Austin Lewis began writing for the Review in 1902 and was among the rare writers who would stay with it through the end, helping to theorize the turn to ‘industrial socialism’ Kerr and Mary E. Mary embarked the magazine on in 1908. Here, on that subject Lewis is in fine form as he speaks to the economic forces making the ‘trade unionism’ of that time obsolete as a vehicle for the mass of the working class.

‘The Coming Unionism’ by Austin Lewis from The International Socialist Review Vol. 18. No. 4. October, 1917.

NOW that there is a stoppage in immigration and a demand for men in other directions than in productive industry, the time has come that the masses of workers in this country, as well as in others, may reconsider their position and try to make the best of it. We know that when two men are looking for one job the chances of improving the conditions of labor are very hard, for it is difficult for any other idea than that of absolute physical necessity to find a lodgment in the mind of a worker at such times. But when times are such that the quantity of available labor power is very limited, and that supplies are not renewed in the usual fashion but are, on the contrary, continually reduced by the attrition of war, the ordinary working man is in a better position to establish a standard.

Even governments and capitalists feel this and act accordingly. Over in Great Britain there has been a commission of doctors and others to report on the way to get the best output of munitions. Their report is an eye opener. They require as the preliminary to efficient production, shop conditions which do not obtain anywhere, except in a few very highly developed factories. They want a limited workday, regular week-end holidays, cheap railway excursions for the sake of change, shower and other baths, the best ventilation of factories, provision against cold and wet clothes, and many other things which would appeal to the ordinary worker as luxuries. And these are set by physicians and factory inspectors, and even employers, like Rowntree, as the necessary elements in successful production. In this report there is no attempt to talk humanitarianism or altruism or any other ism except that of effective exploitation, the making of the most goods in the least time.

It is a cold-blooded proposition and there is complete agreement by all the experts that the best way to make plenty of goods most quickly is to treat the employees as the commission suggests. As Rowntree says, the employer has machines and workers. The machine he nurses and gives individual attention. If the machine is a little out of order it is treated back to good condition and has an oiler to coddle it. It is never allowed to overstrain and it is kept in the pink of condition as long as its life lasts. He suggests that the worker also be regarded as part of the machinery of production and that the same care be lavished upon him as on the machine. Then, Mr. Rowntree thinks, he will repay as the machine repays. You will see that it is purely a capitalistic proposition of efficiency and does not go to the essence of the matter at issue in the working-class fight.

But it is very plain that this point of view puts a new complexion on the matter, for, if it becomes obvious to the employer that he can get better work by a distinct improvement in the working conditions of the worker, it does away with a whole lot of unnecessary fighting on the part of the working class in the way of organization for mere palliative measures, and allows of organization for what is, after all, the main purpose (or should be the main purpose), of a labor organization. That purpose is the control of the job and the displacement of the capitalist employer by associated labor.

Now why have the employers taken the pains to have the commission appointed, and why have they allowed the publication of the report? Neither of these things would have happened a few years ago. Now comes the United States Government and reprints the main points of the British report and circulates it, through the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The reason is plain enough. There is a shortage of labor and, since there is a shortage, labor becomes at once valuable and must be taken care of, if only for the making of products which will again shorten the supply of labor, and render the question of production more and more difficult of solution.

Suppose there had been an unlimited supply of labor in England; the same old system would have been persisted in and the same old destructive methods supported as being necessary to the required amount of production. If it had been necessary to kill twenty per cent of those employed in the production of munitions they would have been killed, for the munitions had to be produced. If there had been enough labor power loose to allow for the killing of twenty per cent without seriously jeopardizing the continuance of industry, they would still have been killed, for it would have been cheaper to have killed them in production than to have furnished the equipment which the commission reports as necessary to successful production.

There is no poetry at all about it, and the demand on the part of the commissioners for the improvement of conditions is merely the practical solution by the bureau of the capitalist experts for the problem of the scarcity of labor and the proper production of commodities—the carrying out of a system of industrial efficiency. Only that, but its complications are great.

If the admission is made that the condition of labor must be improved to the extent demanded in England and if the intelligent capitalist sees that the condition of labor must be so improved in order to get the maximum of efficient production, then the question of decent conditions is removed from the work of labor organization and becomes a part of the capitalistic method of production, whether that production is carried on by a firm, corporation, a syndicate or the government itself. If the worker N is part of the machinery he is the care of the employer.

Taking a concrete example: a few weeks ago I was in the Northwest, in the neighborhood of the lumber workers’ strike. I found a series of demands which ran practically as follows: An eight-hour day, proper conditions, such as the substitution of good beds in a well-aired room for the present arrangement of rotten bunks full of vermin and all manner of uncleanliness, shower baths, and the proper placing of meals on the table by the employer, in place of the utterly inhuman and bestial way in which food is presented to the worker at present.

Now all of this is covered by the report of the commission, which finds expressly: “Cleanliness is not only beneficial to the health and personal efficiency of workers engaged on processes in which heat, dust and dirt are present to an unusual degree, but it bears an important relation to the good health and working efficiency of all workers. Shower and douche baths should be provided for both men and women. Water at a temperature of 100 degrees F should be provided.”

Taking the question of hours, the commission finds : “The human system flags and produces less in a system of long hours.” Prof. Stanley Kent, of the British Home Office, showed that the output between six and eight p.m. was less than for any other two hours during the day.

Even the question of wages came under the consideration of the commission, which finds that high wages tend to an increase in the amount of product and are followed by better and greater efficiency in production. Again attention is to be called to the point that there is nothing altruistic or humanitarian about this; it is solely a matter of efficiency, of the amount of actual product of a given quality to be produced in a given time. These higher wages are found to result in the following factors, which make for increase in product: (1) Higher willpower on the part of the man, having more energy of course he is able to expend more and where the work requires a more concentrated effort he is able to give it. (2) “Better wages mean better food for a larger number of men with families, and again they mean a better provision for those families, which reacts upon a man’s health and his work. In these cases it is not so much the saving or the possibility of saving money which is the factor of importance, but the satisfactory spending of it.”

In the last sentence is repudiated the whole of the old-fashioned view. According to that, the worker was a lazy and selfish, good-for-nothing, who did not save, who did not actually deny himself in order to save, and go without the elementary pleasures of life in order that he might save. Now spending becomes of more importance than saving, even in the eyes of this commission. The commission regards pleasure as essential to the proper production of output in sufficient quantities and of the proper quality. “Opportunity for recreation is of the highest importance,” says the commission, “as a healthy relief from the monotony of work.”

Here is topsy-turvydom with a vengeance; who can imagine the old capitalist economists presented with a program such as this?

Also, what becomes of the old trade union notion with its labor commodity standpoint and its demands for higher wages, as a better price for the commodity, labor power, which was peddled by the business agents? If there is to be no higgling at the point of production, and if the worker is to be regarded as a high-priced machine which has to be kept in constant repair at such an expense as is found to be reproductive, like any other machine, what is to become of the business agent? He will be as extinct as the dodo, for if his business is to get wages and conditions, and the wages and conditions are forthcoming, his occupation is gone, and he will be another capitalistic agent flung on the scrapheap by the demands of war and the consequent shortage of labor power.

Of course it is not to be imagined that the employers as a whole are going to be enlightened enough, or in the mass (speaking of the small competitive employers) rich enough to furnish the material for the change in conditions sketched out as necessary. But such as do not change their methods will be inferior employers with inferior machines and unable to compete in the markets with the efficient employers, whether they be the government or corporations which can expend the amount required to improve the human machines requisite to turn out the increased product. This again will be another drive in the tendency towards government employment and the increase of the scope of government industrial enterprise. In the district of the lumber strike the strikers were frequently asked how they would regard government employment; to which they replied that they would just as readily work for the government as for any other employer.

“But,” added the men, “the government will have to give us our conditions or we will not work for them any more than for any other employer.” Would the government grant the conditions? That would depend upon the attitude of the government officials and whether they were modern and enlightened industrial overlords or have merely carried over the psychology of the older and more crudely brutal school. It would all depend on whether they are like the Neapolitan who fancied he could get more work out of his ass by giving it little hay, plenty of beatings, and some prayers. In spite of such stupidities as are inseparable from governmental officialdom, there is little doubt that a government would grant such conditions as are demanded by the lumber workers. Such would appear to be a reasonable assumption at least. But the workings of governments are, to say the very least, problematical, and a government which turns over the manufacture of clothes for soldiers to notorious scab firms is more than that.

But suppose the government or some great corporation does take over the lumber industry, and does provide those conditions which the English commission has considered as necessarily preliminary to the production of the greatest amount and the best quality; what would be the condition of organized labor?

Speaking by and large, its position would be just what the capitalist experts have declared that it should be; to wit, a well-kept, well-oiled, well-finished, well-polished machine, properly geared and running steadily and purring contentedly like a good motor engine, and grinding out profits as they were never ground out before. Cannot you see the workers? All in the pink of condition, and profits piling up all around, the greatest amount of product of the best quality spilling beneficently all over creation at the very touch of these highly trained, carefully watched and splendidly handled proletarian mechanics!

Actually the workers would be a great deal better off physically, better fed, better clothed, better rested, and at the same time more completely policed, herded together with the most beneficent and philanthropic oversight ever expended. Relatively they would be much worse off for the wealth created by such a class would be relatively much greater, its exploitation much higher than ever before. The creation of this greater wealth is the cause of the new idea. More wealth for the industrial overlord is the incentive which lies behind the whole of the scheme. As has already been pointed out over and over again, there is nothing to move employers in the idea except that fact that such treatment of employees means a greater amount of product and thus greater values created. These values would remain in the hands of the employing class, as well as the very effective human machinery.

And what would be the position of the craft trade unions under such conditions? It would be hard to create a case against employers who treated their help with such consideration and care, would it not? If we accept the idea that labor power not only is, but must always be, a commodity to be bought and sold, which is the current concept in the American Federation of Labor, the position of the trade union leaders would be practically untenable. Of course, I am told over and over again, that the American Federation does not accept the commodity conception of labor. But I can see no proof. Indeed I am convinced to the contrary. I know that there is a provision which states that the commodity, labor, is not one of those commodities which are subject to the Sherman Act, as amended, but even this staggering statement does not compel me to accept the conclusion that the American Federation of Labor has abandoned the practice of asking a high price for the commodity, labor power, and conceding the product to the employers.

If the essence of the labor movement is wages and hours, then the American craft union will be driven out of the ring by the process of the new idea, for wages and hours will be conceded as oil to the machine. The idea of labor as a machine will be hailed enthusiastically by the really capable portion of the American industrial capitalists and the mere question of wages and hours will recede into the background.

But the fortress of capitalistic domination, of the power of the industrial overlord, will be just as strong as ever. For whether the process of production is carried on by the corporation guided by the machine-proletarian principle or by a governmental body, which is actuated by the same principle, the results will be identical. We shall have a subject proletariat manufacturing vastly increasing amounts of vastly improved products for the industrial overlords and still in a state of subjection itself, and still as far away as ever from the actual control of industry. And against this condition of affairs the old-fashioned craft union will be helpless.

But it is just under such conditions that an industrial unionism, striving for the overthrow of the industrial overlord and endeavoring for shop control and all that shop control implies, will be at its very best. A working class, well enough fed and well enough rested to be ambitious and to have developed the “Will to power” is the proletariat which can the most successfully make the great fight of the future. It is a working class which can be inspired, for it is a class which would have the time and energy for imagination and enthusiasm. The whole tendency of the modern industrial movement, even in the capitalistic circles, is towards making possible those conditions under which industrial unionism will thrive and is shaping the trend of the industrial union to the goal of possession and power for the working class.

The International Socialist Review (ISR) was published monthly in Chicago from 1900 until 1918 by Charles H. Kerr and critically loyal to the Socialist Party of America. It is one of the essential publications in U.S. left history. During the editorship of A.M. Simons it was largely theoretical and moderate. In 1908, Charles H. Kerr took over as editor with strong influence from Mary E Marcy. The magazine became the foremost proponent of the SP’s left wing growing to tens of thousands of subscribers. It remained revolutionary in outlook and anti-militarist during World War One. It liberally used photographs and images, with news, theory, arts and organizing in its pages. It articles, reports and essays are an invaluable record of the U.S. class struggle and the development of Marxism in the decades before the Soviet experience. It was closed down in government repression in 1918.

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