I much mistake, therefore, if we are not entering upon a period of great transitions, a period of difficulty and many dangers. The whole structure of industry and social life is liable to be subjected to a strain—possibly to a shock—for which experience furnishes no guiding precedent. We have settled the administrative questions; we can collect taxes, build court-houses and pay the policeman. We have settled the political questions; for the nation lives and will live, the greatest and grandest in all the earth. But the further test is now to come, the test of the ocean liner and the limited express. Can we settle the economic questions? Can we raise this wide realm of industry from selfishness to charity, from strife to friendship, from competition to co-operation, from the warring instincts of the savage state to the larger and nobler needs of associated life? This is the problem which steam and electricity present for solution.
Will there be a fourth stage and another revolution in the methods of transportation? That is to ask, I suppose, will the puzzle of aerial navigation find a practical solution? Whether it does, or whenever it does, of this we may be certain, that the varied products of labor and skill, the endless commodities that supply our ever growing wants, will always seek their passage from producer to consumer along the routes of least resistance. Therefore, it may happen, in some bright and wonderful to-morrow, nearer to us perhaps than we imagine, that the stubborn land over which our ponderous vehicles are now dragged will be abandoned, even the liquid waterways discarded, and the vast commerce of the future be borne swiftly and noiselessly through the yielding air. If that marvelous day shall come, assuredly will it bring its harder questions and press us with its weightier demands.
II. Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration
INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION AND ARBITRATION
By Honorable Marcus A. Hanna
United States Senator from Ohio
When I received the kind invitation of this society to come to this meeting, I confess I did not know what I was coming to. I like to talk upon practical things, and there is no subject to-day that is nearer my heart than is this question of the relation between capital and labor.
The subject assigned to me was “Arbitration,” which I consider only introductory in entering upon the discussion of a subject as broad as the one under consideration this evening. The matter of arbitration might be considered under two heads. Arbitration in business circles, by business men, whom we may call employers or capitalists, if you please, is one phase of it, but arbitration to settle differences between employers and employees is an advanced stage of it. It is a progressive form of arbitration.
To have success in conciliation, or arbitration, there must be thorough and effective organization on both sides. The large aggregations of capital, feared at first by labor, may prove to be labor’s best friend, in that, control of a trade being thus centralized, there is opportunity to establish friendly relations which shall make uniform conditions throughout the country, or large sections thereof, and reduce the basis of competition to the quality of the product rather than to the concessions forced from labor.
The growth of sentiment for arbitration and conciliation has been reflected in the legislation of the various states. While foreign countries made the earlier attempts by legislation to promote the formation of local boards of arbitration, some of the states of the Union were first to establish permanent central bodies with authority to mediate in labor disputes and to arbitrate matters referred to them. Sixteen states have established such central boards, beginning with Massachusetts and New York in 1866 and following, in succeeding years, with California, Colorado, Idaho, Illinois, Louisiana, Montana, Minnesota, Ohio. Utah, Wisconsin, New Jersey, Michigan, Connecticut and Indiana. These central boards usually consist of three members, an employer, an employee and a neutral.