My justification for making this assertion will be recognized by every one who has had the opportunity to attend shop meetings of a newly organized trade union.  These meetings are unique as they disclose the force in a productive group, and the value of giving the individuals engaged in routine work the opportunity to pool their common experience and pass judgment on methods of work.  Whatever decisions these workers come to, none are fully realized or freely pursued under conditions which industry imposes.  But in the course of shop meeting discussions, it becomes clear to an observer that methods of work is as absorbing a topic as the relation of the work to the wage.  The routine which is the apparent result of the division of labor, becomes under discussion a matter of technical import.  The workers’ knowledge of labor saving devices and their resources for inventing new ones are as expert as is the business man’s knowledge of how labor cost can be saved.  This matter under discussion is of high interest and concern.  There is an integrity in the concern which evidently springs from experience and the suppressed interest in perfecting methods and the inter-relation of the workers in a shop.  The vitality and intelligence of these machine tenders may well inspire the agitator who addresses their meetings to curse a system which withholds full knowledge of the workshop and blocks the opportunity for eager workers to try out new schemes born of intensive experience and failure to function in the fullness of their capacity.

Industry offers opportunities for creative experience which is social in its processes as well as in its destination.  The imaginative end of production does not terminate with the possession of an article; it does not center in the product or in the skill of this or that man, but in the development of commerce and technological processes and the evolution of world acquaintanceship and understanding.  Modern machinery, the division of labor, the banking system, methods of communication, make possible real association.  But they are real and possible only as the processes are open for the common participation, understanding and judgment of those engaged in industrial enterprise; they are real and possible as the animus of industry changes from exploitation to a common and associated desire to create; they are real and possible as the individual character of industry gives way before the evolution of social effort.

We speak of interdependence in industrial enterprise as though it were some new thing.  The early interdependence had its roots in the common knowledge and use of an inherited technology, where property was common in the common use of it.  Interdependence due to modern technology has increased, and the interdependence which characterizes our own time is economic.  The tools of industry as well as the natural resources are owned, and only by application to the owner can a man live or labor.  However disastrous that ownership has been to past generations, it has bound men together in their use of what we ironically call labor saving devices; devices which have not saved labor in the interest of labor.