3 - The idea of international labor regulation (1953)

Summary

The writing of history is primarily a matter of asking the right questions of your source material. It is this questioning mind of the historian which distinguishes history from mere chronology and from the “background information” found in the flimsy introductory chapters to the innumerable mass-produced economic surveys that purport to explain the complexities of the contemporary world. The history of ideas is especially challenging to the historian because it is sometimes difficult to treat ideas as source material and to subject them to the kind of questions that the historian is bound to ask. There is always a temptation to accord absolute value to some ideas, to cease being an historian and to become an apostle and an advocate. John W. Follows, in a book entitled Antecedents of the International Labour Organisation which attempts to trace the origins and progress of the idea of international labor regulation, has not avoided the most important mistakes. He obviously wants to do honor to the ILO (a laudable motive, but not for an historian); and he considers international labor regulation to be a “good thing.” This approach to his subject inhibits him from asking the rather unceremonious and impertinent questions which the historian must ask: Why did the idea of international labor regulation originate with certain industrial employers in the early nineteenth century? What significance did this idea have in relation to the early conflicts between industrial workers and their employers?