DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS AND SOCIOLOGY. 'J'J 



Division VIII.— LABOR MOVEMENT. 



In accordance with the recommendation of the Board of Collaborators, 

 Prof. John R. Commons was invited by the Executive Committee of the 

 Carnegie Institution of Washington to take charge of this Division upon the 

 death of Colonel V/right. Colonel Wright had already arranged with Pro- 

 fessor Commons and his assistants to prepare several studies for him. In 

 addition to this he had made an appropriation of $1,500 to be used by 

 Professor Commons in the collection of material relating to the labor move- 

 ment, as stated in his annual reports for 1907 and 1908. This appropriation 

 was made on the condition that the more valuable part of this material, which 

 had been gathered for the Bureau of Industrial Research, should be printed 

 as a documentary history of labor in the United States. The material turned 

 out to be very extensive. The two volumes originally contemplated have now 

 grown to six dealing speciiically with the labor movement, while two more 

 deal with labor conspiracy cases between 1806 and 1842. Two other volumes 

 relating to the plantation and the frontier are included in the same series and 

 the ten volumes are to be issued by the Arthur H. Clark Company, of Cleve- 

 land, Ohio, in the course of the ten months beginning September, 1909. 



While it seemed eminently desirable to secure the cooperation of Professor 

 Commons in the work of the Carnegie Institution of Washington on account 

 both of the amount of study which he had already put upon the subject of 

 labor and of the appreciation of this work shown by Colonel Wright, the 

 situation was a difficult one from the fact that his investigations had been 

 originally undertaken for the Bureau of Industrial Research, which had spent 

 a much larger sum upon them than that contributed by the Carnegie Institu- 

 tion of Washington. The writer accordingly visited Madison in April and 

 discussed the situation at length with Professors Commons and Ely. As a 

 result a tentative plan was agreed upon, according to which Professor Com- 

 mons should take charge of the Division of Labor for the Carnegie Institu- 

 tion of Washington and complete the work begun by Colonel Wright, but 

 have the privilege of publishing his history as a part of the History of 

 Industrial Democracy, undertaken by the Bureau of Industrial Research, as 

 well as in the series contemplated by the Carnegie Institution of Washington, 

 each organization receiving credit for its share in the final work. In order to 

 carry this plan into effect it was necessary to secure the consent of the con- 

 tributors to the Bureau of Industrial Research as well as of the Carnegie 

 Institution of Washington, and certain financial questions have arisen which 

 have thus far made it impossible to reach a final agreement. It is hoped, 

 however, that in the course of a month the matter will be settled to the satis- 

 faction of all parties. While in general such a partnership as that described 

 is not an ideal arrangement, the peculiar circumstances of the case made it 

 seem the best solution of the problem which arose on the death of Colonel 

 Wright. 



