Labour relations

“ Stone; “but they would be sadly out of place here, and very ridiculous. All labour must be directed by the circumstances of the state of society in which it is employed; and all labour, so regulated, is equally respectable.” ”

“ In a society of producers of commodities, the exchange of commodities is carried out according to the labour socially necessary for their production. Labour is the source and the measure of their exchange value. ”

“ When the reader comes to consider this,—which is the great industrial object lesson of modern times,—when he sees what the share is which Labour has appropriated so triumphantly, he will see how the conclusions we have here arrived at, with regard to the causes of production, afford a foundation for the hopes and claims of Labour, as broad and solid as that by which they support the rights of Ability. ”

“ As I hinted before, in the new order of things all branches of labour will be organised in a similar way to the arrangements we see to-day in large factories, large estates, or institutions of the Government. Unnecessary work will be avoided, and the reward for work done will be greater. Labour will not be wasted in making luxuries for the idle, but will be usefully employed in making the necessaries of life for other workers. ”

“ That type of employer has never recognized that capital, [286] brains and manual labour fill separate and distinct rôles in industry. He looks upon himself as the all-dominant personality and Labour as his feudal and dependent hireling. ”

“ I doubt not that in God's good providence new resources will be ever opened before mankind for the employment of human industry; but when I see even a temporary superfluity of labour, I tremble to think of what vast power of grinding and oppressing that very circumstance places in the hands of the employer. ”

“ If we succeed in pointing out the extent and importance of those aids which production derives from the labours of men, who have not been ordinarily classed amongst "working men," but who have been truly the hardest and most profitable workers which society has ever possessed, we shall show what an intimate union subsists amongst those classes of society who appear the most separated, and that these men really labour with all others most effectually in the advancement of the great interests of mankind.
Harrison. ”

“ The emancipation of labour requires the conversion of the instruments of labour into the common property of society, and the management of labour by association, and the application of the product with a view to the general good and an equitable distribution. ”

“ The labourer could only obtain the full produce of his labour in communities in which co-operative production, voluntary exchange, and co-operative distribution were the basis of industrial organisation. ”

“ But law or custom may interfere to limit competition. If apprentice laws, or the regulations of corporate bodies, make the access to a particular employment slow, costly, or difficult, the wages of that employment may be kept much above their natural proportion to the wages of common labour. ”

“ The employment of men, the fixing of their wages, hours of labor, and working conditions, the bargaining in respect of these things-whether carried on separately or collectively-each and all constitute intercourse for the purposes of production, not of trade. ”

“ The forces that are going to help, apparently, in this evolution will be the labour exchange—the centre for the mobilization of labour, the produce exchange, the inventor's spirit in the labour unions and employers' associations, and the gradual organization by inventors of the common vision of all men, and setting it at work on the supreme task of modern life—the task of drawing out, evoking each particular man in the world, and in behalf of all, freeing him for his own particular place. ”

“ We answer, to voluntary laborers or servants who received a compensation for their work. The relations of servant and master or laborer and employer are necessary, legitimate and honorable relations. All men have not the skill to acquire or manage capital, and capital is essential to the accomplishment of great enterprises, to the march of improvement, and the progress of civilization. ”

“ Are the relations of employers and the employed on so satisfactory a footing as to give no grounds for anxiety? Has the labourer, by whose toil all those vast accumulations of capital are created, enjoyed an equitable share of them? Have his means of domestic comfort increased in the same ratio as the wealth of his master? ”

“ Let any one imagine that the labourers of England should suddenly desist from helping each other in simple employments, and he will see at once the prodigious advantages of simple co-operation. In a countless number of employments, the produce of labour is, up to a certain point, in proportion to such mutual assistance amongst the workmen. ”

“ A society that will satisfy the needs of all, and which will know how to organize production to answer to this aim will also have to make a clean sweep of several prejudices concerning industry, and first of all the theory often preached by economists—The Division of Labour theory—which we are going to discuss in the next chapter. ”

“ Before considering the grounds of hope on this subject, a hope which many persons, no doubt, will be ready, without consideration, to pronounce chimerical, I will remark, that unless a satisfactory answer can be made to these two questions, the industrial system prevailing in this country, and regarded by many writers as the ne plus ultra of civilization—the dependence of the whole labouring class of the community on the wages of hired labour, is irrevocably condemned. ”

“ Let us do all we can to help labor. Give it a square deal—an honest and generous wage for an honest day's work. Labor is neither a commodity or a chapel; it's human. Let us inject more of the human element into our dealings with labor and with those of others. ”

“ There, without any deceiving veils falling between, we come close up to the real point at issue between the employer and the employed, between the employé and the community, the standard of living that is possible, as measured by the employé's share of the product of labor. ”

“ The main substance of this immense problem of organising labour, and first of all of managing the working classes, will, it is very clear, have to be solved by those who stand practically in the middle of it, by those who themselves work and preside over work. ”

“ That such consequences may be looked for, is probable, when we consider that labour, whether physical or intellectual, is eminently social, and always most effective when combined—yet, that the achievements which human industry has made conspicuous have been won not always by the combination of many hands, but by the co-operation of many minds and the accumulated experience of many men. ”

“ The workers, by the strength of their Trade Unions, may from time to time obtain improved conditions of employment, but until they obtain possession of the means of producing wealth, namely, the land, the mines, the railways, shipping, factories and workshops, they will remain dependent on a small section of the community providing them with employment. ”

“ The employment of these different sorts of labour power, an employment which is, in its turn, made necessary by the mode of production, makes a great difference in the cost of maintaining the family of the labourer, and in the value of the labour-power of the adult male. ”

“ The purposes of the union are various. The mutual aid and benefit feature is secondary to the protective purpose, which is to secure the most favorable conditions of labor that can be obtained. This includes efforts to raise wages and to prevent their fall, reduction of hours of labor and prevention of their increase, the regulation of apprentices, overtime, piecework, and many other difficulties which arise in the complicated relations of labor and capital. ”

“ Hence, it is not applicable where a great many different things are required of the same workman; nor in relations in which continuity, as, for instance, of the inclination or disposition of the workman is the chief thing.245 The further the division of labor is carried in our day, the greater the part money plays in our social economy, and the more lasting relations are dissolved, the more general becomes piece-work, which, with all its material advantages, has, speaking morally, its dark side. ”

“ The primary task may be to secure a better adjustment of the economic interests of employer and employee through an improvement of the wage system, but in the larger sense the industrial problem is a social and moral one. ”

“ He may prove in many ways, as a mere purchaser, his concern for the interests of the producer. And there are, doubtless, occasions on which you, the great employers of labour, may call upon him to make large sacrifices of his money, his time, and his thoughts, for the welfare of the labouring classes. His example and his encouragement may cheer you on; and as a citizen, as an instructor, as a neighbour, in all the capacities of life, he may act and speak in a way that may indirectly, if not directly, support your more manifest endeavours in the same good cause. ”

“ When we come to questions between labor and its employers, more than this is true. The employers of labor as a class are closely in sympathy with the honest desire of their men to better themselves, and the constant increase in the employment of arbitration to settle difficulties, the experiments in co-operation and profit-sharing, and the furnishing of cheap and good houses to the workers are all evidences of this fact. ”

“ Also, because of the variety of commercial enterprises which are the legitimate prey of the cooperative society, the demand for skilled workers is much more varied than in the organized labor movement. ”

“ Come into our ranks, ye shirkers, for we now rule this land.
Work or starve, the workers said, for you must earn your bread.
Then into their ranks came the masters and joined the workers' song;
Then into their ranks came the masters and joined the workers' song.
All workers, "The Army of Production," in One Big Union, regardless of age, creed, color or sex, is invincible.
Labor is entitled to all it produces. An injury to one is an injury to all. ”

“ Without organization of Labor — where Capital, Management, and the Community are organized — what equality of relationship can there possibly be between the four parties to industry? And where, under such a condition, are the individual units of Labor likely to find themselves in the teeth of a world competition, more relentless where Labor is concerned than in the case of Capital or Management? ”

“ We see on both sides black suspicion twisting the motive behind every action, and the task is to create contentment among the workers, and enlist their hearty co-operation with employers in the process of production. ”

“ As the chosen people bore in their features the sign manual of Jehovah, so division of labour brands the manufacturing workman as the property of capital. ”

“ Labor is here honored and respected, and great examples incite us to action. All around us in the professions, in the marts of commerce, on the exchange, where merchant-princes and capitalists do congregate; in these manufactories and workshops, where the products of every clime are fashioned into a thousand forms of utility and beauty; on these smiling farms, fertilized by the sweat of free labor; in every position of private and of public life, are our associates, who were but yesterday "hireling laborers," "mud-sills," "slaves." ”

“ Why is it that we have a labor question at all? It is for the simple and very sufficient reason that the laboring man and the employer are not intimate associates now, as they used to be in time past. Most of our laws were formed in the age when employer and employees knew each other, knew each other's characters, were associates with each other, dealt with each other as man with man. ”

“ The division of labour, which has played so great a part in furthering competitive commerce, till it has become a machine with powers both reproductive and destructive, which few dare to resist, and none can control or foresee the result of, has pressed specially hard on that part of the field of human culture in which I was born to labour. ”

“ The essential difference between the various economic forms of society, between, for instance, a society based on slave labour, and one based on wage labour, lies only in the mode in which this surplus-labour is in each case extracted from the actual producer, the labourer. ”

“ The labor union movement, unlike the political socialist revolutionary movement, undertakes in its operation to supply labor with a certain working content, which the administrative scheme of industry has excluded from the experience of its workers. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In order to avoid the inconveniency of such situations, every prudent man in every period of society, after the first establishment of the divisions of labor, must naturally have endeavored to manage his affairs in such a manner as to have at all times by him, besides the peculiar produce of his own industry, a certain quantity of some one commodity or other, such as he imagined few people would be likely to refuse in exchange for the produce of their industry.
Labor is the one paramount force which develops the resources of the world. ”

“ In short, it is evident that to lead the labour of large masses of people, and to do that, not merely with a view to the greatest product of commodities, but to the best interests of the producers, is a matter which will sufficiently and worthily occupy men of the strongest minds aided by all the attainments which cultivation can bestow. ”

“ But the labourers can still work, and the capital which previously employed them will, either in the same hands, or by being lent to others, employ either those labourers or an equivalent number in some other occupation. ”