Progressive Solutions for the Labor Problem

I. Labor's Response to Capitalism


A. Labor Productivity

1. Labor productivity-- relates output to the labor hours used in the production of that output.

a. Productivity is largely finding a way of getting workers to work harder and faster; workers, on the other hand--especially those being paid by the hour--found it more advantageous for them to less hard unless a way was found to incentivize them to work faster.

2. Frederick Winslow Taylor--the scion of a wealthy Philadelphia family, Taylor probably had what today we would recognize as  an obsessive-compulsive disorder. He spent much of his childhood counting steps between tasks in order to find the "one best way" of doing things

a. Scientific management--after leaving Harvard when a mental breakdown made him temporarily blind, Taylor went to work for a friend of his father's as a machinist. Disgusted with the work practices of his fellow employees--especially their efforts to restrict output--he resolved to find the "one best way" of completing a variety of jobs. Taylor's first success was with a steel manufacturer, who allowed Taylor to reorganize work in the pig iron yard.

3. What was scientific about scientific management?--not much, really. Taylor had no background in physiology, so he had very little insight into how the human body worked. His most famous experiment, with "Schmidt" in the pig iron yard, consisted of providing Schmidt with more pay than his fellow workers as long as he loaded more pig iron. Workers invariably found better ways than the "one best way" to complete their  assigned tasks.

B. Scientific Management and the Progressive Movement--the concept of scientific management attracted a lot of support within the Progressive Movement, since it seemed to offer a logical, neutral, "scientific" means of resolving conflicts between management and workers.

1. Louis Brandeis--later became the first Jewish Supreme  Court Justice, and the author of Other People's Money, and How Bankers Use It, but he was also one of the leading proponents of the application of scientific management.

II. National Civic Foundation

A. Civic Foundation of Chicago--in the aftermath of the Pullman Strike, the Civic Foundation of Chicago sought to bring together management and labor to work  out their differences, and to seek common ground. Attracted not only large business and labor leaders, but also churchmen and social reformers. The organizations that followed in the wake of the Civic Foundation of Chicago followed this formula, which they argued presented to voice of "the public" and represented their interests.

B. National Civic Federation--established in 1903, it brought together business and labor leaders on a national stage. Membership was voluntary, and the organization had no means of carrying through with its suggestions. Like the Civic Foundation of Chicago, the National Civic Federation became a leading proponent of the "tri-partrite" system of addressing labor disputes, with "disinterested" citizens arbitrating these disputes between  labor and management.

C. National Association of Manufacturers--founded in 1895, but transformed in 1903 by David MacLean Parry into an effective anti-union vehicle, which led to the Open Shop movement of the early years of the 20th century.

III. Role of Government

A. Protection of "property rights"--through much of the development of capitalism, government had only seen fit to protect the property of capitalists; with TR assuming office, however, he saw that maintain the government's superiority over both capital and labor.

1. 1902 Anthracite Coal strike