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temporarily withdrawn people from the community, but because it is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.

  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.

  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.

  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].

     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.

  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.

  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 law suits.

  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.

  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.

  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.

  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.

  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!

     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.

  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.

  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].

     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.

  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.

  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.

  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].

     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.

  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."

  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]

     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.
