Herbert Hoover: The Man and His Work

by Vernon L. Kellogg

The Conference has therefore proposed to set up a small amount of governmental machinery comprising Chairmen covering various regions in the United States, with a Central Board in Washington, as a definite organization for the promotion of these agencies. It has believed that this is a step consonant with the normal development of our institutions and the progressive forces already in motion, and that in such steps lie the greatest hope of success. No one is compelled to submit to the machinery established but where the employer and employee refuse to enter into, or fail in, bargaining, then through the use of this machinery the public stimulates them to come together under conditions of just determination of the credentials of their representatives. The plan is, therefore, a development of the principle of collective bargaining. It is not founded on the principle of arbitration or compulsion. It is designed to prevent the losses through cessation of production due to conflict but, beyond this, to build up such relationship between employer and employees as will not only mitigate such disaster but will ultimately extend further into the development of the great mutual ground

of interest of increased production and under conditions of satisfaction to both sides. It is a part of the conception of the Conference that only in bargaining and mutual agreement can there be given that free play of economic forces necessary to adjust the complex conditions under which our industries must function.

Reduction of conflict in industry is the phase that not only looms large in the public mind, but conflict is the public exhibit of the greatest mark of failure in industrial relations. The imminence of conflict is evidence of failure to have discussion or to arrival at mutual agreement. Therefore, under the plan of the Conference that mutual agreement is the best basis for prevention of conflict, the second step in the Conference proposals is that there should be a penalty for failure to submit to such processes. That penalty is a public inquiry into the causes of the dispute and the proper ventilation to public opinion as to its rights and wrongs. The strength of the penalty is based upon the conviction that neither side can afford to lose public good will. Pressure to rectitude by government investigation is distinctly an American institution. It is not an intervention of public interest that is usually welcomed. In the plan of this Conference, this general repugnance to investigation is depended upon as

a persuasive influence to the parties of the conflict to get together and settle their own quarrels. They are given the alternative of investigation or collective bargain under persuasive circumstances. In order to increase the moral pressures surrounding the investigation, either one of the parties to the conflict may become a member of the board of investigation, provided he will have entered on an a priori undertaking that he is prepared to submit his case to orderly and simple processes of adjustment. Thus his opponent will be put at more than usual disadvantage in the investigation. If both sides should agree to submit to normal processes of settlement, the board of investigation becomes at once the stage of a collective bargain and the investigation ceases.

I will not trouble you with the elaborate details of the plan, for they involved a great deal of consideration as to many difficult questions of selection of representatives, provision for action by umpires, for appeal to a board in certain contingencies, the character of questions to be considered, methods of enforcement, standards of labor, and so on. The point that I wish to make clear is that the Conference plan is fundamentally the promotion of collective bargaining under fair conditions of representation by both sides and the definite organi

zation of public opinion only as a pressure on the parties at conflict to secure it. It is therefore basically not a plan of arbitration, nor is it an industrial court. It is stimulation to self-government in industry. The plan contains no essence of opposition to organized labor or organized employers. It involves no dispute of the right to strike or lock out, nor of the closed or open shop. It simply proposes a sequence of steps that should lead to collective bargain without imposing compulsions, courts, injunctions, fines, or jail. It is at least a new step and worth careful consideration before employees and employers subject themselves to the growth of public demands for the other alternatives of wider governmental interference.

The Conference has set out the critical necessity of the development within industry itself of a better basis of understanding as having the great values that all prevention has over cures. There have been hopeful developments in American industry during the past two or three years in this direction. The first unit of employment relationship is each industrial establishment, and if we would battle with misunderstanding and secure mutual action it must be at this stage. It takes its visible form in the organization in many establishments under various plans of shop councils, shop

committees, shop conference, all of which are based on the democratic selection of representatives of employees who shall remain in continuous open and frank relation and conference with the employer in the interests of both. Where this development has had success it has had one essential foundation; that is, that it must be conceived in a spirit of coöperation for mutual benefit and it has invariably lost out where it has been conceived solely to bargain for wages and conditions of labor. It does not necessarily involve profit-sharing, but it does involve a human approach to the problems on both sides and a mutual effort at betterment.

It is the organization of such contact between employer and employees which distinguishes this advance from the previous drift in large industry. This type of organization has met with success not only in non-union shops but in unionized shops, and in the latter case it has imported the spirit of mutuality in addition to sheer negotiation of grievance as to conditions of labor. It cannot, in our view, succeed if it is to be conceived in a spirit of antagonism either to employer or to union organization.

The trade unions of the United States have conferred such essential services upon their