Industrial peace

“ I therefore used it as a nucleus for a foundation to forward the cause of industrial peace, as being well within the general purpose of your Committee; for in our complex industrial civilization of to-day the peace of righteousness and justice, the only kind of peace worth having, is at least as necessary in the industrial world as it is among nations. ”

“ A person creating jobs for five hundred people did not become an idol, but a person taking five thousand workers on strike became a hero. Violent demonstrations, burning buses, killing people became a normal practice. In Industrial Management focus was on ‘labour-problem’. Increasing production, improving production methods, increasing level of quality were relegated to background. To keep and “buy” industrial peace became the full time job for the management. ”

“ The English factory girl who is urged to join her Union, the tired old Scotch gatekeeper with a few pounds to invest, the Galician peasant when the emigration agent calls, the artisan in a French provincial town whose industry is threatened by a new invention, all know that unless they find their way among world-wide facts, which only reach them through misleading words, they will be crushed.” The Industrial Revolution of the past century, steam-power and electricity, the railway and the telegraph, have knit mankind together, and made the world one place. ”

“ Posterity will probably characterize our age as the Industrial Age, a phrase that will signalize our period both for the development8 of industries not thought possible a century ago and for the evolution of the industrial worker to a position of striking importance and power. For the first time in the history of humanity the workman's status is the subject of international agreement. The League of Nations promises to treat Labor from a humanitarian point of view and so to place it on the broad, firm pathway leading to industrial peace and economical solidarity for the common good. ”

“ Probabilities of Industrial Peace.--This concentrative process at work in both capital and labour, consolidating the smaller industrial units into larger ones, and tending to a unification of the masses of capital and of labour engaged respectively in the several industries, is at the present time by far the most important factor of industrial history. ”

“ No nation can hope to make a stand in modern warfare, much less to make headway in warlike [Pg 311] enterprise, without the most thoroughgoing exploitation of the modern industrial arts. Which signifies for the purpose in hand that any Power that harbors an imperial ambition must take measures to let its underlying population acquire the ways and means of the modern machine industry, without reservation ”

“ Technology and industrial experience, in large volume and at a high proficiency, are indispensable to the conduct of war on the modern plan, as well as a large, efficient and up-to-date industrial community and industrial plant to supply the necessary material of this warfare. At the same time the discipline of the campaign, as it impinges on the rank and file as well as on the very numerous body of officers and technicians, is not at cross purposes with the ordinary industrial employments of peace, or not in the same degree as has been the case in the past, even in the recent past. ”

“ The national interest demands that in the period of industrial peace which has been assured by the new contract both management and labor make every possible effort to increase efficiency and productivity in the manufacture of steel so that price increases can be avoided. ”

“ Probably next to the patriarchal stage, in which each factory is a happy family, the industrial conditions most favourable to peace are when a powerful trade union is face to face with a representative employers' association, both under the guidance of strong but moderate leaders and neither feeling it beneath its dignity to treat on equal terms with the other. ”

“ It was not until the Government of Britain, representing the Community, invited Capital, Management, and Labor to meet in common, and policies were arrived at as the result of Round Table Conference, that the necessary adjustments of industry were so arranged as to make possible the vast production of munitions required to win the War. What was necessary to the winning of the War is equally necessary to the winning of Peace — which we can hardly say exists so long as international strife gives way only to industrial unrest. ”

“ Every active industrial or commercial nation is therefore fain to watch and guard its existing opportunities for foreign trade and investment, and to plan ahead for enlarged opportunities to meet the anticipated future needs of an expanding trade and a growing population. It views with fear, suspicion, and jealousy every attempt of a foreign country to curtail its liberty of access to other countries and its equal opportunities for advantageous trade or exploitation. ”

“ Consideration of the common interest of capital and labour dependent on their necessary co-operation in industry might lead us to suppose that along with the growing organization of the two forces there would come an increased recognition of this community of interest which would make constantly and rapidly for industrial peace. But we must not be misled by the stress which is rightly laid on the identity of interest between capital and labour. ”

“ If this authority were exercised with an eye single to the largest and most serviceable output of goods and services, or to the most economical use of the country's material resources and man-power, regardless of pecuniary consequences, the course of management so carried out would be not sabotage but industrial strategy. But business is carried on for pecuniary gain, not with an unreserved view to the largest and most serviceable output or to the economical use of resources. ”

“ As industrial relations imply peaceful relations, under a certain rough reorganization and reconstruction of governmental functions which the association of labor presents, it is inevitable that in its international aspects the association should formally advocate universal peace. Workmen have always realized, however feebly and vaguely they may have expressed it, that it is they who in all ages have borne the heaviest burden of privation and suffering imposed on the world by the military spirit. ”

“ As the foremen of factories testify again and again, factory discipline is valuable only up to a certain point, after which something else must be depended on if the best results are to be achieved.
Monopoly of both the raw material and the newly-opened markets is certainly a valuable factor in a nation’s industrial prosperity; but while we spend blood and treasure to protect one and [Pg 165] secure the other, we wantonly destroy the most valuable factor of all, intelligent labor. ”

“ It is likewise a matter of course that this technological knowledge, that so enables the material equipment to serve the purposes of production and of private gain, is a free gift of the community at large to the owners of industrial plant ”

“ The great owners of capital, earning more than they could consume or profitably invest in home industries, were compelled to send their surplus to colonies and dependencies, where a new profit could be made. With the rapid increase of capital, however, the competition between the industrial nations for the possession of these agricultural dependencies became keener. Such competition meant war. As capitalism approached its climax wars were bound to become more frequent, destructive, and violent. ”

“ It happened in Europe, as it has happened now and again elsewhere, that the ownership of the soil in advanced feudal times took shape as a Landed Interest living at peace and under settled relations with the community from which they drew their livelihood and their means of controlling the community. Under these circumstances there grew up an ever-widening industrial system, under manorial auspices, in which the foremost place is taken by the mechanic arts, in the way of specialised crafts and mechanical processes and appliances. ”

“ The present plight of the German people under war conditions may serve to show how nearly that end may be attained, and yet how inadequate even the most unreserved measures of industrial isolation must be in face of the fact that the modern state of the industrial arts necessarily draws on the collective resources of the world at large. It may well be doubted, on an impartial view, if the mutilation of the country's industrial system by such measures of isolation does not after all rather weaken the nation even for warlike ends ”

“ They rely upon similar economic [37] forces to bring the nations together; reciprocal lowering of tariffs, the common development of the backward countries by the leading nations, the neutralization of canals—and last but not least, the modernization of Russia, Japan, Prussia, and Austria, that is, the full establishment in these countries of industrial capitalism and the semi-democratic political institutions that accompany it—as we see them in Great Britain, France, and America. ”

“ As has been noted above, modern warfare not only makes use of, and indeed depends on, the modern industrial technology at every turn of the operations in the field, but it draws on the ordinary industrial resources of the countries at war in a degree and with an urgency never equalled. ”

“ A community may be small, relatively to the industrial system in and by which it lives, and may yet, if conditions of peace permit it, stand in such a relation of complement or supplement to a larger complex of industrial groups as to make it in effect an integral part of a larger community, so far as regards its technology. ”

“ In a large country, such as America or Russia, which comprises within its national boundaries very extensive and very varied resources and a widely distributed and diversified population, the mischief suffered from restraints of trade that hinder industrial relations with the world at large will of course be proportionately lessened. ”

“ The experience of the campaign does not greatly unfit the men who survive for industrial uses; nor does it come in as a sheer interruption of their industrial training, or break the continuity of that range of habits of thought which modern industry of the technological order induces ”

“ The state of the industrial arts is a joint heritage of the community at large, but where, as in the modern countries, the work to be done by this technology requires a large material equipment, the usufruct of this joint heritage passes, in effect, into the hands of the owners of this large material equipment. ”

“ Such a country comes nearer being a miniature industrial world; although none of the civilised nations, large or small, can carry on its ordinary industrial activities and its ordinary manner of life without drawing on foreign parts to some appreciable extent. But a country of small terri [Pg 265] torial extent and of somewhat narrowly restricted natural resources, as, e.g., Germany or France, can even by the most drastic measures of restraint and mutilation achieve only a very mediocre degree of industrial isolation and "self-sufficiency,"—as has, e.g., appeared in the present war. ”

“ So that the means will be at hand competently to meet this more urgent need of a stricter limitation of the output, in spite of any increased productive capacity conferred on the industrial community by any conceivable advance in the industrial arts. The outcome to be looked for should apparently be such an effectual recourse to capitalistic sabotage as will neutralise any added advantage that might otherwise accrue to the community from its continued improvements in technology. ”

“ A country becomes a "self-contained economic whole" by mutilation, in cutting itself off from the industrial system in which industrially it belongs, but in which it is unwilling nationally to hold its place. National frontiers are industrial barriers. But as a result of such mutilation of its industrial life such a country is better able—it has been believed—to bear the shock of severing its international trade relations entirely, as is likely to happen in case of war. ”

“ It assumes that the capitalists themselves are increasingly likely to profit by peace, to desire peace, and to achieve peace. According to the German Socialist, Karl Kautsky, we are approaching a new stage in the industrial development of the world. ”

“ The like will necessarily apply throughout the industrial occupations that employ extensive plant or processes, or that articulate with industrial processes of that nature; which will necessarily comprise a larger proportion of the industrial process at large than hitherto. ”

“ To make their industrial efficiency count in this way toward warlike enterprise and imperial dominion, the usufruct of any such inoffensive and unpatriotic populace would have to fall into the hands of an alien governmental establishment. ”

“ Today thousands of England's industrial plants are being operated as government factories for the production of war materials, and many other thousands of plants, still under private control, are centering their energies in this same direction.
"We have here in the United States vast resources in manufacturing and producing equipment, but they are unorganized and uneducated for the national service. Our observations of the European War have taught us that it is upon organized industry that we must base every plan of military defense. ”

“ We simply produced, in our factories as well as on our farms, more things that other nations wanted, and we could offer them at prices with which other nations could not compete. This golden key of industrial progress and peaceful commercial methods opened to our trade many doors which seemed to be closed against it by all sorts of artificial obstructions; and this peaceful expansion of our foreign commerce went steadily on, while other nations that had an overabundance of battalions, batteries and warships vainly struggled to keep pace with it. ”