THE NEW STATE By Mary Parker Follett
# Chapter XIV The Group Principle at Work
Our rate of progress, then, and the degree in which we actualize the perfect democracy, depends upon our understanding that man has the **power of creating**, and that he gets this power **through his capacity to join with others** to form a real whole, a living group. Let us see, therefore, what signs are visible to-day of the group principle at work.
First, our whole **idea of education** is rapidly changing. The chief aim of education now is to fit the child into the life of the community; we do not think of his "individual" development except as contributing to that. Or it would be nearer the truth to say that we recognize that his individual development is essentially just that. The method of accomplishing this is chiefly through (1) the introduction of **group class-room work** in the place of individual recitations, (2) the addition of **vocational subjects** to the curriculum and the establishment of vocational schools, and (3) the organizing of vocational guidance departments and **placement bureaus** in connection with the public schools.
In many of the large cities of the United States the public schools have a vocational guidance department, and it is not considered that the schools have done their duty by the child until they have helped him to choose his **life occupation**, have trained him in some degree for it, and have actually found him a job, that is, **fitted him into the community**. It is becoming gradually accepted that this is a function of the state, and several of our states are considering the appropriation of funds for the carrying on of such departments [1].
1. It is interesting to notice that Miss Lathrop's whole conception of the Children's Bureau is that it is to fit children into the **life of the community**.
The further idea of education as a **continuous process**, that it stops neither at 14 nor 21 nor 60, that a man should be related to his community not only through services rendered and benefits received but by a steady process of preparation for his **social and civic life**, will be discussed later [2].
2. See Appendix.
The chief object of **medical social service** is to put people into harmonious and fruitful relation, not only because illness has temporarily withdrawn people from the community, but because it is often some lack of adaptation which has caused the illness.
Our different **immigration** theories show clearly the growth of the community idea. First came the idea of **amalgamation**: our primary duty to all people coming to America was to assimilate them as quickly and as thoroughly as possible. Then people reacted against the melting-pot theory and said, "No, we want all the Italians have to offer, all the Syrians can give us; the richness of these civilizations must not be engulfed in ours." So **separate colonies** were advocated, separate organizations were encouraged. Many articles were written and speeches made to spread this thought. But now a third idea is emerging -- **the community idea**. We do not want Swedes and Poles to be lost in an undifferentiated whole, but equally we do not want all the evils of the separatist method; we are trying to get **an articulated whole**. We want all these different peoples to be part of a true community -- giving all they have to give and receiving equally. Only by a **mutual permeation of ideals** shall we enrich their lives and they ours. >>ideals
Again our present treatment of **crime** shows the community principle in two ways: (1) the idea of **community responsibility for crime** is spreading rapidly; (2) we are fast outgrowing the idea of punishing criminals merely, our object is to fit them into society.
First, the growing idea of community responsibility for crime. We read in an account of the new penology that **"Crime in the last analysis is not to be overcome after arrest but before,"** that crime will be abolished by a change of environment and that "environment is transformed by child labor laws and the **protection of children**, by housing laws and improved sanitation, by the prevention of tuberculosis and other diseases, by health-giving **recreational facilities**, by security of employment, by **insurance** against the fatalities of industry and the financial burdens of death and disease, by suitable vocational training, by all that adds to the content of human life and gives us higher and keener **motives to self-control, strenuous exertion and thrift**." We of course do not exonerate the individual from responsibility, but it must be **shared by the whole society** in which he lives.
Secondly, the old idea of justice was **punishment**, a relic of personal **revenge**; this punishment took the form of **confinement**, of keeping the man outside society. **The new idea is exactly the opposite: it is to join him to society by finding out just what part he is best fitted to play** in society and training him for it. A former Commissioner of Corrections in New York told me that a number of people, including several judges, were looking forward to the time very soon being ripe for making the "punishment" of a crime the doing some piece of social service in order to fit the criminal into the social order. One man who had shown in his crime marked organizing ability has been sent to oversee the reclaiming of some large tracts of abandoned farm land, and this had worked so well that a number of judges wished to try similar experiments. >> criminalskills
Thus **criminals** are coming to be shown that their **crime** has not been against individuals but against society, that it has divorced them from their community and that the object of their imprisonment is that they may learn how to unite themselves to their community. The colony system means that they must learn to live in a **community** _by_ living in a community. This is the object of Mr. William George's "Social Sanitarium," where the men are to live in a **graded series** of farm villages, govern themselves, support themselves and also their families as far as possible, and pass from "village" to "village" on their way towards the society from which their crime has separated them. >> reintegration
This same principle, to make the life while under punishment a **preparation for community life**, underlay the work of Mr. Osborne at Sing Sing. Through his Mutual Welfare League he tried to develop a feeling of responsibility to the community, a feeling first of all that there was a community within the prison. All the men knew gang loyalty: it was Mr. Osborne's aim to build upon this. He thought they could not feel responsibility to a community outside when they left unless they learnt community consciousness inside. He did not provide recreation for them solely for the sake of recreation; he did not allow them self-government because of any abstract idea of the justice of self-government; he tried to bring the men of Sing Sing to a realization of a community, to a sense of **responsibility to a community**. The two men who escaped from Sing Sing in 1916 and voluntarily returned has learned this lesson [1]. >> responsibility
1. The new farm industrial system which is to replace Sing Sing is founded largely on the community idea.
Both these principles -- community responsibility for crime and the necessity of fitting the offender into the community life -- underlie the work of the **juvenile court**. The probation officer's duty is not exhausted by knitting the child again into worthy relations; he must try to see that **community life** shall touch children on all sides in a helpful not a harmful way. >> communitylife
A future task for the juvenile court is to organize groups back of the child as part of the system of probation. All our experience is showing us the value of using the group incentive. The approval or blame of our fellow-men is an urgent factor in our lives; a man can stand any sort of condemnation better than that of his club. It was the idea of community punishment which was such an interesting part of the "Little Commonwealth" which Mr. Homer Lane established near Detroit for boys and girls on probation. If a boy did not work he was not punished for it, he did not even go without food, but the whole commonwealth had to pay for it out of their earnings. The **whole moral pressure of the community was thus brought to bear** upon that boy to do his share of the work -- an incentive which Mr. Lane found more powerful than any punishment. >> whopays
A colonel of the American army says that fewer offenses are committed in our army than in the Continental armies, not because human nature is different in America but because our methods of army discipline are different: the custom in our army is to **punish a company for the offense of an individual**; the company, therefore, looks after its own members.
The procedure of our **courts** also shows signs of change in the direction of the recognition of the group principle. Until recently we have had in our courts two lawyers, each upholding his side: this means a real struggle, there is no effort at unifying, one or the other must win; the judge is a sort of umpire. But the **Reconciliation Court of Cleveland** (and some other western cities) marks a long step in advance. This does away with lawyers each arguing one side; the judge deals directly with the disputants, trying to make them see that a harmonizing of their differences is possible. In our municipal courts, to be sure, the principal function of the judge has long been not to punish but to take those measures which will place the individual again in his group, but this applies only to criminal cases, whereas the Reconciliation Court of Cleveland, following the practice of the conciliation courts of certain continental countries [1] deals with **civil cases**. The part of the judge in our juvenile courts is too well known to need mention.
1. France, Norway, Switzerland. In Norway it is said that more than three-quarters of the cases which come before the conciliation courts are settled **without lawsuits**.
In a jury I suppose we have always had an example of **the group idea** in practical life. Here there is no question of counting up similar ideas -- there must be **one idea** and the effort is to seek that. >> oneidea
In our legislatures and legislative committees we get little integrated thought because of their **party organization**; even among members of the same party on a committee there are many causes at work to prevent the genuine interplay we should have. The governors' commissions, on the other hand, hear both sides, call in many experts and try to arrive at some **composite judgment**. >> composit
Nowhere has our social atomism been more apparent than in our lack of **city-planning**: (1) we have had many beautiful single buildings, but no plan for the whole city; (2) and more important, we could not get any general plan for our cities accepted because the individual property owner (this was called individualism!) must be protected against the community. City-planning includes not only plans for a **beautiful** city but for all its **daily needs** -- streets, traffic regulation, housing, schools, industry, transportation, recreation facilities; we cannot secure these things while property owners are being protected in their "rights." The angry protest which goes up from real estate owners when it is proposed to regulate the height of buildings we have heard in all our cities. The struggle for enough light and air in tenements has been fought step by step. The "right" claimed was the right of **every man to do what he liked with his own property**. Now we are beginning to recognize the error of this, and to see that it is not a state of individualism but of **anarchy** that our new building laws are trying to do away with. No real estate owner is to be allowed to do that with his own property which will not **fit** into a general plan for the beauty and efficiency of the city. The key-note of the new city-planning is adaptation, adaptation of means to end and of part to part. This does **not stifle individual initiative but directs it**. >> cityplanning
And the interesting point for us here is that the real estate men themselves are now beginning to see that particularistic building has actually hurt real estate interests. The "Report of the Advisory Council on the Real Estate Interests of New York City" admits that "light. air and access, the chief factors in fixing rentable values, had been impaired by high buildings and by the proximity of inappropriate or nuisance buildings and uses." It is impossible to talk ten minutes with real estate men to-day without noticing how entirely changed their attitude has been in the last ten or twenty years. Moralists used to tell us that the only path of progress was to make people willing to give up their own interests for the sake of others. But this is not what our real estate men are doing. They are coming to see that **their interests are in the long run coincident with the interests of all the other members of the city**. >> realestate
The growing recognition of the group principle in the **business world** is particularly interesting to us. The present development of business methods shows us that the old argument about cooperation and competition is not fruitful. Cooperation and competition are being taken up into a larger synthesis. We are just entering an era of collective living. **"Cut-throat" competition** is beginning to go out of fashion. What the world needs to-day is a cooperative mind. The business world is never again to be directed by individual intelligences, but by intelligences interacting and ceaselessly influencing one another. Every mental act of the big business man is entirely different from the mental acts of the man of the last century managing his own competitive business. There is of course competition between our large firms, but the cooperation between them is coming to occupy a larger and larger place relatively. We see this in the arrangement between most of our large printers in Boston not to outbid one another, in those trades which join to establish apprentice schools, in the **cooperative credit system**, worked out so carefully in some of the western cities as almost to eliminate bad debts, in the regular conferences between the business managers of the large department stores, in our new Employment Managers' associations in Boston and elsewhere, in the whole spirit of our progressive **Chambers of Commerce**. When our large stores "compete" to give the highest class goods and best quality service, and meet in conference to make this "competition" effective, then competition itself becomes a kind of cooperation! There are now between thirty and forty **associations** in this country organized on the **open-price plan**. The Leather Belting Exchange, an excellent example of "cooperative competition," was organized in 1915. Some of its avowed objects are: standardization of grades of leather, promotion of use of leather belting by scientific investigation of its possible uses, uniform contract styles, uniform system of costs accounting, daily charts of sales, monthly statistics reports, collection and distribution of information relative to cost of raw material and to methods and cost of manufacturing and distribution [1]. How vastly different a spirit from that which used to animate the business world! >> cooperativeassociations
1. "Experiences in Cooperative Competition," by W.V. Spaulding.
Modern business, therefore, needs above all men who can unite, not merely men who can unite without friction, but who can turn their union to account. The successful business man of to-day is the man trained cooperative intelligence. The world as well as the psychologist places a higher value on the man **who can take part in collective thinking and concerted action**, and has higher positions to offer him in the business and political field. The secretary of a Commission investigates a subject, is clever in mastering details, in drawing conclusions and in presenting them, perhaps far cleverer in these respects than any member of the Commission. But the chairman of the Commission must have another and higher power - - the **power of uniting these conclusions with the conclusions of others, the power of using this material to evolve with others plans for action**. This means a more developed individual and brings a higher price in the open market.
Another illustration of the group principle in the business world is that **a corporation is obliged by law to act in joint meeting**, that is, it cannot get the vote of its members by letter and then act according to the majority.
But more important than any of the illustrations yet given is the application of the group principle to the relations of capital and labor. People are at last beginning to see that industrial organization must be based on the community idea. If we do not want to be dominated by the special interests of the capital-power, it is equally evident that we do not want to be dominated by the special interests of the labor-power. The **interests of capital and labor must be united** [1].
1. The great value of Robert Valentine's work consisted in his recognition of this fact.
Even collective bargaining is only a milestone on the way to full application of the group principle. It recognizes the union, it recognizes that some adjustment between the interests of capital and labor is possible, but it is still "bargaining," still an adjustment **between two warring bodies**, it still rests on the two pillars of **concession and compromise**. We see now the false psychology underlying compromise and concession. Their practical futility has long been evident: whenever any difference is "settled" by concession, that difference pops up again in some other form. **Nothing will ever truly settle difference but synthesis**. No wonder the syndicalists label the "compromises" made between "antagonistic interests" as insincere. In a way all compromise is insincere, and real harmony can be obtained only by an integration of "antagonistic" interests which can take place only when we **understand the method**. The error of the syndicalists is in thinking that compromise is the only method; their fundamental error is in thinking that different interests are necessarily "antagonistic" interests. >> synthesismethod
Compromise is accepted not only as inevitable and as entirely proper, but as the most significant fact of human association, by those economists who belong to the school of "group sociologists" which sees present society as made up of warring groups, ideal society as made up of groups in equilibrium. Not only, I believe, is conflict and compromise not the true social process, but also it is not, even at present, the most significant, although usually the largest, part of the social process. The **integrating of ideas** which comes partly from direct interpenetration, and partly from that indirect interpenetration which is the consequence of the **overlapping membership** of groups, I see going on very largely in the groups to which I belong, and is surely an interesting sign-post to future methods and associations. >> overlappingmembership
The weakness of **Arbitration** and Conciliation Boards, with their "impartial" member, is that they tend to mere compromise even when they are not openly negotiations between two warring parties [1]. >> arbitration
1. I am speaking in general. It is true that the history of cases settled by arbitration reveals many in which the "umpire" has insisted that negotiations continue until real coincident interest of both sides should be discovered.
It is probably from what we see on all sides that the more "**concessions**" we make, the less "peace" we shall get. Compulsory Arbitration in New Zealand has not succeeded as well as was hoped just because it has not found the community between capital and labor. >> concessions
The latest development of collective bargaining, the Trade Agreement [2], with more or less permanent boards of representatives from employers and workers, brings us nearer true community than we have yet found in industrial relations.
2. It has long been known in England and America but recently it has been spreading rapidly.
The history of these Agreements in England and America is fruitful study. One of the best known in American is Mr. Justice Brandeis' protocol scheme in 1910 for the garment industries of New York, which provided for **an industrial court composed of employers and employed to which all disagreements should be brought**, and for six years this prevented strikes in the needle trades of New York [1].
1. Recently abandoned.
One of the most interesting of the Trade Agreements to be found in the Bulletins of the National Labor Department, and one which can be studied over a long term of years, is that between the Stove Founders' National Defense Association (employers) and the Iron Moulders' Union of North America. It is not only that the **permanent organ of "conference"** (employers and employees represented) has brought peace to the stove industry after forty years of disastrous strikes and lockouts, but that question after question has been decided not by the side which the market rendered strongest at the moment seizing its advantage, but by a **real harmonizing of interest**. A good illustration is the treatment of the question of who should pay for the bad castings: that was not decided at once as a matter of superior strength or of compromise, but after many months a basis of mutual advantage was found.
For some years **Trade Agreements** have been coming to include more and more points; not wages and hours alone, but many questions of shop management, discipline etc. are now included. Moreover it has been seen over and over again that **the knowledge gained through joint conference is the knowledge needed for joint control**: the workmen ought to know the cost of production and of transportation, the relative value of different processes of production, the state of the market, the conditions governing the production and marketing of the competing product etc.; the employer must know the real conditions of labor and the laborer's point of view.
The fundamental weakness of collective bargaining is that while it provides machinery for adjustment of **grievances**, while it looks forward to all the conceivable emergencies which may arise to cause **disagreement** between labor and capital, and seeks methods to meet these, it does not give labor a **direct share in industrial control**. In the collective _bargain_ wages and the conditions of employment are usually determined by the **relative _bargaining_ strength** of the workers and employers of the industrial group. Not bargaining in any form, not negotiations, is **the key to industrial peace and prosperity**; the collective contract must in time go the way of the individual contract. **Community is the key-word for all relations** of the new state. Labor unions have long been seeking their "**rights**," have looked on the differences between capital and labor as **a fight**, and have sought an advantageous position from which to carry on the fight: this attitude has influenced their whole internal organization. They quite as much as capital must recognize that this attitude must be given up. If we want harmony between labor and capital, we must **make labor and capitol into one group**: we must have an **integration of interests and motives, of standards and ideals of justice**. >> community
It is a mistake to think that social progress is to depend upon anything happening to the working people: some say that they are to be given more material goods and all will be well; some think they are to be given more "education" and the world will be saved. It is equally a mistake to think that what we need is the conversion to "unselfishness" of the capitalist class. Those who advocate profit-sharing are not helping us. The quarrel between capital and labor **can never be settled on material grounds**. The crux of that quarrel is not profits and wages -- **it is the joint control** of industry. >> jointcontrol
There has been an increasing tendency of recent years for employers to take their employees into their councils. This ranges from mere "advisory" boards, which are consulted chiefly concerning grievances, through the **joint committees** for safety, health, standardization, wages, etc., to real share in the management [1].
1. The three firms which have carried **co-management** furthest are the Printz-Biederman Co. of Cleveland, the Wm. Filene's Sons Co. of Boston and the U.S. Cartridge Co. of Lowell. See Report of Committee on Vocational Guidance, Fourth Annual Convention of **National Association** of Corporation Schools, by Henry C. Metcalf.
But even in the lowest form of this new kind of cooperation we may notice two points: the advisory boards are usually representative bodies elected by the employees, and they are consulted as a whole, not individually. The flaw in these advisory boards is not so much as is often thought, because the management still keeps all the power in its own hands, as that **the company officials do not sit with these boards in joint consultation**. There is, however, much variety of method. In some shops advisory committees meet with the company officials. Some companies put many more important questions concerning conditions of employment before these bodies than other companies would think practical. A few employers have even given up the right to discharge -- dismissal must be decided by fellow-employees.
Usually the management keeps the final power in its own hands. This is not so, however, in the case of Wm. Filene Son's Co., Boston, which has gone further than any other plant in co-management. Here the employees have the right by a two-thirds vote to change, initiate, or amend any rule that affects the discipline or working conditions of the employees of the store, and such vote becomes at once operative even against the veto of the management. Further, out of eleven members of the **board of directors**, four are representatives of the employees [1]. >> comanagement
1. We have a number of minor instances of the recognition of the group principle in industry. An interesting example is the shop piece-work in the Cadbury works, where the wages are calculated on the output of a whole work-room, and thus every one in the room has to suffer for the laziness of one. (See "Experiments in Industrial Organization," by **Edward Cadbury**.)
The great advantage of company officials and workers acting together on boards or committees (workshop committees, discipline boards, advisory councils, boards of directors, etc.) is the same as that of the regular joint conferences of the Trade Agreement: employers and employed can thus learn to function together and prepare the way to joint control. Workshop committees should be encouraged not so much because they remove grievances etc., as because in the joint workshop committee, managers and workers are **learning to act together**. Industrial democracy is a process, a growth. The joint control of industry may be established by some fiat, but it will not be the genuine thing until **the_process_ of joint control is learned**. To be sure, the workshop committees which are independent of the management are often considered the best for the workers because they can thus keep themselves free to maintain and fight for their own particular interests, but this is exactly, I think, what should be avoided.
The labor question is -- Is the war between capital and labor to be terminated by fight and conquest or by **learning how to function together**? I face fully the fact that many supporters of labor believe in what they call the "frank" recognition that the interests of capital and labor are **"antagonistic."** I believe that the end of the wars of nations and of the war between labor and capital will come in exactly the same way: by making the nations into one group, by making capital and labor into one group. **Then we shall learn to distinguish between true and apparent interests, or rather, between long-run and immediate interests; then we shall give up the notion of "antagonisms," which belong to a static world, and see only difference -- that is, that which is capable of integration.** This is not an idealistic treatment of the labor problem. Increase of wages and reduction in cost of production were once considered an irreconcilable antagonism -- now their concurrence is a matter of common experience. If the hope of that concurrence had been abandoned as visionary or idealistic, we should be sadly off to-day. Many people are now making a distinction, however, between **production and distribution** in this respect: in the former the interests of capital and labor are the same, it is said, but not in the latter. When that reorganization of the business world, which is no longer utopian to think of, is further actualized, then in distribution too we shall be able to see the coincident interests of labor and capital. >> longterm
As the most hopeful sign in the present treatment of industrial questions is the recognition that man with his fundamental instincts and needs is the very centre and heart of the labor problem, so the most hopeful sign that we shall fully utilize the constructive powers which will be released by this psychological approach to industrial problems, is the **gradually increasing share of the workman in the actual control of industry**.
The **recognition of community** rather than of individuals or class, the very marked getting away from the attitude of pitting labor interests against the interests of capital, is the most striking thing from our point of view about the famous report formulated by a sub-committee of the British Labor Party in the autumn of 1917. In every one of the four "Pillars" of the new social order this stands out as the most dominant feature. In explaining the first, The Universal Enforcement of the National Minimum, it is explicitly stated that this is not to protect individuals or a class, but to "safeguard" the "community" against the "insidious degradation of the standard of life." The second, The Democratic Control of Industry, proposes national ownership and administration of the railways, canals and mines and "other main industries ... as opportunity offers," with "a steady increasing participation of the organized workers in the management," the extension of municipal enterprise to housing and town planning, public libraries, music and recreation, and the fixing of prices. This "Pilar," too, we are told, is not a class measure, but is **"to safeguard the interests of the community as a whole."** >> communityasawhole
Under the heading, "Revolution in National Finance," the third "Pillar," it is again definitely stated and moreover convincingly shown that this is not "in the interests of wage-earners alone." Under "The Surplus Wealth of the Common Good," the fourth "Pillar," it is stated that the surplus wealth shall be used for what "the community day by day needs for the perpetual improvement and increase of its various enterprises," "for scientific investigation and original research in every branch of knowledge," and for "the promotion of music, literature and fine arts." **It is in the proposal for this appropriation of every surplus for the common good -- in the vision of its resolute use for the building up of the community as a whole ... that the Labor Party ... most distinctively marks itself off from the older political parties."**[1] >> commongood
1. I have not spoken of the cooperative buying and selling movement because by the name alone it is obvious how well it illustrates my point, and also because it is so well known to every one. Another evidence of the spreading of the community idea is the wide acceptance of the **right of the community to value created by the community**. >> cooperativebuyingandselling