THE ATTITUDE OF AKBHICAH INTELLECTUAL0 TOWARD

THE LABOR KOTEKiSHT , 1390 ~ 1900

DISSERT AT I ON

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State Unitersi ty

By

JOHH L, SHOVSR, P. A,, A. K,

* * * *

The Ohio State University 1957

Approved by;

Advi ser Department of History TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION...... i i i

I. THE LABOR SCENE...... 1

II. THE LABOR INTELLECTUALS...... lU

III. LAISSEZ-FAIRS THEORISTS...... ty)

IV. m a n a g e m e n t a t t i t u d e s ...... So

V. THE PATRICIANS AID LABOR...... SO

VI. THE SOCIAL GOSPEL AND LABOR...... 109

VII. THE NEW ECONO!!ICS AND LABOR...... l>tp

VIII. THE CHANGING MIND OF THE SOCIAL REFORMERS...... 172

IX. THE SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE...... 191

X. JOHN A. COMMONS, THE TRIUMPH OF REALISM...... 21S

CONCLUSION...... 2U0

BIBLIOGRAPHY...... pUfi

ii INTRODUCTION

This study, unlike more general works in intellectual history,

seeks to examine the underlying assumptions and beliefs of a critical

decade by exploring the responses of loading thinkers to a single

challenge to the social and economic status quo.

The focus of the study is upon the decade 1890-1900; the problem

is the attempt of laboring men to better their economic status through

organized union pressure.

The nineties have been chosen in the belief that they constitute a climax point in both intellectual and economic history. The accen­

tuation in the gradual economic development that had been taking place

since the Civil War - the growing power of industrial concentrations, the rise of cities, the continuing flow of immigrants, the decline of the independent farmer - emphasized the failure of traditional American thought to keep pace with the far-reaching social changes. If the eighties were a period of awakening, by the nineties reformers of all kinds stood ready with programs to readjust social and political cir­ cumstances to the facts of a new age. Radicalism stirred in the West and in major cities; sincere reformers like George and Bellamy offered panaceas for social salvation; in religion, in economics, and in social work, prophets of the new day attacked traditionalism and called for ideological and practical reorientation.

i i i iv

Ho decade, Save perhaps the thirties, has been so significant in

American labor history. A new pragmatic theory, the foundation of the labor movement for forty years to come, was built from the failure of

idealism, socialism, and political participation. The American Fed­

eration of Labor proved its strength by surviving a degression, the first labor organization ever to do so, and it withstood attempts at

redirection by both friends and enemies. Violent counteroffensives

of capital, climaxing in the strikes and outbursts at Coeur d'Alene,

Homestead, or Pullman, failed to check the advance in power of an increasingly united working class.

This study assumes that an intellectu al is an individual whose primary concern is with ideas, and if perchance individuals mentioned may have gained prominence in other field s such as p o litic s , they are included on the assumption that despite their importance elsewhere, their intellectual contribution, of itself, would have been significant.

Again, the study is confined to in tellectu als who directly discussed the labor question, eliminating philosophers or economic theorists whose contributions to the issue were secondary to more theoretical considerati ons.

While the nineties are a time base, there has been no attempt to bracket ideas within the confines of this decade. It has frequently been necessary to look to earlier periods to establish the patterns of traditional thought in the nineties. Likewise, in several cases where conclusions have been subsequently drawn from the particular situation in the nineties, or when ideas suggested in the nineties have V not "been developed, or synthesized until later, there has been no hesi­ tation to project the study into subsequent decades.

The hypothesis of this study is that the American intellectual in the nineties failed to come to grips with the labor problem. Save for a few significant exceptions, the intellectual was encumbered by a pattern of thought springing from Locke's doctrine of natural rights,

Puritan "success” philosophy, and reinforced by t*e American frontier tradition, While such a group of ideas cannot easily be defined, the following components, more or less exclusive, may b« noted, First, it was assumed that there was in America unlimited opportunity for economic advancement. Just as land had always been available, so other possibilities were always available for the resourceful and enterprising man; second, there was free opportunity to rise in life, there were no rigid class distinctions based on economic status. Any worker might become a capitalist. Third, success in exploiting this boundless opportunity was the result of Individual effort unassisted by government, by sub sid ies, or by communal a c tiv ity . I n itia tiv e and effort were expended fully only when an individual labored upon his own property. Since success was individual, any failure was due to individual defect, not lack of opportunity. Fourth, society was a unity, in that the pursuit of the individual's personal gain resulted in the general welfare. Fifth, the uninhibited workings of this private enterprise system caused automatically a continuous material progress of society.

From this fund of ideas the American derived his political beliefs, particularly that the least government was the best; he found in it v i his favorite folk-hero - the self-made man of material wealth; hie defense of free enterprise was simply a rationalization of the ideas translated into economic terms. For the opponent of labor organiza­ tion, this pattern of ideas was an effective buttress to an intransi­ gent attitude of defiance and non-recognition* The reformers who framed the social gospel or built a new ethical economics sought a middle ground which would reject the most extreme application of laissez-faire, but retaining individualism, self-help and claselessness, would find for the worker a new unity in the natural corporate harmony of the business community. In no sense would the reformers accept economic class organization of the laboring men0

This ideology shaped in Jeffersonian pre-industrial America had no relevance to the world-wise pragmatic union leaders who faced the critical problems of large-»cale industrialism* The practical, con­ servative union leaders had no alternative but to erect firm barriers against all intellectuals, and thus to assure a separation of intel­ lectuals from the labor movement which has persisted to the present day*

Accordingly, this study begins with the question; What did labor want? It seeks to answer this through examination of the objectives outlined by union leaders and by the intellectual spokesman within the labor movement. Second, it will examine those patterns of traditional thought developed before the nineties and employed during the decade by academians, business leaders, and aristocrats in their v i i opposition to labor* Third, it will turn to the reform compromise as expressed in the social gospel and the new economics. Tourth, it will discuss the radicals who would project the revolt against traditional thinking into a revolt against capitalism; and fifth, it will conclude with an examination of those intellectuals who attempted to interpret the new function of trade unionism within a capitalistic structure, and to redefine economic theory in terms of a new role both for business and labor combination. chapter one

THE LABOR SCENE

"The lahor troubles, their causeB, course, and cure, took lead of all other topics in the public prints, and in serious conversation,"

Edward Bellamy wrote in the introductory chapter of his Looking

Backward, 13&7~2000.^ While the American economy moved forward with giant strides in the decades after the Civil War and poured forth from its seemingly boundless industrial cornucopia rails and steel, flour, meat, and oil in ever increasing abundance, the expanding class of

Americans who depended upon wages for their living shared leas and less in the bountiful rewards capitalism had to give, Henry George stated the dilerana succinctly: progress and poverty seemed to advance together0 The workingman's economic position had improved, but the

Btiffly colonnaded income figures alone did not reveal the true picture.

They did not t e l l th at the nature of the economy had changed from agrarian to industrial, and that with the security of the land gone, the new claBB of wage earners were solely dependent upon th e ir income from labor. Despite the emphatic denials of employers, laborers in industry worked for long hours at deadening Jobs for pay barely suf« ficient for subsistence; to supplement the meager family income, small children and women trudged to work daily in mills and mines.

The ephemeral attempts of workers to bring pressure upon employers to remedy this state of affairs had met with scant success. Beginning

1(Boston, /iSSf/, 1917), 18.

1 2

In the days of Jackson, embryonic labor organizations, barely main­

taining existence, struggled to protect and improve the position of the

wage workerB. By 1890 the waning KnightB of Labor, crushed by the

Burlington Strike, its cooperatives a failure, was fast being eclipsed by the emerging American Federation of Labor, founded in 1386. A vaBt

ideological chasm separating the Knights from the A, F. of L. was

testimony to the lack of direction and purpose in the labor movement.

Not only was there uncertainty within the ranks, but a series of

harrowing challenges from outside threatened the destruction of the

s t i l l in fa n t w orkers’ movement, The Haymarket r i o t , Homestead S trik e ,

the Coeur d'Alene riots, and the Pullman Strike pointed up the deter­

mination of the forces standing in the way of labor's demand for

recognition.

- 0 -

Intellectuals contributed much of the discussion of the labor problem Hin the public prints and in serious conversation,H yet dif«

ferent from their Suropean counterparts, they looked in upon the problem from the outside rather than surveying it from within. The

intellectual of any age is a kind of conscience of society. Not only

is he the writer, the scholar, or the speaker; as a dealer in ideas he

attempts to generalize from the immediate experience of his society.

Unlike most of his fellows, he attempts to interpret experience rather

that merely to accept it. He relies upon an ideological slide rule

which he may call tradition, religion, science, or ethics, to measure

and appraise his own culture. It is not a far step for him to desire 3 a re-direction of society in the particular pathway where his calcu­

la tio n s t e l l him i t ought to move.

The American intellectual did not share in labor*s hattle for

recognition and status. Both the Knights of Labor and the American

Federation of Labor were so determined upon their own ends and means

that they could find no place for those who would re-direct them. They

feared the theories of the intellectual as against their own prac­

ticalities, they feared his vision of the ultimate against their preoccupation with the immediate,, Consequently, they deliberately erected barriers to exclude him from their organizations.

Despite the scorn with which organized labor received their Sage

advice, prophets and seers of pulpit, press, and classroom nevertheless hastened to take sides as the labor question became the foremost social issue of the age, A tiny minority tried to imitate those European intellectuals like the German socialists or the English Fabians who had exercised active leadership in trade unions, A few defended the status quo by trying to discount any labor problem; many pontifically counselled moderation and self-help to the workingmen. The one undeniable fact was that by the 1890*s America had a "labor problem," a situation most

Americans had considered to be unique to the tired and static economy of Europe and foreign to America*

- 0 -

The American Federation of Labor, which by this period claimed the right to speak for labor, was a selfish class-conscious organization representing an elite of skilled workers - in no senBe did it represent

the American working class. Its program which concentrated upon immediate wages and hours goals was a deliberate policy forged by its businesslike leaders from the many failures and the few successes in labor's past. The national organization was a federation in a true

sense of the word, consisting largely of component autonomous unions of crafts* The intellectuals whose broad social viBion incorporated the whole class of workingmen and who looked hopefully to eventual equality

of economic and political rights for all, found narrow business unionism myopic.

One of the first objectives of the new American Federation of

Labor, indeed, had been to discard an ideology particularly enamoring

to many of the intellectuals. This was the antimonopolism of the farmer organizations, the single-taxers, and the Knights of Labor. Anti­ monopolism rested upon the assumption that in America opportunity was unlimited. All that was necessary to allow the advance of the moral, hard-working "self-made man" was to remove a l l a r t i f i c i a l obstacles to his advancement. Henry George, despite the strong support given by

New York City unions to his bid for the mayoralty in 1886, conceived no need for labor organizations. They were restrictive institutions that interfered with the "producer's relation to his opportunity:" they often could find employment for their own members only by displacing other workers. With the infinite opportunities unlocked by the single tax, their need and their utility would wither away.

Similarly, the Knights of Labor professed a policy in line with intellectual ideals of harmony, self-help, ana opportunity. The ob­ jective of the Knights was to by-pa8s the middleman and through the 5 fusion of the functions of owner and worker, replace the wage system with worker-owned cooperatives, This would come so gradually, according to conservative Grand Master Workman Terence V, Powderly, as not even to destroy existing ownership; it would merely extend it, A romantic and prim itive, he even hoped that out of cooperatives there might come eventually a return to the soil where each man would he master of his own homestead, Violence and strikes had no part in this slow march to

U topia, Although the Knights became embroiled in s t r i f e , i t was no O doing of Powderly1s - he boasted of never having ordered a strike.

In rejecting antimonopolism, the A, F0 of L, accepted a capitalism more mature than the agrarian centered laissez-faire opportunism of the

Knights, The first premise of Federation policy was that available opportunity was limited. Its aim was to exercise the same control over jjob supply that monopoly exercised over production. Just as the capitalist from 1873 onward had been trying to divest himself of a com- petitive market, the A, F. of L. sought to increase job opportunities through shortening work hours and enhancing the demand fo r goods. At the same time the supply of laborers would be kept static through apprenticeship regulation, strict craft organization, and restriction of immigration.

The p re sid en t of the F ederation, Samuel Gompers, was the p rin c ip a l spokesman for the pragmatism and anti-intellectualism that characterized the union's strategy. Gompers had experience with radical

^Terence 7. Powderly, The Path I_ Trod, eds. Harry Carman, Henry David, and Paul N. Guthrie (New York, 19 W>), pp. 268-70, 282; see also by the same author, "Strikes and Arbitration," Horth American Eevlew, 1^-2 (May, 1886), pp. 502- 506, — — intellectualism, for like a surprisingly large number of the union *b 3 influential leaders, he had had a youthful education in Marxism*

While he never made a formal commitment, hiB intimate associates from

1873 to 187S were ex p atriated M arxists, Gompers averred in h is auto­ biography the belief that Marx had been primarily a trade unionist, opposed to both the political and anarchist elements in the labor movement, John R, CommonB points out that the one Important element of his labor theory Gompers gleaned from his socialist experience was his class consciousness. Labor was and would remain a class apart,,

!?he union's policies should aim toward goals realizable for individual members of th a t c la s s . He concentrated, th e re fo re , upon "the actual economic problems of the shop as against the general reforms of

anarchism, socialism, politics, in which non-vage-earners were adepts.B5

Ever the empiricist however, Gompers rebelled against Marx'a "solidarity" concept of class which looked to labor's conquest of capitalism en masse, Gonpers and the fathers of the A» F. of L., conditioned by

their shop experience, looked first to the worker as as individual.

Economic power meant strength to protect the single worker in his job.

Rather than seeking the economic betterment of all, their aim was to prevent the employer's use of his economic power arbitrarily against

the helpless individual workingman,

^Adolph S tra sse r and P* J. McGuire were members of Sorge's I . W, A» Frank Foster did not reject socialism until 1886,

^Samuel Gomners, Seventy Years of Life and Labor (New York, 1 9 2 5), I . 91. ^John R, Commons, "Karl Marx and Samuel Gompers," P olitical Science Quarterly, XLI (June, 1926), 285. 7 Gompera1 rejection, of in te lle c tu a ls was d elib e rate and d ecisiv e.

In hi a long term as chief executive of the union he waged re?tentless war upon idealism, radicalism, and political involvement. His some­ time b perceptive annual reports to the national convention were variations on several central themes. First, the need for ever- strengthened organization; second, concentration exclusively on prac­ tical goals; third, the evolutionary nature of progress toward these goals; fourth, the complete forsaking of political solutions; fifth, the determination to use force if necessary to gain desired ends.

Gompers believed organization brought maturity to the labor move­ ment. Through balance of the forces of capital and labor, conflict could be mitigated. "The better prepared we are to enter into strikes, the less occasion will we have to resort to them . . . "he told the delegates in 1896.^ “The organization and concentration of the one

- capitalists, pre-supposes the organization and concentration of the other - workers. 11

Like a giant business firm, this organization looked only to immediate goals. As early as 1889, the A. F. of L. president declared:

"Our organization is founded on eminently practical questions. We pro­ pose to organize our fellows, we propose to improve the condition of our fellow working men and women, to raise men upon a high standard of life, a higher plane of the social structure in which we live."^ Fore­ going even faint glimmers of the idealism so dear to the intellectual,

kproceedlngs, American Federation of Labor for 1896, 20.

7lbid., 1889, 10. s he maintained in 1890. "that the working people are in too great a need of immediate improvements in their condition to allow them to forego them in the endeavor to devote their entire energies to an end however S ■beautiful to contemplate. "

Yet advance had to he gradual, even toward these limited goals.

Gompers complained to those who would move more hastily!

There are some who, dissatisfied with what they term the slow progress of the lahor movement would have us hasten it hy what they lead themselves to "believe is the shorter route. No intelligent workman who has passed years of his life in the study of the labor problem, expects to wake up any fine morning to find the hopes of these years realized overnight," and the world on the flood-tide of the millen­ nium.

With increasing emphasis, Gompers spurned political participation, particularly when in 1896 the union nearly harkened to the tempting call of the free silver crusade. Even before the battle over Socialism in 1893 and 189^-, Gompers was pleading: " P o litic a l issu es . . . fin d the union barren ground for sowing. There has been a steady growing conviction among organized toilers that political aims cannot settle 10 economic demands."

On this isolated economic level the necessity for use of force was but a reaction to the amassed power of labor's opponents.

I have used the work "combatants." Such, indeed, we are, in all that the work implies. Against us we find arrayed a host guarded by special privileges, buttressed

gIbld., 1890, 1 3 .

5Ibid., 1898, l4.

^Samuel Gompers, "Trade Union, Their Achievements, Methods, and AiBS," Journal of Social Science, XXVIII (October, 1891), 9

by legalized trusts, fed by streams of legalized monopol­ ists, picketed by gangs of legalized "Pinkertons”, and having in reserve thousands of embryo employers who, under the name of "militia" are organized, uniformed, and armed for the sole purpose of holding the discontented in sub** servient bondage to iniquitous conditions,

labor does not consciously foster a strike, but * iolence is a better alternative than "the panga of hunger," Still, recurring to his balance of power principle, Gompers argued, "To prepare for strikes is to avert them, or at least to reduce their number; and it is beyond the shadow of a doubt th a t more s trik e s have been averted by the organ- .12 iration of labor than by any other means,"

There was little in the aims of pragmatic unionism that could appeal to one with a sensitive social imagination, or who deBired effective economic reform. Even casual perusal of the words and writings of GomperB makes it clear that what the A, F, of L, sought was the same type of economic control over the job market as that exercised by monopoly in the broader reaches of the economy. For example, he wrote in his autobiography: "For a number of years I had foreseen the necessity for paralleling in the labor movement the centrailzation that was taking place within the industrial organization,"^-3 John R, Commons,

Gompers' personal friend and interpreter, perceptively described the ultimate sought as "constitutionalism" in industrial relations, where

u i t i a . , %.

■^Samuel Gompers, "S trik es and the Coal M iners," Forum, 2b (September, 1897)* P* ^7.

13Gompers, 70 Y ears, I , 3^6. 10 collective "bargaining could be carried on by direct negotiations of two organised groups, each holding power and sanction through strikes and lU lockouts over the other.

In 1901 Gompers served as Vice President of the National Civic

Federation, an organisation of business and labor leaders which sought to promote collective bargaining between equally balanced groups.

Addressing itB convention that year, the A, F, of L. president made clear, "I will not join - I have not joined - in that hue and cry against combinations of capital, I realise that this is a matterof 15 economy and development and stre n g th ,"

- 0 -

Committed qs they were to immediate goals of wages, hours, and conditions of labor for the skilled working man, the businesslike tinion leaders clearly recognized that the ideological bounds of the labor** oriented intellectuals were far wider than their own. They regarded the intellectuals as social mystics who saw labor as the avant-garde of some eosmic social rejuvenation. Their presence in the ranks would jeopardize the "first things first" axiom which was the cardinal premise of pragmatic unionism. The A, F, of L., by implication at least, accused the in te lle c tu a l of thinking not in terms of re a l workmen, but in terms of abstract individuals deduced from general theories. The

Marxist intellectual pictured the worker as spurning all else for the

lH John E. Commons et al, History of Labor in the United States (New York, 1918), II, 527. 15 ^National, Conference on Industrial Conciliation, under the aus­ pices of the National Civic Federation,1 New York, December 16-17, 1901 (New York, 1902), pp. 69-70. 11 benefit of his class; the Christian Socialist tried to remake the workingman, the final product being an ethically sensitive laborer shaped in the image of the creator; and the Fabian efficiency-oriented intellectual conjured up a workingman ready to sacrifice himself in a full drive for more effective organization.^

American labor consistently turned its back upon intellectual leadership. Operating independently, its leaders developed out of the ranks. As a result, not the panaceas of intellectuals, but the trade union thinking of the rank and file dominated.

Terence V. Powderly, in spite of his own vague idealism, did not hide his disdain for intellectuallsm. He was contemptuous of young men "just broken loose from college, filled with knowledge gleaned from books, writing, talking, vociferating, exasperating, and bleating about the coming revolution.11 He pointed up the sharp dichotomy be­ tween the radicalism which he considered synonymous with intellectual!sm and the conservatism of the ordinary laborer by adding: "The working* men, especially the organized workingmen of the United States are not planning a revolution. They of all people are most concerned in the 17 perpetuity of our institutions."

Samuel GonrperB while still a humble laborer in the New York cigar industry, evolved what he called one of his "guide-posts „ . . for years to come":

I saw th a t leadership in the labor movement could be safely entrusted only to those into whose hearts and minds

16 Selig Perlman, A Theory of the Labor Movement (New York:, 192g),

■^Powderly, The Path _! Trod, ^5~U6. 12

had. been woven the experience of earning their bread by daily labor. I saw that betterment for the workingman must come primarily through workingmen. I saw the danger of entangling alliances with intellectuals who did not under** stand that to experiment with the labor movement was to experiment with human life.

This pragmatic union synthesis did not materialize without serious challenge. In the throes of the depression of 1S93* with economic gains difficult to obtain, there was a strong temptation to turn the

A. F. of L. toward political objectives. Socialists in 1S9^ nearly won the union's endorsement of a political program calling for collective ownership of the means of production. The success of Gompers and his associates often Came through shrewd parliamentary outmaneuvering of their opponent b0

The survival of the A. F. of L. in contrast to its predecessor organizations resulted from the fact it did not, even through vague criticisms of the wage system, challenge the capitalist system or private property, the root and branch of American conservatism. By steering clear of political involvements, it avoided splinterings and schisms over issues other than those directly economic. It kept its fro n t u n ited on exclusively economic goals. The A. F. of L. was no organization of new immigrants and tenement dwellers, its members were actual or potential property holders who lived in simple but tidy working class residential areas. By its concentration upon immediate

l ft Gompers, JO Y ears, I , 97~9^. material problems of the skilled worker, not visions of Utopia for a whole class, it made this potential middle class working man realize the importance of united action to the objectives he considered most important® The backbone of the A. F® of L®*s support was the members of the most economically and socially advanced of the American working class® CHAPTER TWO

THE LABOR UNION INTELLECTUALS

Despite their disavowal of intellectualism, American labor unions

found i t necessary to defend th e ir cause to th e ir members and to the

general public, hence it was necessary to breed within the ranks men

of sufficient candor and eloquence to act as spokesmen. Those labor

leaders whose role as speakers, writers, or interpreters could be dig­

nified by the term "intellectual" were manifestly of the homespun variety. They were labor leaders first, intellectuals secondj Lacking

formal education, without exception they rose from the ranks, often

served as local union officials, and claimed influence, in the case of

the American Federation of Labor, only because they could defend its

basic tenets simply and well. However, their acceptability was con­

ditioned upon their close adherence to the parly line; to stray from it

meant loss of influence, alienation, or both. Of the three labor

intellectuals considered here, George E. McNeill w®s old in the labor

movement before the A. F, of L, was born and h is youthful o rie n ta tio n

in antimonopolism always precluded his complete acceptance by the union

leaders. The second, Frank K. Foster, although once a Marxist,was bo

firm in the faith that he might be regarded as an official spokesman as much as Gompers. The th ir d , George Gunton, c a rrie d the p arty lin e

further than the party wanted to go and drifted from the fold, at least

in practice. In theory, however, he was never far from the union's

expressed position.

1U 15

George E, McNeill never doubted that there was a Golden Day in the future for labor. He might reshape and modify his plan of how the millennium would come, but through h is long career he never waned in the firm faith that it was coming. What a day it would beJ "When the Golden Rule of Christ shall measure the relations of men . . . thB glad evangel of the Christmas morn shall sound again . . . peace on earth shall prevail, not by subduing of man to man » . . but by the free acceptance of the Gospel that all men are of one blood,

More than any other active labor leader of the epoch, McNeill was deeply entwined in the reform tradition of the New England idealists.

Born in Amesbury, Massachusetts in I 8 3 6 , he was a member of a working class abolitionist family. His first taste of labor strife was an I 85 I strike in his home town’s woolen mills, where already he was a regular employee. His reform interests extended over most of the post Civil

War social scene. Prom abolition he moved to the labor problem; also he was an ardent temperance spokesman. During the Civil War, McNeill met Ira Steward, the intellectual father of the eight-hour movement, a cause McNeill championed for the rest of his life. With Steward and

George Gunton he helped organize the International Labor Union in IS 7 8 .

Remarkably similar to the later A. F. of L,, the Union refused to join in political ventures with the Greenbacks and accepted the wages system as permanent.

Devoting his life to the labor cause, McNeill was for eight years president of the Eight Hour League, secretary of a short-lived

■^George E. McNeill, e d ., The Labor Movement (Boston, 13S7). U6S-69. 16 cooperative union called the Sovereigns of Industry, and served until

May, 1873 a8 first deputy of the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In the crucial year, 1886, McNeill, like Henry George, was a candidate fo r mayor of hie home-town, Boston. His fate was the Same as George's*

A member of the Knights of Labor, he served as Secretary-Treasurer of District 30 Boston and represented the Knights before Congressional committees in 1886. During his career, he was associated at different times with four different labor papers. McNeill was one of the few leaders to bridge the ch&sju between the Knights and the A. F. of L.

With a speaking and prose style like a frontier evangelist, wearing a flowing white beard that made him resemble nothing less than an Old

Testament prophet, he adorned his rhetoric with frequent references to

"God and Mammon" and fiery Biblical quotations. Such ardor and spirit must have made him an impressive figure in his frequent appearances 2 before the A« F. of L. conventions and other labor assemblies;

McNeill's most important contribution to the literature of the labor question was The Labor Movement which he edited in 1887. A for» gotten minor classic of social protest, the lengthy volume contained a number of short essays by such authorities as Henry George, Franklin H.

Giddings, the sociologist, and E, J. James, economist and later President of University of Illinois* McNeill himself contributed seven articles®

The not too thinly veiled purpose of the volume was to reconcile the approach of the Knights of Labor with the new program of the American

Federation of Labor. This is particularly evident in the McNeill articles.

2 Ibid., 6ll; see also Arthur Mann, Yankee Reformers in the Urban Age (Cambridge, 195*0. 175-SO* 17 In the tradition of the Knights he looked to the eventual abolition of the wages system and the creation of worker-owned cooperatives, hut at the same time he spoke glowingly of the great social gains to be realised when the eight hour day, the principal objective of the Federation, was a r e a lity e

Like William Morris he viewed the industrial system as crude, ugly and unromantic. It encouraged despotism, disease, corruption, misery, vice, and crime0

The bell that calls the weary, half-paid worker from his needed rest, taunts him with each resounding stroke. The machinery that renderB his skill and time of leBB value to himself and more to his master, becomes the hated in- etrument of torture; its monotonous hum keeping time to his groans ana curses. The mill, the mine, the foundry and the round-house stand like giants, ever ready to swallow up his substance. With such feelings constantly present in the hearts of the laborers, unused to thought, disciplined only to act, what wonder that violence should spread like an epidemic from s ta tio n to ^ sta tio n , from mine to mine, and from factory to factory.

The worker demanded a change in this condition; in the future there ought to be a "levelling-up" process by which wealth would be distributed in the process of production. Eminently human, McNeill predicted that cooperation would liberate the motives of men, "The motives of the chattel-slave are buried with his chains, new ambitions are aroused, new hopes give strength to new demands; education, culture and opportunity are ever beckoning to new energy,* The wage worker who formerly rendered his services only grudgingly, when once his own

^McNeill, The Labor Movement, U^lf— 55.

Sbid., 1460-61. 18 5 employer, e cooperator, “works as never before," With earnings

accumulating and production stimulated, any need for capitalists and

middlemen would gradually disappear. The,* would be “ground to powder g between the upper and nether millstones of progressive civilization,"

Work would become p leasu re, not pain. The reduction of hours, which

would follow upon worker control, would place the lever of civilization under the humblest man and . , . /.lift/ him up to the enjoyment of all

the opportunities of civilization, making him a better man in this

world and in the world to come,"7

Like his precursor Steward, McNeill in 1887 was stiU under the

spell of the antimonopolist's dream of unlimited opportunity. In

interpreting the "Principles of the Knights of Labor," McNeill aligned

himBelf squarely within the gradualism of that organization^. anti-

monopoly drive. The first step in the process was "the organization of

all laborers into one great solidarity, end the direction of their united

efforts toward the measures that shall, by peaceful processes, evolve

the working classes out of their present condition in the wage system

into a cooperative system,"

McNeill,s attempt to correlate the shortened hours drive of the

A, of L, w ith the cooperative movement of the Knights was not a

^Ib id . ,

^McNeill, The Labor Movement, UfH.

7Ibid.„ Ug2.

8lbid., U85. 19 success, for it was the cooperative theme that still stood out most clearly. Worker ownership would come first, then hours would he reduced to a minimum, profits increased to the maximum, and the worker transformed into a #man upon whom the honors and duties of civilization Q can safely rest.""'

McNeill was not a profound thinker. His approach was that of the humanist, not the analyist. Fired by the idealism of the emerging social gospel, he believed in a Kingdom that would come in this world by the efforts of mortals. He never doubted the goodness and rationality of men, one® freed fromthe wage system^ oppression.

Since his departure point was sentiment and not logic, it was not difficult for McNeill to change tack with the waning of the Knights and the rise of the A. F„ of L. He always defined his ends ih the language of idealism, but noticeably by the turn of the century he had adjusted his "means" to the point of discussing the limitation of Job oppor­ tunities, the necessity for high dues, and other solid pragmatic union approaches.

While he was a frequent contributor to the American Federationist from 1890 1° 1 9 0 0, two articles published in the twilight of hie life

(He died in 1 9 0 6.) raise again the questions posed in his early book.

In an important address to the Fifteenth Meeting of the American

Economic Association he spoke of "Trade Union Ideals" - a subject of little concern to the ordinary union leader, but one in which McNeill w&s particular^ qualified. The old idealism was still there, as was

9 Ibid., ^66. 20 the purple prose. The lahor movement had now become, metaphorically, the "finger of true civilization touching the button of the dynamic forceB of our diviner nature." But a new theme appeared. McNeill had suggested before the lack of any real freedom of contract in employee— employer bargaining; now it was the core of his text.

The opportunity for the nearest approach to freedom of contract is when a powerful labor organization has attained a membership covering practically all the craftsmen; that is, when an employer cannot employ help or such help or such q u an tity of help as he req u ires u n less such help are members of a union. In such case the employer himself or his repre­ sentative and the representatives of the employees meet on measurably equal terms — provided always that the trade union is strong enough to enable the members to remain from work for such a length of time as will so diminish the cap­ ital invested in the enterprise aB to compel a conference or to cause bankruptcy.

The unions were correct in claiming that only through them could the laborers fix the price and conditions of work. The worker was a merchant selling his own time; his labor was the only commodity on the market where the price was determined by the buyer, not by the seller.'1'1' A humble wage worker had human rights as well as property rights; in fact, the two were contingent upon each other. However,

McNeill still looked forward to a shore dimly seen where there would be a partnership of the owner of tools and of the laborer; he still hoped to relieve work of its monotony and enhance the worker’s sense of individual importance. But, sifted through the stormy decade of the n in e tie s , these co n sid eratio n s had become secondary to the

10 George E. McNeill, "Trade Union Ideals," Publications of the American Economic Association, 3r<* Series (New York, 1903), IV, 218.

U Ibid., 220. 21 day-to-day struggle for balance of power. Trade union?, he said in

November, 190^» provide an orderly method to eliminate the "feudal spirit" from the industrial world without destroying past achievements or retarding future progress* Their objective is "better distribution of opportunities and things for today, tomorrow, and forever. They do 12 not seek a redistribution."

McNeill was the most idealistic of the union intellectuals; he was the only prominent figure in the A. F. of L* who "might have been comfortable in the company of social gospel ministers or morally inspired reformers. Yet his was an amorphous idealism that snaped itself to the particular cause in which he found himself involved. It was not a social or religious idealism that embraced all men in its fold; it was simply a sincere dedication to the particular objective of organized labor at the time.

The real positions of power within the American Federation of

Labor were reserved fo r younger men, more hard-headed than eloquent.

McNeill was a "grand old men" of the organization, a revivalist, but perhaps because of his deep saturation in obsolete KnightB of Labor idealism, or hie interpretation of the Federation’s purposes in more grandiloquent terms than the leaders could stomach, never an active lead er.

One senses that McNeill was ill at ease with the mundane matters of immediate problems and routine policy. So firmly fixed were his

12 George E, McNeill, "Labor's Advance: From the Old to the New Philosophy," American Federatlonist, XI (November, I 9 0U), 1 7 5 . 22 eyes upon th® coming Kingdom that the change of step implicit in his writings was not important. He was greatest where the pragmatic union leaderB were weakest, For after a l l , could a Samuel Gompers ever conceive, let alone describe, the working out of labor objectives as the "bloodr-stained** march of labor

through deserts wide of poverty and want, over marshlands where the quagmires and quicksands of deceit endanger his trembling steps, over the streams of culture’s brutal coi>. tempt, up the barren hills of opportunity, across the wide plain of indifference, /to / reach at last the promised land, by poet and prophet long foretold, the land of peace, of liberty, or fraternity, and of equality , 1 *

~ 0 -

A Esw Englander like McUeill, Prank Keyes Poster was an amateur poet and novelist, as well as an leader active in the highest councils of tbs American Federation of Labor, Although he too had his youthful

"affair1’ with radicalism he moved always in close harmony with the official position of the union. He was a "party line spokesman," not a creative thinker. Yet within the confines of his intellectual creed his explanations are bold, frank, and sometimes brilliant.

Born in 1855 snd completing an education in common schools and

Academy, Poster entered the most scholarly of c ra ft tra d e s, th a t of printing, Hv j o in e d the Hartford, Connecticut Typographical Union, and a f te r moving to Boston in 1880 was p re sid en t of the Cambridge lo c a l.

He associated with the Knights of Labor and by 1S8U edited the order’s journal in Massachusetts. His candidacy for the lieutenant-governorship in the hopeful year of 1886 failed* By the time he joined with Gompers,

^M cN eill, "Trad® Union Id e a ls," The Labor Movement, 228-29, 23

McNeill, and Strasser as a pioneer member of the American Federation of

Labor, he had abandoned any vestiges of social!am or antimonopolism 1^ remaining from his early career.

A thread of consistency runs through all Foster's writing. Unlike

McNeill, his views showed no marked change during the fifteen years of

his active labor career. Labor's problem, he pointed out in an early

article, was the consequence of the social upheaval of large scale

industrialism. The laborer might look back "with a memory of regret"

to the pristine days "when the New England shoe shop was a lyceum,"

when "the maua was more than a tender to the machine and the m ilita ry

rule of our present industrial system did not oppose a perpetual menace

to the individuality of the operator." But look back was all he might

do. There was no return. Opposition to large scale industrialism was

futile. Labor's realistic demand should be that the machine serve the producing masses as well as the consuming, that its effects should be 15 not so radical as to cause worker displacement and suffering.

The demands of labor, Foster attested, are selfish and individual­

istic; they are not class demands. The laborer is heir to those faults

and those strengths which characterize all human nature. What he wants

are things which "affect h is standard of manhood ra th e r than th a t of

classhood." He demands recompense not merely to meet life's needs but

^Sdann, Yankee Reformers, 189-190; McNeill, The Labor Movement. 60J. 15 Frank K. Foster, "Printers, Their Unions," in McNeill, ed,, The Labor Movement, 19*1-96* 2k to provide an "assured future and adequate to bring "light and l6 leisure" into the life of every manual worker. The laboring man

w a n ts his full measure of liberty, not the mythological liberty of

freedom of contract.

Life without liberty is not life at all in the full sense of the word. That man who is forced to give practically all his waking hours to the service of the one who buys his labor, in order that he may secure his daily bread, can hardly be called a free man. It is no answer to say that the laborer has control of his labor, and may change his employer when he will. Legally, this is the case, but the economic penalty coerces him to continue under irksome conditions, as truly as the whip of the southern slave-driver served to coerce the negro. The aggregation of capital in corporations has largely destroyed the mobility of labor and dwarfed the economic influence of the individual laborer. It is only by associative effort that the laborer can make his voice heard * . . ^

First of the list of labor’s needs was shorter hours, closely

coupled with increased wages. Basic for Foster’s argument was his

insistence that the wages question correlated with the standard of

civilization. If hours were reduced and the workingmen were thus pro­

vided more time for leisure and culture, their taste would improve

correspondingly, and the laborers would soon deserve and demand higher

wages. A people contented with "black bread and wooden shoes" do not

raise the standard of revolt. Such people in their few blind protests

would demand only the immediate satisfaction of animal needs and wants.

But to free labor from the drudgery of long toil would open vistas of

oulture and education; once touched, latent capacities would develop

Frank K. Foster, "The Condition of the American Working Class: How Can it Be Benefited," Forum, XXIV (February, 1398), 712-13.

17Ibid., 715 . 25 18 by use end exerclBe. ThiB did not mean that the wage-worker would at once make the beat use of his leisure, The so-called "leisure classes" most assuredly did not } "But the contention of the trade unions iB th at reasonable leisure is an essential requisite for the production of the most efficient labor, for intelligent citizenship, and for well- balanced men,

Reflecting the popular Spencerian philosophy, Foster made clear that labor sought no dead level Bellamy-type society. Freedom of

opportunity was what labor was seeking J "In eq u ality of m aterial pos­

sessions among men is certain to continue as long as some are prudent

and others foolish, some grasping and others generous; but nature’s law 20 of compensation must not be restricted by irtificial conditions,"

G-overnment privileges granted to natural monopolies, the rising bureaucracies in cities and states, represented a kind of interference which might easily lead to antagonism of classes: the haves against

the have-nots. Labor, by its own accord, should gain greater leisure and benefits within the society. In the last analysis, ", . , the welfare of a class depends in the ultimate upon the welfare of the

entire community. The state is organic. Its constituent parts may not 21 by harmed without detriment to the entire organism," Labor, deprived

l gIb id , , 7 1 6 .

^Frank K, Foster, "Trade Union Ideals," Publications of the Ameri- Economic Association, 3rd Series, IV (Hew York, 1903), 2 3 5 ,

^Foster, "Condition of the Working Class . , , loc. clt, , 722,

21Ibid,, 721 . 26 and denied an equitable share in the distribution of goods, sought its rightful status in the unified economic society*

To gain this desired balance, labor had to organize effectively on a class basis. This is no contradiction of fester's organic idea.

The laborer, he maintained, was customarily a part of the community,

"but when he brings h is labor in to the market, h is in te re s t demands that he obtain for it the highest possible price up to the limit of the absorption of the "margin of profit;" while, under competition with other employers, the labor-buyer endeavors to obtain it at the lowest possible price. What the laborer is contending for is an equality of 22 bargaining power." Were men universally fair, just or honorable, restrictive or coercive agencies would be unnecessary, but speaking like a Calvinist divine, Foster reminded his union colleagues, "there is nothing more apparent . . . than the fact that all men do not possess these q u a litie s . "23

The trade union is pragmatic, Foster argued; in its growth and purpose it simply followed the lines of least resistance. If it is narrow, it is only as narrow as men are. It Can broaden as they 21+ broaden. If unions are called selfish, foster would reply: "The suggestion iB possibly to be permitted that from the days of Adam to

22 Ibid., 717. 23 Prank foster, "A Word About Trade Unionism," American Federation!st, IV (September, 1897)* 1U8 - 1U9.

2 V i d . , 1 U9 . 27 those of Adam Smith, and even In our own altruistic age, most individ­ uals and associations of individuals have been more or less dominated 25 by self-interest," Like G-ompers, he insisted that union restrictive practices simply paralleled those of industry, "With the object lesson

of combine, pool, trust, and merger looming large before his sight, pray why should not the wage earner say, . . . 'It shall go hard but I pc will better the instruction, 111

Unlike McNeill, Foster spurned what he called "high sounding platforms or empty platitudes." The utmost claim he could make for the union ideal was

that . , , organization, properly financed and judiciously directed will Becure to its membership large material and moral advantages . . . 0 The trade union represents the principle of opportunism in social reform. It does not refuse the small gain - but neither does it waste its ammunition in shooting arrows at the sun. It recognizes the limitations of human nature which have kept men dependent and in bondage,, '

Although he cited frequently John Swinton's axiom "first things

first," Foster really believed there should be "first things onlyJ"

As to action outside the economic field: "The first essential of

sound trade unionism is that it shall obtain the fullest concert of

action in craft affairs, and bitter experience has amply proven that

^Foster, "Trade Union Ideals," 235«

26 .. . . ■LUJLU. , d jjo

27Ibid., 2^5. 28 this can only he accomplished "by rigidly respecting individual liberty 28 of opinion in all other matters,, "

In the debate over the proposed political program in 1893* Foster

showed no patience either with the objectives or the maneuvers of the

Socialists* "To insist,” he declared, "on Plank 10 means nothing more

or less than that the trade unions of America are to be simply annexes

of the Socialist Labor Party*"

There are too many of our radical friends who appear to be lamentably ignorant of the fact that there 1 b such a thing aB American history,, The political action of the wealth producers, to be successful, must work out its sal­ vation on American lines « and here again I mean that higher Americanism - catholic in its tolerance and grandly liberal in its conception of citizenship, °

In 1903 he added, M. , * our entire social order is based upon „30 security in private acquisition and possession of property*"

Poster was the realist where McNeill was the idealist. More than

any other spokesman for labor, he tied the union movement to a general

philosophy of Calvinist pessimism that defended the tenets of selfish,

pragmatic unionism as representing the best that could be done in an

imperfect society*

The most interesting but scarcely the most successful of Poster's

literary excursions was a novel, The Evolution of a Trade Unionist,

published in 1901* It consisted of some sound trade union philosophy

28 Prank W. Poster, "Trade Unionism and Social Reform, "American Pe de rati oni a t, VII (March, 1900), 6%

^Frank W. PoBter, "Labor Policies, Politics, and Platforms," Ibid, , I (March, 18 9*0, 5-6.

^Poster, "Trade Union Ideals," loc. clt, , 2 3 6 , encumbered by a creaking unimaginative plot. The protagonist,, an idealistic youthful reformer, Ernest Aldrioh, learns by practical experience in the trade union movement the folly of his adolescent

Socialism and matures gradually to pragmatic unionism. Several of the novel's minor characters are thinly-veiled representations of some of the author's contemporaries. Halph McLaren, venerable sage of trade unionism is clearly George E. McNeill - he even has a white beard.

Cotton manufacturer Edward Crittenden, inventor of a revolution-cooking apparatus which will teach the laborer the virtues of frugality and plain living, is evidently Edv/ard Atkinson, the New England cotton magnate and moral pundit who invented the Aladdin oven as one contribu­ tion to a solution of the labor problem. Of him, "plain working girl

Lizzie" exclaimed pointedly, "The old prig, I'll bet he never made his money that way. He gives me a pain."^*

Poster looks with no hidden contempt upon the idealistic middle class reformers. His description of a laborer's reaction to a meeting of the noblesse oblige "New Era" Club is the best part of the novel.

The members wore t a i l o r made clothes and diamond rin g s, peered at the workingmen present "through eye glasses, which adorned the bridges of their classical noses," and advocated replacing the "barbaric competitive system" with "the spirit of Christianity" where workers would be employers and middlemen non-existent. At the climax of the evehlng,

Halph McLaren, advocate of higher wages and shorter hours, laid to rest in short order the tenuous generalities of the reformers. "The way to

•^Frank K. Foster, The Evolution of a Trade Unionist (Boston, 190lX 1M0 . 30 help the laborer,B he pleaded eloquently, “is to give the laborer the opportunity of helping himself, by lessening the handicaps now imposed 32 upon him by our so cial system,

At the close of the novel, the converted Ernest Aldrich answers the question: "Have your ideals died?” His answer is one which Foster or any member of the early A. F. of L. hierarchy might have given:

"No,11 Said Ernest, more seriously, "my ideals have not perished, but they have changed, I think that nearly all of the men who are in the ranks of the older trade unionists have undergone a like experience, if my information is cor­ rect, Young enthusiasts start in to change things over in a day and naturally select what seems to them the quickest method. With increasing knowledge of the limitations of human nature, comes a c le a re r perception of what may be actually accomplished and also where it is useless to ex­ pend energy. I have an abiding faith that the wage earner is to work out his own Salvation, but it will be through ,, evolutionary processes, not by revolution or by resolutions,"

- 0 -

Of the three labor intellectuals considered here, George Gunton was the most controversial. He accepted, like Foster, most of the

tenets of pragmatic unionism, but carried them to extremes to which his colleagues dared not follow him, Gunton followed closely in the foot­

steps of a pioneer labor theorist of the sixties and seventies, Ira

Steward, Steward had rejected the wage fund theory of the classical economists, boldly asserting that wages depend not upon the amount of

capital and the relative supply of labor, but upon the customs and desires of the working class. There was a direct psychological pathway

32Ibld,, 138-^1

3 3 ib id ., 1 7 3 . 31 from wants to wages. The first step was to eliminate competition of low standards of living with the higher standards, A simple bit of legislation would accomplish thiB —* a general eight hour law. I t would force the laborer living on the margin with his ten to twelve hour wage to demand the Same compensation for eight hours. Most important it would provide that leisure which alone could improve the cultural level, aad lead to a higher quality of wants for the laboring man. Optimistic, the doctrine envisaged increasing consumption, hence 3^ increased production.

Steward looked even further into the future. Increased production, coupled with the rising expense of labor would eventually level class distinction. Writing in that period when cooperation was labor’s aspiration, Steward declared emphatically: "In America, every man is king in theory, and will be in practice eventually, and in good time coming every man will be a capitalist."-"

McNeill, whose contact w ith Steward was probably c lo se r than w ith his juniors in the American Federation of Labor, never drifted far from the same tradition of opportunity and cooperation. Foster, on the other hand, borrowed from Steward his sociological wage doctrine, but

Imbued it with a strong dose of pessimistic Calvinism, converting it into a program to be achieved through the restrictive economic tech- niques of pragmatic trade unionism. George Gunton's book, Wealth and

3^- ■ John Rogers Commohe, "Introduction,11 Commons et a l,, eds., A Documentary HiBtory of American Industrial SocietyTCleveland, 1909-1911), IX, 2$~2b. •^Ira Steward, "A Reduction of Hours an Increase in Wages," i b i d ., 300- 3 0 1. 32

Progress (1887) was based upon manuscript material left by Steward at his death in 1883. Although Ghinton started as an official propagandist for the eight-hour movement within the American Federation of Labor, hie concept of the organization seems to have been different from that of the straight “party-line11 spokesmen. Organization and bigness in labor or in industry were not restrictive techniques; rather they were high­ ways to increased efficiency and expanded production.

Born in England in 18^5. George Gunton came to America at the age of 29 leaving behind a family of eight. He was employed as a weaver in Fall Eiver, Massachusetts and had a prompt baptism of fire in trade unionism when he was blacklisted in 1875 la the wake of an unsuccessful strike. Attracting the attention of George McNeill and Ira Steward, by 1878 he was e d ito r of The Labor Standard (F a ll E iver). In 1880 he ran for the Massachusetts legislature on the Greenback ticket, When he moved to New York City in 1885, Hev. Heber Newton, Episcopalian

social gospel minister, placed Gunton in charge of an economics study group in his church. By 1890 this had blossomed into the Institute of

Social Economics, usually called simply Gunton's Institute. In 1891 the institute began to publish The Social Economist; in 1896 it became

Gunton'8 Magazine. ^

Gunton prided himself upon his "straight from the shoulder" economics designed for the understanding of the common man. His frequent lectures for the economics course in the Institute were witty, urbane,

•^"George Gunton," Fill Dictionary of American Biography, 55“56. 33 and usually loquacious. Smug and dogmatic, contemptuous of adversaries, he never seemed to doubt th a t he had found the u ltim ate economic tru th .

Beginning with the sociological wage doctrine of Steward, Gunton shaped from it a theory even more optimistic than that of his pred­ ecessor. Where Steward had emphasised the depressing effect of low standard wages, Gunton emphasised the elevating effect of high standards,^

Like Steward, Gunton evolved a theory of social progress based upon "acquired social wants" as the motivating force beyond social action, progress, and history. In analyzing modern capitalism, he again shared with Steward the idea that the masses were denied full realiza­ tion of the techniques of large scale production because of their limited social desires. But while Steward had looked forward to cooperation, Gunton emphatically believed Capitalism was the lint 3S stopping point#

Gunton differed sharply from Foster and from the orthodoxy of the

A. F. of L. in two respects. First, Steward, McNeill and Foster advocated an immediate eight hour law as the initial step in the elevation of living standards. Gunton was doubtful. To reduce hours before cultural standards had been raised would mean idleness and use­ le s s employment of le is u re .

37 Commons, Documentary History, IX, 27n.

^Ray Madsen, "The Economics of George Gunton," Unpublished thesis, M#A., The Ohio S tate U niversity, 195^» 3U

The second point of difference is basic to Gunton's theory* This is his emphasis upon expansion nnd production* It is best delineated in a typical Institute lecture where Gunton explained that the standard

of living of the highest paid holds up the entire wage structure*

Group-wise the highest paid do not save, they spend according to their wage, making a retu rn to the economy in p ro p o rtio n to what they have taken from it. The wages question, then, is "largely a question of

opportunity, — opportunity for increasing the efforts that stimulate

and diversify and elevate the ideas, tastes, and necessities that make up the social life of the family," This being the case, he concluded,

, in stead of saying th at wages are governed by supply and demand,

and hence that we must make a war or pestilence to raise them, we should

recognize the fact that the real and only way to permanently raise

wages is to increase the social opportunities around every member of

the families of the laboring class,

Accordingly, Gunton had little patience with the trade union doc­

trine of restriction of opportunity.

The laborer believes In the doctrine of supply and demand, Mr, Gompers, and Mr, Powderly and Mr. Sovereign, and Mr. Debs, and all the others are imbued with the idea that as supply and demand govern wages, so they will limit the supply, that is their justification for strikes. The socialistic idea is born of that same idea, that the capitalists' interest is not merely temporarily but per- manently hostile to the laborers,.

^George Gunton, "What Makes the Rate of Wages," Gunton Institute B ulletin, I, number 15 (March 12, 1898), 233~23^.

^Gunton Institute Bulletin, I (December 18, 1897)* 72. Gunton'a optimism knew no bounds. There would be an immense increase in production resulting from machinery and inventions and stimulated by high wages. This in turn would lead to the greatest economic institution of all, the "trust," the capstone of efficiency and mass technological output,,

Labor organization was the historical concomitant of the increased organization of capital. They "are as inseparable from the wages system as are factories from capitalistic production*" But labor organization was more than a power equalizer* Gunton stressed the enlightening educational benefits of the union; as a social organ­ ization the union would stimulate Interests and would weld labor into a social class, compelling the "intelligent and advanced to devote their efforts to improving the material and social conditions of their less Ul capable brethren*"

Gunton favored the eight hour day, but not for the same reason, better distribution of available opportunities, that motivated GomperB and Foster* Gunton always came back to his single axiom:

. * . eight hours per day would increase the wants of labor, and therefore increase their consumption of goods, so that it would require a far greater quantity to glut the market than before* Production then would not be curtailed, but would be increased to meet the enlarged demand, and the whirr of machinery would be louder than ever.^

George Gunton, "Social Influence of Labor Organizations," Journal of Social Science, XXVIII (October, 1891), 102, 105*

njn signed article, probably by George Gunton, "The Approaching Sight Hour Day," Social Economist, I (October, 1891), ^28. 36

While he severed connections with the labor movement and often criticized its leaders, the points of difference were less important than the points in common between Gunton and the A. F. of L. He vigorously defended the organizing principle against the chimera of freedom of contract, he condoned strikes and supported the workers in U3 the Homestead Strike, The base point of difference was the question of purpose. Should labor look optimistically to an expanding market, or in the spirit of pessimism regulate the supply of laborers relative to the demand? It might be argued that in the light of subsequent developments Qunton was more co rrect than Gompers or F oster, Have not concentration, efficiency, increased production and consumption been the economic fulcrums that have improved labor’s status?

In the latter years of the decade Gunton's attention focused increasingly on a defense of the prevailing system of monopoly capi­ talism, He became one of the leading American defenders of the trust, terming it an unmitigated good. Supplemental to this he favored tariff protection, the gold standard, lauded imperialism and launched bitter attacks upon the single-taxers and silverites - the latter notwith­ standing the fact he once had run for office under the Greenback label,

Gunton came near paranoia in his fear of Populism in 1896, He informed an Institute audience that it was a conspiratorial movement controlling

HOOO newspapers, having behind it the support of all saloon men. If

Bryan was elected the positions of power would go to Coxey and his like, _ __ George Gunton, “The Carnegie C onflictS ocial Economist, III (August, 1892), 108-118. 37

The "sole object" of the Bryan crusade was the "taking possession of the government of the United States for the purpose of killing the organized productive industry of the country, which is conducted by private effort,, " He concluded with the "continued applause" of his audience ringing in his ears: "The commune is on the march, and Bryan is crossing the Alps with his army of over 6,000,000 bent on the I4.I4 industrial disruption of the nation,"

Gunton never for a moment lumped labor with Populism and the forces - those opposed to trusts - that threatened American industrial civilization.

P resident Gompers of the American Federation of Labor does not share the prevalent alarm regarding the concentra­ tion of capital . . . , It is gratifying to know that the President of the largest bona fide labor organization in the world recognizes the inevitable trend of social advancement and sees that laborers cannot rise by pulling down capitalists but only by doing something for them­ selves, Would that as much could be said for the editors of some of our leading dailies, ^

Even the casual reader of the yellowed files of The Gunton

Institute Bulletin who notes the elaborate format and the picture of the lavish headquarters the organization maintained at 3^ Union Square,

New York, will sooner or later entertain suspicions as to how this expatriated labor union defender of the trusts was able to maintain such extravagant trappings. It was not from student fees, for the format tells us: "Tuition fees are low on account of a liberal

IP? George Gunton, "The New Democracy," Gunton Institute Bulletin, I, Number lU (March 5, 1898), 215, 219,

^"Editor's Crucible," Social Economist, I (March, 1891), 6 3 © 32 endowment. " The in stitution vras iranortant enough to li s t among

"Counselors of the In stitu te11 in lg°2 such distinguished and varied personages as: Thomas R. Reed, Speaker of the House, Hon. Theodore U6 Roosevelt: Hon. Carroll D.bright, Commissioner of Labor; Hon. Heniy

Cabot Lodge; Hon. George C. Perkins, United States Senator; Hon. Lyman

C-. Gage, Secretary of the Treasury; Booker T. Washington; and Arch­ bishop John Ireland.

The susoicions of Gunton1s enemies received te llin g corroboration near the end of his career. Sued by his second wife for divorce in

1906, Mrs. Gunton in her demand for alimony told a reporter of the Hew

York Sunday American: "I nm out of funis now, but Mr. Gunton has promised to get the Standard Oil to advance him half his yearly re­ tainer, or S7500, and as soon as he receives that he will give me the U7 money I need. 11

Yet somehow Gunton never le ft home. The was was indeed narrow between the Gompers who boasted, of never joining the "hue and cry"

The relation of Roosevelt and Gunton was close. Gunton wrote in 1399: "We have better uses of C-overnor Roosevelt than to put him to sleep in the vice-presidency. " Gunton Magazine, XVII (Oct', 'er, 1299)» ?95» Howard L. Hurwitz, Theodore Roosev e lt and Labor in New York State (New York, 19^3)* 216-217, 290, refers to Gunton as Roosevelt's "labor advisor" during his term at Albany.

^Caro Lloyd, Henry Dem&rest Lloyd (New York, 191?), II, ?lln; see also John T. Flynn, God's Gold (New York, 193?) , 3^9: Allen ITevins, John D. Rocke fe lle r (New York, 19*+l) , II, 2^0, 517* The latter, although he notes the $1^,000 annual stipend, comes to the amazing conclusion: "He /Gunton/ saw no danger in strong ca p ita listic combi­ nations, and while he defended the movement toward concentration in industry as inevitable and healthy, he did not defend monopoly. Gunton1 s was no mere uropagandjst publication. 11 (Underscoring is mine.) 39 ag ain st tr u s ts and. the Gunton who openly defended them, Gunton was

simply the logical outgrowth of the capitalistic unionism McNeill had.

tried to clothe with lofty ideals and which Foster had presented as the

only practical alternative in an imperfect society.

The arguments of the trade union intellectuals underscored the

thorough-going capitalism of the American labor movement. Theirs,

however, was not the traditional capitalism of laissez-faire, it was

the controlled, privately regulated capitalism of the trust and the

industrial combination, Foster, McNeill, and Gunton emphatically

rejected the orthodox faith that economic advance had to be individual

and alone* stressing that the single worker could enhance his economic

status only in company with the members of his class. CHAPTER THREE

LAISSEZ-FAIRE THEORISTS

Whether the apostles of laissez-faire selected as their departure point the economic liberalism of the Manchester school or the practical

approach of the English utilitarians, they joined in condemning labor

organization, along with protective tariffs or government meddling, as perversions of the inexorable laws of economics,, Laissez-faire pro­

fessors of political economy in the nation*s leading universities care­

fully drew logical inferences from observed facts to construct an

economy which responded w ith mechanical re g u la rity to the impulse of

supply and demand,, Tampering with the machinery was unnecessary, for it

distributed its benefits, in the long run, to those who most deserved

them; furthermore, interference might work positive danger by imperiling

the smooth operation of natural law. The laissez-faire theorists con­

fidently denied that there was any labor problem that could not be

resolved on an Individual basis, through work, thrift, and sobriety.

While several of the leading spokesmen for laissez-faire discussed here

lived before 1890, they were still the real architects of the economic

orthodoxy of the decade and through their textbooks and their students

in business and government exercised a vital and lasting influence.

There were four tenets in the creed of laissez-faire. First,

p o l i t i c a l economy was the science of w ealth, governed by laws as

immutable as those of physical science. The author of a leading

u© textbook, Beverend Francis Wayland, argued inasmuch as the universe had been ordered in a systematic way by God, in the Same fashion, * . it is obvious, upon the slightest reflection, that the Creator has sub­ jected the accumulation of the blessings of this life to some determinate laws*"'1' An amateur political economist and professional astronomer,

Simon Newcomb of Harvard writing in 1886 substituted scientific justifi** cation for God-given justification of the same precepts and devoted an entire chapter of his text to demonstrating how the scientific method 2 could be used to determine absolute laws of economics.

The second tenet of laissez-faire was that of self-interest, for these divine or scientific absolutes could unfold only by permitting each man complete economic freedom* Implicit in the argument was this assumption: progress results from observing certain laws of nature; these natural laws in turn could be discovered only by the individual through the exercise of his powers of reason* "The choice of every m&n,M wrote Way land, "naturally leads him to that employment for which he is beet adapted .... The case is the same with respect to capi­ tal* Since the in te r e s t of the community was but a bundle of in - dividual interests, the pursuit of selfish personal ends resulted in the general welfare.

Third, competition had to be free so that every man might follow his initiative and self-interest to wherever it might leado

^■Francis Wayland, The Elements of Political Economy (Boston, {^83TJ, 1856 ed.), 15* p Simon Newcomb, Principles of Political Economy (New York, 1886)*

^Wayland, Elements, 11^* ^2

Interference not only violated the individual's freedom, but also

obstructed the operation of economic law#

Fourth, government was to the orthodox political economist an inefficient agency warped by political pressures, ill-qualified to

intervene or even mediate in the operation of the free market0 The

individual, to be sure, Wayland argued, is liable to error, but he doeB

so only because the indications deceive him. The legislator on the

other hand, "besides being liable to err by mistaking the indications, is liable to be misled by party zeal, by political intrigue, and by

sectional prejudice, "

With the economic system an impersonal mechanism, its operations

ordained either by God or by science, notions of human morality or

"sentimentality" - to uee the language of political economy - had no

role. At the center of the economic process, wrote E. L. Godkin of the

Nation.,is an "economic man who desires above all things, and without

reference to ethical considerations, to get as much of the world's

goods as he can with the least possible expenditure of effort or energy

on his part. The fact that he is not humane or God-fearing no more

affects his usefulness than the fact that the first law of motion would

carry a cannon-ball through a poor man's cottage.

h Ibid., 115? Sidney Fine, Laisseg-Falre and the General Welfare S tate (Ann Arbor, 1956), 52“ 55»

^E. Lo Godkin, "The Economic Man " (March, lggi), in 1. L0 Godkin, Problems of Modern Democracy (New York, 1903), l6 l-l6 2 . ^3

The prophets of political economy counted, among their number some of the most d istin g u ish ed names in American education. Francis Wayland, dean of them all, became President of Brown University in 1827 and held <$ his position for twenty years, Francis Bowen, author of PrlncipleB of

Political Economy, was professor of natural religion, moral philosophy, and civil polity at Harvard for thirty-six years following his appointment in 1853* Arthur Latham Perry enjoyed a similar tenure at near-by Williams College. Arthur Twining Hadley waa President of Yale from 1899 to 1921. Another of the latter day saints of the craft,

J. Lawrence Laughlin, received a PhP degree from Henry Adams at Harvard, married the daughter of William Holmes McGuffey of "Header" fame, and ended his career as chairman of the department of political economy at the newly formed University of Chicago.

Their subject occupied a place of distinction in the typical college curriculum. Usually, Political Economy or Moral Philosophy was reserved for the final term of the senior year. Often the venerable college president himself would impart the canons of economic orthodoxy

Wayland's Elements, a gospel to the political economist, had a success textbook writers might dream of. Published in 1837, the book was in its fourth edition by lSUl. An 18^7 copy in the Ohio State University Library is numbered in the fourteenth thousand; one in 1856 in the t h i r t i e t h thousand. The te x t was li s t e d in 1876 among the ten "most Saleable" on p o l i t i c a l economy. I t was "recast" by P resid en t Aaron L. Chapin of Beloit College in 1878, twenty three years after Wayland’s death. The revision toned down some of the original author’s extremes, such as his condemnation of poor laws. See William S. Boelker, "Francis Wayland, A Neglected Pioneer of Higher Education," Proceedings, The American Antiquarian Society (Worcester, 19*&), 55; Joseph iorfman. The Economic Mind in American Civilization (New York, 19^9), H I, SI. uu to the prospective leaders of the next generation.^ The laiSBe&»faire economic absolutes were more than inviolate, as the first President of the American Economic Association expressed it, they were an unremit— C* ting standard for determining Hwhether a man was an economist at a ll,n

The texts in common use confirm this conservative tenor of economic teaching. The two most saleable books in political economy, according to a Publisher1a Weekly survey in I 876 were John S tu art

Mill* b Principles of Political Economy and Adam Smith’s Wealth of

Nations, Included among the American written texts in the top ten were

Wayland's Elements, P e rry ’ s The Elements of P o litic a l Economy, Francis

Bowen's American Political Economy, and Horace Greeley's Essays 9 Designed to E lucidate the Science of P o litic a l Economy.

The easy, c ris p ly -lo g ic a l deductions of p o litic a l economy were an

American exprossion of the widespread Scotch "common-sense philosophy" particularly as evolved by Dugald Stewart, Adam Smith's pooularizer in England, This ideology spurned the anti-clerical liberalism with with Smith seemed often connected, and rejected the gloom of Malthus and Ricardo, The idea that economic essentials could be apprehended by self-conscious observation unencumbered by intellectual analysis,

7 For the best discussions of the impact of the political economists, see A, P, Grimes, The Political Liberalism of the New York Nation, the James Sprunt Studies in History and Political Science (Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 1953), 3^» PP* 15“l6; Fine, Laissez-Falre and the General Welfare State, ^7**79»

^Francis A, Walker, "Recent Progress of Political Economy in the United States," Publications of the American Economic Association, IV (1889), 25^.

^Dorfman, Economic Mind, III, 81, >+5 and. that once comprehended, these observations always seemed to square with the accepted ideas of morality, optimism, and revealed religion, was of natural appeal in America.

The Social Darwinism of Herbert Spencer, proselytzed in America by William Graham Sumner at Tale after 1868, bolstered the precepts of p o litic a l economy already affirm ed on th eo lo g ical and common sense grounds by adding to the proof the most popular vogue in contemporary science,, Social Darwinism substituted for God-given natural laws a blunt single law of nature; survival of the fittest. Only in an environment of complete freedom could the processes of natural selection do their job of differentiating the able from the weako

Charity, government interference, and "sentimentality" obstructed the functioning of these processes just as much as they did the operation of divine economic law.

Likewise, America's secondary schools were fertile ground for propagating the truths of political economy. M. A. Newell, superin­ tendent of public instruction for Maryland told the National Kducatioml

Association in 1085 that the elements of political economy could be as accessible to the young as grammar and mathematics. The N. E. A. archives record barely an annual meeting before 1900 where teachers were not extolled to lend their assistance in quelling strikes or suppressing socialism and anarchism, or to teach the poor to respect 10 the property of the rich.

10 , Merle Curti, The Social Ideas of American Educators (New York, 1953), 221, 218. - o -

The discussions of the labor question in the political economy texts were studded with loaded terms such as 'Vicious,11 "idle,"

"improvident," and "temporary infelicity" (referring to technological unemployment)0 Using such tools, the theorists of laissez-faire fashioned four arguments to prove the fatuousness of the demands of the working class and to confound the spokesman for labor. First, the economic laws that distributed material rewards were inexorable; there was no way laboring men in concert could modify them. Second, the laboring man had no need to alter the economic status quo for, even if he did not realize it, he was well provided for. Third, since economic law was absolute, ill-conceived attempts to change them would work positive harm. Fourth, labor organizations, in positing unavailing and unnecessary objectives, were revolutionary forces threatening the overthrow of the American political and economic system.

The immutable laws of economics, operating through the pursuit of individual self-interest in the free market, were applied to the labor question with unremitting vigor. As Wayland had explained it, God had made labor necessary to well being, for he had attached to it suf­ ficient rewards to make it attractive and such penalties to idleness to make it unattractive. Man's ordained duty was to cooperate, and to arrange society in such a way that the directives of Divine Providence could be implemented.^

n Wayland, Elements, 107-10S. ^7

The rewards of labor were determined by the same inflexible economic laws. Borrowing from Adam Smith, Arthur Latham Perry recognized seven determinants of wages: 1, Agreeableneas of the employ­ ment; 2. Ease of learning the skills; 3o The constancy of the labor;

The amount of tr u s t involved; 5* The p ro b a b ility of success;

6* Customs, prejudices, or fashion; 7» legal restrictions and voluntary- associations. 12 Perry said nothing of the relation of wages to living standards, nor did he even consider the arguments of Ira Steward worth comment. The amount av ailab le fo r wages to be divided among the to ta l lab o r force in the economy was lim ited - i t was the "wage fund" remaining after profits and all other costs had been subtracted. Since mathematics limited the fund available for distribution, and since there waa no give and take in the system, moralism or legislation could have no effect upon ths wages that labor would receive. G-odkin con­ cluded that the problem of wages and of labor romained "very much what it has been ever since agriculture was substituted for hunting and fishing - a problem which, in the main, each man must solve for h im self.

Not only was labor's quest to alter the absolutes of political economics an unavailing one, the theorists of laissez-faire believed th a t i t was a p a te n tly unnecessary one. For them there was no problem of hours, of wages, or conditions of labor. The uninhibited operation

1 2 Arthur Latham Perry, Elements of Political Economy (New York, 1876), xii.

■*"^E. L. Godkin, "The Economic Man," loc. c it., 179» Ug of the free market worked benefit for the laboring man, if only he would recognize it. Naturallaws had determined ten hours to be the normal working day.This was not detrimental to the laborer, for it provided out of each day, ten hours for work, eight for sleep, one and one half for meals, and leftfour and a half for recreation and culture. Reduction of hoursmight lead to the false belief that "the comfortable subsistence rate," not the market rate, was the proper lH standard for wages.

Professor Perry saw "no sense or reaBon in the common jealousy of workmen toward employers." They were partners in the same concern, not antagonists. "Workmen who are intelligent, prudent, skillful will infallibly get their due. Employers who are humane, urbane, fair, will find their account in it." Waving the gleaming banner of "free opportunity," he reminded his students that ". , . the class laborers 15 shade constantly into the class capitalists." The Nation expressed even more clearly this potent myth, the most effective weapon supplied by history to the intellectual foes of organization among laboring men,

"Any boy of good education who chooses to go into a mill or workshop, and to make himself master of any branch of industry, and determine to live by it, and stick to it, and make a profession of thoroughness and fidelity, may feel as sure of fortune and infiuence as it is ever permitted to mortals to feel.

■^Grimes, The Political Liberalism of the New York Nation, 29-3^0

^Perry, Elements, l63-l6H„

l6Nation, 711 (1868), Ug

The astronomexv.polltlcal economist, Simon Newcomb, claiming to be a "Plain Man" conversing on the labor question, reiterated the canons of Belf-regulating capitalism and extolled the miracles of production achieved in the free enterprise system. He conceived a scientific economy more flu id than th at of Wayland, Bowen, or Perry. Success comes in this system, he explained, to the individual who would pro­ vide the best service to the people at the cheapest price. Commodore

Vanderbilt, for example, had received nothing for himself from his

Gargantuan services. He had been merely a distributor of his money, and had poured a lion's share of it back into the economy. To Newcomb, the laboring man was blind in foolishly restricting production. His strikes injured the public, they harmed the laborer himself as well as his family and children. If he won, the laborer's wage increases would only raise the prices he had to pay for the necessities of 17 l i f e .

In "Vision of a Puritan Deacon," Newcomb had the Archangel Michael resurrect and bring back to the Boston of 1387 long dead Puritan deacon, Samuel Cushing. The good deacon i s astounded to see the beautiful, tidy home of the bricklayer where the neatly dressed wife and family sit down to a bountiful table garnished with juicy fresh grapes grown on the Pacific Coast, Surely, the deacon believes, this must be the home of the wealthiest of Bostonians ~ perhaps the governor's mansion. When the incredulous deacon inquired what miracle

^Simon Newcomb, A Plain Man's Talk on the Labor Question (New York, 1886), >10-41, 127 - 13^, passim. has produced this phenomenon, the Archangel describes to him the powerful machines that produce moi'e than can be consumed, railroads that link coast with coast, all created and directed by extraordinary men of financial and technical skill* How fortunate society must be, concludes the astonished deacon, to be blessed by such machines and leaders. But - supreme tragedy - the Archangel has to exolain to him that the bricklayer does not appreciate these wonders. He hates the machine upon which he labors, for it works so efficien tly as to put others out of work. He resents the industrial leaders who have served him so well. Dissatisfied, he pinches his pennies to invest in an organization known as the Knights of Labor, which even now endeavors to close the market for those luscious California grapes, just because Chinese could grow them more cheaply. More of his precious pennies go to support Pennsylvania, miners striking for higher pay, and because of their strike the poor bricklayer and his family IS shiver without coal or pay an exorbitant price for it .

Progress was Newcomb's single denominator, economic or moral.

Material improvement was sufficient answer to a ll economic complaint.

All sins perpetrated, all injuries wrought, were expiated i f one age was "better off" than the one preceding. The "Knight of Labor" ought to be happy that he was able to organize - a hundred years earlier this would have been forbidden, or he would have been too tired and overworked to have cared. But he could organize now, thanks to 51 those benevolent and. skilled capitalists who had made life better for him ,1^

In +heir false attempts to alter the inalterable, not only would the laboring men fail, they would very likely work positive harm by interfering with that individual freedom which was the keystone of capitalistic progress. At the heart of the doctrine of private property which the political economists defended so tenaciously was the idea of freedom of contract. Professor Perry saw trade unions as a violation of this clear-cut precept,,

The trades' unions in this country cannot be commended, because they tend to destroy the freedom of personal action, and bring a l l workmen to one le v e l of wages. The s p ir it of P o litic a l Economy, which i s the s p i r i t of freedom, i s against such associations . . . . I f any man has a service to render, let him offer it fjjgely, and make the best terms he can with whomever wants i t .

The Nation was willing to concede that the laborer might not be a free agent, but organized efforts to ameliorate his status could only be disastrous for a smoothly operating economic arrangment, based not so much on the natural law of "freedom,11 but upon an iron-clad law of nature.

They seek to overthrow in the moral world the law of survival of the fittest , , . . They insist that all should survive, both the fit and the unfit; that virtue shall not have even the reward of achievement, and that the qualities which most distinguish man from the brutes shall not profit any individual man materially.

19Ibid., 135-151.

^®Perry, Elements, 1U9,

glNation, U 3 (lgg6),pi®5 52

President Chapin of Beloit admitted from the vantage point of 187S that "capital has been unduly favored" in the economic competitive sphere* But, he hastened to add, "this is to be counterbalanced, not by special legislation to favor the other side, by attempts to fix the hours and wages of labor, but by earnest united protests against all special legislation - by insisting on freedom as the fundamental 22 law of productive industry*"

According to Perry, strikes were false both in theory and practice; in theory, because there was no free exchange when an element of compulsion was introduced; in practice, because labor and c a p ita l gained most when they cooperated to maximise production.

Increased production, not coercion, was the only certain road to 28 increased wages. ^

William Graham Sumner would condone strikes as an exercise of the laborer’s right, individually or collectively, to make or unmake contracts* This, however, did not include license to interfere with the employer's property, to prevent others from working, or to boycott the employer's legitimate trade. The strike was simple a struggle for survival to determine whether the employer could hold out as long without profits as the workers could without wages* In the long run, work stoppages could not enhance wage re tu rn s, fo r Sumner in s is te d

22 Francis Wayland, Elements of Political Economy (Recast by Aaron L* Chapin, Hew York, 187*0, 110-Hl. 23 Perry, Elements, l^^loO* 53 lik e P erry aid other p o litic a l econom ists, " If we want more wages, the 24 only way to get them is by working, not by not working,H

Rev, Wayland p o stu la ted th at wages were dependent upon fa c to rs, like population levels, beyond the power of either labor or capital*

Only unregulated competition in a free country could bring these

factors to their proper level. Since this was true,

. , , combinations among capitalists or laborers are not only useless, but expensive, and unjust. They attempt to change the laws by which remuneration is governed, and they must, by consequence, thus be useless. They expose capital and labor to long periods of idleness, and thus are expen­ sive, They assume the power of depriving the capitalist of his right to employ laborers, and the laborer of his right to dispose of his labor to whomsoever and on xhat terms soever he pleases, and hence they are unjust,

More ominous, President Hadley of Yale hazarded that once there

was interference with the automatic laws which give the "prudent and

efficient man" control of the result of his labor, "you will soon lose

both the capital and the morality under which that capital has been

created , , , , The fund of national capital is placed at the mercy

of the paupers, and the restraints which now limit the number of these

paupers are taken away. " At the climax to which the process could lead

"we have that imminence of starvation characteristic of savage or

„r6 half-savage raceB."

24 William Graham Sumner, "Industrial War," Forum, II (September, 1886), 1-8; see also Richard Hofstadter, Social Darwinism in American Thought (Rev, ed,, Boston, 1955)» 62,

Wayland, Elements, 3°3»

^Arthur Twining Hadley, "Population and Capital," Publications of the American Economic Association, IX (1894), 5&5» 5U

In their most extreme arguments,the political economists associated organized Ichor with the threat of revolution. Francis

Bowen seemed ahle to hear distant drum beats and see the dim shadovys of barricades J

They are under p e rfe ct d is c ip lin e , tu rn in g out on strike at a day's notice, and remaining out till the word is given to end the strike, all their movements being carefully concerted by their officers. They enforce mem­ bership even on those operatives who are unwilling to join them, by refusing to work for masters who employ non- unionists . o . . Thus armies of workmen are arrayed, as i t were, in a h o s tile camp, to wage war upon th a t C apital on which the efficiency of their labor mainly depends. All of the associations are also more or I cbs affiliated with each other, and their treasuries render mutual aid, so as to prolong the contest till the patience or the capital of the particular employers who are standing out is exhausted .... Master manufacturers, thus attacked, have no recourse except to break up their establishmente, and either send their capital abroad, or see it rapidly waste away.2?

Historian Herman von Holst believed that the nation in the months a f te r the Pullman strik e was "... fast drifting into a more appalling crisis than the Civil War .... At present nothing less than the preservation of society is at issue." Labor was bent upon the extinction of society's most vital principle - law. Powder and lead

should have been made "to speak when the actions of the duly fore*. 28 warned rioters first called for that argument." The thoroughly frightened Nation drew the Same analogy: "The insidious attack of

27 'Francis Bowen, American P olitical Economy (New York, 1 8 8 5 ), l l 6„ pa Herman von H olst, "Are We Awakened," Journal of P o litic a l Economy, II (September, 189*0» 55 labor unions on the power of government, with the boycott and the universal sympathetic strike as weapons, also hat its instructive pq analogies with the assault of slavery upon the national life." 7

The scions of p o litic a l economy were the spinners of a myth c a lle d r e a lity . Their economic system was woven lo g ic a lly from principles unrelated to life or society. Their worker was an arti­

f i c i a l creatu re conceived in the laboratory of p o litic a l economy.

Political econony had not felt the pulse of social change, While they

spoke of Adam Smith, God-given laws of economics, and a completely

free-wheeling economy, the growth of monopoly, the alliance of the

state with business, and steady draining of opportunities made mockery

of the principles they professed,

- 0 -

While the four hypotheses outline constitute the main stream of

laisses-faire thought, these arguments were often buttressed by

theoretical considerations of a slightly different nature,

S. L, Godkin, from a utilitarian viewpoint, added one ingredient

absent in the spculations of the academic economists. The Nation^

editor saw the protective tariff as the "devil" corrupting the American

economy. Why so suddenly after the Civil War, he asked, was the nation

haunted by class consciousness and a labor problem? The reason was

that the owners of protected industries, ceasing to rely upon ths principle of freedom, had encouraged their workers to do the same,

29 Nation, LIX (189*0, 22-23. 56

Tariff advocates appealed to the public in the name of vhat Godfcin considered the insidious doctrine that wealth depended not upon personal initiative, hut some outside factor like the whim of a benevolent legislature.

The tariff led to class stratification which in turn contributed to accumulation of increasing proportions of the national income in the hands of the few owners, reducing more and more of the population to day laborers who considered themselves a class apart.^

The most important and most discussed tenet in the laissez-faire affirmation of faith was the "wage fund theory" which held that wages of workers were paid out of a remainder after all other costs and prow fits had been discharged. Since the fund was static on a national scale, wage increases for one group of workers would automatically mean cutting of another, or else curtailing expansion and leading in the final analysis to reductions or layoffs. There was no tampering with this set fund, for

that which pays for labor . . . is a capital created or in process of creation, which cannot be increased by the pro­ posed action of government, nor by the influence of public opinion, nor by combinations among the workmen themselves o * . , The question of wages is a question of division* It is complained that the quotient is too small. Well, then how many ways are there to make a quotient larger? Two ways: Enlarge your dividend, the divisor remaining the same, and the quotient will be larger; lessen your divisor, the dividenfl^remaining the same, and the quo­ tient will be larger,

-^E. L. Godkin, "Some Political and Social Aspects of the Tariff" (March, 188J), in Godkin, Problems of Modern Democracy, 116, 121,

^ P e r r y , Elements, 153“ 15 ^i 56a

Newcomb, with his constant emphasis upon expanding production, cautioned his readers that the wage fund was not static, but was rather a "flow, 11 the payment of wages depending, "not upon the magni« t.ude of the fund, but upon the rate at which it was replenished. . . .

Historically, the economists derived the wage fund originally from Malthus, who applied it strictly to problems of subsistence, arguing that increased wages would lead to a larger population, which would drain the static food supply. James Mill substituted capital for food, with the theory that if the ratio of capital to population increased, wages would rise; if the ratio of population to capital would increase, wages would fall. By 1S60 British economists already disputed the argument that there was a definite fixed amount from which wages had to be drawn.

The attack of a small group of American economists upon the wage fund theory represented the first breach in the almost solid wall of political economy. Francis Walker, the most important of these pioneer challengers, was the son of Aroasa Walker, author of the standard p o litic a l economy te x t mentioned e a r lie r . A p ro fe sso r, and for eighteen years President of the Massachusetts Institute of

Technology, Walker, although himself a conservative, published in 1376 the first challenge to the tenets of Wayland and Perry. Walker was anything but an economic radical, for he was fearful of the power of the labor unions and never questioned the superiority of the laissez~ faire economy* nevertheless he recognized the practical uses to which the wage fund theory had been applied. 57

. . . it may fairly be assumed that its progress toward general acceptance was not a little favored by the fact that it afforded a complete justification for the existing order of things respecting wages. If there was, in truth, a def­ inite fund out of which wages were paid; if competition unerringly distributed the whole of that sum; and if no more could be paid to the wages class, as a whole, without impairing capital, diminishing employment, and thus in the end injuring the laborers themselves, then surely it was an easy task to answer the complaints or remonstrances of the working classes, and to demonstrate the futility of trades unions and strikes as a means of increasing wages. If an individual workman complained for himself he could be answered that it was wholly a matter between himself and h ie own class,”

Rather than being paid out of capital, Walker argues that wages were paid out of current production. The employer hired just as many laborers as would enable him to produce that which he could sell for a profit. The extent of his success determined the wage ratio.

The wage-fund theory left out of account the efficiency of labor, inventions and improvements; actually an increase in the number of laborers might mean not a wage reduction, but might lead to more efficient division of labor 0 Strangely, Walker's academic theories were in many respects not too different from those of a man named

Ira Steward who had never seen the inside of an economics classroom.

Joseph Schumpeter sees the whole heated argument over the wage- fund as a tempest, in a teapot. No one ever predicated a static fund, least of all Malthus or Ricardo. To the Mills, both father and son, the "wage-fund" was simply a useful analytical tool. The vice was

that the eager amateurs of economic "science" caught hold of the word

"fund" and cloaked with a halo of absolutism a concept intended to

-F rancis A. Walker, The Wages Question (New York, 1876), 1H2-IU 3. establish only a simple relationship between aggregates. The logic behind the wage fund, according to Schumpeter, is simply the common

sense p ro p o sitio n th a t makes wage income dependent upon e ffic ie n cy of

productive processes, buying habits, free trade in necessities, and 33 the rate of saving. ^

It is difficult to conceive that as late as the time Franklin D,

Roosevelt was a student at Harvard the principles of political

economy, as here outlined, were standard academic bill of fare in 3^ most American colleges and academies. The educated generation from

the Civil War until after the turn of the century carried forth with

them into business, politics and education the unbending laissez-

faire precepts. It was the economic gospel of traditionalism in the

nineties,, The ten ets of p o litic a l economy were b u ttresse d by v ir -

turally every myth that the American heritage was heir to. Laissez-

faire was a rational version of the Protestant ethic of individual

salvation outside any institutional framework; it was Lockian natural

rights - universal truths discovered by human reason; it was the

great myth of progress; it was the unlimited opportunity of the

American frontier justified and canonized by academic economists.

This nuclei of ideas constituted the most formidable intellectual

barrier confronting the practical leaders and the home-spun economists

within the organized labor movement. They preached nothing short of

^Josef Schumpeter, HiBtory of Economic Analysis (Hew York, 195U), 667-671. 3U James McGregor Burns, The Lion and the Fox (New York, 1956), 19- 20. 59 heresy, for they denied that success was purely individual, they would supplement self-help with institutional action; they held that opportunity was scarce, not abundant, and it was necessary to ration and distribute it by collective action among the labor force. CHAPTER FOUR

MANAGEMENT ATTITUDES

The spokesman who pleaded the case for American Mg businesB during the nineties were not intellectuals of the academic variety*

Rather, they were successful businessmen who occasionally rose above the pressures of job and business to interpret and defend their function and role. Their creed was coldly utilitarian, void not only of moralism but of the careful logic of the laissez-faire theorists.

P r a c tic a lity was th e ir ultim ate to s t. They were not h y p o crites, then, in their belief that what worked best for business worked best for

America.

There was no single reaction to the demands of labor that could be accurately termed the "management response." The p o sitio n of the c a p ita lis t ran the gamut from those denying any problem e x isted to those who accepted labor unions and gave lip service to the principle of collective bargaining. At the extreme right were the militant defenders of the status quo who interpreted the so-called "labor problem" as the creation of scheming radicals, immigrants, and walking delegates. A second group, upholders of classic laissez-faire liber­ alism, did not ignore the existence of some kind of problem, but they insisted there was no inequity that could not be remedied through mutual good-will of labor and management, and particularly by the individual worker’s hard work, thrift, and sobriety. A third school 60 61 of management thought fe a rfu lly recognized a problem and turned to legal force to restrain conflict and achieve by compulsion the harmony they believed ought to exist in industry.

The last group, one of self-styled progressive business leaders representing the peaks of the capitalistic pyramid, recognized that laissez-faire was an anachronism and that labor organizations might well be a nermanent part of the American capitalist set-up. At the close of the century they clustered around Mark Hanna in the National

Civic Federation, an organization aimed to stimulate collective bar­ gaining among equally balanced power groups. At its heights it claimed as members individuals of such assorted interests as John

M itchell, Charles Schwab, John H, Commons, and Samuel Grompers. For a fle e tin g moment, the bold experiment seemed to presage a new day in labon-management relations.

- 0 -

The anti-labor arguments of the employers of the extreme right drew heavily upon the storehouse of political economy, rejecting only such arguments as those for free trade which ran counter to the status quo that had rewarded most of them so well. Inexorable natural laws and laissez-faire theories were canons in their creed. Especially they stressed Samuel Smiles* ideals of self-interest and self help, the route to success which most of them had followed.

These intransigents responded to the challenge of the labor problem by coupling two arguments. First, the free enterprise system embodied the best of a ll possible worlds, and those who administered it were benevolent and fair; second, the aggressive labor movement 62 which disputed this truth was ill-conceived., immoral, and ignorantly led .

Labor had no grievance against the American capitalist according to employer Henry W. Sage of Ithaca, Hew York. A timber magnate who owned a mammoth portion of Michigan forests, Sage was a nationally known philanthropist and an original trustee of Cornell University.

He was the remorseless foe of labor organizations. The benevolent

American capitalist had not only made the wage earner in the United

States the best paid in the world, but had gone further; he had promoted education, morality, and religion. It was slander to term him an oppressor of lab o r.

Since he could find no justification within the economic System for the prevailing labor discontent, Sage calculated that the cause must lie outside. Writing in the turbulent year, 1886, Sage attri­ buted a major portion of the unrest to the agitation of "our foreign population.H The root of the problem ". . . is in the moral quality of that class of laborers who forget that with prudence, economy, and self-denial, such as our forefathers cheerfully practiced, and such as most of the wealthy men of today once practiced, any man may in a few years lay some foundation for a comfortable competency," The solution was not in force, not in organization, but in the moral elevation of men to the point where they would be dutiful, true to their obligations, thrifty, self-denying, and content with the sphere where God had placed them. A reader owes a certain debt to Sage - 63 he crammed into one crowded page virtually a ll the social and economic 1 myths of his age.

Seconding Sage’s stand, Austin Corbin, President of the Long

Island and of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad, deplored the foreign ideologies that hod permeated trader unions and led to the disregard of self-help as the pathway to individual advance. Not a single one of the "too men" in America, he reminded his readers, owed his -prominence to labor unions; on the contrary, they would have failed if their young energies had been throttled by the dictatorship of a 'Walking delegate." These nefarious organizations encourage . attacks upon that independent, manly man they call "scab;" they perse­ cute the wives and vhildren of men who would rather work than strike.

They fail to recognize that all men have a certain sacred birthright; 2 "the right to freedom from d icta tio n ."

George F. Parsons, an editorial writer for the New York Tribune emphasized not so much the lack of abstract, moral q ualities ns the per­ sonal moral weaknesses in the workingmen themselves. The "booze" b ill, he reported, of laborers was from four to five million yearly. This amount Saved would ouickly erase any vestiges of a "labor problem. "

Men who could not govern their appetites deserved to remain poor,'

1 Henry W. Sage, "The Labor Problem," S cientific American Supple­ ment , 22 (August 28, 1886), p. 8877* O Austin Corbin, "The Tyranny of Labor Organizations," North American Review, 1^9 (October, 1889), no. ^13-^20.

-^George Frederic Parsons, "The Labor Question," At 1 antic Monthly, 98 (July, 1886) ,p,107© " ~ ~ ~ 64

Morality for businessmen of this type was a facile twig bent to their own deBigns0 At the same time they piously counselled laborers to practice the honest virtues that brought the self-made magnates their success, they would have been repelled with horror at the sug­ gestion that "morality11 or "sentimentality" had anything to do with the operation of the self-governing economy. In the operation of a business, morality and economics were two diametrically opposed categories that should not be confused,, The moral standards that ought to govern personal life had no application. Their creed was 4 personal morality# economic amorality. Regardless of monopoly, unchecked immigration, and economic favors showered by a fairy God­ mother government upon select individuals, these arch-conservative businessmen still held resolutely to the old traditions of free economic advance and freedom of contract.

The ideology did not fade with the passing of time. The annual address of the president of the newly formed National Association of

Manufacturers in 1903 attested to its continuing power:

Organized labor knows but one law and that i s the law of physical force - the law of the Hun and the Vandals, the law of the savage .... Composed as i t i s of the men of muscle rather than the men of intelligence, and commanded by leaders who are at heart disciples of revolution, it is not strange that organized labor stands for principles that are in direct conflict with the natural laws of economics,

4 See Edward E, K irkland, "Divide and Ruin," M ississlppi Valley Historical Review, XLIII (June, 1956), 3-17*

^David M, Parry, Annual Address of the President of the National Association of Manufacturers, New York Timeq April 15, 1903* quoted in John K0 Galbreath, American Capitalism "^Boston, 1952) , 157* 65 - o ~

Closely eHied with the intransigents were a small group of Belf- styled liberals who would accept reluctantly the fact that labor had grievance, insisting at the Bame time that any maldistribution of wealth or low wages would be arranged for the right by the 11 invisible hand" that guided the self-governing economy* Like the academic theorists, they believed that interference in the system through legislation or unnatural pressures would interfere with the boundless industrial progress America seemed to be making. Any changes had to be achieved through the unassisted efforts of individual men - by foregoing vices, by friendly arrangements with employers, or by saving pennies in food preparation. Only the individual was free, the system was in flex ib le* This second category of management spokesmen d if f e r from the first only in that they spoke in terms of some "solution 11 and did not defend the system a® perfect in its existing form.

The name of Edward Atkinson, textile manufacturer and banker of

Boston, appeared as a persistent by-line in the leading periodicals of the decade. A professional speaker and piiblicist, he toured the

South urging industrialization in the post-reconstruction days; he produced hundreds of pamphlets and articles and even had the time to dabble in the field of invention. Atkinson was the most outspoken opponent of the ei^it hour day. ^

To defend his arguments, Atkinson marshaled legions of imposing statistics and fortified them with logical inferences meticulously

^"Edward Atkinson," Pi ctionary of American Biography, I, Uo6-Uo7<> 66 drawn from political economy4 He rallied to the defense of the worker's freedom to negotiate his own contracts, stressing that the demand for hours reduction was an interference with personal liberty presaging that day when "the state constable may enter the household of a free citizen and prescribe . , . how they shall work and for what number of hours.Enam ored, like all anti-labor theorists, with the necessity of the worker having "personal liberty," he cited as the factors of production: land, labor, capital, mental energy, and time.

Since time was the only equal and constant factor, "it follows that any legal restrictions upon the free use of time impairs personal liberty more than almost any other interference with the freedom of men th a t can be conceived.H®

Like Sage, Atkinson argued that labor had no real claim against the employer class. To look behind the statistics would disclose a basic harmony of interest of labor and capital. Armed with a sta­ tistical method strange and wonderful to behold, he determined that the national divider,d was ten billion dollars, with one billion deducted for farm produce domestically consumed. By dividing the remaining nine billion among the laboring force, the result waB $523 per individual. If eight per cent was deducted for taxes and ten per cent for the capitalists' share, the resulting amount in the wage fund was $^33 per individual, a figure consistent with that of the census bureau. Hence, Atkinson reasoned that the industrialist in

gIbid., U37 . 67 truth absorbed only ten per cent of the national dividend* MoBt of this he poured back into the econoiry to buy goods and services, thereby Q c re atin g jobs*-'

With labor already receiving the lion's share of the national income, there was not only little need for reform, there were few possibilities. Total national production could be enlarged, but this was at best a slow process; it was impossible to take from the rich and give to the poor as Atkinson's figures demonstrated, but there was one remaining alternative. This was to eliminate waste of income already earned* To achieve this, Atkinson modestly put forth a child of his own inventive genius, the Aladdin Oven. Coupled with a revo­ lutionary new cook book, this device, if used frugally and expedi­ tiously by a working class family, could result in the saving of five cents daily 0 These pennies saved might be devoted to providing new homes for the workers. The oven, he wrote, would "cause a profound revolution in the condition of the civilized world * . . that is what

I am going down to p o s te r ity upon. The epitaph on my monument w ill be: 'He taught the American people how to stew , 1

^Harold Francis Williamson, Edward Atkinson, The Biography of an American Liberal (Boston, 195*0 • 266. Frederick B. Hawley, hNo'te"s~nd Memoranda,'Q uarterly Journal of Economica, II (April, lggg), 36S—371 points up some omissions in Atkinson's statistical method. He failed to consider personal services in computing annual income and did not compute the earnings from capital invested as a significant factor in the total wealth. Hence his total national income figure of 9 billion was fa r too sm all.

^Edward Atkinson to Albert Shaw, June 6 , 1891, quoted in Fine, Laisscz-Falre and, the Welfare State, 6U, 6s

Frederick W. Taylor, the father of scientific management, at the

start of his career in the last years of the decade, was more realistic

than Edward Atkinson, perhaps because he was primarily an engineer and

technologist and did not venture into the theoretical realms of political economy* He was more willing than Atkinson to acknowledge

an undesirable state of affairs that might constitute a "labor problem." But strife of this kind was unnatural and unnecessary

according to his calculations* The self-styled prophet of a new

industrial regime, Taylor held forth to this fellow managers the possibility of harmony of interest, justice, and the free operation

of natural laws in industrial relations,, Taylor was the most explicit

of an enger group of managers whose mechanistic ideas of incentives, piece-rates, or gain-sharing would eliminate all possible human v a ria b le s from the commodity "labor* "

Working with rigidly absolute ratios and standards, Taylor at­

tempted to convert the Puritanical virtues of hard work, efficiency,

care and perseverance into statistics and to use them as a stimulus

to induce every worker to produce at his maximum rate. Such efforts

created a bitter antagonism between trade unionism and scientific

management that stretched into the 1 9 2 0's , waned b r ie f ly , only to be­

come more pronounced after the depression of 1929* In his firBt published article, in 1 8 9 6 , he condemned both the ordinary piece rate

Bystem and p r o f it sharing. As an a lte rn a tiv e , he suggested three

steps. First, the determination "scientifically" by a time-motion

study of the time required for a particular task: second, a dif­

ferential piece rate, granting to a worker the highest rate if he finished the work in a minimum time at maximum efficiency; third, compensation for men and not for positions. With meticulous organi­ zation he listed ninety-three benefits of the plan. One of the chief advantages, he assured his manager friends, was that it "promotes a moet friendly feeling between men and their employers, and so renders labor unions and strikes unnecessary," A few paragraphs later he added: "As soon as the men recognize that they have free scope for the exercise of their proper ambition, that as they work harder and better their wages are from time to time increased, and that they are given a better class of work to do , , , the best of them have no use for the labor union."1'*'

Andrew Carnegie in a s e rie s of a r tic le s , a l l of them p red atin g the Homestead S trik e , seemed on paper to be more progressive on the labor issue that either Taylor or Atkinson. He conceded that labor had grievances and even accepted labor's right to organize. "The right of the workmen to combine and form trades-unions is no less sacred than the right of the manufacturer to enter into associations 12 and conferences with his fellows , 0 . 8 As a humanitarian prin­ ciple, Carnegie believed that no worker should be required to labor more than ten hours a day.

^Frederick W. Taylor, "A Piece Rate System, Being a Step Toward Partial Solution of the Labor Problem," Economic Studies, I (Hew York, 1896), 89-92, 97. 1 P Andrew Carnegie, "An Employer's Yiew of the Labor Q uestion," Forum, I (A pril, 1886), 119. 70

The four points of Carnegie's proffered labor solution of April,

1886 seemed the harbinger of a coming day 8 He suggested, first, that wages be geared to a sliding scale with prices received for the product. Second, that a "proper organization" of workers be formed

in every plant by which the natural leaders might come to the fore and

confer freely with management. Third, that- when disputes failed of

adjustment between the immediate parties, peaceful arbitration should be resorted to. An arbitration committee of retired business and union leaderB was a possibility. Fourth, weapons of violence on both

sides should be abandoned; there would be no interruption of industrial

operations. Arbitration would settle all disputes, the parties 13 agreeing in advance to abide by the award,,

Five months later, in the wake of the 1886 strikes, the steel** master had new counsel. He was concerned with the "uninformed"

workers who denounced capitalists and big corporations. If Carnegie

was the first, he was not the last to envisage American corporations

as ch aritab le in s titu tio n s operating fo r the b en efit of widows and

orphans,

When one, therefore, denounces great corporations for unfair treatment of their men, he is not denouncing the act of some monster capitalist, but that of hundreds and thousands of small holders, scarcely one of whom would be a party to unfair or illiberal treatment of the working** man; the majority of them, indeed, would be found on his side; and, as we have been, many of the owners themselves would be workingmen. Labor has only to bring its just grievances to the attention of owners to secure fair and

1^ I b id ,, 12U, 71

liberal treatment. The "great capitalist" in almost a myth, and exists in any considerable number of degree only in the heated imagination of the uninformed*"!^

As a result of the recent strikes, Carnegie reasoned that labor should have learned that public opinion would no longer countenance violence or inciting to violence. At the same time, employers ought now to realize that the conscience of society would not condone working men twelve hours a day or hiring the most irresponsible of the labor force as "sci bs" instead of raising the wages of the regular 1 R employees in time of c?.o..els, j

The paternalism that Carnegie preached in Qospel of Wealth is not found frequently in the w ritings of the management spokesman, For the most part, their chief concern was the defense of the capitalistic system. Strangely, the strongest pleas that the labor problem could be solved through the benevolence of the owners came from groups outBide of the industrial field,

Carnegie himself had confidence in the goodness and integrity of men, particularly those of wealth, and consequently could never imagine a latent conflict in the relative position of aggressive capital and subservient labor. The natural state of affairs between the two was harmony to be m aintained by mutual tr u s t and good w ill,

Carnegie seemed to envisage little necessity for anything more than individual faith and confidence « certainly no need for compulsion or force - to maintain harmony,

! ^Andrew Carnegie, "B esults of the Labor S tru g g le," Forum, I (August, 1386), 5U7 .

15I b id ,, 5 5 5 . 72

« o -

Other believers in the unity of management end labor did not share with Carnegie the optimistic faith that good-will could be main*-* tained without some definite framework sustained by force. When he proposed arbitration, Carnegie had assumed that both sides would willingly agree in advance to accept the award. More cynical observers in the ranks of management would place no such trust in human good­ ness, A small group of them went so f a r as to demand sta te in te r ­ vention to compel and enforce harmonious relations in industry. The believers in compulsory arbitration differed sharply from the laissez-faire capitalists in their concept of the state. Their particular political theory, that of the corporate state, is usually

considered the outgrowth of the less fluid social structure of 16 Europe, where the labor movement waB often genuinely radical*

Typical of the plans for compulsory arbitration within the con­

te x t of the corporate sta te was th at advanced by Hon. Seymour Dexter,

a banker and author of a treatise on building and loan associations

from Elmira, New York, holder of a Ph.D degree from Alfred College.

A statewide court would be created with jurisdiction over wages#

hourB, tools and appliances, safety, conditions of labor, and terms

of the labor contract. Members would include jurists, social

scientists, legislators, and representatives of labor and management.

The decision would be enforced upon corporations by threatening to

16 For comparison see Matthew H. Elbow, French Corporate Theory, 17 89-19*18 (New York, 1953), 197- 73 deprive them of their franchise, upon unions by declaring their 17 strikes criminal conspiracy.

Like all corporate state ideas, Dexter's began hy comparing the state to an organism: "The State in its social life . . . is in fact becoming knit together and related in all its parte, akin to the human body. The railroads of all kinds, the natural and artificial waterways, are the circulatory system*, the telegr&ph and telephone the 18 nervous system." This organic Btate, acting in its corporate capacity had the power to command harmony in the smaller corporations which made up the whole,.

The great corporation, with its $150,000,000 of invested capital and its valuable franchises granted by the State, becomes valueless without its army of employees. The army of employees must earn the wages which the cor­ poration pays, in order to live and maintain themselves and families. In their harmonious working together, the people of the State of New York are necessarily and directly concerned and interested and have the moral ri^it, and should have the legal right to command them to work in harmony, and to further command that neither party shall voluntarily disrupt such harmonious workings, under any circumstances, to the extent of paralysing the function which the union of their forces discharges in the social structure of the State, without the individuals directly engaged introducing such disruption being guilty of high crimes under the law. We assert this proposition as true and fundamental in reference to every corporation or employer and their employees, who by the union of their forces perform a function in the social life which cannot be readily and at once discharged by others without serious injury to the public at large.*9

17 Seymour Dexter, "Compulsory A rb itra tio n ," Journal of Social Science, 28 (October, 1891), pp. 86-100.

lg Ib ld . , 8 7 .

19Ibid., 88 . 7^

To protect private property from violence and to preserve industrial

harmony, Dexter and those associated intellectually with him would

cross the pale to a corporate state akin to that of Mussolini’s Italy

of many years later,

0 —

Unlike Dexter who would surrender freedom and democracy in the

name of economic order or the nay- 3ayers like Atkinson who scorned

the existence of any labor problem, one influential group of

employers near the turn of the century not only accepted labor unions, but formed close working contacts with the "pure and simple"

union leaders. They acknowledged the fact that organized labor as

represented by Gompers, F oster, and the A, F. of L. was in tru th

conservative and not too far removed from big business in its

economic ideology. Their aim was not to restrict or eliminate

organized lab o r, but to learn to liv e with i t . While Sage and Corbin

shuddered at the fear of approaching revolution, Mark Hanna growled

to his startled follow employers: "Any man who won't meet his men

h a lf way is a goddam fool.'"

The principal manifestation of this enlightened viewpoint was

the entry of the National Civic Federation into the industrial rela­

tions field in December, 1900. Formed in Chicago in 1893, the

original objectives of the organization had been academic and phil­

anthropic, although it had urged arbitration and conciliation as

effective means of peacefully settling labor disputes. In its

statement of purpose in 1900 the Federation recognized candidly the

existence both of big labor and big capital, and made plain its firm 75 belief that disturbance in industry could be avoided only by full and free discussion between the two equally balsn cod groups. Collective bargaining of this type would be insured through standing trade agree-' raents in each industry. Consistent with the desires both of manage­ ment and the A. 3T. of L ., government was to have no p a rt in the procesB. Compulsory arbitration was specifically rejected. A specially appointed Industrial Commission within the N. C. P., chosen from employers and labor leaders, served as a propaganda agent for conciliation of this type and also stood ready to render its services 20 a,s counselors in case of private dispute.

The N. C. P., with its practical administration in charge of

Secretary Ralph Easley, claimed as members such prominent leaders of labor as Samuel Gompers, John M itchell, and Daniel J. Keefe, P resident of the International Longshoresmen. The latter was instrumental in bringing first Daniel R. Hanna of Cleveland, whom he described aB

"one Great Lakes emplojre r w ith a record of f a i r treatm ent of employees," and later his father, Senator Mark Hanna into the N. C. P.

In March, 1901, the organization Bought the aid of Senator

Hanna in bringing together the parties in the complicated anthracite coal negotiations. With Hanna's assistance, the operators entered into an agreement with John M itchell's union that lasted until April 1,

1902. Although he claimed he had never previously heard of N, C. P.,

Hanna found its concept of free bargaining of independent balanced groups to be in close affinity to his own views of what industrial

20 Rational Conference on Industrial Conciliation, under the auspices of the National Civic Federation, 1901 (New York, 1902), Appendix, 272. 76 relations should be. Accordingly, he accepted enthusiastically the position as head of the Industrial Commission.

Despite the association of Hanna with politic^. conservatives and wealthy business interests, his labor views were marked by a tolerance for labor organizations unusual for a figure of his background in

1900. Since he had personally been implicated in a disastrous coal strike in the Massilon, Ohio area in 1876, he had condemned violence and disunity in the relation of capital and labor. Rather than oppose each other, the two parties should cooperate to stimulate pro« duction which would be b e n e fic ia l to the wage**earner ae well a» to the employer.

Hanna did not conceive an idyllic industrial world of peace and harmony « h is cardinal concern was the p ra c tic a l one of production.

Employers should recognize unions as indispensable and useful. He declared in his typical gross manner: "There is more to overcome in the way of feeling on the part of capital than on the part of labor.

Capital has been for many generations entrenched behind its power to 21 dictate conditions, whether right or wrong ..." He was even more emphatic in his endorsement of unions:

I believe in organized labor, and I have for thirty years. I believe in it because it is a demonstrated fact that where the concerns and interests of labor are en­ trusted to able and honest leadership, it is much easier for those who represent the employers to come into close contact with the laborer, and, by dealing with fewer persona, to accomplish results quicker and better. The trusts have come to stay* Organized labor and organized capital are but forward steps in the great

2*Herbert Croly, Hark Hanna (New York, 1919)» **06. 77

industrial evolution that is taking place. We would just as soon think of going back to primitive methods of manufacturing as we would primitive methods of doing business, and it is our duty, those of us who represent the employers, from th is time on to make up our minds that this Question is one that must be heard. ^

Despite the disclaimers of Hanna.'s biographer, Herbert Croly, the successes of the National Civic Federation were greatest when it could approach businessmen with the name of Senator Hanna at the top of it s letterhead. It reached a climax in 1901 when with the

Senator's help it averted the anthracite coal strike. The following year i t took something more than peaceful conciliation to compel compromise from the irreconcilable anthracite owners.

While the reports of the Federation's conventions reflect the cheerful atmosphere of a Rotary convention, it can be doubted if beneath the cloak of superficial friendship there was anything but an ephemeral bond between individuals of such varied strioe as

G-omoers, Commons, Hanna, and Charles Schwab. There may have been a respect for strong opponents and reluctant acceptance of collective bargaining, but evidence is lacking to demonstrate any real accents ance of the organization principle in its full implication by business representatives. Schwab warned the 1 9 OI convention: "Labor must not restrict it s output.'" He made plain h is opposition to unions "as then organized." He would be willing to accept unions only when they agreed not to limit production, to keep their con­ tracts, and when they had the good of the trade they represented a.t h e a r t.^

22“ Mark Hanna, "Industrial Conciliation and Arbi.tra.tion," Annals of the American Academy, XX (July, 1902), 26. ^National Conference on Industrial Conciliation, 1901, 33° The N. C. F. is a good exaniple of the paradox of outward t>ro~ gressivism and latent conservatism found so frequently in the reform movements from 1901 to 1908. While mature in its recognition of labor's desire for balance of power, the leaders of the N. C, F. were still unwilling to concede that labor unions were frank: class organizations. Secretary Easley cautioned: "The division of ueople into classes is against the spirit of democratic institutions. The maintenance of industrial peace is absolutely essential to commercial prosperity, to popular government, to the progress of civilization."

Judicious reform was the best preventive of injudicious revolution.

"To prevent the industrial revolution threatened by extremists, and to secure industrial peace are the reasons for the existence of the 2 U National Civic Federation." This can scarcely be reconciled to the A. F. L.'s pragmatic policy of class organization a® a way of securing and guaranteeing benefits to the individual worker.

The golden days of the National Civic Federation faded quickly.

Once deprived of the personal prestige of Senator Hanna, the organ­ ization degenerated into advocacy of welfare capitalism. Pressure forced Mitchell and Gompers out. Its last pathetic contribution, far different from the days when it could claim John R. CommonB as a member, came in the "Red Scare" of 1919 when i t s Review became an organ for super-patriotism, dissemination of fantastic tales of

pli Ralph Easley, "Work of the National Civic Federation," H arper13 Weekly, (November 26, I 9 0U), 'p. 1805. 79 i conspiracy, and exposes of alleged plots in schools, unions, school- 25 hooks, and churches.

Like the Progressive Movement of which it was a part, the

National Oivic Federation can he appraised only in the perspective of what had gone before, not what has happened since. The N, C, F, stood a pole apart from the anti-labor industrialists. It repre­ sented an independent chapter in American labor history. It is not too much to say that for Gompers and pragmatic, non-governmental unionism, it represented a climactic point. If the spirit it represented could have continued, "pure and simple" unionism would have seen its ultimate triumph. Not for forty-five years, or until the years after the Second World War, was there any example of such a give and take relationship between labor and management. The attitudes of mutual respect and balance of power exemplified in N, C.

F. had expired by 191*+. The militant anti-labor crusade in the twenties was the antithesis of the "constitutionalism" of Hanna and

Gompers preached. Ironically, when collective bargaining was finally recognized and the power balance principle made a. working rule in industrial relations, it was not accomplished by voluntary accept­ ance in the N. C, F. fashion, rather it came through a means that organization would have deplored - through government direction in a time of national emergency.

25 ^Robert K. Murray, Red Scare: A Study in National Hysteria (Minneapolis, 1955). 2*+5. CHAPTER EIVE

THE PATRICIANS AND LABOR

While the majority looked with optimism to the new century as a limitleBS world of progress and to wonders of technology awaiting man’s genius to tap them, a minority whose still, small voics was scarce heard above the din of the multitude, prepared themselves resignedly as a maddened, materialistic society flung itself toward destruction* Most of those who, borrowing Eric Goldman's term,^ can be called "patricians,11 represented old wealth obtained in commercial ventures long passed, Adamses, Lodges, Eliots, Roosevelts, they belonged to families with sufficient security to have risen above the pressing necessity of wealth-gaining. As fin de slecle apostles of values derived from inheritance and tradition, they looked down from the aristocratic mountaintop disdainful not only of the begrimed masses, but of the money-grubbing plutocrat to whom

"the old American family means nothing," who "knows naught of the p history or traditions of his State and country and cares less,"

"I have known and known to le ra b ly w ell, a good many 'su ccessfu l men,'" added the eldest of the proud house of Adams, "men famous during the last half-centuiy; and a less interesting crowd I do not

^See Eric Goldman, Rendezvous with Destiny (New York, 1953)* chapter 2„

^Henry Cabot Lodge, Early Memories (New York, 1913)* 2^9*

SO gl care to encounter, Hot one that I have ever known would I care to meet again in this world or the next , .

Ironically, although these were superficially among the most astute critics of capitalism the late nineteenth century produced, they were themselves the products of the capitalist system they condemned, and in the final analysis, its defenders. Despite his occasional vindictiveness, Henry Cabot Lodge still looked with reBpect upon the opportunistic "self-made man;" usually stoical

Henry Adams came hastening back from Europe when the family fortune was threatened. Although he quickly re-couped his own financial interests, he brooded deeply over the tragedy to his family and friends. "Boston grew suddenly old, haggard, and thin," he k meditated. Brooke, the youngest brother, recalled twenty four years later how "Henry and I sat in the hot August evenings and talked end­ lessly of the panic and of our hones and fears, and of my historical and economic theories . . . "^ The more business-oriented older brother, Charles Francis, remarked that the five years required for family recovery were "years of simple Hell" which "shattered my «6 whole scheme of l i f e , "

^Charles Francis Adams, Jr., Autobiography (Boston, 1916), 190* k Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams (Boston, 1913), 33^.

^Brooks Adams, The Degradation of the Democratic Dogma (Hew York, 1919), 3K

^Charles Francis Adams, J r,, Autobiography, 200; James Truslow Adams, The Adams Family (Boston, 1933)♦ 33^. 82

One who searches the patrician writings for some evidence of

Tory aristocratic noblesse oblige toward the less privileged will be disappointed. The American patrician scarcely appreciated the intensity of the labor problem or the pressing needs of the worker.

That the patrician was not completely sincere in criticizing capitalism appears clearly in their severe condemnation of labor couples with a mild, often jesting criticism of the system that gave them wealth and status. Unions and strikes were fuel for the gristmill which was methodically grinding society to bits,

- 0 -

The scion of the patricians was deeply pensive, and often pro­ vocative Henry Adams. Ever since that night in July, 1868, when the

Adams family set foot in Boston following a ten year absence, hardly less strangers than "Tyrian traders of the year B. C. 1000 landing from a galley fresh from Gibraltar,"^ a gloomy motif of failure bung

over Henry Adams' l i f e . In h is p e ssim istic Education he considered himself a failure at teaching, in politics, and in his personal rela­

tionships. The values Adams had inherited from his eighteenth

century background seemed to be evaporating around him. But there is more than melancholia in his monumental Mont St. Michel and Chartres and the Education. Adams turned its own intellectual weapons upon an

age which worshipped progress and gloated upon science. While the incorrigible optimists spoke of advance, Adams deduced from physics,

Darwinian evolutionary theory, and abstract mathematics his own

^Henry Adams, Education, 237* S3 theories affirming the descent and fall of modern man. MMy belief is th a t science i s to wreck u s," he mused, "and th at we are lik e monkeys monkeying with a loaded shell; we don't in the least know or care where our practically infinite energies come from or will bring g US 10. "

Adams spoke in words steeped in irony and paradox to a gullible age that believed "life is real, life is earnest." When he spoke of

the failure of his vaguely defined eighteenth century education in

the nineteenth century of m u ltip lic ity symbolized by the dynamo, was it Henry Adams, the outward form upon which these multiple forces had worked, who was the failure - or was it the society itself that had

failed ?

The labor situation seemed to contribute to Adam's resignation

and his pessimistic ire more than any other single topic. An Ironic

l e t t e r to E lizabeth Cameron, July 6, I 89 1*, described his discomfort

at being compelled to forego a trip West "owing to the disposition

of President Cleveland and the installation of Dictator Debs,"

"Never was such chaos - at least since February, I86l," he noted

with sardonic glee.

Cleveland has undertaken to run the railroads by the army, against the protests of the states .... With Olney as Acting President and Miles as Hailway Superintendent, running the country in the interests of George M. Pullman - if that is his name - I will bet my useless pair of new mountain boots that long before two years are up all the bankers and brokers of Wall Street, State Street, and Jerusalem will have gone down on their knees to your

%enry Adams to Brooks Adams, August 10, 1902, in Harold Dean Cater, Henry Adams and His Friends (Boston, 19^7), 5 2 9, (Hereafter cited Cater.) gU

husband ^ sen ato r Don Cameron, s ilv e r Senator from Pennsylvania/ as the only safe and reactionary mugwump in the country who can alone represent the interests of capital.-'

Debs crushed and the sta tu s quo v in d icated , Adams saw the pluto— cratic triumph hastening the inevitable decay of democracy.

The la s t week has been more than u su ally awkward for politicians, Cleveland has won another coloBsal victory for his friends the gold-bugs; a greater one than his silver triumph, for he has settled the working-man forever. Now that the gold-bug has drunk blood, and has seen that the government can safely use the army to shoot socialists, the wage-questlon is as good as settled. Of course we silver men will be shot n ex t, but for the moment, the working-men are worse off th an we0 Of course, too the Senate has unanimously approved of Cleveland .... The gold-bug has got us cold. For my part, I do not object. I never think it good sense to try to reverse the processee of nature, and my idea of politics is to hasten rather than retard re s u lts ....

His laboring man was even most abstract than the political economist's. Henry Adams was further from South Boston than he was from the Cathedral of Chartres in thirteenth-century Normandy.

Adams and his compatriot "belated wanders" from the eighteenth century felt themselves helpless forces tossed in the vagrant tem­ pest of capitalism, first by selfish laborers, then by grubbing plutocrats. Stimulating when he contemplated "ultimates," Henry's only offering to the practical field of labor organization was his opinion that unions spellsd "blackmail" of the capitalists and the p u b lic .

'Henry Adame to Elizabeth Cameron, July 6 , IS9U, Letters of Henry Adams, ed„ W orthington C. Ford (Boston, 1930- 1 9 3$), I I , 5 1 , (hereafter cited Ford).

^Henry Adams to Elizabeth Cameron, July 1 3 , 189*+, Ib id . , I I .

52- 53° 85

The only Berious trouble now, at home, i s not p arty but wages. The labor of our common sort seems to have developed a system of blackmailing society which society submits to. The capitalist robbed us, but had an interest in letting us have what we wanted. The laborer blackmails us under the pretense of robbing the capitalist. Hie strikes are always against us, in order to impoverish us, and so affect capital. To me, it is all one. Between the two gentle tyrants, I was long ago squashed* My class is qiiite extinct, as a class, and only the organizations have survived to employ us as individuals in their service. The class was anyway not worth saving, and I am not going to try to Bave it; but now all the money~men are howling murder and telling us to sell all we have and bury it in the back yard because there i s n 't any money, and a l l there is, they need for labor strikes.

And what of the future? "I am always thinking," Adame wrote to his brother, Brooks, two years after Bryan's first defeat, "of the next p re s id e n tia l e le c tio n , and of what we are to say two years hence. Hanna will drive us to Bryan - and then I Much as I loathe the regime of

Manchester and Lombard S tree t in the n in eteen th century, I am glad I IP shall be dead before I am ruled by the Trades Unions of the twentieth.

~ 0 «

Like his brother, Brooks AdamB was a dealer in ultimates who speculated on the fate of the cosmos. But unlike his older brother,

Brooke was not one to stand aside while society quietly and methodically spent itself. Henry captured the contrast well when he described to

Mrs. Lodge a color print of two donkeys "representing my brother Brooks and me .... a smoky factory town in the distance, a glare of light without trace of a shadow; and B rother Brooks looking sideway as though 13 to kick, while I look at you patient and resigned."

11Ibia., March 22, 19O3 , I I , U02«U03. ■^Henpy Adams to Brooks Adams, June 11, 1898, Ford, I I , lf?Un. ■^Henxy Adams to Anna Lodge, September 26, .1909» Cater, 6 6 7 ? Arthur Beringause, Brooks Adams (New York, 1955). 3» ' 86

While he affirmed, the melancholy theory of decay postulated hy his historian brother, Brooks Adams blazed out boldly to hazard an explanation and to proffer a remedy. In the boldest of his early theoretical Btudies, The Lav of Civillzation and Decay, published in

I 8 9 6 , he saw the shifting tides of the world's gold supply as a major causative factor in history, "Gold-huge" or usurers like those who came to power in the twilight of the Roman Empire, interested in a static economy for the selfish purposes of protecting their own material gains, fostered monopolistic practices and halted progress.

In sharp contrast were the hardy warrior-patriciane of the Cincinnatus type who had presided over Rome's rise to power. In his own society,

Brooks Adams saw that the same nefarious "gold-bug" capitalists had reached their ultimate triumph with the victory of the gold standard and the high protective tariff. The old free market had ceased to e x is t. Monopoly was in e v ita b le; man was the slave of h is to ry ! Social institutions, lagging behind social change, must hasten to catch up to the stupendous changes wrought by concentration. "To attack monopoly," he wrote, "is to attack the vital principle of our civilization itselfe

Taking human h i3tory altogether, I apprehend that monopoly is rather the ih natural condition of mankind than competition 0 . . ."

Social structure could be made consistent with the new monopolistic economy in one of th ree ways, according to Adams. F i r s t , by a balance of power so that neither monopoly nor the public would prevail; second,

lH Brooks Adams, "Problem in C iv iliz a tio n ," A tla n tic Monthly, £Vi (July, 1910), 29-30» quoted in Thornton Anderson, Brooks Adams, Constructive Conservative (Ithaca, 1951), 135-136. 37 by cruBhing free enterprise and establishing monopoly rule by economic

coercion. The third, original with Brooks Adams, would create an

"administrative state" directed by forceful "men of action" who would 15 stimulate efficiency and bring rebirth to lost individual initiative.

Add together Adams'belief in rule by a forceful aristocracy, his

disdain for democracy, his favorable attitude toward concentration,

his advocacy of the organic state, and it will be found that his social

theory contains most of the ingredients of the French corporate state

of a later decade.

Yet from his peculiar viewpoint, Adams' analysis of labor's aims

squares more closely with reality than those of his fellow patricians

or those of the leissez-faire theorists, notwithstanding that Adams

b itte r ly objected to e-very advance labor was making. The same accel­

eration that had brought economic centralization in business had

impelled labor unions to organize labor a.s a monopoly. It was largely

his fear of the ultimate conflict of these two monopolistic groups that

led him to advocate the administrative state as the only recourse,

. . . Labor protests against the irresponsible sever- eighty of capital, as men have always protested against irresponsible sovereignty, declaring that the capitalistic social syBtem, as it now exists, is a form of slavery. Very logically, therefore, the abler and bolder of labor agitators proclaim that labor levies actual war against society, and that in that war there can be no truce until irresponsible capital has capitulated. Also, in labor's method of warfare the same phenomena appear as in the autocracy of capital. Labor attacks capitalistic society

15 Anderson, Brooks Adams, 1 3 2 -1 3 6 passim. 88

by methods beyond the purview of the law, and may, at any moment, s h a tte r the so cial system; w hile, under our laws and institutions, society is helpless.

Should capital continue to exercise sovereign powers, without accepting the attendant responsibilities, "the revolt against the existing order must probably continue, and that revolt can only be dealt with, as all servile revolts must be dealt with, by physical force, 11 7 A government effective enough to deal with such problems would of necessity have to be one of strength. Has capital contem­ plated, inquired Adams, that its own violation of laws might lead to revolution said creation of a situation where Hthe American people must 18 be ruled by an army?"

It i? futile to talk of keeping peace in labor disputes by compulsory arbitration, if the government has not the power to command obedience to its arbitrator's decree; but a government able to constrain a couple of hundred thousand discontented railway employees to work against their will, must d if f e r considerably from the one we have. Nor is i t possible to imagine that labor will ever yield peaceful obedience to such constraint, unless capital makes equiva­ lent concessions, — unless, perhaps, among other things, capital consents to tribunals which shall offer relief to any citizen who can show himself to be oppressed by the monopolistic price. In fine, a government, to promise stability in the future, must apparently be so much more powerful than any private interest, that all men will Btand equally before its tribunals; and these tribunals must be flexible enough to reach those categories of activity which now lie beyond legal justification.

Brooks Adams, The Theory of Social Hevolutions (New York, 1918), 27-28,

17 Ib id . , 29.

18 Ib id ,,

19Ibid., 29-30. 89

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Charles Francis Adams, Jr., the eldest of the fourth generation

Adamses, was the only one to he preoccupied with business and public

affairs. He was chairman of the Massacltusetts Board of Railroad Com­

missioners from 1872 to 1879; he was chairman of the Board of the Union

Pacific from 1884 to 1890. Less intellectual than his erudite brothers,

he was at heart a romantic. He lamented the passing of the old.

Quincy, long the "port in the storm" to a family proud and independent

was being transform ed before h is eyes "into a conventional, commonplace

suburban community . . . wholly devoid of individuality." Industrialism

and material progress were ugly, its human products colorless.

So, no more than its everlasting hills or the islands in its bay are the present inhabitants of Quincy sug- gestive of the Quincy of my boyhood. The hills have been stripped, and gutted or built over, made common and vulgarized, or devasted and turned, as I have already said into a mining horror, while the islands have lost the green, whale-back outlines under an eruption of summer hotels and seashore cottages. As to the population, no one knows me now as I walk the once familiar streets; and I recall no faces. With local feeling, traditions also are gone* As I pass to and fro in Quincy, I now seem to wander with ghosts.

Arguing much like Edmund Burke, Adams believed that social change had

to be a gradual development in harmony with the traditions of a

culture. He deprecated the impulse of the moment that led to "the e v e r —

lasting issuing of new legislative edicts in which the supposed popular 21 will is crystallized ..."

20 Charles Francis Adams, Jr., Autobiography, 8 . 21 I b i d ., 1 7 5 . 90

Two important and pithy pronouncements, separated by a wide span of twenty-nine years, constituted the only public statements made by

Charles Francis Adams upon the labor question, yet significantly, they reflect a constant principle. During his career as Massachusetts Rail­ way Commissioner, he penned a bitter unsigned article for the North

American Review attacking the candidacy of Ben Butler for the governor*-* ship. Latent in the Butler platform he saw the fatuous assumption that legislation was the means to social reform. For the lower classes the answer was not legislation, it was individual self-reliance, Massachu­ setts ought to be a great voluntary industrial co-partnership where each man might feel he worked with his own tools for his own profit.

Conflict was needless, for he argued that already capital belonged to lab1 w o r. 22

The next month in the same periodical, Adams reviewed with un­ veiled cynicism a five hundred page report of the Massachusetts Board of Labor, Strange, he scoffed, so many pages concerning the problems of a labor force smaller than the population of Liverpool* But the authors (who Included George E. McNeill) most grievous error was that

"they are seeking to obtain through political agitation that which Can 23 come only thru industrial reorganization." Adams spoke vaguely, but

22 Unsigned article, "The Butler Canvass," North Arnerican Review, CXIY (June, 1872), 1 U7 -I 7 O. Attributed to Charles Francis Adams, *Jr. by Sarah S, Whittlesey, Massachusetts Labor Legislation: An Historical and Critical Study, Supplement to the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (January, 1901), lH6. “^Unsigned article, "Report of Statistics of Labor in Massachusetts A Review,® North American Review, CXV (July, 1872), 210-219, Attributed to Charles Francis Adams ~ ' "arah S. Whittlesey, Massachusetts Labor Legislation, loc. 9 1 without specification of some type of cooperation, but whether this was to he cooperation of the Christian Socialist type, or cooperation as owner-managers might direct, he never indicated. Perhaps his interests

shifted in other directions, for he made no public statements on the labor question until 1901.

He appeared in that year before the annual conference of the

National Civic Federation advocating "investigation and publicity" rather than compulsory arbitration. His plan would provide a public tribunal clothed with a power of "compulsory inquiry" when the oublic interest was involved in an industrial dispute. Its sole enforcement power would be the force of p ublic opinion; i t could make recommen­ dations only. The main advantage of the plan was its lack of "com­ pulsion, " its refusal to rely upon the authority of the state as a

s o lv e -a ll 0

The trouble with us is that we are always prating to the force of public opinion; but, when the exigency arises, we evince no confidence whatever in it. Like a parcel of children, we are apt to cry out for the master to come in and enforce instant obedience with the rod, I submit that permanent results with us in America are not reached in that way. Let us in this matter have the courage of our conviction.

Still, there were situations where arbitration could be of no

avail. Some issues could be resolved only by force. Out of every ten

cases of controversy, he explained, it was desirable that one should

not be settled, but fought out, ", . .Our civil war was a case in

2 *+ Charles Francis Adams, Jr., "Investigation and Publicity as Opposed to Conroulsory Arbitration," Industrial Conferenee under the auspices of the National Oivic Federation, December, 1902 (New'York, 1903), 69 -70. 92 point. No arbitration could have settled that, , . . the issue had to 25 be fought to the bitter end,"

Charles Francis Adams was a realistic conservative, struggling for some solution to a perplex question. His willingness to recognise the p ra c tic a l forces involved was more r e a l i s t i c than condemning labor unions as "blackmail" or depicting them as the avant garde of social revolution. Perhaps, then, he is to be forgiven for suggesting that the

National Civic Federation be given official status so that in case of a critical labor situation, the national executive might take counsel with

"the wisest of the nation's men - those of highest character and most 26 intimately acquainted with every consideration involved,"

- 0 -

Indiana-born John Hay, secretary to Lincoln and erstwhile verse writer, was not a patrician by blood. Lacking the requisite birth­ right, his way to acceptance was his close friendship with his intel­ lectual superior, Henry Adams, He confessed that he depended on Adams 27 "to keep me in the straight path by showing me the crooked,"

Hay was obsessed with a chronic pessimism and a fear of impending social upheaval. Restless through the colorless political struggles of the eighties and nineties, Hay was haunted, like his friend Adams, by a vision of personal failure. His budding political career had been

2 5 I b i d ., 7 0 .

P6 I M d ., 68 .

^Quoted in Robert Spiller, "Henry Adams," in Spiller et al, eds,, Literary History of the United States (New York, 19^8), II, 190>-190U, nipped by the Conklings, Platts, and Quays. MI am a worthless creature, destitute of initiative," he wrote to Henry Adams with cynical jest,

"Time goeB by imperceptibly in indolence and solitude," he wrote from 2g his New Hampshire summer retreat five years later.

John Hay’s acquaintance with matters social and economic did not penetrate surface manifestations. In an epoch alive with pressing issues, his intellectual perimeter never extended beyond elections and political personalities. Blindly Republican, fron his limited vantage point he viewed each tiny ripple in his placid ideological eddy as an in te lle c tu a l tid a l wave.

Labor c o n flic t, of which he had a p a rticu la r horror, heralded nothing less than violent social revolution. Unlike the more refined

Brooks Adams who would explain violence as a reaction to the amassed power of capital, Hay, like the most extreme of the labor haters fretted, "The very devil seems to have entered into the lower classes of working men, and there are plenty of scoundrels to encourage them to all lengths."^9 The plot for Hay’s Breadwinners seems the product of his own despairing reaction to the rail strikes of 1377* At its height he wrote his wealthy father-in-law:

Since last week the country has been at the mercy of the mob, and on the whole the mob has behaved better than the country. The shameful truth is now clear, that the government is utterly helpless and powerless in the face of an unarmed rebellion of foreign workingmen, mostly Irish, There is nowhere any firm nucleus of authority -

John Hay to Henry Adams, August 5* 1&90* September 3, 1895* W. R. Thayer, John Hay (Boston, 1915)* II* 80, 12H.

^John Hay to Amasa Stone, August 23, 1377* Ibid., II, 5« 94

nothing to fall back on as a last resort. The Army ha* been destroyed by the dirty politicians, and the State m ilitia is utterly inefficient. Any hour the mob chooses, it Can destroy any city in the country - that is the simnle truth. Fortunately, so far, it has not cared to destroy any but railway property,, . . . The town is full of thieves and tramps waiting and hoping for a riot, but not daring to begin it them­ selves. If there were any attempt to enforce the law, I believe the town would be in ashes in six hours.-

John Hay saw no problem, only irresponsible agitation. Try as he might, he still sounded like a Euclid Avenue capitalist* Unlike an

Adams, he did not fit his problem into a teleological scheme of decline; his only answer was forceful repression or surrender to oblivion. But

one should not hasten to distinguish the Beacon Hill patricians from

John Hay when it comes to the labor question. Henry Adams wrote to him upon reading a pre-publication copy of Breadwinners: "As a work of

art, I should not hesitate to put the 'Bread-winners' so far as the

story has gone, quite at the head of our Howells' and James' epochs for

certain technical qualities, such as skill in construction, vivacity in 31 narration, and breadth of motif."

This wooden novel, The Breadwinners, published anonymously, was

Hay's principal contribution to the literature of the labor question.

Friends of Hay have defended it as an attack not upon labor, but upon

the shallow value system of a materialistic generation. Yet the burden

of the plot was not upon the superficiality of life among Cleveland's

"400," it was upon the alleged deceit and revolution preached by

^Hay to Stone, July 24, 1377, Ibid., II, 1-2.

■^Henry Adams to John Hay, September 24, 1883, Ford, I, 353. 9 5

■unscrupulous labor radicals. Hay never specified whether O ffitt, whom he sty led a "professional reform er" was a trade-union man, but he never indicated he was not. He made him an Iago-like character tarred with villainous black. His expression was "oleanious,H his face suiv. mounted by a "low and shining forehead, covered by reeking black hair," his mustache, "long and drooping, dyed black and profusely oiled;" his to ta l countenance was one which created the im pression th a t " it could change in a moment from a do^-like fawning to a snaky venomousness."-

Sharply contrasted was the industrious carpenter, Matchin, a walking Currier and Ives figure representing Hay's picture of the

"ideal" working man. He was "contented with his daily work and wage, and would have thanked heaven if he could have been assured that his children would fare as well as he. A simple man, he eschewed material values, he "enjoyed himself in a rational way with his files and chisels and screw-drivers.

Hay attacked the shallow material values which, in his opinion, the laborers sought. Maud Matchin, the gold-struck daughter of the

Carpenter, who was seized with delusions of grandeur by her high school training, was just like the sordid members of the "Brotherhood of

^2 ' John Hay, The Breadwinners (Hew York, 1 SSU), 7 5 , The incidence of this stereotype among the patricians is interesting. Theodore Roosevelt later described "... a typical professional laboring man; a sleek, oily little fellow, with a black mustache, who had never done a strike of work in Us life." "Phases of State Legislation," American Id eals and Other Essays (New York, /T?S977t 190**) 1 95.

■^Hay, Breadwinners, 19.

I b id ., 92, 96

Breadwinners'1 - the "laziest and most incapable workmen in town" - in craving something for nothing,,

By contrast, Hay found nothing wrong with the plush and velvet

society of "Algonquin Avenue." The hero, Famham, a former army officer

who had a few vague misgivings about the sacrifice of his adventuresome

life on the Western frontier, moved through the novel like a Greek God*

He was a man who did not need to work for a living, who had wealth and

obviously knew the best use to make of it* Nor was there any indication

that the stilted mode of living of the Algonquin Avenue set, epitomized

by the 300 agonizing pages of coquetry finally required for Farnham to

win the hand of lily-white Alice Balding, mi^ht have been based upon

values as twisted and base as those of the Breadwinners.

Obviously in the fortunate situation of Cleveland in 1883» labor

had no need to complain* To Hay, the only thing that could inroel them

to do so was their gullibility to vague orders from unscrupulous in­

dividuals "higher up."

Mr. Temple said, "The poor - - - foolsJ I felt sorry for them. They came up here this morning, - their committee, they called it, — and told me they hated it, but it was orders.1 'Orders from wh&reT', I asked. 'From the chiefs of section,' they said; and that was all I could get out of them. Some of the best fellows in the works were on the committee. They put 'em there on purpose. The sneaks and lawyers hung back.^

Always lurking in the background was the specter of social revo­

lution which had so obsessed Hay in 1377. If this was the inevitable

result of labor organization - and Hay had no doubt that it was - the

only way to meet it was by similar tactics. If the police were under

35Ib id ., 189. hire to the radicals and the mayor a frightened, compromixing poli­

tician, the only hope for the defenders of property was in the sticks

and bullets of Farnham'e heroic vigilante committee which drove the

cowardly irresponsibles in panicked flight from the streets. Since

their cause was so meaningless, ere long even the most determined of

the strikers, "living in a good deal of style - with sentries and

republican government and all that" succumbed in ignominious retreat

to a more potent force: "By the great hokey-pokey.1 they couldn't keep

it up a minute when their wives came .... told 'em their lazy picnic

had lasted long enough, that there was no meat in the house, and they

had got to come home and go to work. The siege didn't last half an

, h36 hour. "

Thus could a man who had known Lincoln and who had yet to serve

his country as Secretary of State, conditioned by wealth and fear,

approach the major problem of the industrial age. How well he might

have profited from a talk with Terence 7. Powderly or from knowledge

of the conservatism of the Knights of LaborJ That the labor organi­

zations of his day believed in the self-made man, believed in unlimited

opportunity, and forswore violence John Hay did not know — or perhaps

he did not want to know.

- 0 -

Hay's equation of unionism with conspiracy received a hearty

second from a writer of history and hero tales who combined matters intellectual with a Career as an aBpiring New York politician, 03 Police

Commissioner, Assistant Secretary of the Navy, and Governor charting an ambitious course toward the White House? Theodore Roosevelt linked arguments of Hay and Charles Francis Adams when he attributed labor difficulty to those '•professional agitators" who spread abroad the heretical doctrine that reform could come only through legislation.

There was no real problem, Theodore Roosevelt implied. "When people are struggling for the necessaries of existence, and vaguely feel, no matter how wrongly, that they are also struggling against an unjustly ordered system of life, it is hard to convince them of the truth that an ounce of performance on their own part is worth a ton of legislative promises to change in some mysterious way that life system."' V

Roosevelt refused to recognise any economic class distinctions.

The situation of the laborer, he argued, for better or worse, was no different than that of other Americans. "The worst foe of the poor man is the labor leader," he explained, ". . , who tries to teach him that he is a victim of conspiracy and injustice, when in reality he 1b merely working out h is fa te with blood and sweat as the immense m ajority of men who are worthy of the name always have done and always will have to do0“-^

^ Ib ld . , 2Ul.

■^Theodore Roosevelt, "Phases of State Legislation," Century, XXIX (April, 1885)* 822, alBO in Roosevelt, American Ideals, 8M~85«,

^RooBevelt, "How Not to Help our Poorer Brothers," Review of Reviews (January, 1897)* in Ibid.., 220. 99

How solve the problemT In a personal letter from his Dakota ranch

In 1886 he wrote:

My men are hard, working, labouring men, who work longer hours for no greater wages than many of the strikers; but they are Americans through and through; I believe nothing would give them greater pleasure than a chance with their rifles at one of the mobs. When we get the papers, espec­ ially in relation to the dynamite burners, they become more furiously angry and excited than I do, I wish I had them with me and a fair show at ten times our number of rioters; my men shoot well and fear very little,-^

Roosevelt hailed Cleveland*s forceful action in the Pullman Strike nHad it not been for the admirable action "if the Federal Government,

Chicago would have seen a re p e titio n of what occurred during the P a ris

Commune , . , for all the horrible waste of life this would have Ho entailed Governor Altgeld would have been primarily responsible,”

Nor were the th re a ts of the Rough Rider empty g estu res. Although as a member of the New York legislature he had favored antttenement laws, and as governor had advocated improvement in industrial sani­ tation, Roosevelt always stood ready to use in labor disputes the weapon he understood best - physical force. When Italian laborers building the Croton Dam in Westchester County struck in 1900 for a twenty-five cent daily wage increase, Roosevelt sent 1300 state m ilitia to sustain strikebreakers imported by the contractors. One of the militiamen killed in the action, Roosevelt said should be on the

-^Roosevelt to Anna Roosevelt Cowles, May 15, 1886, Cowles Collection, quoted in Howard Hurwitz, Theodore Roosevelt and Labor in New York S tate (New York, I 9H3 ), i l l ,

^Roosevelt, "American Ideals," in American Ideals, 8, 100

"role of honor side by side with names of those who died in open battle Ul with their country's foes."

A few days later, Eoosevelt wrote Lodge, . . the riotous

Italians have begun by assassinating one of the National Guard* As a matter of fact, I think that one of the contractors decidedly oppressed the employees, but of course now that the latter have taken to violence

1+2 we have got to put them down and shall do it at any cost,"

Like his fellow patricians, Roosevelt would occasionally don the grey cloak of pessimism. After the victory dinner in I 896 he wrote disgustedly that he was "personally realizing all of Brooks Adams" gloomiest anticipations of our gold-ridden, capitalist bestridden, usurer-mastered future." But like his fellow selfcontradicting patricians, when the crisis came he did more than take a faithful position behind the capitalist's barricade - he supplied the bricks and mortar to build it,

- 0 -

Henry Cabot Lodge, politician and intellectual, underwrote in a more rational manner most of the labor policies of his younger, ebullient contemporary, Roosevelt. A practical politician, Lodge had to accept unquestioningly certain precepts and compromises, which the

Adamses could have avoided. Near the apex; of his Senate career in 1918,

h i Quoted, Hxirwitz, Theodore Roosevelt and Labor in New York, 2 5 1 , 1+2 "Quoted from Roosevelt Papers, April 17, 1900, Ibid. , 253* ^ I b id ,, 186* 1 0 1

Lodge wrote to Brooks Adame, "I have to accept the proposition that

Democracy is able to defeat Autocracy .... Whether I believe it or not as an abstract proposition I must assume it, because if I did not

I should be crying in the wilderness and what- little I am able to do Mi for the cause which I have most at heart would be sacrificed. ..."

In h is more p riv a te and pensive moods, Lodge joined w ith the gloomy patricians to lament the passing of an old order - perhaps that order which had given prominence to New England sailing families like the Lodges, Uncertain or unconcerned with what forces brought about the change, Lodge seemed to revere the traditions of the past, con­ demning gnudiness, intemperance and crudeness in the emerging society in which the desire for material gain and to get "something for 1|.K nothing " had penetrated both upper and lower classes. Unable to restore the "old families" to their position of prominence, checkmate the gluttonous capitalists, or restore "self-reliant individualism,"

Lodge and h is colleagues could only despair and berate the most oub- licized of the monopolizing forces: that of organized labor. In his rev ealin g book, Early Memories, Lodge wrote:

The underlying proposition of most of the agitation now going forward is to take money by means of legislation, through government action, from those who have it, either by earning it or by inheritance, and give it to those who have not earned it, and especially to those who are unable or unwilling to earn it. The old spirit of individualism, which has carried the United States forward to its extraordinary material success, is decried as almost purely evil, to be curbed if not wholly extinguished. Success of any sort, no

^\iodge papers, quoted in John A. Garraty, Henry Cabot Lodge, A Biography (New York, 1953)» 33*.

^ 5 Ibid. , 229. 102

matter how honest and honorable, especially if it brings a pecuniary reward, is not only no longer admired, as it used to be, but has become a danger rather than a prize for which men should strive. To labor in any way appears to be considered as a misfortune in itself, which, if inevitable, must be mitigated so far as possible, the principal mitigation proposed being an effort to prevent those who work hardest and beet from gaining any greater reward than those who work least and most ineffectively .... Instead of seeking to assure equality of opportunity, the theory, whether openly expressed or not, appears now to be that without regard to merit there must be equality of reBult, a widely different proposition, far more difficult of attainment, and certain to end in a kind of injustice that would act as e. powerful dissolvent upon the,social structure, and even upon civilization i t s e l f . 6

For popular consumption, lodge, faced with the practical necessity of winning votes in a state with a huge labor population, modified hie adamant views regarding legislation on questions pertaining to labor.

The destiny of the republic is in the welfare of its working men and women. We cannot push their troubles and cares into the background, and trust that all will come right in the end. Let us look to it that differences and inequalities of condition do not widen into ruin. It is most true that these differences cannot be rooted out, but they can be modified, and a great deal can be done to secure to every man the share of well-being and happiness to which his honesty, thrift, and ability entitle him. Legislation Cannot change humanity nor alter the decrees of nature* but it can help the solution of these grave problems. '

Lodge was not a hypocrite. He lent verbal endorsement to the eight hour day and sponsored legislation outlawing child labor in the

D istrict of Columbia. When Hew England cotton manufacturers coew plained to him of competition of low-wpge Southern producers, Lodge

Henry Cabot Lodge, Early Memories, 212-?]3. k7 Henry Cabot Lodge, "The Independent Spirit of the Puritans,” in Lodge, Speeches (Boston, 1892), 9. 103 countered that the Southern operatives should he brought up to New

England standards; to make New England wages conform to the lower Us level would he "a retrograde movement in our civilization," But

Lodge thought always in terms of the individual laborer, never of the organised labor group. Closer to the paternalistic position of the aristocrat than any of his patrician contemporaries, he would grant concessions and assistance to make more palatable the lot of the single workingman; he would never countenance the workingman's organizing to win the rights for himself.

In the same tradition, when the laboring man got "out of hand," he hastened to endorse forceful repression. He urged Roosevelt to follow Cleveland's example at the time of the threatened rail strike U9 in 1903, 7

Lodge's private correspondence at the time of the anthracite negotiations the same year gave a perceptive clue to the motivations behind his paternalism. He bewailed the obtuseness and "insensate folly" of the mine operators, whose stubborn refusal to deal fairly with the workers was "breeding socialism at a rate which it is hard to 90 contemplate" and "endangering all property rights."' Occasional reform resolution was better than catastrophic reform by revolution I

Ug Oarraty, Lodge, 2 2 9. U9 See Selections from the Correspondence of Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge, lggU-1918 (New York, 1 9 2 3), I I , Uj.

5°Carraty, Lodge, 229, 10H

_ o -

If Charles VT. Eliot, long-time president of Harvard, would not

have called himself a patrician, ideologically he embraced much of

their creed and he bore the name of a venarable New England family.

He was the uncompromising foe of all forces that challenged individual

autonomy - from the mediocre standard!zation of the trade union to the

crass materialism of the capitalist. Like Henry Adams, Eliot found ultimate worth in the realm of the individual spirit. He joined with

the patricians from the opposite side of the Charles in their lament

for eighteenth century individualistic values dissipated in the multi­

plex nineteenth century. However, he never shared the disillusionment

that characterized most of the patricians - Eliot maintained the fleet­

ing hope that rugged individualism could be resurrected. Yet basically

he stood on the same ground as the patrician. He condemned the crass

materialism of status quo capitalism, battled against all tendencies

to turn to anything Save individual initiative for economic advance,

and feared that the ultimate of continued labor organization would be

revolution - not of the violent kind that Hay predicted, but a gradual

decay of American principles and institutions. Deriving his set of

values from the rich tradition of American transcendentalism, Eliot

eloquently proclaimed that "the supreme powers of the universe are not 51 mechanical or material; they are hope and fear and love."

Doctrines refreshing and brilliant proclaimed theoretically from

a Unitarian pulpit or to a Harvard Yard audience were out of nlace

^^Henry James, Charles W. Eliot (Boston, 1930)* II. 107. 105 amidst the din of factories in nearly South Cambridge or Somerville.

Eliot never grasped the changed industrial perspective - the monotony, the long hours, and fatigue dulling to mind and body that sapped the

"joy in work" which he so much emohasized. Machinery, he surmised optimistically, enhanced the opportunity for mental, not physical exertion. Why, then, did the laborer complain? First, because division of labor had often been carried too far causing tedium and monotony; second, because labor unions had destroyed incentive through the minimum wage. The vigorous lab o rer ought to ris e up and welcome

self-proving competition; he should Joyously seize the opportunity for 52 hearty i*rork.

Eliot was more perceptive than most of his critical contemporaries in detecting the shift in the strategy of labor organization from the humanitarian ends of the KnightB of Labor to the wage and pay goals

of the American Federation of Labor - but he was unalterably opposed

to what he beheld. Trade unions were monopolies.' Requiring a man to

work below his normal capacity was degrading.' "It is high time it

should be generally understood , 11 he proclaimed, "that trade unionism

in important respects works against the very best effects of democracy.

It is the * . . professions, the higher walks of business, and the

artistic callings, which best illustrate the fortunate results of

genuine democracy on personal character, or, in other words, the

effects on individual character of the utmost liberty under law.

5^Charles W. Eliot, "Content in Work," World 1s York ( I 90U), in William A. Neilson, ed .93 Chnrles W. Eliot; The Man and Hib Beliefs (New York, 1926), 2^3-25^. ^Charles W. Eliot, "The Future of Trade Unionism in a Democracy," Ibid., 280, 268. 106

Although he cautioned a Kenyon College audience ageinst the evils of monopoly in a 1910 lecture, he warned, "The most dangerous mono­ polies for democratic society are the monopolies of all the labor in a great variety of trades .... It is the duty, therefore, of capital

. . . to resist steadily the monopolies created by trades unions and to deprive these monopolies of the means and instruments through the use of which they obtain such monopolistic powers." Tragically, at least for a great intellectual like Eliot, he closed by giving voice to his own worse dilemna. . . the strongest and most comprehensive desire of democracy is for the progressive development of freedom for the 54 individual and of free institutions." Eliot never quite understood something a fellow Bostonian, George E. McNeill, could have explained to him well — that freedom for the working man in the vast industrial machine depended upon organized strength. The individual freedom v'hich Eliot prized so highly had little meaning up against the mammoth amassed power of monopoly capitalism .

- 0 -

These patricians were the last remnants of a tradition evolved through Protestantism, Puritanism, and transcendentalism. They con­ demned all forces infringing upon the freedom of the single individual.

The legislation the laborer demanded, the gilded materialism of the plutocrat - were destructive of the ideal Emerison proclaimed so well

*n Self-Reliance. Lodge, Roosevelt, and Charles Francis Adams feared dependence of men upon laws rather than upon hard work; Eliot deified

54 Eliot, "The Future of Capitalism in a Democracy," Ibid., 309- 310. 10? an idealized "free individual," and, most markedly, Henry Adams pro­ claimed a road to salvation that lay through Individual character.

It was not hie individual failing that he lamented; he criticized a society in which the notable education which had shaped his character was so lacking. Even the corporatist among them, Brooks Adams, looked to the administrative state as a road back to rule by the patrician individualistic "man of action" and destruction of the stultifying rule of the "gold-bugs,"

When this world of the "higher individualism" of character and not wealth decayed around them, it seemed to the patrician that all th a t was of value in c iv iliz a tio n was dying. Hence Henry Adams' requiem for the eighteenth century; hence the helpless frustration of

Hay and all of the others against the dominant monopolistic, freedom- eapping element se

Organized labor wae particularly anathema to them. First, it was the most dramatic manifestation of the monopolistic forces they feared. It would provide freedom through organization, not through individual action, hence it contradicted directly their ideal of "self- reliance." Second, their stand on the labor question brought into sharp relief the paradox latent in their creed. When they pointed up the weaknesses and problems involved in capitalism they rose to a higher plane than the defensive psychology of laissez-faire theorists or management spokesmen, yet i f they had re a lly been c r i t i c s of capitalism, their place was at the side of the laboring men who was trying to achieve for himself freedom from the constricting web of anti—aristocratic industrialism. The patricians failed their 108 aristocratic obligation of noblesse oblige. If the Hays, Adamses, and

Roosevelts would extend no helping hand, if they would not condone the laboring man's own organized efforts, where would they have the laborer turn? In the final analysis these were false patricianB, the private property tradition they inherited from the Protestant ethic triumphed, and when crisis came - as they believed it had come in labor's rise to power — these casual critics of capitalism were revealed as capitalists themselves,, They were opposed to organized labor, for when the working man challenged the status quo, by the same act he challenged them J CHAPTER SIX

THE SOCIAL GOSPEL AND LABOR

"... What a sorry Bet of ignoramuses they must he who imagine that they are fighting for the rights of labor in combining together to prevent other men from working for low wages because, forsooth, they are discontented with them."'1' With these words, a leading reli­ gious periodical had dismissed in 1877 the protest of American rail workers against a precipitate ten per cent reduction in wageB.

Traditionally, some of the most avid support of laissez-faire economics and its collateral anti-labor theories had come from the nation's churches. From many a Christian pulpit laborer had been told that the only problem was one he had himself created. "... Looking through city and town and village and country," Henry Ward Beecher once proclaimed, "the general truth will stand, that no man in this land Buffers from poverty u n le ss i t be more than h is fault - unless i t 2 be his sin," "A dollar a day," he cried, will not "support a man and five children if a man would insist on smoking and drinking beer . ,

. . But the man who cannot live on bread and water is not fit to live,"

^Christian Union, August 1, 1877. quoted in Henry F. May, The Protestant Churches in Industrial America (New York, 19%). 92*-93.

2Henry Ward Beecher, "Econony in ..Small Things," Plymouth P u lp it, III n. s. (New York, 187^75). quoted ibid, 6 9.

^Quoted in Paxton Hibben, Henry Ward Beecher (New York, 1927). 326. 110

A writer in one of the nation's most learned theological journals, shortly after the Homestead strike of 1892, sought to correct the

"serious error" that capitalists do not labor,

. . . The truth is that no class labors harder, that none is more harassed with care and none more lik e ly to f a i l .... The accumulation of capital is itself a great public benefit .... Capital inures as much to the good of the general public as to the benefit of the capitalists themselves .... Nor are we at liberty to disregard the part which Providence has in giving to certain persons special responsibilities and opportunities in the manage­ ment of the w orld's c a p ita l .... The o f f ic ia ls of a railroad hold their ppsition, for the present at least, by God's appointment. ^

While noisy extremists like these drew attention, their arguments probably never affected more than a small minority of church-going

Americans. It is safer to hazard that the typical attitude of middle class American Protestantism at the dawn of the nineties decade was one of indifference. The typical layman would have accepted the economic status quo without question and considered his religion some­

thing apart. When the Protestant gave thought to what he believed, he might have harbored some vague notion of character perfection in the hope of "salvation" in another world; most certainly he did not link

religion and social problems.

The advent of the social gospel in the 1880's was like a breath

of fresh air in the stifled atmosphere of hostility and indifference.

The crusade of the socially conscious clergy to infuse moral consid­

erations into the economic system was the first substantial challenge

to the well-nigh inviolable precepts of traditional laissez-faire

**G. F. Wright, "Ministers and Mobs," Bibliotheca Sacra, XLIX (October, 1892), 6 7 6 -6 7 9 passim . I l l

■oolitical economy. Although none were econom ists, and. many conserva­ tive and socially naive, the social gospel ministers had an incal­ culable effect upon economic thinking. The social gospel( the first break with the economic orthodoxy of academy and pulpit, paved the way for a new reformed school of ethical economics; it spurred devoted followers to descend into slums and workshops to take up practical causes of social reform. There would still be those who argued the dogmas of laissez-faire, but after the mid-nineties they were on the defensive; there were few churchmen after the turn of the century who would have ventured to have discussed the labor problem in Beecher’s terms. The labor question for the social goBpel was not a matter of mathematical calculation of wages and population, it was a moral ques­ tion primarily concerned with human values. Social religion envisioned an economic order founded on harmony and brotherhood where the “law of life" would not be competition but rather "the law of life would be the law of love."

Ironically* however, the social gospel ministers failed in the one place they wanted most to succeed. They could not communicate with the

American workingman. Since they knew few real wage-workers, they con­ structed an ideal worker shaped in their own ethical image and in so doing they made the worker too perfect: they expected too much of him.

The prophets of the social gospel failed for the most part to compre­ hend the vast forces and counterforces that motivated the capitalist structure and buffeted the individual worker in their changing tides.

The dramatic pitched battles of labor and capital that blotted the history of the seventies and eighties pointed up the growing class 112 differences in America. Much to their horror, Bociolly conscious clergymen found this foreboding class stratification extending into their own churches as Protestantism, in particular, seemed to become a middle and upper class religion with the vast and growing laboring classes alienated.

The many statistical surveys of numberB-conscious clerics were more ambitious than exact, but the point they made was clear. Washing** ton Gladden found that from jOlumbus factories employing 3009*^4000 workers, only one th ir d were regular in church attendance, most of these being C atholics. Of the members of h is f i r s t Congregational 5 Church only ten percent were wage earners. The reason for this general trend, a New Jersey minister reported was not the workers' dis­ belief in Christianity, but "unbelief in Christianity as practiced by g the churches." Samuel Gompers seemed to su b stan tiate th is when an inquiring minister asked his opinion:

^ associates have come to look upon the church and the ministry as the apologists and defenders of the wrong committed against the interest of the people, simply be­ cause the perpetrators are possessors of wealth, .... whose real God is the almighty dollar, and who contribute a few of their idols to suborn the intellect and eloquence of the divines, and make even their otherwise generous hearts callous to the sufferings of the poor and struggling workers, so that they may use their exalted positions to discourage and discountenance all practical efforts of the toilers to life themselves out of the slough of despondency and despair.

^Washington Gladden, Applied Christianity (New York, 191^), 152-T>3o g Rev. Amory H. Bradford, "Why the Artisan Classes Neglect the Church," Christian Union, 32 (July 2, 1SS5)* PP. 7~S.

Francis Perry, "The Workingman'n Alienation from the Church," American Joiffinal of Sociology, 17 (March, 1899)* 622-623. 113

Obviously the church had a formidable challenge. How was it to respond? For a conservative like Bev. H. Francis Perry, it was not

"true that men are in a prison house and the church is holding the key0

The church may be depended upon to lead in securing justice and truth0

It must also warn the workingman that his alienation often results from tendendcies within himself rather than within the church. The

Jesus who is applauded by the average workingman is a minimized Jesus g Christ, a fictitious person, not the Chriet of the Gospels. 11

Perry*s response would have been inadequate for Washington

Gladden, minister of the North Congregational Church, Springfield,

Massachusetts. In 1876 when most churchmen were either indifferent to la b o r ' b plight or parroted the economic cliches of conservative journals, Gladden published Working People and Their Employers. For him, as for Wendell Phillips before him, the crusade for labor rights was part of a reforming cruBade already begun. "Now that slavery is out of the way," he said in the opening pages of the book, "the questions that concern our free laborers are coming forward; and no intelligent man needs to be adminished of their urgency .... It is plain that Q the pulpit must have something to Bay about them." In the book, however, Gladden would have granted to labor only limited rights to organize, and condoned only moral pressure upon a recalcitrant employer, never force or strikes. He subsequently disavowed his first

8 7~ Ibid., 629. q Washington Gladden, Working People and Their Employers (New York, 1885), 3. llU work ns "hot an important book," and from his changed perspective of thirty-one years later regretted some of his criticisms of unions.

However, Charles H, Hopkins rightfully calls the book a "mile-oost," 10 the first in clerical awakening to the labor problem.

In 1882 when he accepted the pastorate of the First Congrega­ tional Church, Columbus, Ohio, Gladden was already looked to by 11 America's progressive clergy as a leader and teacher. The social gospel, of which he was the most popular spokesman, was a composite movement. It included conservatives in theology and economics who differed from Beecher and his fellow laissez-faire defenders only in an awareness of the labor problem and desire for some Christian solution; it included Christian Socialists, and at the extreme left a few members of Daniel DeLeon's Socialist Labor Party. In his social and theo­ logical views. Gladden adhered to a middle of the road position. His influence, the volume of his writings, and the representative nature of his views make him a good focal point from which to survey the e n tire movement.

The theology upon which the social gospel rested was not profound.

The Kingdom, Gladden believ ed , could come in th is lif e through the evolutionary efforts of repentant and dedicated men. The mark of the

^Washington Gladden, Recollections (Boston, 1909) , 255~?57; Charles Howard Hopkins, The Rise of the Social Gosoel in American Protestantism , Ig65-T915"Qfew Baven, 19H5T,~ 255-257*

■^Aaron Abel, The Urban Impact on American Protestantism (Cam­ b rid g e , 19U3 ), 7 0 . 115 converted, man was his awareness and fulfillment of social obli- 12 g atio n s. The second commandment, embodying what Gladden termed

"rational self-love" requiring love of one's neighbor, as well as one’s self, was the ideological foundation of the Bocial church, Christ was not the divine medium for personal other-worldly salvation, he was essentially a moral teacher and exemplar, pointing the wav to a better world in this life. To Gladden, the economic and social life of the eighties and nineties did not meet the Christ-like ideal. Any organ­ ization of society, he frequently emphasized, which is founded on selfishness and not on love would come to grief. This ideal society built upon religious precepts was not for Gladden merely a vision, it was a useful blueprint for social reform.

It must be possible to shape the organization of our industries in such a way that it shall be the daily habit of the workmen to think of the interest of the employer, and of the employer to think of the interest of the work­ man. We have thought it very fine to say that the inter­ ests of both are identical, but it has been nothing more than a fine saying; the problem now is to make them identical. ^

However bold and revolutionary Gladden's visions may seem, it must be stressed that his way anything but a radical program. This is par­ ticularly apparent when he turned to the question of how to implement it. This earthly kingdom would not come by legislation, by pressure from various interest groups, centainly not by force. Gladden firmly believed that enlightened human will, unaided, could affect the

■^Washington Gladden, Social Salvatl on (Boston, 1902), lU, 26.

^Gladden, Recollections, 300. 116 the transformation. "When men see that Good. Will is the law,H he wrote optimistically, "they will learn to obey it. Most of them have lH never yet clearly seen i t . 11

In applying the perfect ideal of Christian love to the imperfect society of mortals, Gladden saw the prevailing laiesez-faire political economy as a b ru ta l v io la tio n of ChriBtian e th ic s. Most of a l l , he could not accept the idea that "scientific absolutes" of economics were unchangeable - there were no "natural laws" th a t could not be 1H improved upon by the free will of man. " In rejecting laissez-faire,

Gladden bravely denounced the strongest intellectual bulwark its de­ fenders could claim: the doctrine of natural rights. . . that men enter into social relations through some sort of voluntary compact," he wrote, "because they think it will be profitable. . . . is certainly not the doctrine of the Sermon on the Mount." Rather, man was born into society, his relations to family and community were the primary facts of his life. "He can contemplate no other facts apart from l 6 i t . "

In arguing the social origin of rights, Gladden fell squarely into a dominant intellectual trend of his time that held to the view that

society was an organic unity, not a mere aggregation of individuals.

He believed this so strongly he was hesitant to condone the existence

lUIbid., 313.

^W ashington Gladden, Tools and the Man (Boston, 1893)* 36-37*

^Washington Gladden, Christianity and Socialism (New York, 1 9 0 5), 2 0 -2 1 o 117 of any subsidiary organization, like a trade union, in this organic state0 There were two basic elements, the individual and society; no intermediary should separate them.

The s o lid a rity of labor i s ju s t as great a menace to the peace of the nation as would be the solidarity of cap­ ital. It is the solidarity of society which furnishes the time p rin c ip le of a l l our conduct^ We are a l l members one of another — laborers, employers, merchants, customers, professional people, artists, traders, all sorts and con­ ditions of men; and this is the body to which we rightly 17 apply the motto, "an injury to one is the concern of a ll.11

lor the work of "bringing all social classes into a living unity,"

Gladden would turn to the State - to him, a noble institution of high purpose, not a mere "necessary evil." The State (he capitalized the term) was to be the political embodiment of the social unity. It was the "social family." As conceived in America, the State rested ut>on

"grovelling theories;" if it was to be invested in pouular thought with its "true divine character, we should need no other agency for the lg unification of society." Gladden's Christian organic state was not the corporate state of Brooks Adams. Gladden's state was a democratic and capitalistic organization where dedicated Christians would uractice the law of Christian love as a guide in matters economic and political,,

Gladden enthusiastically endorsed the orogressivism of Theodore

Roosevelt as the proper balance between order and change. Can the real redemption of the social order be achieved? asked Gladden. "President

Roosevelt thinks it can, and those who stand with him and support him assume that the existing competitive regime can be moralized and made

^Washington Gladden, Social Facts and Forces (New York, 1897),

lg I b i d ., 203. 118

to represent the interests of equity and fair dealing. If this can be 19 done, nothing more is needed. 11 There was a note of urgency in

Gladden's wordB of reflection in 1909* although he had abandoned by this time many of his earlier ideals. With nefariouB forces of radi­

calism stirring in the nation, Roosevelt had come none too soon. He

was with Lodge and Ralph Easley in believing that reform was an urgent

necessity to preserve the system.

That the burdens thus imposed would at length become intolerable, and that revolution would be the issue, was plain to all who could discern the signs of the times, but their voices fell on deaf ears. Fortunate it was for this country that the arrival of Theodore Roosevelt at the head of the nation was no longer deferred.

There was not the least trace of socialism in Gladden's program.

He wrote revealingly, "The most profound and perfect definition of property that I have ever seen is that of the Roman Catholic writer,

Dr. Brownson: 'Property is communion with God through the material 21 w o rld .'"

Gladden's aim was not a new society, it was to apply moral

standards to the old one. He stipulated, "Private property and private

e n terp rise must be m aintained, and some means must be found of infusing 22 into them a larger measure of good-will." The state was merely the

symbol of familial unity - it was not necessarily the prime mover or

^G ladden, The Church and Modern Life (Boston, 190S), 155* 20 Gladden, Recollections, 391.

Gladden, Tools and the Man, 86. 22 Gladden, Applied Christianity, 96. 119 the agent of change. While government might embark upon the limited roform program of progressivism to correct the most obvious abuses, the real motivating force for the new order was the benevolent good­ will of men. This was true even in industrial relations.

The old maxim noblesse oblige is binding upon the captains of industry^ Because they have the superior intelligence and the natural gifts of leadership they must take the initiative in all plans for the reorgani­ zation of industry. Hear Carlyle again: "The main substance of this immense problem of organizing labor, 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 of2ijt; by those Vho themselves work and preside over work."

Gladden brought to the labor question, concepts of the organic state, the necessity of harmony between social interests, liberal capitalism, and a conviction that the pathway to reform waB through individual application of Christian love, "Is it peace or war?", he asked in a sermon delivered on numerous occasions to both labor and management groups. Competition meant warfare J Cut of i t would come fighting organization, first of capital, then of labor. Neither side could win this anomalous struggle for the wealth produced by their mutual exertions.

There was a better way - that of good-will and Christian love.

"The doctrine which bases all the relations of employer and employed upon self-interest is a doctrine of the pit; it has been bringing hell

to earth in large installments for a good many years." The answer a b s tra c tly was: "Thou sh alt love they neighbor as th y s e lf." — Gladden, Tools and The Man, 237 . 120

Concretely, Gladden1, solution was profit-sharing where diligence of 2U labor would be rewarded by benevolence of capital.

Both management and labor had moral o b lig atio n s. For the owner,

"This means that every employer must consider his employees, be they more or fewer, as the flock over which he is shepherd; and must feel

that a very large part of his business is the maintanance between him- 25 s e lf and them of sympathetic re la tio n s ,"

He urged the workers, on the other hand, to forego violence, unlearn bitter habits of speech, and trust their paternalistic employers.

They should have social consciousness, not class consciousness.

Gladden would concede to labor a right to organize. "The attempt to

deprive them of the right to stand together for their own defense is

one they ought to resist by all lawful means, and they ought to know

that all men who hate oppression are on their side," Still, Gladden prescribed, in his 1897 book, marked limits within which such class

organizations ought to operate. Labor unions might act as: 1. Bene­

fit societies; 2, Agencies to improve health, comfort, and safety in

labor; 3» Organizations for educational purposes; U. Propaganda

agencies to advocate the increase of wages and shortening of hours.

Although labor organizations might on occasion be forced to use the

strike, Gladden warned that it was "a costly luxury for working men 26 and must be indulged in sparingly. "

^Gladden, "Is it Peace or War," Applied Christianity, 13 1h-136«

“^Gladden, Social Facts and Forces, 37*

26I b id ., 6 6 , 6 H. 121

The laborer ought first to put his personal house in order before making demands upon his employer. "It is a high time that a good many

of them were thinking less about a great increase of wages , 0 . and more about making a wiser and more economical use of wages they now 21 receive, which in many cases is altogether possible." The profit-

sharing which Gladden advocated would provide for this by allowing frugal workmen to be not only "sharers of profits, but owners of stock

and receivers of dividends." There was a trace of the moral aristo­

crat in Gladden when he urged, "If the working people of thiB country would save, for the next five years, the money that they spend on beer and tobacco and baseball, they could control a pretty large share of

the capital employed in the industries by which they get their living,

and they could turn the dividends of this capital from the pockets of 28 the money lenders into their own."

As a believer in organic unity, Gladden could not conceive labor

as a monopolistic force exercising control over the job market for the

benefit of skilled workers only. His broad moral purview embraced all

workers; his vision of social harmony extended through the entire

industrial organization. "One lesson," he counseled, "that the people

of the trades-unions need to learn is the solidarity of human interests

„ . . , They are organized to look sharply after the interests of their

own class, and they have been quite too much inclined to be oblivious

of the happinesB of o th e rs." The tru e union was an organic one - "the

Gladden, Tools and the Man, 1^7* pa Gladden, "Can Our Social Ills be Remedied," 7orum, 71II (September, 1889)* 25-26. 122 iinion of employers and employed — of guiding brains and willing hands

- all watchful of each other's welfare, working together for the 29 common good 0 n

While Gladden before 1900 was definitely a reformer when he dealt with the labor question, he still remained committed to many of the axioms upon which the anti-0 abor attitudes of laissez-faire had rested.

While he condemned n atu ral rig h ts theory and the wage fund, he su b sti­ tuted concepts of harmony and unity almost as rigid, and certainly as f a r removed from the real demands of the A. F. of L, a 9 the postulates of the political economists. Gladden remained loyal to that Protestant ethic which taught that salvation (or Buccese) still came through the efforts, not of groups, but of individual men.

There were two entities, the individual and society - no anti­

social restrictions should prevent liaison between the two 8 The dedi­ cated Christian would benevolently serve his fellow'men; the individual worker should pursue not the limited objectives of his class, but the ends of society. The laborer should be moderate, self-disciplined, and trusting as he pursued these goals. At the turn of the century,

Gladden may be said to exemplify the outward reform and inward conser­ vatism that characterized most of the reformers of his decade.

In the rapid and dramatic changes of the nineties, as capital con­ centrated and labor organizations clung tenaciously to the few hard-won gains that survived the 1893 depression, the thoughtful Gladden, for all his moralism never an ivory-tower recluse, took new stock of the

^Gladden, Social Facts and Forces, 72, 7 6 , 81. 123 situation. Unlike lesser men of his generation, his focus changed.

Organic state ideas, fatherly advice to laborers, and appeals to employer paternalism disappeared from his writings. The later Gladden was more social analyst than Christian preacher. With a view that capitalism was more monopoly than individual opportunity, and resigning himself to the conclusion that good-will alone was not enough, Gladden although still a conservative, turned to the pragmatism of the A. 7.

of L.

"The relations between the men who work for wages and the men who pay wages are distinctly less friendly than they were twenty years

ago," he surmised in 1911.' Power combinations of capitalists made

so-called freedom of contract for the laborer meaningless.

He lost his faith in paternalism and employer good-will. Rights

andfreedom for the laboring mftn, he asserted, could be secured only by organized strength. Even employers who said they believed in unions

still firmly maintained an open shop. "It is difficult," Gladden wrote,

"to consider the non-union element in an open shop in any other light

than aa as ally of the employer in his resistance to unionism."^

Another fact has some significance. Twenty-five years ago there was much inquiry among employers about industrial partnership, or profit-sharing, as it was rather unhappily named. I had w ritten something about i t , and I used to get letters from employers very frequently asking about the working of such plans. These methods are not much talked about these days. The impulse to asspciate the men with the masters seems to have spent its force. The lessening

^Gladden, The Labor Question (Boston, 191l), S. 71 ^ I b i d .. 196. 12k

importance of this feature in the industries of the pre~ sent day is an indication of the growing alienation of the two classes.?2

Earlier conceptions of Christian love and harmony gave way to more realistic conclusions:

It may he suggested that the sentiments of justice and humanity in the hearts of the capitalists themselves will prevent this oppression. Doubtless there are among them men of good w ill who would he moved hy such considerations; hut unfortunately, these are not the people who set the pace in these competitive struggles; and the unorganized laborers, instead of enjoying the protection of the best employers, soon find themselves at the mercy of the meanest.

In discussing unions he still counseled labor to moderation, yet

his words were more understanding and tolerant. He advised unions to beware abuses of the tremendous power they wielded, and to eschew violence. The clearest example of his change of heart was his position

toward the non-striking worker.

It is so entirely plain to me that the freedom of the working class can be maintained in these days only by firm organization that I could not get the consent of my conscience to stay outside the union. And I am equally sure I could not feel any very enthusiastic admiration for men of my own trade who refused to join the union and did what they oould to defeat its purposes. I trust that I should be able to refrain from applying to them opprobrious epithets and from assailing them with brickbats* but I should not be able to hold them in high honor .*

Gladden did not need to Bhed his belief in private property to

accept the pragm atic unionism of Gompers. However, he had lo s t the

ethical intellectual!sm that characterized most of the other socially

32Ibid., 7-g.

33ibid., 6U.

3^Ibid., 1*10. conscious clergy. His concern was the manner in which the individual laborer would secure personal economic rights. His broadened view held that Christianity might work through institution s as well as through reoentent individuals. He retreated from idealistic organic ideas to sounder economic one3. He stood on the same ground as the practical union leaders in perceiving labor's need for counter-power to operate in the monopoly ca p ita listic framework.

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A clergyman not only overlooked by writers on the social gosoel, but absent from every standard biographical dictionary, Charles Wor­ cester Clark, not only made the transition, as did Gladden, to accept the labor market control practices of pragmatic unionism - Clark even predated Gladden in espousing the cause. One analysing the relation of the social gospel to the labor problem might well ignore this elusive writer, except that the one major article he contributed to the problem was perhaps the most original and perceptive of any of the social gospel writers. Since he died in 1391* this posthumous article in the Andover Review was his last work. In it he wrote per­ ceptively, '‘while the equal right remains, the equal chance has been vanishing, and now for the greater portions remains in theory alone.

We are s t i l l blinding ourselves to the change, .and in sistin g that the social system best suited to a condition when equality of all men was 35 the rule is best now that eauelity is no more."

35charles Worcester Clark, "Applied Christianity: Who Shall Apply i t First," Andover Review, XIX (January, 1893), 21. 126

Commenting on the working man him self, Clark was hold considering the early date. "It is not so much want of effort on our part tc help their., as our failure to sympathise with and assist their own efforts u36 for relief." He rejected the orthodox doctrine that Christianity's only concern was personal character. "The truth of the matter is about this, that for those who have some chance in life character determines condition, but for those who have no fair chance condition determines character. The work of Christianity in public affairs is to create and make permanent those favorable general conditions under which each man's character shall determine his individual condition . " 37

Bishop P. D. Huntington was another of the socially sensitive ministers who with Gladden and Clark stressed the inequality in bar­ gaining power between labor and capital. Capital, armed with superior wealth and power, could hold out longer. He was contemptuous of the proud and disdainful who frowned upon "pale, emaciated brethren." Even worse "some of them are professors of the religion of the carpenter of

Gallilee, the Saviour of the world, the Lord of our race, who never 38 pronounced a malediction on the poor or a blessing on the rich."

"Noblesse ob 11 ge," he reminded Forum readers, "amounts to nothing, because the superior power, being commercial and mercenary, is not

36I b i d ., 2 3 .

3 7 I b i d ., 30.

3®"Bishop Huntington on the Causes and Losses of Strikes," Our Day, HV (March, 1295), 13- 127 noblesse. The friction is more unhealthy aE it becomes manifest that the distinction is not one of moral dignity, birth, or even breeding, 39 but of cunning or chance."

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To the right of the moderate social gospel advocates was a group even more conservative than Gladden had been in his early years. They recognized a labor problem and were dissatisfied with the economic status quo. However, the solutions they posed embraced organic or even corporate ideas of harmony; they rejected fearfully any suggestion of class organizations. All were believers in capitalism with a favorable disposition to the stereotype of the "self-made man" of the business world. They were caught up in the tradition America had inherited from the Protestant ethic - individual success, integrity and character. The individual laborer, to them, should avoid unions, trust his employer's benevolence, and practice thrift. The state should pro­ tect property from labor violence.

Profit-sharing was a particularly attractive panacea for the

Christian conservative. In one package it combined the vital elements of unity, mutual cooperation of worker and owner, and opportunity for worker initiative. The most, prolific of the advocates of profit- sharing was a Unitarian, Hev. Nicholas Paine Gilman, who held

•^F, D, Huntington, "Social Problems and the Church," Forum, X (October, 1890), lUO. Several other clergymen, less prominent at the time than Gladden and Huntington were congenial to the trade unions. For example, two younger men, destined to be among the important leaders of social religion, Walter Eauschenbusch and Stephen Wise, expressed sympathy with the laborers in the Brooklyn Street Car strike of 1895° 128 pastorates in New England, and professorships at Antioch College and

M eadville Theological Seminary,,

The most attractive feature he saw in profit-sharing was its

applicability to the American intellectual environment. Gilman be­

lieved there was a distinctive American "race *1 sprung from an Angle-

Saxon background and shaped by the novel influences of the isolated *40 American continent. The unique traits of American character he

dilineated were: belief in personal liberty; practical conservatism

and acceptance of government as a necessary good; belief in economic

advance by individual effort; belief in competition; a passionate kl "public spirit," and faith in progress.

Given this rhapsodic view of American society, Gilman rejected

both the survival of the fittest theory of the Social Darwinists and

Marxist ideas of class conflict. Rather, in the near future he saw

doctrines of struggle giving way to "the humane doctrine of membership

in the body social and brotherly kindness which pervade the New Testa­

ment." These, Said Gilman, "are infinitely higher, as they are

infinitely truer to the properly human life of man than the doctrine

of the natural struggle for existence and the untempered rage of pure lip competition."

Uo Nicholas Paine Gilman, Socialism and the American Spirit, (Boston, 1893). 52. hi - Ib id . , 62-85 passim . lip I b id ., 19. 129

The trade union, as a selfish competitive organization, did not f i t in to Oilman's scheme of things,, Trade union "tyranny” was one of the workingman's greatest enemies, he argued; unions discouraged ambi— tion and repressed personal initiative. They brought in "the kingdom of the mediocre in all its dullness and flatness,” The need of the day was not for more organization, "but more rational individualism as w ell,

According to Gilman, what recourse had the laborer?

I have a profound conviction that a true and natural aris­ tocracy — the leadership of the competent — is to endure in the industrial world, as elsewhere for an indefinite time , , , , I have no difficulty in believing in the fundamental rationality of the men who employ their fellow-men in large or small enterprises; I do not doubt tteir predominant desire to be fair and just in their dealings,

A harsh employer was better than a weak of incompetent one. The best manager was one who felt no sympathy for his workers, but rather by stern and e ffic ie n t measures kept them in work year a f te r year. The successful employer had a moral obligation to uplift his employees, for he "holds in his hand something more than the means of subsistence for those he employs. He holds their moral well-being in his keeping, , ," Writing five years after the strike at Pullman, Gilman still spoke approvingly of the Pullman community's beautiful lawns, neatness, low rents and lack of pauperism. He admired the "large mindedness of Pullman, the thoroughness of working out of every UR physical detail,"

U3ib id ,, 333. lili Nicholas Paine Bilman, A Dividend to Labor (Boston, 1899)* 3» U5iM d. , 1 7 , 2UU. 130

Trusting then to the paternal benevolence of the employer, why

not recreate the practical profit-sharing of early industry where worker and owner labored side by side? Profit sharing would recognize

the high and necessary offices of capital and skill; it would respect

the proper authority of the manager, yet it viewed the handworker as

something more than a machine; it elevated the worker into a moral partnership effective and ennobling. "Show what kind of man you are,"

Gilman admonished the workers. Combine with the employer "to make H£j profits sure and large." Lyman Abbott, editor of the influential Christian Union accepted

the same conservative paternalistic ideas, but he carried the doctrine

of Christian unity the furthest of any of his social gospel colleagues when he became the avowed advocate of the corporate s ta te .

Like Gladden he believed the cause of the free laborers to be

simply an extension of the abolitionist crusade. In his theology, he maintained that Christ was to come in this earth through an evolu**

tionary process in which men would create a Christian society based on

self sacrifice and cooperation.^ If this transformation was to be

achieved, he believed the church's focus had to be upon individual men,

not upon society. "Sins are individual," he postulated, and "Christ proceeded on the assumption that, if we can get rid of sin in the Lj.g individual, we shall get rid of evil in the state,

^Nicholas Paine Gilman, Profit Sharing Between Employer and Employee , (Boston:, /T88ff7, 1893)»' ^ 0 * "*

^Lyman Abbott, Reminiscenses (Boston, 1 9 1 5), U1 5 ; Ira Brown, Lyman Abbott (Boston, 1953)» ^ 8 .

^Lyman Abbott, "Christianity and Socialism," North American Review, lUS (A p ril, 1889) t>•^9o 131

Despite his individualism, Abbott was no defender of laissez- faire. In 1F!7*? he proclaimed, ’"The community which attempts to set aside natural lavs is one of lunatics, hut the community which makes Ug no attempt to employ and direct them is one of barbarians*" His

Christian Union was a. forum for reform spokesmen like Gladden, Richard

T, Ely, and Josephine Shaw Lowell.

Abbott sought to discover a "Christian basis for industry," how­ ever the solution he finally offered was different from any desired either by labor or management. He saw the wage system as only a step in the evolutionary process that would lead to the triumph of "social and organic Christianity." The "industrial democracy" Abbott nronosed was on the surface a, reflection of Gilman’s profit-sharing scheme, incorporating organicism, moderation, and opportunities for worker in itia tiv e . But Abbott went further. Labor leaders were not suffi­ ciently radical, he urged. They were content to leave the existing industrial system unchanged instead of seeking a system where labor would become it s own master. If each workingman could have a thousand dollars invested in his work, workers would be their own capitalists and masters, and "the present industrial d ifficu lty growing out of chronic and suppressed conflict between laborers and. capitalists will .■SO be at an end." In calling for mutual aid, elimination of con flict, and cooperation within a capitalistic structure, Abbott was the

^Abbott, Remini scenses, ^OH,

5°Ib id . , ^ 1 1 . 132 leading American advocate of the corporate society. In what is per­ haps the clearest exposition of this theory by any American writer, he said in Forum in I 8 9 O:

Industrial democracy means the recognition in private industries of Professor Jevon's aphorism, that combinations should be perpendicular, not horizontal; that is, that there should be a combination of labor and capital in one organi­ zation, in competition with a similar combination of labor and capital in a rival organization, not a combination of battle array against a combination of all

In the interim before "industrial democracy" could be established,

Abbott would turn to compulsory arbitration to protect the public interest from industrial warfare. Despite his legal training, he gave little regard to the technicalities that make bargaining between labor and management different from a lawsuit to redress injury through pay­ ment of damages. "The state compels the contestants to submit their questions to a court, unless they can decide them peaceably between themselves; compels them to abide by the decisions of the court, and if necessary it sends a sheriff to take the property from the one man and give it to the other . nJ The labor organizations he condoned were those which operated for the single purpose of securing "industrial democracy."

If Abbott criticized capitalism, it was only because it did not go far enough to make every worker a capitalist. Without considering vital factors of power and ultimate control, he wanted to maintain a

^Abbott, "Industrial Democracy," Forum, IX (August, 1390), 663.

^Lyman Abbott, "Compulsory Arbitration , 11 Arena. VII (December, 1S92), 32. 133 competitive system, yet at the same time organize it so competition would no longer exist.

In the conservative social gospel tradition was a Catholic social movement which climaxed in May, 1891 with Leo X III's E n cy lical, Rerum

Novarum. Through the e ig h tie s , Archbishop John Irelan d of St, Paul and

Cardinal James Gibbons of Baltimore had united with Terence V, Powderly in preventing papal condemnation of the Knights of Labor, When the

Canadian bishops declared the organization anathema in their country and forbade Catholics belonging to it, Gibbons summoned Powderly to

Baltimore and received assurances that there was nothing in the secret ritual of the Knights violative of Catholic belief or that could not be imparted in the confessional. Gibbons openly gave his aoproval to the organization, and his linking it with the church in frequent public 53 statements proved a sustaining boon to the Knights,

With such spokesmen as Gibbons and Ireland leading the liberal wing in American Catholicism, the church before 1891 had from time to time urged worker organization, arbitration of labor disputes, and child labor legislation. In an essay of October, 1901, Ireland expressed the cautious view of Catholic liberals when he defended labor as a "holy cause" - that of humanity, but at the Same time placed the weight of his essay on an excoriation of strikers who by not allowing non-union men to work interfered with a sacred right - personal liberty

^Aaron I, Abell, "The Reception of Leo XIII’s Labor Encylical in America, 1891-1919*” Review of P olitics, VII (October, 19^5)> ^7^? Henry J, Browne, The Catholic Church and the Knights of Labor (Washing** ton, t>,C., 19^9), 339* 13U to work. Labor organizations might argue, defend, or persuade, but they had to abjure weapons of force and boycott.

The Encylical Re ram Novarum, the Vatican response to the growing force of Socialism in European labor, rested upon two major premises.

First, it upheld the "inviolability of private property," as against the socialist "community of goods; 11 second, in postulating that there could be no practical solution of industrial oroblems without the assistance of religion, it called for harmony and mutual responsibility of labor and capital. In it the living wage was endorsed; trade unions were sanctioned with emphasis upon mixed syndicates of both labor and msnagement.

S till, the main impact of the document was conservative in America as in Europe. Rather than a constructive instrument for social reform, it became the church's weapon against socialism. Catholic writers make the claim that the large numbers of their faith in the American Federa-* tion of Labor contributed to preventing socialist control of that

organization. Only a small group of Catholic intellectuals, like

John A. Ryan in America, seized upon the few reform suggestions in the

Encylical. Its stress upon syndicalism and organ!cism made it a strong

underpinning for a corporate movement among European Catholics.^

5^John Ireland, "Personal Liberty and Labor Strikes," North American Review, CLXXIII (October, 190l), HH 5-.U5 3 .

55prowne, Catholic Church and Knights of Labor, 357n»

Aaron I. Abell, "The Reception of Leo XIII'b Labor Encylical," Review of Politics, VII (October, 19U5 ), U6H-U6 5 . 135

“•O'**

While the moderates and conservatives counseled unity and self- help, from the left a tiny group of courageous zealots carried the humanism of the social gospel to its logical conclusion and launched a frontal attack on capitalism.

"We are not to work to establish a Christian co-operative colony,

W. D. P. Bliss of BoBton, the most effective of their number, declared,

"no system of profit-sharing, no individualistic scheme, no ignis fatuus of associated charities and model houses and aristocfatic patronage. We are to work for the development of the Christian state, 57 and so for the conversion of people to our ideas. "

Bliss, first a Congregational, later an Episcopalian clergyman, was founder of the Society of Christian Socialists - the most important of the radical Christian organizations - and a charter member of the

American Fabian Society. In 1890 he resigned M s pastorate under pres­ sure and founded a "lower class" church, the Mission of the Carpenter*

His socialism was vague; clearly it was not the scientific socialism of Marx, The program B liss outlined in a p riv a te l e t t e r in 1895 seemed hardly radical in calling for a legal eight hour day, public ownership of all natural monopolies, increased lend taxation, a graduated income and inheritance tax, abolition of the contract labor system, and free 58 municipal employment bureaus. Bliss was a gradualist. Unlike

R7 Pawn (July-August, 1890), 111, quoted in May, Protestant Churches in Industrial America, 2U3 .

5%5ann, Yankee Reformers in the Urban Age, 92-93; Bliss to Henry Demarest Lloyd, July 17, 1^9?, Lloyd Papers. Abbott, he did not voice the platitude that individual character regen-* eration came first, social reform second. Bliss argued "the necessity of a true environment as one of the elements, though by no means the 59 only element, in the development of perfect character."

The Christian Socialists did not isolate the labor problem apart from the general economic reforms they proposed. Hence, rather than discuss arbitration, cooperation, or union organization, they empha­ sized those basic economic changes which they hopefully trusted would liberate workers from oppression, women from bondage, ministers from slavishnesB, and artists from commercialism.

There was no general agreement within the Christian Socialist camp. Herbert Newton Casson, also a Bostonian, was an e x p atriate

Methodist who founded what he ambitiously called a "labor church." A member of the radical Socialist Labor Party, he not only condemned the kid-glove social criticism of moderates like Gladden, he spurned Bliss because of his insistent Episcopalian belief, charging, "Christian

Socialism takes its stand in the Church as a divinely sanctioned insti­ tution, while the Labor Church places itself in ;be center of the Labor

Movement and says, 'God is here.’ Christian Socialism . . . still be- 60 lieves in the sacredness of mould and cobwebs,"

F. M. Sprague, author of a creditable book on Socialist theory,

Socialism from Genesis to Revelation, likewise chided the compromising

D a w n (July-August, 1890). 120*121, in May, Protestant Churches in Industrial America, 2U3.

^Herbert N, Oasson, What We Believe (Ljmn, 189?) * quoted ibid. , 137 6l moderates, declaring, "You cannot Christianize exploitation . . ."

From the Midwest a stormy petrel, George D, Herron of Grinnell College, termed America a fallen nation and called for a national revival in which public ownership of the source and means of production would reulace crude assertion of enlightened self-intere 8 t in the social and economic world. More radical than Bliss, Herron called for a strong group of self-sacrificing men "willing to fail that they may prove the justice of love and the social wisdom of sacrifice,"

The Christian Socialists are of importance only as the extreme to which the revolt against classicism in economics could lead. Few were the laboring men, fewer still the church men upon whom they had influ en ce,

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The common workingman was neither articulate nor had he a forum to voice his reaction to the social gospel. It is clear that he did not rally to effectuate the panaceas the reformers suggested. Econ­ omist Francis A, Walker sagely commented, "Nothing has been more marked than the indifference, if not the actual hostility, of the laboring population of England and America, generally, to the schemes 62 of cooperation and profit-sharing ..."

One particularly radical workingman, identified simply as J.

Willet of Glenn, Michigan used the pages of Abbott's Christian Union

61 . , May, Protestant Churches in Industrial America, 244, 62 F rancis A, Walker, "Democracy and W ealth," Forum, X (November, 1890), 253. 138 for an attack upon the counsels of providence and moderation addressed

to the workingmen.

We have never expected any help from the priesthood class; sb a class their feelings of self-interest are all in favor of the aristocracy .... We believe much in Jesus and his teachings, but not much in the teachings of his pretended followers. A civilization that permits men to be the great enemy of men, and allows the hardest and most repugnant toil to draw the lowest pay, is a threat and a sham , , , a religion that allows it without constant, earnest, and persistent protest is a humbug,^3

W illet spoke b i t t e r l y of those who condemned the vice and intemperance

of laborers and ignored similar manifestations among "better people"

What of the extravagance of Garfield’s funeralT He wagered that any

one hundred workingmen consumed le s s liq u o r annually than P resident

ArthurJ A primitive kind of class conscious radical, Willet declared,

"The question is the case of the workingman versus the ruling classes

o . . . No, Mr. Gladden, ruin has never come upon a nation from the

incompetence and improvidence of its workingmen, but always by the 6H vices of its ruling classes."

Although Willet is extreme, he emphasizes the difficulty of oveiw

coming a mutual distrust between the clergy and the worker. Save for

Gladden and Caseon, most of the men of the cloth lacked knowledge of

the laborer's problems. Thinking in broad social terms they lost

touch w ith the immediate demands of the worker. The so cial gospel was too optimistic both in trusting the good will of the employer and placing too much faith in the ultimate perfectibility and social

63J. Willet, "Letter from a Workingman," Christian Union, XXX21 (October 29, 1885), 7~8.

6V i d „ 139 coiiBciousness of the working man. Notions of paternalism, unity, and

self-he]p were meaningless to workingmen in an economy of mammoth pri-

■mate power structures. The clergy, strengthened by understanding

seemingly denied to others, stood on a patrician mountaintop and attempted to guide the unfortunate below. Save for Gladden, Clark, and a few others, the social gospel ministry gave little support to labor's organized effort at self-help. The final tragedy of the social gospel was its inability to win real support from the one group it most wanted to attract.

In perspective, the social gospel is not to be condemned, con­

sidering the social context in which it operated. From beginning to

end (Christian Socialism excepted) it was solid middle class creed.

Individual self-help, personal success, inevitable progress, unlimited

opportunity — its ideas were the basic ingredients of the American

intellectual heritage. Ralph Henry Gabriel aptly terms the social 69 gospel , "the religious phase of the progressive movement, " The

organic ideas of Gladden and Gilman were the attempt of the middle

class social gospel to compromise between classical laissez-faire and

labor's demand for class organization. Rejecting unbridled individ­

ualism and natural rights, the social gospel attempted to substitute a

new unity - more or less corporate in nature - that would bind together

the worker with the employer, and in turn the industrial unit with

society as a whole,

^Raiph Henry Bah riel, Course of American Democratic Thought (New York, 19^0), 332. lMo

By so doing, private property would be maintained and the

existing distribution of wealth would not be violated* Economic

individualism was not submerged within class organization; the moral, enterprising individual would still be rewarded for his achievements

by advancing within his particular institutional framework. Labor'e

selfish class demands had to give way to a concern for the general

welfare; management had to replace economic exploitation with a paternal care for the welfare of the workers. In place of the

frightening class rationale of the labor movement was substituted the

soothing ’’togetherness 11 of the industrial community.

While conservatives had insisted upon the perfect nature of the

status quo, the social gospel held that it was imperfect, but per­

fectible through reform. Optimistic in looking to the future, the

social gospel believed the status quo could be improved with a minimum

of sacrifice of personal liberty. It dispelled the alliance of religicn

and reactio n ary p o litic a l economy; i t paved the way fo r the new p o li­

tical economy of Richard T. Ely and John R. Commons,

The caution of the social gospel in dealing with the labor movement,

was to be expected. For Protestantism to have accepted class organi­

zatio n of labor in 1900 was asking too much. Despite the ris in g tid e

of concentration in business, in suburban and small town America the

self-made man ideal of initiative, hard-work, end resulting success

would not down easily. It is of great significance that even a few

courageous ministers were able to make the bold step of accepting the

class unionism of the American Federation of Labor. lU i

The social gospel was a First World War casualty. The church did not minister to labor in the dark days of the twenties; nor did it

share with organized labor the rebirth of the thirties. Despite the ambitious herpes of the social gospel, Protestantism and organized labor in America have followed separate paths. CHAPTER SEVEN

THE HEW ECONOMICS AND LABOR

I t was a "hot and disagreeable summer day" in 1880 when a twenty-

*ix year old economics Ph.D from Heidelberg returned to New York City after three years abroad. "... My h eart Sank w ithin me," Richard T,

Ely lamented as he walked the dirty and ill-kept streets. "I thought

. . „ of the clean and beautiful streets of Berlin and Liverpool, and the painful contrast made me want to take the next boat back to Europe

0#0. This was my home and I vowed to do whatever was in my power to bring about, better conditions,, My youthful ambitions were high."

Ely was only one of a number of young American students of econo­ mics whose nameB have since become among the most d istin g u sih ed in

their field, who had traveled to Germany for graduate study not avail­ able in their own country. They included Edmund Janes James, the founder of the American Academy of Political and Social Science; Henry

Carter Adams, economic theorist and professor at University of Michigm; and two of America’s most distinguished theorists of economics, Simon

Nelson Patten and John Bates Clark. These German trained scholars had s. pronounced impact upon academic economics in the United States: as instructors of graduate students in economics, a whole new generation

of scholars came under their influence. One of Patten 1e students was

1 Richard T, Ely, Ground Under Our Eeet: An Autobiography (New York, 193S), 65.

1 ^ 2 1U3

Thorstein Veblen, Among those who studied under Ely were, John R.

Commoha, America's most ahle labor economist; Albion V. Small, a pioneer in American sociology; Edward Webster Bemis, controversial teacher and public o f f ic ia l; and in non»-academic realm s, A lbert Shaw, journalist and reformer; and Amos Warner, author of the classic

Amorican Charities,

These so-called new economists, both of the first and second gen­ eration, were rugged individualists in disposition and intellectual fortitude, if not in economic theory, Nonetheless, it is possible to delineate several common denominators in ideas and experiences that u n ite them.

Common to their economic thinking was the influence of the German historical school. The economists of Bismarck's newly formed Reich abandoned the English and French dogmas of laissez-faire, and consistent with the nationalism and vague romanticism of late nineteenth century

Germany, substituted & relativist or historical interpretation of p o l i t i c a l economy. They m aintained th a t i f such a th in g as economic 2 "law” existed, it was applicable only in one country at one period.

Economists, it followed, should turn, in the manner of the scientist, to an empirical study of the forces and counter-forces that motivated economic society. "What we young fellowB were concerned about," wrote Ely in retrospect, "was life itself It followed that if there were no inviolable axioms given by God or science to underwrite

^See Edmund Janes James, "Preface," John Kells Ingram, A History of Political Economy (New York, 1^07), x.

'^Ely, Ground Under Our F e e t, 153<> lUH the statue qxxo, and if social needs were the determinants of economic

"behavior, policy and practices could be modified in the interest of a more effective or more just distribution of the benefits of economic so ciety .

The new economists learned from the Germans to look to the s ta te as an agency useful in achieving ethical and social objectives. In

Germany, Lockipn natural rights had never found a strong foothold, and in the tradition of Hegel, Herder, and Treitschke, professors like

Karl Knies, who taught Ely, stressed the idea of the organic state.

The new economists remembered the lessons well, for Ely sixteen years later described the State as a "continuous, conscious organism, and a moral personality, which has its foundations laid in the nature of man. "

It would be a mistake to assume that German influence was the sole intellectual backdrop of reform economics. Correlating closely with the formal academic theories in the thinking of the economists was a second major tenet, the social gospel. Ely, Clark, Henry Carter Adams, and Carroll D. Wright, first United States Commissioner of Labor, were as much at home in the p u lp it as in the classroom. They deplored the separation of ethics and business; the new economic society they would fashion once they had smashed the dogmas of laissez-faire would be solidly erected on Christian principles. Ideas of good-will, benevo­ lence, harmony, and individualism x^ere to the new economists, as to the social gospel, both intellectual attributes and pit-falle,

u Richard T. Ely, The Social Law of Service (New York, IS 96) , 167 . 1^5

Apart from these intellectual common denominators, there was a certain consistency in the careers of the ethical economists. Since they so boldly advocated a break with theories and concepts near­ deified in academic and business circles, they brought down upon them­ selves censure and sometimes vengeance by conservative college admin­ istrators and political economists. Simon Newcomb scoffed that Ely's

The Labor Movement was marked by a ''general p u e r ility of tone and treatm ent ..." and concluded that "Dr. Ely seems to be seriously out of place in a university chair.An irate Cornell board of trustees 6 that included employer Henry W. Sage, dismissed Henry Carter Adams when he expressed sympathy with the rail Btrikers in 1SS6. In the wake of the Pullman Strike in 189*1, Ely wc8 accused by the Wisconsin

Superintendent of Public Instruction of teaching anarchist ideas and fomenting labor violence. An investigating committee exonerated him, but Edward W. Bemie of University of Chicago was not so fortunate. A speech critical of the rail owners lost him his job. Within the same year, John R. Commons was dismissed under similar pressures at Indiana

University.

Actually, the aroused conservatives need not have been concerned about the new economists, for they would have been hard put to have found a radical among them. Ely always stressed that his preachments were directed to the "better classes," and that he considered himself

^Quoted, Ely, Ground Under Our F e e t, 178-179.

^See supra. , 62. lU6 an "aristocrat.Not only did the new economists openly disavow

radicalism, many of them became increasingly conservative as they

achieved academic status and distinction. John Bates Clark, who in the early nineties joined the plea for a unity of ethics and economics,

soon after igOO was condemning strikes as an "unnatural influence" and praising competition as the "invisible hand" guiding free economic processes. Crusader Edward W. Bemis ended his career as superintendent

of Cleveland's water-works. As Ely drifted into land speculation he

became a b i t t e r c r i t i c of socialism and was looked upon as an avowed

conservative by colleagues and students at University of Wisconsin.

The American Economic Association, founded with a bold reform platform

in 1886 by a group of liberal economists, intellectuals and clergr, had

so watered down i t s statement of purposes by 1890 th a t i t had become

simply a dull professional academic body, palatable even to J. Lawrence

Laughlin and Simon Newcomb « in fact the only prominent economic writer

who had not joined wa& William Graham Sumner0

The la te n t conservatism of most of the e th ic a l economists i s no

more in evidence than in their stand upon the labor question. While

Ely, Clark, Bemis and most of the others broke sharply with the laissea-

faire theorists in advocating organization of labor and in some cases

condoning strike rights, their acceptance of the organizational prin-

ciple was conditioned by moral preachments, beliefs in harmonious means

of organic unity in business like cooperation or profit-sharing, and a

refusal to accept the class-conscious goals of pragmatic unionism,

7 Richard T. Ely, "Fundamental Beliefs in My Social Philosophy," Forum XVIII (October, 189*0, 183* ib i

With the exception of John R, Commons, the association of the ethical economists with the labor movement was oblique and Casuals Ely, defending himself against charges of fomenting labor violence in 189^* made clear: "I have never attended a \tfOrking man's meeting in

Madison , . , , So far as I ever expressed myself about any strikes in

Madison, it has been to condemn them , » „ . I have written my books g primarily for men of wealth and culture , , , H

M 0 M

Richard T, Ely, the first secretary and the prime mover behind the American Economic Association, was the most widely-known although not the most scholarly of the ethical economists. Reared in a Calvin- istic household in upstate New York and educated at Dartmouth and

Columbia, his German education shattered the absolute truths of church, economics, and life bred in him by environment and experience. Re­ tu rn in g to America, he f i r s t became p ro fesso r of p o litic a l economy at

Johns Hopkins, but his great contributions came between 1892 and 1925 when he served as chairman of the department of economics at the

University of Wisconsin,

Ely was the conscience of the new economics -his writings often reflect more social theology and ethical idealism than analytical economics. Solidly in the tradition of the social gospel, he joined with Gladden in transforming other-worldly salvation into a social

salvation to be achieved gradually in this world through the actions of repentent men. In soaring flights of idealism, Ely conceived both

ft Richard T, Ely to Amos Wilder, July 22, 139^. Ely Papers, lUg men and society to "be perfectible - all that was needed was to follow the universal principles of Christian morality, applicable to all places, at all times. Ely simply substituted ethical abBOlutes for 3 economic ones.

Again he was like Gladden in espousing a universal brotherhood of men and in looking to the organic state as the embodiment of social unity. There were no "natural rights" to life, liberty, and property inherited by men from some primeval condition. The State had been the o rig in an d guarantor of rights in the past, it should be emploj'-ed to enhance and extend them in the present.

Men have never come together in a state of nature, and then by the formation of a state passed out of a condition of nature into an organized political existence. The state grows up naturally, spontaneously, and men are born into the S tate, and the State i s one of the forces making them what they are. The basis of the State is human nature, and the State is the natural condition of men.

The intensity and enthusiasm of Ely’s writings contrasted to the bleak conservatism of the political econom of his day create the im­ pression that Ely was a vigorous reformer, if not a radical.^

^Richard T. Ely, Social Aspects of Christianity (New York, 1389), 5 3 ~ S l passim.

^Ely, Social Law of Service, l67-lo8»

■^Eor example, he began The Labor Movement in America (New York, 1886), preface, v: "The Labor Movement treats of the’ struggle of the masses for existence, and this phrase is acquiring new meaning in our time. A marvellous war is now being waged in the heart of modern civilization. Millions are now engaged in it„ The welfare of humanity depends upon the issue, Joseph Dorfman calls Ely a "Christian Socialist.,11 quoting his statement that Das Kapital was "one of the ablest politico-economic treatises ever written. The Economic Mind in America, III, lol~l6^, —- — il+ 9

Impassioned, words and carefully qualified statements are deceiving,

Sly was a reformer to be Bure - but the great lesson of the Progressive movement i s that one can be a reformer and a conservative too.1 Ely was always the intellectual patrician who vjould reform the status quo mainly in order to preserve it. As time passed and circumstances differed, Ely failed to change. The progressivism of 1887 became the conservati sm of 1913. He made his conservative position explicit in a revealing article written at the height of the academic freedom furor of which he was the center:

As far as my general social philosophy is concerned I may then say that I am a conservative rather than a radical, and in the strict sense of the term an aristocrat rather than a democrat; but when I use the word "aristocrat,11 I have in mind of course not a legal aristocracy, but a natural aristocracy, not an aristocracy born for the enjoy­ ment of special privilege, but an aristocracy which lives for the fulfillment of social service.^

When Christian idealism had to be transformed into a social pro­ gram, Ely became aautious. "There is no p o s s ib ility of escape from toil and suffering," he warned. "Mitigation and gradual improvement are the utmost we can hope for and it is the duty of all those who have the ear of the masses to tell them this plain truth even if it be not altogether palatable,Although Ely occasionally spoke with elusive sympathy toward socialism, urging its study as a way of distinguishing merits and demerits of existing institutions, he firmly maintained that com petition was a "permanent featu re of human B ociety," The aim of reform should never be to eliminate it, but to strengthen the individual

12Ely, "Fundamental B eliefs . . Forum, XVIII (October, 189U). lS3o

1 ?Ibid0f 182-183, 150 and the group to participate effectively,, A force for good, compe­ tition mounted to "higher and higher elevations, and means rivalry for ever better and hotter things . B , . Competition gives us a brave, iH strong race of men, and the bravo and strong are the merciful*"

When Ely discussed the labor question, his argument was blunted by a p a tern al and condescending a ttitu d e , but he was no enemy of labor organization or no defender of the industrial status quo, He believed reverently in equality of opportunity, but he saw realistically that i t meant l i t t l e to the average workingman* "One of the elementary truths which wo in this coimtry specially need to grasp is that the average man 1r net a peculiarly gifted man, 11 Accordingly, the ten­ dency to turn boys away from manual labor with the siren Call "rise in life" was meaningless and dangerous* ", . , Our school books, our periodicals for the young, and one might almost say our entire litera­

ture, all are carrying through the length and breadth of the land the conception th at to ris e in l i f e means to become fl, great m anufacturer, a railway president, or a merchant prince* No wonder humble toil is 15 scorned J1'

Since, from this realistic viewpoint, most laboring men could expect to spend their lives as journeymen, organization was necessary to remove the disadvantages they suffered, Ely argued appealingly that the "right" of free contract between workers and employers, so

1*+ Richard T, Ely, "Competition: Its Nature, Its Permanency, and Its Beneficience, " Publications of the American Economic Association, II (3rd series, 1900), b7, 70. ' 15 Ely, The Labor Movement in America, 95* 151 important to Adam Smith and the Physiocrats, had no meaning. This wss true, first, because there was a natural inequality in man; second, the law of supply and demand did not function in the labor market.

The laborer as a seller of his toil, was bound by circumstances beyond his control. He had to seek a labor market at the place where he lived. He was too uneducated to know conditions elsewhere or finan­ c ia lly unable to move. I f demand for labor fa ile d , the commodity could not be withdrawn from the market. Ironically, in times of unemployment and declining wages, the labor supply increased as wives and children

sought jobs. The price of labor, again would not automatically increase when demand increased, because it was necessary first to absorb the reserve army of unemployed. Supply of labor could not be regulated short of population decrease, or cessation of immigration.

Freedom of contract was an invalid idea, third, because the em­ ployer had powers over the very lives of his "free agent" employees.

He influenced their expenditures through loans and company stores; factory working conditions affected their health and safety; their moral and intellectual life was shaped by the hours they were required to labor, the fatigue of the job, and the contacts of the plant. When the laborer attempted to withhold his labor, legal or privately insti­ tuted obstacles like the black-list, the injunction, and the irort-clad 16 oath prevented him.

Effective labor organizations could counteract the disparity in the workingman’s position. "They unite labor as capital is united,

l 6 Ibid., 95-102 passim. 152 and place the two on a proper footing for a free contract. A worker

could withhold his labor temporarily from the market. Union periodicals could assist him in finding the heat market for his labor. The union

could regulate labor Eupply by preventing too great apprentice pressure upon journeymen and by educating the laborer to "prudence in marriage. 11

Ely had Caught a glimpse of the job^control theory of Gompers and the

American Federation of Labor, although he had little or no contact or

correspondence with the organization.

A union made arbitration or disputes possible. "To aBk a single laborer, representing a ten thousandth part of the labor factor, to place himself against a man who represents all the combined capital,

is as absurd as to p l a c e a boy before an express train, and expect him to stop it s progre ss.

Ely stressed the "educative" value of the labor organization. The union was a political training ground, a forum for matters social and

cultural, and a powerful force for temperance. He quoted Powderly>s

statement, "If a man given to the use of strong drink and a serpent

applied for admission to the order, I would vote for the serpent in iq preference to the drunkard." Ely cited with approval a New York

Union which censured a member for using in public meeting the word

"damned. "

The author of The Labor Movement in America joined with other

conservatives in o b jectin g to v io len ce, but he did not condemn a ll

-^Richard T.Ely, "Labor Organizations," Forum, III (March, 1887), 552 Ely, Labor Movement, 1^6. 19I b id ., 132. 153

strikes. "Employers , 11 he wrote, "rarely offer an advance voluntarily, 20 for they are like purchasers of other commodities," There was some

contradiction between Ely'B position on strikes in theory and. in practice. When crisis came, as in 189*+, he was not so ready to endorse

the idea. In primary Institutions like railroads, "the public interest becomes paramount, and public authority, if it discharges its function, 21 will not tolerate strikes . 11 Unlike Henry Demarest Lloyd, Clarence

Darrow, or Lyman Trumbull, he did not object to the action of the

federal government in suppressing the American Railway Union, "What

we have recently witnessed in railway strikes," wrote Ely, "is bar­

barism and not civilization. We should not, in this matter, allow a

discussion of abstract rights to interfere with determined action

which will prevent the recurrence of events like those referred to, 22 which are nothing less than a national disgrace and humiliation."

Emohasis upon harmony, belief in equal opportunity, and anti­

monopolism found an outlet in schemes of profit-sharing and cooperation. 23 Ely encoitraged studies of the cooperative movement. His Labor Move­

ment contained a leading chapter on the subject. While he granted

that many of labor’s cooperative experiments had failed, he attributed

?0 Ib id . , lUg. 2 l Ely, "Fundamental Beliefs ..." Forum, XVIII (October, 189*0, 17 *1.

22Ib id ,

"see Edward W. Bemis, Albert Shaw, Amos G. Warner, Charles Howard Shinn, & Daniel R. Randall, History of Cooperation in the United States, ed. , Richard T, Ely, Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical & Political Science, VI (1888). 1 5 ^

this not to defects in the system, "but to weaknesses in human nature.

Profit-sharing was a "desirable combination . . . when carried out

with good intent on both sides «, 0 „ its field must however,

always be a limited one. "

Organized effort by laborers as well as cooperation might affect

the future of industrial relations, but for Sly the true remedy ley

elsewhere and was less concrete. As a Belf-styled aristocrat, he re­

turned always to the moral class distinction he had recognized earlier.

Experience must b rin g the fact more and more home to every thinking person that one indispensable condition of permanent improvement in the lot of laborers is their moral elevation. The first conditions of success in their various efforts are mutual confidence, incorruptible integrity, and unquestioned fidelity in positions of trust. Without these qualities, oolitical action, co-operation, and organization can do but poor and imperfect work, while they will fre­ quently fail altogether. ?

The preface of Ely's Labor Movement contained sage advice for the

wage-earners of America. Pirst, they should improve their characters,

make themselves better workers and better men; second, avoid drink;

third, beware demagoguery in unions, particularly of a political sort;

fourth, initiative no violence; fifth, seek refuge in the law only;

sixth, cast aside envy — cultivate admiration for genuine superiority,

"It is a grand thing," he told a supposed working class group of

readers," that there aro men with higher natures than ours, and with

every advantage for the development of their faculties, that they may

2k Ely, Social!sm and Social Beform, 339*

^ E ly , The Labor Movement, 318, 155 lead in the world's progress, and serve us as examples of vhat we 26 should strive to become,n ‘

Conclusions like these, Ely pointed out, were with him empiricalo

"All this is said entirely apart from my views ac a church member. I 27 come to it by an independent route as a social scientist . 11

Ely made explicit that the social reform he advocated was conser­ vative and not revolutionary. The "better classes" had a vital resoon- sibility - the welfare of their fellows and of all society. The lower classes would willingly follow if it could be demonstrated that their superiors were sincere in devotion to their interests. America, he

Warned, must heed the sad example of GermaAY. There social reform came too late, for the masses received the impression that the action sprung from fear alone, not from a sincere interest in human welfare.

’Alien Ely declared, "Timid, half-way measures will not stem the tide of socialism," he was at one with that solid conservative tradition of the Progressive Movement that would reform to preserve the existing 28 system,, The real ideal he postulated sounded far different than the idealism of his social gospel writings: "Our ideal is a social state, not of equality but of equal opportunities, giving to each the means for the development, complete and harmonious, of all his faculties,"2^

26Ibid., v-ix.

g 7 Ib id . , 321.

O ff Ely, Socialism and Social Reform, vi.

^9Richard T. Ely and Seth Low, "A Program for Labor Reform," Century, X7II N.S, (April, 1890), 951. 156

Although the critic cannot doubt the sincerity of Richard T. Ely, nor deny to him the title, "Progressive," - in his own d.?y -> he was always at sea in discussing the labor question. By pitching it upon a moral plane, he lost sight of factors of power and economic change that he occasionally suggested in his unadulterated economic dis­ cussions. The character of the working man simply was not at issue in the labor struggles of the nineties.1 Blinded by his own moralisra,

Ely never really viewed the working man as he really was. What better or more telling evidence of Ely's apartness and isolation from his problem than a cogent letter he wrote to a defender at the height of the lggU in v e stig atio n s:

I never attended a working man's meeting in Madlson, I was never asked by a striker for any advice. So far as I ever expressed myself about any strikes in Madison, it has been to condemn them ...» Moreover, I have written my books primarily for men of wealth and culture — for those called the upper classes — and by them chiefly my books have been read .... My public addresses have been to audiences of th is kind * . , . Only twice in my l i f e so far as I can now remember, have I ever spoken to audiences of working men, and I have always held myself aloof from agitation as something not in my province -- something for which I am not adapted .^

It is not surprising that by 1910, with the addition of Commons and others to the department of economics at Wisconsin, Ely waB looked upon as a conservative. Not only had he held fast to the liberalism of the nineties, his own extensive real estate holdings strengthened his determination to preserve the status quo. The professor who had once spoked objectively about the broad ideals of socialism wrote to

President Van Hise on February 15, 1910;

^Ely to Amos Wilder, July 22, 189*i, Ely Papers, 157

I doubt i f there is any American university of equal rank in which bo little attention has been given to Social­ ism as has been given in the University of Wisconsin .... I may say that I think' on investigation i t w ill be found that no one of the great universities is more conservative in its department of political economy, while other insti­ tutions have men far more radical than anyone here — men who I would not think of recommending for a p o sitio n .^

- 0 -

The paradox of progreesivism mixed with conservatism was by no

means unique among the new economists with Ely. Ideas of harmony, paternalism, and reluctant reform came close to representing the main­

stream of their thought.

The desire to find an ethical solution to economic problems was

clearly manifest in the writings of the first American scholar to study in Germany, a theorist more profound than Ely, John Bates Clark. In

his fir st work, The philosophy of Wealth(1886), Clark joined Ely in

demanding a unity of ethics and economics. More sociologically

oriented than Ely or Gladden, he was concerned with applying ethics to

institutions, not with the moral appeal to individuals to convert their

society. He accepted competition, but would recondition it by intro­

ducing Christian ideals. The false idea of the old economics that had

applied only a "law of selfishness" to business, had created a dual

morality, one for the service of God, the other for the service of 82 mammon. A man must serve God, Clark exclaimed, while doing business.'

•^Merle Curti and “Vernon Carstenson, The TJniversity of Wisconsin: A History (Madison, 19^1), II, 3lji* ’ 82 John Bates Clark, "Christianity and Modern Economics," The New Englander and Yale Review (July, 1887)* 50-59! also John R. Everett, Religion in Economics, a study of John Bates Clark, Hi chard T. Ely, Simon Nelson Patten (New York, T9U&), 53-55- 158

He vsb convinced however, that progress was being made toward this goal - as fast as human imperfections would allow. The better world would unfold as men discovered the immutable lave of economic activity that underlay the organic society.

Clark saw a real ground for industrial conflict, caused by "stra­ tegic inequality between capitalists and laborers. Labor should be organized to the same point as capital, the balanced forces should be tempered by the increased effectiveness of moral agencies like the church. The solution to the labor problem, Clark believed, could be found in arbitration, profit-sharing, end full cooperation, A coop­ erative society would eliminate the dividing lines in industry. Like

Ely, Clark saw in cooperation the possibility not only for the satis­ faction of material wants, but the chance for expansion of the mental and moral horizons of the workers.

Clark followed Ely’s pattern again as the moral earnestness of his early writings gave way to a cautious conservatism when his interest® turned from social economics to value theory. Clark's dedication to a competitive system was, however, a more reasoned view than the moral ideas of Ely, When he wrote "The Modern Appeal to Legal Ibrces in

Economic Life" (lS9*0, Clark had already evolved his important effec­ tive (or marginal) utility theory of value. Value was determined by society's market estimate of the usefulness of a particular commodity.

Accordingly, any s trik e which demanded more than the product of mar­ ginal lab o r would f a i l , the one th a t demanded le ss would succeed. In

^Clark, The Philosophy of Wealth, 132, quoted ibid. , Ul. 159 other words, Clark voiced the old cliche, "A strike against a falling market can never succeed,"

"Strikes," he wrote, "now rely on an unnatural influence. They terror!se non-union men. This often makes the adjustment of wages a prolonged tragedy, and is so obviously intolerable that not a word should be wasted in demonstrating what, in this connection, is the duty of the state. That would scarcely be a government at all that should refuse to exert its power in protecting men in their right to work.

When he wrote Histributton of Wealth in 1899, Clark had come to advocate competition as an "invisible hand" guiding free economic processes. Powerful groups conspired to inject a monopoly principle in contravention to the all-important competition. The main groups guilty were what Clark called the "revolutionary classes," and workmen in a few highly organized trades. To prevent furtherance of the trend, trusts should be dissolved, concentration limitede

In the struggle between capital and labor, one side centralized faster than the other. Inequality resulted, and since all society could suffer, there had to be a corrective."^ Asking "Is Compulsory

Arbitration Inevitable," Clark pointed out that the state vacillated between partial tolerance of labor, and half-hearted defense of the

-^John ^ates Clark, "The Modern Appeal to Legal Forces in Economic Life" Publications of the American Economic Association, IX (189*0, 22.

^Everett, Religion in Economics, 53-7*f passim. i6o strikebreaker. If a laborer has a right to his job, "it is in order TC for some competent authority to Say so . . , A tribunal should avoid the extreme of dictating wages, or forcing men to work against their will, but men should continue to work while claims were investigated.

Clark by opposing the monopoly principle acknowledged himself the foe of the philosophy of the American Federation of Labor. In striving for a return to a freely competitive system, Clark looked to a noble ideal - attractive to liberal politicians and intellectuals alike, but one that was becoming increasingly unrealistic in a world of Standard Oil, the National Civic Federation, and the New Nationalism of Croly and Roosevelt, Clark's defense of competition was the strongest made among his economic contemporaries. Unlike many of them, he understood that concentration had obliterated the free functioning economy. His ideal of a return to a truly competitive order was one that would recur frequently in reform platforms from 1900 until the advent of the New Deal.

~ 0 ~

Carroll D. Wright was not an academian as were the other of the new economists ~ he might almost be said to have become an economist by accident. A Civil War officer and an aspiring conservative poli~ t-ician in Massachusetts, he accepted a position as Commissioner of

Labor Statistics in 1873 probably as a way of furthering his

•^John Bates Clark, "Is Compulsory Arbitration Inevitable," in Employers and Employees (Chicago, 1902), 5L. i6 i ambitions. 37 The scrupulous standards of objectivity he maintained often brought criticism of the bureau both from labor and from capitals

In 1885 Wright was appointed the f i r s t United S tates Commissioner of

Labor, a position he held for twenty years. As such, he was chairman

of the commission that investigated the Pullman Strike in 1S9M-. , ? 8

An active Unitarian and the son of a Univerealist minister,

Wright believed firmly that society was evolving toward a better day,

in which evil would be overcome. The church would set the goals which

social science would provide rational means to attain. His point of

departure was his Universal!st trust in public opinion. "The inhar­ monious conditions . . , 11 he wrote, "while they will not be removed,

will be greatly decreased by an authoritative exposition of positive 39 facts." Like Henry Demarest Lloyd or Henry George, he sought to

buttress economic theory with fact and make the dismal science a

working, comprehensible tool for reform, although many times his oioneer

statistical methods left much to be desired.

Like most Christian social thinkers, Wright dreamed of an economy

founded on harmonious relations between employer and worker. He had

about as few real contacts with workingmen as Ely. Wright’s "good

37His immediate predecessor as deputy chief of the bureau of Labor Statistics was George E. McNeill. It was this bureau that- Charles Francis Adams attacked in the North American Review for July, 1872, supra. , 90.

3®"Carroll D, Wright," Dictionary of American Biography, XX, 5UI4-5U5.

3^Carroll D. Wright, "Industrial Necessities," Forum, II (November, 1886), 310. l62 citizen” worker - sober, industrious, seeking education and culture - would have been hard to find in most American factories. In hiB early- wri tings, Wright w&s critical of labor unions. In 1SS2 he asserted th a t the real means of elim in atin g discontent was to "awaken honest bo public sentiment." Unions could not affect real wages. Wright granted that strikes and boycotts were more useful for labor than vague promises, however they subjected the worker's cause to possible adverse judgment of public opinion. labor should beware this, for the true solution to their problem lay in the political realm. An enlightened public could decide this industrial problem on its merits, then vote the necessary legislative reforms to achieve balance and adjustment.

Since there was no real conflict between labor and capital, profit sharing was a possible alternative. Since the interests of the two groups were re c ip ro c al, i t was a f a i r means of d is trib u tin g the respective investments of both.

There was an important difference from most ethical economists and social gospel clergymen in Wright's discussion of the labor problem. He was too close to the issue, even if through the impersonal medium of statistics, to be long content with solutions impractical or undesirable to either of the parties concerned. Even before Gladden made his dramatic change, a shift in focus can be detected in Wright's th in k in g . While th is conservative M assachusetts p o litic ia n was always

Uo James R. W. Leiby, Statistics and the Labor Problem: A Biography of Carroll D. Wright, Unpublished Thesis, Ph.U, Harvard University, 262. This able study is the only major secondary work available on Wright. 163 reluctant and fearful of violence, by the end of hi a career he openly- defended the trade union principle.

In 1891, he concluded on the basis of his research, that although gains by the laboring-man in the last decades had been so enormous as to change his whole relation to society, he had not received a share of the benefits of technology nearly proportionate to that of the capitali st.

The report filed by the commission investigating the Pullman

Strike, largely the work of Wright, did not join the press in placing the responsibility for the violence solely upon the strikers, The com­ mission was frequently critical of the arbitrariness of the Pullman

Company and the General Managers' Association. It urged employers to

recognize and to deal with trades unions. Such organizations were but

the response to the increased concentration in business. The report

stated pointedly: MIn view of this progressive perversion of the laws

of supply and demand by capital and changed conditions, no man can

well deny the right nor dispute the wisdom of unity for legislative Hi purposes among thoee who supply labor , 11 Debs viewed the rep o rt as a

"triumphant vindication of the A. R. TJ. " To Nation it was "disappoint­

in g , 11 while Harper's proclaimed that the principles "silently assumed"

by the commiesionere negated all those upon which society had hitherto h2 rested. Although forgotten in the furor over the report, the

^•Report of the Chi cago S trike of .June-July, I 89 H by the Uni ted States Strike Commission, Appendix to the Fourth Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor, Statistics, and Mines to the Ugth General Assembly of the State of Tennessee (Nashville, 1895)»

1+2 " E d ito ria l," Harper's Weekly, XXXIII (November 2U, I 89 H) , 1107. 16U commission recommended a permanent federal s trik e commission clothed with legal power to adjudicate future disputes in public service 1+3 industries,,

Wright's call for organization of labor and of capital in each industry was based upon his understanding of the key problem of over- production and c o lla te r a l to i t , the growth of a co n tro lled economy.

Labor's organized power counter-balancing that of management would allow intelligent treatment of conflict free from passion, excitement, and other ills of individual bargaining with owners. Wright's accep­ tance of the A. F. of L. power philosophy was empirical - a development arising from his own intimate contact with real problems like those of 189^0

Perhaps ideally he would have wished for something better than the n&rrowness of pragmatic unionism. There was a bit of nostalgia lingering when in contrasting the Knights of Labor to the A. F. of L., he noted that the former "not only Btrives for the usual purposes of trade unions, but goes beyond by its endeavors to unify wage-earners without regard to the trades followed.

These two types are characteristic of all labor organ­ izations. The one primarily is selfish, looking to the interest of its own craft; the other is broader, more philo­ sophical, looking to the interests of all crafts. It is not strange that _the first succeeds and the latter practically ^always - she/ fails. Perhaps in another state of society the broader basis will win.

^ Heport of the Chicago Strike, 19O-I9I; Carroll D. Wright, "The Chicago Strike^ Publications of the American Economic Association (189U), 503-519.

^C arroll D. Wright, "Labor Organizations," American Antiquarian Society Proceedings, XVII n.s. (1907), ^^0. 165

Wright marks an advance in thought over both Ely and Clank* He did not long for a competitive ideal that no longer existed - particu­ la r ly a fte r h is dealings with management power in 189'+. He was as idealistic as Ely, but he rose ajbove moralistic shibboleths for working­ men, perhaps because he had come to know the American laborer, and had resigned himself to compromising his ideals to embrace only what was realizable in an imperfect world,

- C -

Henry Carter Adams, an important and forgotten figure among the new econom ists, could be c la s s ifie d as the most modern and the most prophetic of the school. Of the group considered here, Adams was the only one who clearly freed himself from the intellectual baggage of unbridled individualism nnd free, unlimited opportunity. Adams was not

only educated fcr the ministry, his father was a missionary oreacher

in Io\ira and a founder of Grinnell College. The recepient of the first

Ph.E granted at Johns Hopkins, he continued his studies at Serlin and

Heidelberg, In 1879 be became lecturer in economics .jointly at Cornell

and University of Michigan, and after 1886 at the latter institution

only*

His most distinguished study, "The Relation of the State to

Industrial Action," appearing in January, 1887, was a careful criticism

of economic classicism. Traditional laissez-faire, he demonstrated, was unworkable for three reasons. First, the free play of individual

interests forced down the moral sentiment pervading any trade to the

level of the worBt man in the business. Even the most ethical employer had to compete on the market with the oppressive and the unscrupulous. 166

A moralistic businessman following the maximB of Sly or Gladden might he forced out of business*

Second, the rule of non-interference rendered impossible benefits to be gained from monopolistic organization in certain lines of business*

Third, restriction of public powers within the narrowest possible lim its rendered government weak: and inefficient, A weak government in

the midst of a society controlled by the commercial spirit quickly became a corrupt government; this in turn encouraged private comor- ations to adopt bold measures for gaining control of the political H5 mac Pinery*

The constant emphasis in Adams' w ritings was the fundamental fact of social change. His view wes social, not individual; his institu­

tional theories that stressed the social framework within which ideas and ideals operated presaged the economic theory developed a few years later by John Rogers Commons.

Theories of free contract and oersonal freedom conceived in a pre-industrial age were inapplicable to a great industrial era. As

capital's power concentrated, labor had to organize to counter it*

W riting on the labor question in 1SH6, Adams condemned works lik e

Edward Atkinson's "statistical" surveys which ignored the critical issues at stake. While labor efficiency had increased 500$, wages had

risen only 100$. This was no problem created by demagogues, and Adams was unsparing in criticism of those who so interoreted it.

Hr ■^Henry Garter Adams, "The Relation of the State to Industrial Action," Publications of the American Economic Association, I (January, ISS7), 38. Where there is observed an almost unanimous movement on the part of any class of men, based upon a sense of wrong among those men, it is either the absurdity of prejudice or the cunning of personal interests which leads one to say that such a movement is the reeul|gof the eloquence of ignorant and demagogical leaders.

Adams Interpreted this new labor movement as being in the heritage

of two similar historical upheavals. The Reformation had secured

personal liberty for the individual; the political revolutions had

given him political self-government. Nevertheless, the march toward

freedom was not complete. Industrial activity would be chaotic and

tyrannical until brought under the same kind of responsible control J

The purpose of the labor movement was "that the exercise of industrial power, like the exercise of political power, should be held to strict account," Adams touched upon a theme prominent in the writings of social thinkers in the twentieth century when he wrote:

The truth is that the theory of liberty upon which the French Revolution was fought to a successful issue, which placed the personal right to acquire property on the same footing as the right to security of life, is no longer applicable to modern society . . , . This is the reason why it was reserved for the present generation, impelled by the same hope of personal freedom and by the same appreciation of social fairness and social equality that inspired the leaders of the English and French revolution, to impose such conditions upon the exercise of industrial power that the m aterial progress of our century may become the source of highest blessings to all, '

While Wright had demonstrated statistically that change occurred,

Clark had made a case for a return to a competitive system, and Ely had appealed to individual morality, Adams, on sounder ground,

Tienry Carter Adams, "The Labor Problem," Scientific American Supplement, 22 (Augu3t 21, 1886), p. 8862. l6S

interpreted the great social changes of industrialism in terms of

institutions, and advocated corresponding institutional reform to keep

apace the economic upheaval# For the worker, Adams speculated, the industrial revolution in

our time has meant the destruction of the intimacy of craft industry,

and the creation of a class who has no property save their labor,

"It means that the worker hae lost control over the conditions of

labor, and the labor agitation of our times . . . is but the effort

of workingmen to gain again control over the conditions in which work

shall be done , 11

For the statesman, industrialism meant the discarding of Adam

Smith's outworn theory. The state must do two things. First, regulate

the plane of competition, raising the standard ^bove that of the lowest

in the business; second, the state could regulate "natural" monopolies.

The new industrial age challenged the scholar to seek new per­

spectives. Clearly aware of the position of the intellectual, Adams

wrote, "He views society from a height . . . he will be more apt , , ,

to discover the general trend of society. History to him is like a

river lying at the base of a mountain on which he stands ..."

Feudalism had given way to nationalism, nationalism to the machine age.

"The birth of a capitalist class, freed from the restraints formerly

imposed by custom and law, was the first step in industrial armament, while the organization of labor into unions of trades is to be regarded as a second step, a counter-movement on the part of those whose Up! interests were endangered by the rise of great industries."

^Henry Carter Adams, "An Interpretation of the Social Movements of Our Time," International Journal of Ethics, II (October, 1891), UO-U 6. 169

Adame weakened hie case by stopping short of specific suggestions*

A way must be found, he hazarded, to bring the ethical sense of the

community to bear upon the industrial problem. This could not be

done by limiting organization « organization, he asserted," is the

most potent force in the industrial history of the nineteenth century,

and it must either be used for the good of society, or Bociety must

bear the ills which it brings."^9

The great trend of the day, Adams believed, was toward liberty.

But for him, unlike most of his colleagues, liberty was more than a political right. Liberty and economic security were intermingled.

There was no real liberty for the propertyless, there was no freedom

in rights granted by feudal business leaders. Liberty was a right

secured and guaranteed through organized institutional force.

- 0 -

The ethical movement in economics, like the social gospel, was

short-lived. By the turn of the century its leaders had been for­ gotten, or more likely had drifted into conservatism. Ambitions hopes of profit-sharing, worker cooperatives, or employer paternalism went unrealized - as a disillusioned Washington Gladden had recognized.

Ethical appeals to workingmen for sobriety, moderation, and increased

Initiative fell on deaf ears. Only Carroll D. Wright and Henry Carter

Adams ever seemed to realize just how irrelevant and futile such appeals were. Some of the aims of the reform economists found reali­ zation in Theodore Roosevelt*s New Nationalism, but the lofty Christian ethics of the Ely-type new economist was lacking.

^Ibld., Ug. Ho labor leader or labor group ever heeded the pleas of Ely and his colleagues. Only one remarkable member of the group, John KogerB

Commons, with hie distinctive empirical approach, ever made real coiv»

ta c t w ith the union movement. E ly 's situ a tio n was ty p ic a l. Not only did he fail to attend worker's meetings in Madison, he desired no audience other than the "better classes." The irony of it is that

there is scant evidence he ever had a following gnong the "well-to-do" either. Linked as they were to the Americantradition of individual success, classlessness, and unlimited opportunity, the new economists lacked a vantage point to re a lly understand the trade union movement,

While Wright had come through experience to have insight into the problem, it was only Henry Carter Adams who approached some appreciation of the aims and p o sitio n of the labor movement.

On a less ambitious plane than the lofty heights toward which the new economists aimed, a real co n trib u tio n was made. I f they did not win the laboring man, the middle class citizen, or the politician, they did make a real contribution in their own academic field. In dealing with the labor problem, although Ely may be criticized, he had started a trend toward academic understanding of the issue which Henry

Carter Adams elaborated and which finally reached fuition with Commons,

Economic reformers, academic and practical, could find support for the next thifrty years in the writings of Ely, Clark, and to some extent

Wright and Adams. A revolution had been launched in economic thought.

Although Ely turned to conservatism, and Clark drifted back to tra­ ditional ways of thought, neo-classicism was a far different discipline th an tlhe p o l i t i c a l economy of F rancis Wayland or Simon Newcomb. Economics had. "been transformed from a dismal science of self-expiation into a dynamic study for social understanding and reform. Despite their hesitancy and conservatism, the social gospel and the new economics had shattered the most formidable intellectual obstacle that barred the acceptance of the organizational rightB of the laboring man. CHAPTEH EIGHT

THE CHANGING MIND OF THE SOCIAL HEFGRMER

While ministers and economists laid the theoretical foundation for a better society more consistent with Christian ethical standards, another group of idealists were not content with persuasive appeals for action or academic treatises on reform. For them the challenge of the so cial gospel was a p ersonal one, and many of them as settlem ent workers, writers, and speakers dedicated their lives to the improvement of their fellow men. Their areas of operation cut a broad swathe across American society, embracing slum reform, child labor legislation, improvement of factory working conditions, temperance, and many others.

Since by and large their concern was idth the individual - the child in the workshop, the family man incapacitated by alcohol, the poverty- stricken tenement mother - their relation to the organized efforts of laboring men was peripheral. Occasionally, however, when their attempts to lift the oppressed individual from the depths corresponded with the limited goals of the unions, the two groups formed temporary alliances. Hence, the American Federation of Labor gave its support to child labor legislation which would decrease the labor supply, forcing the employer to pay more for workers. In spite of their detachment from unions, these practical reformers were so close to the problems of working and living conditions, so aware of the deadening effects of personal poverty, and so conscious of callousness and

172 173 indifference that they were ahle to approach the working man's organized efforts to better his own condition with a tolerance and understanding greater than any other group thus far considered.

The reformers had no specific creed; there seem, in fact, to have been as many theories of reform as movements. However, on the basic question of purpose and objective, a broad new theory was replacing the alms-giving type paternalism like that of Carnegie's Oospel of

Wealth, In the tradition of individual initiative and self-help, the older conservative idea of "charity" attempted to combine alms-giving with moral lessons in religion, economics, and character. Belief work, for example, Bhould always be undesirable and hard — the better to discourage the habitual idler. The fear was frequently expressed that charity would prove harmful to the moralB o f the r e c ip ie n t. Conser­ vative reformers looked with dread toward concentration of power in private hands and in government, for corollary to it they saw the 1 decline of a world founded on individual initiative and character.

The new reform theory emerging in the final decade of the nine­ teenth century discarded the individual free w ill which was the main conservative presupposition. The new reformers learned to look to environment, not moral competence or individual w ill, as the underlying cause of the problem of the "down-trodden" classes. Jane Addams,

Charles E. 9pahr, and even Francis Willard urged that more consid­ eration be given to factors such as income, living conditions, and

^For example, see Frank Sanborn, "Social Relations in the United States," Journal of Social Science, XXX7II (December, 1S99)» 17* "birth rate which lay at the root of social problems. The new school of social reformers approached the social question with a skeptical spirit of inquiry. Following the lead of sociologists like Amos Warner or Walter Wyokoff, they sought to do more than deal with surface symptoms of more b a sic problems. Through em pirical evidence, they sought to get to the core of every social problem. As in the case of the ministers and the economists, the closer an intellectual approached the problem of the working class, the more he came to accept the practical, if not ideal, expedient of class«orlented craft unionism.

M 0 M

Jane Addams, who founded Hull House, Chicago, in 1889, was the most influential spokesman for the new "environmentalist" movement.

More than a worker in the cause, she was, in addition, a philosopher of reform and an astute critic of the objectives of some of her fellows.

Considering her education at pious Rockford College, Illin ois, and her near-TJniverealist faith in man's goodness and perfectibility, it is surprising to find the idealistic Miss Addams more of a realist upon social problems than economists like Ely. The difference was that

Miss Addams spent most of her life at Hull House in the slums of

Chicago. While she believed sincerely in temperance, moderation, and virtuous living, she was too familiar with the people and the con­ ditions of South Chicago to preach morality to workingmen or adviBe more frugal use of their money.

Within a year after founding Hull House, Jane Addams had seen enough of the effects of cut-throat competition between laborers in

Chicago slums to make her a vigorous advocate of organization. SbB 175 knew sewing women who worked in th eir own homes from6 a. m. to 11 p.m., piecing together the ready-cut material delivered to them, and at the end of the day had not earned enough to pay for food and shelter.

F u ll House became a center fo r the formation of trade organizations,

A shirtmaker’e union, with many of these oppressed women as charter 2 members, was formed there in 1891, and a cloak-makers union in 189?*

Miss Addams believed that the aims of the trade union and of the settlement house were essentially the same, since both were attempting to "understand and so far as possible to alleviate" those features of the industrial system which "thwart our ethical demands, not only for social righteousness, but for social order." A common rule for the standard of life and the condition of labor might be gained by legis­ lation, she asserted, but it had to be maintained by trade unions.^

Notwithstanding her recognition of a need for organization, Jane

Addams, like most of the social thinkers of the decade, remained re­ luctant to accept unions as outright class organizations. She praised the union which included in its membership prominent ladies from

Chicago’s woman’s clubs because this evidenced "recognition of the fact that it is a general social movement concerning all members of society U and not merely a class struggle. " Stressing a view characteristic of the nineties, Jane Addams emphasized that "the settlement is pledged to

2 Jane Addams, "The Settlem ent as a Factor in the Labor Movement," in R esidents o f H ull House, H ull House Maps and Papers (New York, 1895), 187-188.

■^Jane Addams, Twenty Years in Hull House (New York, 1911), 220,227.

**Ibid., 2 1 3 . 176

insist upon the unity of life . . ." The labor union was a kind of

primitive "brotherhood, and even the sympathetic strike was a "narrow,

and wasteful and negative demonstration of ethical fellowship,

Since no part of society could get along without the others, labor

organisations should avoid feelings of disdain which made them claSB

organizations, "The labor movement," she stressed, "must include all g men in its hopes, "

Ideals of unity and visions of labor organizations as instruments

for all society's welfare were less important to Jane Addams by the

end of the centuiy. Like Washington Gladden, she shifted with changing

social currents. Discussing "Trade Unions and Public Duty" in 1899,

Bhe attempted to counter six standard objections to unions by demon­

str a tin g that union standards of conduct were no d iffer e n t from any

other group in the society. First, while the non-union laborer was

often treated harshly during a strike, she reminded her readers that

America treated its traitors even worse. This non-participating

laboring man was capitalizing upon the sacrifices of others of his

class. Second, the often condemned walking delegate, contrary to popular belief, did not have the authority to call a strike; often he held his job at great personal sacrifice because he was blacklisted for

any other kind of employment. The trades unions had as much rigjit to

his services as the corporation had to those of an attorney. Third,

5Addams, "The Settlem ent House as a Factor in the Labor Movement," Hull House Maps and Paper b, 201.

6 I b ld ., 203- 20U. the criticized boycott was simply an application, to industrial rela­ tions of the preferential principle of the protective tariff - as a nation we traded only with those we chose, and on our own terms; fourth, the shorter working day demanded by unions was not unreasonable, for already many municipal and state employees were working these hours by legislative action. Fifth, while the unions limited the number of apprentices in any trade, this was the same as the principle of copy­ right, namely the protection of one^ skill or self-interest. Sixth,

the sympathetic strike often brought down upon worker organizations

“great accumulations of moral force," but what else, asked Jane Addams, was our crusade in Cuba but a sympathetic striked

Society, Miss Addams asserted, had shirked its duty upon issues lik e ch ild labor and working hours. By so doing i t had turned over to the unions the responsibility for obligations belonging by rights to asociety, A critical public which had refused to enlist law to do the job of social reform was little justified in condemning unions for trying to assume the task unassisted. If trade unions occasionally grew violent in their attempts^; enforcement of rights, it was only

Cf because society had provided them no other means,

Jane Addams believed that at the root of the labor issue was a moral question, and her most significant contribution was her discus­

sion of the relation of ethical considerations to the problems of the worker in large-scale industry. As might be expected, she called for

^Jane Addams, "Trade Unions and Public Duty," American Journal of Sociology, IV (January, 1899). ^58. 178 a morality founded on experience and identity, not upon uninformed

"sympathy." The humanitarian who allowed himself to decide what was beet for others, rather than consulting them, had failed to dissociate his personal ambition from his reform ends, Jane Addams had touched upon a provocative point, discussed by philosophers since antiquity.

The question was: Why do good? What i s the re la tio n of doing good and the reward one expects for doing it? Jane Addams based her di&- cussion of the issue solidly upon the labor question.

The social and economic upheaval which had shattered the romantic agrarian individualism of pre-Civil War America had outmoded the old

"personal" morality, by which one benevolent man aided a less fortunate brother. What was needed was a "social morality" which would know and coaprehend the physical and intellectual desires and the emotional feelings of people in need. In an astute and telling comment upon the whole nature of American reform in the IggOs, Jane Addams wrote,

An exaggerated personal morality is often mistaken for a social morality, and until it attempts to minister to a social situation its total inadequacy is not discovered. To attempt to attain a social morality without a basis of demo­ cratic experience results in the loss of the only possible corrective and guide, and ends in an exaggerated Individual morality but not in a social morality at all. We see this from time to time in the care-worn and over-worked phil­ anthropist, who has taxed his individual will beyond the normal limits and has lost his clue to the situation among a bewildering number of cases. A man who takes the better­ ment of humanity fo r hie aim and end must also take the daily experience of humanity for the constant correction of his process. He must not only test and guide his achieve­ ment by human experience, but he must succeed or fail in proportion as he has incorporated that experience with his own. Otherwise his own achievements become his stumbling block, and he comes to believe in h is own goodness as something outside of himself. He makes an exception of himself, and thinks that he is different from the rank and file of his fellows. He forgets that it is necessary to 179 know of the lives of our contemporaries, not only in order to "believe in their integrity, which is after all hut the first beginnings of social morality, but in order to at­ tain to any mental or moral integrity for ourselves or any such hope fo r s o c ie ty .9

Employers who gave personal favors to workers in the form of profit-sharing or paternal benefits expected an economic return through increased production, peaceful acceptance of working conditions, and wage satisfaction. This type of employer, motivated himself by

selfish reasons, failed to understand that his benevolence was re­ ceived in the same spirit in which it was given. He did not understand the needs of his workers, and he left outside of the paternalistic

sphere the one question , that o f wages, in which h is workers were primarily interested.

In an ingenious article written in 189^ but withheld from publi­ cation until 1915, Jane Addams used the Pullman Strike aB an example

of the moral dilemna in the paternalism advocated by Ely and many of the social gospel ministers. Entitled "A Modern Lear,11 it fitted the problem into the context of the relationship between Shakespeare*s

Lear and his daughter, Cordelia.

The father, Lear, granting from his own bounty in his own terms, expected a similar return. He did not receive it. By the same token,

Pullman had personally met what he considered the "social needs" of h is employees. His conception o f what was "good for them" had been

cleanliness, decency of living, and above all, thrift and temperance.

He believed he had even gone beyond these minimal needs by providing

^Jane Addams, Democracy and Social Ethics (Hew York, 1907), 176-177. 180 opportunities for culture, recreation, and fellowship, "I had known

Mr, Pullman, H Jane Addams recalled, "and had seen his genuine pride and pleasure in the model town he had built with so much care. Yet, ironically Pullman's paternalism did not produce for him the loyal 10 support and appreciation of his employees that he desired. Even though its founder might not realize it, Jane Addams detected two selfish motives behind the experiment. The first was the ever present one of profit; the second, self-gratification - the personal importance to Pullman of what the outside world thought of him and his experiment.

In the process he ceased to measure the usefulness of the Pullman community in terms of the workingmen's needs. The theater was complete in equipment, beautiful in design, but too costly for troupes depending upon the patronage of mechanics; the church was too expensive to be permanently rented by any denomination,11

As Jane Addams interpreted it, what Pullman failed to understand was that the great objective of the workers was freedom from sub­

servience, They wanted better wages so that they might provide for

their own needs as they conceived them, not playgrounds and tidy boulevards provided by a fatherly employer. The laboring group had learned the necessity of organized effort to achieve such freedom.

Accordingly, they were willing to subordinate individual interests to

1 0 ' Addams, Twenty Years in H ull House, 215; Jane Addams, "A Modern Lear," in Graham Taylor, ed,, Satellite Cities; A Study of Industrial Suburbs (New York, 1915)» 79* 71*

n ibid., 79- 181

the trade and to subordinate trade interests to the good of the working class. Compared to these aims, the "old ones which this philanthropic employer had given his town were negative and inadequate.

Fe had "believed strongly in temperance and steadiness of individual

effort, but had failed to apprehend the greater movement of combined

abstinence and concerted action," 12

The influence of Jane Addams and Hull House radiated throughout

the entire humanitarian movement. Hull House residents like Julia

Lathrop and Florence Kelley were crusaders for child labor legislation;

Miss Kelley served as Illinois factory inspector and took a law degree

at Northwestern in order to enforce more effectively the state child

labor law; Miss Lathrop served on the Illinois state board of charities

and became chief of the United States Children's Bureau in 1912. In

the Bast, Josephine Shaw Lowell, like Jane Addams, argued the necessity

of strong organization of labor to counter the advantages in the employ­

er's position. She stressed the same socially-oriented ethical

approach, emphasizing not individual goodness, but the necessity of

tolerance, faithfulness to contract, and confidence among the two

organized parties who would submit their grievances to impartial

arbitration.

To hope that men through common experience might come to appreciate

each oth er1s needs and am bitions was the l o f t i e s t id ea l toward which

social thought could strive, Jane Addams seemed alv*ays to be strong

in the faith that even within a competitive system, the noble "social

■^Addams, Democracy and S ocial E th ic s, 1^7-ll+g. 182 m o rality 11 of which she spoke was realizable. At the Same time she sensed the growing class differences in America; she knew that there lurked selfish motives of economic advantage in paternalism and in much of the moralism of the privileged classes. Social and moral reform was desirable and possible - but Jane Addams more than most humanitarians realized just how difficult the task was,

- 0 -

Frances Willard, the long-time president of the Woman's Christian

Temperance Union, seems out of place in the company of those whose con­

cern was the labor question. S u rp risin g ly , by 1895 ®be was an open

defender of labor organizations, and recognized that no single reform movement, even temperance, was ever far removed from the social envi^

ronment which gave it birth. Miss Willard formed a working alliance

with the Knights of Labor originally only as a means of winning

support for temperance. In 1886 she told the assembled white-ribbon

ladies that the Knights would soon hold the balance of power at the polls, and under the inspired and temperate leadership of Powderly 13 would be "likely to vote right on the prohibition issue."

Miss Willard retained close association with the Knights even

though she was subjected to bitter citticism within temperance ranks.

She was in itia te d in to the order in 1887 and was instrum ental in

establishing a labor department in the W. 0, T. U, Her associations

with the labor movement throughout the eighties, however, were still

^^Mary E arh art, Frances W illard: From P rayers to P o li tic s (Chicago, 19^0, 2^5. 183 those of expediency, not acceptance. Her attitude, like that of most of the reformers, was paternalistic, as when she counseled workers,

"The central question of labor reform is not so much how to get higher wages as how to turn present wages to better account." The problem, she continued, was not overproduction but underconsumption due to fourteen millions of dollars drawn annually from workers by saloon- lk keepers and cigar-makers.

Pearful of strikes and violence, Miss Willard remained silent at the time of the Haymarket riots. During the Pullman Strike she wrote to her friend, Henry Demarest Lloyd, that she understood Mr. Debs was under "the domination of whiskey to such an extent that in the very height of that awful strike, which was practically civil war, he had to be locked up because he was u tte r ly out o f h is mind through drink. 1,1 ^

By the mid-nineties, Prances Willard, despite her disavowal of v io len ce had become more to lera n t of labor unions and considered them something more than merely allies in the prohibition movement* She was such an admirer of radical Henry Demarest Lloyd that she promised to support him as a Candidate for President of the United States. It was a saddened, wiser Prances Willard who argued in an important speech in London in 1895 that the drink problem was only part of a larger social situation. Poverty was the cause of brutal drinking habits.

^Prances Willard, Glimpses of fifty Years, The Autobiography of an American Woman (Chicago, 1889), ^13*

■^Frances W illard to Henry Demarest Lloyd, November 25, 1895, Lloyd papers. 1SU

The "brewers were in league with the employer capitalists to keep down

the working classes .1 The aim of the reformers, therefore, should be

mitigation of poverty first, temperance, second, "Under the Bearclw-

light of knowledge," she told the delegates to the world temperance

convention, "in these days it is folly for us any longer to ignore the

mighty power of poverty to induce evil habits of any kind. It was

only our ignorance of the industrial classes that magnified a single

propaganda and minimized every other so that temperance people in

earlier days believed that if men and women were temperate all other

material good would follow in the train of the great gracei'1-^

Miss W illa rd 's asso c iatio n w ith the A, F. of 1, was never so

close as with the Knights, however, she contributed one article to 17 the American Federation!St. 1 According to Henry Demarest Lloyd,

Frances Willard, before her death, was openly Calling herself a

s o c ia lis t. She wa9 never an open champion of the labor movement, but

her reform zeal was so intense that in her sincere desire to under*,

stand the mighty forces with which she dealt, she evolved a real

'teocial morality" and through it was able to approach the labor problem

with a vision and perspective lacking in most of her contemporaries,

l 6 Earhart, France s Willard, 257.

At Miss Willard's request, H, D. Lloyd put her in touch with Gompers, who accordingly asked her to write an article for the American Federation!st on the coal strike in England. The article, sent first Vo Lloyd with, the request to bill in certain "blanks," stressed over­ population as the key problem in England. Lloyd, forwarding the manu»- s c rip t to Gompers commented: " It i s incom prehensible to me how a woman who Calls herself a socialist can reach the conclusion that population is the crucial difficulty with England." Gompers, although he agreed with Lloyd, printed tha article and replied to Lloyd: "Any contribution from the pen of Miss Willard is interesting and vrill aid in giving our magazine a wide circle of readers," Ibid,, 2 5 S. 185

~ 0 -

The kind, of all-embracing "social morality" Jane Addams had advo­ cated inspired man;/' idealists and humanitarians to descend into work­ shops and tenement districts to learn from first-hand experience the nature and extent of'the social problem." Most of these observers, like Miss Addams herself, did not systematize their observations or attempt to probe the personal and social causes and consequences of the situations they encountered. To attempt to impart some kind of organization and purpose to this kind of analysis, a group of pioneer

sociologists of the nineties supplemented casual observation with formally organized studies and statistical reports.

Amos Warner, a pioneer among these empiricists, received a Ph.D degree under Ely at- Johns Hopkins. His great contribution, the classic

American Chari ties, stressed the complex inten-relationship of hereditary and environmental factors in causing poverty. Althou^i

Warner's statistical methods were often primitive, his evidence demon­

strated that poverty came not from misconduct, it came from misfortune,^

Likewise, Warner reasoned that the labor movement was the inevitable result of mechanization of jobs which forced the individual industrial worker to "join or die," The low-skilled or unorganized found it increasingly difficult to maintain themselves. Although they might have once possessed considerable efficiency that would have won them

18 His " s t a tis tic s " showed th at in a survey among so cial workers in British and American cities, 23*5# of cases reported were the result of mis conduct; 72.0 the result of misfortune. Amos Warner, Amsrican Charities (New York, , 1919), ^6-^7. < 186 a job, since they could not obtain steady work their incapacity was intensified and magnified.

One of the most unusual attempts at social analysis was that of a Princeton sociologist, Walter Wyckoff, who in the Bummer of 1891 abandoned his comfortable circumstances and took to the road earning his way by temporary jobs in order to grasp the actuality, not merely the theory, of labor discontent. Employed always as an unskilled laborer, he attempted through personal experience and discussions to fathom what was in the workingman's mind. The resulting books. The

Workers: The East and The Workers: The West, were more in te re s tin g than convincing because Wyckoff' s was s t i l l an a r t i f i c i a l experiment.

Although he had no other source of income at the time, he did not have a family to support; his condition was tempered by the fact that he could always return to the middle class society from which he had come.

Within this context, however, the book was a strong antidote to the dreamers who talked in terms of worken-employer harmony and mutual interest. "You may tell us," wrote %-ckoff," that our interests are identical with those of our employer. That may be true on some ground unknown to us, but we live from hand to mouth, and we think from day to day." He found nothing of the "nobility of labor" in the work that he did. Wyckoff felt that the "boss" distrusted the workers, watching them every moment, implying th at not fo r one second would he en tru st his interest* in their hands. Lacking any sense of achievement, oppressed by dulling monotony, the common laborer longed only for the 19 signal to quit work, and for his wages at the end of the week.

^9waiter tftrckoff, The Workers; The East (New York, 1897), 6 6 . is>7

While Wyckoff c alled fo r worker o rg an izatio n s, he had l i t t l e to say about trade unions. Rather, the ideal he seemed to dimly foresee was a system in which the prodding, swearing, driving boss would be replaced by cooperative type labor where workers would choose their own leader, know the terms of their contract, and work cooperatively knowing there would be a bonus for prompt completion of a job.

Charles B. Spahr, a journalist, attempted, like Wyckoff, to gather objective on the spot reports of labor conditions in different industrial situations. Using as samples a primitive Arkansas farm community, the new factory towns of the South, the iron centers of

Pennsylvania, and industrial Chicago, he concluded that wages were decreasing, not increasing; children still labored long hours; and industrial feudalism prevailed in parts of the country. Something of a rural romanticist, Spahr reported that it was in fanning districts

"that the writer found social and moral and intellectual conditions 20 most hopeful."

Although his research techniques were not refined, Spahr tried

to be objective. His starting point was a remote Arkansas farm com­ munity which was to serve as an example of working conditions of fifty years previously, to contrast with the present day. He found money was

a rare commodity in the ru ra l community. The to ta l income of a farmer

"of a more en erg etic type" was lik e ly to be no more than $225 annually*

Spahr condemned the "utter folly" of the statisticians who assumed that

2 0 Charles B. Spahr, America’s Working People (New York, 1900), v i i - v i i i . 188 the condition of labor had improved during the last half-century as much as wageb supposedly had risen. The farm laborer could not be compared with the urban industrial worker. The farmer had little need for oash since he kept his own garden, traded directly with fellow producers and not with middlemen, and his wife made his own clothing.

The apostles of progress had overlooked changing environmental condiw 21 tions that wage statistics did not reveal.

In New England, although census reports represented wages of cot­ ton workers as increasing more than thirty percent between 1880 and

1890, workers themselves reported to Spahr the exact opposite, namely,

wage reductions in the laBt decade had been 20 per cent; during the

last two decades, 50 per cent. "As between the first hand testimony

of men who have spent their lives in making cotton," Spahr posited,

"and the official statistics of a partisan census, there was no question 22 which to trust."

Visiting the Homestead plant eight years after the strike, Spahr

wrote a stinging indictment of Carnegie's "imperialism." He found

discontent and discouragement, skepticism and bitterness among the

workers. Even though he had misgivings about unions, he wove from the

Homestead experience a strong argument for labor organization. The

alternative for the Pittsburgh steel workers was unions or "imperiallm."

So long as the organization of iron-workers is pro­ hibited, the exhausting and demoralizing twelve hour day and Sunday labor are bound to remain. Trade unions have

2 l Ib id . , 6 5 , 6 8 , 7 0 .

22I b id ., zk9 189 their featureB of danger , . . but the prohibition of trades-unions, as exemplified at Homestead, leaves the working classes without the hope of a better future* *

Although the social statisticians did not analyze the nature and impact of trade unions in their surveys, the new factual!sm in social science demonstrated the speciousness of the arguments denying there was an acute labor problem, and affirmed the trade union theory that freedom and economic rights for workers were best achieved by their own organized efforts,

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In the decade of the nineties, the social reform movement was at its dawning; by contrast the social gospel and the new economics were reaching ebb-tide. The social reformers, unlike ministers, economists, employers, or patricians, had learned of the labor movement directly from the people involved. Intimate with reality, they discarded the moralistic, paternal approach. They realized just how futile was the appeal to character and individual Initiative for people who lived in

Chicago tenements. Part of the reason for the longer life of their approach was, as Jane Addams stressed, their understanding of people’s

social needs and their attempt to meet them.

None of the reformers, except perhaps Prances Willard, were ever associated with a labor organization. Their all-embracing goals

reached beyond the narrow lim its of the pragmatic union; JoBephine

Shaw Lowell and the others seemed to recognize that any support they

received from craft organizations in campaigns such as that against

child labor, was temporaiy and expedient,

2 ^ Ib id ., 166. Perhaps at a deeper level, the unions could have profited from some of the social idealism of the reformers, more substantial and rooted in reality than that of the ministers and economists. Important although wages and hours goals were, labor organizations might have used a "social concept," Devoted only to immediate material objec­ tives, employing restrictive anti«social techiques of market control, pragmatic unionism was on the way to becoming simply the worker's side of the capitalistic coin. Still, there is an inextricable dilemna*

The first task of the working class was to elevate itself to an equally balanced power position with capital. Pre-occupied with a difficult struggle of this kind, it was difficult to contemplate to what ends power, if attained, would be directed. CHAPTER NINE

THE SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE

Few vere the Intellectuals In the nineties who did not walk the thin lines of compromise that attempted to achieve humanitarian and economic reform and yet remain within the framework of the capitalistic order. American socialists rejected the doctrines of classlessness and unlimited opportunity which were the root and branch of the indigenous capitalist tradition. For them private ownership meant exploitation of the public. The socialists went further; they declared open war upon all the compromisers - intellectuals and labor leaders alike ~ whom they derisively identified as "fakirs , 11 The socialists conceived labor organizations not as "pure and simple" craft unions, but as the advance guard in the people's march toward social revolution. This being true, it was necessary to "bore from within" - using their own phrase « to place in control of the union those leaders who saw the greater vision and could guide the workers toward it.

The socialists made a series of direct assaults upon the American

Federation of Labor. They came closest to success during the depression of 1893 wh«n there was a meager harvest for the workingmen of wage increases and hours reductions. The union's convention of that year nearly adopted a program that called for "collective ownership of all means of production and distribution. 1,1 That the socialists failed at

^American Federationist, I (March, 189*0 * 20.

191 192 high tide in 1893 resulted not only from parliamentary chicanery by opponents lik e Gompers, but from th e ir in a b ility to compromise or to make peace within their own ranks.

The history of socialism in America before the nineties was a checkered story of disappointments, internal conflict, end party splintering. Its origins lay in the hopeful New Harmonys, Icari&s, and

North American phalanxes of the thirties and forties, American reflec­ tions of the Utopian socialism of Fourier and Owen, Not until early in the seventies did the scientific socialism of Marx and the First Inter** national find fertile ground in America. The meager following for

Marxism, mainly among German workers in New York City, was scarcely promising, still when the battle over anarchisn rent the International wide open in Europe, Marx arranged the transfer of its headquarters to

New York. Friedrich Albert Sorge miraculously managed to keep the organization alive in America until I 876 .

Ephemeral though it was, American socialism reflected in micro** cosm the s p lits th a t severed the European movement. Out and out Marxists, like the founders of the International, would eschew political methods of gaining power and concentrate fully upon penetration of labor organizations, and rally these to the cause of social revolution*

Followers of the German Socialist Ferdinand LaSalle, such as those who split from the American branch of the International in 1873» believed that the road to liberation of the masses was political and evolutionary

— to be achieved by gradual reform sponsored by representatives elected to public office by the aroused workers. The anarchists, who came close in the eighties to tearing asunder the entire Socialist movement 193 in America, preached, the immediate and violent overthrow of all governs ment a u th o rity , to them the mask fo r c a p ita lis t oopression.

The mainstream of Marxist thought in America was represented by the Socialist Labot Party, founded in New York in 1876. It maintained a struggling existence - once claiming lees than 1500 members - u n til

1886, In that banner year for American radicalism, Socialists, single- taxere, Nationalists, and trade unionists consolidated in support of

Henry George as a candidate for mayor of New York City, Reassured by the 68,000 votes George received, the Socialist Labor Party revived and surveyed with eager hope the prospects for 1 S8 8 , maneuvering at the same time to gain control of the hybrid United Labor Party that had backed George, The party's optimism was precipitate. The tenuous radical alliance shattered on the irreconcilable split of Socialists and single-taxers, and a row within the S, L, P, led to the purging of a sizeable LaSallean minority. When the nineties dawned, the Socialist

Labor Party could, by careful scrutiny, claim two entries on the asset side of the ledger. An influx of Russian immigrants into the United

Hebrew Trades in New York provided a new and much needed source of membership. Second, the inherent weakness in the party councils was remedied as leadership passed more and more into the hands of an able and Influential intellectual, considered America's most distinguished

M a rx ist,th e o rist, Daniel DeLeon,

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Caustic, brilliant, cynical, irascible - might describe Daniel

DeLeon equally well. Coming to the socialist cause by the way of

Bellamy nationalism and a supporter of George in 1886, DeLeon, by 19^ profession a lecturer in International Law at Columbia, rapidly mas­ tered and accepted as dogma the writings of Karl Marx. Intellectually he went further. His development and extension of Marxist theories rank him with Jaures, Bernstein, or Lenin as one of the foremost inter­ preters of the author of Das Kapital - tradition has it that Lenin was much influenced by DeLeon's writings. 2

Within his own party and in his revolutionary ventures into trade union politics, Deleon was a stormy petrel who stirred controversy and dismay among both enemies and followers. His particular theory, which would combine political and economic drives for revolution, was a gradual development, forged out of his futile attempts to capture labor organizations fo r the S. l. P. I f DeLeon was not a major figure in each of the skirmishes in the socialist offensive of the nineties, he

stood close by on the sidelines.

The first challenge flung by the Marxists at the still developing pragmatic unionism came at the American Federation of Labor convention in 1890 at Detroit. A year earlier, when the major labor organization in New York City, the Central Labor Union, had fallen under the influence

of the Knights of Labor, the socialists had withdrawn to form a counter

organization, the Central Labor Federation, which was chartered by the

A. F. of L. However, fences were mended and in December the s o c ia lis ts

abandoned their separate organization and returned to the Central Labor

Union. The s p lit grew even more com plicated when in June, 1890 the

contentious socialists withdrew again, and applied for recharter of the

O Arnold Petersen, Daniel DeLeon, Social Architect (New York, 19^1), 61. 195

C entral Labor Federation. They met a new o b stacle. Gompers and the

other conBervatives who dominated the executive committee of the A. F.

of L. blocked the application because the Socialist Labor Party, a political organization and not a bone fide trade union, was listed in

the C. L. F, membership.

In a bitter debate waged on the convention floor in December,

socialism in the A. F. of L., not the queetion of recharter, was the

real issue. Lucian Sanial, friend and alter ego of the absent DeLeon,

spearheading the argument, declared that the first, trade unions had been organized by socialists; in Europe socialists had kept trade unions cleansed from capitalistic influence. Gomoers, leaving the podium to counter the socialist spokesman, used in his rebuttal the

term "Unions, pure and simple" for the fir^b time, adding: "I desire to take this opportunity of saying that I have ever held that the trade unions were broad enough and liberal enough to admit of any and all

shades of thought . . . but at the same time the conviction is deeply

rooted in me that . . . the first condition requisite is good-standing in a trade union, regardless of which party a man might be a member

of." By a decisive vote of 157^ to U 96 the action of the executive

committee was sustained and the embittered Sanial threatened that

"Socialists would cram Socialism down the throats of the American work­ ingman.

Daniel Bell, Marxian Socialism in America," in Donald Drew Egpert and Stow Persons, eds., Socialism in American Life (Princeton, 1952), 1, 251-252; Commons et_ al, History of Labor in the United States, II, 5lU—5 1 9* American Federation of Labor, Proceedings, 1890. 13-1722-26. 196

Although consistently checkmated in the American Federation of

Labor, the leaders of the S, L, P. were not inclined to let pass the opportunities of the depression years. Under the personal leadership of DeLeon, they attempted to extend their influence within the dying

Knights of Labor, Since membership in the Knights, unlike the A* F, of L ,, was not r e s tr ic te d to wage workers, DeLeon him self attended the

Philadelphia convention in 1893 a® representative of the S, L, P, dominated District Assembly ^9 New York. He led the small socialist group there into an alliance with supporters of Iowa farm editor John B,

Sovereign to end the fourteen year presidency of Terence V, Powderly.

DeLeon's influence in the Knights reached a climax at the General

Assembly held in New Orleans in November, 189^. With Powderly1s friends attempting to return him to office, DeLeon's bloc of eight socialists held the balance between the Powderly and Sovereign faction^

As price for his support of Sovereign, DeLeon extracted from him a promise to appoint Sanial editor of the Journal of the Knights of Labor,

Again, the jubilant S, L, P. celebrated too soon. Sovereign, a con- servative like Powderly, reneged on the agreement and lent strong efforts to combatting all Socialist infiltration, A bitter recrimina­ tory battle between the Journal and DeLeon's The People (New York) ended only when the convention of the following year refused to accept the credentials of DeLeon ar any of the District Ug Socialist delegates.

Battered and defeated by conservative labor leaders who seemed little different in philosophy and tactics from capitalistic employers,

DeLeon was ready to abandon a p o licy of cap tu rin g organizations which he cynically described as crosses between "a windbag and a rope of 197 sand . 11 Already the caustic term ’’fakir" punctuated his terse letters

—• in 1896 he accused hoth labor organizations of being led by

"charlatans."

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The Marxists' attempts to "bore within" trade unions had been repulsed against a solid wall of conservative opposition whose defensive arsenal included the parliamentary bludgeon and the promise made to be broken. Replying in embittered disgust, DeLeon, with or without the support of his followers, essayed to speak for all the Marxists. His reaction to the consistent pattern of defeat was two«fold. First, revising Marxist theory in terms of the S. L. P . 's Sad experience, he concluded that it was useless to attempt to "bore within" fake unions which were actually adjuncts of capitalism. Second, he attempted to displace the decadent old unionism with a new revolutionary program where workers would attack simultaneously on two fronts, both the economic and political, and gain control of the power centers in each*

The theory, he argued, upon which "pure and simple" trade unionism re sted was fa ls e . "The pregnant p o in t," DeLeon to ld the s trik in g New

Bedford, Massachusetts textile workers in 1898, "that underlies these pregnant facts is that, between the working class and the capitalist class, there is an irrepressible conflict, a class struggle for life,"

There was no "common interest" of worker and employer upon which to build the "safe relations" toward which the trade union aimed .*1

^Daniel DeLeon, "What Means This Strike," Address of February 11, 1898, in DeLeon, Socialist Landmarks, Four Addresses (New York, 1952), 93-9^. 198

"Pure and simple" unionism, said DeLeon scornfully, could promise the workers only a future of futile strikes, consistent wage reduc­ tio n s , and continued poverty. The Knights and the A* P. of L ., he con­ tinued, were impotent, and for two reasons. First, the capitalist classes held pragmatic unionism in "utter contempt" "because of the

caliber of the "ignorant, stupid, and corrupt" leaders who typically

represented them. These petty and ineffective men lent their meager

force to capitalist political parties, endorsed ambigious causes 3uch as free silver, or even like Gompers, accepted favors in the form of government jobs for family members. How could such compromisers hope to speak for labor? Second, "pure and simple" unionism ignored class differences and the close connection between wages and politics. It encouraged workers to split their ballots among the parties of capital.

Thus, the blundering fakirs unwittingly contributed to the enemy’s > divide and rule strategy - the most effective possible device to insure 5 the continued political control of capitalism.

What was the alternative? Sound organisation had to be grounded upon "scientific" principles which DeLeon delineated with scholastic­ like absolutism. First, the aim of labor organization should be to

overthrow capitalism end make the machinery of production the joint property of the people. Second, this should correlate with a political program where the aroused workers, voting for principles and not for men, would wrench control of government from the capitalists and

5 lb id ., 106- 110. 199 effectuate their own class platform abolishing the wage system.

Politics, DeLeon underscored again, was as much a class concern as 6 wages and hours.

Attacking capitalism in this manner on two fronts, DeLeon waB rejecting the rigid Marxist theory that government was but a super*, structure which rested upon an economic base - a superstructure that would disappear once economic power was made subject to worker democrgjy.

The social question and all such questions are essen- tially political. If you have an economic organization alone, you have a duck flying with one wing: you must have a political organization or you are nowhere. Watch the capitalist closely, and see whether the social question is exclusively an economic one, or whether the political wing is not a very necessary one. The capitalist rules in the shop. Is he satisfied with that? Watch him at election time, it is then he works; he has also another workshop, not an economic one - the legislatures and Capitols in the nation. He buzzes around them and accomplishes poli­ tical results. He gets the laws passed that will protect his economic class interests, and he pulls the wires, when these interests are in danger, bringing down the stxong arm of political power over the heads of striking working­ men, who have the notion that the wages or social question is only an economic question,'

To implement this dual program, DeLeon launched in New York City in

IS96 a labor organization designed to destroy all craft unions. The

Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance was industrial in nature, embracing all workers regardless of craft - the better to balance the similar concentration of capitalistic power. Prophetic although the idea was,

DeLeon's industrial union was vastly different from the industrial

6 I b i d ., 111- 112 .

7DeLeon, “Reform or Revolution," Address of June 26, IS 9 6 , I b id ., 6 8 . 200

■unions of the 1930°« Although in theory the union was separate from

the Socialist Lahor Party, in reality the two were closely linked.

The Socialist Trade and lahor Alliance would fight the battle for

socialism in the economic arena, while the party would battle in the

political arena* Looking to ultimates, DeLeon developed the idea of

industrial unions into a blueprint for the classless society - some­

thing lacking in the writings of Marx himself. The control of a

single plant by the industrial union would be projected through rep re**

eentative councils to the control of the entire industry. At the

peak, a new system of representation based upon industries, not upon

geographical districts, would weld together the constituent industrial g unions into one vast national "union. 11

His revolutionary radicalism notwithstanding, DeLeon opposed the

use of violence in attaining socialist ends. He did not believe the

worker should degrade himself by using the methods of class war pro­

voked by capitalists. FersuaBion, logic, oratory, would extend the

scorpe of the socialist unions; eventually the worker parties would

expand to become a real force in the political affairs of the nation.

The millenium would come by evolution.

The parallel between the life of DeLeon and that of his mentor,

Karl Marx, is close. DeLeon's Dean Street was a tiny third floor

apartment over a store on A Street in the New York slums; the grubby

little office from which he edited the struggling journal People appears

austere even when dusted and modestly arranged for an official picture,

^DeLeon, "Socialist Reconstruction , 11 Ibid., 21^-213; see also Charles A. Madison, CrlticB and Crusaders (New York, 19^7). ^77» 201

Like Marx, DeLeon was a ste rn party d is c ip lin a ria n ~ too Btern con­ sidering the weak and ephemeral nature of his party. He summarily dismissed such prominent members as Herbert N. Casson of Boston's labor church, James F. Carey, a leader of the Haverhill shoe workers, and eventually clashed even with Sanial. In a major party purge in

1899, complete with a convention riot, a brawl for possession of the party newspaper's office, and a law-euit, a large group led by Morris

Hillquit seceded in objection to the link of the Socialist Labor Party w ith the S o c ia list Trade and Labor A lliance. DeLeon p erso n ally must bear much of the responsibility for the controversy that plagued the party. His daily reminder and diary for I 896 notes as the only entry for many days, "row with ..." One of the victims of his scornful pen wrote to him dejectedly in 1897s "You are a generous cuss, Dan; a I believe you would give away your mother-in-law.

The obstacles to success in America of any orthodox or reshaped

M arxist theory were too form idable fo r DeLeon to surmount. Completely alienated from existing unions and a center of conflict in his own party, his only outlet was recriminatory cynicism. So long as free opportunity seemed reality, not myth for most Americans; so long as

"pure and simple" unionism brought bread and butter rewards to craft union members, only a few dissidents could see fit to give their sup­ port to Marxism. Marxism did not make inroads in the labor movement, nor did its attempts at independent organization meet with success.

A Socialist Labor Party that claims DeLeon as a patron saint still

Q DeLeon's Daily Reminder, 1896; Fred W. Lang to Daniel DeLeon, January 11, 1897» "DeLeon Papers. 202 exists In New York City - an annual party celebration commemorates his b ir t h date each year. They in s is t th at DeLeon i s someday to be revived from history's dustbin, and that eventually he will gain recognition as a great and prophetic intellectual*

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While DeLeon and the New York Marxists burned themselves out in futile assaults upon the A. F, of L. and the Knights, a group of socialists completely independent of the Socialist Labor Party and of an entirely different vintage - home-bred, more Fabian than Marxist, little troubles with problems of dogma - almost rode the tide of depression to the greatest coup d'etat in labor's history: the com­ mitment of the American Federation of Labor to a socialist program.

An eleven point program for political action, modelled upon that of the British trade unions, was proposed to the 1893 convention of the American Federation of Labor by a Chicago socialist, Thomas J,

Morgan. The proffered platform set forth eleven objectives of the union political action including: compulsory education: direct legiew lation; a legal eight hour workday; sanitary inspection of workshops; employer liability for injuries; abolition of the contract system in

*11 public works; abolition of the sweating system; municipal owner­ ship of public utilities; and nationalizs.tlon of telegraph, telephone, railroad, and mine properties. The tenth and most controversial plank advocated: HThe collective ownership by the people of all means of production.

For a complete text of the proposed ] political program see American Federationist, I (March, 189*0. 20, 203

After a heated, debate, a motion recommending that affiliated unions give the program their “favorable consideration" w»s downed by a slim 1253*-*1132 margin. However, an alternate motion simply to submit

the proposed program to a referendum of the member unions without

recommendation Carried with only 67 dissenting votes.

In the course of the year various A. F. of L. unions endorsed the program, many of them unconditionally. Opposition developed late, but

it came from powerful quarters. Compere, McGuire, Foster, and Strasser

declared themselves unequivocally against Plank 10.

The fiery convention session at Denver which considered the pro-

gram in December, IS 9U, was marked by sly parliamentary maneuvering,

Coroners, leading the opposition, declared that the results of any political participation on labor*B part would be "too portentuous for

contemplation." Where labor had entered candidates, he reported that

"sad as it may be to record, it is nevertheless true that in each one

of these localities politically they were defeated and the trade union movement more or less divided and disrupted. It was moved to replace

the controversial collective ownership plank with a vague resolution

calling for "the abolition of the monopoly system of landholding, and 12 substituting therefore a title of occupancy and use only." The

opponents of the socialist plank combined forces to carry the substi­

tute motion. There were no changes made in any of the other ten planks

in the platform, however when the program in its entirely, including

■^A. F. of L. Proceedings, 189 b, l4 . 12 American Federationi s t, II (March, 1895)* H* 20U

now the amended Plank 10, was voted upon, it was defeated 735-H73»

Most of the socialist sympathizers who had supported the original

Plank 10 voted to defeat the entire platform. Had the union a poli­

tical program at all? Were the other planks, except ten, accepted

regardless of the adverse vote on the complete motion? After a year of

confusion, the Federation voted in the succeeding convention to inter­

pret the previous year's vote as a rejection of the entire political

program. Henry Demarest Lloyd, for one, "believed Plank 10 had "been

defeated by "treachery.11

If the socialists had failed to commit the union to a program of

political action, they did enjoy a brief Pyrrhic victory, for by com~

bining with the supporters of mine chief John McEride they were able

to oust Gompers from the union presidency. In New York, DeLeon held a

"wake" for the defeated union chief. It was premature, as so many

S. L. P. celebrations proved to be. The following year, the cigarmaker

returned to the position he then held uninterruptedly until his death

in 192 U.

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While DeLeon, A hab-like, struck out w ith h is Marxist weapons at

the forces that frustrated and defeated his efforts, Henry Demarest

Lloyd, an in te lle c tu a l *s C hristian as DeLeon was M arxist, as middle

class as DeLeon was p ro le ta ria n , as kindly as DeLeon was ira s c ib le ,

quietly gathered his thoughts upon the defeat of Plank 10.

I am informed that Plank 10 - for collectivism - was defeated at Denver by the action of the delegates who voted No although they had been sent under instruction to vote Aye. If this be so, this treachery is a, sufficient 205

confirmation of what I said to you about the "fakirs” of our Labor Movement .... The defeat of Plank 10 threatens to make it impossible to get our workingnen 1 nto any kind of political action, outside the old parties,

That the one term "socialism” could embrace both Daniel DeLeon and

Henry Demarest Lloyd perhaps demonstrates the semantic nebulousness of

the word. Lloyd plodded his slow way toward socialism not in response

to any theoretical or dogmatic consideration - he probably never read l4 Marx. Bather, as a sensitive, genuinely humanitarian reformer, he plunged into cause after cause. He attempted rational appeals to the

good-will of men of wealth; he hoped to weld together a broad alliance

of the common people centering in a union of American labor with

Populism. When his efforts were scorned by the wealthy and rejected

by the "pure and simple” trade union leaders, he slowly began to take

stock of the system that created all this, and cautiously came to

accept socialism as the only choice. Daniel Aaron calls Lloyd "the

finest product of the middle class conscience in our history . . . he

demonstrated so impressively how a middle position - gradualist, prag- 15 matic, tolerant — can be vital and deeply radical at the same time. 11

After a lifetime spent in conscientious search for social justice Lloyd

concluded that for the humanitarian reformer who sincerely seeks the

^Henry Demarest Lloyd to John Burns, February 6 , 1895, Lloyd papers. I 1! While Lloyd always made plain that he repudiated Marxism, there is in his daughter's extensive biography, largely a reproduction of Lloyd's own writings, no evidence that he ever read Marx. Caro Lloyd, Henry Demarest Lloyd; A Biography (Hew York, 1912), I, 298; see in particular "Why I Join the Socialists,” II, 253-279.

1 5Men of Good Hope (New York, 1951). 170-171. 206 welfare of all mankind, the socialist alternative was the only alternative,

Lloyd, the product of a Dutch Reformer minister’s home and holder of a law degree, had behind him already a career as a reformer and

Chicago journalist when the trial of the Raymarket anarchieta brought him full face with the labor question. He joined the protestouts who condemned the prejudice and arbitrariness of the trial in Judge Gary's courtroom, and Lloyd was influential in persuading Governor Oglesby to commute the sentence of two of the defendants to life imprisonment.

At the base of Lloyd's crusading philosophy was a kind of social gospel, Christian, yet rejecting everything associated with contempo)>* ary religion, ethical, yet free from any vestiges of paternalism or morelism. He was the uncompromising opponent of force in any form - physical, economic, or political. He fought against monopoly because, as he declared, "Monopoly i s forceJ" The only e v il he could conceive greater than "reform by force" was "the perpetuation, the permanence of injustice." Accordingly, in a reform program he drafted in 1886, he would reform taxation so that corporate property would pay dividends not only to stockholders but to all society; he would confiscate common carriers, repaying the owners with workhouse relief « for this was the same measure they had meted out to their employees; he would repeal all laws gr.-uting speoipl privilege; provide for the eight hour 16 day; abolish child and female labor. The religion of humanism he espoused cast off most of the trappings of traditional Protestantism

Caro Llqyd, Henry Demarest Lloyd, I, 110-111. 207 to assume a universalist belief in the goodness and the perfectibility of all men. Man’s redeemer was mankind.' His ideal was "a church which will worship God through all his sons made in his image, through a mediator, Mankind, which having suffered all and sinned all, can

sympathize with all and will carry all the weak and weary ones safe

into its bosom. The church of songs, prayers, sermons and stained

glass windows having failed to hear the cries of those plundered, murdered, betrayed, was in truth atheism not piety. "To me," Lloyd

speculated, "religion appears to be living the ideal life, or as you

would say, doing the will of God, in all departments of life, physical, 18 mental, moral, social, individual.11

Lloyd illuminated the laborer’s cause with an idealism brighter

than that even of Gladden or Ely. Like the pragmatic union chiefs,

he granted an inalienable right for labor to organize as a counter­

weight to capitalist power. But he did not stop here. Labor was to

sound the clarion call for the rehabilitation of the competitive

economic order. Labor's watchword was ". . . a brother anywhere, a 19 brother everywhere ..." His social vision was the very epitome of

the intellectual breadth which the pure and simple union leaders

feared and ruthlessly rejected. He spoke repeatedly of a new Magna

Carta for labor. "Let us begin to make ready now," he wrote, "for that

next emancipation - the new liberty - that enlarged democracy. Let

17Ibid. , I, llU-]15.

lgIbld. , I, 117-113.

^Henry Demarest Lloyd, "The Labor Movement," Address of July H, 1889 i-n Lloyd, Men the Workers (New York, I 9O9 ), 17* 2 0 8

America, the leader of the liberties of mankind, make the first move, and led the federation of the trade-unions of its working peoole lead

America. H"20

The validity of the class conflict theory and the necessity for worker organization were forcibly driven home to Lloyd by the events in the mining community of Spring Valley, Bureau County, Illinois in the winter of 1888-1889. Shortly before Christmas, the company owning the mines, a subsidiary of the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad, closed two of the coal shafts and in late April completely shut down the mines. Lloyd visited the troub' area in September, 1889 and described with the astute eye of a trained reporter the lurid tale of unemployment, the climbing death rate, the desperate attemots of the dispossessed Belgian and French immigrant miners to fin d work elsewhere - a l l th is the re s u lt of the a rb itra ry actio n by a management which now offered workers who had been receiving 90# per ton a 35# Per ton wage, the lowest ever paid in mining history. On November 13, Lloyd made a direct humanitarian appeal in a long, moving letter in the Chicago

Tribune to the "certain rich men11 who co n tro lled the Spring Valley mines.

This was a strike, he proclaimed, of "millionaires against miners J"

Contrary to his optimistic hopes, his sincere appeal was ignored - and from this defeat Lloyd drew a.n important lesson. Paternalism, gospel of wealth, moralistic appeals to the "better classes," were worthless.

When I wrote the story of Spring Valley I really be­ lieved that its revelations would have some effect upon the directors of the Railroad and the Coal Company . . . I was younger then than I am now. It produced no effect

20 Lloyd, "The Safety of the Future Lies in Organized Labor," an address of 1&93» Ibid., 97* 209

upon these men whatever .... Things at Spring Valley have ever since gone on from had to worse and recently an appeal went out through the country for food and clothing for the people there, as they were starving. This experience makes me understand what Ruskin meant when he said: "I am done with preaching to the rich. 11

The reform career of Lloyd came to a crescendo in 189^. With unemployment rampant and poverty abroad in the land, he seized the opportunity to attempt to ally the divided forces of reform into that great movement which would lead toward the "next emancipation" of which he had so glowingly spoken. Was there not much to draw upon? The

American Federation of Labor had recommended a political program, including a collectivist plank, for the consideration of itB members;

the Populists at Omaha had endorsed a platform calling for broad reforms

and benefits to labor. Although Lloyd refuBed to publicly acknowledge himself as a socialist, he believed the time had come to work under

the banner of Populism for public ownership of means of production and ?2 di stribution.

Lloyd was the most influential figure present when a conglomerate

group of Illinois reformers including trade unionists, Socialists,

single-taxers, and Populists met at Springfield on July H. In his job

as a pacifying agent he performed the near miracle of holding the group

together and presiding at the birth of a hodge-podge platform that

tried to make vague allusions to the particular reform panaceas of

21 Caro Lloyd, Henry Demarest Lloyd, I, 138-139; see also Henry Demarest Lloyd, A Strike of Millionaires Against Miners or the Story of Spring Valley (Chicago, 1890). 22 Caro Lloyd, Henry Demarest L^oyd, I, 2^1 ; see also Lloyd to Typographical Uni on fc) of Chicago, July, 189^-, rough copy in German in Lloyd papers. 210 each faction represented. Yet it did give the united reformers a program for action. Although a hit cumbersome, the unwieldy alliance waged a campaign in Illinois in 189^ under the Populist banner. In reality it was largely a labor party - it is not inexact to say that the American Federation of Labor was a political agent in Illinois in

189^. Lloyd himself was a candidate for the House of Representatives and such reputed fig u res as Father McGlynn, Ig n atiu s Donnelly, Henry

George, Clarence Darrow, and Lyman Trumbull, spoke on behalf of the ticket in Chicago,

Inspired by the great possibilities of the movement, and strug­ gling desperately to keep it from disintegrating, Lloyd urged the national union leaders to seize hold of this great opportunity for leadership in the direction of social progress. Re wrote eloquently to Gompers: "This c r is is is g re a te r than th a t of 1776 or 1861. You have in your place at the head of the working men the key to the immed— jate future. You can write your name by the side of our greatest p a tr io ts . What i s done needs to be done q\iickly ..." Failing in this appeal, he desperately renewed the plea several days later.

The time has come for the leaders to lead. Ho man in history has had a greater opportunity for usefulness than now begs you to embrace it. The people are scattered, dis­ tracted, leaderless, waiting for just such guidance. And the opportunity will not recur. If not taken now the reins will pass to other hands, or what is more likely, no reins will be able to control the people. ^

^Lloyd to Gompers, n.d., Caro Lloyd, Henry Demarest Lloyd, I, 2*+6~2^7. Although the letters are not dated, the period being discussed and former date references would place the two letters in late August, 189^. 211

The leaders did not lead i The opportunity passed unrealized.'

Abandoned by parent groups like the A. E. of L. and the national

Populist party, the shaky little reform alliance went down to defeat,

gathering only a portion of the labor votes from Chicago and a ?k sprinkling of down state votes from the troubled coal areas*

Henry George in a Chicago address during the campaign had given virtually no support to the broad reform program; the Populists in

their subsequent convention drifted off into the miasma of free silver

which Lloyd cogently described as the "cowbird of the reform movement.'^5

The indifference of union leaders, much like that of the mine

owning capitalists, turned Lloyd forever away from the trade union movement. He never quite forgave the summary defeat of Plank 10.

"Gompers is a good fello w ," he wrote in 1899, "but he shows the tim idity 2g of the elected person.11 When his friend, Christian Socialist min­

ister W. D. P. Bliss wrote proposing organization of a Boston group to

lead workers toward more effective political participation, Lloyd

counseled him: "That the organization . . . will make a pleasant im­

pression I have no doubt, but I cannot understand how anyone who was

really in favor of either independent action by the workingmen, or

2k See Chestler A. Destler, "The Consummation of a Labor-Populist Alliance in Illinois, 189 k" and "The Labor-Populist Alliance of Illinois in the Election of 189 k," i n American Badicalism, Essays & Documents (New London, 19^6), 162—211,

25Caro Lloyd, I, 26k.

^Lloyd to Henry Yivian, ibid., II, 86 . 212 collective effort could have fought at Denver against what is called

"Plank 1 0 . 11 Glancing at the letterhead, Lloyd advised Bliss that the list of sponsors of the organization included persons who "would b rin g i t not only no stren g th but p o sitiv e weakness," The names on the le tte rh e a d included; George E. McNeill, Frank F oster, Sajnuel 27 Gompers, John McBride, and P . J. McGuire,

Having failed in his political ventures and his attempts to redirect orthodox trade unionism, Lloyd began to look with favor upon the revived Utopian communities that for a short time in the nineties drew the attention of such important socialist thinkers in America as

Eugene V, Debs and J. A. Wayland. When he visited the idyllic Shaker community at Mt. Lebanon, New York, a spirit of romantic nostalgia overcame him and he described his impression as that of "sailing a stormy, tempestuous, wave-tossed sea, and suddenly, by some little movement, passing into a quiet stream, winding through peaceful meadows, touched by the sunlight and reflecting the serenity of deep blue 28 skies," He showed some passive interest in the ambitious plan of the Colorado Co-Operative Company to establish enough cooperative societies and industries in one state as to achieve complete social­ ization there. As his enthusiasm for the cooperative ideal waxed, he toured Europe in 1897 and reported his survey of the working of the system there in a hastily written book, Labor Co-Partnership.

2^Lloyd to Bliss, May 1895? Bliss to Lloyd, April l 6 , 1895, Lloyd papers. 28 Caro Lloyd, II, 56* 213

Cooperation was more than "a method of business merely," i t was "an 29 ideal of conduct and a theory of human relations." This was to he no plan for paternalistic profit-sharing; it was to he worker owner­ ship and control of industry. It would pave the way to socialism.

Yet one senses that Lloyd was drifting. His daughter points out that he never looked to cooperation as a complete solution; rather cooperatives were temporary stop-gaps, to point the way until society was ready for a more general social change. Lloyd was too much the believer in the good in man to resort to the recrimination like

DeLeon, or to accept the tortured compromises into which many of his fellow idealists were forced. The individual cooperative was a kind of laboratory where experiments for a better future were performed, where men might be trained to govern th e ir own in d u strie s and which might serve as examples for the rest of society. Perhaps this was what Lloyd meant when he told the original settlers of the short-lived

Ruskin Community in Tennessee: "They ^/cooperative communities/ are the monasteries in idiich the light of the new faith is kept burning on the mountain tops until the dark age is over. The dreams of the cooperators never materialized, Ruskin faded away in a recriminatory dispute over the publication of Wayland’s socialist paper there and over claims of individual members to private property; the Colorado experiment and its supporters were clutching for the last straw of life in 1900,

^^Henry Demarest Lloyd, Labor Co-Partnership (Hew York, 1898). 327.

•^Caro Lloyd, II, 8 8 , 66. 2 lH

Already, however, Lloyd, had. mo^ed beyond cooperation,, In January,

1899 b® sailed for New Zealand, where hold social experiments such as public ownership of railroads, compulsory arbitration of labor disputes, and social security had made the country a Mecca for reformers the world over. Although this ‘'Newest England" was an agrarian, "unciti— fied" country, Lloyd reported enthusiastically that the work there

"was a far more instructive episode than the French Revolution . . .

New Zealand has pointed the way for peaceful revolution, if there is any such way, " ^

He was particularly impressed by the smooth functioning of the

court of compulsory arbitration and he immediately saw possibilities

for use of a similar plan in the United States, However, the compulsory

arbitration that Lloyd championed upon the basis of his New Zealand

experience was not the anti-labor weapon designed by management spokes*-* 7.2 men like Seymour Dexter. It was for Lloyd the outgrowth of his

lifelong opposition to force, for to him compulsory arbitration dealt

with the essential question "whether property and business shall be

distributed by the methods of reason and brotherliness, or by the 33 methods of force and mere greed , , , " Action under the New Zealand

law had to be initiated by one of the two parties to the labor dispute.

Conciliation was exhausted before any arbitration was attempted. On

3 1 Ibld. , II, 118.

3^ See Supra,, 67~6S.

^Henry Demarest Lloyd, A Country 'Without Strikes (New York, 1900), 175. 215 the a r b itr a tio n board, management, lab o r, and members of the ju d iciary were equally represented.

Again, lloyd held compulsory arbitration to be no panacea. He, of all people, a lawyer and participant in the trial of the Haymarket rioters and of Bugene Debs, was cognizant of the control of the courts by business, "Courts are poor things at best," he granted, "but they average infinitely higher in justice than war, especially private war , , . , 'Capitalist judges," the workingmen say. Far better for the striker that the 'capitalist judge' sit in such an arbitration •i ty. court than in a star chamber . . .

The breadth of Lloyd's social vision appears clearly when he commented upon the fa c t th a t both labor and management were u n ited in opposition to compulsory arbitration - and that this was a point to its creditJ Here, in effect, is the dilemma between the labor union and the intellectual. With his ultimate aim of the general betterment of the lot of all mankind, Lloyd recognized the monopoly-force ten­ dencies in pragmatic unionism as well as in concentrated capital.

Monopoly labor was a force ag ain st "commonwealth" a s well a s the

"wealth" he had condemned long before.

Enemies in all else, union labour and union capital are friends in their fright at the suggestion that the public shall compel them to adopt rules of order instead of a m ilita ry code .... They are c la ss lead ers of c la ss move­ ments seeking class advantage; the public is their quarry.^

3^Caro Lloyd, II, llU,

^ I b i d . , 1114-115. 216

When Lloyd finally made the decision to formally join the

Socialist Party in 1903» it marked no major departure from the prin­ ciples for which he had stood since 189 ^-. it was the logical develop­ ment of his philosophy and ideals* One of the things that deterred his joining earlier was his disapproval of the socialist concentration upon the battle between the "capitalists" and the "working class."

Lloyd insisted that the real contest was between broader forces: between the people and those who committed depredations upon them,

Farmers, non-union laborers, the vast groups who had no "union" to speak for them should be included - for them the Socialist Party would become the great champion. The socialist slogan ought to be, he wrote, not "Working men of the world, unite J" rather, "People of the world, unite

Lloyd had no sympathy at all for the militant socialism of DeLeon,

Its dogmatism and acute class consciousness clashed with his humani­ tarian conscience. Perhaps this is why he wrote DeLeon a terse post­ card note early in I 8 9 6 : "Please le t me know when my su b scrip tio n to your paper runs out. I should like for the present to discontinue my 37 subscription. 11

In a sense Lloyd was the most genuine of all of the reformers.

In him there was no taint of paternalism, of superiority, or painful compromise. He embraced all people in his vision of the future, and he devoted his life to seeking a way to that vision, Bach step of his career marks a new attempt on his part to perfect society. While he

^Ibid,, II, 259, 261.

37Lloyd to The People (New York), January 1 5 , 1396, DeLeon Papers. 217

rejected paternalism and trade unionism outright, he still clung to

cooperation and to compulsory arbitration as temporary measures to hide time until the coming of the millenium,

Lloyd could never have fitted into the American labor movement,

anymore than he could have found a place in DeLeon's S o c ia list Labor

Party, Both were too narrow for the universal kind of humanism in

which he believed so sincerely. It might be suggested that it is not

to the credit of either that they could not accomodate within their

ranks this moBt humane, sensitive, and intellectually attractive of

all the reformers. CHAPTER TEN

JOHN R. COMMONS, THE TRIUMPH OF REALISM

When John Rogers Commons described Horace Creeley as a "catalyst" who combined the "higher idealism" of New England transcendentalism with a "lower idealism" springing from the demands of the working classes for better conditions of life and labor, he might well have been describing himself. Commons saw the nineties and the Progressive era as one of the great reform periods in American history, and few were the contemporary movements which did not touch him. He first learned to chart his course by the lofty ideals of the social gospel; at the same time, guided by his friend, Richard T. Ely, he spoke effectively for the new ethical economics. On a less elevated plane

- which he considered most important - Commons formed close associa­ tions with laborers, farmers, and political leaders. He built his economic theory like a New England granite wall, stone by stone, often more from in tu itio n than from lo g ic. Such th e o rie s face the charge of being pedestrian or lacking in any fundamental synthesis, yet they have a way of standing the test of time better than many more complex and intricate works.

Commons dipped with discrimination into many of the social cur-

rents of his day to borrow components for his final theoretical pro­ duct. Yet he never accepted the full substance of any creed. Even when he was fired by the idealism of the social gospel, he could never

218 219

accept unadulterated the organic society idea, nor could he bring him-

sell' to preach moderation and abstinence to workingmen. Like Jane

Addams, he recognized at an early date the m utuality of environment

and social problems, calling for a "Christian society," not a "society

of Christian individuals,"

His "studies in depth" of the American laborer's plight convinced him that freedom and rights for the worker could come only through

some institutional framework. Out of this he fashioned a political

and economic theory which, rejecting John Locke, held that rights such

as life, liberty, and property existed because of an institutional

structure which could protect and guarantee them. The democracy of the

future, then, would not be an atomistic system consisting of single,

isolated individuals; it would be a system of bargaining, or regulated

conflict, between balanced, organized institutional forces. His pri­

mary attention was to the economic area, which he considered to be

basic. To achieve democracy there, collective bargaining between

strongly organized management and labor groups was in h is opinion the

only possibility.

Commons was a t h is best dealing with the lab o r problem he knew so

well. All his most intricate theories were, for the most part, in­

ferred from his research with the working people and their organiza­

tions, He maintained a Careful distinction; never did he attempt to

impose any idea upon the labor unions or their leaders. He partici­

pated only as an observer, never as a partner. When Commons moved into

broader realms of theory and attempted to set up a theoretical economic 220 system, his simple prose grew tortured, his ideas became abtruse and p ed an tic.

To understand this most significant of the intellectuals to deal with the labor problem in the nineties, it is important first to see him in his formative years, slowly evolving ideas of wage and insti­ tutional theory out of the miasma of Christian economics. Then, he can be followed to the beginning of the new century and the maturing of what he called 11 institutional economics." Finally, sifting from this experience, he can provide an interpretation of the place of the intellectual in the labor movement.

- 0 -

"I was brought up on Hoosierism, Republicanism, Presbyteriansim, and Spencerism," Commons described his boyhood. His strong-willed, pious, Christian mother combined running a boarding house with the publishing of an anti-3aloon tract during her son .1 i college years at?

Oberlin. She influenced him to cast his first Presidential ballot in

188^- for St. John, the candidate of the Prohibition party.

Commons matriculated as a student under Richard T. Ely at Johns

Hopkins in 1888, where he was first exposed to the academic side of the labor problem. He was never to complete a Eh.D degree; when he failed to win a fellowship in 1890 he had to seek a teaching job. For a year he taught at Wesleyan University, Connecticut, filling the vacancy created by the resignation of a scholarly young professor named Woodrow Wilson. He held a position for another year at Oberlin, and then settled at University of Indiana. Like other of the ambitious and often outspoken new economists, he was plagued by the attacks of 221 orthodox writers, hoards of trustees, and newspapers. In 1395 be was compelled to leave Bloomington with the tirades of Indianpolis news- pepers ringing behind him. Again, after only four years at the Univei*- sity of Syracuse, his guarded expressions of sympathy for Henry George and Karl Marx cost him another job. I t was not u n til I 9 0U when Ely brought him to the progressive and expanding University of Wisconsin that Commons finally found an atmosphere conducive to his scholarly research. At Madison, he created the leading center for industrial relations study in America; by 1911 he had produced his classic

Documentary History of American Industrial Society, and in company with some of his most able students was editing The HiBtory of Labor in the 1 United States.

- 0 -

The nineties were a time of flux and controversy for Commons. In this germinal period, two major influences seemed to shape his thinking.

The first was his mother who represented the staid, crusading Presby- terianism of his youth, best symbolized by their joint foray into the temperance movement. The second was the impact of E ly 's e th ic a l economics. Trying to fuse what they termed "Sociology" with Christian moral precepts, Commons and Ely were instrumental in forming "The

American Institute of Christian Sociology" in 1393-

Even though Commons in his "social gospel" period was under the influence of Ely, there is a distinctive quality to his writings that at once separates him from moralists like Gladden or his mentor, and

-‘■For bio g rap h ical m aterial on Commons, see John Hogers Commons, Myself (New York, 193*0 » 3 £t seq.; Joseph Dorftoan, The Economic Mind in American Civilization, III, et seq. 222 at the Ban© time suggests some of his future ideas. His major work in this period, Social Reform and the Church, and his numerous articles hinge upon three propositions, all placed in a theological setting:

Eirst, the Kingdom of God is to come in this world, not in another.

Second, it can come only when the environment in which men live is to improved that men can accept and understand God’s word; third, this necessary environmental change must he preceded hy modification of some of the major tenets in American economic thinking.

Like so many expatriates from orthodox theology, Commons retained the Presbyterian notion of salvation, but transformed it from the dualism separating the city of earth from the City of God into a monistic concept. The Church, he pleaded, must not be content to save individuals for another world, it should save society in this oneJ

This it could do by gradually developing that which was highest and p best in each man. This kingdom was to come by ev o lu tio n , not by a catastrophic ending of the world; it was to result not from a blind, mechanistic force, but from the daily influence of man uoon man; it was to come as much through man's free will as through God's sover­ eig n ty . ^

Some substantial social changes were necessary, however, before men might even give thought to this ideal. Man, asserted Commons, was more than animal - he was a being of aspiration. Yet, at the same

p John R. Commons, Social Reform and the Church (Boston, IPJPU, 71 - 72. 3john R. Commons, "Social Economics and City Evangelization," The Christian City 12 (December, 1S98), 772, Commons Scrapbook #1, 223 time, he was a creature of his environment, and the inexorable daily wants for food, clothing, and shelter pressed upon him. If these base wants were supplied regularly in a self-reliant way, "and if in supplying them his bodily and spiritual powers are not basely, exhausted, then he may rise above the animal and reach out for the noble joys of the soul; then, and only then, can religion touch him.u

Ideological concepts were of no appeal to men lacking economic security.

The development of the soul, he argued, was through adaptation to environment.

Commons flung the challenge of social reform squarely upon the threshold of the church. Christianity, sihce it is the source of our ethical ideals, is the standard against which society must be measured.

Slavery, for example, was not wrong u n til C hrist pointed out i t s inconr* sistency with the moral dignity of every soul before G-od. Modern society, held against this ethical standard, did not meet the test.

For in stan ce, the "great mass of workmen, when we consider a l l th e ir circumstances, are no better off than they were thirty years ago,"

Turning to the necessity for a change in economic thinking, Com­ mons argued that something more than a "maudlin symnathy cropped from books" was necessary to give enough understanding to men to effect the desired economic change. Commons insisted, like Jane Addams, that to discuss problems of labor and capital, strikes or boycotts, one had to

_ Commons, The Church and the Problem of Poverty in Cities," The Charities Review, II, Number 7 (May, 1893)t 35^« 5 Commons, Social Reform and the Church, 7. 22k project himself into the piece of the working man. The man of learning should, "take the standpoint of the workingman" both because they lacked leadership and power in a society which favored the well-to-do. and realistically, because their economic uplifting would raise their 6 power of consumption and reinvigorate the entire economy. Already moral considerations were y ie ld in g to what was to become the dogged persistence of Commons for facts and real experience.

Personal experience had to be buttressed with hard economic data.

The reformer must learn that a fundamental economic change had occurred

since the Civil War. The old era of free contract was dead. Industry was no longer a eystem where the single employer made a simple wage contract with a single laborer. Employers had consolidated as huge

corporations under the protecting wing of government, while their hun­

dreds or thousands of employees represented to them numbers, not names,^ The concentration of ownership of all the opportunities of labor in a few corporate bodies had created an "imperial power" « the path to tyranny was a short one. The crisis could be remedied, main­ tained Commons, "only by recognizing in man as one of his inalienable g rights, along with life and liberty, the right to employment,"

g Commons, untitled article. The Oberlin Review, February 7» 1888, Commons Scrapbook #1; Social Reform and the Church, 5 6 , 68,

^Commons, "The Value of the Study of Political Economy to the Christian M inister," Methodist Review (New York), XIV (September, 1898), Commons Scrapbook #1.

^Commons, "The Church and the Problem of Poverty in Cities," loc. c it., 35°. 225

In postulating a new "natural right," Commons delved into poli­ tical and economic theory. Natural rights, he explained, were of social origin. In the first stage, such rights were moral - the com­ munity would decide that men,lought" to have a certain right. In the

second stage, the moral "ought" would he translated into a substantive right, enforced either by popular will or by law. Commons saw clearly that any consideration of "right to employment" would immediately con­

flict with another of the "God-given" rights - that of property.

Given the existing economic structure, a right to work might be enforced through two means. First, the laborer, through organization,

restriction of output, and exclusion of the unskilled and unorganized,

could guarantee his status, and exact wages above the minimum subsis­

tence level. Second, government could intervene, as Henry Carter Adams had put it, to raise the level of competition through measures like p free public education, the factory acts, or more fluid monetary laws.

One can sense immediately that for Commons the need for legal and

institutional reform was more important than ethical and spiritual

factors. While he clothed his economics with Christian terminology,

the means he used and the ends he Bought were the products of economic

reasoning. For Ely or Gladden, Christianity came first and society had

to be reconditioned to fit its ethical pattern. With Commons, however,

social needs came first, and Christianity seemed to be simply an

inspirational force that would impel men to do their duty,

^Commons, "The Right to Work," Arena, XXI, Number 2 (February, 1*99), 131-1^2; "Progressive Individualism," The American Magazine of Civics, VI (June, 1^95)* 56l~57^i distribution of Wealth (New York, 1*93), 67. 226

Commons had. so much diluted his religious orinciples that it was not difficult for him to abandon them. When, after 1899, his research

carried him into more intimate contact with "business and trade union

leaders, he dropped the theological trappings of his economic argument

and concentrated upon conclusions sifted from his practical experience.

By the time he came to Madison, he evinced little interest in matters

religions, and none at all in a revival John R. Mott led on the univeiv, 10 sity campus. Yet this germinal period is important for an undeiv.

standing of Commons, for non-religious ideas like environmental con­

ditioning, class conflict, and the concept of "right to work" occur in

more developed form in all his later works. In projecting Commons

beyond 1 9 0 0, we are in effect simply tracing the development of ideas

conceived in the nineties. His reflections on the institutional

organisation of the economy and on labor as a counter-force were to

become the substance of the theories he spelled out in his mature labor

theory.

- 0 -

In 1899* John R. Commons undertooka study for the United States

Industrial Commission which took him to the offices of most of the

"^Conversation of the writer with Ur. Selig Perlman, Madison, Wisconsin, November 21, 1956# nation's major unions. This intimate contact, coupled with the

direction in which his thinking was already moving, gave Commons a

springboard to move beyond the social and economic precepts in which he had been schooled. He built to be sure, upon the foundations of

the social gospel and new economics « it is not too much to say he

could never have woven together his new postulates without the coura­

geous intellectual adventuring of men like Ely, Wright,and Henry

Carter Adams before him. The important fact is, however, that Commons

made a psychological breo^- which none of his predecessors had been

able to do - he abandoned the strongly implanted American tradition of

classlessness and discarded with it o whole web of virtually indigenous

ideas such as the ideal of success, the self-made man, the myth of unlimited opportunity, end the vision of the harmonious organic

industrial society.

Hot only did he argue that the near-eacred concept of natural

ri^its was false, he explored history sufficiently to try to demonr-

strate that it had always been so. Any vestiges of abstract life,

liberty, and property as rights "natural" to the unorganized, isolated

^ It is difficult, with research materials now available, to care­ fu lly document the actual relationship between Commons and the American Federation of Labor. Commons, despite his diligence in collecting the papers of others, saved so little of his own correspondence that the extent of his communications with union leaders cannot be determined. However, Selig Perlman states that Commons was a close personal ftiend of Gompers. An examination of the Gonrpers papers in the library of Congress, impossible for the present writer, might shed light upon the question. In his autobiography Commons stresses his work with govern- ment agencies, for example, the State Industrial Commission of Wisconsin. 22g individual had been swept away in the development of the economic power structures in the last years of the nineteenth century. In this epoch when economic power was centered in these organized institutional grouos, Commons believed that labor was left out. His great contri­ bution was to give theoretical body and content to the union policies which Gompers, Poster, and the other leaders of the A* P. of 1, had evolved in order to create for labor a comparable power oosition.

As he tried to forge a theory for the changing economic society in which he lived, Commons might be imagined as asking three questions:

Pirst, what is the nature of the contemporary economy, and of the industrial system adjunct to it? Second, how did this system develop?

Third, given this system how can effective and productive industrial relations best be maintained?

In surveying the economy of his day, Commons saw it not in terms of individuals, but in terms of "institutions." The institution he defined as "collective action in control, liberation, and expansion ,.12 of in d iv id u a l a c tio n ." The economy, or the s o c ie ty , was not an inde«* pendent self-sustained "organism" like so many of the reformers before him had insisted; it was an "organization," with the focus upon social relationships. No "right" could be separated from some social context, most certainly not that of property. "It is the sanction of

sovereignty," wrote Commons, "that makes property what it is for the time being in any country, because physical force, or violence, is the last and final appeal when the other sanctions are deemed inadequate

12 John Hogers Commons, Institutional Economics (New York, 193*0 » SU2. 229 to control individuals." Property rights were, then, social relationr* 13 ships stabilized according to law. Wealth, by the same token, was an institutional concept involving not merely material possession of a thing, hut ownership, i.e. ability to control. "Ownership, at least in its modern meaning of intangible property means power to lH restrict abundance in order to maintain prices.. . ." Institutional economics, Commons emphasized, stressed scarcity, not Adam Smith's theory of divine abundance. It underscored the role of collective action in deciding conflicts and maintaining order in a world of 15 scarcity. In the era of the corporation and the credit economy, the large firm in its rationing transactions exercised so vast a power as to influence government and the total economy. It laid dovm

"governmental rules . . . to be obeyed by their own employees, agents, and foremen in their wage bargaining and price bargaining with outside subordinate individuals or merchants ..."

The labor union was a counter^organization designed to balance this "imperial power" to ration and distribute commodities and jobs.

The future would see a democracy not of isolated, unorganized indivi— duals but of checks and balances between organized power groups.

•^John s. Commons, The Economics of Collective Action (New York, 1950), Hi. lH » Commons, Institutional Economics, h- 5 ,

15I b i d ., 6.

Commons, The Economics of Collective Action, 287-282. 230

. . . If American democracy is "saved , 11 it will be saved by collective economic organisations of corporations and labor unions. Instead of the traditional equilibrium between equal individuals of economic theory, the alter­ natives today a**© between an economic government based on balance of power between self-governing corporations and unions, and a suppression of both, or their leaders by military power .... Yet the whole system of political economy, as theoretically developed in the nineteenth century by professional economists and approved by the public generally, has been so built upon the ideal of a perfect society of liberty, equality, and fraternity among individuals, under the ideal name of "democracy , 11 th at people have not learned to think and act in terms of the^y actual "collective democracy" of economic organizations.

The pattern of development of these social and economic insti­ tutions was by custom and practice. There was a constant, shifting struggle through history by which different groups imposed their customs upon society, and by which they were then gradually accepted and fortified by legal sanctions. The merchants in the medieval pie­ powder courts imposed their commercial practices upon judges, thus marking the rise of the law merchant. The rising merchant class had first by custom and then by law achieved dominance for their poli­ tical and legal concepts over those of the feudal lords. In his own last days Commons witnessed, with enthusiastic approval, courts peiv forming the same kind of absorbing operation with the customs of

American trade unions as fair wages, normal working day, union shop, seniority, etc. were recognized a© legally enforceable rights.

Commons, The Economics of Collective Action, 313-315? 8ee also Kenneth Parsons, 11 John R. Commons Point of View, "‘"The Journal of Land and Public U tility Economics, XYIII, Number 3* 2^5-266, reprinted in Commons, The Economics of Collective Action, Appendix III, 351-375* Commons himself wrote of the Parsons article: "I feel Parsons has done very much indeed to clarify my arguments with which I have struggled back and forth these twenty years." Ibid., 375n. Commons rejected the Marxist class interpretation of social changp.

While he believed "that the economist working through social classes is working through the greatest of social forces," he still insisted,

11. . • that social classes are not permanent divisions in society. 18 They are historical categories. They are temporary and shifting."

Nor did he accept the view often associated with Marxists, that economic pressures were determinative. While economic forces had a role in institutional evolution, Commons believed that "an inspiring idea, as well as the next meal, makes history. It is when such an idea coincides with a stage in economic evolution, and the two cor­ roborate each other, that the mass of men begins to move, "l^

Neither did Commons believe that fundamental moral issues were the motivating catises of Bocial struggle and social change. Conflict arose not from fundamentals, but from the means and strategic positions

opposing social classes adopted in order to dominate the fundamental issue - whether it be that of the institution of slavery, or the power to establish prices. The causes of industrial conflict centered upon recognition of a right to use weapons of force, and upon the attempts

of the labor and management groups to extend the respective control of their organization.

This method of evolution through custom and struggle he brought to bear upon the historical development of the American labor movement.

13"Discussion of the President's Address, n Twelfth Annual Meeting, American Economic Association, 77~7®t in Commons Scrapbook #?. ^John R. Commons, "Introduction to Volumes VII and VIII," Commons et al, eds., A Documentary History of American Industrial Society (Cleveland, 1909-1911), VII, 21, 44. 232

Lying dormant until 1820, labor agitation began with the extension of manhood suffrage between 1820 and 1830- With the extension of avenues

of transportation and the rise of a national banking Bystem, the emer­ gent new merchant-manufacturerR, seeking profits for expansion by

reducing the proportionate share of the working man's income, tore

asunder the familial colonial workshop, and isolated journeymen and

apprentices as a class apart. Labor's ideological program in what

Commons termed this "citizenship period," called for a reduction of

the farmers' sun to sun hours, which had been accepted without question

in industry, to allow time for leisure and education for citizenship.

Free schools, abolition of imprisonment for debt, and lien laws were 20 secondary goals.

In the period, 1837~1S60, while the merchant-manufacturer expanded

his economic control, labor reform became humanitarian protest against

exploitative and inhuman conditions in mill and factory, Utopian com- munities like the North American Phalanx or Brook Farm represented the most extreme attempts of intellectual idealists to play harbinger to

a new industrial order. Movements for worker cooperatives and pater- nalistic schemes of profit-sr.: ring had their incubus here.

Commons depicted a second impulse, paralleling what he termed the

"higher idealism" of the transcendental variety. This was a "lower idealism" which sprang from the immediate desires for better wages

and hours by the workingmen. Its chief spokesman, George Henry TBvans,

^Commons, "Introduction to Volumes III and IV," Ibid., Ill, 18 - 58 , 233 editor of the Ithaca (New York) Workingman 1 s Advocate, was a -pioneer in the restrictive psychology of modern unionism for he favored free

Western land, not as a refuge for oppressed factory workers, but as a means of controlling the job market through siphoning off excess labor where the supply was too abundant. Commons marked the year 1853 as a

critical turning point. In that year, laborers buffeted by growing

economic crisis and disillusioned with cooperation, abandoned the long

wait to reap the harvest of idealism and turned to their own rationing

devices such as limited apprenticeship, closed shop, and minimum wage.

Horace Creeley, the "catalyst11 who straddled so many reform currents,

attempted to weld together the two idealisms by advocating Utopian

socialism domestically, coupled with protective tariffs as a way of market control to raise wages.^

The period, 1860-1880, Commons designated the wage-conscious period. In the years after Appomattox, the coming of mechanized

transportation so expanded the potential market as to require an

intermediary jobber or middleman between the manufacturer and the merchant. As gold disappeared and greenbacks expanded and contracted

with the prevailing political winds, the cost of living rose propor-i

tionately and stimulated wage-laborers to organize. Ira Steward1s 22 wage-conscious unionism looking to an increasingly large share of

capitalism's returns for labor, performed three significant functions*

“^Commons, "Introduction to Volumes VII and VIII," Ibid., VII, 19^ H passim.

22See supra. , 28-29. 23H

First, it rejected the pessimistic class doctrine of Marx; second, it

accepted capitalism as a permanent system; third, it was the generic 28 ancestor of the pragmatic unionism of the 1 8 9 0 's .

As the jobber gradually faded away to be replaced by the mammoth

corporation that was both producer and wholesaler, the hour had come

for an •'industrial democracy" of which Commons had spoken - where

balanced labor and management groups would hammer out policies in an

atmosphere where both had power and strength in equal proportions.

The rise of the restrictive labor union, then, was part of the

mainstream of capitalistic development. Solutions premised upon

organic harmony, employer paternalism, in fact all panaceas which

denied the laboring class a strongly organized power position, ignored

this and therefore rested upon false assumptions. As he surveyed the

economy of his day, Commons perceived that the nature of the tecbnCM

logical processes involved in large scale industry and the demand for

huge capital resources required concentration and bigness ~ he was

one of the first intellectuals to note this, "The trust and the trade

union," he wrote in 1 8 9 9 * "have no choice, except that empty option

between life and death. They must combine, or cut throats, or be 2l+ swallowed,"

The id eal toward which Commons aimed was a modest one - even more

so when contrasted with the ones conjured up by his new economist

o'x ^Commons and John B , Andrews, "Introduction to Volumes IX and X," loo, c it., IX, 19-2U passim. ph Commons, "Two Features of the Day," The Chicago Daily Tribune, September 15, 1899* Commons Scrapbook Number 2, 235 associates. It was what he termed the "trade agreement." Two organ- i zed institutional lahor and management groupe, with opposite inter­ ests. would frankly admit that on both sides the ruling motive was self-interest; each was trying to exact the maximum concession from the other; and that the only sanction that compelled them to meet was the knowledge that otherwise the industry would cease to operate - the worker would receive no wages, the employer, no profits. Commons put it succinctly; "It is simply wholesome fear that backs their 25 discussions ..."

In the industries employing the system, Commons noted "the new feeling of equality and mutual respect" on both sides. He added,

"After all has been said in press and pulpit about 'dignity of labor,' the only 'dignity' that really commands respect is the bald necessity 26 of dealing with l§bor on equal terms."

The National Civic Federation, of which Commons was an enthusi­ astic supporter, came close to capturing the essence of his "trade agreements" idea. He commended the Federation's stress upon concil­ iation - voluntary agreement of the parties concerned - as against outside interference through arbitration, "Our strongest opponents," he observed, "were the National Association of Manufacturers on the one side and the communist and anarchist spokesmen and press of the o ther. ^5John R. Commons, Trade Unionism and Labor Problems (Boston, 1905), H. ^Commons, "A New Way of Settling Labor Disputes," American Monthly Review of Reviews, XXIII (March, 1901), 333*

^Commons, M yself, S3* Unlike his idealistic comrades of the nineties, Commons was so

close to industry and the human element that sustained it, that he

forswore perfectionism. The ultimate goals of the capitalist and of

the employees were diametrically opposed. The only narrow path of

realism he could prescribe was “the spirit of true democracy, which

investigates, takes into account all of the facts, gives due weight to

each, and works out, not an ideal, but a reasonable solution day by 28 d a y ."

- 0 -

What, according to Commons, was the role of the intellectual in

this institutionalized “industrial democracy11? He made his position unmistakably clear, for he deplored the influence of men of theory and

broad social principles within the trade unions. His friend, Compere,

he declared, was right when he termed intellectuals the “fool friends"

of labor. Commons was emphatic: "I always look for them and try to

clean them out from all negotiations between capital and labor, and 29 from the councils of labor."

The economists who longed for responsible intellectual guidance

of the laborer's cause failed to understand the kind of intellectuals

who came to leadership in unions. Who were they? Not the studious

idealistic scholars who would be jeered at and shouted down in die~

grace by the mob, the intellectuals who would triumph would be those

who appealed to the prejudices and the passions, “I have tried it and

^Commons, Industrial CoodWill (New York, 1919), 185»

^ Myself, 87-SS. 237 know , 11 Commons observed candidly.The class-conscious Intellectual who spoke In glowing terms of society as a metaphysical entity could scarcely hope to communicate on a rational plane with thoBe for whom

"society" meant their own class, and their own wage, profit, and rent interests. If he did gain an audience, it was to the detriment of the labor group, for he deflected them from the limited goals toward which they could most effectively work.

The proper place for the so-called expert was as agent, not as principal, Re might serve as attorney, statistician, and mediator, but his role should be always that of specialist .^ 1 Workers were self-determining beings who set their own goals; they might claim from the intellectual expert advice as to the best road toward the objectives set by their own leaders. If the union goals were contra­ dictory or their objectives destruction of their own interest, it was the job of the expert to tell them so. But the last decision remained always in the hands of the membership. To Commons the intellectual in the labor union should be an "expert social topographer and trained 32 forecaster of group behavior.

John R. Commons willingly accepted his own role in the terms he had delineated. The union leaders had experience, they had to take risks, unlike the intellectual they could find no job elsewhere.

^ Industri al Cood-Will, 1 7 7 *

^S elig Perlman, "Perlman on Commons," in Henry William Spiegel, e d ., The Development of Bconomic Thought (New York, 1952), ^06-^407. 238

"I always accepted philosophically what they rejected of my hard work, and stuck to them n e v erth ele ss," Commons mused. "They were le ad e rs,

I was an intellectual.When Commons did occasionally rap the knuckles of union leaders, it was only because he felt they were dis­ sipating their own interest by wandering afield into political or paternalistic ventures.

- 0 -

With John Rogers Commons a full cycle of economic thought was completed. The new economists, who deplored the division of ideals and economics implicit in the laissez-faire theories, had laid an ethical foundation for economic and social reform. Commons marked a return, for in accepting the place of the intellectual in the union's

"i solation-ward" and building his working theory out of empirical,not ethical, building blocks, he returned to the old dichotomy between morality and economics of Wayland, Newcomb, and Perry.

Still this is not at all to relegate Commons to the dust-bin of political economy. The difference lay in his method of approach. For the apostles of Smith and Malthus, economics was an amoral system deduced from logical principles; to Commons it was an amoral system resulting from the practical exigencies involved in achieving imme­ diate material goals. Commons was the analyst, not the interpreter.

His question was "what is?" not "what is right?" Institutional eco­ nomics was a solid empirical answer, devoid of abstractions like

"natural rights," designed to explain the unfolding of the economic

^ M y se lf, 88 . 239 forces struggling for power in the modern day. The key was always social relationships - men in groups or classes opposing, bargaining, compromising to allocate the quantity of resources available. Theorists like John Kenneth Galbraith have drawn heavily upon the pioneer work of CommonB in their works in recent economic theory.

Commons was a kind of "economic conscience" for the American labor movement, for he depicted the pragmatic, wage-conscious unionism of the A. P. of L. as the logical evolution of capitalistic processes.

He said in effect to the "first things first" oriented leaders of the union: You are more right than the economists and intellectuals who would steer you toward more lofty social goals.

He succeeded where all the other intellectuals failed. In the first place, he corrected the assumptions of the management spokesmen and laissez-faire apolbgists who failed to account either for the realities of the social problem, or the mammoth changes taking place in industrial life. Second, he discarded the moralism which had de­ flected the zealous reformers who had condemned laissez-faire rigid­ ness, He accepted the idea of class organization of labor, not the nebulous schemes of organic unity which the social gospel and ethical economics had advanced, as the only feasible response labor could make to the concentration of capital. To him, these sincere students of society had set their sights too high, and by aiming at the impossible destroyed the possibility of achieving immediate satisfaction of the workingmanTs most pressing needs. CONCLUSION

It ms as much the fault of the intellectuals as of the unions that there was no meeting of minds between labor and the intellectuals in America in the nineties. This is not to minimize the importance of the barriers the unions set up to exclude any person who would guide them away from wages and hours goals. These were im portant, nonethe­ less, the American intellectual disqualified himself because he was bound in a pattern of thought, shaped largely by the economic circum­ stances of frontier America, which had prevailed since the days of

Jefferso n .

All save the socialists and a few rare individuals like John R.

Commons never drifted far from the intellectual creed that included freedom of opportunity, individualism, natural rights, social unity, and automatic progress. Not all of the intellectuals accepted the ideas to the same degree, but there was still a link that bound con­ servative to reform er, new economist to management spokesman.

The demands of the American Federation of Labor were contradictory at every turn to this "unlimited opportunity" pattern of thought.

Although monopoly capitalism had already discarded freedom in the economy as intellectual baggage, the full force of the tradition was brought to bear to counter the emerging labor movement - thus the argument that only through individual initiative and maximum personal freedom could the worker make economic progress; thus the pleas for moral improvement, thrift and sobriety,

2l+0 2hi

According to the philosophy of the A. F. of L. e.e enunciated hy

Gompers and the home-spun labor intellectuals, opportunity for the working class was limited. It could be distributed more equitably not through individualistic means, but through organized worker effort to secure shorter workdays, job differentiation, apprentice restric­ tion, immigration control, and most important, through creating a better consumer^ market by increasing the leisure time of the workers, Frank Foster emphasized the class conscious psychology that would shape union strategy for the purpose of immediate gain for the workers, and only through very indirect means seeks the eventual wel­ fare of all society. Contrary to the traditional interpretation in

America, freedom for the laboring man was not a sacred birth-right, it was something to be fought for. To achieve and guarantee individual freedom in an industrial system, it was first necessary to break the tyrannical control of big business over the isolated laborer by uniting single workers into a.n effective and unified counter-force.

The American Federation of Labor w?,s in accord with the trend toward monopoly control of business in its efforts to check competition in the labor market, and distribute more equitably existing opportunity.

The most extreme among intellectuals in a defense of free oppor­ tu n ity were the academic economists and management spokesmen who clothed economic individualism with divine as well as scientific sanctity. For the most part, either they denied the existence of a labor problem, or looked for a solution to the reassertion of the self-help ideals latent in the myth. The patricians, from their 2k2 removed vantage point, lamented the passing of an old order based upon character and initiative.

The reformer proponents of the social gosnel and the new economics, while they scorned the extreme of laissez-faire economics, were closer to the tradition of free opportunity than they might have admitted.

Their particular compromise, while it spurned the extremes of economic individualism, retained the middle class notionB of classlessness, private property, and the equation of success with moral worth. It stressed a natural organic unity that hound owner and laborer. In turn, the harmony of interest between laborer and employer was simply a part of a larger and natural social unity. Sober, industrious workingmen in the employ of benevolent, considerate owners, according to this ethical ideal, should forget selfish aims in their mutual striving for the common social good. There should be within this harmonious society no class organizations, no restriction of produc­ tion, no benefits or claims by one group at the expense of another.

No generalization, however, can embrace all the reformers, for there were those such as Washington Gladden, Henry Carter Adams, Jane

Addams, and Henry Demarest Lloyd, who began with the same ideological framework as Ely, Gilman, or Clark, but finally discarded it. The closer an intellectual came to workers and tenement dwellers, the more he recognized how far removed were the ideals of frontier America from the realities of industrial America.

The Socialists atre a chapter apart. Since they did not accept the tradition of free opportunity, they were in a position to stand outside its confines and better analyze both the traditional reformers 2^3 and the true purposes of the lahor movement. Understanding the actual

conservative, capitalistic purposes of trade unionism better than any

of the liberal intellectuals, the Socialists, particularly Henry

Demarest Lloyd, were best able to point up the limitations of the

A. F. of L. position which brought benefits only to skilled workers

and failed to challenge the capitalistic control of the political machinery.

John Rogers Commons was the most important intellectual active in

the decade to accept the organizational principle of the A. F. of L.

In doing so, he found it necessary to discard free opportunity ideas

and to replace them with an economic theory resting upon rights secured by institutional action, upon limited opportunity, and the acceptance

of class divisions in society. His '•constitutionalism1' in industry

was a means of adapting changed economic circumstances to basic demo­

cratic political ideals, still maintaining a capitalistic structure.

Commons formulated an economic theory that confirmed the ideological

basis of trade unionism and sought to make theoretical economics more

consistent with economic reality in the twentieth century.

Commons, more than the other intellectuals, was able to reconcile

the basic dilemma in the question of the relation of the intellectual

and the trade union. Commons simply reversed the role of pilot that

the intellectual usually chose to play in the labor movement. He

interpreted the role of the man of ideas to be that of the agent who

synthesizes and justified ends and means conceived by the people most

immediately concerned - the laborers. It was only by this kind of com­ promise that labor and the intellectuals in America could be colleagues. It is not difficult to criticize, as did Henry Demarest Lloyd,

the myopia of a pragmatic unionism that ignored the plight of the majority of the American workers, those who possessed no craft; pursued

a selfish policy of monopolistic market restriction; and steadfastly

spurned opportunities to lead in the direction of general social reform*

The A. F. of L. lacked a social conscience such as some of the intel­

lectuals, like Lloyd, might have provided. Ho matter how compelling

hroader goals might have been, there remains the substantial question

whether the American laborers could have achieved them even if they

had desired. The determination of the opposition, the deep rootedness

of economic orthodoxy, and the difficulties which conservative craft unionism confronted,npke it more likely that had skilled workers tried

to uplift the unskilled, or become the advance guard of the reform

cause, all would have gone down in defeat together.

Regardless of the Socialists who would have carried labor forward

to a broad reform urogram, the major thrust of intellectual interpre­

tation of the labor problem was an attempt to turn the labor movement

in an even more impossible direction - back to an individualism,

economic freedom, and harmony which was not only outmoded in a mono­

polistic economy, but in direct contradiction to the tenets of trade

unioni sm.

Simply to avow th a t ideas re fle c t economic circum stances i s oveiv.

simplification. The intellectuals of any age are the inheritors of a

complex tradition woven from the social and economic past in their

culture. The typically middle class intellectual is scarcely able to 2^5 discard all the ideals and the myths he is heir to. While as a reformer, he may even himself believe he has spurned his past, his usual response is to seek compromise that will mitigate the conser­ vation of the old order, yet retaining its essential features, and perhaps redirect or restrain the demands of those denied status in the

status quo. American intellectuals drawn from this middle class back­ ground, except for Commons and perhaps Lloyd, could not close the ideological lag that separated their theories from social and economic r e a lity . bibliography

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I, John L. Shaver, was horn in Delaware, Ohio, July 15, 1927*

I received my secondary school education in the public schools of

that city, and my undergraduate training at Ohio Wesleyan U niversity,

which granted me the Bachelor of Arts degree in 19^9» 1 attended

the Law School of Harvard University from 19*+9 until 1951 when I

withdrew in good standing, I received the Master of Arts Degree

from the Ohio State University in 1952. In September of 1953 I was

appointed graduate assistant in the department of history at Ohio

State, the following year assistant instructor, and the third year

full-time instructor. The teaching was combined with the completing

of work toward the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. In September,

1956 I accepted the position I still hold, that of instructor in history at DePauw University,

263