CHAPTER XXXLABOR AND THE WAR
Such vast quantities of manufactured products—machines, munitions, clothing, food, supplies of every sort—were consumed in the war and had to be speedily produced for immediate destruction that for the first time in the history of the world the forces of production at home became of as much consequence for the winning of the war as were the fighting forces at the front. This fact, because it was so new a feature of warfare, was not at first recognized by the Entente Allies in its full significance and consequently their efforts lost much in possible effectiveness during the first year or more of the struggle. Nor did the United States at once realize the necessity of mobilizing the productive forces and directing their employment along lines that made for martial efficiency. But the first few months of war effort developed friction between employers and employed, competition in the bidding for labor by the various war agencies of the Government and the private employers engaged in production of war necessities, bungling and waste in the distribution of labor and a tendency to backsliding in labor conditions. The Government had become the greatest employer of labor in the world and it soon became evident that to correlate the activities of all its war making agenciesand induce efficient coöperation between them and private employers new machinery would have to be devised for the handling of the forces of production.
For this purpose there was created the War Labor Administration, including in its machinery and its duties those of the Department of Labor, but expanding such of them as dealt with labor in its relation to the war and adding others that would meet new needs and aid in the solution of new problems, with the Secretary of Labor as its responsible head. In order to carry out the immensely enlarged program which war emergencies made necessary in a broad, comprehending and coöperative spirit, the Secretary called to his assistance an Advisory Council whose members represented all phases of interest in industrial work. To its preliminary study and careful planning was due in large measure the efficient and harmonious working of the big undertakings of the War Labor Administration. By its advice and as a part of the machinery for the correlation of effort there was devised the War Labor Policies Board on which were represented the War, Navy, Agriculture and Labor Departments, the Fuel, Food and Railroad Administrations, the U. S. Shipping Board Emergency Fleet Corporation and the War Industries Board, and to which were attached advisers representing labor, business management and technical fields. It unified labor policies and harmonized the industrial activities of the different branches of the Government, ensuring more efficient team-work for the prosecution of the war.
The War Labor Policies Board was thus the organization through which spoke the voice of all theindustrial agencies of the Government and behind its administration of industrial relations was all the power of the Government. It worked out a national policy for the distribution of labor which was executed through the agency of the United States Employment Service. By means of conferences between the representatives of organized labor and industrial management it did much toward the standardizing and stabilizing of wages. It endeavored to bring about proper standards and satisfactory conditions of labor. By anti-child-labor regulations in all Government contracts it kept a restraining hand on the evident tendency toward employment of children that had been induced on the part of employers by the need for labor and on the part of parents by the possibility of greatly increased earnings. It adopted a policy toward the employment of women in industry which aimed to keep women out of unfit occupations and to provide such standards and conditions in the occupations to which they were admitted as would conserve their health and welfare. It advised the more general employment of older men for many kinds of work rather than that of women or boys, and largely because of its support of this policy the age of engaging men advanced during the war by ten years, until men of fifty were able to find employment.
The first task which the War Labor Policies Board undertook was that of bringing order out of the chaotic condition which had quickly developed through the bidding for labor against one another of all employers, both public and private, and the working out of a national policy for the distribution of labor. The existing machinery of the United StatesEmployment Service, very greatly enlarged and strengthened as soon as funds for that purpose were available, was used in the execution of this policy. Offices were established in the several states, their number soon totaling 400, and a decentralized system was worked out consisting of state and community labor boards, upon all of which there was joint representation of employers, employees and the United States Employment Service. These made it possible to list and keep constant check upon the supply of labor and the demand for it in every part of the country and within a very short time to move an excess of the supply in one place to another in which there was need. These community labor boards were organized in every state of the Union and by the first of September, 1918, were at work in 1000 industrial centers. In every application for work the schooling and the occupational experience and training of the applicant were stated, thus making it easy to match the job with the man. By the end of the summer the U. S. Employment Service had made placements of almost 2,000,000 wage earners.
The production departments of the Government agreed to employ unskilled labor only through the U. S. Employment Service and private employers, with very rare exceptions, were quickly brought to see the necessity of coöperation and readily responded to the plea that was made to their patriotism and their intelligence. The Employment Service aided in the weeding out of men from non-essential industries and helped to transfer them to those upon which the nation’s life depended. It gave efficient assistance also in the important work of preventing the drafting into the army of skilled workers whose laborwas needed in war industries. Through its 15,000 enrollment agents it reached out into towns and villages, tapped every potential supply of wage earners, and registered in advance men for specified trades for which one or another war emergency would soon make demand. Its division for farm service made it possible to harvest the 1918 crop with far less than the usual loss due to lack of harvest hands, notwithstanding the fact that there was little unemployment in any part of the country. For the guidance of boys in their latter teens the section of the U. S. Boys’ Working Reserve directed the work in 1918 of 250,000 boys of high school age who wished to devote the summer vacation to productive civilian work that would aid the prosecution of the war, exercising upon this great body of future citizens through various agencies and by varied methods a notable influence for manly spirit, patriotism and citizenship ideals.
A section of the War Labor Administration that had under its charge the informing of the public as to its activities and the education of those engaged in war emergency production was a part of the democratic methods of the whole national war program and did much to stimulate patriotic effort and bring divergent interests into harmony. Through thousands of magazines, newspapers and periodicals of every sort it brought the efforts being made by the War Labor Administration to general knowledge and aroused interest in industrial problems. It sent out hundreds of speakers who talked upon subjects dealing with labor and the war before chambers of commerce, clubs, trade unions and other organizations, and meetings of employees in plants devoted to warindustries. It distributed 1,000,000 posters a month, which, changed every two or three weeks, were displayed in workshops, factories, stores and railway stations, and it supplemented these and the spoken word with a campaign of motion picture service. It formed committees among the employees of over 12,000 plants to establish personal contact between those employed in war industry, their employers and the representatives of the Labor Department, promote better understanding between them and so increase production.
A serious problem grew early in the war out of the immense expansion in size and man-power of plants engaged in war industry and the creation of many others—the problem of the housing or transportation of their employees. Almost overnight the population of the vicinity of an industrial plant would increase so greatly that transportation facilities would be swamped and housing accommodations become utterly inadequate. Appropriations amounting to $100,000,000 were provided for the solving of this problem, half of which was to be devoted to industrial housing. At the end of September, 1918, houses, apartment houses and flats capable of accommodating 9,000 families had been built or were under construction and financial allotments had been made for as many more projects which were under consideration and about to be developed. To relieve situations where it was possible for the incoming workers to be absorbed by surrounding or nearby communities there had been built up in more than fifty cities organizations in which councils of defense, chambers of commerce, housing associations, Y. W. C. A. and other local bodies coöperated withthis division of the War Labor Administration. Such an organization would investigate living conditions and list vacant houses, flats and rooms, frequently showing the existence of sufficient housing facilities to make construction unnecessary.
Among the most important of the agencies developed by the War Labor Administration was that of the National War Labor Board, created for the purpose of adjusting difficulties between wage workers and employers in industries directly or indirectly concerned with production for the war. It was appointed by the Secretary of Labor at the end of our first year of participation in the war and consisted of five representatives each of employers and wage-earners and two joint chairmen acceptable to both sides. It served as a sort of court of appeal, only such cases of disagreement being considered by it as the Conciliation Service of the Labor Department failed to adjust.
In form and purpose the War Labor Board was a new departure for even a democratic nation to take. It had no precedents behind it and no body of law with which to enforce its decisions. To make its work effective it depended upon the general sense of justice and fair play, the confidence of workers and employers in the justice of the policies by which it was guided and the loyalty and patriotism of both the opposing sides of industrial controversies. Its purpose was to secure maximum production of all war necessities by preventing strikes and lockouts, and also proper conditions of labor and of living that would aid in making possible that maximum production. With regard to labor unions the Board based all its procedure upon the right of labor to organizeand to bargain collectively with employers, but forbade any coercion by labor unions or their members of either employers or employees. Employers were not allowed to discharge workers or to penalize them, directly or indirectly, for attempting to organize, although shops were to be continued as closed or open, on their existing status, for the period of the war. In open shops the union standard of wages and conditions was to be maintained. The Board would not use its power to compel open shops to become union shops, but employers agreed to recognize the right of the employees of a shop to form a full organization of their own members if they chose. The Board recognized the basic eight-hour day as applying in all cases where required by the existing law and in other cases it pledged itself to settle the question with due regard to the welfare of the workers and to governmental necessities. In the case of women workers it insisted upon equal pay for equal work and said that their tasks must be proportioned to their strength.
The National War Labor Board called to its aid a large number of men and women trained in the investigation of labor problems and when its services were necessary the case was studied by several of these agents, the sides respectively of labor and of management being investigated each by those sympathetic with its point of view. They studied each case on its own merits, listed the grievances, collected evidence and selected witnesses to appear before the Board. In some cases, in order to expedite the work, trained examiners conducted hearings at which both sides were represented and then reported to the Board with an analysis and summary of the case.
At the date of October first, 1918, the offices of the National War Labor Board had been invoked in 531 controversies involving the employment of more than 2,000,000 workers, of which 266 were still pending. Awards had been made directly in forty-four cases, others had been referred to other governmental agencies or settled in other ways, and others had been withdrawn or dropped. In only four cases had the members of the Board failed to come to unanimous decision concerning the award and in only three instances had there been refusal to accept its conclusions. In two of these cases the result was the taking over by the Government, in one, of telegraph and telephone lines, and in the other of a munitions plant, while in the third, also a munitions plant, the striking workers decided, upon appeal to their patriotism, to accept the award and to resume work.
The work and the decisions of the National War Labor Board had a profoundly beneficent influence upon the war production of the country, reducing to a minimum the deterrent effects of labor troubles. The policies to which it pledged itself and the general confidence in its purpose to deal fairly with both sides greatly decreased the probable number of cases of serious trouble, as in many which otherwise would have grown into strikes or lockouts the opposing parties found they were able to settle their differences between themselves. The work of the Board raised the wages directly of approximately a million workers and of perhaps twice that number indirectly and it strongly influenced for the better the relations between wage earners and employers.
The just and scientific management of labor problems in connection with the war resulted in a minimumof labor trouble, an enthusiastic and patriotic response of labor to the needs of the nation and an enormous and very slightly interrupted production of all goods needed for war purposes.