Professor Hatfield, of the University of California, and Professor Meeker, of Princeton University, will be attached to the summer school of Columbia University during July and August, giving courses in money and banking, and corporation finance. Professor B. H. Hibbard, of the Iowa State College, is now engaged in the work of the Bureau of the Census, Washington. Dr. C. P. Huse, of Harvard University, has been appointed assistant professor of economics at the State University of Missouri. Professor Lincoln Hutchinson, of the University of California, sailed early in May for Australia, to be gone until August. Professor A. S. Johnson, of the University of Chicago, succeeds Professor Young at Leland Stanford University. Dr. William Kirk, at present professor of political economy in Brown University, has been appointed professor of political economy in the University of Rochester, and secretary of the Rochester Charity Organization Society. Miss Hazel Kyrk, of Ohio Wesleyan University and the University of Chicago, has been appointed an instructor in economics at Wellesley College. Chester A. Phillips, A.B., Yale, 1908, has accepted a position as instructor in economics at Dartmouth. Dr. William H. Price, instructor (on leave of absence) in political economy in the University of Wisconsin, and at present deputy commissioner of the Wisconsin Bureau of Labor and Industrial Statistics, has accepted an appointment as assistant professor in Yale University. He will have charge of courses in corporation, economics and insurance. Dr. W. E. Rappard has been appointed instructor in the School of Business Administration of Harvard University, and is also to conduct courses in economics in that institution. Mr. R. J. Ray, of Harvard University, has been appointed professor of economics at Keiogijuku University, Tokyo, Japan. Mr. Daniel C. Roper, special agent in charge of cotton ginning statistics, Bureau of the Census, Washington, has been transferred to duties on the Committee of Ways and Means, House of Representatives, with particular reference to revision of the tariff schedules on cotton and woolen goods. Dr. I. M. Rubinow, statistical expert of the Federal Bureau of Labor, who has been studying workingmen's insurance and compensation for industrial accidents for the past eight years, has been asked by the Ocean Accident and Guarantee Corporation, one of the largest casualty and liability insurance companies in the United States, to reorganize their statistical department. For this purpose Dr. Rubinow has taken leave of absence from the Bureau of Labor for three months. Mr. Earl A. Saliers, at present Harrison Fellow in Economics in the University of Pennsylvania, has been appointed an instructor in Lehigh University. Dr. Harrison S. Smalley, whose appointment as assistant professor of economics at Leland Stanford Junior University was announced in the previous number of the REVIEW, will remain at the University of Michigan as professor of economics. Mr. Rufus Daniel Smith, for the past two years instructor in sociology at the University of Pittsburgh, has resigned his position to accept the secretaryship of the Associated Charity Organization of Montreal. Mr. Smith took up his duties in Montreal on May 1st. Mr. Thomas Luther Harris, of the University of Wisconsin, is taking Mr. Smith's work for the rest of the year. Mr. W. W. Stewart, assistant in economics in the University of Missouri for the past year, has accepted an appointment to a similar position at the University of Michigan. Professor W. G. L. Taylor, of the University of Nebraska, has resigned on account of ill health. During the past year he has been absent in France. Dr. A. C. Whitaker, of the department of economics and social science at Leland Stanford Junior University, will deliver a series of lectures at the summer session of the University of California. Mr. R. C. Whitnack, of Harvard University, is appointed instructor in economics at Brown University, to conduct the work of Professor H. B. Gardner, who will be absent on leave during the academic year of 1911-12. In the latter part of March, Mr. William F. Willoughby resigned the position of Assistant Director of the Census to become a member of the Commission on Economy and Efficiency in the Executive Service. While with the Census Bureau he was chairman of the Committee on Economy and Efficiency for the Department of Commerce and Labor, and the preparatory work done in the Department led naturally to his selection for the Commission itself. Harvey A. Wooster, B.A., Wesleyan, 1909, who has been studying in the Yale Graduate School, has accepted the chair of economics at DePauw University. Dr. Allyn A. Young has resigned his position at Leland Stanford Junior University and been appointed professor of economics in Washington University, St. Louis. Dr. Anna Youngman, of Wellesley, will be absent on leave for the year 1911-1912, as holder of the Alice Freeman Palmer Fellowship awarded by the Association of Collegiate Alumnae. Miss Youngman expects to study in Berlin, taking up the subject of taxation of land values. VOL. I The American Economic SEPTEMBER 1911 No. 3 ORGANIZED LABOR'S ATTITUDE TOWARD INDUSTRIAL EFFICIENCY In a recent article one of the foremost efficiency engineers of the country, referring to the adoption of the system of scientific management in industrial establishments, predicts that it will mean "for the employers and the workmen who adopt it, and particularly those who adopt it first, the elimination of almost all causes for dispute and disagreement between them." The spokesmen of organized labor seem to take a different view of the matter. Their attitude is partly one of hostility, partly of suspicion. Are the principles of trade unionism and scientific management in irrepressible conflict? Can one survive only by crushing the other, or is their opposition an accident due to imperfections which may be corrected, so that both can flourish together? It is sometimes argued that trade unions would be of greater advantage to workingmen if they would make the production of wealth their main object and abandon altogether their restrictive policies. But I consider that production is the business of the employer, and that, if a union turns itself mainly to production, it can do so only by becoming its own employer—that is, by becoming a coöperative society. As a matter of fact, modern trade unionism is a survival of all kinds of experiments in organization, including coöperation, politics, and joint membership of employers and workmen; and it has survived only to the extent that it has chosen to enforce policies that restrict the employer. Labor has never been able to compete with the employer, as coöperation requires. Those coöperative societies which have succeeded, like the coopers and molders, have done so by becoming employers, and are now simply successful corporations employing hired labor. Those which have failed did so only after leaving behind them a wake of wreckage of other wage eamers hired by regular employers; for they kept their heads above water only by generously failing to pay themselves full wages in order that they might cut prices, and thereby they weak ened the ability of competing employers to pay full wages. Thus a labor organization that devotes itself to production travels a disastrous circle. It fails, whether it succeeds or fails. Conscious of the futility of trying to cope with the employer on his own ground, modern trade unionism contents itself with trying to tie his hands. Its policies are necessarily restrictive. If it cannot prevent the employer from doing as he pleases at some point or other, it is something besides a trade union. The real questions are, whether its restrictions are injurious or beneficial? to whom? and who is to decide? Again, it is sometimes charged that unions are organized mainly to foment trouble, especially strikes. The fact is, that unions came into existence after periods of strikes, and were thought by workmen to be the means of getting their demands without strikes. The modern idea of a permanent trade union is coincident with the ideas of negotiation, arbitration and finally of trade agreements, with their permanent joint boards and periodic joint conventions for the settlement of differences. Experience has shown that it has not been difficult to win strikes in periods of prosperity, but it has been impossible to retain the fruits. Consequently, to the experienced unionist, the preservation of his union has come to be more important than winning strikes.1 And nearly all of the restrictive policies of which complaint is made spring from the effort to preserve the union. The irrepressible conflict, therefore, if there is one, between unionism and scientific management, will be found at the points where management weakens the solidarity of unionism. Other points of conflict are incidental. These are irrepressible. The real question here is this: Can scientific management deal scientifically with organizations as well as individuals? Is there a science of industrial organization as well as a science of engineering details? The history of the stove molders and stove foundrymen will assist us. Long before management became a science the stove foundrymen had practiced its principles. For forty years, prior to 1890, they were working out the problem of efficiency details. 1 This conviction first became dominant in labor organizations in the decade of the fifties, both in England and the United States. See Documentary History of American Industrial Society, vols. 7 and 8, period of 1840-1860. (Cleveland: A. H. Clark Co. 1910.) 2 See Bulletin of Labor, No. 62, Jan., 1906, U. S. Bureau of Labor, article by Commons and Frey on "Conciliation in the Stove Industry." |