VALUE OF EMPLOYMENT DEPARTMENTS BY H. A. White... 338 345 MEN NOT EQUAL IN THIS WORLD- By Charles William P. 348 Cleveland, O. To the Editor of "The American Employer" Chamber of Commerce Bldg., Dear Sir: The first four copies of "The American Employer" have been received and carefully read. I was more than pleased indeed with the contents. I have devoted the past ten years almost exclusively to organization work among both employers and employees and am acquainted with most magazines, local, state and national, published for the purpose of bringing about a closer relation and better understanding between all parties concerned. I feel however, that your magazine fills a long felt want. In To be sure, if we want to educate employees we must reach the employers first. fact, if you can get the employers as a class interested in organization work not only for defense but for positive constructive work, most if not everything, is won, for if the employers are not willing to show the workmen the right way, then they are to blame if others show them the wrong way. Leading men of public affairs here and in Europe have admitted to me that they stand aghast at the great modern disease, that is, apathy and inexcusable indifference. Whereas condemnation does not cure anything and whereas you cannot saw wood with a hammer, you choose the right and only way, that is, to create sentiment through a systematic, consistent and insistent campaign of education among the employers of the country. If there is anything I can do to help you to introduce your magazine among the employers of this city, your wishes shall be command. Hoping that you will succeed beyond expectation in your laudable and patriotic undertaking I remain, The American Employer A MAGAZINE DEVOTED TO THE INTERESTS OF THE BUSINESS MEN OF THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA WHO HIRE LABOR Published by The American Employer Publishing Co., 404 Chamber of Commerce Building, Cleveland, O. J. H. SMITH, Pres. and Treas. JOHN WEBER, Sec. J.W.EBERHARDT, Vice Pres. Vol. I Price $2 a year. Single copy 20 cents. January, 1913 No. 6 Editorial The Trusts Not The Employers The greatest mistake that the paid agents of organized labor and their journals are making in discussing the economics of industrial questions is that they are confusing the trust problem with the labor problem. To be fair with these men and their papers, the mistake is not confined to them, but is made by a great many other people, including some well-meaning politicians who think they understand economic conditions and who believe themselves capable of economic argument and who really do not know the a. b. c.'s of economics. Of course, there are employed labor agents and politicians, too, and many of them, who know better and who purposely confuse the trust question and the labor problem for the retention of their jobs and for votes. As a matter of simple fact, the immense body of employers of the United States are not in the trusts. They are business men whose interests are not only differentiated from those of the trusts, but are actually attacked by the very existence of huge combinations of capital. While it is true that so-called trusts control, perhaps wrongfully, immense aggregations of capital, they are. minimum employers of labor compared with the great rank and file of men who engage the services of other men for hire. Every man who has a small store in which there are one or two clerks is an employer. A superintendent or manager, or even a foreman, is at once. an employer and an employe. He receives a salary for his services from his company, and on the other hand, he engages and dispenses with the services of the men. If he has a few shares of stock in his company, he is, to a still greater extent, both an employer and employe. It is very hard to establish a line of demarkation between the employers and the employes. Without taking space to enter into a long discussion of the merits and demerits of the trust question, one may accept for the purposes of argument as true, everything that has been said against large combinations of capital, and the fact will still remain that the whole controversy does not touch the relations between the great body of employers and employes. As a matter of fact, to whatever extent trusts are harmful and wrongful, the first people affected are the employers. Their business is injured by the tactics of the trusts and they are the first people who are hurt. The injury done to employes by the trusts is incidental to the injury done to the employers and follows logically, because the interests of the employer and employe are one. The Labor Clarion, of San Francisco, which is the official organ of the San Francisco Labor Council, seems to think that it has made a great case against the employers of labor by saying in its issue of Nov. 15, 1912, that the wealth of the United States this year is estimated at $115,000,000,000. of which the workers get less than 10 per cent. These figures may or may not be right; we have not verified them; but if they are, the condition is due to the machinations of a few people and not to any transactions on the part of the rank and file of the employers of labor, and it is manifestly unfair for any man who attempts the task of leading labor or of thinking for laboring men to lay the blame for any such condition upon the rank and file of the employers of labor who are not the trusts and who are the first people to be injured by the trusts. Nothing could be more unfair than to blame a body of men numbering many thousands for the conduct of a half dozen or a dozen mammoth illegal combinations who are by no means confining themselves to grabbing things from laboring people, but who are filching not only from laboring people, but from employers and from everybody in sight. In a recent address on "Efficiency and the Trusts". Louis D. Brandeis made the point that the prosperity of any great American city comes through the constant effort of the average business man, and says: "Business was made for man, not man for business. And if we re member that business was made for man, we must not forget that any system under which business is to be done should be a system which will develop the individual man; and if there is any system which will develop the individual man better than the system of liberty, then we are wrong in our form of government. We ought to have a monarchy instead of a democracy, if it is better that we shall do for men than to let men do for themselves." Employers Should Teach Their Men It is a regrettable mistake when an employer of labor believes that the men in his employ are working for him. They are not. They are working under his direction. They are receiving his money in compensation for their services. He has the right to employ them, discharge them, increase their pay or reduce it. Yet all the time they are working for themselves, immediately for the money they receive, but primarily in the hope of advancement and improvement of their condition. No man is absolutely independent of others. Every man has his own limitation as to time and effort. When a man undertakes big things, he must have assistance. Organization follows. One sees it in the church, charity. social life, at the clubs, in politics and in business. in business every man employed is a part of the organization. He may be a small part, but he is a useful part. He or somebody else in his place is a necessary part. If a business progresses and prospers, everybody in it is benefited. If it languishes and fails, everybody in it is injured. The interests of the employer and the employe are one. Each is a part of the organization. Both stand or fall with the organization. This represents a community of interests on the part of men seeking their individual personal interest. The employer is working for himself. Every employe is working for himself. Yet all must work together that the, interests of each may be served. |