The cooperative movement which was, as we saw, far less continuous than trade unionism, has also shown the effects of the business cycle.  The career of distributive cooperation in America has always been intimately related to the movements of retail prices and wages.  If, in the advance of wages and prices during the ascending portion of the industrial cycle, the cost of living happened to outdistance wages by a wide margin, the wage earners sought a remedy in distributive cooperation.  They acted likewise during the descending portion of the industrial cycle, when retail prices happened to fall much less slowly than wages.

Producers’ cooperation in the United States has generally been a “hard times” remedy.  When industrial prosperity has passed its high crest and strikes have begun to fail, producers’ cooperation has often been used as a retaliatory measure to bring the employer to terms by menacing to underbid him in the market.  Also, when in the further downward course of industry the point has been reached where cuts in wages and unemployment have become quite common, producers’ cooperation has sometimes come in as an attempt to enable the wage earner to obtain both employment and high earnings bolstered through cooperative profits.

FOOTNOTES: 

[101] The struggle for control, as carried on by trade unions, centers on such matters as methods of wage determination, the employer’s right of discharge, hiring and lay-off, division of work, methods of enforcing shop discipline, introduction of machinery and division of labor, transfers of employes, promotions, the union or non-union shop, and similar subjects.

[102] The first trade societies were organized by shoemakers. (See above, 4-7.)

[103] See Chapter on “American Shoemakers,” in Labor and Administration, by John R. Commons (Macmillan, 1913).

[104] See Don D. Lescohier, The Order of the Knights of St. Crispin.

[105] See above, 114-116.

CHAPTER 13

THE IDEALISTIC FACTOR

The puzzling fact about the American labor movement is, after all, its limited objective.  As we saw before, the social order which the typical American trade unionist considers ideal is one in which organized labor and organized capital possess equal bargaining power.  The American trade unionist wants, first, an equal voice with the employer in fixing wages and, second, a big enough control over the productive processes to protect job, health, and organization.  Yet he does not appear to wish to saddle himself and fellow wage earners with the trouble of running industry without the employer.

But materialistic though this philosophy appears, it is nevertheless the product of a long development to which the spiritual contributed no less than the material.  In fact the American labor movement arrived at an opportunist trade unionism only after an endeavor spread over more than seventy years to realize a more idealistic program.