No More Learning

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of "Open Shop Committee" of the NAM, "is the natural leader of his workmen. " *- "The real and ideal union is the one between employer and employee" as a recent bulletin of the NAM has an- nounced.
The obverse of this felicitous state is held to arise the instant trade unions appear on the scene. If one traces back through the literature of the Spitzenverbdnde^ one finds the language of invec- tive heaped on trade unions and trade union-leaders so uniformly the same that all of it might well have been issued from a single headquarters. Many of the Spitzenverbdnde have originated out of a desire to organize all employers along class lines,'*^ or have shortly made this one of their principal interests. '^*
The attitude of employers in Germany and Italy under totali- tarian colors is too well known to require elaboration here. There trade unions, strikes, boycotts, and even the more familiar methods of employee retaliation have been formally outlawed. In England, France, and the United States the position is much the same, but no power has yet made such drastic action on behalf of the Spitzen- verbdnde possible. The program of the NAM, known for years by the term Parryism--after its author, David M. Parry (see p. 194, above)--was launched in 1903 and is still held as the official posi- tion; it may be taken as typical of the attitude of all the Spitzenver- bdnde,
According to Parry,
organized labor knows but one law and that is the law of physical force --the law of the Huns and Vandals, the law of the savage. All its pur- poses are accomplished either by actual force or by the threat of force. It does not place its reliance upon reason and justice, but in strikes, boy- cotts and coercion. It is, in all essential features, a mob power knowing
42 "He is the natural leader of his workmen, and is able by instruction, example and fair dealing to bring to bear constantly upon them influences for right-thinking and action and for loyalty to the common enterprise. " Proceedings of the 28th An- nual Meeting of the NAM, May, 1923.
43 As, e. g. , for all those employers' organizations with which labor problems are the primary concern such as the Norwegian Employers' Association, founded in 1900, the Swedish Employers' Federation, organized in 1902, and the Confederation of British Employers' Organizations, organized in 1919. As in Germany, Holland, Japan and a number of other countries, employer organizations were set up as parallel and cooperating bodies along with the industrial Spitzenverbdnde, which included much the same membership.
4* As with the NAM from 1903 to the present, and the Confederation G^nerale du Patronat Fran9ais after reorganization following the Matignon Agreement in 1936.
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277
no master except its own will. Its history is stained with blood and ruin. It extends its tactics of coercion and intimation over all classes, dictat- ing to the press and to the politicians and strangling independence of thought and American manhood. *^
There is no evil for which organized labor could not be held accountable by Mr. Parry. It "denies to those outside its ranks the individual right to dispose of their labor as it sees fit" (denies "free- dom of labor"), and asserts that each workman is "his own judge of the length of time he shall work" and how much he shall do on the job. It takes no account of the "varying degrees of natural apti- tude and powers of endurance" of different individuals, and places, through restrictions on output, a premium on "indolence and in- competency" and thereby reduces all labor to one "dead level. " Its "leaders are found to be agitators and demagogues, men who ap- peal to prejudice and envy, who are constantly instilling a hatred of wealth and ability, and who, in incendiary speeches, attempt to stir up men to seize by physical force that which their merit can- not obtain for them. " *(R)
This phraseology could be duplicated in the language of anti- labor organizations in every major capitalistic country in the world. The position of the NAM has not changed on the major issue, as the La Follette Committee reports on labor espionage, employer strike-breaking tactics,*^ and so forth, have shown at great length, or as may be read from reports to the National Labor Relations Board on the cases of Little Steel and Remington Rand. *^ Follow- ing the Matignon Agreement in 1936 between the COT, repre- senting the bulk of French Organized labor, and the CGPF, repre- senting organized French business, French employers not only reorganized their central association on a militant basis similar
45 Report of President David M. Parry, Proceedings of the 8th Annual Convention of the NAM, April 14-16, 1903.
46 Ibid.
47 See the various sections of Report 6, Part 6 of the La Follette Committee Reports. 48 In its Labor Relations Bulletin, July 20, 1936, the NAM referred to the "Mo-
hawk Valley Formula," by way of which Remington-Rand broke the strike at its plants as "constructive" and "a real contribution to civic dignity. " The National Labor Relations Board summary of the case found that the Formula called for "employment of strike-breaking agencies . . . use of spies, 'missionaries' and armed guards . . . attempts to turn civil authorities and business and other interests in the various cities against the union . . . intensive publicity and propaganda . . . based upon deliberate falsehoods and exaggerations," and so on.
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throughout to that of the NAM, but also established a special watchtower Committee of Foresight and Social Action (Comite de Pr^voyance et d'Action Sociale), which set as its goal the complete and final overcoming of the much feared trend towards "the dic- tatorship of the proletariat," the "crumbling of authority," *^ the establishment of worker Soviets" in the factories through the "sit- down strike" and the "occupation of factories," ^? which they pro- fessed to see threatening all French industry.
But how achieve the objective? The Committee on Resolutions of the NAM once declared ^^ that "fair dealing" between employer and employee is centered not on the existence of "organizations of labor as such," but is conditioned upon the complete abolition of "boycotts, blacklists and other illegal acts of interference with the personal liberty of employer and employee" (italics mine). To this end it affirmed the complete freedom of the employer to hire and fire at will, and of the employee to work or quit irrespective of
"membership or non-membership in any labor organizations. " Such membership was not to constitute a basis for discrimination, but neither must employers be interfered with in the "management of their business, in determining the amount and quality of their products, and in the use of any methods, or systems of pay which are just and equitable. " Mutually satisfactory wages and working conditions could only be worked out individually between em- ployer and employee, and at no time should the employer be in- timidated by threat of strikes, nor should he be required to resort to the lockout. These principles, the Association announced again in
1907 are matters not of "capital against labor, nor employers against
employees, but . . . of good citizenship against bad citizenship
. . . of Americanism and patriotism against demagogism and so-
^^
49 See, e, g. , Gignoux, op. cit. : M. Duchemin, "Sur I'Accord Matignon," Revue de Paris, Feb. 1, 1937; and various issues of La Journee Industrielle, official publication of the Confederation Gdn^rale du Patronat Francais.
50 Particularly interesting are some of the publications of the Comit^ de Pr^voy- ance et d'Action Sociale, such as the following: Les Dangers economiques et sociaux du controls de I'embauchage; L'exposition a-t-elle eti sabot^e? [by the COT]; and La Riglementation de I'embauchage et du HcenciSment en Allemagne (similar articles for the United States and Italy).
51 Proceedings of the 8th Annual Convention.
^^Proceedings of the 12th Annual Convention, Committee on Resolutions report- ing on "Industrial Peace. "
cialism. "
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279
The employers' case as stated here remains unaltered to this day. The argument rests on three closely related theses: (1) strikes, boycotts, blacklists, are or ought to be declared illegal; that is, they are blows directed not only against the employer, but also against the laws of the land (the American form of government). These are methods of intimidation which are not and cannot be sanc- tioned by law, and even the lockout employed in retaliation is a defensive weapon which employers should not be forced to utilize in a society governed by the rule of law. (2) Complete freedom of the employer can only be effected by keeping unabridged his right to hire, fire, and control the conditions and terms of employment, and complete freedom of the employee can only be maintained by keeping free access to all jobs and the terms on which employment is taken without the interference at any point by the collective will of his fellows. (3) Collective antiemployer trade-union action ema- nates from insincere labor leadership (demagogues; racketeers) whose objectives are to undermine the institutions of the country (Americanism and patriotism) on behalf of "alien" and "socialis- tic" doctrines.
This position of the National Association of Manufacturers is a precis not only for their own subsequent history, but also for the social policies of all the other Spitzenverbdnde. The language has changed from time to time and from country to country, but upon this doctrinal tripod rests the whole superstructure of antilabor policies of employer organizations throughout the world. By the same token, the social programs of the Spitzenverbdnde, both within and without totalitarian countries, are directed along three main lines: (1) render militant labor action impossible or at least severely actionable by law; (2) control the conditions and terms of the wage contract; and (3) "re-educate" and reorient the social ideology of the previously "misled" labor masses.
Space is not available for detailed review of the history of these efforts. It is noteworthy, however, that the first action taken within the Fascist and Nazi systems was the complete abolition of all trade unions. The Konoye-Matsuoka regime in Japan had by the end of
1940 practically completed a similar task. The Petain government in France moved to destroy all trade unions, and particularly the militant CGT, as the first step in its program of "collaboration"
? 28o SOCIAL POLICIES
with the triumphant Nazis. Along with abolition of trade unions, strikes, lockouts, boycotts, blacklists and all similar tools of social warfare have been declared illegal in that rump state. Much the same effect was for a period of time achieved in England as a result of the Trades Disputes Act and other legislation following the great coal strike in 1926. It seems probable on the evidence of emphatic and oft-repeated declarations by accredited spokesmen, that if either the labor-relations alter ego of the Federation of British In- dustries--the Confederation of Employers' Organizations--or the National Association of Manufacturers were given a carte blanche to write onto the statute books what they felt to be the most de- sirable legislation, the law in both England and the United States would promptly come clearly into line with the antilabor prohibi- tive ordinances of the Axis states.
Further proof than is provided by the many express statements of the two latter associations (in condemnation of the weapons of militant labor action) that such action would ensue is provided by comparison of the internal programs of the alternative or sub- stitute types of labor organization devised by capitalistic interests within and without totalitarian circles. Salvemini has referred to the Fascist "Workers Confederations" as a system of nation-wide "Company Unions. " ^^ The same may be said of the Nazi "Labor Front" (Arbeitsfront). ^^ Yet, as pointed out above, the former is entirely in line with the preexisting Catholic program of "integral syndicalism" first clearly formulated by church spokesmen in the
1 850s ^^ and popular with the great corporate interests of the Po industrial complex on the eve of the Fascist coup d'etat, while the latter is a readaptation of the underlying ideas which dominated the establishment of the "Works Committee of the Industrial Em- ployers and Employees of Germany" (Arbeitsausschuss der gewerb- lichen Arbeitgeber und Arbeitnehmer Deutschlands); the last- named group was formed during the revolutionary interlude fol-
53 Salvemini, Under the Axe of Fascism; see, particularly. Chapter VII, "Company Unions, Nazi Unions, and Fascist Unions. "
54 See Brady, The Spirit and Structure of German Fascism, Chapter IV, "Labor Must Follow Where Capital Leads. "
55 See Gide and Rist, History of Economic Doctrines, particularly the section en- titled, "Doctrines That Owe Their Inspiration to Christianity," pp. 483-517; the papal encyclicals Rerum Novarum and Quadragesimo Anno, and Moon, The Labor Problem.
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lowing the war, on the initiative of the Federation of German Employers' Associations (Vereinigung der deutschen Arbeitgeber- verbande), alter ego of the Federation of German Industries (Reichs- verband der deutschen Industrie). (R)*
Now an examination of either of these predecessor bodies, or of those which followed with the triumph of corporate principles, will show that they all had in common plans for a systematic application throughout their entire economic systems of what has long been known in the United States as "company unionism. " Neither, that is to say, the specific programs, nor the idea of expanding and fed- erating nation-wide networks of such employer-controlled labor associations is confined to countries now in the Axis block. Some- thing of the nature of Italian collateral syndicalism seems to have been envisaged by the Federation of British Industries with its "National Alliance of Employers and Employed" set up in 1920. (R)^ Since the triumph of the Tories in 1926 this rather mild attempt to adapt to peacetime conditions the principles of a but partially employer-controlled wartime Whitleyism has been kept from crys- tallizing along Labor Front lines. The primary reason for this has been internal factionalism amongst the "Confederation of Embit- tered Obstructionists"--as a friendly critic refers to the Confed- eration of Employers' Organizations--and not to any significant differences of opinion as to the desirable objectives.
The first pioneering effort to set up a nation-wide federation of company unions--equivalent to the Labor Front--was, in fact, American. In 1912, an expatriate union leader named Joseph W. Bryce presented a plan before the Annual Convention of the NAM which called for a nation-wide organization to be known as the Trades and Workers Association; this was to be made up jointly of employers and employees, organized along occupational lines in city and regional confederations, which were in turn federated into
the central association. Employers were to assume the position
56 In turn a member of the Zentralverband der deutschen Arbeitgeberverbande.
57 In the formative days of the Federation of British Industries it had been hoped by some that the Federation itself might include "not merely the representatives of capital but those of labour . . . something approaching a partnership between capital and labour in place of the armed neutrality, which is the best that can be hoped for under present circumstances. " The Whitley councils were regarded as a temporary method of coping with mounting wartime dissatisfaction of British labor over rising costs of living in face of war profiteering.
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throughout of leaders to the employee ranks. ^^ Employers and em- ployees, when joining the organization were both to sign a like obligation, "on the word of honor of a man" to promote "industrial peace . . . by organizing branch associations all over this land which shall teach, preach and practice this doctrine, not by erecting an army of strike breakers, but by creating an association of men and women who shall gain fair treatment by giving fair treatment and will not strike. " ^(R)
Bryce was warmly applauded, but interest was lukewarm. By that time the danger of unionism seemed to the members of the NAM not so imminent as it had in 1903. But this attitude of com- placency was rudely shaken a year later with the bombshell of "Bloody Ludlow. " Thereafter the Rockefeller type of "Company Union" ^^ gained great popularity. During the twenties this com- pany unionism became the Siamese twin to the NAM's Open Shop or "American Plan. " With the coming of the great depression, the program was widened out, the better to cope first with the rising labor unrest which accompanied mounting unemployment, and then successively with the pro-labor "Article 7a" of the NRA and the National Labor Relations Board. The rise of the CIO brought this phase of the antiunion drive to a rather disastrous close.
68 Proceedings of the 17th Annual Convention of the NAM, 1912.
59 The plan was "to establish branches of our Association in the various cities. Those branches may be what we term mixed branches of the various trades, or where there are sufficient numbers of any one trade they may form a branch of their own, such as a carpenters' branch, a bricklayers' branch, etc. " When this had been done in each locality where the NAM had members, "Our next move is to establish a labor bureau" to find employment for members by making special "arrangements with the various industries to supply them with efficient men, organized upon the peace principles. " These arrangements provided for preferential employment of Trades and Workers Association members. Then, "when we obtain work for our members, we say to them, 'Now it is up to you to make good. If you are an efficient loyal employee, good wages, good working conditions and steady employment will be furnished you in so far as it is possible. ' " This, said Mr. Bryce, should insure to employers "interested and peaceful employees . . . who want to remain at work without interference from agitators and bulldozers" with their "rights by continuing at work. " Ibid.
60 There are two basic American types, the "committee" type, which stems from the more benevolent "welfare capitalism" schemes and traces its origin to the Filene Cooperative Association established in 1898. The second, known as the "joint com- mittee" type, was devised for the purpose of preventing unions by direct control over substitute union organization, and made its appearance first under the auspices of Rockefeller interests following "Bloody Ludlow" in 1913. It was described by Vice- President Hayes as "pure paternalism" and "benevolent feudalism. " See Character- istics of Company Unions (U. S. Dept. of Labor, Bulletin No. 634, 1935).
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In its wake has come a threefold shift of emphasis focused on the conquest of the "workers' soul" or general social point of view. In the first place there appears a new and pronounced emphasis upon vocational education, apprenticeship training, and foremanship conferences. So far as may be read from the available records, the last of these three is more or less uniquely American, although it appears to have been elaborated as one of the principal means for "re-educating" workmen by personnel experts committed to company-union techniques. ^^ The other two, very important in the early stages of industrial evolution, have in recent years been paid a great and growing attention. They list high in the annals of all the leading Spitzenverhdnde, and may be considered merely as two phases of a single program having the dual objectives of (1) at- taching to each separate plant a compact corps of especially selected and trained workmen chosen in advance for subsequent advance- ment through the managerial ranks, and (2) attaching to the inter- ests of management, via a special ideological training supported by an appropriately graduated incentive system, the ambitious youth who would otherwise be apt to become future labor leaders.
In many places the success of this program from the employer's point of view has been rather astonishing. Especially noteworthy was the pre-Nazi system of Dinta (Deutsches Institut fiir Tech- nische Arbeitsschulung), founded in 1926 and established by the beginning of 1933 in somewhere between 350 and 500 of the largest industrial plants in Germany. ^- Its director, Arnhold, was subse- quently made director of vocational education for all Nazi Ger- many--a fact which takes on added significance when it is realized
61 E. S. Cowdrick, for example, has taken a very prominent position in the discus- sion and plans for foremanship training, and Cowdrick was for years closely asso- ciated with the company union program of the Colorado Fuel and Mine Co. Later he became administrative head of the Special Conference Committee, established in
1919 by a group of large American corporations for the purpose of holding monthly meetings on the premises of the Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey dedicated to the elaboration of a mutually satisfactory and uniform approach on corporate labor problems.
62 See Brady, The Spirit and Structure of German Fascism, pp. 161-70. "The problem," said Arnhold in 1927 {Dinta was organized in the Stahlhaus in 1926 under the sponsorship of Voegler, chairman of the big steel trust Vereinigle Stahlwerke), "is to take in hand leadership of all from earliest childhood to the oldest man, not --and I must emphasize this once more--for social purposes but from the point of view of productivity. I consider men the most important factor which industry must nourish and lead. "
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that under the principles of the "caste state" (Stdndesstaat) all edu- cation is thought to be directly or indirectly vocational. The Dinta unit has many interesting parallels in France, England and the United States, not to mention the other Axis powers. The Ford vocational schools are an outstanding American example. ^^
A second and correlative shift of emphasis looks towards the
further conquest of the worker point of view through gradual but
cumulative supersession of noncommercial over commercial incen-
tive systems. The pioneering work here in the United States was
done by the A. T. and T. in its now famous "Hawthorne Experi-
ments," wherein it was shown that after-work and social group,
interest-in-the-job, job competitions, and similar interests could
be made to yield worker output far in excess of those induced by
the more usual "commercial incentives" of reduced hours and
higher wages. ^* Those experiments have had an extraordinary in-
fluence in American personnel literature, and largely underlie the
work of the British Institute for Industrial Psychology. (R)^ They fol-
low lines very close to those promoted in Germany by a number of
large corporations before the coming of the Nazi regime. The cen-
tral idea of the Labor Front under the new regime has for its stated
objective the effort to "suppress the materialism" and "instead
divert the gaze of the workers to the spiritual values of the na-
<<<<
63 The Ford schools--as also the Ford conception of scattered and ruralized in- dustrial communities--may be taken as prototypal of these efforts in America. The reader will find the literature of personnel agencies, such as the Personnel Research Federation and the National Occupational Conference, replete with plans, programs, and propaganda for these schools. A good many of the larger American corporations have carried schooling on through to the university level, though the more or less vocational aspect tends to be minimized as one proceeds up through facilities pro- vided for office and upper managerial ranks.
64 For a description and favorable comment on the Hawthorne Experiments, see F. J. Roethlisberger and W. J. Dickson, Management and the Worker (Boston, 1934);
tion. "
Henderson, T. N. Whitehead, and Elton Mayo, "The Effects of Social Environ- ment," in Papers on the Science of Administration, ed. Luther Gulick and L. Urwick (New York, 1937); and Elton Mayo, The Human Problems of an Industrial Civiliza- tion (New York, 1933).
65 A publication of the British Institute for Industrial Psychology, written by G. H. Miles (London, 1932) is prefaced by an advertisement which states that the author "discusses the root problem of industry--how to supply adequate incentives so that the maximum energy of each worker, from the managing director to the office boy, may be aroused and directed in the best interests of the firm. " Commercial incentives throughout are played down; noncommercial incentives heavily empha- sized.
66 Robert Ley, Fuehrer of the Arbeitsfrontj in "New Forms of Community Work"
L.
J.
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Trades unions, all spokesmen for the Spitzenverbdnde agree, thrive on "materialism"--the interest drives for higher wages, shorter hours, better working conditions, job security, and the like. Employer specialists in the causes of industrial unrest have felt that if employer-controlled substitutes could be found for these labor ob- jectives it would be possible to bring the labor movement under control.
Thus has arisen the general series of company social pro- grams known by the common designation of "welfare capitalism. " They are to be found in every major capitalist country in the world, some of them dating their programs back beyond the turn of the century. (R)^ Outstanding examples are Krupp, Siemens and Halske,
I. G. Farbenindustrie and Zeiss in Germany, Imperial Chemicals in England, the Harmel works at Val-de-Bois and the various prop- erties with which Henri Fayol was associated in France, Mitsui in Japan, and Ford, General Motors, Standard Oil of New Jersey, Procter and Gamble, Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. and the A. T. and T. in the United States. ^^ These schemes run all the way from free lunches at noon to provision of recreational grounds and parks, retirement and other types of social insurance, club facili- ties, house journals and newspapers. ^^
The Italian "After-Work" (Dopolavoro) and the Nazi "Strength through Joy" (Kraft durch Freude) movements, supported by vari- ous affiliated and auxiliary services, represent a sort of generalizing and nationalizing of this type of labor neutralizing company activ- ity. Sports, hiking clubs, playing fields, and clubrooms are designed
(in English), Herausgegeben vom Reichsarbeits- und Reichswirtschaftsrat (Berlin, 1935)-
67 Notably, Krupp. A special guide book {Fiihrer durch die Essener Wohnsied- lungen der Firma Krupp, 1930, published by the Krupp Company), quoted from the biography of the elder ICrupp, written in defense of his settlements and general wel- fare program for Krupp employees inaugurated in the early 1860s, the following: "I am firmly convinced," Krupp said, "that everything I have recommended is neces- sary, and that the results will more than pay for themselves. We have much to gain thereby. Who knows but that when, after years and days, a general revolt will go
through the land, when there will be a general uprising of all laborers against their employers, but that we shall be the only ones passed by if we are able to do what is required in time? . . . The command of the establishment shall not be lost, the sympathy of the people shall not be forfeited, there shall be no strikes called. . . . In the foreground of general objectives [stands] increasing the attachment to the plant, the working place, the profession. "
68 For exhaustive data, favorable to such plans, consult particularly the several reports of the Goodyear and, the Procter and Gamble companies.
69 See various reports of the National Industrial Conference Board summarizing employer welfare plans.
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mostly to appeal to the youth. In the more fully developed pro- grams, special activities and facilities are provided likewise for the older employees, male and female, and for sweethearts, wives, moth- ers, and dependents. The coverage here is all-inclusive, and the range of interests brought into these systems of ideological regi- mentation soon becomes logically "totalitarian"--that is, it at- tempts to control both form and content of the totality of worker ideas and activities. The attitude of the big and dominating com- panies which have become interested in such programs within the various capitalistic countries is for all practical purposes uniform and highly enthusiastic. ^^
With but minor exceptions, the variety of motives underlying
these various programs from company unionism on through to the
more engaging forms of "welfare capitalism" all have as a common
denominator the objective of neutralizing militant labor organiza-
tion. In the course of time--most fully realized in the totalitarian
countries--these programs have been knit into coherent and bal-
anced systems for waging "total war" on the common ideological
front. More than that, in the hands of personnel experts, trained
in various scientific management schools, the aim of these programs
has changed from the desire to prevent antiemployer organization
to an intention to control--on behalf of determinate employer so-
cial interests as well as of employee interests--the underlying values
and thinking processes of all employees. As the Japanese have so
quaintly put the matter, extirpation of "dangerous thoughts" is
giving way to "ideological reconstruction" of "thought offend-
ers," who need to "liquidate their dangerous and contagious
^^
thoughts. "
Thus it may be said the general objective of all "harmony" pro-
grams is to transfigure the employers into the roles of instructors,
70 Particularly interesting in this connection is a book written by Dr. Rexford B. Hersey, of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, called Seele und Gefiihl des Arbeiter, Psychologic des Menschenfuhrung. Hersey, a leading figure in American scientific management circles and an advisor to the Pennsylvania Rail- road on personnel problems, was so impressed with what he saw in Germany under Reichsbahn and Labor Front auspices that he wrote this very laudatory book; Nazi leaders were so impressed with the book that a German edition was published with a foreword by Dr. Robert Ley, Leader of the Labor Front. Both Dr. Hersey and Dr. Ley, apparently, see quite eye to eye.
71 "Japan to Keep Thought Offenders Locked up so Duty of Conversion Can Be Carried Out," Otto D. Tolischus, New York Times, May i6, 1941.
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guides, and "leaders" of their men. Conversely, labor is to look to the employers for leadership and guidance--literally, to "entrust" the employer with their individual and collective welfare while conforming their innermost thoughts with the requirements of his ideas and the configuration of his interests. The accepted large- scale employer version of "harmony" in labor relations, in other words, could lead only to "the servile state. "
THE CONTENT OF "hARMONY" IN PUBLIC RELATIONS
"By following the dictates of their own interests landowners and farmers become, in the natural order of things, the best trustees and guardians for the public. " Thus spoke the official representa- tives of England's pre- and early industrial Squirearchy. ^^ g^t in order to find the precise equivalent for contemporary times, one has only to page through the voluminous literature of official busi- ness propaganda in any major capitalist country. Almost without exception the big businessman is coming to think of himself as the person who guides, "educates," and "leads" the general public on behalf of the common or "community" good, with the result, that although he is typically the possessor of vast wealth and prepotent political and social authority, spokesmen for his interests yet seek to remold the businessman in the public eye as the least selfish of all. ^^ In this redaction, not profits but "service" becomes his lead- ing aim; he, and all too often he alone, thinks of the sacrifices of the public when strikes occur and of the benefactions that flow to the public when "progress" under his benign guidance takes another momentous step forward.
American readers are now, thanks to the labors of public- relations counselors over the last decade or so, thoroughly familiar with this picture of the domestic business tycoon. They are apt, however, to misunderstand a like picture of businessmen abroad, where social backgrounds are quite different from those at home. Broadly speaking the importance of public relations--^whose pri-
72 See J. L. and Barbara Hammond, The Town Labourer, iy6o-i8^2 (London, 1917).
73 "Indeed, the very essence of business success lies in the degree to which the employer, in competition with others, can benefit both his employees and his custom- ers. . . . The employer . . . manifests daily a high order of unselfishness. " Link, TNEC Monograph No. 11, pp. 80, 81.
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SOCIAL POLICIES
mary purpose is to paint just such a picture--decreases as one moves away from countries with long and deep-seated liberal, dem- ocratic, and parliamentary institutions. In those countries, such as Japan, Italy, and Germany, where forces behind the transition from feudal and despotic authorities were either but short lived or unable, for one reason or another, to prevail for long against a more tenacious past, public-relations activity as we know it is al- most nonexistent. The benevolent or "patronal" position of the businessman is there largely taken care of by the surviving eti- quettes and the formal compulsion of invidious social status, and is quickly reinforced in the event of emergency by official govern- ment propaganda.
Even here there is a great difference between a country such as Germany, where liberal education and some popular familiarity with democratic institutions had taken more than superficial root, and countries like Italy and Japan where the reverse was the case. For these reasons National Socialist propaganda was necessarily, and by all means, better organized, more distinctly employer con- scious, more vociferous, and more versatile than the propaganda of either Italy or Japan. And at the other end of the scale, public- relations propaganda of the corporate growth in the United States --where social station, the insignia of rank and power, and day-to- day contacts with the claims of squirearchy, royalty and empire are much less striking or almost nonexistent--is more highly colored and ambidextrous than it has ever become even in England.
In countries within the totalitarian bloc all this is commonly, and as a matter of course, taken for granted. So, likewise, is the spe- cific purpose and the general content of the official propaganda. The specific purpose is always and universally that of consolidating the economic and political power of the upper social layers. And the content is designed to inculcate public loyalty to the same social layers whenever their authority or rights of leadership are seriously questioned. Just what symbolism it uses, and by what methods or routes popular acceptance of the dictates of the upper social layers is achieved, will depend upon times, circumstances, and historical antecedents. But the purpose is always the same, and the central
theme is always that felicitous relation between the rulers and the
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ruled, between master and man which is said to represent "social harmony. "
Most public relations as we know it in America, to make a long story short, not only strives to "sell the public" on the "enterprise system," but also makes its appeal primarily to the symbolism and myths of "social harmony" and "class collaboration," as these have been transmuted to fit into the ideological framework of the "mid- dle class" outlook.
That "social harmony," with its implied--^when not directly in- sisted upon--blind acceptance of the "leadership" of compactly or- ganized business, is the object of American public relations is so well known that it no longer requires proof. The series of adver- tisements by the NAM captioned "Prosperity Dwells Where Har- mony Reigns," is typical of the central strain running through all big-business controlled propaganda here and abroad. In a society where the burgherdom has played such an important role through- out its history as it has in the United States, this really means "mid- dle class relations. "
That the central appeal in American public-relations literature is directed largely, if not exclusively, to the middle class can easily be demonstrated. Aside from early sporadic efforts, the first clear appeal made in peacetimes for public support of the business sys- tem as such came during the postwar years, when middle-class "unions" of one sort or another were organized in the various formerly belligerent countries as an offset to resurgence of popular demands and threatened civil strife. In one form or another they were established by militant business interests in the United States, England, France, Italy and Germany. ^* With the return to "pros-
74 In England the Middle Classes Union, organized in 1919 to defend the "people with the middle interests" claimed that it was able to destroy successively a railroad strike, a coal strike, and a dock strike. In France a "confederation of Intellectual Workers" was formed about the same time. It claimed 120,000 members in 1921 dedicated to the position that demands of intellectuals "had nothing in common with those of the manual laborers. " New York Times, May 22, 1921. In Italy "a number of organizations comparable to what may be called a vast middle-class union" were "formed throughout the various cities and towns" during 1920 which brought to- gether "the gentlemen of assured income" in forces sufficiently powerful to "break the back" of a strike of postal clerks and railroad employees. New York Times, May 23, 1920. In Germany a similar union made up primarily of professional people had doctors and hospital help who refused during the period of the Spartacist revolts
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perity," and the subsidence of popular discontent, middle-class unions everywhere went on the rocks.
But with the beginning of the great depression of the early thir- ties, the leading business concerns made new and much more effec- tive efforts to mobilize sentiments along these lines. By this time, however, a number of factors conspired to alter greatly the type of appeal within the United States. The factors, outlined in this study, include the growth in the relative importance of the Spitzenver- bdnde and the dominant position of the giant corporations within these newer networks, together with an increasing concentration of control over the media for the dissemination of information on the one hand, and the critical character of American relations with countries which had formally gone over to a totalitarian basis on the other. The change in appeal was twofold. One emphasis led to the organization of various types of semi- or openly vigilante Citi-
zens' Committees and Citizens' Forums. The other led to the rise of public-relations counselors, frequently in connection with or- ganized advertising agencies, but everywhere openly and frankly employing the techniques and the approach of high-pressure ad- vertising. Fusion of these two in the middle thirties, with adver- tising steadily gaining the guiding power, had led by the latter part of the decade to the swift articulation of an organized nation-wide business propaganda for the "sale of ideas" to the American people dealing with promotion of the values and merits of "the enterprise system. "
Just what this means can be seen when it is realized that ad- vertising in America, contrary to the common impression, had come by the early thirties to direct its appeals not to the broad masses but primarily to the middle-income layers. The expression long employed in these circles to describe the shift of the basis of the
to serve "sick Proletarians" in a "counter strike," with the result that these same "sick proletarians could thenceforth obtain neither drugs nor medical attention, while proletarian patients were left unattended in their beds. " The result was a breaking of the strike. Lothrop Stoddard, "The Common People's Union," World's Work XXXIX (Nov. , 1919), No. 1, pp. 102-4. A"nd in 1920, on the suggestion of Chauncey Depew of the New York Central Railroad, a People's Union was estab- lished with headquarters at the New York Press Club. It announced in its first official statement that "The breath of our life is public opinion. This movement is answer to a demand by the country's press for protection of the organized public from the terrible consequences of general strikes. " New York Times, July 22, 1920. See also, Corbin, The Return of the Middle Class.
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appeal from mass markets to the middle class has been, "the market
is a diamond. " The phrase means simply that, when incomes are
aggregated by layers horizontally across the typical income pyra-
mid, purchasing power by income layers takes on the shape of a
diamond, not a triangle. Advertising copy is then written to a mass
market, rated in terms of purchasing power, across the center of a
diamond and not the base of a pyramid. Sales above or below what-
ever may be determined as the two limiting bands of profitable
appeal are then regarded as of the order of "windfall gains. " Only
to the income territory within the two bands, however, does "it pay
"^^ to advertise. "
The market for every commodity has been shown to have some variation on the general diamond shape, including even the cheap- est and most widely sold foodstuffs. Likewise the market for con- sumer goods as a whole shows the diamond pattern. But it is inter- esting to note that the companies which advertise, the agencies which write the advertising copy, and the media through which advertising appeals are made are not only typically large-scale, ex- clusive, and closely controlled by the upper social strata, whose in- comes are above the upper band, but also that the lower band, de- pending upon the commodity, excludes from between 20 and 60 percent or more of the entire population of the United States. This only means, of course, that the upper social layers purchase but small quantities of mass produced goods and services from which they draw their incomes, and that the lower income layers have in- sufficient purchasing power to be worth the cost of the appeal.
Consequently, when militant interests within the advertising in- dustry begin to take over the "sale of ideas," its copy is written primarily as appeal to the middle-income layers. Such a fusion of advertising and public relations not only directs attention to the values, institutions, and symbolisms of the middle layers, but also does so at a time when the income, occupation, and social security status of these same ranks is becoming peculiarly and increasingly unstable. The "average citizen," for example, is gradually losing his property stakes. The little businessman is in a more precarious position than at any time since the very beginning of the capitalis-
ts See W. H. Mullen, "Diamond as Market Pattern," Printers' Ink, Feb. 6, 1936, pp. 66-70.
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tic system. The farmer-operator is in the process of being trans- ferred from an independent owner to a dependent tenant. It is be- coming more expensive to acquire education for, and proficiency in, the learned professions, with the result that the professions are becoming more exclusive and opportunities for jobs more re- stricted. A large and increasing range of skilled crafts and white- collar workers are being proletarized. And so on, ad infinitum. Yet the very multiplicity of variables in the picture, the varied social antecedents of these ranks, and the general confusion wrought by the swiftness of some of the changes, when coupled to the momen- tous social and political issues at stake, makes these people while in the very process of being declassed still peculiarly susceptible to a "middle class" appeal directed by the upper social stratum.
The content of the appeal made to these ranks by such adver- tising is not only geared to "middle class" ideologies, but also, so to speak, to its modes of speech and manners of thought. Historically the "middle classes" took root as rising trading, commercial, and industrial classes, deeply imbued with what Sombart has called the ideologies of "holy economy" as practiced by an Alberti, a Jacob Fugger or such a shrewd and calculating Yankee Bonhomme as Benjamin Franklin. The characteristic gospel of Franklin's "get ahead," altered and transmuted by the evolving techniques of
"high' pressure," has led directly to the ripened techniques of much contemporary advertising.
These can be said to center around such generally accepted, if not almost hallowed ideas as caeterus paribus, "all the traffic will bear," "repetition is reputation," and "truth is believability. " When these techniques and ideas are focused on the "sale of ideas," the net result may be summarized as forceful persuasion, via cal- culating doctrinal exegesis, of those potentially convertible social layers who are most apt to be won over to the rules of status at the lowest per capita cost, by articulate and ideologically ambidextrous spokesmen for those who have a special vested interest in the main-
tenance of the status quo. And the content of this propaganda is the notion of "social harmony. "
It would be extremely interesting to compare the forms, ideas, appeals, and symbolisms employed by this American propaganda with those being evolved abroad--particularly within the totali-
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293
tarian countries. The American techniques are, of course, charac- teristically of native vintage, yet the care of the central "harmony" argument on the one hand, and the cavalier disregard of the usual canons of scientific truth on the other, amount to much the same thing both in this country and abroad. When such a blending is fully centralized and carefully rationalized, the logical result can only be a "ministry of propaganda" directed towards the defense and maintenance of whatever slowly consolidating hierarchy of policy-making power its characteristic ideology was devised to promote.
It is, then, perhaps unnecessary to remark that public relations in America are thus increasingly designed as means for coordinat- ing (1) labor or "industrial" relations activity, (2) advertising or "consumer relations," (3) small business or "trade relations," and (4) farmer or "agricultural relations. " Which is to say that while public relations directs its programs primarily at the conquest of the "soul" of the middle classes, its officers are attempting to make this appeal the center around which to group all other propaganda efforts directed to the coordination of all groups and interests to the evolving ideologies of status.
And from all our historical evidence it is entirely obvious that, in a regime of benevolent status, "social harmony" calls for the "lead- ership" of the "trustee" in all things and with respect to all people. Otherwise it becomes unalloyed despotism.
But under neither circumstance, of course, is the result recon- cilable with democratic institutions--except in the propaganda.
? Chapter IX
POLITICAL POLICIES: BUREAUCRACY, HIERARCHY, TOTALITARIANISM
c4npiHE ANIMOSITY o? German capitalism against the state," wrote JL Professor Bonn on the eve of the Nazi coup d'etat, "does not rest upon fundamental theoretical foundations, but upon purely opportunistic considerations. It is opposed to the state when state control is in the hands of a political majority whose permanent good will it doubts. German capitalism, which would like to be freed of the power of the state, and which seeks to push back state intervention as far as possible, is constructed exclusively upon the most thorough intervention of the state. " ^ A correct generalization this, but one which might have been as readily applied to monopo- listically-oriented business in any other major or minor capitalistic country. For the confessed objectives of German business which filled Bonn with gloomy foreboding--the drive for a well-nigh all- inclusive system of tariff protection, ever more elaborate subsidies and subventions, more and more governmental aid in the control over competition--^were at that same time coming swiftly to domi-
nate the programs of organized business all over the world. German levels of organization were at that time doubtless some- what higher than those obtaining abroad, the clarity of her business leaders less confused by serious factional cross-currents, and the attitude of the government in general was far more lenient. But the patterns of thought, the modes of procedure, the forms of organiza- tion, and the principles at stake were shared by companion inter- ests in England, France, the United States and elsewhere. There was nothing in principle to distinguish the programs of the Reichs- verband der deutschen Industrie from that of the National Asso-
1 M. J. Bonn, Das Schicksal des deutschen Kapitalismus, (1931), pp. 95-96, 98.
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295
elation of Manufacturers in the United States or the Confederation Generale de la Production Fran^aise, nor of the immense and rap- idly proliferating meshwork of trade-associations, cartels, syndi- cates, chambers, and business institutes brought together in these general purpose peak associations, or Spitzenverbdnde. Nor, least of all, was there anything to distinguish the trend of economic thinking, social outlook, and political interests of the huge com- binations which had come increasingly to dominate the inner coun- cils of their respective central associations in the capitalistic coun- tries.
Since the time Bonn wrote his study, this dual process of expand- ing business organization and business-government interpenetra- tion has been greatly speeded up. Within three major capitalistic countries the fusion between private enterprise and political au- thority has been extended far enough for the habit of regarding politics and economics as but two facets of a single thing to become the rule and not the exception. Fascist Italy has greatly expanded the power and influence of the "Corporate System. " Germany has become National Socialist, and the whole of her elaborate economic machinery has been given some degree of official political status. Japan has followed suit, and from latest reports France under the occupation is treading the same path. NRA within the United States pointed in the same general direction, and the more recent developments of the National Defense program appear to be pick- ing up where that ill-fated experiment left off. British war controls, as the London Economist has pointed out in a series of caustic articles, have vested in private hands political authorities which sanctify de jure what was rapidly becoming de facto a ''feudalistic system of cartel control. "
Now, in appraising the significance of this morganatic alliance of private economic power and government it is important to re- member, that the former derives from a system of monopoly, or of interlocking monopoly-minded groups, and that the institutional umbilicus of this monopoly-orientation feeds upon the sanctions of private property. It is, of course, a truism that even in its ger- minal form private property is far more than a mere economic cate- gory; that it is equally a "political" institution. Through owner- ship of productive means, the individual is, under capitalism.
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vested with a bundle of definitive rights and prerogatives. Under these sanctions he is granted narrowly defined but inherently ex- clusive power to manipulate people in an environment of rigor- ously interdependent human relations. Whether, as Spencer once wrote in a scorching passage, "the original deeds were written with the sword," it is nevertheless true that with and through such pos- sessions one can coerce, bend others to one's will, withhold, re- strain, settle the fate and alter the fortunes of growing numbers of non-owners without, and increasingly against, their consent. The natural frame of reference of ownership is, and has been from the beginning, as clearly political as economic, as obviously "Machia- vellian" as "Ricardian. "
Fee simple is related to private monopoly as youth is to age, as acorn to oak. It is the minuscular shape, the germinal form, the archetypal pattern for the proliferating giants which have sprung from its institutional loins. If private ownership of the means of production prevails throughout an economic system and is largely unimpaired by hostile countervailing forces, then, sooner or later monopoly in all its manifold expressions must appear on the scene. For property is power, and collusion is as "natural" as competi- tion--a fact which the great Adam Smith was quick to recognize. ^ Because this is true, growth of such possessions expresses power cumulatively; left to itself this power is additive, unidirectional, without internal restraints and external limits. Its higher economic form of expression is monopoly, and monopoly prerogatives are to power as fulcrum is to lever.
2 The passages are well known: "Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform combination, not to raise the wages of labour above their actual rate. To violate this combination is everywhere a most unpopular ac- tion [today it would be known as an "unfair trade practice"! ], and a sort of reproach to a master among his neighbors and equals. We seldom, indeed, hear of this com- bination because it is the usual, and one may say, the natural state of things which nobody ever hears of. " Again, "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty and justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such as- semblies; much less to render them necessary.