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George Gunton: Pioneer Spokesman for a Labor-Big Business Entente
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 July 2012
Extract
The story of George Gunton is that of an astonishingly accurate economic prophet whose viewpoints have found wide acceptance a half-century after they were enunciated. Gunton is shown in this article not as a paid defender of big business but as an apostle of compromise, standing in the No Man's Land of a vast battleground. With equal fervor Gunton declared, “It is our industries that make us great,” but that laborers' wages were “as elastic as human wants … capable of as much expansion as the social character of man.” His numerous commentaries are a lucid clue to the relative importance of contemporary issues, and those commentaries are enhanced by Gunton's instinctive sense of history. Out of the confusion of contradictory evidence recorded at the Chicago Conference on Trusts, before the Industrial Commission, and elsewhere on the business and political stage Gunton framed his thesis of the essential interdependence of big business and organized labor. His convictions were, in total, unique, and his judgment and reconciliation of conflicting viewpoints have meaning and utility today.
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References
1 Gunton, George, “Position of Gunton's Magazine,” Gunton's Magazine, XIII (Nov., 1897), 363Google Scholar.
2 For divergent views held by contemporaries see Social Economist, II (May, 1892), 414–21, 425–28Google Scholar; clippings in Seligman, Edwin R. A., Scrapbook, I (1886–1897)Google Scholar at Columbia University; John Hobson to Henry D. Lloyd, Jan. 8, 1896, Lloyd Papers, State Historical Society, Madison; Carroll D. Wright, testimony, United States Industrial Commission, Report … on the Relations and Conditions of Capital and Labor (Washington, 1901), VII, 25Google Scholar. Of recent writers critical of Gunton see Flynn, John T., God's Gold (New York, 1932), 329Google Scholar; Destler, Chester M., “The Opposition of American Businessmen to Social Control During the ‘Gilded Age,’” Mississippi Valley Historical Review, XXXIX (March, 1953), 652, 657Google Scholar; Thorelli, Hans B., The Federal Antitrust Policy (Baltimore, 1955), 330Google Scholar. For more favorable views see Fine, Sidney, “Laissez Faire and the General-Welfare State in American Thought, 1865–1901” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan, 1948), 517Google Scholar. (This reference to Gunton is not included in the recent published version.) See also Ralph, W. and Hidy, Muriel E., Pioneering in Big Business, 1882–1911 (New York, 1955), 660, 744Google Scholar.
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7 He continued, however, to support actively the eight-hour day and for a “nominal honorarium” wrote a widely circulated pamphlet, The Economic and Social Importance of the Eight-Hour Movement, for the American Federation of Labor in 1889. See Gompers, Samuel, Seventy Years of Life and Labor (New York, 1925), I, 294, 298Google Scholar and Fine, Sidney, “The Eight-Hour Day Movement in the United States, 1888–1891,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review, XL (Dec, 1953), 445Google Scholar. In 1903 Gunton accepted a request of the striking boilermakers in the Bayonne plant of Standard Oil of New Jersey to intervene with the company on their behalf. Gunton strongly urged Standard Oil to grant recognition of the union. Hidy and Hidy, Pioneering in Big Business, 600.
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12 This financial assistance, which amounted to as much as $15,000 annually, lasted until 1904. John D. Archbold to George Gunton, Sept. 28, 1899, in Anonymous, “Standard Oil and its Hirelings of the Press,” Hearst's Magazine, XXIV (July, 1913), 26–27Google Scholar; Mrs. Amelia Gunton to Edwin R. A. Seligman, Dec. 24, 1905, Seligman Papers; Hidy and Hidy, Pioneering in Big Business, 660.
13 Aside from Standard Oil, the sources of financial support for the school are uncertain. A news item implied that “several gentlemen” who were acquainted with Gunton's lecture work connected with Newton's church contributed to the Institute. It is suggestive that among the later Counselors of the Institute were such men of wealth as Joseph A. Hendrix, president of the National Union Bank, William F. Draper, New England industrialist, Alfred Dolge, manufacturer from upper New York State, and Edwin Seligman. See New York Times, Jan. 17, 1892; Social Economist, I (July, 1891), 325–28Google Scholar; “Gunton Institute Announcement, 1898–99,” Gunton's Magazine, XV (Sept., 1898), 225–26Google Scholar.
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53 On the question of Gunton's relations with Standard Oil, the author is in essential agreement with Professor and Mrs. Hidy that “Although for some years the company helped to finance Gunton's work, he was an independently minded journalist.” Pioneering in Big Business, 660. Evidence pointing to this conclusion includes: newspaper reports of his lectures before Rev. Newton's class in social economics which indicate that his philosophy was well formulated before the financial assistance began; that Gunton opened his journal to a wide range of views, some hostile to big business; and that he himself continued to maintain a position favoring shorter hours, collective bargaining and government aid to labor which was far in advance of the prevailing attitude of the top leadership of Standard Oil. See New York Times, Jan. 19, 27, 1888. For what it is worth, Gunton put himself on record: “I do not regard myself as under the slightest obligation to change my views or policy by receiving aid from anybody.” Gunton to Theodore Roosevelt, April 1, 1901, Roosevelt Papers, Library of Congress.
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