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Labor Resists

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Business Ethics from the 19th Century to Today

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Abstract

Workers struggled to improve their working environments and to get better compensation. Employers and workers sometimes resorted to illegal and unethical activities, including threats of and actual violence. Large-scale employers enlisted their political allies to tilt the balance of power in their favor. Despite opposition, the rights of workers expanded during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Although not strictly illegal, using such political influence was certainly dubious. Union workers sometimes made their gains at the expense of non-union workers. Gains in wages were more likely attributable to increasing labor productivity than to union activity.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Carl Gersuny chronicles employee pilfering in New England textile mills (1976, 144–146).

  2. 2.

    Alan Trachtenberg reported “close to 37,000 strikes, involving 7 million workers on record between 1881 and 1905—provide dramatic indices of turmoil (Trachtenberg 1982, 80).”

  3. 3.

    Coal mine operators in other states had conspired to get railroads to charge higher rates to West Virginia operators (Wheeler 1976, 88).

  4. 4.

    Mother Mary Jones came to West Virginia during one of the strikes. She allegedly exhorted miners to, “Arm yourselves, return home and kill every goddamned mine guard on the creeks, blow up the mines, and drive the damned scabs out of the valley (Lee 1969, 27).” Howard Lee got this quote from a transcribed copy of Jones’ speech retained by the secretary of the West Virginia Coal Operators Association. Given that Ms. Jones’ name is now the title of an esteemed liberal periodical, one wonders how Mother Jones readership would react to knowing that she advocated armed violence with—guns.

  5. 5.

    The safety measures were, in effect, apportioned according to the party, who could better or more conveniently make the decision. Presumably, if transactions costs were low, using a Coasian argument regarding an initial assignment of property rights (or responsibility), an efficient level of safety would be chosen, regardless of whether miners or operators made safety decisions.

  6. 6.

    At one point, Carnegie was proud that he paid his men an average of $1.40 a day compared with the local average of $1.35. In 1898 he paid $13.5 million in wages and reputedly gained $11.5 million in profits (Standiford 2005, 240).

  7. 7.

    Companies issuing scrip often did so at full value; some miners sold their scrip to independent individuals, saloons, and storekeepers. Independent individuals often paid 65 to 85 percent of the face value and then turned around and bought provisions from the company store. Coal mine owners quickly prohibited such transactions (Fishback 1986, 1022).

  8. 8.

    Ford defended his assembly line system, denying that it took skill out of work (Hall 1998, 414; Seabright 2004, 158–59). Ford was blunt in his autobiography: “Without the most rigid discipline we would have the utmost confusion … . There is not much personal contact—the men do their work and go home—a factory is not a drawing room (Ford and Crowther 1923, 111–112).”

  9. 9.

    See Fairris (1995, 498) for arbitrary foremen; Nelson (1982, 335–357); second quote Douglas (1921, 89–107).

  10. 10.

    David Roediger and Philip Foner thought the shorter workday was simply camouflage for the real goal: cutting wages (1989, 245–248; Hunnicutt 1992, 478).

  11. 11.

    Government officials’ and social activists’ belief that they know better than do employers and business owners recurs. Proponents of the minimum wage often assert that employers will benefit from raising the minimum wage; such an argument leaves unanswered the obvious question, “If it is so beneficial, why don’t employers do so voluntarily?”

  12. 12.

    Because convict labor was not voluntary, employers exploiting such labor could be seen as acting unethically, even though their actions were legal. Rebecca McLennan documented how the American judicial system gave “official recognition and implicit approval” to involuntary servitude (McLennan 2008, 109–111, see also 8). The businessmen involved showed scant regard for the humanity under their control, and their ethical behavior surely ranked among the worst examples in modern business ethics (Blackmon 2009, 96, 327, 362–364; McLennan 2008, 122). De Beers Mining Company exploited native people in the gold and diamond fields (Newbury 1987, 17–18, 23).

  13. 13.

    In a sense, the argument is that such employers are exploiting their workers for the workers’ own good.

  14. 14.

    The rising earnings of American women suggest that the father’s earnings may prove to be less important to families in the future; whether fathers will spend their days wandering aimlessly remains to be seen.

  15. 15.

    McKendrick later took to task commentators unwilling to examine the available data, admittedly a difficult endeavor. He revealed his scorn in the memorable statement: “There is a kind of social history which will always dwell lovingly on cancer of the scrotum in climbing boy chimney sweeps, or exploit the quick reaction to stories of the rampant immorality of the mill-hands, of female workers stumbling home ‘blear eyed with drink and beastliness (McKendrick 1974, 170–171).’”

  16. 16.

    This point was made by Kathryn Edin and H. Luke Shaefer: “The decision makers rarely meet the rank and file….Only employers who know their employees personally can exercise the discretion to discern whether someone like Rae [fired for missing a shift, when her transportation proved unavailable], the two-time ‘cashier of the month,’ has missed her shift because she’s shirker or is a valued employee who has hit a rough patch (Edin and Shaefer, $2.00 a Day, 165).”

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  1. Department of Economics, University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls, IA, USA

    David George Surdam

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Surdam, D.G. (2020). Labor Resists. In: Business Ethics from the 19th Century to Today. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37169-2_1

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