GLEASON, ARTHUR HUNTINGTON. What the workers want: a study of British labor. *$4 Harcourt, Brace & Howe 331
20–9059
As a result of five years’ study of the British, the author predicts that England will make an early and sane adjustment to the new impulses of the human spirit now striving for expression throughout the world and that she will be the first country to enter the new age equipped and unembittered. His summary of the wants of the workers today is: “The workers wish to be the public servants of community enterprise, not the hired hands of private enterprise. They refuse to work longer for a system of private profits divided in part among non-producers. They demand a share in the control and responsibilities of the work they do (not only welfare and workshop conditions, but discipline and management and commercial administration). They demand a good life, which means a standard of living (in terms of wages and hours) that provides leisure, recreation, education, health, comfort, and security.” (Chapter 1) The contents report all the important events and tendencies in the industrial world since the war under the sections: Chaos and aspirations; The year; The way they do it; What the workers want; Problems; The summing up. The appendix gives in full the important documents of the social revolution and is divided into the sections: The employers; Masters and men; The workers; The judgment; The public. There is an index.
“A thoroughgoing and interesting summary of movements, forces and men in the British labor situation.”
+ Booklist 16:329 Jl ’20
“The feature that gives the book its greatest value, is its profound understanding of the British people, whose industrial and political problems it describes and illumines with such keen comment.” T. M. Ave-Lallemant
+ Freeman 2:164 O 27 ’20 1000w
“There is little attempt to give the historic background of the various groups, but the reader who has been awakened at all to the new authority with which labor is speaking in Britain and, to its influence upon world politics, as well as upon labor problems in the narrower sense, will find here the best material yet available for understanding the situation.”
+ Int J Ethics 31:115 O ’20 150w