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Show T THE AMERICAN WAY f ' LABOR Y, 4. ' AND ctt CAPITAL Maurice R. Franks Many a labor leader, sincere or otherwise, would have us believe be-lieve that everything the American Amer-ican worker enjoys today has come to him solely as a result of the rise, of organized labor, and that each and every gain has been made ""in the face of stubborn resistance by organized organiz-ed capital. This contention is more rash than rational, and to fall for it is to get a badly distorted picture pic-ture of the actual facts. None of us can afford this in these days when the survival of our American economy depends upon up-on mutual understanding and harmony between the partners of industry the worker and his employer. Certainly, the unions have played a prominent part in elevating ele-vating the social and economic status of the worker. But to run away with the notion that the. unions have done this job singlehanded is to labor under a decidedly false impression. The standard of living of American workers has steadily increased over the years, first of all, because of the progress of American industry because of capital investment in technology, technol-ogy, plant capacity and marketing market-ing facilities. It was the development devel-opment of mass-production technique tech-nique by capitalized industry which enabled management to pay labor higher real wages. With mass production of goods came increased purchasing power, pow-er, for the worker in particular, in the form of more dollars with which to acquire lower-priced commodities. Here, then, is a highly significant signi-ficant contribution to the economic eco-nomic welfare of the working-man working-man one which enriched his home life, not as a result of militant unionism, but rather as the free result of capitalistic vision, ingenuity and enterprise. No union, we should remind ourselves, played any part in Henry Ford's development of a low-priced automobile nor was any demand of labor behind be-hind his historic move to establish es-tablish a $5 - a - day minimum wage for his workers at a time when the average wage for the industry was somewhere around $1.50 per day. As a matter of record, the vision of Ford, the capitalist, exceeded the vision of any of the labor leaders of his day. As a pioneer mass producer pro-ducer of automobiles, he saw his workers as not only so many production hands, but also as so many potential customers for his product. So when we strike off a medal med-al to pin on the breast of organized or-ganized labor for having bettered better-ed the lot of the worker, we must strike off one of equal size and brilliance to pin on the breast of its partner, capital. Lacking the benefit of mass-production mass-production machinery and technique, tech-nique, there would not be enough cars produced to supply sup-ply the members of Walter Reu-ther's Reu-ther's Automobile Workers Union Un-ion no matter how loudly Walter' Wal-ter' might shout nor how hard he might pound the table at contract-making time. Nor is it likely that Phil Murray, without with-out the facilities and know-how, would be able to. turn out enough metal for all his million mil-lion members to supply the mousetrap industry. All along the line we find labor la-bor and management combining to lighten their mutual burdens and to provide for their mutual gain. At no point is it a solo performance; always it is a case of partners at work. Capital, through the agency of management, manage-ment, provides the ingenuity, the know-how, the savvy to create labor-saving devices. Labor, La-bor, through the agency of its unions, steps in to claim a fair share of the saving for itself. That is the true picture of American industrial development, develop-ment, and it is not a picture of labor unions being solely responsible re-sponsible for the social and economic ec-onomic gains made by the workers. |