CHAPTER L LABOR PROGRAMS1 Four programs. All programs for the improvement of the condition of the wageworkers fall into four general classes, though there are many combinations and mixtures of these four. For the sake of brevity these four classes may be arranged as follows: I. Programs depending upon voluntary agreements among free citizens. 1. The balancing-up programs. 2. The collective-bargaining programs. II. Programs depending upon authority and compulsion. 3. The voting programs. 4. The fighting programs. By the balancing-up programs are meant all programs which aim to create or restore a balance among occupations so as to give those in one occupation the ability to bargain to their advantage as effectively as those in any other. Such a program would aim to enable the unskilled worker, as an independent bargainer, to prosper as well as the skilled worker, the technician, the business manager, or the capitalist. It, would aim to equalize the prosperity of different classes by first equalizing bargaining power, so that each occupational class could, by the simple process of voluntary agreement among free and equal citizens, gain as many advantages as any other occupational class. This would combine equality with 1 The substance of this chapter is found in an article by the author, entitled "Four Labor Programs," in the Quarterly Journal of Economics for February, 1919, Vol. XXXIII, No. 2. 2 individual liberty and initiative. It would leave the individual free to make his own arrangements with other individuals or groups of individuals, everyone acting voluntarily and without any compulsion whatsoever. Compulsion would be exercised only to compel the fulfillment of agreements voluntarily entered into, never to compel individuals to enter into business arrangements against their will. .By the collective-bargaining program is meant one under which individuals voluntarily join associations and surrender to the association the power to make business arrangements and agreements for themselves. So long as no force or threats of force are used to compel the individual to join such an association or to prevent his withdrawing from it, such a program is voluntary and not compulsory. Voluntary agreements among free citizens remain the basis of organization, rather than the authority and compulsion of the state or any other organization. This is the type of business organization which has prevailed in free countries under liberal governments. 3. By the voting programs are meant all those where the wageworkers are to use their voting strength to get control of the government and then use the compulsory power of the government to secure for themselves what they want. Much of our social legislation and all programs of state socialism fall in this class. By the fighting programs are meant all those under which the wageworkers are to use their fighting strength to get what they want, without waiting for the slow process of gaining control of the government by the constitutional methods of voting. These fighting programs are sometimes called by the more euphonious name of "direct action." Sabotage, strikes accompanied by violence or threats of violence, syndicalism of the more extreme sort, and Bolshevism fall in this class. Conditions that determine which program shall be followed. It is important that we understand the relation of each of these programs to the others and to the general economic background. It is the belief of the writer that each is the logical and inevitable outcome of general economic conditions; that one who understands these conditions in any time and place can predict, with some approach to certainty, which of the four will be the dominant program; and that the determining factor in each case will be the balance or lack of balance among the various factors of production, human and nonhuman. The idea is too prevalent that bad economic conditions are always and necessarily the fault of some person or some institution and that the remedy is therefore the punishment of the guilty person or the reform of the defective institution. The fact is, as shown in Chapter XXXIII, that many bad economic conditions grow out of lack of balance among the various factors which have to be combined to get any large economic result. An unbalanced ration means poor nutrition; an unbalanced soil means poor crops; an unbalanced business organization-say a farm where there is too much land or not enough labor or equipment to cultivate it-means inefficient production; and, finally, an unbalanced nation, which has too much labor and too little capital, too much population and not enough land, too much of one kind of labor and not enough of another to work effectively with it, or any other of an infinite number of possible bad combinations, means ineffective production and is likely to mean a bad distribution of products. Physical basis of value. The laws of value, instead of depending, as some, would have us believe, upon a whimsical psychology or an accidental institutional background, are frequently adaptations to the physical facts connected with this problem of balance. If a man is consuming a ration with too much starch and too little protein his craving for foods rich in protein will increase and his taste for foods rich in starch will decrease regardless of the prevailing school of psychology or the institutional background. This increase in the craving for protein and decrease in the craving for starch will have some bearing not only upon his relative valuation of different foods but also upon the relative prices which he will be willing to pay for them. If the relative market supply of food of the two kinds is such as to make everybody crave foods rich in protein and not those rich in starch, that fact is likely to influence the relative market prices of the two kinds of food. The price is an adaptation to the physiological situation and not to the institutional background. Even under communism, where no open market was allowed to exist, if the one kind of food became scarcer than the other it would be pretty difficult to prevent people from giving expression to their craving for protein by trying hard to get more of it, either by surreptitious bartering or by stealing. A question of balance. The farmer whose soil is unbalanced, say with too much nitrogen and too little potash, and who observes that the use of a fertilizer rich in potash adds considerably to his crop is pretty certain to feel a stronger desire for potash than for nitrogen. Granting that he wants a large crop, the preference for potash as against nitrogen does not depend upon the prevailing psychology nor upon the institutional background. The fact that a larger crop follows the addition of a certain quantity of potash to that already in the soil, whereas the addition of an equal quantity of nitrogen to that already there is not followed by a noticeable increase of the crop, is a physical and not a social or a psychological fact. Even a communistic society, if it perceived that its soil was thus unbalanced and if it knew that it needed additional potash more than it needed additional nitrogen, would doubtless make greater effort to get potash than to get nitrogen, though it might not be wise enough to adopt the simple expedient of allowing people to offer a higher price for the one than for the other. This principle applies to the ratio of population to land, or to equipment, or to the ratio of different kinds of labor to one another, as well as to the different food elements in a ration or the different elements of plant growth in the soil. A community -whether communistic, individualistic, or otherwise-in which there was an abundance of land and labor but little equipment would feel the need of additional equipment more than of |