New-York tribune., 1902-01-22
AMERICAN CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY.


The influence of trades unionism in bringing
about the unsatisfactory condition OF some OF
the most important British industries has been
receiving renewed attention In England That
the state Of affairs is bad, and that the policy
Of the unions has long been adverse to an
enlightened view Of sound economic require
ments, is well known. 1t is one OF shortsighted
selfshness, and one that can have only a Grip
pling effect on the national productiveness and
hence of the national prosperity. British work
men have been trained to believe that their
interests are best subserved by using the power
OF their unions TO limit production and to raise
wages, while reducing the return given for
wages. It is a perfectly simple proposition
that the great power of the unions has been
exerted to maintain, but 1T looks no further than
the weekly return to the workmen, and quite
fails to take into account the inevitable effect
upon the larger trend of economic forces with
which the interests Of the workmen, no less
than those OF the employers are bound up
Doubtless the idea fills the mind of every work
man that he is compelling a fairer distribution
of the products jointly of his labor and of his
employers capital He does not see that he is
reducing the national profit, the national pro-
Guctiveness, from which his own reward no less
than his employers, Is derived, and that he is
crippling his own country by contracting IN
stead Of expanding It's industrial power and it's
ability to meet the competition that is more and
more becoming international in it's scope
"The London Times" has recently taken occa-
sion to point out the fact that responsibility for
the prevailing attitude of the British trades
unions rests heavily upon the employers of
labor. During the last century the trend of
sentiment of the labor unions has gone on in
this mistaken direction hand in hand with their
enormous growth In power, unheeded by those
who ought to have watched it most jealously
They have been Indifferent and disunited; they
have failed to understand the inevitable opera
ton Of a tendency that working before
their eyes. They have abdicated their functions
as captains of industry in broad sense, and
concerned themselves only with fighting details
point by point as they came up to embarrass
them. The interesting point about 1.-THE Times's"
structures upon British employers Is its declara-
tion as TO where they must look for guidance
and suggestion for the way out of their difficult
ties. Not only in the treatment of the men
they employ, but In the management of their
business, in appreciation of changing conditions
and in openness to new ideas they must look to
America.
The relations between capital and labor are
in much more enlightened state here than in
England. The workingmen themselves take a
truer economic view of the forces they are
themselves engaged in welding. Restriction of
output finds no large number OF friends among
American laborers. Its falseness as an eco
nomc principle has always been understood by
a class of men who are intelligent and Informed
enough to perceive that the more they produced
the more they would get The American work
man, being human, may not welcome the intro
duction of machinery that Will enable one man
to do what half dozen had done before but
he recognizes 1t as inevitable, and be acquiesces.
TO his own ultimate benefit and the benefit of
the community. He recognizes that minimum
wage must be coupled with minimum produc-
ton, and that II he cannot offer the latter he