ABSTRACT

Dilution was the most controversial labor problem that the Government had to face throughout the war, but “labor troubles” were not caused solely by the reluctance of the skilled men to yield up their hard-won prerogatives. Dilution was but the roughest facet of the general problem of increasing production in almost inverse proportion to the reduction in the normal labor force, depleted by recruiting for the country's armed services. In addition to the expedient of dilution the Government attempted a stronger ordering and disciplining of labor. Faced with the paradox of the simultaneous need for a reduction of labor turnover and for an increase in labor mobility, the Government proceeded to take measures to restrict the freedom of movement of labor while, at the same time, seeking to obtain control over labor so as to be able to shift it wherever it was deemed most necessary. Labor was to be made more effective and more efficient, not only by relaxation of restrictive trade practices but by getting the labor force to produce at its maximum and wherever it was most needed. Where exhortations failed, the Government was prepared to adopt compulsion. 1 Because, in the minds of the workers, each step taken by the Government affected not only their present condition but their future status, the Government's course was not by any means easy. To the Government the road might seem a broad, clear highway; labor viewed it with caution, suspicion, and even real alarm.