III.2. Employer and Worker

This tone of “equal rights”, to which social and public life in the United States is attuned, now also rules within the capitalist enterprise. Here too the employer does not — as was, and is, the rule in old Europe with its feudal traditions — confront the worker as the “master” who demands obedience. The purely businesslike standpoint in the handling of the wage contract was from the outset the ruling one. The formal “equality of position” of employer and worker did not first have to be wrested in long struggle. Just as the American woman was carried in the arms because she was rare, so the employer too, towards the worker, who was originally not at his disposal in any quantity he pleased, made a point of a courteous, obliging behaviour, which naturally found strong support in the democratic atmosphere of the country. Even today English workers are astonished at the respectful tone that employers and foremen in the United States adopt towards the worker; they are astonished at the freedom of the American worker even in his place of work, “delivered from what may be called vexatious surveillance”; they wonder that he can take a day or two’s leave, that he may go out to smoke a cigar, indeed that he smokes during work and even has a cigar vending machine in the factory at his disposal. It is also a peculiarity of the American manufacturers that while they omit to put the simplest safety appliances in their establishments, while they do not care in the least about the objectively good arrangement of the workshops (which are rather often overcrowded and so on), they are on the other hand most ready to do everything that could be felt by the worker subjectively as an amenity, that is, that they provide for “comfort”: bath-tubs, shower-baths, lockable cupboards, regulation of the temperature of the workrooms, which are cooled by ventilators in summer and warmed in winter. The English workers of the Mosely commission could not wonder enough at this arrangement in particular, which one finds fairly generally in the American factories. “You picture to yourself the reply of an English manufacturer who was asked to take such measures for the well-being of his staff”, says the iron-founder Mr. Maddison (p. 18), and all the others are “impressed by the exceptional organisation made to ensure the comfort and well-being of the staff”.

These are, to be sure, all small things, but “little gifts preserve friendship” holds here too. I shall try to show later that in no country of the world — objectively considered — is the worker so exploited by capitalism as in the United States, that in no country of the world does the worker chafe himself so bloodily in the harness of capitalism, wear himself out to death so quickly, as there: but that is not what matters when the task is to explain the feeling-contents of the proletariat. For their shaping, only what is felt by the individual as pleasure or displeasure, valued as worth or worthlessness, is of importance. And it is one of the most brilliant diplomatic feats that the American employer (just like the party politician in his way) has known how to keep the worker in good humour in spite of all actual exploitation, so that the latter has not come to the consciousness of his real situation at all. And to this, this generosity in small things has essentially contributed.

But there is yet another circumstance that has worked in the same direction, that is, has influenced the worker psychologically so that he became, not an opponent, but even a promoter of the capitalist organisation. American employers have understood masterfully how to interest the worker in the success of the enterprise, to identify his interests up to a certain point with those of capital. Not so much through profit-sharing (although this too occurs in all its varieties in the United States) as rather through a system of small measures, which fit one into another and achieve on the whole wonder-working effects. It is the first boast of all American employers (for example, again, from the people of the Mosely commission) that they do not try to cut the extra-high earnings that the worker occasionally achieves on the basis of an agreed piece-rate by lowering the unit rates (as the European employer usually does). Under this liberal practice the worker remains constantly in the fever of work and earnings, and is kept in good humour by the possibility of very high gains.

A second generally widespread custom of the American employer is to interest the worker directly in technical progress, by most readily accepting every suggestion for an improvement of the machinery and so on, and — if it is introduced and proves itself — letting the worker profit from it directly or indirectly. Thus the works into which the worker is incorporated becomes in his feeling much rather his works, in whose weal and woe he has a share. This custom of receiving “suggestions” and “complaints” from the workers and always examining them seriously is found in all branches of American industry: in blast-furnace works as in shipbuilding, in cutlery manufacture as in spinning, in the leather trade as in bookbinding, in paper-making as in the chemical or optical industry. In most factories there is a so-called “suggestion box”, a box into which the workers throw their “proposals” or “suggestions”. Most highly developed of all such arrangements is the system in the well-known model works of the Cash Register Co. at Dayton, O. Here in every department of the factory there stand locked writing-desks, and beside them is put up a board with the words “Complaints and suggestions”. Every worker is free to write his complaints about defective tools, machines or working methods, as well as proposals for improvements, together with his name, on the strip of paper that covers the surface of the desk. When this has been done he can tear off the upper strip of paper — there are two one above the other — and take it with him, while the copy beneath is drawn by means of a crank into the inside of the desk, where the strip winds itself on a roll. From time to time the written rolls are collected and the proposals examined. For noteworthy suggestions diplomas of honour and money prizes are awarded every half-year. The amount of the prizes depends on the value of the innovation; the business spends some thousands of marks on it every year. For the prize-giving all the workers, men and women — over 2,000 persons — are invited to a meeting, and the festive ceremony proceeds with music and speeches. In 1897, 4,000 “suggestions” had come in, of which 1,078 were adopted; in 1898, 2,500 more; in 1901, two thousand, of which ⅓ were introduced wholly or partly into the works.

Finally, capital seeks to entice the worker by granting him a share in its yields. The means to this is the advantageous offer of shares. The capitalists thereby kill, in some circumstances, two birds with one stone: first, they draw the worker into the stream of business activity, awaken in him the lower instincts of the striving for gain, of speculative fever, and thereby attach him to the system of production they represent; but secondly, they place their rotten shares, prevent a threatened fall in the price, or perhaps thereby influence the share market for the moment in a way that procures them an extra-good profit.

This system was applied in the grand style by the steel trust. The company first used, in 1903, 2,000,000 dollars of the surplus profit of the previous year to buy 25,000 preference shares (shares of the preferred stock). These it offered to the 168,000 employees at a price of 82.50, payable within three years. So that the workers should be induced to hold the shares, an extra dividend of 5 dollars per share and year was promised in case the shares remained longer than 5 years in the possession of the first purchaser. The offer met with general approval: 48,983 shares were acquired by employees of the company. Soon afterwards the fall in price followed (which one had probably tried to hold up or avoid by that welfare action). The preferred shares of the U.S. Steel Corporation fell to 50. A new trick: to calm the workers, but at the same time to prevent a further lowering of the price (which would have arisen if the workers had got rid of their holdings of shares), the company undertook to buy back the shares in the workers’ hands at the price of 82.50, if the workers kept the shares until — 1908! As early as December of the same year (1903) the corporation made the workers a new offer, on conditions similar to the first, only that the price of the preferred shares was fixed at 55. Again 10,248 employees accepted it, who together acquired 32,519 shares. Since the shares meanwhile rose again to 82, this time the workers had an advantage from their purchase.

What is brought about by a policy of this kind — at least temporarily — is clear: “Partners of the great enterprise, the multitude of petty shareholders are led more and more to consider economic questions from the employers’ standpoint.” “The chances of collision … will disappear … when their differences are merged in a sense of common ownership …” Above all: the worker is saturated with capitalism: “The present ambition of the higher wage-earner seems to incline more to the pecuniary rewards of his work than to the work itself. Doubtless this tendency is due in no slight degree to the fact that the wage-earner is brought into constant and immediate contact with the money-making class. He sees that the value of the industry is measured chiefly by its profits. Sometimes the profit is flaunted in his face. At all times the thing most in evidence to him is money.”