The Settlement of Wage Disputes Part 16

This provision may mean a great deal or very little, according as the Court and the higher courts interpret the idea of "reasonable continuity." If it is taken to mean simply that the enterprises covered by the act should not limit production in accordance with some agreement with each other in order to increase profits, or to fight the unions, it will have little or no importance as regards the question of security of employment. And that is probably the interpretation that will be given to it. It will be hardly possible to work out a plan for regularity of operation by mandate of a court, and under penalty. Such rules and practices as the Court may lay down will probably take cognizance of the laws of the market which ordinarily govern business operations. To rule otherwise would mean embarking upon a comprehensive reform of business operations; it would necessitate the development of some other gauge of business operation than business profits.

Only one case which has come before the Court has brought up this question of continuity of operation. The Court investigated a complaint that the flour mills at Topeka were reducing production. It found that the mills were running at sixty per cent. capacity; and that the cause of this reduced operation was a falling off in the flour market, due to world-wide economic changes beyond the control of the industry and the Court. The Court found this limitation of production not unreasonable.

It gave no sign of making any radical use of its powers to control the regularity of production, nor of interfering with the ordinary processes of business operation. This policy it tempered with concern for the workers--suggesting to the millers that they put their "skilled and faithful" employees on a monthly pay system. It appointed a committee to draw up rules and regulations to be observed in the operation of the industry, and to keep it informed.

5.--In the coming years there will take place in the United States much controversy and a great variety of experiments in wage settlement. To the realists of all parties, this course of controversy and experimentation will appear to be only a struggle for power. To the rest, it may appear that there are ideas at work; ideas springing partly from the example of political change, and partly from the fact that the industrial world has undergone such a rapid revolution. It is impossible to predict the ideas which will have the most abiding force. It is impossible even to a.s.sert that society will make a satisfactory choice among them.

In the present confusion of counsel, two relatively new ideas, in particular, appear to me to be likely to endure and be accepted by society. The first is the idea that the welfare of the wage earners in each particular industry is one of the major questions in the conduct of that industry; and that the wage earners should partic.i.p.ate effectively in those activities of direction by which the conditions of labor are determined. The second idea is that the whole body of wage earners in industry should possess the means of checking the action of private enterprise, when they can prove clearly that the methods of production that are being pursued are wasteful either of human or of material resources. An example of such a protest is that of the English coal miners against the organization of their industry--which was one of the grounds for the appointment of the Coal Commission. It would not appear to be impossible to reconcile the action of private investment and private enterprise with this concept of the right of the wage earners to exert control over the policy of production, in so far as they can establish the fact that human or material resources are not being well applied--the general interest being the test.

The main current of industrial change will be, in my opinion, in the direction indicated by these two ideas. And change in that general direction is, it seems to me, essential to the peaceful conduct of industry, for only in some such way will a sense of common interest be established--which sense alone can hold together an undertaking so dependent upon a division of function as is modern industry. Through all changes, it will remain true that effective production depends upon the willingness to work hard for the sake of working well, and upon the existence of strong habits of self-dependence.

FOOTNOTES:

[151] "As law embodies beliefs that have triumphed in the battle of ideas, and have then translated themselves into action, while there is still doubt, while opposite convictions still keep a battle front against each other, the time for law has not yet come; the notion destined to prevail is not yet ent.i.tled to the field," "Law and the Court," address by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., before the Harvard Law School a.s.sociation.

[152] In this matter the Kansas Industrial Court law sets a good example by authorizing the Court to build up a staff of accountants, engineers and such other experts as it may need for the proper conduct of its operations.

[153] H. B. Higgins, "A New Province for Law and Order,"

_Harvard Law Review_, March, 1915, page 23.

[154] "Where the union admits all qualified workers to members.h.i.+p, under reasonable conditions, such a rule cannot become the basis of monopoly." U. S. Ind. Comm'n. Report (1915), Vol. I, page 116. Report signed by Commissioners Manly, Walsh, Lennon O'Connell and Garretson.

[155] F. W. Taussig, "Principles of Economics," Vol. II, page 205. Revised Ed.

[156] Sections 6 and 16 Act Creating Court of Industrial Relations, Kansas, 1920.