Creative Impulse in Industry: A Proposition for EducatorsMarot, Helen
Science
Creative Impulse in Industry: A Proposition for Educators
Marot, Helen
Business and education -- United States; Technical education -- United States; Working class -- Education -- United States
Such organization as the movement in England seems to be evolving, the
syndicalists have contended for as they opposed the German idea of
state socialism. But the syndicalists in their propaganda did not
_develop_ the idea of industry as an adventure in creative enterprise.
Instead they emphasized, as did the political socialists and the trade
unionists, the importance of protecting the workers' share in the
possession of wealth. They made the world understand that business
administration of industry exploited labor, but they did not bring out
that both capital and labor, so far as it was possible for each to
do, exploited wealth. That was not the vision of industry which they
carried from their shops to their meetings or indeed to their homes.
Their failure at exploitation was too obvious.
An interesting illustration of what would happen in the ranks of
the syndicalists if the business idea of labor's intellectual and
emotional incapacity for functioning, gave way before a community's
confidence in the capacity of labor--we have in the case of the
migratory workers in the harvesting of our western crops. The
harvesters who follow the crops with the seasons from the southern to
the northern borders of the United States and into Canada are members
of the most uncompromisingly militant organization of syndicalists,
The Industrial Workers of the World. On an average it takes ten years
for these harvesters to become skilled workers and these men, members
of this condemned organization, are the most highly skilled harvesters
in the country. On account of their revolutionary doctrines and their
combined determination to reap rewards as well as crops, they are
considered and treated like outlaws, and outlaws of the established
order they are in spirit. When the owners of the farms of North Dakota
realized that their own returns on the harvests were diverted in the
marketing of their grain, they combined for protection against the
grain exchanges and the elevator trusts. While developing their
movement they discovered that the natural alliance for their
organization to make was with the men who were involved with them
in the production of grain. And as the farmers have accepted the
harvesters as partners they have formed in effect a coördinated
producing combination. Without finally settling the problem of
agriculture, they have strengthened the production group and
eliminated strife at the most vital point.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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