BROOKS, JOHN GRAHAM. Labor’s challenge to the social order; democracy its own critic and educator. *$2.75 (2c) Macmillan 331
20–8263
“The problem here submitted is a study of power rapidly and in part accidentally acquired by labor. More especially it is a study of what labor is to do with its new mastership, what fitness it possesses for the work it would take in hand and how, meantime, other classes are to play their part.” (Chapter 1) The author holds that the war has precipitated this new power of labor, which in normal times would have developed more slowly and carried with it its own discipline, and that now its education will be more costly both for itself and the public. He also holds that for capital the day of “the lone hand” has closed and that the lesson for both capital and labor to learn is to unite their forces in cooperative effort. A partial list of the contents is: “A new society”; World lessons; The struggle at its worst; The Inner revolution; Lessons from the communists; Socialism; Government ownership; Industrial democracy at its best; The employers’ case against the union; The new “profit-sharing”; Syndicalism; The new guild; Index.
“It is a stimulating and penetrating appreciation of the latest developments in the labor field on the background of Mr Brooks’s forty years’ study of the upward movement of wage-earners throughout the world. Like his other books, it is a human document rather than a dogmatic treatise.” H: R. Seager
+ Am Econ R 10:602 S ’20 1000w
“The volume is fully up to the author’s standard of writing, which means that it is accurate, good-tempered and interesting.”
+ Am Pol Sci R 14:739 N ’20 50w
“The very interesting illustrations cited throughout make this book not only earnest but really attractive reading on labor organization questions.”
+ Booklist 16:327 Jl ’20