Herbert Hoover: The Man and His Work

by Vernon L. Kellogg

is a concise but illuminating treatment of the subject of labor unions. After discussing contract work and bonus systems he says:

"There is another phase of the labor question which must be considered, and that is the general relations of employer and employed. As corporations have grown, so likewise have the labor unions. In general, they are normal and proper antidotes for unlimited capitalistic organization.

"Labor unions usually pass through two phases. First, the inertia of the unorganized labor is too often stirred only by demagogic means. After organization through these and other agencies, the lack of balance in the leaders often makes for injustice in demands, and for violence to obtain them and disregard of agreements entered upon. As time goes on, men become educated in regard to the rights of their employers and to the reflection of these rights in ultimate benefit to labor itself. Then the men, as well as the intelligent employer, endeavor to safeguard both interests. When this stage arrives, violence disappears in favor of negotiation on economic principles, and the unions achieve their greatest real gains. Given a union with leaders who can control the members, and who are disposed to approach differ

ences in a business spirit, there are few sounder positions for the employer, for agreements honorably carried out dismiss the constant harassments of possible strikes. Such unions exist in dozens of trades in this country, and they are entitled to greater recognition. The time when the employer could ride roughshod over his labor is disappearing with the doctrine of laissez faire on which it was founded. The sooner the fact is recognized, the better for the employer. The sooner some miners' unions develop from the first into the second stage, the more speedily will their organizations secure general respect and influence.

"The crying need of labor unions, and of some employers as well, is education on a fundamental of economics too long disregarded by all classes and especially by the academic economist. When the latter abandon the theory that wages are the result of supply and demand, and recognize that in these days of international flow of labor, commodities and capital, the real controlling factor in wages is efficiency, then such an educational campaign may become possible. Then will the employer and employee find a common ground on which each can benefit. There lives no engineer who has not seen insensate dispute as to wages where the real difficulty was inefficiency. No

administrator begrudges a division with his men of the increased profit arising from increased efficiency. But every administrator begrudges the wage level demanded by labor unions whose policy is decreased efficiency in the false belief that they are providing for more labor."

Three years before publishing the Principles of Mining Hoover had collaborated with a a group of authors in the production of a book called Economics of Mining. And three years later, that is in 1912, he privately published, in sumptuous form, with scrupulously exact reproduction of all of its many curious old woodcuts, an English translation of Agricola's "De Re Metallica," the first great treatise on mining and metallurgy, originally published in Latin in 1556, only one hundred years after Gutenberg had printed his first book. "De Re Metallica" was the standard manual of mining and metallurgy for 180 years. Georgius Agricola, the author, was really one Georg Bauer, a German of Saxony, who, following the custom of his time used for pen-name the literal Latin equivalents of the words of his German name.

This translation, with its copious added notes of editorial commentary, was the joint work of Hoover and his wife—it was Mrs. Hoover, indeed, who began it—and occupied most of their spare time, especially their evenings—and sometimes nights!—and Sundays, through nearly five years. They had been for some time collecting and delving in old books on China and the Far East and ancient treatises on early mining and metallurgical processes, and had accumulated an unusual collection of such books, ransacking the old bookshops of the world in their quest. In 1902, Mrs. Hoover while looking up some geology in the British Museum Library, stumbled again on Agricola, which she had forgotten since the days she was in Dr. Branner's laboratory. By invoking the services of one of their friends among the old book dealers the Hoovers soon owned a copy. Caught especially by the many curious and only half understandable pictures in it they began to translate bits from it here and there, especially the explanations of the pictures, and in a little while they were lost. Nothing would

satisfy them short of making a complete translation. It became an obsession; it was at first their recreation; then because it went very slowly it seemed likely to become their life avocation.