There are perhaps worse addictions than collecting old books but the evil of the disease is that it feeds other distracting interests as liquor nourishes vice. The other day I was wandering about a junk store and came across a slim green volume whose title ensnared me at once.
Impressed into its cloth cover were the words Special Labor Report on Remedies for Strikes and Lockouts by Harris Weinstock, Special Labor Commissioner. The cover also bears its dedication, “To James N. Gillett, Governor State of California.” Date of publication was January of 1910.
Rather than an introduction the book’s first text page consists of a letter of transmittal from Weinstock to “His Excellency” in the State Capitol:
“I have the honor to hand you herewith my report in the execution of the commission I hold from you as Special Labor Commissioner to examine into the labor conditions and labor laws of foreign countries, and to report thereon to you, the Executive of the State of California . . . I have now the honor to submit this as my report covering these various investigations, and to embody in a final chapter such general conclusions as I have been enabled to reach, and such recommendations for proposed legislation as in my opinion is likely to lessen strikes and lockouts in the Commonwealth of California.”
If that language seems a bit flowery for a state employee it is because Weinstock was no civil service apparatchik. Born in London, he became a merchant in San Francisco, later establishing the Mechanic’s Store in Sacramento, which became one of the west’s largest retail outlets. His partner in that enterprise was David Lubin, a Polish immigrant whose first merchandising effort was the One Price Store, whose then-revolutionary concept was that a particular item would cost the same to any customer. Together Weinstock and Lubin built a west coast retail empire whose profitability enabled both men to pursue their personal interests beyond business.
Weinstock’s career was to include promotion of a California bill to establish compulsory arbitration in labor disputes (Senate Bill 918, the Industrial Disputes Investigation Act of 1911) based upon the Canadian Industrial Disputes Act. The bill would have applied to railroads and public utilities and required non-binding arbitration by an appointed board with no strike or lockout before the conclusion of the review. The bill failed to pass due to opposition by both organized labor (which wanted the power of the strike preserved) and management (which cherished its power to lock out workers).
The New York Times of September 14, 1908 finds Weinstock already embarked upon the international journey that would produce both the report to his Excellency the Governor and the legislation of 1911:
“A CALIFORNIA IDEA: Our Paris dispatches [sic] yesterday gave an interview with Mr. Harris Weinstock, the Labor Commissioner of California. That State, like most others, has had its troubles arising from strikes and the disturbances that too often accompany them, and its enterprising and sensible Government conceived the idea that it would be will to study the various modes of dealing with such troubles in other parts of the world. In pursuance of this idea, which is certainly a happy one, Commissioner Weinstock has been visiting the chief countries of Europe, and, after completing his investigations in France, where he now is, intends to pursue them in Australia, New Zealand, Japan and China.
He has already formed a tentative plan for legislation on the subject, based on conditions he has found in different countries, especially in Germany, and as we conceive, on a sound view of human nature. The essential principle of his plan is that time and mutual discussion, with the greatest practicable publicity as to causes of labor disputes, will tend to prevent the consequences, and that these requirements can properly be enforced by the State. The law he is considering will provide for thirty days’ notice from employers intending a lockout or from a union intending a strike, with the penalty of fine for disobedience. In the case of a union having no funds the fine is to be levied on individual members. This will secure delay, during which discussion will naturally take place. If discussion fail [sic] to result in an agreement, then the influence of publicity will be brought in. Each side will be entitled to name representatives on a committee of arbitration, and if they neglect or refuse to do so the selection can be made by the Governor of the State. This committee will have the powers of a court of law to examine witnesses and documents. If no settlement is reached there will be at least a chance for such reasonable light on the dispute as will guide public opinion—an important factor. If carried out, Mr. Weinstock’s plan will lead to a highly valuable experiment in an important and difficult field of legislation.”
[An example of a partially successful attempt by a State to compel arbitration in the pre-NLRA era was embodied in the Kansas Court of Industrial Relations, which existed from 1920 to 1925]
Reading Weinstock’s report one gets the idea that the man tended to obtain his material in a top-down fashion, beginning with the views of his hosts (invariably of the upper class) and only then, and superficially, with the views of workers; as to statistical analysis the reader finds only the most cursory of numerical comparisons. A typical quote:
“The leading French labor leaders frankly admitted to me that the French workman is mercurial, excitable, impetuous, hasty, lacking in self-control, and therefore, very hard to discipline.” After providing a similar evaluation of French employers the author concludes “The result under these circumstances can not be otherwise than very strained relations between employers and their workmen.”
Weinstock concludes “I hold that the time is ripe when the suffering and misery brought upon untold numbers of innocent people by strikes and lockouts should cease,” and follows this with a list of foreign nations and American states in which some form of voluntary arbitration (“state intervention”) exists. And then there follows his plan for the California legislation, now altered from the general to the more specific focus on public utilities and services.
If Weinstock’s report seems more like a travel diary of a wealthy man than the work of a researcher it is because he was primarily an observer of the old school rather than a formal analyst; much more De Tocqueville than John Dunlop, and with a good heart withal.
Weinstock’s government career included positions as the Market Director of the State of California and also as State Labor Commissioner, in which post he wrote this slim, green and very hopeful book. His papers reside in the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life at the Bancroft Library of UC Berkeley.
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