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The Girdler Mind. Eagle-bald, hawk-nosed Tom Girdler, at 66, has one possession of which he is inordinately proud—a mind of his own. Most readers will find its self-revelations the most interesting part of Tom Girdler's autobiography. The pugnacious author often mistakes shallowness for insight ("With free water and cheap soap who really is obliged to live in filth?"), but in his wrestling with the problem of Labor & Management he tackles squarely one of the thorniest problems in the U.S. The conclusions he has reached are important, not because they are Tom Girdler's, but because they are shared in part by both Big and Little Business, and by many a U.S. citizen who is not in business at all. Says the author:
— "The job, as I see it, is to eradicate the false idea that the interest of the employer and the interest of the employes are distinct. In the final analysis their interest is the same. . . ."
—"In my opinion 90% of the people who belong to unions belong because they must belong if they want to work. . . . I accept unions. I believe the right of people to join unions should be protected by law but I believe just as strongly that there should be a law to protect the right to work of anybody who wants to keep out of a union. . . ."
—"Any contract is supposed to represent a balance of interests between two parties. Today there is no balance in the arrangements between workers and those whose function in the economy is to create work. The most important factor in the elements causing the lack of balance is the short sighted policy of the government which behaves as if all employers were the natural enemies of all who are employed. . . . This is a monstrous fallacy."
Seeking an answer to the problem of Labor & Management, Tom Girdler voices some emphatic conclusions. No lover of unions, he insists that they are necessary, equally insists that under the present Administration they are a disorganizing influence in American industry. Holding that America's future is a great challenge to the managers of American industry, Girdler ends with the suggestion that management will be unable to meet the challenge unless wartime emergency controls are lifted. He concludes:
"Inevitably the people of the United States before long are going to have to make up their minds whether they want to gamble their lives and happiness on some Socialistic scheme of state capital ism, entirely theoretical, or whether as free individuals to drive ahead to achieve a still higher living standard. . . . When we reach the end of the war, this country will confront a problem almost as big as preparing for war. If there were the same desire in government as there is out of it to enable capitalism to meet this test there could be more intelligent planning for the emergency ahead in every county in the country. . . .