Perhaps an even better evidence of the intention of English labor in this direction is the movement towards decentralization in the trade union organization.  This movement, known as the “shop-stewards” movement is essentially an effort of the men in the workshops to assume responsibility in industrial reconstruction after the war, a responsibility which they have heretofore under all circumstances delegated to representatives not connected directly with the work in the shops.  As these representatives were isolated from actual problems of workshop production and alien therefore to the problems in their technical and specific application, they were incapable of functioning efficiently as agents of productive enterprise.  This “shop stewards” movement recognizes and provides for the interdependence of industrial interests, but at the same time it concerns itself with the competent handling of specific matters.

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 cooerdinated producing combination.  Without finally settling the problem of agriculture, they have strengthened the production group and eliminated strife at the most vital point.