Two on Unions
Barbash, Jack
Two on Unions American Labor Unions and Politics—1900-1918, by Marc Karson. Foreword by Selig Perlman. Southern Illinois University Press. 358 pp. $6.50. As Unions Mature, by Richard A. Lester....
...On the public front, need for legislation to deal with the pathology is recognized...
...tEWIS, professor of English af Rutgers, is the author of "The American Adam" and "The Picaresque Saint," to be published this month...
...In any case, the treatment of these ideologies within the covers of one book helps illuminate the contrasts among the ideologies according to a consistent viewpoint...
...But within the setting of the religious community the Catholic church was perhaps the first of the traditional churches to view the labor movement as something more than a subclassification under poverty and charity, which gives it a leftward direction in the ideological spectrum...
...Rather he raises questions as to whether prevailing economic theory should not be broadened to take into account new institutional facts...
...RICHARD SCHICKEL reviews fiction regularly for The Progressive...
...DON PERETZ wrote "Israel and the Palestine Arabs...
...Above all there does not seem to have been a continuing organizational mechanism within the unions, as was true of the other major ideological groupings...
...among his books are "Radio, Television, and Society" and "TV and Our School Crisis...
...Catholicism as a labor movement ideology by Karson's own facts does not, however, fit into the pattern of the other ideologies that sought t© influence labor movement orientation...
...Lester's low decibel and sensible treatment can very well provide the basis upon which reflective people in the labor movement can stand back from the field of action and take stock of where they are now and where they are going...
...WILtlAM B. HESSELTINE is professor of history at the University of Wisconsin...
...In As Unions Mature, Professor Richard A. Lester feels that the American labor movement has reached institutional middle age as reflected in increasing centralization of control in the national union and in the abatement of union-management conflict...
...Rerum Novarum was implemented by the thought of a number of influential Catholic social action philosophers like Father John A. Ryan and social action oriented cardinals— Cardinal Gibbons of Baltimore, Cardinal O'Connell of Boston, and Cardinal Farley of New York...
...Reviewed by Jack Barbash Marc Karson's enterprise is a study of the social ideologies affecting the American labor movement between 1900 and 1918...
...RALPH K. HUITT teaches political science at the University of Wisconsin...
...ALFRED WERNER is the well-known art critic...
...The anti-socialist bias is perhaps a rightward influence...
...Karson develops the thesis that Catholic social action doctrine provided the countervailing ideological pull against socialism in the American labor movement...
...Specifically he stresses the replacement of the commodity concept of employment with a "social welfare conception of the employer-employee relationship...
...The Militia was ultimately disbanded when an unsympathetic Archbishop announced that he would no longer support Dietz' activities...
...3.75...
...But even this most ambitious Catholic enterprise aimed at the labor movement in this period could not muster as many as a thousand members...
...Catholic laymen like John Mitchell of the Miners and Peter Collins of the Electrical Workers carried social action theory, particularly as it negated socialism and class struggle, into the ranks of the labor movement...
...The priest who above all other devoted himself to the organizational task necessary for the principles of Rerum Novarum was Father Peter E. Dietz" and his Militia of Christ for Social Service...
...Princeton University Press...
...It is at this point, perhaps, that comparative analysis with the European Catholic labor movements could have sharpened the focus of the Catholic church in the American labor movement...
...His new novel, "Henderson the Rain King," will be published in February...
...The influence of the Catholic Church is attributed to the preponderance of Irish Catholics in the leadership and membership of the AFL and the propaganda, educational, and organizational activities of laymen and specific priests...
...C A. SIEPMANN is chairman of the department of communications at New York University...
...171 pp...
...MERRILL JENSEN is professor of history at the University of Wisconsin...
...The seminal document was Rerum Novarum of Leo XIII in 1890 which called for, in essence, according to Karson, "strong support of the doctrine of private property, unqualified rejection of and opposition to socialism, and acceptance of trade unions...
...We have been accustomed to think of these ideological influences as coming from the left...
...Accompanying this aging process are unmistakable signs of the pathology of institutional middle age: corruption, authoritarianism, a diminution of the sense of mission and experimentation...
...Moreover, the abatement of open conflict may be illusory and represent a shift of the scene of conflict from the economic front to the political front, as the 1958 political campaign suggests...
...My principal criticism is that Lester draws most of his raw material from the international union...
...His assessment of Gompers as a leader is rather more critical than that of the Wisconsin school, but on this issue we are confronted with a matter of personal judgment...
...In a certain sense, therefore, the title of the book is unnecessarily limiting because the subject matter goes beyond politics, as the term is usually understood, into ideologies...
...ROBERT LOUIS PETERS teaches literature at Wayne State University...
...Underlying these activities was a body of doctrine dealing with the role of the Catholic Church in the labor movement...
...Father Dietz was an indefatigable organizer and propagandist and was highly thought of by Catholic trade union leaders and non-Catholic leaders alike...
...The international union is remote from the average union member's field of reality, and I am not sure that the aging process has yet reached the worker where he lives...
...In the author's words "the weakness of socialism in the American Federation of Labor at the close of World War I was, in part, a testimonial to the success of the Catholic Church's opposition to this doctrine...
...Now Karson confronts us with an ideological influence that doesn't lend itself so easily to left-right labeling...
...There is, however, a substantial area of valid generalization in the Lester volume to provide ample ground for disquiet in labor and kindred circles...
...WERNER LEVI is professor of political science at the University of Minnesota...
...The main motive power seems to have come from the latter...
...It is the exhaustive analysis of the interaction between Catholic social action doctrine and the American labor movement that constitutes the distinctive feature of American Labor Unions and Politics...
...Pure and simple" trade unionism, socialism, syndicalism, Catholic social action doctrine— all come under Karson's scrutiny...
...Karson adds a new dimension to our thinking about ideologies and the American labor movement...
...Unlike most of the practitioners of advanced economic theory, Lester does not undertake to force the facts of union-management transactions into a predetermined conceptual mold...
...wise and responsible observer and limits his legislative proposals for the most part to disclosure devices and a minimal degree of substantive regulation...
...JACK BAR-BASH, professor of labor education at the University of Wisconsin, wrote "Labor Unions in Action" and "The Practice of Unionism...
...Karson has done enough of his own research to entitle him to an informed judgment...
...The union supporters of Catholic social action doctrine among the Catholic trade unionists responded more out of a sense of kind with other Catholics rather than as members of a disciplined faction...
...Karson does a workmanlike job on the other strands of social thought in the labor movement, but there the contribution is not so unique...
...Lester is a RICHARD W.B...
...WILLIAM L. NEUMANN teaches history at Goucher College...
...SAUt BEtLOW won the National Book Award in 1954 for "The Adventures of Augie March...
...For Lester this aging process has specific public policy and economic implications...
...My own observation is that most local union groups still live a precarious existence and haven't been able to relax long enough to age, even psychologically...
...There is no evidence, for example, of any responsible Catholic trade unionist taking seriously the idea of an organized Catholic faction within the movement...
Vol. 23 • January 1959 • No. 1
