I

INTRODUCTION

DURING the past few years, the labor problem has risen steadily in relative importance in the United States, until at the present time, it may not unfairly be described as the dominant economic concern of the American people. In part this is the consequence of a temporary lull in other storm centres. The currency has been narrowly rescued from acute malignancy only to be cheerfully consigned to chronic indisposition. The tariff has passed from an economic issue to a fiscal device. The control of industrial combinations and the regulation of railroad rates are still in the outer vestibule of loose thinking and careless talking.

But much more than the lessening interest of other problems, it has, of course, been the increasing intrinsic importance of the labor question that really explains the present popular absorption in the subject. The marvellous industrial expansion of the United States in the past decade has been accompanied by a notable change in the quality of the productive factors. Labor, as an industrial agent, no less than capital, has become almost a new thing under an old name. The familiar problems of the labor world have taken on a more intense phase, and a whole array of new questions challenge attention.

Of these labor problems, trade unionism is far and away the most important. Broadly understood, American trade unionism is the American labor problem; and, in a narrow acceptation, trade-union policy and practice impinge at some point or other upon such specific social problems as immigration, child-labor, employers' liability, and methods of industrial remuneration.

Bearing in mind the absolute importance of trade unionism in American industrial life, on the one hand, and the keen popular interest in its nature and activities, on the

other hand, it is astonishing that no detailed description of American trade unionism and no adequate analysis of its operations have been forthcoming. We have had intelligent reports of particular episodes in trade-union experience. Isolated students have given faithful descriptions of tradeunion conditions in specific localities. National and state bureaus of labor have made useful compilations of tradeunion statistics. But nowhere has there been any comprehensive study of the history, structure, and functions of trade unionism as an actual part of the contemporary economic organism. Such an investigation as Sidney and Beatrice Webb have brilliantly achieved of trade unions in Great Britain finds no counterpart in the United States. In the main it has been foreigners, attracted by the novelty and variety of American labor conditions, that have given us such recent studies as we have.

In another place,1 I have suggested the explanation of this comparative neglect-not, indeed, peculiar to trade unionism but true of other important fields of economic inquiry. That explanation was, in brief, that a score of years have elapsed since the coincidence, roughly speaking, of economic investigators and economic issues, effected a renaissance of economic study in the United States-synchronized by the organization of the American Economic Association in 1885. Within that period, every important university has found it necessary to provide more or less abundant opportunities for economic instruction; increasing numbers of capable students have gathered for training in economic investigation, and economic science in the United States has come to be studied with a vigor and an activity unequalled in any European country and unsurpassed in the case of any of the natural sciences. But the method of investigation has been narrow. On the one hand, we have permitted the Comptian influence and the "extreme Historismus" of the German investigators to justify economic microscopics; and on the other hand, dismayed by the vast area, the extensive activities, and the scattered data subject to economic

"Political Economy and the Public" in North American Review, February, 1905.

inquiry, and poorly equipped both in requisite resources and opportunities, we have refrained from attempting comprehensive induction. In consequence, economic investigation in the United States, although pursued with unexampled activity, has been almost exclusively historical or institutional, on the one hand, and local or intensive on the other. Of extensive economic investigation, economic induction, in the proper sense of the term, little has been attempted and less accomplished. The historical evolution of economic institutions as revealed in more or less accessible records, the functional activity of economic organizations as displayed in limited areas-these have defined the scientific activity of the ordinary economist. Of the comprehensive study of the growth and activities of any actual part of the economic organism, we have had infrequent examples.

If the economic investigator-and, in particular, the economic investigator in the United States,-is to attain his highest scientific possibility, he must realize more fully than heretofore that there is no short-cut to economic knowledge. He must adopt a mode analogous to that employed by the physical scientist and described as extensive or experimental, rather than intensive or institutional. He must derive his subject-matter not from history alone, nor from the present experience of restricted localities; but he must observe and collate the phenomena under consideration from an area practically co-extensive with their manifestation; he must interpret each group of facts in the light of conditions prevailing in the particular place; and he must test the uniformities revealed by reference, as tentative hypotheses, to conditions in still other localities.

Moreover, it seems clear that the successful conduct of economic investigation along empirical and extensive lines must involve the use of a group of workers, instead of the individual student, as the unit of research. Until such time as the number of independent investigators has greatly multiplied or the activity of appropriate government agencies has greatly enlarged, the well-equipped department of political economy in the American university may be expected to be the prime factor in economic research. Such an economic laboratory or

seminary will include not only a directing and teaching staff and a body of students actually in residence, but affiliated workers in the field and associated beneficiaries of subventions desirous of operating from an established base. A particular body of contemporary economic phenomena will be selected for collective, rather than coöperative investigation; and specific aspects thereof will be assigned to individual workers for research in accordance with an organic plan. In regard to books and documents, the investigator must be in possession, in addition to ordinary library apparatus, of all primary documentary material relevant to his inquiry, whether it be as ephemeral as municipal reports and trade-union journals, or as unobtainable by formal request as trade agreements and corporation records. Finally, each investigator must be in command of funds sufficient to enable him to visit, and upon certain occasions, temporarily to reside in representative localities for the purpose of gathering additional evidence. Considerable aid may be expected in this direction from coöperation with governmental agencies and with endowed institutions of research. But, most of all, university authorities must recognize that "investigation funds" are as essential to scientific activity in political economy as laboratory apparatus is to chemistry and clinical provision is to medicine.

In the winter of 1902 the Economic Seminary of the Johns Hopkins University-composed of a small body of advanced students preparing for a scientific career in economic research-undertook, under the direction of the editors, an investigation of the history, activities, and influence of labor organizations in the United States, in the more extensive manner above indicated. The primary design was the development of sound method in economic inquiry; but it seemed clear that a deliberately planned, diligently prosecuted investigation of a subject of such vital importance could not be without practical as well as disciplinary results. The generosity of a friend of the University, and a grant from the Carnegie Institution, supplied the funds necessary for the inquiry.

The initial task of the Seminary was the collection of

trade-union documents constitutions, convention proceedings, journals-designed as a documentary basis of the inquiry. In 1903 appeared, under the editorship of Dr. Barnett, "A Trial Bibliography of American Trade-Union Publications," cataloguing some two thousand items, since supplemented fifty per cent., in preparation for a second edition. Of this essential mass of source material, the largest part is now contained in the Seminary's own collection, carefully arranged and catalogued and steadily increasing by systematic addition.

In addition to coöperative activity, each member of the Seminary undertook the detailed investigation and study of some one carefully selected aspect of the trade-union question. The more important of these assigned topics were: the organization of labor in a representative industry, the apprentice system, labor federations, the finances of trade unions, the minimum wage, and the beneficiary features of trade unions. The range of subjects was necessarily determined by the number and quality of the student investigators available; but it was hoped that a series of such specific inquiries would ultimately make possible a comprehensive survey of the nature and functions of labor organizations.

The ordinary procedure of each investigator was first to thoroughly acquaint himself with whatever secondary material might be available. Thereafter, attention was at once turned to the actual subject-matter of investigation. Conditions in the immediate environment, Baltimore, were first studied, after which the experiences of other typical communities were examined, until sufficient data for reasonably safe generalizations had been obtained. During the summer recess, field work was carried on in favorable localities; and the data thus collected were constantly supplemented and corrected by documentary study and personal interview.

In the conduct of his specific inquiry, each investigator examined in turn the experience of a considerable number of unions in relation to that particular aspect of trade unionism with which he was concerned. At first the simpler and more 'Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science, Series xxii, Nos. 1-2 (January-February, 1904).