Page:Robert W. Dunn - American Company Unions.djvu/12



The growth of company unions dates from about 1917, not more than a dozen plans of any consequence having existed before America entered the war. Among the more important of these earlier plans were those of the Davis Coal & Coke Co., the White Motor Co., the Printz-Biederman Co., the Nunn, Bush and Weldon Shoe Co., Wm. Demuth & Co., the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, and several plans sold to company executives by the magnetic, go-getter, "industrial evangelist," John Leitch, author of Man to Man. Company-guided "shop committees," for special purposes, had of course been known before this in American industry, and had been used by the shrewder employers in settling grievances without the intervention of a labor union. But the plans above mentioned were among the first permanent committee systems adopted in this country.

During 1918 and 1919 some one hundred firms adopted joint committee arrangements upon the suggestion or under the pressure of the National War Labor Board. The Shipbuilding Labor Adjustment Board also put across many "shop committees" in the government ship yards, some of which are still in existence, much to the annoyance of the Machinists' Union. The purpose of these committees, instituted partly through governmental pressure, was to gain "industrial peace" and thus, secure greater war production, to conciliate labor, which then—the employers contended—"had the upper hand," and to check the rapid spread of unionism. To be sure, not all of these committees clashed immediately with the trade unions, as the trade union