i STEAM COAL - Clpdigital.org
i STEAM COAL - Clpdigital.org
i STEAM COAL - Clpdigital.org
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30 THE <strong>COAL</strong> TRADE BULLETIN.<br />
PRESIDENT ELIOT, OF HARVARD, ON EM and the same hours of daily labor over wide<br />
PLOYERS' ASSOCIATIONS AND LABOR areas of our vast country. It is clear that an<br />
UNIONS.<br />
almost indispensable mode of conducting one industry<br />
may be entirely inapplicable in another in<br />
By C. W. Eliut. L. L. D., President Harvard University.<br />
dustry, and that such diversities<br />
EXTEND TO RATES OF WAGES,<br />
The most striking fact in the development of the<br />
to the number of hours which count as a day's<br />
industrial combat during the last two years is the<br />
work, and to the distribution of the hours of<br />
extensive and firm <strong>org</strong>anization of employers.<br />
labor through the twenty-four liours of the day.<br />
They were compelled to form compact and trust<br />
Some industries, like a blast furnace, for instance,<br />
worthy associations by their experience of the<br />
must be carried on incessantly, day and night.<br />
force which could be exerted by the large <strong>org</strong>aniza<br />
and month after month; others, like a cotton-mill,<br />
in ordinary times run steadily a definite number<br />
tions of labor against any single employer. They<br />
of hours out of each twenty-four, and have no<br />
found that their only safety was in the <strong>org</strong>anization<br />
of trustworthy associations of employers in<br />
difficulty in stopping over night or over Sunday;<br />
others, like a bakery, are necessarily spasmodic<br />
each of the principal trades or occupations, and<br />
in their operation, with hours of unseasonable activity,<br />
and regular daily periods of comparative<br />
inaction. Some trades are active at certain seasons<br />
of the year and dull at others. In some<br />
trades the effort of the worker is steady and<br />
monotonous; in others it is intermittent and<br />
various. In some trades all the labor is heavy<br />
and hard; in others it is all light and easy. I<br />
expect therefore to see the employers' associations<br />
resisting, and resisting successfully, uniform legislation<br />
affecting either wages or hours of labor.<br />
The employers having <strong>org</strong>anized strong associations,<br />
it has become highly important to find<br />
some tests which may be applied to the policies<br />
of these strong and numerous associations to distinguish<br />
the good and safe policies from the evil<br />
and dangerous ones. The efforts of the emp'.overs'<br />
associations are beeomirg very strenuous,<br />
pnd are encountering equally strenuous efforts on<br />
the part of <strong>org</strong>anizations of labor; so that it is<br />
all-important that the emp'oyers' policies—and,<br />
PRESIDENT KI.10T, OP HARVARD.<br />
indeed, the unions' policies also—in all their diversity<br />
should deserve public coTfidence and approval.<br />
Some of the fundamental policies of the<br />
labor unions, such as the closed shop.<br />
also of comprehensive associations which represent<br />
the employers in a great variety of industries.<br />
These trade associations are, of course, various,<br />
because the interests and needs of the different<br />
trades and manufactures are various. A single<br />
uniform policy is not to be expected in all employers'<br />
associations except on the main lines of<br />
action. The effort after a uniform policy in regard<br />
to wages and hours, which characterizes the<br />
federated trade-unions, is. in my view, a dangerous<br />
one, whether for the trade unions or for the employers'<br />
associations. The diversities in the industries<br />
and occupations of the country are so<br />
great, and the conditions under which the same<br />
industry is prosecuted in different places differ<br />
so widely, that the public may reasonably distrust<br />
efforts at universal legislation or universal policies—that<br />
is, legislation or policies which are<br />
supposed to cover a great variety of trades, or<br />
are intended to produce the same rates of wages<br />
THE LIMITATION OF OUTPUT,<br />
and the effort after a monopoly of the labor in<br />
each trade or occupation, certainly do not now<br />
command public approval. What tests or criteria<br />
can we apply to the policies of the new employers'<br />
associations to discriminate the selfish<br />
from the unselfish policies, the policies which will<br />
prove acceptable to the community at large from<br />
those which will prove unacceptable?<br />
In the first place, whenever an association of<br />
employers shows that its effort is, after all, directed<br />
to the attainment of a monopoly, like the<br />
habitual effort of every labor union, it will certainly<br />
fail to command public confidence. Mortopo<br />
lies are no more welcome to the free people of the<br />
United States to-day than they were to our English<br />
ancestors four hundred years ago. The contest<br />
against monopolies granted by the sovereign