A HISTORY OF LABOR IN THE UNITED STATES
Crownhart, Charles H.
A History Of Labor In The United States By CHARLES H. CROWNHART. Former Chairman Wisconsin Industrial Commission. LABOR is fortunate in having an authentic history of labor in the United States...
...All who are interested in the great social problems of the day and of those which will come in the reconstruction period after the war the work of Prof Commons and his associates will prove of exceptional interest...
...Brute force may, and often does, obtain its immediate objects...
...But the employers because of being more highly organized, and being better educated have the greater opportunity to solve labor problems than any other class...
...It may appear to succeed but success born of unreasoning force is short lived...
...The labor leaders of the future will more and more need to be students of political economy...
...His keen and inquiring mind did much to make the Wisconsin labor department one of the most useful in this country...
...Thus the reader may make the past serve the future...
...He is liberal-minded...
...He is still looking forward...
...LABOR is fortunate in having an authentic history of labor in the United States written by impartial students of the subject...
...Labor thinks of itself as the producing class...
...For a work of this character no one is more competent, no one is more intelligent, no one is more sympathetic and impartial, than Prof...
...The movement must comprehend the rights of all, as well as the aspirations of a class...
...It cannot live apart from the influences of the times of which it is a part...
...A history of labor no doubt will be welcomed by many of them as something useful in their business...
...John R. Commons, the noted political economist of the University of Wisconsin...
...The history of labor shows that some of the most promising movements for the betterment of the laboring classes have failed because they were not properly related to other movements in the stream of life on which they were common voyagers...
...They comprehend the immediate future with a single purpose...
...Labor may win shorter hours, only to find that the speeding up process of the employer to maintain his output is more devitalizing to the workman than the longer hours...
...It did not occur to him that he was increasing the cost of living to himself but also to every other workman just in proportion as he increased the cost of production...
...So it is, and yet relatively it is the largest consumer...
...Permanent success in labor movements must be based on right rather than on might...
...By stating a fact of history, without giving it a proper setting may give an entirely false impression...
...Those most directly concerned in labor movements, too often have a narrow point of view...
...It consumes all it produces as a general rule...
...They will need to be students of history with the power of applying their knowledge to current events...
...It is in bringing out the relation of labor movements to other economic factors that a history of labor is made valuable to the student of labor problems...
...The day of brute force as a dominant factor in life is fast disappearing...
...Society must develop as a whole and labor is only one phase of industrial and social development...
...They fail to grasp the relation of their own little world with the world of big things in which they are enveloped...
...In writing the history of labor in this country he has so correlated the facts that the reader may make proper deductions...
...Labor can not live unto itself alone...
...Not all history is valuable...
...and as a member of the Wisconsin Industrial Commission in its formative period he helped to practically apply his learning to actual conditions...
...Employers of labor, while they loudly complain of their labor troubles, are as a class less concerned over cost of production than are the laboring men...
...Prof...
...I onca heard an English boot and shoe worker explain how his union retarded production in order to make more employment for the men...
...Commons is possessed of wide knowledge of labor problems...
...It is to present all the interrelated facts and their influences on each other that the historkV proves his worth...
...He has broad and liberal views...
...For the laboring man to increase the cost of production is to increase his own cost of living as well as the cost of living of others...
...We speak of the producer and the consumer as though they were opposing classes...
...he has been intimately associated with leading laboring men...
...Labor may focus its vision on a high wage and in obtaining it find that the cost of living outruns the increase in wage...
...With him the past is only the key to unlock the future...
...Prof...
...That they are not deep students of labor problems is to be regretted...
...Commons has not only the theoretical knowledge of labor gained by extensive reading on the subject but he has gone into the shop to see for himself the wheels go round...
...Generally speaking the employer is an agent to pass the cost of production on to the consuming public...
Vol. 10 • July 1918 • No. 7
