Labor and economic development

This volume of essays is sponsored by the Inter-University Study of Labor Problems in Economic Development. Most of the chapters are based upon research financed by this study. Each essay is eventually to be the subject of a separate monograph. The financial support of the study by the Ford Foundation is gratefully acknowledged.
The authors of the chapters in this volume, together with others associated with the Inter-University Study, met in Cambridge, Massachu setts, in 1955 to review the preliminary results of research in the various countries and to secure a common framework. It was essential to avoid the artificial casting of divergent experience into a single, rigid mold, and to permit some expression of the different interests and backgrounds of the individual authors. At the same time, if these separate accounts of labor-management experience in the course of industrialization were to permit of generalization, a mutually agreed upon outline and attention to a limited number of central questions would be unavoidable. A common core of issues was drawn from the larger study; the interested reader may find it in the International Labour Review for March 1955.