Excerpt from Bulletin of the Bureau of Labor, Vol. 54: September, 1904

One of the most important features in the industrial life of the last decade has been the rapid development on the part of both large and small employers of labor of a growing interest in the welfare of their employees. It has been recognized more and more fully that the establishing of cordial relations between employers and employees invariably results in a greater industrial efficiency on the part of the workman, and in a great measure obviates the costly and sometimes destructive industrial disturbances which have been so unfortunately frequent during the past twenty years. Interest and confidence on the one hand have developed in the workman a livelier and more intelligent regard for the welfare of the business of his employer, while on the other hand they have prompted a frank, rational, and more unselfish discussion of all the various causes which have been so productive of strikes and lockouts, and thus have frequently given rise to a spirit of mutual concession so necessary to an equitable and peaceful adjust ment of these industrial disputes which have proved not only harmful to the business of the employer but injurious to the comfort and wel fare of the employee.

These measures for the betterment of the condition of the workman have taken a great variety of forms, and have been directed not only to his improvement industrially and financially, but also in a physical, social, intellectual, moral, and domestic way. Special efforts in one or more of the above directions have been put forth from time to time by a rapidly increasing number of employers.

The establishing by employers of industrial schools has furnished workmen with a surer basis for the exercise of the knowledge gained by practical work in their various occupations and has given them the means of rising more rapidly in the industrial scale by the taking up of more skillful and more highly paid occupations, while the establish ment of manual-training classes or schools has given the children of the workman the opportunity of gaining early in life not only a degree of knowledge of the simpler elements of mechanical work, but also a manual facility with various tools that better fits them for entrance into active work in the industrial world.

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