger field of some especial task. There are numerous non-economic 
 and cultural aims that might together furnish a sufficient national and 
 civic purpose for the efficient functioning of groups to serve. It would 
 indeed seem as though the preservation and the enhancing of all the 
 values of Western civilization would in itself be a sufficient purpose, when 
 once the supreme need is made apparent, for such a socially responsible 
 activity. If men are willing to forsake all they hold dear and risk life 
 itself to defend that civilization, it would seem as though when once they 
 realized that it was menaced with just as dangerous internal disorgani- 
 
268 The Problem of Group Responsibility 
 
 zation they could be led to do what on the whole they want to do 
 anyway. 
 
 Nor, in estimating the chances of such a situation calling forth a social 
 response, must we overlook the influence of individual men who are 
 convinced of its necessity the influence of outstanding personalities 
 and leaders like Sidney Hillman. When conditions are ripe one such 
 leader can work wonders in crystallizing sentiment and giving the impetus 
 to the formation of new habits and attitudes. 
 
 Nevertheless, after all these factors are taken into consideration, it is 
 evident that some form of force will always remain necessary, just as 
 among individuals complete anarchism is not and does not promise soon 
 to become a very practicable social arrangement. In the situation as 
 reorganized this force may well be employed as an educative measure. 
 When so employed, however, against groups and not individuals, to be 
 ultimately of any avail it must be employed to develop habits of social 
 responsibility and never simply as a means to the attainment of social 
 peace at any price. 
 
 The most effective social pressure is the force of public opinion not 
 public opinion as voiced by the editors of newspapers, but the real and 
 genuine feelings and attitude of all the members of society. It is signif- 
 icant that even under present conditions it has proved infinitely more 
 efficacious against the selfishness of economic groups than any scheme 
 of police power yet devised. A law against a strike is quite apt to provoke 
 it; an overwhelmingly adverse public opinion is bound to result in its 
 failure, and probably to prevent its outbreak. Hence it is that all the 
 competent investigators of the system of compulsory arbitration have 
 declared against the compulsory features and have, like the President's 
 Industrial Commission, preferred to rely solely and entirely on the public 
 opinion following upon full publicity. 
 
 But if a group should still, in the face of such a united public opinion, 
 prove obstinately recalcitrant, it will be necessary and under such condi- 
 tions quite possible to proceed to apply direct pressure. There are untold 
 possibilities in the use of economic ostracism, for instance, when em- 
 ployed by a constituted authority and supported by the weight of a great 
 public opinion against the group ostracised. There are hi fact such 
 possibilities hi it that it is difficult to conceive of a group even compelling 
 hi order to further its own interests the mere threat of such an action. 
 It seems as though the employment of such severe measures might, in a 
 society organized primarily for production, bear somewhat the relation to 
 the prevention of group depredation that capital punishment does to the 
 
The Problem as an Essay in Education 269 
 
 prevention of every man murdering his neighbor: a relation which, though 
 present, can hardly be said to enter appreciably into the situation. 
 
 These considerations must not, however, be allowed to induce a too 
 confident optimism. The pathway to a more socially responsible society 
 is not easy; and long and arduous will be the journey, many the slips and 
 failures. These suggestions do not, of course, point to any "solution," 
 sinple or complex. There is no " solution," in the sense of a formula, how- 
 ever elaborate, that can be applied to the concrete material, any more 
 than there ever is a "solution" to the complex human problems of society. 
 They may, however, serve to illuminate the problem; and after all the 
 important consideration is that the problem, the necessity of developing 
 within society a sense of mutual responsibility for the efficient functioning 
 of those tasks which the members of society, be they individuals or 
 groups, have as their chosen duty to perform, be clearly recognized. The 
 important thing is that the problem be clearly envisaged in its full setting, 
 and worked upon patiently through long experiment. When once its 
 importance is fully realized, the nation will have already gone a long ways, 
 a very long ways, indeed, towards eliminating its consequences. 
 
 And thus we return, as men have so often returned, to the guiding 
 light of the best Greek thought about society, and to Plato; for what is 
 our ideal state but that heavenly city in the sky where each group does 
 its work harmoniously and joyously, and what is that which we have 
 been calling "the sense of social responsibility" but that saving virtue of 
 Justice which is both the product and the prerequisite of a well-ordered 
 social life? True, the philosopher need hi our state no longer be king, and 
 keep the groups hi their proper relation, for we have discovered that 
 the regulative power of Justice in the state arises through being just in 
 small things; but he will be all the freer to revisit the ideal realm whence 
 he has brought us his vision, that he may return with new insight and 
 new illumination to assist in the eternal ideal progress of the quality and 
 texture of the life of the spirit. 
 
JLWl , 
 
 RETURN T~ 
 
 KJESF 
 
 
Y.C 86227 
 
 \ 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
 
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