Economic essays

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Identifikator:: 1753623200

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-136107

Document type:: Monograph

Title:: Economic essays

Place of publication:: New York

Publisher:: Macmillan

Year of publication:: 1927

Scope:: viii, 368 S.; Ill., graph. Darst.

Digitisation:: 2021

Collection:: Economics Books

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Document type:: Monograph

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Title:: Eight-hour theory in the american federation of labor / Henry Raymond Mussey

Collection:: Economics Books

EIGHT-HOUR THEORY IN THE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR 235 the idea is or ever was true, the labor leaders found it extraor- dinarily useful in their business. Mr. Gompers in his autobiography explains the matter thus: “The first economic theory that came under my eyes was not calculated to make me think highly of economists. My mind intuitively rejected the iron law of wages, the immutable law of supply and demand, and similar so-called ‘natural laws.” * And again: “My method of evolving my philosophy has been intuitive.” * The “intuitive” method of thinking has the great advantage of allowing you to believe more or less what you need to believe, without being too strongly biased by either facts or logic, both of which commodities too often function only as excess baggage in the equipment of the practical organizer of men. On the side of facts and logic, the British economists who followed Ricardo, in trying to discover why wages went up, not unnaturally stumbled on capital as the controlling agent, and the wage-fund doctrine developed. In the United States, with its extraordinary natural resources, attention was no less naturally drawn to product as not only the source but the determinant of wages. Henry George and General Walker, at sword’s point on most matters, were agreed on this doctrine. American wage theory never lost this initial bent, and Professor Clark has given it practically final form in his specific productivity theory. Now Mr. Gompers and his associates just “intuitively” rejected all this body of theory, not because it was false, but because they could not use it, and because they found in the bootstrap theory, on the other hand, an idea that gave them practically unlimited scope. Perhaps, after all, it is fortunate that they did so. What is the form, then, into which the Ricardo-Steward doc- trine was cast by Mr. Gompers and his associates? Perhaps it has never been more clearly stated than in a comparatively late article by Frank K. Foster, one of the war-horses of the early Federation movement, published in the American Federationist for November, 1900, under the title, “Sidelights on the Shorter Workday Demand.” The following passages, with the emphasis of their author’s italics, are taken from this article: ' Seventy Years of Life and Labor, Vol. II, p. 1. Ibid., p. 24.

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