CHAPTER IX

UNITED STATES INDUSTRIAL COMMISSION'S REPORT

ON LABOR

ALTHOUGH much has been said and written about the progress which has been made in American economics in recent years, we are still more likely to underestimate than to overestimate the advance which has been accomplished, and especially are we apt to forget within how short a space of time this transformation in American economic thought has taken place. The writer of the article in The Nation for January 16, 1902, giving an account of the annual meeting of the American Economic Association held in the preceding month, speaks about the activity in economics in this country as largely due to men who began their academic work some thirty years ago. Now the truth is that the men whom he had in mind, men prominent in effecting the organization of the American Economic Association, were, for the most part, not even undergraduates thirty years ago, but were still engaged in their preparation for college. Most of these men are still on the sunny side of fifty, and some of them are nearer forty than the former age. While the work which was done by men of a still

older generation should not be disparaged, while this earlier work was, indeed, a necessary preparation for the more recent work, it is, nevertheless, true that the great change in economic thought in our country, which has given the United States a leading position in economic science, has taken place within twenty years, and that it has been quite largely brought about by men who believe that they still have before them the better part of their own work.

Reflections of this kind are especially appropriate as an introduction to those portions of the Report of the Industrial Commission which deal with labor, because the advance which economics has made during the preceding twenty years finds such marked expression in the methods employed and in the conclusions reached by the Industrial Commission, and especially by the economists who, as experts, were connected with the work of this Commission. It is difficult, even for those who have followed with some care the treatment of labor problems for the past fifteen or twenty years, to realize the progress which has been made in their discussion, both in respect to positive knowledge and to scientific methods followed. It is now somewhat difficult to do justice to those who, twenty years ago, were actively engaged in a scientific discussion of labor questions in this country, and to realize that a large part of the pioneer work in this field dates back to a period even less remote. The distinction between anarchistic

and socialistic movements is now understood by every economist, and even by the general, intelligent public; but it required careful study to discriminate between these two movements in 1885. Every graduate student now understands the difference between the principles underlying the American Federation of Labor and the Knights of Labor, but so careful a student of labor problems as Brentano, twenty years ago, denied the existence of any labor organization based upon the principles underlying the Knights of Labor. These are simply illustrations of the condition of thought and of knowledge even at so recent a period as 1885, when the American Economic Association was organized, and serve to show how much work has been done in order to give us that basis of knowledge with which any economist now begins a study of labor.

Another way of getting at the same thing is to contrast the Report of the Industrial Commission, created by act of 1898, with the voluminous Report of the Senate Committee on Labor and Education, in 1885. This earlier report has some value, because it gives the opinion of all sorts of people on all sorts of questions in any way connected with labor in 1885. It allowed a good many cranks and some thoughtful people an opportunity to express their views, and perhaps served as a safety-valve, which is probably the chief purpose which those had in mind who were responsible for the existence of the committee.

The American economists are so numerous, and they have made themselves felt to such an extent in every part of the country, that probably we shall see no more federal reports on labor like the one issued by the Senate Committee of 1885. It is a great thing that it is known that there are in this country a body of economic experts, and that the state of public opinion is such as to demand their employment. The entire character of the Report of the Industrial Commission, the way the work is planned, and the way it is executed, show the constant guidance of the economist. The economists employed belong, for the most part, to those whom we would naturally designate as the younger generation of American economists, a generation younger than those who founded the American Economic Association, being, indeed, mostly students of those who were active in the early days of this association. When one considers all the circumstances surrounding their work, it must be said that they did their work remarkably well, and that they have strengthened the position and the influence of economists in this country. The three experts chiefly responsible for that portion of the final report dealing with labor are Dr. E. Dana Durand, the secretary of the Commission, Professor John R. Commons, and Mr. Charles E. Edgerton. Other experts employed by the Commission, whose work fell under the head of labor, are Messrs. J. R. Dodge, for agricultural labor; Samuel M. Lindsay, for railway labor; Victor H. Olm

sted and William M. Steuart, for prison labor; Thomas F. Turner, for Asiatic labor on the Pacific coast; F. J. Stimson, for labor legislation, and Eugene Willison, for mine labor legislation. Miss Gail Laughlin also treated the subject of domestic service. It is seen that, out of twenty-seven experts employed by the Commission, eleven had to do directly and immediately with various phases of what we broadly designate as labor problems.

While the work of the Commission was SO broadly outlined in the act which created it that it could take in every subject pertaining to "industry," even when industry is most broadly interpreted, it was to be expected that a large part of the report should deal with labor. There are nineteen volumes in the entire report, and at least ten of them deal directly and immediately with the subject of labor to a large extent. If there is any one subject in the investigations of the Industrial Commission, which transcended labor in interest, it is the subject of trusts and industrial combinations, and it is in part the influence which these have upon labor that is responsible for the interest in them.

The mass of material furnished in the report is so vast that it is discouraging to the busy man, who would glean from it its practical and scientific teachings, until he discovers how admirably it is all arranged, and how excellent is the review of the whole subject in the final report. Each volume has its preliminary review of its substance,