Chapter 9

stimulating this looking in on a group of University men has been. It in itself is worth the trip. I feel sure of my field of work; that I am not going off in unfruitful directions; that I am keeping up with the wagon. I am now set on finishing my book right away--want it out within a year from December." From Chicago he wrote: "Am here with the reek of the stockyards in my nose, and just four blocks from them. Here lived, in this house, Upton Sinclair when he wrote 'The Jungle.'" And Mary McDowell, at the University Settlement where he was staying, told a friend of ours since Carl's death about how he came to the table that first night and no one paid much attention to him--just some young Westerner nosing about. But by the end of the meal he had the whole group leaning elbows on the table, listening to everything he had to say; and she added, "Every one of us loved him from then on."

He wrote, after visiting Swift's plant, of "seeing illustrations for all the lectures on technique I have given, and Gee! it felt good. [I could not quote him honestly and leave out his "gees"] to actually look at things being done the way one has orated about 'em being done. The thing for me to do here is to see, and see the things I'm going to write into my thesis. I want to spend a week, if I can, digging into the steel industry. With my fine information about the ore [he had just acquired that], I am anxious to fill out my knowledge of the operation of smelting and making steel. Then I can orate industrial dope." Later: "This morning I called on the Vice-President of the Illinois Steel Company, on the Treasurer of Armour & Co., and lunched with Mr. Crane of Crane Co.--Ahem!"

The time we had when it came to the actual printing of the thesis! It had to be finished by a certain day, in order to make a certain steamer, to reach Heidelberg when promised. I got in a corner of a printing-office and read proof just as fast as it came off the press, while Carl worked at home, under you can guess what pressure, to complete his manuscript--tearing down with new batches for me to get in shape for the type-setter, and then racing home to do more writing. We finished the thesis about one o'clock one morning, proof-reading and all; and the next day--or that same day, later--war was declared. Which meant just this--that the University of Heidelberg sent word that it would not be safe for Carl to send over his thesis,--there were about three or four hundred copies to go, according to German University regulations,--until the situation had quieted down somewhat. The result was that those three Or four hundred copies lay stacked up in the printing-office for three or four years, until at last Carl decided it was not a very good thesis anyway, and he didn't want any one to see it, and he would write another brand-new one when peace was declared and it could get safely to its destination. So he told the printer-man to do away with the whole batch. This meant that we were out about a hundred and fifty dollars, oh, luckless thought!--a small fortune to the young Parkers. So though in a way the thesis as it stands was not meant for publication, I shall risk quoting from Part One, "The Problem," so that at least his general approach can be gathered. Remember, the title was "The Labor Policy of the American Trust."

"When the most astute critic of American labor conditions has said, 'While immigration continues in great volume, class lines will be forming and reforming, weak and instable. To prohibit or greatly restrict immigration would bring forth class conflict within a generation,' what does it mean?

"President Woodrow Wilson in a statement of his fundamental beliefs has said: 'Why are we in the presence, why are we at the threshold, of a revolution? . . . Don't you know that some man with eloquent tongue, without conscience, who did not care for the nation, could put this whole country into a flame? Don't you know that this country, from one end to the other, believes that something is wrong? What an opportunity it would be for some man without conscience to spring up and say: "This is the way; follow me"--and lead in paths of destruction!' What does it mean?

"The problem of the social unrest must seek for its source in all three classes of society! Two classes are employer and employee, the third is the great middle class, looking on. What is the relationship between the dominating employing figure in American industrial life and the men who work?

"A nation-wide antagonism to trade-unions, to the idea of collective bargaining between men and employer, cannot spring from a temperamental aversion of a mere individual, however powerful, be he Carnegie, Parry, or Post, or from the common opinion in a group such as the so-called Beef Trust, or the directorate of the United States Steel Corporation. Such a hostility, characterizing as it does one of the vitally important relationships in industrial production, must seek its reason-to-be in economic causes. Profits, market, financing, are placed in certain jeopardy by such a labor policy, and this risk is not continued, generation after generation, as a casual indulgence in temper. Deep below the strong charges against the unions of narrow self-interest and un-American limitation of output, dressed by the Citizens' Alliance in the language of the Declaration of Independence, lies a quiet economic reason for the hostility. Just as slavery was about to go because it did not pay, and America stopped building a merchant marine because it was cheaper to hire England to transport American goods, so the American Trust, as soon as it had power, abolished the American trade-union because it found it costly. What then are these economic causes which account for the hostility?

"What did the union stand in the way of? What conditions did the trust desire to establish with which the union would interfere? Or did a labor condition arise which allowed the employer to wreck the union with such ease, that he turned aside for a moment to do it, to commit an act desirable only if its performance cost little danger or money?

"The answer can be found only after an analysis of certain factors in industrial production. These are three:--

"(_a_) The control of industrial production. Not only, in whose hands has industrial capitalism for the moment fallen, but in what direction does the evolution of control tend?

"(_b_) The technique of industrial production. Technique, at times, instead of being a servant, determines by its own characteristics the character of the labor and the geographical location of the industry, and even destroys the danger of competition, if the machinery demanded by it asks for a bigger capital investment than a raiding competitor will risk.

"(_c_) The labor market. The labor market can be stationary as in England, can diminish as in Ireland, or increase as in New England.

"If the character of these three factors be studied, trust hostility to American labor-unions can be explained in terms of economic measure. One national characteristic, however, must be taken for granted. That is the commercialized business morality which guides American economic life. The responsibility for the moral or social effect of an act is so rarely a consideration in a decision, that it can be here neglected without error. It is not a factor."

* * * * *

At the close of his investigation, he took his first vacation in five years--a canoe-trip up the Brulé with Hal Bradley. That was one of our dreams that could never come true--a canoe-trip together. We almost bought the canoe at the Exposition--we looked holes through the one we wanted. Our trip was planned to the remotest detail. We never did come into our own in the matter of our vacations, although no two people could have more fun in the woods than we. But the combination of small children and no money and new babies and work--We figured that in three more years we could be sure of at least one wonderful trip a year. Anyway, we had the joy of our plannings.