eggs in one basket, so that it seems to some as yet too hazardous. Synthesis, it seems to some, should come only after more complete analysis, and combination again only after more perfect specialization has been obtained.

And when reference is made to the court, it is only fair to admit that it is an institution that for a number of years has been the subject of uninterrupted and widespread criticism. These attacks on the courts and on the administration of justice have come not only from radicals and class-conscious groups. That justice has to a great extent been "put beyond the reach of the poor" is deplored in the introduction of Hon. Elihu Root to Mr. Reginald Heber Smith's Justice and the Poor (p. x). As early as 1906 Professor Pound, now dean of the Harvard Law School, called the attention of the American Bar Association (XXIX, Part I, 395) to the general dissatisfaction with the administration of justice. In 1912 Mr. Roosevelt, and in 1924 Mr. LaFollette, were attacking the exercise by the court of the power to declare laws unconstitutional on the ground that they protected the special and selfish interests in the community, and were demanding that these powers of the court be limited; while from the year 1890 the inadequacy of the courts to deal with juvenile offenders and the gross miscarriage of justice throughout the entire administration of criminal law has engaged the attention of all concerned for the protection of life and property and above all of youthful morals.

As the result of this multiplicity and unanimity of complaint, many changes in the system as well as in the law are in process of introduction. Some of these contemplate a change in the structure of the courts; some, the development of new devices.

In the field of industrial accident and industrial disease there has taken place an almost revolutionary change in the substitution of the administrative for the judicial tribunal under the old employer's liability doctrine.

Thus a stream of criticism of the courts is constantly gathering force, and the current of sceptism of the law as administered by them increases in volume at the very time when there is likewise an increasing consciousness that from the law alone can come protection from extreme cases of departure from the general code of practice and from the common modes of thought.

These are a great many kinds of very difficult undertakings to carry on at once. If the progress seems often incredibly unendurably slow, the social worker must pray that prayer of the poet, to be filled with a "passion of patience," and again recall the words of the prophet that "he that believeth will not make haste." What the social worker is attempting to do through the new formulation of the law is what the Master did when "he set a child in the midst of them," and if the father asks, as in Galsworthy's tale, paraphrasing the words of the parable, Can a man not do what he will with his own? to point out through the new devices that he was never more than trustee holding title for the equitable owner, the true beneficiary-the community-who is now in a position to demand an accounting.

But while these public agencies are being developed and new compulsions are formulated, the social worker will recall the words of the apostle, "The law was our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ." He will not need to be reminded that processes of compulsion are abhorrent to him. The procedure he desires to follow is that of diagnosis and treatment grounded in the intelligence of the worker and on the cooperation of the client. To the extent to which an appeal must be made to the rule of law, embodying as it does the idea of force, to that extent is often revealed, as has been shown, a break in the organization of community resources. But sometimes there is also a failure in our case work. That the latter should never be condoned or overlooked because of the former is a high obligation, resting peculiarly on The Family Division of the Conference.

V. INDUSTRIAL AND ECONOMIC PROBLEMS

NEW DEVELOPMENTS IN INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS

EMPLOYEES' REPRESENTATION AND
WORKERS' INITIATIVE

Ben M. Selekman, Department of Industrial Studies,
Russell Sage Foundation, New York

The philosophy of social work has long emphasized the importance of those social processes and those methods which enable men to become through their own initiative self-reliant, useful, and happy members of the community. I need not repeat for this audience that the emphasis is on the phrase "through their own initiative." For in a last analysis social workers seek primarily not to solve the problems confronting individuals or groups with whom they work, but rather so to awaken the initiative and resources within them that they themselves will solve their own problems.

I should like, as my part of the discussion this morning, to examine the employees' representation movement from this particular vantage point of social work. For employees' representation plans, or company unions, as they are sometimes called seek to devise a method by which employees in a given establishment may participate in determining conditions of work through representatives elected from fellow-workers in the shop. I should like to ask, therefore, Does employees' representation enable wage-earners to exercise their own initiative in securing for themselves and their families those rewards which they expect from industry in return for their labor investment-namely, wholesome community conditions, high standards of safety and sanitation, reasonable hours of work, security of employment, and adequate wages?

Satisfactory answer to this question, as well as to the whole problem of workers' initiative in industry tied up with it, must of course await the results of far more experiment and research than has thus far been made. And indeed such experiment and research has become increasingly necessary. For the employees' representation movement has grown rapidly to significant proportions. Although hardly more than ten years old, over one million wage-earners, according to some estimates, are engaged in establishments operating under employees' representation plans. So many conflicting statements have been made about this movement, which has obviously come to play an important rôle in the industrial life of the nation, that the facts about its working are badly needed. Some light upon the question just raised, of workers' initiative under

employees' representation, may be thrown by the intensive studies of three specific experiments recently published by the Department of Industrial Studies of the Russell Sage Foundation. One of these deals with the operation, since 1918, of the Partnership Plan at the Dutchess Bleachery, Inc. The other two deal with the experience of the Industrial Representation Plan, the so-called Rockefeller Plan, in the coal mines and steel works of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company. Thus we have a record of the operation of employees' representation plans in three basic industries-coal, steel, and textiles.

The Partnership Plan in the Dutchess Bleachery, as its name suggests, aims to make the workers partners in the business. It turns over entirely to a board of operatives elected by the employees the administration of the company's houses, assigns to a board of managers, composed equally of stockholders' and workers' representatives, the responsibility for shop management; admits to the board of directors a representative of the operatives and of the community; provides employees with information concerning the financial conditions of the business; creates two sinking funds, one to pay part-time wages to the workers when unemployed or ill, and the other to pay dividends to stockholders during business depression; fixes dividends at the maximum rate of 6 per cent, dividing all the residual profits between stockholders and employees. The board of operatives retains a paid official-its executive secretary-to administer the functions conferred upon it by the Partnership Plan.

The aim of the Rockefeller Plan, as stated in the preamble of its latest revision, is that "of maintaining and further developing harmony and right understanding within the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company through ‘joint representation.'" Under this method of joint representation, employees elect annually "from among their own number representatives to act in their behalf." The subjects upon which these representatives are to act for the employees pertain, in the words of the plan, to their "employment, living, and working conditions, the adjustment of differences, and other matters of mutual concern and interest." The machinery of joint representation consists of four committees composed of equal numbers of employees' representatives and company officials. These committees "have to do with any matters pertaining to" first, cooperation, conciliation, and wages; second, safety and accidents; third, sanitation, health, and housing; fourth, recreation and education. In addition, joint conferences of all the employees' representatives within defined districts and an equal number of company officials are held periodically "to discuss freely matters of mutual interest and concern embracing a consideration of suggestions to promote increased efficiency and production, to improve living and working conditions, to enforce discipline, avoid friction, and to strengthen friendly and cordial relations between management and employees." Annual joint meetings are also held. Time does not permit me to describe here the other features of the plan, but I shall touch upon some of these in the discussion that follows.

The list of improvements in working conditions effected in the companies operating under these plans is impressive. At the Dutchess Bleachery, housing, recreational, and factory conditions have been improved. The coal camps of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company stand out now as model communities, with attractive homes, well-drained streets, and recreational facilities. Bathhouses have been built for the comfort of the miners. Safety work in its mines ranks among the highest in the state. Personnel relations between workmen and foremen and superintendents have been placed upon a much friendlier plane. Grievances have been voiced to management with a greater degree of freedom. Outstanding gains have been achieved at the Pueblo Steel Works. Here the employees secured the eight-hour day in the fall of 1918, five years before it was introduced by the United States Steel Corporation, the dominant producer in the industry, with which the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, a much smaller concern, competes for business.

Many other achievements of this kind could be enumerated, but this list is already impressive enough to give some indication of the possibility for progressive changes in industrial conditions through employees' representation plans. However, it must not be taken for granted that all of these improvements have been secured through the initiative of the workers. Some of them were; others were not. For instance, such an important change as the introduction of the eight-hour day in the Minnequa Steel Works was the direct result of the workers' use of the machinery provided by the Rockefeller Plan. And at the Dutchess Bleachery the management turned over to the workers entire responsibility for the supervision and maintenance of the company's houses. In the coal mines of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, on the other hand, practically all of the improvements in housing, living, and working conditions were initiated and carried out by the management. Thus at the outset three fundamental questions are raised. First, What degree of participation do employees' representation plans actually aim to give the workers? For instance, is their aim merely to improve living and working conditions, or is it primarily to afford workers a method by which they can voice their desires for and secure such improvements themselves? If it is the latter, we come to the second question: How can we train both management officials and employees in a going concern in those new processes of cooperation involved in any plan of employees' representation? Third, Can representatives, elected from the working force of an establishment and dependent upon the management both for promotion and the ultimate security of their jobs, be generally expected to handle shop grievances for fellow-employees with sufficient force and persistence? While the answer to this last question may depend in some measure upon the character of the individual representative, it must be admitted that a real problem does exist here.

It will be noted that the list of accomplishments just discussed did not