Industrial relations

“ What It Means.—The industrial problem as a whole is a problem of adjusting the relations of employer and employee to each other and to the rapidly changing age in the midst of which industry exists. It is a problem that cannot be solved in a moment, for it has grown out of previous conditions and relationships. It must be considered in its causes, its alignments, the difficulties of each party, the efforts at solution, and the principles and theories that are being worked out for the settlement of the problem. ”

“ The interest of anyone who starts a factory is in production i.e. running the factory. Everyone connected with the business knows that salary will be paid if the business works. If this is known to all then why is it that common methods of showing strength by the workers and management in industrial relations. tend to stop or reduce production? As an answer to strike by the workers the employer resorts to lock-out. ”

“ By learning the social relations and understanding their source, they can profit and prepare to change the industrial structure of society, which as a matter of course, will determine also the changes in the social and political character of the system which is bound to be inaugurated. ”

“ The greatest skill and wisdom on the part of manufacturers and producers will be required to hold and increase it. Our industrial enterprises which have grown to such great proportions affect the homes and occupations of the people and the welfare of the country. ”

“ In industry it is difficult to recognize, because every civilized nation in a healthy state of development must present an extension of industrial production, for the following four reasons: 1. Because occupations that were formerly domestic in character have been taken over by industry. ”

“ How many have paid the slightest attention to the technique of its organization, or have devoted any time to a working out of the smaller problems which must be worked out before it can achieve this or that victory? Here are our great industries, our complex systems of exchange. How many radicals really know the technique of even the smallest section of them? Radicals wish to reorganize the industrial system; would they know how to organize a factory? ”

“ Capital and the Administrative Staff—Capital and the Manual Workers—The Manual Workers inter se—The Administrative Staff and the Manual Workers—Industry and the Consuming Community—Industry and the Nation.
Before we can construct any scheme of reform of our industrial system we must have a clear idea of what is industry. In the prosaic language of economics it is a purposive production of commodities and services, the immediate object of those engaged in it being to provide, through the result of their work, the material means of satisfying their wants and desires. ”

“ Only after we have mastered the principles upon which American industry is based, shall we be in a position to solve the problems which arise directly from the nature of our economic organization.
46. INDUSTRIAL REFORM.—Our industrial life is so clearly based upon certain fundamental institutions, such as private property, free contract, and free competition, that an industrial "system" is said to exist. Certain great evils, notably poverty, have accompanied the development of this system. ”

“ This leads us to the third branch of industrial administration the settlement of the conditions under which the human beings are to be employed. The adoption of one material rather than another, the choice between alternative processes or alternative ways of organising the factory, the selection of particular grades of workers, or even of a particular foreman, may affect, for the worse, the Standard of Life of the operatives concerned. ”

“ The keeping of the industrial balance, therefore, and adjusting the several industrial processes to one another's work and needs, is a matter of grave and far-reaching consequence in any modern community, as has already been shown. ”

“ The development of large scale factory production, the benefit of combination in the competitive struggle, and the tremendous advantage of concentration in securing possession of the unoccupied opportunities, were so great that vast accumulations of capital became the normal agency of the industrial world. ”

“ In presenting this plan of organization of industries, as it exists today, we have in mind only the object before explained. The workers, forced by capitalist ownership of the means of production to do service in all these industries, must organize themselves in their proper places in the industries in which they are engaged. Every worker who studies this map will find where he will fit in when the industries are organized for the control of the workers through industrial organization. ”

“ When we come to the more specific problem of industry, which is our immediate concern, a glance at history shows that the era of most rapid economic progress the world has ever seen has been the era of the greatest freedom of the individual from statutory control in economic affairs. The features of the last hundred years have been the rapidity of development in industrial technique, and constant change in the form of industrial organisation and in the direction of the world’s trade. ”

“ Nothing in modern times has exerted a more profound or far-reaching influence upon the general course of civilization. The factory is the symbol of a new economic order. It has been said, and rightly, that three things,—steam, steel, and credit,—have revolutionized industry during the past hundred years.
Industrial Organization of Today.—In the days of hand-industry men needed no large amounts of capital in order to engage in the production of goods. ”

“ The question how industry would be located, assuming the whole surface of the globe was brought into a single market or area of competition, with an equal development of transport facilities in all its parts; or in other words, "What is the ideal disposition of industry in a world-society making its chief end the attainment of industrial wealth estimated at present values?" ”

“ In conclusion I will venture to express the opinion, that before any system of industrial partnership or profit sharing possible to manufacturers, and hence practical and permanent can be introduced, there must be more, and to a very great extent radically different, fundamental teaching on the part of labor leaders and so-called labor and social reformers. ”

“ Industry is the means by which the material resources of the world are transformed, through human intelligence and human energy, with the aid of natural powers, tools, and machines, into commodities and services available for human use. It is a vast process of transformation, itself a series of transforming processes so inter-related and numerous as to unite mankind, in this age of world-wide industrial expansion, in an enterprise that encompasses the globe.
The Parties to Industry We are accustomed to discuss the problems of industry in terms of Capital and Labor. ”

“ The object of production will primarily consist in offering “service” to mankind and the ideas of making money or profiteering will almost totally disappear. All benefits of industrial achievements will proceed ultimately to the community at large being filtered through individuals, syndicates and the newly organised state. ”

“ The modern industrial system has brought with it an immense variety of practical problems which nations must solve on pain of industrial and commercial ruin. For these problems we want, not a few old-established general principles which no one seriously calls in question, but genuine constructive and organizing capacity, aided by scientific and detailed knowledge of particular institutions, industries and classes. ”

“ He consolidates and harmonizes every branch of wage labor in the industry, until should he declare the present owners expropriated the industry would go along its accustomed course in the hands of the industrial organization without any shock or jar to the rest of us. ”

“ But the modern State has gone further than this: it has realized the necessity of taking an active part in modern industrial life, for the equalization of the terms of competition, the redress of grievances, and the furnishing of utilities, either because it could do it better or because it was the only agency capable of acting. ”

“ And yet there is in modern industry a certain regularity of outline, and a general tendency to follow the economic laws discussed in the preceding three chapters. This circumstance prevents us from concluding that our industrial life is entirely a haphazard affair. ”

“ On every side are to be seen unmistakable evidences of national prosperity. The industrial arts are pursued with more vigor and success than ever before. The various channels of commerce, instead of being drained, dried up, are crowded to their utmost capacity. ”

“ The real question arises as to the manufactures of these materials. But we count upon larger industrial rewards, in the form of wages, and profits, here than in England; we must get more from an industry than England in order to satisfy us. ”

“ J. Shield Nicholson rightly calls, in his "Principles of Political Economy," "the bases of industrial organisation"; and it is to industrial organisation that a country such as ours has been indebted in a pre-eminent degree both for its material prosperity and for the position it occupies to-day among the nations of the world. ”

“ Trusting to the reports of our exhibitions of industrial skill, I was ready to swear that we had left our neighbours of England a hundred leagues behind, and that their manufacturers, to avoid being reduced to beggary by our competition, would soon be obliged to come over to learn how to smelt and refine iron, how to spin cotton, how to manufacture steel, how to manage the most gigantic establishments in the most economical manner, how to despatch mountains of merchandise beyond sea most expeditiously. ”

“ In centralizing manufacturing plants in cities, certain industrial economies are secured, such as: (1) economy in motor power, whether it be water or coal; (2) economy in machinery—it is not necessary to duplicate machines ”

“ We have unjustly been styled a nation of shopkeepers; but it may in all fairness be alleged that, until the last fifteen years, we have been under the spell of the commercial and industrial spirit, and that the intellectual faculties of the nation have been mainly absorbed in the introduction and [135] maintenance of railroads and factories, in the raising and marketing of grain, in the development of real estate enterprises, and in trading in the commodities or securities which these various undertakings have produced. ”

“ The money which they take back to their homes is amply replaced by the treasures they leave behind in the product of their labour, and in the branches of industry which they have introduced or improved." [45]
[45] Of the sixty-four manufactories and workshops, twenty-eight belong to foreigners; and there is not a single industrial establishment in which foreigners are not employed, either as managers, engineers, or labourers. ”

“ Will the present standards of management, skill, workmanship and factory discipline be improved? Will the consumers benefit? Will people save? i. e. Will sufficient fresh capital be forthcoming for the further developments of industry? ”

“ Passing to more evolved societies, it must be observed, first, that the distinctive traits of the industrial type do not become marked, even where the industrial activity is considerable, so long as the industrial government remains identified with the political. ”

“ In so far as we may draw any valid inferences from previous experiments of different kinds, we must note that the record of the successive attempts, in modern industry, to place the entire management of industrial undertakings in the hands of Associations of Producers has been one of failure. In marked contrast, the opposite form of Democracy, in which the management has been placed in the hands of Associa- tions of 'Consumers, has achieved a large and constantly increasing measure of success. ”

“ A brief resume of the industrial history of the last one hundred years or so will be relevant at this stage of the discussion. Capitalistic production, in its modern significance, was born of the industrial revolution in England in the latter half of the eighteenth century. ”

“ When, therefore, the problems of industrial development began to appeal strongly to the national spirit, the country had a trained body of men to call upon who threw themselves heartily and enthusiastically into these practical industrial problems. ”

“ The unexplored recesses of the earth are exploited in a manner and on a scale heretofore undreamed of and unknown, and every department of enterprise is carried on to a degree that distinctly stamps this decade as the acme of industrial enterprise and achievements, the golden age of industrial prosperity, and the acquirement of material improvement and material gain. ”

“ The belief that an industrial country has to concentrate its industries is not, in my opinion, well-founded. That is only a stage in industrial development. As we learn more about manufacturing and learn to make articles with interchangeable parts, then those parts can be made under the best possible conditions. ”

“ And this third great party should be given its proper share of any gain. In fact, a glance at industrial history shows that in the end the whole people receive the greater part of the benefit coming from industrial improvements. In the past hundred years, for example, the greatest factor tending toward increasing the output, and thereby the prosperity of the civilized world, has been the introduction of machinery to replace hand labor. And without doubt the greatest gain through this change has come to the whole people—the consumer. ”