Thirty-five Years of Service...

FOR 35 YEARS the Monthly Labor Review has performed a unique service to all who are interested in matters concerning labor. Before much of this period had transpired, the Review had earned the enviable record for accuracy and objectivity which has made it a veritable symbol of authority in the fields of labor relations and labor economics.

The Monthly Labor Review is 2 years younger than the Department of Labor itself, but it stems from an older root, the bimonthly bulletin-first published in 1895-of the United States Bureau of Labor, forerunner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. When the Review was first published in 1915, its prospectus committed it to "publish the results of original investigations too brief for bulletin purposes, notices of labor legislation . . . and Federal court decisions affecting labor.

It also promised to report news items of a wide range of special labor interest. It expressed the hope (and it chanced not vainly) that through the Review the Bureau itself could "come in closer touch with current labor activities . . ."

This in 1915. For about a decade the Review reflected the character of the Bureau's early work and the general type of labor information available throughout the country from State labor departments and special study groups. It was heavily weighted with summaries of reports from abroad and score-card type articles on State legislation, particularly on the then emerging body of law dealing with workmen's compensation. It was the period of the Walsh Commission on Industrial Relations and of World War I and the beginnings of the boom of the twenties.

By 1925, the Review was regularly carrying the Bureau's own series on prices and employment. Its contents for July of that year, for example, girdled the globe with articles on food costs in

Aires, unemployment relief in Germany, and industrial accidents in Chile.

In mid-1935, it had achieved a pleasing blend of progress and tradition. The compartmentalization of the Bureau into specialized branches resulted in more space devoted to the time series developed in these fields. There was still a sprinkling (but not a plethora) of what the British papers term "miscellaneous cuttings" from far and near. But the quality of accuracy and authority was tangible and constant.

This quality was enhanced by a sense of timeliness and of history. In July 1945, it was already carrying a separate section of pieces on postwar reconstruction and the reemployment problems of veterans. Transparent through the contents was the effort generally successful-to generate the widest possible usefulness through the widest possible coverage and the presentation of a solid core of statistical facts.

The Review in its maturity is clean-cut, informed, well-organized, professional, and perhaps closer and more responsive to trends in labor developments and the complexities of labormanagement relations than ever before. Its credo pledged it to a "review of developments and problems in the field of labor, broadly conceived a nice balance as a journal of labor and general economics, of labor relations, and of industrial, labor, and social history, and as a handbook of current statistics." A measure of its success in meeting the "mixed needs of all groups and persons concerned

" is its

ability to enlist the talents of such a distinguished and informed group of experts, inside and outside the Government, as have contributed to this issue.

Its transcendent value, however, is as a symbol of a basic democratic tradition. This is the impressive value of free inquiry and factual presentation. Preservation of this value imposes a grave responsibility upon the Department, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and more intimately and immediately upon the Review editorial staff.

To the contributors to this issue and to the Monthly Labor Review staff, my thanks on behalf of the Department of Labor for their cooperation and share in a significant achievement.

—MAURICE J. TOBIN, Secretary of Labor

The Anniversary Issue— An Editorial Note

LAWRENCE R. KLEIN

PROBABLY NEVER in its long history have so many distinguished authorities contributed to a single issue of the Monthly Labor Review. Although this 35th anniversary issue only incidentally celebrates the event, given the mortality rate of Government periodicals, 35 years establishes something of a longevity record.

As the Secretary of Labor has put it in his pithy one-page evaluation, the Monthly Labor Review when still in its relative infancy had become a symbol of authority in the most critical socio-economic field of our era. An authority and a pioneer.

The Review, then, is a fitting vehicle in which to assay 50 years of labor progress. And 1950— the Gompers centennial and mid-way in what for labor has been the Gompers century-is a fitting year in which to do it.

Tracing the progress of American labor over a half century requires some gauge for subject matter selection. What standard is most conducive to effective exposition in 50,000 words? It serves no useful purpose merely to chronicle dates divorced from their setting and significance. It is as impractical as overburdening to record only the sterile detail of formal history. And finally, if we pursue but a single sector of theory, or even several narrow approaches, we run the risk of aimless meanders in a maze of trivia.

What we have sought instead is to plot those main currents of American development upon which our labor progress has been borne and to measure some of labor's aspirations against the results to date, with the aid of three devices.

THERE IS FIRST of all the simple chronology of labor events which charts the ups and downs of progress, a kind of contour map from which we

figurations.

These we discern more clearly in eight articles generally discussing (a) the impact of industrial change on the worker's job and occupational and living habits; (b) the institutional changes in labor unions and the patterns of thought with respect to labor's social role and attitudes; (c) the underlying quests and accomplishments—a cutting away of the top soil which obscures the bed rock fundament of labor's aims; then (d) a sort of test-to-date of all this in law and government as a register of progress; finally (e) the changes revealed by an important adjunct to the main outline the development of specialized statistical tools and their uses by labor.

Both to validate and bolster this topical selection a third device is employed-reappraisals of books typical of significant works published in the field during the 50 years surveyed. The books broadly encompass these fields: labor history and theory, trade-union structure, labor law, official investigative reports on industrial relations, the labor novel, and wage theory.

Among the many pitfalls we have tried to avoid are bias, animus, and anything remotely suggestive of an "official" point of view. We have observed but not run afoul of what Mr. Pitzele in his preface to the books section has called "the winds of doctrine." No one is pictured as Sir Galahad and no one captures the Grail. What is presented are a few important facts of labor life in this country in this century, pointed up in the three ways outlined above.

THERE IS an essential unity in the special section as a whole. The articles treat different aspects of labor progress, yet because of varying emphases they complement and supplement rather than duplicate each other. Thematically they suggest concentric circles. Where one merely alludes to a point, the other illuminates in detail, like a map overlay. There is an even firmer bonding between the article and book sections (through each of which runs its own inner thread of consistency). The 10 book appraisals document the labor history and philosophy presented in the articles.

It would be comforting to the point of smugness to attribute such remarkable editorial dovetailing exclusively to planning. Happily some of it was fortuitous. There is an enduring and reassuring

genuineness to the excellence of chance. Nevertheless, the following themes course fuguelike through the special section:

1. The peculiar and phenomenal growth and power of American industry was the great shaper of the structure and character of American labor and at once the cause of its insecurity and well-being.

2. The early attitude of American employers toward unionism was bitterly hostile, and the law and the courts' interpretation of it reflected this.

3. The American labor movement, despite its militancy, nevertheless (and almost alone in the world in this respect) had and has no revolutionary goals and was content to and did secure a place for itself within capitalist society.

4. The 20th was indeed the Gompers Century.

IF WE HAVE UNITY we also have variety. Mr. Clague fears that we lost "some of the most elemental factors of security which were the comfort of our forefathers." Mr. Altmeyer feels we must decide how far the Government can go in social security without encroaching on "habitudes of independence." Mr. Ober points out that "workers today work with greater intensity than they did 50 years ago." But Mr. Bowden believes that "an hour of work today is hardly more intense and life consuming than when the century began."

Mr. Brooks concludes that the labor movement clings to its old ways, but "a new mood of experimentation" is in the offing. Mr. Bell moves out further. Labor has more than adumbrations of new interests and methods. Dean Carman holds with Miss Perkins that the labor movement remains "typically American in its pragmatism.” Mr. Stark expresses some concern over the CIO tendency to "more centralized control" and the AFL executive council structure. Mr. Taft commends the theory that labor has no historic "mission." Mr. Epstein endorses him, calling for Saposs' "reconciliation of evangelicism and practical unionism." Mr. Stern wonders if the ICFTU has not come on the international scene "too late." Mr. Weisz points up the American worker's choice of "the path of collective bargaining" in lieu of socialism.

Messrs. Feinsinger and Witte bleakly comment that it would be difficult from labor's viewpoint to describe Government's attitude in 1950 "as an advance over 1900." Mr. van Arkel echoes this: as in 1927, the law

requires men to strikebreak." To Father Higgins, Government has "haltingly" come to protect workers. Mr. Douty, delving into the economics of labor, finds "increasing sophistication [attending] the payment of labor." Mr. Kassalow, turning over the same furrow, discovers the modern union economic brief to be a symbol as well as a byproduct of unionism's growth and concern with "the broad analysis of national economic trends and the insistence on the relevance of the union's case to these factors."

Mr. Goldfinger (by invitation) has written a valuable critique of BLS' program philosophy. He reviews Carroll D. Wright's early credo for the Bureau and (gently) chides us for perhaps having failed "to fuse the more precise and greater variety of present data with the alertness to labor's problems that characterized the earlier studies more direct contact with the living experience of industries and workers would be most fruitful

THE ANNIVERSARY ISSUE of the Review is a product of the modern Bureau. The Monthly Labor Review as an institution carries forward the best historical traditions of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The anniversary issue would be a realization of one of his basic aims to Carroll D. Wright, who 65 years ago, with his idea and a clerk, groped for methods with an ideal of integrity and usefulness.

Integrity and usefulness are still the watchwords of the Bureau. They are the guidons of the Review to which has been furled this lesson from Maeterlinck:

I have steadfastly resisted the temptation to enhance the marvel of reality by adding marvels that may be attractive but are not true. Being older, I have found the temptation less; for, little by little, the years teach every man that truth alone is marvelous. Another thing that they teach an author is that embellishments are the first of all to fade, that they age more quickly than he; and that only facts, strictly set forth, and reflections that are precise and sincere, will present the same appearance tomorrow as they do today.2

1 The original outline for the special section of the anniversary issue was prepared by my colleagues of the Monthly Labor Review Planning Advisory Committee. They are Witt Bowden, Edgar I. Eaton, Hyman Lewis, Harry Ober, Charles D. Stewart, Abraham Weiss, Morris Weisz, and Seymour Wolfbein. Three of them were also contributors. Elizabeth L. Black prepared the manuscript for the printer and handled the make-up for the issue as a whole.

The Life of the White Ant, by Maurice Maeterlinck (p. 3).