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Labor's Part in War and Reconstruction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Marshall E. Dimock
Marshall E. Dimock
Affiliation:
U. S. Department of Justice
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Extract

Nothing is of greater importance to national defense than the morale of those who do the actual work, the men who pump the petroleum, roll the steel, build the ships and planes. An ounce more of spirit along the assembly line is worth more than a correspondingly higher percentage of armaments in a clash of troops. This is because modern wars are won by industrial strength, a fact that we are almost tired of hearing repeated, but the truth of which we are observing with every passing month of the present war.

War industries require raw materials, trained leadership, and sufficient funds to support the costly effort. A nation needs all of these. But all depend for their success upon the efficiency and ardor of designers, foundrymen, and machinists. Do they put their minds and backs and hearts into their work? Or do they merely go through the motions?

Organized labor may be fitted into a war economy in one of several ways. The workers can be virtually enslaved, as in Poland, and forced to labor with armed sentries standing over them. This method has never proved very efficient. Another way, which Hitler and Mussolini are using, is to appeal to the emotions of patriotism, to work men into a frenzy which must then be sustained.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 35 , Issue 2 , April 1941 , pp. 217 - 231
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1941

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References

1 Greenwood, Arthur, Why We Fight; Labour's Case (London, 1940), p. 139.Google Scholar

2 I do not deal with Labor's rôle in the House of Commons during the early months of the war. As W. Ivor Jennings has said, it was one of an “electoral truce,” not a party truce. Furthermore, it was a period of unequal equilibrium, even in Parliament, where labor feeling was not so strong as in industry itself. See Jennings' article, “The Formation of Great Britain's Truly National Government,” in this Review, Aug., 1940, pp. 728–736.

3 Time, June 17, 1940.

4 Ibid., Oct. 21, 1940.

5 New Republic, June 10, 1940.

6 Cf. Arthur Greenwood, op. cit.; also Morrison, Herbert, Socialization and Transport (London, 1933)Google Scholar; Britain's Industrial Future (London: British Labour Party, 1928); Laski, Harold J., Where Do We Go from Here; A Proclamation of British Democracy (New York, 1940)Google Scholar; Attlee, Clement R., War Comes to Britain (London, 1940)Google Scholar; Labour's Peace Aims (London: British Labour Party, 1940); SirCripps, Stafford, Democracy Up to Date (New York, 1940).Google Scholar

7 Arthur Greenwood, p. 191.

8 Ibid., p. 191.

9 Ibid., p. 191 ff.

10 Ibid., p. 200.

11 See Dimock, Marshall E., British Public Utilities and National Development (London, 1933)Google Scholar; Morrison, Herbert, Socialization and Transport (London, 1933)Google Scholar; Gordon, Lincoln, The Public Corporation in Great Britain (London, 1938)Google Scholar; Thurston, John, Government Proprietary Corporations (Cambridge, Mass., 1937)Google Scholar; O'Brien, Terence, British Experiments in Public Ownership and Control (London, 1937).Google Scholar

12 Arthur Greenwood, op. cit., p. 202.

13 Arthur Greenwood, op. cit., p. 216.

14 Ibid., p. 217.

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