E. How great will be the movement of those going back to Europe temporarily after the War to look after their relatives, or through sentiment to view the destruction of their early homes, et cetera, and who will return to this country after a short visit?
The Committee is now following this with a schedule to industries covering the source of the labor supply, labor turn-over, methods of employment, promotions, transfers, and voluntary lay-offs, insurance, and other methods in use to conserve the labor of the country. It includes inquiries into the living conditions, as housing and sanitation, and into citizenship and knowledge of English.
From the data already at hand, it has begun holding a series of conferences with industrial leaders throughout the country, looking toward the conserving of men, keeping immigrants in America, and stabilizing the labor market. It is essential, however, that the fields of production, transportation, conservation of resources and of the labor supply be brought together and a national policy be worked out as the result of the combined effort. It is important that this whole field be related to universal service and military preparedness. Let us illustrate the nature of the interdependence.
In any system of universal service there needs to be some plan of industrial adjustment, as to time, payments, and releases from work, so that the burden will not fall too heavily upon special industries at critical times of output. The efficiency records of plants make the selection of good officers easier. There needs to be a careful handling of skilled labor in order that it may not be withdrawn too heavily at vital points. Even our voluntary civilian training camps are being filled with coöperation of industry, which is arranging vacations, paying wages during the training period, and urging its men, by competition and in other ways, to attend. No military system can operate successfully without understanding effort on the part of production and transportation men. The pursuit of Villa showed the absence of this, and to date it seems to be largely a moral victory.
When we have this information along many lines, industry is not mobilized. We have but secured the knowledge to begin the real task.
The mobilization of industry for America’s defense cannot stop with the plant. Is the employer’s responsibility ended with the eight-hour day and an increase in wages? The best-equipped plant in the world will not give us strong, able, efficient men unless they live decently, have the right kind of recreation, and get a home stake in the country to defend. There are minimum standards in the matters of numbers, separation of sexes, family privacy, sanitation, and cleanliness which no American workman can fall below and be a loyal citizen fit for defense. It is part of the mobilization of industry to see that conditions do not prevail which give American defense men unable or unwilling to defend it.
Industrial preparedness means a knowledge and system by which skilled workmen at strategic points in industry, supplies, and traffic shall not enlist, but will be released at the greatest point of efficiency. Telegraph companies for instance do not encourage their men to enlist, but are fitting them for signal men in time of need!
We have in all of our preparedness activity failed to grasp the point that there can be no industrial preparedness without the nationalization of business. An inventory of resources and the utilization of the full power of each plant is only possible when all men coöperate for a mutual end and not when they compete for contracts. The employer who cares nothing about the labor market so long as he has plenty of men does little to stabilize that market or regularize employment or distribute men advantageously, and yet in the final analysis defense comes back to efficient, loyal, individual men doing their full duty at some inconspicuous post all over the country.
The nationalization of business is not a matter of legislation, or of regulation, or of coercion. It is the duty and obligation of each responsible person in industry—all working together on a national coöperative basis instead of on a local, sectional, competitive basis. It means a new spirit abroad in business—patriotic Nationalism.
We have come to regard universal service, with a period of compulsory training in a military camp, as a measure of military defense only. We seem to think it means only learning how to shoot and acquiring a thirst for blood. I believe it has a great civic value hitherto disregarded. We have two things to acquire from the training camp: individual proficiency and team work, and a national spirit and point of view.