TRADE-UNION POLICIES IN THE MASSACHUSETTS SHOE INDUSTRY

1919-1929. By Thomas L. Norton '23, Ph.D., New York, Columbia University Press. 1932, pp. 377, index.

This workmanlike and readable book, which has served as a Ph.D. thesis, is a gratifying outgrowth of a study originally begun by the author when a student in the Tuck School. It deals with the problems of the shoe workers in Massachusetts in the crucial post-war period, 1919-1929. The study is excellently written and clearly organized. It is well documented from original sources, and is also based on a first-hand survey of two important and contrasting centers of the shoe industry, Brockton and Haverhill. In Brockton men's shoes are the chief product; its labor organization is the Boot and Shoe Workers' Union, chartered by the A. F. of L., and controlling the union label; its local industrial disputes are settled by reference to the Massachusetts State Board of Arbitration. Haverhill specializes in women's shoes; its labor organization is the independent Shoe Workers' Protective Union, which is outside the A.F. of L.; and in the use of arbitration, reliance has been placed on an independent joint board created by the local industry itself.

In reviewing this book, it is necessary to consider it in relation to the opportunities afforded, for there was fascinating sociological material for study within the small compass of these two shoe centers. Thus, Brockton has for decades presented a notable instance of a trade union membership under the domination of an intrenched union leadership. There, through a tacit understanding between the latter and the shoe manufacturers, the employers themselves, strange as it may seem, force the workers into the closed shop, which many do not want. Of course, in such a situation, should any worker be too bold in criticising policies or practices of the union officers, he may find himself at once declared as not in "good standing" with the union and thus unable to get a job. The futile struggles, for about two decades, of the workers to regain control, and their inability to do so because of a sort of "rotten borough" system in the election of delegates to the union convention, is exceptionally interesting huma experience. Haverhill, with an alternative form of organization, and a more representative union, in turn exhibits in miniature a host of the more common difficulties arising from democratic functioning.

As compared with a kind of analysis emphasizing the actual functioning of these unions, the restrained treatment given to the material by the author deprives it of much of the human drama which is its essence. More realistic accounts and comment on the actual use of power and handling of union affairs by the officers were necessary to give the true picture. In particular, the union stamp policy should certainly have been treated more fully, for here the union label is a mainstay in the power of the union leaders to keep some of the manufacturers on their side, and is of doubtful value, or at least a partial liability, to the shoe workers themselves. From the standpoint of a Ph.D. thesis, the reliance on excerpts from formal statements and from official reports of the discussions at conventions may have been considered surer ground, and perhaps have been wise for the specific purpose, but that approach was at the expense of that intuitive interpretation of the situation which the author's first-hand knowledge of the conditions would have made so valuable.

Francis H. Herrick '81 is the author of some articles "Daily Life of the American Eagle: Early Phase." The concluding number of these articles appears in the Auk for January, 1933.