INDUSTRY AND PROGRESS 
 
PAGE LECTURE SERIES 
 
 Addresses delivered before the Senior 
 Class of the Sheffield Scientific School, Yale 
 University. 
 
 Morals in Modern Business 
 
 With an introduction by Mr. Ripley 
 Hitchcock (second printing). 12mo, 
 cloth binding, leather label, 162 pages. 
 Price $1.25 net; postage 10 cents. 
 
 Every-day Ethics 
 
 12mo, cloth binding, leather label, 150 
 pages. Price $1.25 net; postage 10 
 cents. 
 
 
Industry and Progress 
 
 BY 
 
 NORMAN HAPGOOD 
 
 ADDRESSES DELIVERED IN THE PAGE 
 LECTURE SERIES, 1910, BEFORE THE 
 SENIOR CLASS OF THE SHEFFIELD 
 SCIENTIFIC SCHOOL, YALE UNIVERSITY 
 
 New Haven: Yale University Press 
 
 London: Henry Frowde 
 
 Oxford University Press 
 
 M C M X I 
 

 Copyright, 1911. 
 
 BY 
 
 Yale University Press 
 
 First printed February, 1911, 1500 copies 
 
INDUSTRY AND PROGRESS 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 Employment. 
 
 Why, in ancient history, do we read so little of 
 how most men lived? In the Rome of Julius 
 Cossar the plebeians were much more numerous 
 than the aristocrats and middle class combined, 
 yet the most assiduous research wnll give them in 
 fragmentary glimpses only. We know vaguely 
 that they slept crowded in unsafe tenements, but as 
 that condition gave to the owners and statesmen 
 no concern, history has encumbered itself with no 
 details. The plebeian was of as slight human 
 moment as the slave. He was "fickle," "violent" 
 or "dirty," but few other adjectives were needed 
 for him. In Greece also manual labor was lower- 
 ing, and masses of the population were looked 
 upon without respect. Such thinkers as Aristotle 
 and Plato believed the higher attributes of man 
 were inconsistent with ordinary labor. Cicero 
 observes that "all gains made by hired laborers 
 are dishonorable and base." Their work is 
 "slavish," and "all retail dealing may be put in 
 
 the same class The work of all artisans is 
 
 sordid. There can he nothing honorable in a 
 workshop." This view, that the common forms 
 
 [1] 
 
INDUSTRY AND PROGRESS 
 
 of labor and of business, instead of being dignified, 
 were degrading, lasted until within a century. 
 Sympathetic attention given to the lives and occu- 
 pations of the many is the great spiritual progres- 
 sive step of our time. 
 
 Whether or not the fate be a blessing or a 
 curse, man must forever struggle to live, and we 
 are no longer satisfied that this strife with nature 
 shall be rendered gloomy and hopeless for the 
 many. Work is beneficent in moderation, killing 
 in excess, and the ideal toward which we climb is 
 so to arrange our world that no man shall be in- 
 jured by labor, while all shall share it. Nobody 
 of free intelligence now looks upon it as an 
 honor to live upon the sweat of another's brow. 
 Today wealth puts a just man in an attitude of 
 apology. He feels the need of showing that his 
 wealth is so employed as to benefit the race. Com- 
 plete idleness and wasteful luxury are badges of 
 failure. Some of those now listening here will be 
 manufacturers, some lawyers, others legislators. 
 Wherever you are, these fundamental questions 
 of human worth will offer themselv'es. Some of 
 you will be conducting small businesses; on a minor 
 scale you will be em.ploying men. Their destinies, 
 and the destinies of their wives, children, and gen- 
 
 [2J 
 
EMPLOYMENT 
 
 erations after them, will be partly In your hands. 
 I say, without any distrust, that it takes as much — 
 nay, more — ability, character and virtue to carry 
 on a retail grocery, without loss and yet with 
 justice, than it does to fill with credit a seat In the 
 Senate of the United States. To conduct any 
 business with honesty and profit tests a man to the 
 very full. The founder of this course knows one 
 place where devoted strength is needed most. 
 He is himself a business man. He realizes that 
 the momentous questions of our day are business 
 questions. No political or social scheme will 
 work unless the country is supplied with men who 
 live up to high standards in private enterprise. 
 "To whomsoever much is given, of him shall much 
 be required." Without that motto there can be 
 no advance. Thelnore we go forward, the more 
 clearly we hear the calls of the submerged. No 
 man who has used money in Industry, and used it 
 for betterment, can feel that his life has been 
 without its worth. Carlyle said that the time 
 approached when one who had no light to shed on 
 Industrial problems could make no claim to leader- 
 ship, and this saying is as applicable to private life 
 as to public glare — to the housewife as to the 
 millionaire. Our citizenship will not be right 
 
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INDUSTRY AND PROGRESS 
 
 until we measure success not by size, or victory 
 over others, but by justice and victory over error. 
 The desire to surpass is tonic in proportion, poison 
 in excess; poisonous beyond exaggeration, when it 
 means willingness to crush the undefended. 
 
 "Such hath it been — shall be — beneath the sun 
 The many still must labor for the one." 
 
 Perhaps. The one for whom the many labor 
 is worse than criminal if he is relentless in his 
 vantage post. Says Huxley: 
 
 "Any social condition in which the development of 
 wealth involves the misery, the physical weakness and 
 the degradation of the worker, is absolutely and in- 
 fallibly doomed to collapse. Your bayonets and cut- 
 lasses will break under your hand, and there will go on 
 accumulating in society a mass of hopeless, physically 
 incompetent and wholly degraded people, who are, as 
 it were, a sort of dynamite which sooner or later, when 
 its accumulation becomes sufficient or its tension unbear- 
 able, will burst the whole fabric." 
 
 Other civilizations have risen and gone. Ours 
 looks stable, and has lasted for centuries, but 
 nothing can so much protect it from overthrow as 
 a satisfying solution of social inequalities. Hap- 
 pily our progress is undoubted. I have spoken of 
 the superior social ethics of our time. Even with- 
 
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EMPLOYMENT 
 
 in comparatively few years a change has taken 
 place which is thus described in "The Labor 
 Movement" by Professor Ely: 
 
 "The length of a day's labor varied from twelve to 
 fifteen hours. The New England Mills generally ran 
 thirteen hours a day the year round, but one mill in 
 Connecticut ran fourteen hours, while the length of 
 actual labor in another mill in the same state, the Eagle 
 Mill at Griswold, was fifteen hours and ten minutes, 
 .... Windows were nailed down and the operatives 
 deprived of fresh air, and a case of rebellion on the part 
 of one thousand females on account of tyrannical and 
 oppressive treatment is mentioned. Women and children 
 were urged on by the use of a cowhide, and an instance is 
 given of a little girl, eleven j^ears of age, whose leg was 
 broken with a 'billet of wood.' " 
 
 As we continue our advance, ever new heights 
 become accessible and righteous demands increase, 
 and the only road is to live up to the best visions 
 opened from the ground already won. The pres- 
 ent movement of investigation, although in its 
 highest aspect a movement of undoubted right, is 
 in another aspect a policy of insurance for all in 
 our civilization that we deem best worth the 
 saving. 
 
 In a striking passage of his "Social Problems," 
 Henry George speaks of the increasing depend- 
 
 [5] 
 
INDUSTRY AND PROGRESS 
 
 ence upon the virtues of our fellows which is 
 forced upon us by the growing specialization of 
 all life. Those w^ho live today "may travel at a 
 speed incredible to the savage; but in doing so re- 
 sign life and limb to the care of others. A broken 
 rail, a drunken engineer, a careless switchman, 
 may hurl them to eternity." As society develops, 
 therefore, a higher and higher degree of social 
 intelligence is required. Once each fam.ily pro- 
 duced its own food, made its own clothing, built 
 its own house, and if it moved furnished its 
 own transportation. The same social tendencies 
 which have made us more dependent upon one 
 another have made us more dependent upon the 
 law. Imagine a single employer, facing and fully 
 realizing the hardships of the men who work for 
 him, and eager to treat fairly his employees and 
 customers alike. It will be impossible for him to 
 do it and survive, unless he receives some protec- 
 tion from statute and from public feeling. Other- 
 wise competition will undo him. Even a single 
 unscrupulous or selfish employer can sometimes 
 make business impossible on moral standards for 
 a number of his competitors. Take so simple a 
 case as the working hours of barbers. Almost 
 all would be glad to close their shops on Sunday, 
 
 [6] 
 
EMPLOYMENT 
 
 but if a few refuse, in order to make extra money, 
 they can gradually entice customers from the 
 others, and thus possibly ruin their business, A 
 law here is necessary to enable the individual to do 
 right. The same principle can be applied to 
 hours in more complicated industries; to wages; to 
 such matters as the employment of children. The 
 majority of the employers whose spirit has fallen 
 under my observation would welcome the exist- 
 ence, and stern, equal enforcement, of laws which 
 would help toward social right. Many of them 
 go ahead, without the sufficient aid of law, to use 
 their brains toward making justice pay, as brains 
 can often do; sometimes even to put justice into 
 effect, if they can afford it, even where they can- 
 not make it so profitable as heartless exploitation 
 can be made. 
 
 Let us now consider a few illustrations of what 
 employers are showing of stupid hostility to 
 obviously right measures, and other illustrations 
 of what they are contributing to progress. When 
 Mr. Page asked me to give this course I told him 
 I lacked sufficient knowledge, whereupon he re- 
 plied that what he desired was an approach to 
 these questions such as is exhibited in Collier's 
 Weekly, representing the attentive interest of 
 
INDUSTRY AND PROGRESS 
 
 one concerned In controversies of the day. While 
 some of my illustrations, therefore, will be drawn 
 from reading, others will relate to the problems 
 in which a serious journalist, like a serious legis- 
 lator, is continually involved; for we all — journal- 
 ists, politicians, lawyers and business men — If we 
 think, are brought to face this set of rapidly chang- 
 ing questions. 
 
 In a special message to Congress, dated January 
 31, 1908, Theodore Roosevelt said: 
 
 "Exactly as the working man is entitled to his wages, 
 so he should be entitled to indemnit; for the injuries sus- 
 tained in the natural course of his labor 
 
 "An employer's liability law does not really mean 
 mulcting employers in damages. It merely throws upon 
 the employer the burden of accident insurance against 
 injuries which are sure to occur. It requires him either 
 to bear or to distribute through insurance the loss which 
 can readily be borne when distributed, but which, if un- 
 distributed, bears with frightful hardship upon the un- 
 fortunate victim of accident." 
 
 In the year 1908 Collier's Weekly took up 
 the case of a man named Merritt, who had been 
 injured In the employ of a vast industrial con- 
 cern. His fate had elements of impressiveness, 
 not the least of which was that the great corpora- 
 
 [8] 
 
EMPLOYMENT 
 
 tion which employed him was conducted by a 
 family of unusual liberality and honesty, so that 
 the tragedy brought out not the fault of any per- 
 son, but the inequity of a social system. He was 
 one of 6,000 employees under the command of 
 one branch of this vast company, and of course 
 he was a pawn, with no discretion, obliged to do 
 what was commanded, morally responsible only 
 for sobriety and efficiency. On July i, 1907, his 
 superintendent ordered this employee, who was an 
 electric repair man, to inspect one of the powerful 
 electric cranes which, suspended above the factory 
 rooms, lift and move the heavy iron. As Merritt, 
 after reaching the top of the room, stepped upon 
 the crane, the operator whose function it was to 
 apply the power to that machine suddenly pulled a 
 lever, the electricity leaped into the crane, Merritt 
 was thrown into the gearing, the cogs tore into 
 his flesh, his right arm was crushed, blood poi- 
 soning set in, and his other arm was rendered 
 almost useless. 
 
 For ten hours' work Merritt was earning $2.75, 
 and by working ov^ertime he averaged $90 a month 
 and lived in modest comfort. Dark indeed was 
 the outlook facing the disabled laborer. While 
 he was lying in the hospital, a visitor was an- 
 
 [9] 
 
INDUSTRY AND PROGRESS 
 
 nounced. It was Mr. Blank, special agent for the 
 company, come to offer Merritt the directors' 
 sympathy and $50 in ready money. For this pres- 
 ent he requested a "receipt." Unlike many work- 
 men, Merritt read the "receipt," and discovered 
 that it contained, hidden in complicated print, an 
 absolute release of all claims against the company. 
 Here is a reproduction of the paper — a document 
 which, being typical and not exceptional, may well 
 have an interest to future generations, wishing to 
 know what ideas of justice prevailed in this com- 
 munity at the beginning of the twentieth century, 
 and were therefore applied even by exceptionally 
 generous employers : 
 
 "Know all men by these presents, That I, 
 Walter Merritt, of the Citj^ of Chicago, County of 
 Cook and State of Illinois, for and in consideration 
 of the sum of fifty dollars to me in hand paid by The 
 International Harvester Company, a New Jersey Corpor- 
 ation, the receipt whereof is hereby acknowledged, do 
 hereby release and forever discharge said International 
 Harvester Company from all claims and demands and 
 each J every and all rights cause and causes of action of 
 every name, nature and description whatsoever, which I 
 now have or which has accrued in my favor against it, 
 said International Harvester Company, arising or grow- 
 ing out of or by reason of any matter, cause or thing 
 
 [10] 
 
EMPLOYMENT 
 
 whatsoever, from the beginning of the world to the 
 
 DAY OF the date HEREOF. 
 
 "And, I do further hereby declare that said Interna- 
 tional Harvester Company has not, nor has anyone for it, 
 or in its name, at any time prior to the execution and de- 
 livery of this release by me, made me any offer of em- 
 ployment, nor held out to me any inducement of future em- 
 ployment in any capacity whatever, as a part consideration 
 for the execution of this release, and that I thoroughly 
 understand the meaning of this release and know that its 
 execution by me is an absolute waiver and bar of all and 
 every claim and demand I may have against said company 
 of every name and description, and that under no circum- 
 stances can I sue or maintain any action, suit or proceed- 
 ing against said company by reason of any matter or 
 thing whatsoever happening to me, or arising in my favor 
 against said company prior to the execution and delivery 
 hereof; and I further expressly state that no fraud or un- 
 due influence on the part of said company, or on the part 
 of anyone representing it, has in any way entered into this 
 release or into any of the steps leading up to it. 
 
 "Witness my hand and seal this 24th day of July, 
 A. D. 1907. 
 
 Witnesses: (Seal) 
 
 [H] 
 
INDUSTRY AND PROGRESS 
 
 State of Illinois, | 
 County of Cook. ) 
 
 I, , a notary public in and 
 
 for said county, in the state aforesaid, do hereby certify 
 that Walter Merritt, who is personally known to me to 
 be the same person whose name is subscribed to the fore- 
 going instrument, appeared before me this day in person 
 and acknowledged that he signed, sealed and delivered 
 the said instrument as his free and voluntary act for the 
 uses and purposes therein set forth. 
 
 "Given under my hand and notarial seal this 24th day 
 of July, A. D. 1907. 
 
 Notary Public." 
 
 According to Merritt, whose story is supported 
 at least by the general custom of claim-agents, the 
 lawyer's arguments to him ran like this : 
 
 "Now, Walter, you know we don't want any trouble 
 about this. When you get well, I'll see what I can do 
 for you. Don't go to any lawyer, for if you do I may not 
 be able to help you at all, for you know it wasn't our 
 fault that you got hurt, and we could beat you in a law- 
 suit. We always win our cases. I'm telling you this as 
 a friend. 
 
 "The International Harvester Company is a New Jer- 
 sey corporation. If you sue the company for more than 
 $2,000 it will transfer the case to the Federal court, be- 
 cause it claims to be a citizen of New Jersey and you are 
 a citizen of Illinois. The Federal courts will probably 
 decide that you and the craneman were fellow servants, 
 
 [12] 
 
EMPLOYMENT 
 
 and you would lose your case there. But you might sue 
 in the State courts for $2,000, and the company could not 
 transfer the case to the Federal court, because that court 
 will not consider any case unless the amount sued for is 
 more than $2,000. In cases like yours the law of Illinois 
 is much more favorable to the plaintiff than that of the 
 United States courts, and you could probably win in the 
 State courts. The company will appeal if a jury decides 
 in your favor. The calendars of the courts are crowded 
 with thousands of cases like yours against corporations, 
 and it would take at least three years to collect your 
 damages." 
 
 Thus helped by the publicity created through a 
 powerful newspaper — an ally not accessible usual- 
 ly to mutilated workingmen — by an intelligent 
 lawyer, and by an acute and sympathetic judge, 
 Walter Merritt won his case. Had It not been 
 for a peculiar collocation of fortunate accidents 
 the struggle would have ended in defeat. Com- 
 pensation is obtained, I believe, in the absence of 
 liability statutes, in about one case in ten. Heaven 
 knows, even after legal victory, the result is 
 tragedy for Merritt, his wife and two small chil- 
 dren. The bright side of this story is that the 
 McCormick Company, frequently ahead of 
 prevailing standards, soon after voluntarily put 
 an employers' liability system into practice. 
 
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INDUSTRY AND PROGRESS 
 
 At common law the employer was compelled 
 only to show reasonable care in providing a place 
 to work, tools, appliances and rules, and in hiring 
 fellow servants. The employee had no recourse if 
 he had been guilty of contributory negligence in 
 any degree, or if his injury was due to the negli- 
 gence of a fellow servant. The employee was 
 taken to "assume the risk." Following the lead 
 of Germany, one civilized country after another 
 has recognized the antiquated absurdity of these 
 rules. Compensation should be compulsory and 
 automatic, or the laborer has no chance. What 
 the old law has usually meant is shown clearly in a 
 recent incident in New Jersey. A girl went to her 
 employer and complained that her machine was 
 unsafe. He told her to mind her own business. 
 Soon the defective machine caused her the loss of 
 one arm. The manufacturer resisted damages on 
 the ground that she had assumed the risk, her 
 knowledge being shown by the fact that she had 
 mentioned the defect to him. In Germany he 
 would have been liable in semi-criminal proceed- 
 ings. 
 
 A short time after the Merritt story was in 
 print, the attorney for one of the largest indus- 
 trial enterprises in the world called to state his 
 
 [14] 
 
EMPLOYMENT 
 
 view of employers' liability, fearing, as he said, 
 that his concern might be next attacked. Mem- 
 bers of our staff, in a long and patient conversa- 
 tion, endeavored to explain that Collier's de- 
 sired not to attack anybody, but to make clear, 
 through specific cases, the necessity of protecting 
 the laborer against poverty from causes uncon- 
 trollable by him. Our laborious arguments were 
 vain; the attorney, with every appearance of con- 
 viction, stated and reiterated the time-honored no- 
 tions of his tribe : 
 
 1. The company was kind to its employees. 
 It provided hospitals for them to use when they 
 were mangled. 
 
 2. If there were a compensation act, workmen 
 would lose their limbs on purpose. 
 
 3. "Shyster" lawyers were continually urging 
 laborers to bring suit. 
 
 4. Juries were unfair to corporations. 
 
 5. Employees would drink up the money any- 
 way. 
 
 There were other arguments, too irrelevant, too 
 heartless, too shallow to record. 
 
 Let us pass to another urgent social need, on 
 which some employers of labor have taken a posi- 
 tion as curiously unseeing. Modern science has 
 
 [15] 
 
INDUSTRY AND PROGRESS 
 
 come to understand the importance of fatigue. 
 The old Mephistopheles is dead, but many devils 
 have arisen, competing for his place, and weari- 
 ness is one. It is the mother of disease. It not 
 only excludes joy, gives birth to languid gloom, 
 shuts the windows of the mind, but constantly it 
 fosters illness in the body. Our tired system is 
 the easy prey of colds, and colds in the weary be- 
 come pneumonia, and the general deterioration 
 of the body welcomes the great scourge, consump- 
 tion. Overfatigue is a devil for man, but a hun- 
 dred times as fierce for woman. Woman is being 
 driven from the home. Once, varying with her 
 station, her work equaled or surpassed man's in 
 variety and interest. She made clothing for the 
 family. There were no dairies, and she it was 
 who extracted butter and cheese from milk. She 
 preserved food for approaching winter. What 
 intellectual and moral bringing up the children had 
 was mostly hers. Now, while the state has been 
 taking over the education, centralized industry has 
 taken over the daily routine. Clothes are no 
 longer made at home, and woman follows to the 
 factory. Dairies furnish us butter, cheese and 
 milk. Great establishments put up soup, pickles 
 and preserves. Not even the washing is alto- 
 
 [16] 
 
EMPLOYMENT 
 
 gether done at home, and here Is where my pres- 
 ent illustration comes. Let us not forget the long 
 and wearing hours that woman often labored in 
 the dwelling which her husband owned. We are 
 endeavoring, not to show that the world grows 
 worse, which would be untrue, but to live up to 
 the twentieth century's possibilities, and to check 
 evils which the centralization of industry has at 
 last put in our control. Public employment, what- 
 ever improvement in the general scale of living it 
 has helped to bring about, has by necessity its at- 
 tendant harms. Women, working too hard, too 
 long, too near the time when children come, are 
 shattered in body, and the next generation is in- 
 jured in advance. 
 
 As Miss Addams says : 
 
 "For a hundred years England has been legislating upon 
 the subject of unsanitary workshops, long and exhausting 
 hours of work, night work for women, occupations in 
 which pregnant women may be employed, and hundreds 
 of other restrictions which we are only beginning to con- 
 sider objects of legislation here." 
 
 Oregon, which has, thanks largely to the devo- 
 tion and intelligence of W. S. U'Ren, in social edu- 
 cation kept a step ahead of most sister states, 
 passed a law that women should not be forced to 
 
 [17] 
 
INDUSTRY AND PROGRESS 
 
 work more than ten hours a day in public laundries. 
 A moderate estimate, surely, of the required pro- 
 tection. The law was attacked, appealed to the 
 Supreme Court of the United States, and its con- 
 stitutionality affirmed. Illinois then passed a law 
 limiting the hours of women in factories to ten. 
 The movers for the law wanted eight hours, but 
 thought it best to try for ten. The Illinois Manu- 
 facturers' Association made a furious endeavor 
 to induce the Supreme Court of that state not to 
 follow the United States Supreme Court's deci- 
 sion in the Oregon case. The brief in support of 
 this contention is a curiosity. Here are a number 
 of its points: 
 
 1. It violates the constitution of Illinois, because it de- 
 prives citizens of liberty and property without due pro- 
 cess of law. 
 
 2. It takes away the constitutional right of the in- 
 dividual to contract. 
 
 3. It is class legislation. 
 
 4. It is a purely arbitrary restriction upon the rights 
 of Illinois citizens to control their time and faculties. 
 
 5. It substitutes the judgment of the legislature for the 
 judgment of the employer and employee in a matter 
 about which they are competent to agree. 
 
 6. It is contrary to the police power of the State. 
 
 7. It is void for ambiguity, as the term "mechanical 
 
 [18] 
 
EMPLOYMENT 
 
 establishment" is ambiguous and of merely comparative 
 significance. 
 
 8. It is unequal in its operation, for it imposes upon 
 the employer a penalty for violation of the statute and 
 imposes none upon the employee. 
 
 9. "It is unequal, discriminatory, and unjust, because 
 it restricts an employee from working more than ten 
 hours a day, no matter if she be employed in more than 
 one establishment," 
 
 10. "It is void because beyond the power of the legis- 
 lature to enact." 
 
 Mr. Louis D. Brandeis, who, as the victor be- 
 fore the United States Supreme Court in the Ore- 
 gon case, was called into the Illinois case, almost 
 ignored legal precedents; he ignored these childish 
 and antique objections; he presented the court with 
 ample evidence that more than ten hours' labor by 
 women in laundries was injurious to their health 
 and morals, and to the health and morals of the 
 community, and he won. 
 
 The employment of mothers shortly before and 
 after childbirth is prohibited in a number of Euro- 
 pean countries. A much-cited case is that of M. 
 Dollfus, a large employer of women in Alsace, 
 who required mothers to remain absent for six 
 weeks after childbirth, during which time he paid 
 them full wages. The decrease in infant mor- 
 
 [19] 
 
INDUSTRY AND PROGRESS 
 
 tality in the first year was from 40 to less than 18 
 per cent. A convention of wage-earning women 
 in America has put forward a program, which in 
 its main outlines must have the support of all 
 employers who realize what the health and mor- 
 ality of women in this generation mean to the 
 efficiency, character and happiness of the next : 
 
 An eight-hour workday. 
 
 Elimination of night work for women. 
 
 Protected machinery. 
 
 Sanitary workshops. 
 
 Separate toilet-rooms for women. 
 
 Seats for women, with permission to use them when 
 the nature of the work permits. 
 
 Prohibition of employment of women two months be- 
 fore and two months after confinement. 
 
 Pensions for mothers during lying-in periods. 
 
 An increase in the number of women factory inspec- 
 tors, based on the number of women workers employed 
 in the state. 
 
 Women physicians as health inspectors to visit all shops 
 and factories where women are employed. 
 
 A minimum wage for women in sweated industries. 
 
 In regard to the employment of children, al- 
 though an unfortunate number of unfair allega- 
 tions have been made, it cannot be denied that 
 great injury is being done, or that in employers 
 
 [20] 
 
EMPLOYMENT 
 
 often humanity yields to greed. We need not dis- 
 cuss, in a course of this kind, the hours of children 
 on the farm, the responsibihty of parents, or the 
 relative healthfulness of good factories and bad 
 tenements. We are on safe ground when we fight 
 bad tenements, absence of schooling and destruc- 
 tive factory labor, all and single, and condemn 
 those employers who have been found blind 
 enough to oppose the passage of protective legis- 
 lation, to evade it when passed, and to endeavor 
 to play upon the fears of the voters and the legis- 
 latures by threatening, in case the privilege of 
 using children was taken away from them, to re- 
 move their factories to more lenient states. As an 
 offset to such acts, we recall that Sir Robert Peel, 
 the father of the statesman, with no public agita- 
 tion to spur him on, introduced the first great 
 measure in protection of factory children, because, 
 himself a mill owner, he was shocked by the 
 wrongs which passed before his eyes. This was 
 in 1902, and many an obscure Peel may be found 
 among the high-minded business men of the 
 United States in 1910. 
 
 Robert Owen, whose influence on philanthropy 
 and social thought has been so lasting, was the 
 manager of a cotton mill at nineteen. More than 
 
 [21] 
 
INDUSTRY AND PROGRESS 
 
 a hundred years ago he successfully introduced 
 standards of conduct to which the world has not 
 yet advanced. He improved housing, furnished 
 supplies at the lowest possible price, stimulated 
 education and thrift, and yet made money. His 
 partners were ordinary men, however, and they 
 conceived that more money could be made if such 
 expensive luxuries as the golden rule were laid 
 aside. Owen therefore founded a new company, 
 with the fundamental agreement that five per cent, 
 return on capital was sufficient, the rest of the 
 earnings to be free for use in behalf of others. 
 Among the members of this firm was Jeremy 
 Bentham. About lOO years have passed since 
 that company was started, but in this year of 
 grace we may say with confidence that this willing- 
 ness of capital itself to deal fairly with employees 
 and with the public was an example fertile in 
 moral progress that will never be equaled by 
 libraries, colleges or medical institutions paid for 
 out of the proceeds of cruelty and fraud. The 
 race of Robert Owen is not extinct. Thousands 
 of business men in America today are moved by 
 similar ideals, though perhaps lacking the brains 
 to put them successfully into practice. There died 
 a few months ago a man whose life moved on a 
 
 [22] 
 
EMPLOYMENT 
 
 plane as high as Owen's. William H. Baldwin, 
 Jr., was a gifted practical railroad man. He 
 knew how to make money, but relentlessly, de- 
 spite much blindness in his competitors, he re- 
 fused to make it at the price of cheating the 
 public or abusing his subordinates. He held ably 
 one position after another in the railroad world, 
 without letting go any of his convictions or 
 descending to sophistries with which many of his 
 associates and rivals defended what he knew was 
 wrong. His object was not to weaken unions, but 
 to strengthen them; not to outdo them, but to 
 help them; not to yield only what was forced out 
 of him, but to be ever thinking what more he 
 could do to justify the power he held. 
 
 When an employer has learned the great cen- 
 tral truth that in fighting unionism he is fighting 
 progress, he will be in a fair way to meet his 
 obligations fairly. Here again we must not lose 
 historical perspective. A century ago law, as well 
 as public sentiment among the property-owning 
 classes, was so unfavorable to organized labor that 
 in England the slightest attempt at concerted 
 action to Increase the price of services was visited 
 with severest penalties. As late as 1834, six 
 Dorchester laborers were sent as convicts to 
 
 [23] 
 
INDUSTRY AND PROGRESS 
 
 Botany Bay, for the mere act of forming a labor 
 union which had not even asked for an advance of 
 wages; and the Statute of Laborers forbade a 
 laborer to seek work beyond the parish in which 
 he was born. Ancient guilds of artisans were 
 sometimes destroyed, and if workingmen merely 
 combined, the penalty was indictment for con- 
 spiracy. It is only recently that any law affected 
 combinations of employers, for until recently the 
 employing class has had its way entirely. Adam 
 Smith more than loo years ago spoke of the tacit 
 but unswerving social understanding among em- 
 ployers to keep wages down. This silent class 
 conspiracy is enfeebled, but not dead. A friend 
 of mine, one of the most intelligent publishers 
 alive, desired to make an offer to a certain writer, 
 but was afraid it would not be proper "to buy him 
 away" from his employer, and many a housewife 
 feels the same obligation not to raise wages for 
 domestic service, or inconvenience her friends by 
 paying more than her neighbors pay. 
 
 I do not pretend that this question is easy in all 
 Its manifestations, but there are plenty of cases 
 of class conspiracy so flagrant as to allow no 
 doubts. The Manufacturers' Association of 
 America and the Allied Citizens' Industrial Al- 
 
 [24] 
 
EMPLOYMENT 
 
 liance form a notable example. A number of such 
 organizations are constantly engaged in the stu- 
 pidest warfare against unionism, and the spirit in 
 which they work came under my personal obser- 
 vation when the trustees of the Lincoln Farm 
 Association, which was founded to preserve to the 
 nation the scene of much of Lincoln's childhood, 
 learned of the fight being made against it by such 
 an organization because we carried on our work 
 in friendly cooperation with the labor unions. The 
 following quotations from published interviews 
 coincide with the whole history of such backward 
 organizations. 
 
 By the president of the National Association 
 of Manufacturers and of the Citizens' Industrial 
 Alliance of America: 
 
 "This is not the proper time to talk conciliation 
 
 Since the principles and demands of organized labor are 
 absolutely untenable to those believing in the individualis- 
 tic social order, an attitude of conciliation would mean 
 an attitude of compromise with regard to fundamental 
 convictions. .... Neither is it the time to talk arbitra- 
 tion or joint agreement. To arbitrate questions of wages 
 and hours is to introduce artificial methods of determining 
 what they shall be and an equitable arrangement as to 
 
 either cannot be effected artificially Arbitration is 
 
 only putting off the day of reckoning." 
 
 [25] 
 
INDUSTRY AND PROGRESS 
 
 By the chairman of the Executive Committee of 
 the Citizens' Industrial AlHance : 
 
 "No organization of men, not excepting the Ku Klux 
 Klan, the Mafia or the Black Hand Society, has ever 
 produced such a record of barbarism as has this so-called 
 organized labor society which, through misdirected sym- 
 pathy, apathy and indifference, has been permitted to grow- 
 up to cripple our industries, and to trample in the dust 
 the natural and constitutional rights of our citizens." 
 
 By the same officer: 
 
 "The only way to settle a controversy with organized 
 labor is to have absolutely no dealings with it." 
 
 A similar spirit, from these same men, is shown 
 in a call for their latest annual convention, in 
 which they say: 
 
 "Insidious and socialistic doctrines as preached, pub- 
 lished and practiced by so-called labor leaders have of late 
 so dominated labor unions as to preclude the exercise of 
 free and independent thought on the part of intelligent 
 members of labor unions, and have become a hindrance 
 to business and a menace to society." 
 
 Again: 
 
 "Whereas, organized labor throughout the country 
 seeks to discourage and practically prohibits membership 
 in the militia." 
 
 [26] 
 
EMPLOYMENT 
 
 A typically violent example of the old anti-union 
 species may be seen also in Mr. Post, of Grape- 
 nuts and Postum fame, who fills newspapers' ad- 
 vertising columns with rhetorical abuse of every- 
 thing the unions do. In all our industrial troubles 
 nobody does more harm than stupid hotheads such 
 as these. 
 
 One need not go further back than the Pittsburg 
 Survey, the Hocking Valley troubles in Illinois, 
 and the mining troubles in Pennsylvania, to find 
 dramatic instances of this spirit in action — of the 
 tyranny with which great business magnates some- 
 times use their power. In the Pittsburg troubles 
 the paper with which I am associated happened to 
 be directly concerned. We made charges about 
 housing conditions, and responsible executives of 
 a great concern, in order to meet these charges, 
 sent us solemn figures which turned out to be ruth- 
 less lies. The survey made a deep impression on 
 the country. It showed men compelled to work 
 at blast furnaces seven days a week, and brought 
 us nearer to the intelligent legislation which in 
 France, Italy and Canada has forbidden the seven- 
 day week. Imagine working violently twelve 
 hours a day, seven days In the week, and hoping 
 to find any higher value In this life. The wages 
 
 [27] 
 
INDUSTRY AND PROGRESS 
 
 were found to be so low also that a normal Ameri- 
 can standard of living was impossible, but a little 
 while later the Steel Trust was taking part in con- 
 structing a tariff to protect its infant industry, a 
 tariff under the shelter of which had been reared 
 the mightiest fortunes In history. The companies 
 in the steel district are also continually busy in 
 stimulating Immigration, as a weapon to beat down 
 wages and the scale of living. Mr, Edward T. 
 Devine, speaking before the American Sociologi- 
 cal Society and the American Economic Associa- 
 tion, was not too severe when he said: 
 
 "The contrast — which does not become blurred by 
 familiarity with detail, but on the contrary becomes more 
 vivid as the outlines are filled in — the contrast between 
 the prosperity on the one hand of the most prosperous of 
 all the communities of our western civilization, with its 
 vast natural resources, the generous fostering of govern- 
 ment, the human energy, the technical development, the 
 gigantic tonnage of the mines and mills, the enormous 
 capital of which the bank balances afford an indication; 
 and, on the other hand, the neglect of life, of health, of 
 physical vigor, even of the industrial efficiency of the in- 
 dividual. Certainly no community before in America or 
 Europe has ever had such a surplus, and never before has 
 a great community applied what it had so meagerly to the 
 rational purposes of human life. Not by gifts of libraries, 
 galleries, technical schools and parks, but by the cessa- 
 
 [28] 
 
EMPLOYMENT 
 
 tion of toil one day in seven and sixteen hours in the 
 twenty-four, by the increase of wages, by the sparing of 
 lives, by the prevention of accidents, and by raising the 
 standards of domestic life, should the surplus come back 
 to the people of the community in which it is created." 
 
 The report of the Bureau of Labor upon con- 
 ditions at the Bethlehem Steel Works showed simi- 
 lar oppression. There we beheld even a thirteen- 
 hour day. A large percentage of the laborers 
 earned but twelve and one half cents per hour, 
 and some only twelve cents. For some of the 
 seven-day men Sunday was not considered over- 
 time. Figures like this, however horrible, are 
 needed to keep the conscience of the people alive 
 and their minds fixed upon the rights of the over- 
 ridden many. The following graphic picture is 
 given by Holyoake in "The Cooperative Move- 
 ment Today" : 
 
 "When in America I passed by a melancholy mountain 
 known as 'Starvation Point,' up which the Iroquois In- 
 dians drove their Illinois rivals and surrounded the base, 
 while the Illinois tribe above were all starved to death. 
 In Spring Valley, near this spot, capitalists recently 
 opened mines and invited settlers by offers of good wages. 
 Miners flocked there, bought lots of the company, and 
 built houses. A township of some thousands arose. For 
 a workman to leave meant the loss of his home, which 
 
 [29] 
 
INDUSTRY AND PROGRESS 
 
 he could neither let nor sell. If the men struck, their 
 employers could confiscate their dwellings. Then their 
 wages were suddenly reduced. The men did strike. They 
 tried to get employment at the nearest mines. All the 
 owners were in the capitalist ring, and no work could be 
 had. The whole town was starved into submission, as 
 completely and pitilessly as the Indians on the mountain. 
 The miners had been lured into a trap. Law gave the 
 capitalist this power — there was no law to deliver the 
 workers. Those who said this was infamous were ac- 
 cused by the capitalists of setting class against class." 
 
 As Professor Giddings puts it, an employer 
 may say, "I will buy labor at the lowest prices at 
 which men who are nearest starvation will con- 
 sent to work," or he may say, "I will pay my 
 help the highest wages that I can afford." Simi- 
 larly he may say, "I will force upon them the 
 longest hours," or 'T will make hours as favorable 
 to them as I can afford." The first spirit means 
 progressive degradation of labor and, in the view 
 of many observers, ultimate destruction of the 
 employer's profits; although I personaly feel safer 
 in relying upon the human and moral appeal than 
 upon the argument that virtue will finally be re- 
 paid in dollars to the employer. Professor Gid- 
 dings points out that there was a steady discour- 
 agement of labor and impairment of efficiency in 
 
 [30] 
 
EMPLOYMENT 
 
 England during the first half of the nineteenth 
 century, under the teaching that unmitigated sel- 
 fishness was economically desirable, and that un- 
 der the opposite rule the laborer is encouraged 
 and stimulated, his standard of living is raised, 
 he creates more wealth for conversion into capi- 
 tal, and this accumulated capital, by increasing 
 the demand for labor, tends further to raise 
 wages. A recent report on national vitality by 
 the Committee of One Hundred on National 
 Health, declares that the present working day, 
 from a physiological standpoint, is too long, and 
 keeps the majority of men and women in a contin- 
 ual state of overfatigue. It starts a vicious circle, 
 leading to the craving for means of deadening 
 fatigue, thus inducing drunkenness and other ex- 
 cesses. "Experiments in reducing the working 
 day show a great improvement in the physical ef- 
 ficiency of laborers, and in many cases result in 
 even increasing their output sufficiently to com- 
 pensate the employer for the shorter day." That 
 shorter hours pay directly in actually increased 
 efficiency, is, undoubtedly, true in many cases. 
 One hundred years ago fourteen and fifteen hours 
 were not uncommon. The first legal limitation 
 was under President Van Buren, in i 840, to ten 
 
 [ =51 ] 
 
INDUSTRY AND PROGRESS 
 
 hours. About thirty years ago it was lowered by 
 Congress to eight hours. Meantime, the produc- 
 tiveness of labor has steadily increased, but how 
 much of the increase is due to shorter hours and 
 how much in spite of it, is the subject of debate. 
 At Liege it was decided that shortening the day 
 gradually from eleven hours to seven and a half 
 resulted in every case in an increase of output. 
 The Solvay Process Company of Syracuse in 
 1892 introduced three eight-hour shifts in place 
 of the two previous shifts of thirteen hours, and 
 found that this change was actually profitable. 
 Many similar cases might be cited, but it seems 
 to me unsafe to look at the question entirely as 
 selfish. Sometimes it will work out right from 
 the mercenary point of view, and sometimes not; 
 certainly it is right from the social standpoint. 
 The step ahead may or may not be profitable for 
 the individual employer, but it is obviously of the 
 greatest advantage to the community. 
 
 Often the employer has carried selfishness to 
 the point where it was obviously unprofitable, 
 as in the case, about twenty years ago, cited by 
 Holyoake : 
 
 "To force upon railway workmen long hours of labor, 
 detrimental to their health and to the public safety, Scot- 
 
 [32] 
 
EMPLOYMENT 
 
 tish railway directors wasted last year more money than 
 would have endowed all the men with moderate annui- 
 ties." 
 
 Such cases grow rarer, however, and more truth 
 inheres every year in the remark of a recent ob- 
 server that the business world In general resembles 
 not piracy so much as traffic on the high seas, 
 where there are many perils of storm and colli- 
 sion, and many disasters wrought by treachery 
 and rashness, but where, on the whole, strong men 
 are trained, and the work of the world is bravely 
 done. "Nothing," to be sure, "is more timorous 
 than a million dollars, except two million dol- 
 lars," but this conservatism of capital is not all 
 evil, and if it is infused with sufficient sincerity 
 and human sympathy it is strength. Edward A. 
 Filene of Boston, who in his own large establish- 
 ment has put many advanced ideas into operation, 
 observes that "ideas go to the scrap heap about 
 as often as machines," and it is a mark of health 
 in the present age that it shows unusual willing- 
 ness to change both. 
 
 Sometimes one man can do much. Let me cite 
 as an illustration the busy lawyer who won the 
 Oregon and Illinois cases for shorter hours, who 
 as these lectures are written out has induced gar- 
 
 [33] 
 
INDUSTRY AND PROGRESS 
 
 ment workers and their employers to a new modi- 
 fication of the open shop idea, and who put forth 
 the first American plea for savings bank insur- 
 ance, with a convincing explanation of the benefits 
 that the laboring classes would derive. Taken up 
 first by ex-Governor Douglas and a few other 
 large employers, this plan, now in operation but a 
 short time, has already shown what a genuinely 
 valuable contribution it is toward the solution of 
 the lowering problem of the workingman's old 
 age. For the man who labors with his hands age 
 comes early and bears many threats. At forty, 
 when the professional man has just mastered his 
 resources, the laborer is frequently of so much 
 diminished value that he is in danger of being 
 thrown aside. The lawyer, the clergyman, the 
 politician, the journalist, may be as useful at sixty 
 as at thirty. 
 
 A condition of industry in which a man ceases 
 to be useful comparatively early obviously offers 
 bitter old-age problems to the majority. England 
 has recently seen herself compelled to introduce 
 a system of old-age pensions, of doubtful bearing 
 on the fibre and p^^p.erlty of her people. The 
 contributory system of pensioning, by compulsory 
 saving, which works so well in Germany, would 
 
 [34] 
 
EMPLOYMENT 
 
 be impossible with our political ideas and institu- 
 tions, and the plan put into force in Massachusetts 
 rests on the substitution of education and persua- 
 sion for the German force. It requires the 
 cooperation of savings banks and employers. The 
 banks offer old-age insurance at cost, and the em- 
 ployers constantly and in many ways remind their 
 employees of the advantages of taking out such 
 insurance. The result, after less than two years 
 of trial, is a great saving to the workingmen, not 
 only of Massachusetts, but all over the country, as 
 the installment insurance companies, like the Pru- 
 dential, have been compelled to lower their rates 
 to meet the savings bank competition. So great 
 a victory, over so appalling a fact, won with such 
 simplicity, helps us to believe that much social 
 progress may be gained without fundamental 
 changes in the structure of society. As a commit- 
 tee of the Boston Chamber of Commerce has 
 just said: 
 
 "What is needed is the establishment of agencies with 
 employers, and where sufficient interest and business pos- 
 sibilities exist, the opening of an insurance department by ^ a ^^^ - 
 the local savings banks. Notle^^jg/mtg^0$Fu\e prose- 
 
 cution of a campaigt^lll^PBPror^tnat will convince the 
 working people of t^^esirability, cheapness and safety of 
 
 [35] 
 
INDUSTRY AND PROGRESS 
 
 savings banks insurance. Such education will encourage 
 thrift, and counteract the unfortunate drift toward non- 
 contributory old-age insurance, which has been adopted in 
 England under peculiar economic and political conditions, 
 which do not exist in this country." 
 
 The enlightenment which Massachusetts has 
 shown, toward both political and economic prob- 
 lems, is a safer example for Americans to emulate 
 than are ideas imported whole from foreign 
 lands. At the very last session of the legislature 
 Massachusetts passed an act compelling employ- 
 ers, when advertising for help in times of labor 
 troubles, to mention any strike or lockout In prog- 
 ress in their shops or factories, and thus refrain 
 from luring workmen from distant homes in igno- 
 rance of what they have to face. The more such 
 definite kinds of Injustice, big or little, are made 
 impossible, the safer we shall be from convulsions 
 based upon despair. A realization of such truths 
 is growing rapidly. Large employers are coming 
 rapidly to accept some form not only of accident 
 insurance, but also of old-age pensions, often with- 
 out contributions from the employees. The "pluck 
 me" store, In which the employee was compelled to 
 buy at ruinous iost the necessities of life from his 
 employer. Is ^^^^as a crime. "Welfare work," 
 
 [36] 
 
EMPLOYMENT 
 
 a term covering the general comfort, health and 
 enjoyment of employees, Is making rapid progress. 
 Could the following paragraph, ten years ago, 
 have emerged from a body like that which actu- 
 ally has recently drawn It up — a committee of 
 which the president of a railway was one of the 
 two members? 
 
 "It cannot be denied that in recent years, notwithstand- 
 ing the vast accumulation of wealth in the hands of a 
 privileged few, there has been no corresponding gain to 
 labor; that our modern competitive industrial system re- 
 sults in conditions which are essentially un-Christian, and 
 unjust to the men who produce the wealth in which they 
 so unequally share; that in every industrial community, 
 poverty due to insufficient wages and uncertainty of em- 
 ploj'ment is to a large extent responsible for the existing 
 discontent, crime, immorality and alienation from religion, 
 and that the Church is to a large degree identified with 
 the capitalistic class and that its influence is used to up- 
 hold the existing economic sj-stem." 
 
 "Welfare work" Includes so much detail that 
 an outline of It might well fill a volume. Each 
 establishment presents a separate problem. Such 
 study Is required that there Is a growing belief 
 that the "welfare manager" Is a necessity — one 
 man, that is, who is not responsible for the money- 
 making side of the business, and whose duty It Is 
 
 [37] 
 
INDUSTRY AND PROGRESS 
 
 to study the needs and wishes of the employees. 
 From bathing facilities and fresh air to libraries, 
 music and courses of instruction, it is his business 
 to make the working day itself a little better worth 
 the living. Shading Into this field are all things 
 which tend toward education, equipment, stimula- 
 tion of ambition and the power of rising — as, for 
 example, the "Top-Notch" system, or special op- 
 portunities for advancement given to those who 
 do best In their particular divisions. Morality 
 also is Included — as where. In some establish- 
 ments, the girls leave half an hour earlier than 
 the men. A free physician is becoming more and 
 more usual. Opportunities for diversion, whether 
 in intellectual directions or In such amusements as 
 dancing and games, are being widely Introduced. 
 In some cases where the workmen are brought to 
 a town merely by the needs of some special busi- 
 ness, prizes are offered by the conductors of that 
 business for the most attractive homes. A few 
 factories (where the nature of the work permits 
 it) employ men or women to read aloud during 
 working hours; others have pianos. In certain 
 employments, such as railway engineering, rest- 
 rooms are of the first importance, especially be- 
 cause an attractive place where a man can read, 
 
 [38] 
 
EMPLOYMENT 
 
 play games or sleep, will prove to be the greatest 
 rival of the saloon. Lunch hours are becoming 
 longer; ventilation is becoming better, and the 
 result is so marked that in one telephone company, 
 for instance, after a new ventilating system was 
 put in, the number of days of work lost by its sixty 
 women employees was cut in half. The relation 
 of fatigue to illness comes within the welfare field, 
 and w^hile with regard to fatigue the length of 
 hours is the most important consideration, all 
 steps which make work more interesting make it 
 physically easier to endure. 
 
 Welfare work can hardly be successful unless it 
 is democratic. Progress in comfort is looked 
 upon by employees as mere bribery if it is used as 
 an excuse for long hours, unsteady employment, 
 low wages or weak unions. Some of the em- 
 ployers who have shown the greatest intelligence 
 in relief and welfare work have been persistent 
 enemies of the union, and no employer who looks 
 upon unionism as an evil, or upon a weak union 
 as more desirable than a strong one, is capable of 
 taking a place in the economic progress of our day. 
 The time for bribery has gone. The time for 
 justice has arrived. The spirit of democracy is 
 passing into industry. The principles of the 
 
 [39] 
 
INDUSTRY AND PROGRESS 
 
 Christian religion, on their most fertile side, are 
 being translated from far-away abstractions into 
 commanding daily guides; and best among them 
 is the Golden Rule. 
 
 [40] 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 Labor. 
 
 Mr. James Bryce, in a speech recently, said 
 that the greatest unsolved problem in the world 
 is to find a satisfactory relation between labor and 
 capital. New aspects of this complicated problem 
 arise with every development in our ethical ideas. 
 Once the duties of labor were regarded by the 
 educated as exclusively toward the employer. An 
 illuminating fact of recent history is the awaken- 
 ing of the laborer to his duties toward his class. 
 Even the isolated rich are coming to understand 
 that things are good which help the laborer to 
 greater value in his life. Charles William Eliot, 
 in his much-discussed lecture on the religion of the 
 future, shows the belief that one of the leading 
 obligations will be so to act that the world's work 
 may be made less dismal. Once in the face of ex- 
 tensive evil we talked about the will of provi- 
 dence. Now we mitigate the evil. 
 
 No single force has done more to educate us, 
 poor and rich, than unions. "Association," said 
 the Bishop of Durham, "for good or evil is the 
 characteristic of our age." In labor, association 
 
 [41] 
 
INDUSTRY AND PROGRESS 
 
 has done so much good that the Incidental evil 
 is comparatively small. The union has been called 
 the worker's public school. It is more. It is the 
 first device in the world by which has been intro- 
 duced a fair dispute between poor and rich. Prac- 
 tically it is new, although in other forms it has 
 existed. Some of Cicero's most violent diatribes 
 are against the trades unions of his time. Strikes, 
 which have been the militant expressions of the 
 desires of labor, are old in history. When the 
 Children of Israel were instructed by Pharaoh to 
 make bricks without straw, and to labor without 
 rest, they went on the first general strike. The 
 slave insurrections, about which we read, but 
 which are more numerous than would be indicated 
 by ordinary history, were the rebellion of the 
 laborers against conditions. The laborer has 
 always been at a disadvantage in these contests 
 with his employer, often he has been desperate, 
 and until recently he has felt that any arrangement 
 which he could come to was likely to result in his 
 harm, partly on account of his inferiority in educa- 
 tion and experience; partly on account of his lack 
 of that formal or informal organization which 
 binds business men together; and partly because, 
 lacking capital on which to live during the contest, 
 
 [42] 
 
LABOR 
 
 he was not able to hold out for terms as long as 
 the employer. There is a certain poem by Lear: 
 
 "There was a young woman in Niger, 
 Went a-ride on the back of a tiger, 
 They returned from their ride, 
 With the lady inside, 
 And a smile on the face of the tiger." 
 
 Holyoake tells us that the sweated workmen of 
 East London say: 
 
 "There was a workman of Whitechapelist, 
 Went out on the back of a capitalist ; 
 
 They returned from their ride 
 
 With the workman inside, 
 And content in the face of the capitalist." 
 
 The stronger the union, the greater will be the 
 possibility of removing inequality and distrust, the 
 fairer the terms, and the more stable the under- 
 standings. Without unions, labor can do nothing; 
 with weak unions It can do little. 
 
 In a general discussion of the duties of labor, 
 the questions which would have been among the 
 most promment a quarter of a century ago, sink 
 now Into the background. The size of the drink 
 bill Is one of the greatest burdens In most civilized 
 countries, perhaps most of all in Great Britain. 
 
 [43] 
 
INDUSTRY AND PROGRESS 
 
 It is a burden even with us, and it falls most 
 heavily on the laboring class. The poor have 
 their forms of the evil of luxury, and drink with 
 them stands first. What is wasted by this vice 
 alone would be enough, used aright, to bring com- 
 fort, education, industrial freedom to all man- 
 kind. The most direct expense may be in the 
 enormous percentage of the productive power of 
 the country that is wasted, but a still heavier loss 
 lies in decreased efficiency. If the duty of laborers 
 and labor unions to agitate for temperance is not 
 here brought forward, it is not because it is not 
 one of the most important tasks ever imposed 
 upon the world or any class, but merely because 
 labor unions so thoroughly understand and are 
 working so persistently. In most unions intem- 
 perance is now regarded as one of the cardinal 
 sins, and the attitude of the unions, combined with 
 the demands of the public and of employers, is 
 resulting in real progress toward temperance. 
 
 Another question, which is among the most 
 serious, fails to require argument from the labor 
 point of view because the unions have been so 
 steadily on the right side. To nobody, of course, 
 does the laborer owe more than to his child, but 
 he knows this as well as we can tell him. Protec- 
 
 [44] 
 
LABOR 
 
 tion of the young from work which stunts their 
 growth and limits their later power may need to 
 be argued to the employer, but the elimination of 
 child labor is a step for which the unions have 
 consistently stood, as they have also consistently 
 stood for the co-relative duty of providing educa- 
 tion and care for children over a sufficient number 
 of years. 
 
 Another step, almost won, is in the point of 
 view of labor unions, and especially labor leaders, 
 toward violence. It cannot with truth be said 
 that the actual belief of the majority of laboring 
 men corresponds with the statements put forward 
 for publication, but it approaches nearer to them 
 with each instructive year. It is no doubt easier 
 to unionize those occupations, like the building 
 trades, in which violence is easy to commit. The 
 part that violence has played in the progress of 
 the race is a matter about which it is difficult to be 
 safely dogmatic. Frequently it is stated, as it 
 was, I remember, by Mr. John Hay, that "assas- 
 sination never changed the face of history." In 
 reality, no historian has the power to say to what 
 extent the progress of humanity was affected by 
 violence in the French Revolution, favorably and 
 for loss. In the female suffrage debate which 
 
 [45] 
 
INDUSTRY AND PROGRESS 
 
 Great Britain is undergoing, the advocates of mili- 
 tant tactics have no difficulty in showing that 
 roughness has accompanied most extensions of 
 male suffrage. Although this philosophic doubt 
 is admitted, there is a constant effort toward peace- 
 ful methods and a constant diminution of violence, 
 since nearly everybody realizes that our permanent 
 industrial victories are to be won by reason, study, 
 spiritual inspiration. 
 
 We need not linger over a point so obvious, 
 although so recent, as recognition of the union. 
 Employers who fight it still are behind their day. 
 As a member of Parliament, who is himself an 
 employer, said: 
 
 "Without unions there was a spasmodic demand for 
 labor at any price, and a sudden fall to the lowest of 
 wages men can take. Industry was demoralized, and 
 there was no healthy competition among employers, mak- 
 ing it difficult for even a just and generous employer to 
 do right — a situation which has been done away with by 
 the progress of the unions." 
 
 Between the contestants stands the consumer, 
 and his rights become clearer. Canada is ahead 
 of the United States in that, without arbitrary 
 settlement, she has conserved the right of the pub- 
 lic without hardship to either disputant. It was 
 
 [46] 
 
 J*L' 
 
LABOR 
 
 perhaps necessary that the two great industrial 
 forces should be allowed to fight out their differ- 
 ences before the time could arrive to intervene 
 with public rights; as in the war between Japan 
 and Russia intervention seemed impracticable at 
 first. No country has yet gone so far as to prevent 
 strikes. Compulsory arbitration, where it has 
 been tried, has not succeeded. The Canadian 
 principle is to force the conflicting parties to sub- 
 mit differences to a board, not of arbitration, but 
 of investigation. It looks fully into the facts and 
 merely makes recommendations, and no strike is 
 permitted until the results of this investigation 
 have been put before the public. The consequence 
 is that if either employer or employees refuse to 
 abide by the decision, the party refusing accepts 
 public disapproval. 
 
 With regard to the rights of labor in enforc- 
 ing its demands, legal standards are changing rap- 
 idly. Up to the early part of the nineteenth 
 century a strike was considered a conspiracy, a 
 view derived from the English common law, now 
 in England changed by statute. On the other 
 hand, while the English law is becoming more 
 favorable toward the liberty of labor to fight for 
 its rights, it is also putting certain obligations on 
 
 [47] 
 
INDUSTRY AND PROGSXSS 
 
 it. Frigls'nn nov, under the TsS-^ sJe case, forces 
 unions to be resr>on5:ble f cr some of the Tiolence 
 commitred bx nnembers, hat tids qwjJiw cunat 
 be looked upon as dosed. 
 
 Apart from the "sray it is earned oat, the tca- 
 denrr is tovard the belief expressed br Jobn 
 Stnarr MUl, that **the strike is irrcM^ whenever it 
 is foolish-" It is both -wTong and fooEsh idiaierer 
 die qoesdons at issue are oi z kind on idBcii lea- 
 soatalaie men ougin to be able to agree, e^wdalhr 
 when the situation r'f?*fd i? one ■srhicii imposes 
 hardships upoTi the ^ — _ ^. 
 
 Along -srith the general srmpatiiT for die trades 
 imions and the obieds "whidi diey hsrt been seek- 
 ing, there has increased also a deamess about die 
 ultim prf ethical standards to irhidi they sfaoold 
 be er : - zed. As Holyoake puts it : 
 
 ■ j_ r^jtr unioaiss strike atg^liin had TnamTtafxmeir — 
 ihcT I- : ' rrtr yet srmci agEinst doing bad -work and 
 Tnat-T-ng •^: - . :erial^" 
 
 This li.T^iz^z znzj not be endrelT fair, ana ii is 
 onlr partly co^siszeziz -srith Pressdent Hadler's 
 fSsttxunent : 
 
 ni£T are j^ xDore omBgnrf wtA ptpaoBO^B^ s^am 
 
LABOR 
 
 We, the public watching the contest between 
 these forces, have decided that in the end there 
 must be consummated, not only an arrangement 
 which shall prevent interruption to production, 
 and therefore penalizing the world, but a return 
 to what workmanship has lost in solidity and 
 honesty. Production on a large scale probably 
 means that we shall never get back to the exqui- 
 site workmanship of the past, for the price of 
 labor cannot again be lowered, and there is no 
 indication that an average citizen will be willing to 
 pay several times as much for a chair beautifally 
 modeled by hand as for one almost like it turned 
 out at Grand Rapids. It may be doubted whether 
 the unions have, or can have, much to do with 
 this question, which must in the end be settled by 
 public demand. In one respect, however, the 
 unions are open to criticism on this ground of 
 lowering quality, and that is in their effort to limit 
 apprentices. The worid needs a revival of die 
 apprentice system, modified to our day. The 
 laborers have taken a position toward appren- 
 tices which is as faulty as that of the manufac- 
 turers. Where the manufacturer has wished to 
 use so-called apprentices as a cloak for cheap 
 labor, to drive out higher forms of skill and re- 
 
INDUSTRY AND PROGRESS 
 
 duce wages, the laborer, seeking the power of mo- 
 nopoly, has been unwilling to have sufficient well- 
 trained apprentices to meet the public need. Few 
 problems in industry today are more difficult than 
 the question of how to have a sufficient supply of 
 skilled labor without forcing down the wage 
 standard. Some of our best thinkers, like Presi- 
 dent Eliot, incline toward the view that it is an 
 outrage to limit in any way the number of skilled 
 workmen, and this, as an ultimate ideal, is un- 
 answerable. There ought to be free trade 
 schools and free apprentice systems enough to 
 furnish skill for everybody; but as an immediate 
 question it cannot be so easily solved, nor can it 
 be solved at all without conscientious refusal on 
 the part of employers to betray the apprentice or 
 trade-school system. The leading economist of 
 England is of the opinion that the apprentice 
 question can never be solved, either by the labor- 
 ers or by their employers, but that the public will 
 have to step in and fix the terms. If all employers 
 are to continue as unfair as some have proved 
 themselves toward the Milwaukee trade school, 
 for example, Marshall's view may be justified; 
 but the world is learning. 
 
 One of the sharpest criticisms left against or- 
 
 ^ [ 50 ] V 
 
LABOR 
 
 ganized labor today deals with the boycott. Not 
 long ago the newspapers reported that the labor 
 unions of St. Louis objected bitterly to Mr. Taft's 
 attending a ball game, and the ground on which 
 this cordial lack of welcome was manifested was 
 that the ball grounds had not been built by union 
 labor. Mr. Taft's labor record in detail I shall 
 not discuss, but his unpopularity with unions 
 brings out some salient unsettled questions. The 
 President not long ago, in connection with the 
 Bethlehem works and their contracts with the 
 government, took the position that all the United 
 States government, in regard to its own purchases, 
 should ask was, whether it was getting from the 
 company a satisfactory product; it could not wise- 
 ly ask whether that product was turned out with- 
 out wrongs to the men. As public thought exists 
 at the present moment, the President is right. 
 The executive cannot use his purchasing power to 
 settle industrial questions not before him. Sen- 
 tences spoken by the President in this connection 
 put one side of the controversy clearly: 
 
 " .... I am utterly opposed to the principle of a 
 boycott. Every issue ought to be settled on its own 
 merits. If the Bethlehem work isn't up to contract, then 
 the government ought not to give the contracts to the 
 
 [51] 
 
INDUSTRY AND PROGRESS 
 
 companies. If it is, then the contracts ought to go to 
 them without regard to controversies that Bethlehem may 
 have with third persons, whether the third persons be 
 customers or employees There is no relation be- 
 tween the one controversy and the other, because — I say 
 that with emphasis — because to hold otherwise is to in- 
 troduce into government methods the system upon which 
 boycott rests, to wit, that third persons are to be involved 
 against their will in a controversy with respect to which 
 they have no natural relation," 
 
 The comment of Mr. Gompers on this position 
 gives the labor union view: 
 
 "According to the President's position it is not the gov- 
 ernment's concern how brutally and inhumanly the 
 workers of a concern are treated; it matters not whether 
 American workers are displaced by the worst element of 
 foreign labor, coolie, Jap, or Slav, whether Americanism 
 may be possible of development among a company's em- 
 ploj^ees ; it is simply a question of product. So long as the 
 product is acceptable the producers may be damned for 
 all time in the production." 
 
 A committee of the House of Representatives, 
 which investigated the Homestead strike, said in 
 its report : 
 
 "If the washerwoman of Burgess McLuckey or Hugh 
 McDonnell refuses to wash for what he is willing to 
 pay, that is her right, but she has no right to stand in 
 
 [52] 
 
LABOR 
 
 front of his door and fling stones at another woman who 
 comes to take her place and do tlie work under the new 
 scale of wages which he is willing to pay." 
 
 It is a question closely connected with this 
 simple proposition about the washerwoman, 
 whether men, women and children, working for 
 "A" and well treated by him, should be forced 
 out of work, and "A" incidentally ruined, because 
 "B," who buys goods from "A," is unsatisfactory 
 to "B's" own employees. The general labor or- 
 ganizations take the position that they may justly 
 inflict any amount of suffering on innocent em- 
 ployers and innocent employees in order to win a 
 contest in a separate establishment. If "B" is un- 
 satisfactory the association says to "A," "Neither 
 buy from 'B' nor sell to him, or we will stop 
 your business." The principle of the sympathetic 
 strike, once admitted, is easily carried on, in the 
 minds of many laborers, to the general and even 
 to the universal strike. Where the line shall be 
 drawn will ultimately be determined partly by the 
 general public's convenience, but still more by its 
 sense of justice. Two great ethical principles un- 
 doubtedly conflict and cannot be wholly reconciled. 
 Labor must organize in order to win, and it must 
 use weapons. The non-union laborer, on the 
 
 [53] 
 
INDUSTRY AND PROGRESS 
 
 other hand, is often the victim of gross oppres- 
 sion,* and one union is frequently forced into idle- 
 ness against its wishes in another's quarrel. A 
 tragic conflict of truths lies here, and similar con- 
 flicts of opposing truths are seen in the union 
 label, a device which may be seen as mere informa- 
 tion to the public, or as an oppressive aspect of 
 the boycott principle. It need hardly be added 
 that all these questions must be settled ultimately 
 in the light of general principles, whatever the 
 world may decide those principles to be. The 
 , blacklist and lockout by the employer; the unfair 
 • list, union label and various kinds of strikes of 
 ' the employees; the closed shop; all must ultimate- 
 ' ly be judged and regulated on simple rules on 
 , which the world has not yet agreed. In the ulti- 
 mate settlement public opinion will express itself 
 through courts and legislatures, but more through 
 changes in employers and laborers. 
 
 On the courts has fallen criticism, just and un- 
 just. It is unfortunate that the injunction has 
 been used so much more freely to interfere with 
 
 * "In the coal strike, an innocent and competent teacher, who hap- 
 pened to be the daughter of a non-union miner, was dismissed by the 
 school board on the threats of the union, and a boy working in a drug 
 store was dismissed because his father returned to work before the 
 strike was declared off." Wright, "Battles of Labor." 
 
 [54] 
 
LABOR 
 
 labor than with capital — largely because the ap- 
 plication of our old ideas of conspiracy to capital 
 is newer. The public feels that although the 
 blacklist, for instance, not only corresponds to the 
 unfair list of the labor unions, but can be used 
 with more absoluteness and cruel power, it has 
 not much concerned the courts. How far the 
 courts ought to police the community is an open 
 question, but at least the public will never be satis- 
 fied to have them police the unions unless with 
 equal zealousness they police the capitalists. Acts 
 for which our courts are still enjoining unions are 
 legalized by statute in Great Britain; and more- 
 over there is seizure by American courts of power 
 never granted to them. When it is argued that 
 injunctions are necessary in labor cases because 
 juries will not convict, the foundation of demo- 
 cratic government is attacked and its greatest 
 merit killed. Democratic government means gov- 
 ernment of the people by themselves, according 
 to their ideas, as opposed to government and ideas 
 imposed upon them. When juries will not con- 
 vict, therefore, there ought to be no punishment. 
 Certainly when the courts carry their seizure of 
 power so far as to allow^ a judge not only to 
 grant an injunction against a strike, but then be 
 
 [55] 
 
INDUSTRY AND PROGRESS 
 
 the one before whom his own injunction is tried, 
 they are inviting lawlessness and disaster. 
 
 Laws and courts amount to nothing except as 
 representing opinion. The most real progress 
 will come from increasing reasonableness in both 
 unions and employers, and from constantly bet- 
 ter-informed and broader consideration given to 
 the subject by disinterested outsiders. Warren S. 
 Stone, secretary of the American Brotherhood of 
 Locomotive Engineers, was recently quoted thus : 
 
 "I do not believe in forcing a man to join a union. If 
 he wants to join, all right, but it is contrary to the prin- 
 ciples of free government and the Constitution of the 
 United States to try to make him join. We of the engi- 
 neers work willingly side by side with other engineers 
 every day who do not belong to our union, though they 
 enjoy without any objection on our part the advantages 
 which we have obtained. Some of them we would not 
 have in the union ; others we cannot get. 
 
 "What I say is, make the union so good that they will 
 want to join." 
 
 In that last sentence lies philosophy. The union 
 man naturally tends toward compulsion when he 
 sees others working by his side, avoiding dues 
 and cost of strikes, and yet enjoying advantages 
 for which he and his family have made sacrifices 
 
 [56] 
 
LABOR 
 
 that sometimes break the heart. If by its pleas- 
 antness, its social, economic and educational ad- 
 vantages, as well as by its power, the union can 
 draw enough men voluntarily to Its membership, 
 a long step will be taken. A union ought to be 
 the best of meeting grounds. Its rooms should 
 offer the advantages of a club, a library, a school; 
 membership in it should be an easy step toward 
 insurance for sickness, old age and death. Here 
 is a quotation from a recent intervievv^ with a labor- 
 ing man, Robert Wuerst, commissioner of the 
 National Metal Trades Association. He said he 
 had fought 368 strikes and won 366, but : 
 
 "I'm not proud of that record; I like to hear people 
 tell me I've prevented more strikes than I have fought. 
 
 "What we're mostly proud of is our cooperative engi- 
 neering course, which builds the apprentice boy into a 
 competent engineer." 
 
 The scheme to which Commissioner Wuerst re- 
 ferred was carried out as part of the plan of Pro- 
 fessor Schneider, in his cooperative school operat- 
 ed in connection with the University of Cincinnati. 
 Professor Schneider's idea was founded on the 
 need of technical training, one of the great basic 
 facts of present-day life. He saw that the public 
 schools, whatever manual work they undertake, 
 
 [57] 
 
INDUSTRY AND PROGRESS 
 
 can never have courses corresponding to the hun- 
 dreds of different trades, and therefore he 
 thought, as we cannot adequately put the shops 
 into the school system, we must bring the school 
 into the factory, educating the youth at the same 
 time of his life in both school and factory. The 
 details of this plan are beyond the scope of this 
 book, but a suggestion of the principles on which 
 it is founded, and of the degree to which it is 
 successful, may be found in a reply from Profes- 
 sor Schneider, written in April, 1910, to an in- 
 quiry from me : 
 
 " . . . . You will understand that the cooperative 
 scheme does not necessarily mean alternate weeks in the 
 school and the shop. The particular scheme to take the 
 school to the boy on the job is merely a detail which 
 must fit local conditions. For instance, for the education 
 of machinist apprentices in Cincinnati, there is a school in 
 the public school sj'stem to which machinist apprentices 
 go one half day per week. Manufacturers pay the ap- 
 prentices for the time they spend in school. Again in the 
 scheme outlined for the department store, you will note 
 that the clerks attend alternate weeks from eight o'clock to 
 ten o'clock in the morning. In other words, the details of 
 how and when the school shall be taken to the boy or girl 
 on the job, must depend on local conditions entirely. The 
 fundamental principle is to take the school to the boy and 
 
 [58] 
 
LABOR 
 
 girl, and to have a definite cooperation and coordination 
 
 between the school and the shop 
 
 "In the trade work, we have simply taken the old- 
 fashioned apprenticeship work and added something to it, 
 namely, instruction leading to higher efficiency and better 
 citizenship." 
 
 Another principle may advantageously be put 
 in the form of a quotation from Mr. Wuerst, as 
 when labor organization accepts a correct princi- 
 ple much is gained, even as when a large employer 
 yields a point theretofore combatted: 
 
 " . . . . One notable advance of the past few years 
 has been the premium system. By its operation a 
 time limit is placed upon a certain set of operations. 
 This is always figured generously. For example, a man 
 is expected to turn out a certain number of castings 
 in nine hours. Then he is paid by the piece, and the time 
 limit is so figured that he can turn out far more than the 
 number required of him as a day's work. Invariably the 
 men have largely increased their wages in this way, and 
 workmen and foremen alike are enthusiastic in its favor. 
 That plan offers a premium to individualism. The slowest 
 workman can always make his day's wage — and the bet- 
 ter workman he is the more he can make." 
 
 When this plan was initiated at the Philadel- 
 phia convention of 1903, it was opposed by the 
 International Association of Mechanics, and it 
 
 [59] 
 
INDUSTRY AND PROGRESS 
 
 has been opposed by many unions since, on the 
 ground that payment in wages based on perform- 
 ance means that the employers will persistently 
 find opportunities to force up the standard of ac- 
 complishment for a given wage — an objection 
 aimed at any plan of piece work. As general in- 
 dustrial understanding and good will increase, this 
 weakness, based on selfishness and bad faith, will 
 grow less, and the minimum wage, made possible 
 by a minimum efficiency, and supplemented by 
 payment for extra performance, will be the future 
 basis of payment for many kinds of labor. 
 
 A certain carpenter was asked why he had left 
 a large city and ceased to be a union man. "Well," 
 he said, "I was a good carpenter, and I like to 
 work. It didn't please me to be told I must do 
 as little as the man alongside of me. I had heard 
 wages were high in the city, so I went there, but 
 I was worse off at the end of a year than I was 
 at home, because this union business held me 
 back. So I hunted up a small town, with plenty 
 of wooden buildings, and set up for myself, and 
 accepted only work that I could do alone. The 
 result is I am busy and happy and well off ; I work 
 as long as I feel like it, sometimes eight hours, 
 sometimes twelve. I charge high prices, but my 
 
 [60] 
 
LABOR 
 
 customers get their money's worth." That man's 
 children have all necessary advantages, and full 
 opportunity to rise. Any solution of the labor 
 problem which suppresses the abler man will work 
 out badly. In helping the weak we must remem- 
 ber that progress is made by the strong. The 
 weak in one century are better off because the 
 strong were free a century before. United labor 
 will never have the full sympathy of society ex- 
 cept where it is willing to see one man do more 
 and better work than his neighbor of lesser gifts 
 or weaker character. The suppression of the 
 superior individual, the limitation of output, and 
 the refusal to allow skill to be generally acquired, 
 are three positions which can never have public 
 support. The laborer, like the employer, must 
 have a conscience about the general welfare. 
 Dreams of the universal strike will lead him 
 wrong. He will gain more by reason than by 
 oppression. Just as the public is studying to 
 check monopoly in capital it will never permit 
 monopoly in labor. It will never permit any 
 labor organizations to grow so strong that they 
 can tyrannize over the whole industrial field. We 
 must keep the freedom to talk it all over reason- 
 ably together. Each union should be strong; the 
 
 [61] 
 
INDUSTRY AND PROGRESS 
 
 stronger It Is the more rational It will be; but a 
 union trust can become so powerful and cumber- 
 some that It not only offends our sense of free- 
 dom, but acts on so broad a field that It cannot be 
 properly In touch with conditions. Our hope lies, 
 not In the fight of one vast trust against another, 
 but In rational and close personal relations In sep- 
 arate Industries — In boards of conciliation. In Im- 
 proved laws and enlightened judges, In long con- 
 tracts and steadier employment, In Increased effi- 
 ciency as well as Improved conditions, In unions 
 which are so Intelligent and attractive that they 
 do not need oppression to bring members, or 
 strikes to give them a just share of the products 
 of industry; a share as full as Is consistent with 
 a return to capital sufl'iclent to keep it active, and 
 is also consistent with honest consideration for 
 the consumer and the cost of living. Happily this 
 Ideal of reason, of knowledge and of fellow-feel- 
 ing, plays daily a larger part In the world's task, 
 growing with such speed that twelve months sel- 
 dom pass without an advance sufficient to encour- 
 age belief and hope. 
 
 [62] 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 Production. 
 
 To Adam Smith, for ten men to make 48,000 
 pins in one day gave food for wonder and sur- 
 mise. By 1888, three men could produce in a day 
 7,500,000 pins of quality much superior.* About 
 thirty years ago it was estimated that an individ- 
 ual could produce about 750 times as much yarn as 
 100 years earlier. t In 1780, before the grain 
 cradle was invented, an able-bodied farm laborer 
 in Great Britain with a sickle could reap about 
 one quarter of an acre of wheat in a single day. 
 Two horses and a man, in the same time, can now 
 cut, rake and bind the wheat of twenty acres. All 
 the resources of 1840 would be inadequate to reap 
 or sow our present annual crop of wheat or 
 corn.$ Production on a big scale begins almost 
 from the Civil War. What becomes of this mul- 
 tiplied product of man working for a given time? 
 Partly he has decided to work less and live more, 
 but principally he has increased his consumption, 
 
 * D. S. Wells, "Recent Economic Changes." 
 t Hoyle, "Our National Resources." 
 t Wells, "Recent Economic Changes." 
 
 [63] 
 
INDUSTRY AND PROGRESS 
 
 especially In substantial food and clothing, but 
 also in books, newspapers, theatres, furniture, 
 house decoration, kerosene, sewing machines, mo- 
 tors, and other articles which in the opinion of the 
 human animal multiply the value of his life. Also 
 more creatures can exist. One hundred years ago 
 the population of 1910 could not have lived. An 
 Oriental legend tells of a man of great learning 
 who, able by incantation to compel inanimate ob- 
 jects to work, ordered a stick to bring him water. 
 Now it happened that he was ignorant of the 
 words which would revoke the order to a stick 
 engaged in bringing water. When the amount of 
 water produced began to look dangerous, he 
 chopped the stick in several pieces. Each piece 
 then began to bring him as much water as the 
 whole had brought before, and ultimately the 
 magician himself and the whole world in which he 
 lived were destroyed by the forces which he had 
 discovered but only imperfectly controlled. Ac- 
 cording to Chinese philosophers, the powers which 
 we have called into existence must ultimately de- 
 stroy us. In Europe and America also numerous 
 men, including wise ones, have thus pointed with 
 alarm to present or predicted results of mechanical 
 productiveness. Professor Ely says of the com- 
 
 [64] 
 
PRODUCTION 
 
 petltive system to which much of our inventive- 
 ness has been due : 
 
 "In its onward march it crushes and grinds to powder 
 human existences bj^ the miUion ; its rubbish has magnitude 
 of tremendous proportions, and this rubbish consists of hu- 
 man beings with minds, hearts and souls — men, good men 
 often; women, and very frequently indeed innocent wo- 
 men, women with precious gifts which ought to be de- 
 veloped for themselves and others ; and little children with 
 all their possibilities," 
 
 Although the laborer Is better off than he used 
 to be, the tragedy still is bitter. Our manufacture 
 of matches would seem incredible to the past, but 
 while 47 per cent, on Invested capital was being 
 made for stockholders, girls employed did not re- 
 ceive enough to keep them off the streets. The 
 speed of sewing machines Increased so rapidly 
 that In the six years from 1899 to 1905 the num- 
 ber of stitches per minute doubled, but meantime 
 the strain on a girl's eye Is more than doubled, she 
 is used up faster, and she receives no more money 
 for her life,* all the gain going in lower prices to 
 the consumer. The minute specialization through 
 which these vast gains have been won from na- 
 ture often makes of the laborer a mere attendant 
 
 • Florence Kelley, "Some Recent Gains through Legislation." 
 
 [65] 
 
INDUSTRY AND PROGRESS 
 
 to a machine. It takes away the variety, com- 
 panionship and personal significance of the old 
 days when one article was entirely manufactured 
 by the workman, who thus, a creator, saw his 
 work take living form beneath his touch. The 
 old Viking was soldier, sailor, merchant, black- 
 smith, all at once. Henry George, In his "Social 
 Problems," has an eloquent description of the old- 
 time blacksmith, or rather "black-and-white- 
 smith," for the finished workman worked In steel 
 also. His smithy stood by the roadside, and 
 through the open door he caught glimpses of na- 
 ture; wayfarers stopped to inquire; neighbors to 
 tell and to hear news; children saw the hot iron 
 glow and watched the red sparks fly. The smith 
 shod a horse; then he put on a wagon-tire; he 
 forged and tempered a tool, or welded a broken 
 andiron; he beat on a crane for the deep chimney- 
 place; and when he had nothing else to do, per- 
 haps, he wrought Iron Into nails. Now, instead 
 of this, we see enormous establishments covering 
 acres and acres, where workmen are massed to- 
 gether by the thousands. The doors are marked, 
 "Positively No Admittance." The workman lives 
 silent In a whirl of wheels and belts, doing over 
 and over the self-same thing, passing all day long 
 
 [66] 
 
PRODUCTION 
 
 bars of iron through great rollers, presenting 
 plates to steel jaws, turning bits of iron over and 
 back again sixty times a minute, year following 
 year. The boy in early youth can learn to tend 
 his machine — when his hair is gray he knows no 
 more. If sixty persons, in cooperation, make 
 shoes with incredible rapidity, so that all of us 
 are better shod, not one of the sixty could make 
 a shoe alone. The farmer's wife is no longer 
 able to take the sheep's wool and produce her 
 husband's coat. The laborer, knowing only one 
 step in a complex process, and for other reasons, 
 finds it harder to become himself an employer. 
 He becomes part of a great machine which may 
 be paralyzed without his fault, 
 
 I need hardly repeat my belief that the draw- 
 backs from specialization, concentration and ma- 
 chinery are far outweighed by the advantages. 
 The general rule is that the worker in a modern 
 factory leads a higher life than the average 
 laborer ever lived before. Alfred and Mary 
 Paley Marshall, in "The Economics of Industry," 
 remark that : 
 
 "When the work is light, and the hours of work not 
 
 excessive, monotony is not very injurious Even 
 
 when the division of labor makes the work of an 
 
 [67] 
 
INDUSTRY AND PROGRESS 
 
 individual monotonous and uniform, it makes the work 
 of the country at large changeful and various. The 
 worker in a town, whose mental and physical energies are 
 not strained by his work, can hardly fail to be educated 
 by the variety and excitement of the various work that is 
 going on around him." 
 
 Mr. Nasmyth, in the Tenth Report of Trades 
 Union Commissioners, said in 1868 : 
 
 "If you call for the brute force of a man you will de- 
 grade the man. He goes to his house so physically ex- 
 hausted that it is an utter absurdity to say to that man, 
 'Read and improve yourself.' He would fall asleep im- 
 mediately: he must go and take some excitement. But if 
 you take the man who has been superintending some piece 
 of machinery all day, in which there is very little or only 
 a minimum of call for his brute force, you will find 
 
 .... a reader and a self-cultured man I think 
 
 this is the result of machinery, that it takes away the 
 necessity of brute labor, and very much elevates the in- 
 tellectual and moral position of the working classes." 
 
 Not all the evils charged against modern in- 
 dustry by Henry George and others are fanciful, 
 and not all that exist can be removed, for some 
 are inherent in the tragedy of life. A great 
 sweetening of the human lot is possible, however, 
 with kindness and knowledge. The economic 
 basis for a happier existence apparently will not 
 
 [68] 
 
PRODUCTION 
 
 fail us, but on the contrary a given amount of 
 effort will continue to produce more and more for 
 man. Machinery will be improved, but methods 
 and organization will be improved still further. 
 Many experts look upon efficiency as in its in- 
 fancy. The studies of F. W. Taylor and others 
 in special branches of this field lately suggest al- 
 most unlimited possibilities. One of these experts, 
 Harrington Emerson, in his recent book on "Ef- 
 ficiency as a Basis for Operation and Wages," de- 
 clares that men, women and children starve, not 
 because there is not abundance, and not because 
 a few have appropriated the portion of many, but 
 because there is a quite unnecessary waste. Man, 
 he says, wastes three quarters of the coal in the 
 ground, brings the remainder to the surface by in- 
 efficient labor and appliances, and doubles or 
 quadruples its cost in transportation. Rarely is 
 ten per cent, of the coal transformed into electri- 
 cal energy; of this only five per cent, can appear 
 as light; and ten to twenty times as much light is 
 provided on a writing table as is necessary, be- 
 cause of the distance of the bulbs from the place 
 where the light is needed. The firefly, converting 
 the hydrocarbons of its food into light, and using 
 the light for its purpose, is in production about 
 
 [69] 
 
INDUSTRY AND PROGRESS 
 
 750 times as efficient as man, in volume use ten 
 times as economical, in time use twice as economi- 
 cal; or altogether 15,000 times as efficient as his 
 human rival. 
 
 "Even if, as yet, some of the high efficiencies seen in 
 nature are beyond reach, it is a greater reason for eliminat- 
 ing those wastes which are avoidable and which are pri- 
 marily responsible for the starvation of men, women and 
 children." 
 
 Mr. Taylor calculates that a first-class man 
 can, under proper conditions, accomplish from 
 two to four times what he does accomplish, and 
 that with no sacrifice of health or strength. 
 
 Our crops are about 30 per cent, of what they 
 ought to be. The average yield of potatoes per 
 acre, over a series of years, is 96 bushels. In the 
 desert state of Wyoming an average yield of 200 
 was reached in 1907, owing to the intelligence of 
 one man, who himself reached 1,000 per acre, 
 while the fertile state of Kansas was averaging 
 6s- He reached an efficiency five times as great 
 as the average in his own state, ten times as great 
 as the average in the United States, and thirteen 
 times as great as the average in a state as blessed 
 as Kansas with favorable soil and climate. Call- 
 ing the standard 500 per acre, as Mr. Emerson 
 
 [70] 
 
PRODUCTION 
 
 does, or half of the Wyoming man's yield, the 
 yield in the United States is 19 per cent, of what 
 it should be, and in Kansas 12 per cent. If the 
 whole United States attained an efficiency in this 
 one crop of only 50 per cent, of standard, the 
 increased value would be enough in one year to 
 pay for the Panama Canal, or the present result 
 could be reached with 40 per cent, of the acreage 
 and labor. It is estimated that a standard attain- 
 able yield of wheat is fifty bushels. The actual 
 yield is fourteen. The total is 650,000,000, when 
 it ought to be 2,500,000,000; and yet, as Mr. 
 Emerson exclaims, there are charity bread lines 
 in New York. Intensity of production, he goes 
 on, on the human side, should mean not the physi- 
 cal exhaustion of an overworked victim, but the 
 joyful stimulus that comes from favorable condi- 
 tions. As the conditions in industrial organiza- 
 tion are no higher than those of agriculture, the 
 amount of needless loss going on at present is al- 
 most beyond the power of the mind to grasp. 
 
 The machine, therefore, and the modern me- 
 chanical system of industry, may be turned into 
 the world's greatest benefactor, but it has many 
 charges yet to meet, political as well as social and 
 economic. Let us take up what is probably the 
 
 [71] 
 
INDUSTRY AND PROGRESS 
 
 largest strictly political issue that confronts us. 
 The machine is father to the trust, and to all its 
 social and economic problems. Units of capital 
 have grown so large that they cannot be met on 
 equal terms by some of their competitors, labor 
 unions or by legislatures. The whole competitive 
 system is thus put on trial, and in a new light. In 
 many lines of manufacture we cannot have the 
 kind of competition which existed a quarter of a 
 century ago, without disastrous fluctuations in 
 prices and increased danger of commercial crises,* 
 due to irregular investments of capital. The best 
 intellect of the United States is now studying how 
 to regulate competition, and, as the result thus 
 far remains: 
 
 " . . . . We are here as on a darkling plain 
 Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, 
 Where ignorant armies clash by night." 
 
 One corporation has annual receipts of over 
 $350,000,000. The very fact of its size makes 
 it certain to be controlled by a few rich men,t and 
 such was the avowed purpose of Mr. Morgan and 
 Mr. Hill in forming the Northern Securities Com- 
 
 * Hadley, "The American Citizen." 
 
 t See an extremely able and suggestive study of the subject by Chas. 
 P. Howland in The Columbia Law Review, February, 1910, entitled 
 "Monopolies : The Cause and the Remedy." 
 
 [72] 
 
PRODUCTION 
 
 pany. It is in a modern form the evil which the 
 old law objected to as mortmain. As Mr. How- 
 land says, in a letter to me: 
 
 "Huge corporations are obnoxious when tiiey monopo- 
 lize business in a given commoditj', but they present a 
 greater danger on social and political grounds. Many 
 accumulations of wealth in corporate form are as much 
 of a menace to the future of the country as if they 
 possessed a monopoly — perhaps even greater, for they are 
 less likely to arouse resistance. If the International Mer- 
 cantile Marine, the Pennsylvania Railroad, the Union 
 Pacific system, the Standard Oil Company and the Gen- 
 eral Electric Company should merge in a single corpora- 
 tion or be combined by a holding company, there would 
 be no combination of competitors, but the combination 
 would be too great for republican government to endure." 
 
 After the merger decision of 1904 a well- 
 known lawyer declared that no one any longer 
 believed competition to be the life of trade. Our 
 attention has been more and more called to the 
 fact that "competition among animals means 
 death," — and often among men. What shall we 
 say of "cutthroat competition" — selling below cost 
 of production in order to destroy? Is it wrong 
 economically? Is it wrong morally? Would it 
 be right for the Standard Oil Company to lower 
 its prices in one state just long enough to send a 
 
 [73] 
 
INDUSTRY AND PROGRESS 
 
 local petroleum business to Its eternal rest? The 
 courts are now endeavoring to apply the Constitu- 
 tion and the old laws about monopoly to our com- 
 plex modern conditions, but neither the public nor 
 the lawyers are agreed about whether this task 
 can best be executed by courts, legislatures or 
 special expert commissions. It is a task for an 
 intellectual Hercules, or rather for thousands of 
 them, and the best thinking available will be insuffi- 
 cient without prolonged study of experience as it 
 is acquired. No one sweeping rule will be suffi- 
 cient. As President Hadley puts it, competition 
 is a good medicine for some things, but not for all. 
 We must not forget, in our regulation, what has 
 been taught us by the past; as, that when prices 
 rise and fall with demand, economy is practiced 
 during scarcity, but when the mediaeval church 
 undertook to forbid any raise in the price of bread 
 the result was famine. Also, to go on with Dr. 
 Hadley's argument, down to the eighteenth century 
 the general practice had been to hedge about busi- 
 ness with a multitude of restrictions. Under the 
 influence of the individualist philosophy of the 
 first half of that century, these restrictions were 
 removed, and the resulting freedom was of un- 
 doubted benefit. When a man had the right to 
 
 fT4] 
 
PRODUCTION 
 
 enjoy what he produced, he was driven by a 
 stronger motive to work. The increased energy 
 thus set loose was what put an end to the economic 
 need of serfdom. Labor became free, wiUing and 
 efficient. As free use of it was guaranteed, capi- 
 tal was accumulated, saving was practiced, new 
 methods of production were enthusiastically de- 
 veloped. A few centuries ago, individual free- 
 dom was not recognized, in law, in morals or in 
 trade. It was found, little by little, that human 
 nature could be trusted. When the eighteenth 
 century granted industrial freedom, it was fol- 
 lowed not only by efficiency in labor and by in- 
 crease and intelligence of capital, but also by large 
 schemes of material service ; by constitutional lib- 
 erty and rational altruism, as well as by modern 
 business power. Macaulay said that the cure for 
 evils of liberty was more liberty. Much truth lay 
 here, which we must remember, yet we are con- 
 vinced that no one principle can serve this multi- 
 form universe. That unchartered liberty cannot 
 be trusted all alone is shown by the now universal- 
 ly conceded need of the factory legislation which 
 most of the British political economists condemned 
 at the time when it was passed. The warning 
 to be derived from these experiences of the past 
 
 [75] 
 
INDUSTRY AND PROGRESS 
 
 is not against any regulation, but against any that 
 is not clearly conceived, unmistakably necessary, 
 and undertaken with a full realization that the 
 world has lost much through unwise restriction 
 made in pursuit of the same ideals which we pur- 
 sue today. In politics it will not do to urge every- 
 thing that assumes to be for the benefit of the 
 common man. So in economics, a spirit which ac- 
 cepts measures merely because they are aimed at 
 trusts is not safe. Right new laws would do a 
 real amount of good. Wrong ones would merely 
 take us perhaps to new evils that we know not of. 
 Some French writer said that misdirected virtue 
 is more dangerous than vice. Thus far, with the 
 public mind having produced no clear principles 
 of regulation, we can intelligently take only short 
 steps. Personally I believe, for instance, that Mr. 
 Taft's badly drawn corporation tax law was a 
 start in the right direction, not only because it is 
 sound as taxation, but because of the information 
 in which it might result. Publication of campaign 
 contributions is another example of the kind of 
 step forward which, if not very far-reaching, is 
 at least seen clearly to be right; and taking the 
 tariff question in its details out of politics is an- 
 other. Had we handled our natural resources 
 
 [76] 
 
PRODUCTION 
 
 wisely from the beginning, and not been in such 
 a hurry to "develop" the country rapidly at any 
 cost, the trust situation might have been much 
 more simple. We have, however, at the present 
 moment a chance to do in Alaska on a smaller 
 scale what we failed to do here — use the natural 
 resources and yet not allow monopoly — and we 
 have an opportunity also to work out the problem 
 in the only natural asset in the country that is left. 
 The water power was not given away with the 
 rest because it was not discovered. We may or 
 may not be able to solve these two comparatively 
 simple problems now, even after all our expe- 
 rience with land, timber, minerals and railroads; 
 and yet it is one clear opportunity to prevent mo- 
 nopoly instead of trying to regulate it after it has 
 grown huge. If principles of control and oi 
 shared advantage — like those, for instance, which 
 Boston applies to her gas franchise — had been 
 from the beginning applied to much of the earth's 
 wealth which we have allowed to be cornered by 
 the few, the people might not now be stirred by a 
 sense of helplessness in the presence of a wrong, 
 and the whole expenses of government might be 
 met by the returns from franchises. The situa- 
 tion being what it is, however, the first sound 
 
 [77] 
 
INDUSTRY AND PROGRESS 
 
 step must be the increase of knowledge, and talk 
 about "inquisition" in corporate matters is ill- 
 applied. A short time before these words were 
 penned, the copper producers were objecting to 
 publishing monthly the output of refined copper 
 and of stocks on hand in North America, and one 
 of them was quoted thus : 
 
 "There is no more reason why we should publish our 
 stocks on hand than the steel companies of the country 
 should publish theirs. The copper figures afford too much 
 ammunition for speculation in Wall street. Besides, the 
 public generally arrives at an erroneous conclusion of the 
 monthly statements. When there is a heavy increase in 
 stocks, the cry of overproduction goes up. The result is 
 an unwarranted slump in copper prices. When there is a 
 reduction vou hear famine talk, and copper prices move 
 up." 
 
 All such arguments must yield to the stronger 
 consideration that our concentrated industrial sys- 
 tem is on trial and that wise regulation of it is 
 impossible without as much knowledge as possible, 
 not only in expert boards, like Public Service Com- 
 missions or the Bureau of Corporations, but 
 among the people generally, who, like an individ- 
 ual, are sure to be made cautious by increased in- 
 formation. The more the human mind knows 
 about a subject, the more it acquires, not of the 
 
 [78] 
 
PRODUCTION 
 
 conservatism which Is bhnd fear of the unknown, 
 but of the conservatism which means caution and 
 thoroughness In the face of complex realities — 
 like the courageous humility of science. 
 
 Most difficult of all the problems of modern 
 producing methods is the problem of mere size. 
 That steam, and its daughters electricity and ma- 
 chinery, have resulted with complete Inevltable- 
 ness in great concentration, is of course undoubt- 
 ed. Up to the point that centralization of indus- 
 try is actually economical it probably cannot be 
 and ought not to be checked. The spot we wish 
 first to discover and then to choose for attack Is 
 that spot where centralization ceases to win by the 
 economies It produces and begins to win by the 
 mere ability to destroy the smaller rival. Here is 
 a statement by an expert engineer:* 
 
 "It is notorious that great aggregations of wealth and 
 power usually do not operate as efficiently as smaller con- 
 cerns. Nothing in the United States is so gigantically 
 inefficient in proportion to its power and opportunities as 
 the United States government, equally in what it attempts 
 and in what it fails to attempt. 
 
 "The great industrial and transportation corporations 
 are often very efficient in manipulation, but content with 
 
 * Harrington Emerson, "Efficiency as a Basis for Operation and 
 Wages." 
 
 [79] 
 
INDUSTRY AND PROGRESS 
 
 low efficiency of operation, although there are notable ex- 
 ceptions. The great ocean shipbuilding yards from 
 Maine to Virginia, from Puget Sound to the Bay of San 
 Francisco, depend not at all on the internal efficiency 
 (which enables the International Harvester Company, al- 
 though a thousand miles inland, to export in competition 
 with the whole world) but solely on absolute prohibition 
 and on lavish government appropriations. It is the little 
 American plant manufacturing automobiles, motor boats, 
 or bicycles, making locomotive repair parts, or some other 
 specialty, that defies the competition of the world." 
 
 Here is another expert engineer's view:* 
 
 "If manufacturers in general realized how much an 
 increase in efficient operation really meant to them, they 
 would be very slow to increase the size of a plant until 
 they had become pretty well convinced that they had got- 
 ten it up to its maximum efficiency." 
 
 " .... If the same intelligence and industry had 
 been applied generally to the art of production as has 
 been exercised in selling products, I can hardly help 
 feeling that we should be suffering less acutely today 
 from high prices 
 
 "The supreme iinportance of efficiency as an economic 
 factor was first realized by the Germans, and it is this 
 fact that has enabled them to advance their industrial 
 condition, which twenty years ago was a jest, to the first 
 place in Europe, if not in the world." 
 
 * H. L. Gantt, "Work, Wages and Profits." This book is to be 
 highly recommended also for its discussion of what modes of payment 
 make for efificiency. 
 
 [80] 
 
PRODUCTION 
 
 As our natural resources are used up we shall 
 become more critical of the sacrifice of efficiency 
 to a size which is successful only through its power 
 to murder competition, and which is responsible 
 not only for much economic unsoundness but for 
 much political uneasiness. Daniel Webster said: 
 
 "The freest government, if it could exist, would not 
 long be accepted, if the tendency of the laws were to 
 create a rapid accumulation of property in few hands, and 
 to render the great mass of the people dependent and 
 penniless. In such a case, the popular power would be 
 likely to break in upon the rights of property, or else the 
 influence of property to limit and control the exercise of 
 popular power." 
 
 And Montesquieu, in his "Spirit of the Laws": 
 
 "Commerce is a profession of people who are on an 
 equality, for merchants of unbounded credit would monop- 
 olize all to themselves. The most miserable among 
 despotic states are those where there is such a monopoly. 
 . . . All inequality in a dem.ocracy ought to be 
 derived from the nature of the democracy, and even 
 from the principle of equality." 
 
 Bacon's opinion was: 
 
 "Above all things, good policy is to be used, that the 
 treasures and moneys in a state be not gathered into few 
 hands, for otherwise, a state may have great stock, and 
 
 [SI J 
 
INDUSTRY AND PROGRESS 
 
 yet starve; and money is like muck, not good except it be 
 spread." 
 
 Adam Smith spoke of: 
 
 "The mean rapacity, the monopolizing spirit of mer- 
 chants and manufacturers, who neither are nor ought to 
 be the rulers of mankind." 
 
 Jefferson's influence on the thought of this 
 country is largely due to the eloquence and convic- 
 tion with which he expressed the need of distribut- 
 ing power. Commenting on these quotations and 
 the principles involved in them, Mr. Howland 
 says of these vast artificial creations, to which we 
 have granted powers always refused to individ- 
 uals: 
 
 "We have now repealed the policy of centuries and re- 
 established mortmain. All that is denied to individuals by 
 limitations of nature and of public policy is now granted 
 to corporations by law. Upon their power to possess no 
 limit is placed. Every day the mammoth corporations are 
 withdrawing from the general mass of property in the 
 country an increasing proportion of the common wealth, 
 which thus passes beyond the sphere of general distribu- 
 tion. The citizen, who in theory enjoys an equal oppor- 
 tunity with all others to engage in business and to acquire 
 a share in that general mass of property, finds that the 
 mass is shrinking, and that his equal opportunity is an 
 opportunity without a goal. This is mortmain, and these 
 
 [82] 
 
PRODUCTION 
 
 are its evils Trusts are organized for pecuniary 
 
 profit, and their prices are dictated by tiieir power and 
 prudence. Once in charge of all markets they may 
 reduce prices much slower than discoveries of trade, 
 economies of production, benefits of inventions will war- 
 rant. After a time we have no means of knowing 
 what prices would have been without monopoly; where 
 it exists all opportunity for economic comparison ceases. 
 .... Securities in any amount may be produced at 
 will — cash avails also for exceptional cases, w^ith which 
 to buy out dangerous rivals if any remain ; the 
 same factors create the inducements for the rivals to 
 sell. If they will not sell, the trust with its greater capi- 
 tal and credit can maintain a price war until they suc- 
 cumb. Then the trust dominates the markets, and simple 
 precautions suffice to deter new^ competition ; the trust 
 will buy all patents and facilities helpful to its control, it 
 will extend in one direction to control the supply of ma- 
 terial, and in the other to eliminate middlemen and reach 
 the consumer. The larger it grows the stronger it be- 
 comes In some kinds of business the avenues of 
 
 trade are open only to a single concern. The farmer 
 may sell cattle, linseed, cottonseed and tobacco only 
 as the trusts choose to buy, and he may buy his 
 fertilizers, his seeding and harvesting machines and 
 his jute-bagging only as the trusts choose to sell to him. 
 The 'cost of living,' instead of being an expression of the 
 needs and resources of society adjusting themselves through 
 multitudinous transactions, is fixed by central authorities; 
 they limit the output and control the prices of crackers, 
 
 [83] 
 
INDUSTRY AND PROGRESS 
 
 hams, sugar, salt, kerosene, chewing gum, matches, glue, 
 soil and sewer pipe, radiators, sewing machines, etc." 
 
 The Socialistic remedy I shall take up under 
 Distribution, since it seems natural to discuss it in 
 connection with cooperation, and cooperative ac- 
 tion has been employed more successfully in dis- 
 tributing goods than in producing them. The 
 fact that the production of so many articles, in- 
 cluding many of the necessities of life, has tended 
 rapidly to pass into the hands of monopolies 
 means that many branches of business will be 
 taken over by the government, unless the intelli- 
 gence and character of the people, the judges or 
 the legislatures prove sufficient to work out a sys- 
 tem of checks or of supplements not yet clearly 
 seen. The discovery of absolute remedies or ex- 
 tensive mitigations will be helped by every wise 
 bit of progress, however slight, and in this fact, 
 even more than in the direct or intrinsic effect, 
 lies the importance of such steps ahead as honest 
 tariff methods; official and public knowledge of 
 corporation facts; public service commissions; 
 sharing of the results of mechanical processes with 
 the public, after the Massachusetts plan, or with 
 the laborers, in steadier employment or better 
 hours or wages, or otherwise in fairer relations. 
 
 [84] 
 
PRODUCTION 
 
 On the courts lies an enormous responsibility, both 
 to bring high intelligence to those aspects of the 
 problem which are presented to them and to keep 
 their hands off those aspects which are not submit- 
 ted to them. I share essentially Mr. Roosevelt's 
 feelings about the Knight decision and the New 
 York Bake Shop decision, and deem the general 
 answer to his criticism of the latter case inconclu- 
 sive. The Knight case showed failure so to con- 
 sider the real facts of modern life as would make 
 clear what actually does constitute a step toward 
 monopoly, and the New York Bake Shop case 
 showed dangerous interference with legislative 
 rights. When the legislature of a state under- 
 takes to regulate industry, wisely or unwisely, the 
 courts ought to go to extremes in order to keep 
 their hands off, instead of to extremes in order 
 to assume control. In the Bake Shop case the 
 court in reality upset a law because they did 
 not happen to share the judgment of the legisla- 
 ture. Nobody has made them a repository of 
 political wisdom, and if they do not cease to pro- 
 gress In legislative usurpation there is serious 
 danger that an angry populace will one day strip 
 the courts of needed powers or resort to short- 
 term elective judges. The field of industry and 
 
 [85] 
 
INDUSTRY AND PROGRESS 
 
 economics is but one of those in which the courts 
 have undertaken a power which it was never in- 
 tended they should have, but it is at present the 
 most dangerous domain in which they have in- 
 dulged in trespass. 
 
 Even if we show the most profound political 
 and economic intelligence, and even if the patience 
 and generosity of every class approaches the ideal 
 of Christianity, some of the evils which we have 
 been discussing will remain, for the individual can 
 never again in the United States change his social 
 and business standing as readily as he has been 
 able to do among the virgin resources, sparse pop- 
 ulation, and smaller units of the past. He loses 
 some freedom to advancing social communication 
 and dependence. He should, however, if our 
 brains and hearts act well, have for his labor a 
 greater product, which should mean more time for 
 thought and reading, pleasanter surroundings for 
 his work, longer and better schooling for his chil- 
 dren. If our mechanical progress in production 
 tails to mean all this, the failure will lie partly in 
 the national intelligence, and partly in the imper- 
 fect national acceptance of the simple moral com- 
 monplaces to which we all do homage with our 
 lips. 
 
 [86] 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Distribution. 
 
 The line dividing production from distribution, 
 like the line between blue and green, is imaginary. 
 The one shades into the other. The railroad, 
 which brings the ore to the steel manufacturer 
 and the casting to the foundry, is as much an ele- 
 ment in production as in distribution. Although 
 the two objects, however, pass one into the other, 
 large areas are distinguishable, and while some 
 problems are alike for both, others are dissimilar. 
 
 Let us consider first that great modern agent 
 of distribution called the railroad. That it con- 
 tributes to the welfare of man is doubted, it 
 seems to me, only by the person whose thinking is 
 unreal; who inveighs against modern conditions, 
 and yet refrains from going to any of the numer- 
 ous spots where he could readily find surviving 
 the conditions of life which he imagines he la- 
 ments. Politically, the railroad was essential to 
 our national unity. Economically, it is a leading 
 factor in that fluid communication and distribution 
 which have meant the transformation of the 
 world into a place where the majority are further 
 
 [87] 
 
INDUSTRY AND PROGRESS 
 
 removed from the servile state. Without it, our 
 crops could scarcely move from the region where 
 they happened to be grown. 
 
 Bastiat asks what the carpenter, who spends his 
 life making tables and chairs, receives in return. 
 He receives, for instance, clothing, to make 
 which an enormous amount of labor and many 
 ingenious inventions have been employed. In 
 one part of the world cotton has been pro- 
 duced, in another wool and flax, in another hides; 
 and all these materials have been transported to 
 the towns, where they have been spun, woven and 
 dyed. He receives schooling for his children, 
 which is a result of the work of many thousand 
 minds. If he undertakes a journey he finds that 
 other men have filled up valleys for him, hewn 
 down mountains, and united the banks of rivers. 
 The social mechanism gives to the humblest 
 workman things which he himself could not pro- 
 duce in many ages; and these general truths are 
 well to remember in a day when the desire for 
 regulation is not always accompanied with suffi- 
 cient appreciation of what the railroads have ac- 
 complished. 
 
 In the railroad problems of today, the in- 
 tellectual are to be distinguished from the 
 
 [88] 
 
DISTRIBUTION 
 
 moral elements. The intellectual side is frankly 
 still almost in the state of chaos. Everybody ad- 
 mits the need of regulation, and nobody has been 
 able to draw a statute which should seem to give 
 a satisfactory outline of what regulation ought to 
 be. Often a law brings about the opposite of 
 what it seeks, as the laws against pooling hastened 
 combination. The abolition of long and short 
 haul prices, and the introduction of a straight 
 mileage rate enforced upon the roads, might al- 
 most remake the map. Nobody can be sure what 
 it would or would not do. The causes which de- 
 termine rates have never been stated, except with 
 the utmost vagueness, by the men who make them. 
 They are a complex of experience, intended to 
 obtain the greatest amount of profit, and there- 
 fore in the main to stimulate a large amount of 
 traffic, but there is no clearer rule. Any Com- 
 merce Commission, instead of sweeping rules, must 
 for a time feel its way cautiously about rates, just 
 as any body to which the task is entrusted must, in 
 the present state of thought, feel its way cautiously 
 about combination. Even when a conclusion is 
 clearly accepted, as that the same men ought not 
 to control railways and the products which they 
 carry, there has heretofore been no successful exe- 
 
 [89] 
 
INDUSTRY AND PROGRESS 
 
 cution of the idea ; the commodity clause of the 
 Interstate Commerce Act being thus far a failure. 
 Expert boards may be expected to accomplish 
 more in time, but at the present moment they have 
 not been able to do much except to improve de- 
 tails of service. 
 
 Our only assured progress in the railroad prob- 
 lem has been political and moral. We have in 
 the last few years, by abolishing passes, discourag- 
 ing lobbyists, improving primaries and awakening 
 public opinion, largely forced the railroads out 
 of politics. The Boston & Maine no longer dic- 
 tates laws to New Hampshire, or the Southern 
 Pacific to California, or the Atchison to Kansas. 
 And as the public has been educated in this regard, 
 so have railroad managers also. They now seek 
 to gain points from legislatures or commissions, 
 not by furtive control but by fair and open argu- 
 ment; and often they welcome regulation. Few 
 of them, for example, wish to go back to the 
 secret rebates, by which they wrecked useful com- 
 petition and made monopolies in lines of business 
 for which there was no economic reason for mo- 
 nopoly, as there is in railroads themselves, tele- 
 graph lines, or telephones. They now realize 
 that, as Professor Seligman puts it, they have 
 
 [90] 
 
DISTRIBUTION 
 
 no more right to make different rates to different 
 customers than the government post-office has. 
 They are moving rapidly also toward the point 
 where they will agree that "the secret and unfair 
 use of 'inside information' is one of the most 
 prolific causes not only of unnatural inequality, 
 but of our political and social undoing."* Mr. 
 William Henry Baldwin, Jr., himself a successful 
 railroad man, urging the need of regulation in any 
 industry on which the prosperity of all depends, 
 declared that "there is a higher law than supply 
 and demand." It was this same enlightened and 
 successful railroad man who said, what can still 
 be applied to some great roads, "if they want to 
 fight trade unions, that is their privilege; but let 
 them do it openly and not in the guise of baths, 
 gymnasiums, cheap lunches, entertainments, or 
 profit-sharing." It is only recently that social 
 ideas of the type that distinguished Baldwin have 
 been found among railroad men. The builders, 
 from Vanderbilt to Hill, have been powerful, en- 
 terprising, stirring characters, but only of late 
 have they seen the ethical bearings of their power. 
 Colonel Wright believed, "If you could put Bald- 
 
 * John Graham Brooks's "An American Citizen," from which the 
 •quotations about Baldwin are taken. 
 
 [91] 
 
INDUSTRY AND PROGRESS 
 
 win's capacity, sympathy, and moral insight into 
 all our employers, there would be an end to all 
 really serious labor troubles within two years." 
 As ideas similar to those of Baldwin, about the 
 railroads' relations not only to employees but to 
 the whole public, are spreading among the able 
 railroad experts, we may expect some effective 
 cooperation between representatives of the people 
 and the men who best know the difficulties of the 
 problems. Baldwin said, "I need, as an employer, 
 an organization among my employees, because 
 they know their needs better than I can know 
 them, and they are therefore the safeguard upon 
 which I must depend in order to prevent me from 
 doing them an injustice." Perhaps the day is to 
 come when a similar confidence will exist, in both 
 directions, between the railways and the public, 
 Baldwin's life answered affirmatively the question, 
 which Mr. Brooks heard him ask: "Harnessed 
 Into a great corporation as I am, can one really 
 fight for the big human causes? Can one through 
 thick and thin defend his own corporate interests 
 and at the same time defend public Interests?" 
 
 The favorable answer to Mr. Baldwin's ques- 
 tion has been made possible only by the changing 
 views of what are private rights, and what public 
 
 [92] 
 
DISTRIBUTION 
 
 duties are. Big business, under modern concentra- 
 tion, has of necessity, as Mr. Hadley has said, be- 
 come a trust, delegated to a comparatively few. 
 If this system is to be satisfactory, we must have 
 the modern equivalent of the teaching of Lycur- 
 gus to the Spartans. "The dread of living for 
 himself alone w^as the earliest lesson imprinted on 
 the mind of a Laodicean." Ethics change. De- 
 mosthenes was bribed; Themistocles, Alcibiades 
 and Coriolanus were traitors. Our leaders do 
 not commit these faults now, but they are only 
 just learning how immoral it is to manufacture 
 securities instead of commodities. Theft was the 
 only form of dishonesty recognized by the early 
 Roman law. The circumstances of life are chang- 
 ing so fast that laws and morals both find difficulty 
 in adjusting themselves. We live under a new 
 system. "This new system must not regard the 
 director as an individual pursuing private busi- 
 ness of his own. It must not allow him to resent 
 the supposition that he shall conduct his business 
 unselfishly. It must regard him as having moral 
 responsibilities to his stockholders, to his work- 
 ingmen and to the consumers."* 
 
 Nor must the change apply only to the larger 
 
 * Hadley, "The Education of the American Citizen." 
 
 [93J 
 
INDUSTRY AND PROGRESS 
 
 kinds of business. In the church of St. James of 
 the Rialto, in Venice, Ruskin read the ninth cen- 
 tury inscription: "Around this Temple let the 
 merchant's law be just, his weights true, and his 
 contracts guileless." We have no means of know- 
 ing whether this advice was frequently accepted. 
 The Roman lawyers assumed that trade must be 
 without any moral quality. Paulus puts it thus : 
 "In buying and selling a man has a natural right 
 to purchase for a small price that which is really 
 more valuable, and to sell at a high price that 
 which is less valuable, and for either to over- 
 reach the other." If we are to ask honesty 
 of a great public distributor like the railroad, we 
 must ask it also in the smallest retail shop. I 
 do not believe there is a sounder and more appro- 
 priate law on the statute books than the Pure Food 
 Law, for which President Roosevelt fought so 
 hard, and against which Uncle Joe Cannon fought 
 so doggedly. And we have gone further than the 
 right to mere absence of fraud. Mrs. Kelley says 
 that the purchaser now has the right : 
 
 1. To have goods as represented. 
 
 2. To have food that is pure and garments 
 that are free from infection, when bought of rep- 
 utable dealers at the price asked. 
 
 [94] 
 
DISTRIBUTION 
 
 3. To be free from participation, indirectly, 
 through purchase, in the employment of children 
 and of the victims of the sweating system. 
 
 A recent act of the New York Legislature was 
 based on the extremely prevalent custom of giv- 
 ing short weight and short measure. An investi- 
 gation indicated that in prominent thoroughfares 
 of New York 59 per cent, of the scales, 71 per 
 cent, of the weights and 82 per cent, of the capa- 
 city measures were incorrect.* Of course this is 
 another case where comparatively few of those 
 who cheat are of dishonest nature. The majority 
 are led astray by unfair competition, and will wel- 
 come effective regulation. So with the sale of 
 fraudulent wearing apparel. The United States 
 government probably is not much cheated when it 
 buys clothing, but nearly every private citizen is.f 
 To inferior fabrics is skillfully given the look of 
 superior fabrics. Cotton is made to look like 
 wool, and'to feel like linen. Silk is adulterated by 
 the addition of weighting material; $800,000,000 
 are spent annually in the United States in clothing 
 
 I 
 
 * Fritz Reichmann, Superintendent of Weights and Measures, in the 
 American Magazine, September, 1910. 
 
 t See a treatment of this subject in Harper's Weekly for Marcli 5, 
 1910, by Nellie Crooks. 
 
 [95] 
 
INDUSTRY AND PROGRESS 
 
 and textile materials, and a large part of it is still 
 fraudulent. 
 
 "Has anything been done to relieve this state of afEairs? 
 The only law in the State of New York which treats 
 specially of the adulteration of clothing is one enacting 
 that collars marked 'all linen,' 'pure linen,' must have at 
 least one ply or thickness of linen. This law is said to 
 have been passed at the urgency of the laundrymen of 
 Troy, as the linen collars can stand the alkalies and acids 
 used in the laundries better than the cotton substitutes."* 
 
 A golden rule grocery was started in England, 
 and 1 believe did not over-well, but yet it is what 
 we must work toward. Old John Woolman, when 
 engaged in retail trade, stopped selling "things 
 that served chiefly to please the vain mind in peo- 
 ple," and he said: "I found it good for me to 
 advise poor people to take such goods as were 
 most useful, and not costly." We have not yet 
 reached Woolman's standard, but it is easy to 
 see why Dr. Eliot included him among the Har- 
 vard classics. We have at least traveled away 
 recently from the rule of law known as "caveat 
 emptor," which meant that the purchaser must 
 look out for himself. Frauds of adulteration, and 
 
 * In the session of Congress of 1910-11 Mr. Victor Murdock, insur- 
 gent leader in the House, has introduced a bill applying the pure food 
 principle to wearing apparel. 
 
 [96] 
 
DISTRIBUTION 
 
 of Inferior material and workmanship, were en- 
 couraged by the first steps of separation between 
 production and distribution. Once the bookmaker 
 and watchmaker and harnessmaker sold his own 
 products, and if it was something made far away, 
 like tea, the retailer at least carefully selected his 
 own purchases. When big manufacturers began 
 to compete against one another, and the seller was 
 not the maker, hidden inferiority became easier, 
 especially at first; but this was before brands and 
 trade marks came in, to make the better class of 
 manufacturers responsible to the public for the 
 quality of their goods. 
 
 And this mention of trade marks brings me to 
 one of the great modern methods of distribution, 
 which is advertising. This is the modern market- 
 place. The world has grown too big, and func- 
 tion too divided, for the people to exchange their 
 completed products personally in a village square. 
 Truth in advertising, said a New York business 
 man, implies integrity in manufacture. The large 
 manufacturer is coming to approach much nearer 
 to the truth in advertising than he did; to rely 
 upon specific information rather than on boasting. 
 The newspapers and periodicals are educating 
 themselves toward cooperating in this government. 
 
 [97] 
 
INDUSTRY AND PROGRESS 
 
 Governor Hughes, somewhat driven by the agita- 
 tion of a newspaper which was itself full of get- 
 rich-quick mining advertisements and other Stock 
 Exchange evils, is reported to have said that one 
 of the most needed, practical and salutary steps 
 would be to prevent the newspapers by law from 
 lending themselves to such fraud. Social develop- 
 ment, without law, has carried the better periodi- 
 cals and many dailies to a standard which makes 
 them decline to be the medium for financial and 
 medical fraud.* 
 
 In order to avoid the waste now incurred in our 
 methods of distribution, to assure better quality 
 to the consumer, to give to the consumer the man- 
 agement of the business, and to remove other 
 evils of the system of competition, many experi- 
 ments have been made in cooperative distribution. 
 Attempts have been made also at production by 
 cooperation, but the results have shown that the 
 world is further from being able to produce co- 
 operatively than it is from being able to distribute. 
 An appreciable amount of retail business is now 
 
 * Just before I corrected the proofs to this book a New York jury 
 gave a verdict of $50,000 against George W. Post of "Grape Nuts" and 
 "Postum" fame in favor of Collier's Weekly, the size of the verdict 
 expressing what the jury thought about the importance of honesty in 
 advertising. 
 
 [98] 
 
DISTRIBUTION 
 
 done by cooperation. One of my early memories 
 is of the welcome pecuniary relief furnished to the 
 economical student by the Harvard Cooperative 
 Society, and when one reads of how large a per- 
 centage it now saves, and how it flourishes, the 
 wonder is that the system does not spread. Of 
 course that society is conducted with ability, and 
 ability is essential. Eight million of the inhabi- 
 tants of Great Britain now buy part or all of the 
 ordinary necessaries of life from cooperative 
 stores. Sir Horace Plunkett's work among the 
 Irish farmers includes cooperative marketing. 
 
 There has been effort at cooperative selling on 
 the continent, although it has proved more difficult 
 than cooperative purchasing, which has sometimes 
 been successful. French cooperative purchasing 
 societies have reduced the price of manure by 20 
 and 30 per cent. It is frequently observed that en- 
 lightened cooperative education has turned Den- 
 mark from weakness into strength and prosperity. 
 There has on the continent to some extent been 
 successful cooperative banking.* Vines have been 
 cultivated in Italy on a system by which the prof- 
 its are divided between the workers and the own- 
 
 * For the fullest account of what has been done see C. J. Ilolyoake's 
 book, "The Cooperative Movement Today." 
 
 [99] 
 
INDUSTRY AND PROGRESS 
 
 ers of the land and vines. Early in the nineteenth 
 century so much was expected of various forms of 
 social labor that men of high education and large 
 ability, as Professor Ely says, thought that com- 
 munistic villages would revolutionize the economic 
 life of the world. The original object of the 
 cooperative movement, indeed, was to establish 
 self-supporting communities, distinguished by com- 
 mon labor, common property, common means of 
 intelligence and recreation. They were to be ex- 
 amples of industrialism freed from competition. 
 In the communal life an ethical character was to 
 be formed in the young, and impressed upon 
 adults, and all assured education, leisure and ulti- 
 mate competence as results of their industry.* It 
 was expected that the unnecessary middlemen 
 could be cut out, the cost of production reduced, 
 demand and supply brought into better relation, 
 and the alternation of activity and depression in 
 business avoided. t These ideas had their origin 
 in the French Revolution. Of the attempts to 
 apply them, made by Owen, Saint Simon, Fourier, 
 and many followers, it cannot be said that the 
 results have ever been successful on a big scale. 
 
 * Holyoake, "The Cooperative Movement Today." 
 t Henry Dyer, "The Evolution of Industry." 
 
 [100] 
 
DISTRIBUTION 
 
 In the only usual cooperative agency — the store 
 — each applicant for admission is taken to accept 
 the principles of truthfulness, justice and economy, 
 in production and exchange. 
 
 1. By abolition of false dealing, direct or indi- 
 rect — by misrepresentation or by concealing facts 
 about articles sold. 
 
 2. By conciliating through equitable division of 
 ''profit" among capitalist, worker and purchaser. 
 
 3. By preventing waste of labor by unregulated 
 competition. 
 
 There are indefinite shades to the cooperative 
 principle. Profit-sharing has had its failures and 
 successes. Herbert Spencer held that coopera- 
 tion would solve those difficulties which are now 
 found in payment by the piece. The sliding scale 
 in which the workman's earnings are proportioned, 
 not to the mere amount of product, as in ordinary 
 piece work, but to the selling price, has been ex- 
 tensively applied in mining, and to some extent in 
 other industries.* It is only one step further to 
 giving the workman a share in the net profits, and 
 logically one step further to cooperation, but the 
 difficulty arises when the laborer shares the risk. 
 The reason that all of these schemes have thus 
 
 Hadley, "Economics." 
 
 [101] 
 
INDUSTRY AND PROGRESS 
 
 far accomplished so little is, according to Emer- 
 son,* that the connection between hard and effi- 
 cient work today and a share in a hypothetical 
 profit months hence, depending on ten thousand 
 elements besides the individual's effort, is too slight 
 an incentive; and in piece work the man might 
 fail from conditions beyond his control, while if 
 he succeeded the rates were cut. "Between the 
 extremes of vague and unrelated profit-sharing 
 and the one-sided exploitation of piece rates, many 
 methods have been evolv^ed for paying variable 
 wages for varying efficiencies." One corporation 
 paid out over $600,000 in 1908 in premiums on 
 the "individual effort" plan — a basic price for 
 labor, with a premium for superior results. 
 Whatever methods are perfected, for enabling the 
 laborer to share more equitably in the results of 
 industry, it is reasonably safe to guess that, in a 
 universe which believes in efficiency, these methods 
 will include a superior reward to the individual 
 who produces superior results. 
 
 Holyoake gives the following incidents in the 
 history of the cooperative movement : 
 
 In 1777 a tailor's cooperative workshop was 
 
 'Efficiency." 
 
 [102] 
 
DISTRIBUTION 
 
 opened In Birmingham, with the object of finding 
 employment for men on strike. 
 
 A cooperative store in England began in crude 
 form in 1794. 
 
 A cooperative corn mill at Hull was put in oper- 
 ation in 1794. 
 
 None of these had the idea of superseding com- 
 petition or establishing a new principle of social 
 life. That idea first came into English minds 
 through Robert Owen. Although Owen, the 
 greatest of English socialists, was the founder of 
 English cooperation, it is true in the main, as 
 Marshall says, that "cooperation is divided 
 from most modern socialistic schemes by advocat- 
 ing no disturbance of private property, and by 
 abhorring state help and all unnecessary interfer- 
 ence with individual freedom." Professor Ely, 
 saying that the device of cooperation is self-help, 
 puts it halfway between labor unionism and social- 
 ism, and says that cooperators, when worthy of 
 the name, are firm in the conviction expressed 
 for them by John Stuart Mill : 
 
 "That the industrial economy which divides society ab- 
 solutely into two portions, the payers of wages and the 
 receivers of them, the first counted by thousands and the 
 last by millions, is neither fit nor capable of indefinite 
 
 [103] 
 
INDUSTRY AND PROGRESS 
 
 duration; and the possibility of changing this system for 
 one of combination without dependence, and unity of in- 
 terest instead of organized hostility, depends altogether 
 upon the future developments of the partnership princi- 
 ple." 
 
 Mr. Emerson reasonably asks why the govern- 
 ment cannot furnish work for all who need it, 
 without any interference with the principles of in- 
 dividual efficiency; why there should not be a mini- 
 mum wage at which employment in national 
 works, reclamation of arid lands, harbor dredg- 
 ing, canals, highways, battleships and fortifica- 
 tions, would be always open, thus doing away for- 
 ever with the disgrace of bread lines. This prop- 
 osition to supplement private industry is entirely 
 unrelated to the proposal to supplant it. Social- 
 ism does not appeal to the students of efficiency. 
 Socialism would not lead us toward the ideal of 
 having every man "work with the reliability of a 
 steam valve, yet with the joy of a hunting dog 
 and the inspiration of the artist." When the 
 government in city, state or nation is as efficient 
 as it ought to be, it will not try to substitute it- 
 self, either in production or in distribution, for the 
 myriad wills and intelligences whose efforts now 
 mean progress, but it will undertake and accom- 
 
 [104] 
 
DISTRIBUTION 
 
 plish the task of seeing that no person of average 
 competence and wilHngness ever knows extreme 
 poverty. Sympathy can, of course, be so empha- 
 sized that it makes for weakness. The world has 
 been as much helped by the individual's enlight- 
 ened self-expression as by softness of heart. The 
 danger, however, of overdoing the Christian 
 virtues is not great. The Hebrew reformers, 
 reflecting their special conditions, gave vivid ex- 
 pression to one high ideal, which cannot thrive 
 alone, but to which we have never yet given suffi- 
 cient intelligent consideration. 
 
 [105] 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 Progress. 
 
 Thomas Jefferson, contemplating death, se- 
 lected for his tomb words which should speak of 
 him to unborn millions. To those millions Jef- 
 ferson presented for their approval the best of 
 his accomplishments. He did not record the 
 conventional glories of his life. No syllable ap- 
 pears upon the stone at Monticello to hint that 
 the dust there buried was called the Governor of 
 a state. No word is spoken of this dust as Secre- 
 tary under Washington, or as Vice-President of 
 his country. For eight years he sat in the highest 
 post, but a traveler, examining history on this 
 tablet, would not be confronted with this fact. 
 Two services only are graven there — the found- 
 ing of an institution where men and women still 
 equip themselves for service, and two documents, 
 in which are proclaimed the rights and freedom 
 of mankind. 
 
 Jefferson's conception of importance has pre- 
 vailed. It is less than ever before the stage-ac- 
 coutred hero of whom we think, and more the 
 faithful worker and the children who are to work 
 
 [106] 
 
progrp:ss 
 
 after him. Our consciences undertake that all 
 one day shall be born with an opportunity to 
 know the best thought of man; to earn, by rea- 
 sonable effort, nourishing food, warmth, light, air 
 and leisure sufficient for happiness, growth and 
 contemplation; to take a real and immediate part 
 in government and in solving the questions which 
 affect us all; to enjoy, in short, those struggles, 
 joys and sorrows which mark the difference be- 
 tween the life of Socrates and the existence of a 
 contented or unhappy pig. There is a pedantry, 
 sometimes found among those who are credited 
 with culture, which puts elegance for the few above 
 comfort for the many. Modern tendencies may 
 be scorned by these, because apparently they make 
 for uniformity. Among them one may hear per- 
 haps more earnest sorrow on the changing cos- 
 tumes of Japan than on the 300,000 rooms with- 
 out a window in New York. A traveler, dreaming 
 of himself as owner of the Ducal Palace, is grieved 
 at the presence of so many other tourists and hor- 
 rified by steamers on the Grand Canal. When 
 slums disappear, in some old pretty town, such a 
 voyager is moved almost to tears. If he thinks of 
 classic times, it is of himself as one of the ruling or 
 decorative few. It is more difficult for him to 
 
 [107] 
 
INDUSTRY AND PROGRESS 
 
 identify himself with the slave or peasant. Even 
 the invention of printing has been decried; and the 
 trolley, because it increases the number of those 
 who use the county roads; steel construction, be- 
 cause ideas of architecture can be applied more 
 easily to stone. Man certainly shall not live by 
 bread alone. It is not the person most deeply 
 versed in history to whom modern democracy 
 seems to threaten the spirit's high accomplish- 
 ments. Ideal flights have never been reduced to 
 rule, but they appear most frequently when all 
 the practical faculties of man are in their flower. 
 Greece's genius in the arts corresponded in time 
 with her study of politics and ethics and with her 
 leadership in the moral standards of the world. 
 Italy led the world in artistic light in the same 
 centuries that saw her busy about exploration, 
 science and practical concerns. So in the age of 
 Elizabeth, and in the most glorious days of Hol- 
 land, and in ancient Rome, the light of the spirit 
 has burned brightest when the hand was on the 
 plow; when the general mind eagerly attacked 
 the practical problems by which it was confronted. 
 While no barometer can foretell the rise and fall 
 of genius, whatever hard work our generation un- 
 dertakes, in reducing poverty, in inventing flying, 
 
 [108] 
 
PROGRESS 
 
 in preserving forests, in tinkering or replacing 
 political machinery, in building up a religion of 
 humanity, will increase and not lessen our chance 
 of registering the soul of this time in some word 
 or shape that the world will not readily let die. 
 The lights of inspiration come when they will, but 
 more willingly when we are proving ourselves 
 men, active in the appointed task. 
 
 The ideal of culture is coming to include rele- 
 vancy, sympathy, comprehension of the actual. 
 Indeed, this is one of the widest intellectual 
 chasms between antiquity and ourselves. The 
 man who did the ordinary labor of the world 
 once lay outside the calculations of the prosper- 
 ous. Labor was the badge of a lower state. The 
 Greeks, for example, although ethically so far 
 ahead of the surrounding nations, and intellectual- 
 ly for a short burst superior to any race that has 
 lived upon the earth, were not permitted to work 
 out principles which had their most eloquent ex- 
 pression in Galilee. A frivolous toast, "Here's 
 to the rich, God bless 'em, and as for the poor, 
 damn 'em, they's used to it," breathes a view held 
 less widely now than ever before. We have un« 
 dertaken to carry freedom beyond declarations of 
 independence, beyond the machinery of govern- 
 
 [109] 
 
INDUSTRY AND PROGRESS 
 
 ment, and to introduce it into economic life. 
 Churches begin to reahze that if they are to sur- 
 vive with any moral leadership, or even with any 
 moral function, they cannot treat this group of 
 questions without courage. The colleges are un- 
 dertaking a double help. Courses such as this 
 are founded by men who, like Mr. Page, realize 
 how much may be gained by suggesting to young 
 men the obligations of their future lives, and the 
 colleges in the main, in approaching economic 
 problems, are braver than the churches. In addi- 
 tion to such ethical enlightenment, moreover, 
 they are undertaking to relate their teaching to 
 the varied needs of men. The tendencies of even 
 the older eastern colleges show something of this 
 change, in more freedom of choice in new and 
 practical courses, in endeavoring to lower the age 
 of graduation, and in a spirit of sympathy with 
 whatever may be the labor of the student's life. 
 It is, however, in other regions of the country, 
 and especially in the West, that the relation of the 
 college to the people's life has grown most close. 
 The University of Wisconsin guides citizens of 
 the state in the most immediate problems that 
 confront them. The farmer, who once distrusted 
 the college, now follows trustfully. Because of 
 
 [110] 
 
PROGRESS 
 
 higher education the human laborer grapples with 
 the earth upon more even terms. Cultivation is 
 the ability to realize ideal values; but training of 
 the brain, insight into truth, harmonious valuation 
 of this world, can be acquired not only from the 
 Greek and Latin tongues, but also from the pro- 
 cesses of nature. Literature, language, philoso- 
 phy and history help to enlarge the vision, to re- 
 fine and guide the mind, and never should the 
 colleges lose sight of breadth of view, of exqui- 
 siteness of taste, of the eternities, but if culture is 
 unrelated to present life, it runs into formality; it 
 becomes an echo; and even "the light that never 
 was, on sea or land" is safer if it plays about the 
 busy haunts of men. Perhaps the college needs to 
 be careful not to allow the older culture to be en- 
 dangered, but with wisdom it can save that culture 
 and yet make itself the servant of a larger class. 
 When Charles W. Eliot left Harvard, that insti- 
 tution had in thirty-five years lost nothing in ripe- 
 ness of atmosphere, and it had been helped by the 
 quality of his mind to adapt itself to the require- 
 ments of changing civilization. When Yale se- 
 lected as her present leader a man distinguished 
 for his grasp of economic truths she recognized 
 that the movements offered to the sanest thought 
 
 [111] 
 
INDUSTRY AND PROGRESS 
 
 of man today are associated with the production 
 and distribution of wealth. Goethe, the most cul- 
 tivated of men, predicted, with the clearness which 
 was his, that by the end of the nineteenth century 
 the dominating problems would be those connect- 
 ed, directly or indirectly, with the industry of the 
 machine. The fulfilment of his vision explains the 
 part which the machine has played in the course 
 of thought attempted in these lectures. This 
 is a course in the ethics of business, but ethics is 
 not something unchanging, dogmatic, abstract. 
 The moral truths which dominate a time are 
 brought to the front by the circumstances of the 
 time. The feudal system could not lay stress on 
 the virtues which became most important to an 
 industrial bourgeoisie. 
 
 We have seen that the discovery of the power 
 of steam and the invention of machinery put a 
 magical weapon into the hands of the human race. 
 They brought it about that if a man labors for a 
 given time, the result of his labor, in clothing, 
 fuel, vehicles, books, is much greater than it was 
 before. They not only increased the productive- 
 ness of labor, but changed the conditions of work 
 and man's relation to his fellows. I wish to end 
 this volume by summing up the progress already 
 
 [112] 
 
PROGRESS 
 
 touched on, and by describing the spirit in which 
 progress may be quickened and assured. An in- 
 teresting remark by W. R. Greg, in his "Reah/- 
 able Ideals," is that there was little difference in 
 power between the lamps used in the days of the 
 pyramids and those used a hundred years ago; be- 
 tween the lighting of city streets in the days of 
 Pharaoh and in those of Voltaire. Moreover, 
 the laborer's cottage formerly had no window. 
 In travel Nimrod and Noah were on an equality 
 with Franklin. When Abraham sent a message 
 to Lot, or Ruth to Naomi, or David to Jona- 
 than, the method was as efficient as any open to 
 George Washington. Robert Bruce traveled 
 like George the Third, and Ulysses may have 
 sailed as fast as Paul Jones. Travel and light, 
 however, are not the most important contributions 
 to happiness of our modern civilization, nor are 
 garments, although it may be observed in passing 
 that Queen Elizabeth is supposed to have worn 
 the first pair of knit hose ever brought into Eng- 
 land. Men^do not grow old as rapidly as they 
 did before machinery undertook the heaviest 
 Avork. Their minds are better stimulated. The 
 relative number who have the narrowest outlook 
 is constantly and rapidly decreasing. Modern in- 
 
 [113] 
 
INDUSTRY AND PROGRESS 
 
 dustry has so greatly diminished that universal 
 scourge Poverty, that even in the London slums 
 conditions are improving. Before an investigat- 
 ing commission in London,* one of the most expe- 
 rienced speakers told of a time in his memory 
 when husband and wife sometimes had to sit up 
 alternately to protect their children from the rats 
 which swarmed up from the sewers, and when 
 cesspools were often not more than a foot be- 
 low rooms teeming with families. Poverty in- 
 creased until the cotton manufactures came, 
 since when, taking decade by decade, it has been 
 on the decline.! Colonel Wright tells us that be- 
 fore the factory was established, the working 
 classes of England lived in hovels and mud huts 
 that would not be tolerated even in the worst 
 coal-mining districts in this country or in Eng- 
 land today. As to the justly abhorred sweating 
 system, it "is the old hand system prior to the 
 establishment of the factory," which had been uni- 
 versal. It Is of the Reformation period, in France 
 and other countries, that Colonel Wright de- 
 scribes the life of the peasant as one of hopeless 
 
 * Wylie's "Labor, Leisure and Luxury." 
 
 t See Carroll D. Wright, "Some Ethical Phases of the Labor 
 Question." 
 
 [114] 
 
PROGRESS 
 
 and perpetual agony. He lived in ;i hut, like a 
 hare in his hollow, near the palisaded inclosure of 
 his lord, "in want and fear, hardly sheltered and 
 not at all fed, a prey to epidemic diseases; later 
 to go out starved and trembling to see his plot of 
 ground and harvest in cinders; to repair the dam- 
 age and begin again, with the prospect of another 
 similar catastrophe." Again: "Huddled to- 
 gether in what poetry calls a 'cottage' and history 
 a 'hut,' the weaver's family lived and worked, 
 without comfort, convenience, good food, good 
 air, and without much intelligence. Drunkenness 
 and theft of materials made each home the scene 
 of crime and want and disorder. Superstition 
 ruled and envy swayed the workers. If the mem- 
 bers of a family endowed with more virtue and 
 intelligence than the common herd, tried to so 
 conduct themselves as to secure at least self- 
 respect, they were either abused or ostracized by 
 their neighbors." 
 
 Mr. D. A. Wells, giving a similar view of his- 
 tory, hardly exaggerates when he says that the 
 very outcasts of England are now better pro- 
 vided for than were multitudes of her laboring 
 men some sixty years ago. One writer, describ- 
 ing the time of Henry III., says of the working- 
 
 [115] 
 
INDUSTRY AND PROGRESS 
 
 men of those days that they were worse clad, 
 worse fed, worse housed, worse taught; that they 
 were sufferers from loathsome diseases which we 
 know nothing of; that the disregard of human 
 life was so callous that we can hardly conceive it. 
 There was everything to harden, nothing to soft- 
 en; everywhere oppression, greed and fierceness. 
 The law of the land was intensely cruel and merci- 
 less, and the gallows and the pillory — never far 
 from any man's fire — were seldom allovv^ed to re- 
 main long out of use. Here is an inventory* of 
 the household furniture of a peasant six years 
 before the death of Edward I. : 
 
 
 £ 
 
 s. 
 
 d. 
 
 A maize cup, 
 
 
 
 
 
 6 
 
 Abed, 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 6 
 
 A tripod, 
 
 
 
 
 
 3 
 
 A brass pot, 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 A brass cup, 
 
 
 
 
 
 6 
 
 An andiron, 
 
 
 
 
 
 3 1-2 
 
 A brass dish, 
 
 
 
 
 
 6 
 
 A gridiron. 
 
 
 
 
 
 5 
 
 A rug or coverlet. 
 
 
 
 
 
 8 
 
 5 7 1-2 
 
 Eden, "The State of the Poor." 
 
 [116] 
 
PROGRESS 
 
 Such a man could earn but twelve cents per 
 week. For three or four centuries following the 
 thirteenth century the standard changed surpris- 
 ingly little. In "The Rise of the Middle Class," 
 M. G. Mulhall, in the Contemponiry Review 
 for 1882, supporting the position that the rich 
 are not individually as wealthy as in the past, 
 estimates that the proportion of persons in mid- 
 dle fortune has doubled, and the condition of the 
 working classes has improved in even greater de- 
 gree than the growth of capital. In countries, 
 where the earnings of the strictly so-called work- 
 ing class form the bulk of the national income, as 
 in Russia anci Italy, the people are not so well fed 
 or prosperous as in those (like Great Britain and 
 France) where machinery has largely taken the 
 place of manual labor. "In the early nineteenth 
 century the agricultural laborers of Sicily and the 
 Lombard plains, the rent-racked peasants of parts 
 of the Comarca and Campania, the migrant har- 
 vestmen, whom poverty drove from the Abruzzi 
 to sow the Maremna with their bones, had a lot 
 of hopeless misery, beside which that of the Eng- 
 lish factory slave or Irish peasant was bright."* 
 
 •Colton King, "A History of Italian Unity." 
 
 I 11' I 
 
INDUSTRY AND PROGRESS 
 
 1840 
 
 1880 
 
 22 
 
 73 
 
 15 
 
 54 
 
 269 
 
 358 
 
 84 
 
 118 
 
 In forty years the consumption of food in Eng- 
 land per inhabitant increased as follows : 
 
 Tea, ozs., 
 Sugar, lbs., 
 Wheat, 
 Meat, 
 
 In the same period the ratio of savings bank 
 depositors increased over 300 per cent, the ratio 
 of paupers fell to the lowest known since the 
 beginning of the century, and the persons unable 
 to sign the marriage register fell from 42 per 
 cent, to 23. Robert Griffen, president of the 
 Statistical Society, comparing two periods in the 
 nineteenth century about fifty years apart, calcu- 
 lated that the later workman got from 50 to 100 
 per cent, more money for 20 per cent, less work; 
 that in the same proportion he was better fed, 
 clothed and housed; and that he paid less taxes 
 in return for much greater service from the gov- 
 ernment. Real wages probably rose about 60 
 per cent, in the United States between i860 and 
 1 89 1, and about 70 per cent, in Great Britain. 
 
 These random illustrations will serve to cast 
 doubt upon the poetic view of poverty in the 
 golden past. The error grows largely from the 
 
 [118] 
 
PROGRESS 
 
 habit of comparing the man who now makes the 
 tenth part of one article with him who formerly 
 made it all. The factory laborer, however, cor- 
 responds not to the village blacksmith, who was 
 one of the leading men in his region, but to the 
 agricultural or common city laborer. If history 
 is read truly, the well-to-do and poor alike have 
 more material possessions than formerly, at a 
 smaller labor cost, and the world is a better place 
 for both of them. 
 
 This superiority of our day is not material and 
 intellectual alone. It is also spiritual. The hu- 
 man awakening is one of the glories of the mod- 
 ern world. Long before machinery was intro- 
 duced, little children were compelled to work like 
 slaves, but, as President Hadley says, it was only 
 after the factory was born that their wrongs were 
 noticed. As late as the middle of the eighteenth 
 century, with only a blanket for clothing, women 
 were harnessed to trucks, underground, and wo- 
 men were let out in droves to overseers whose 
 cruelty could not even be conceived today. What 
 most people then thought of such abuses may be 
 guessed from the fact, already mentioned, that 
 even John Bright thought that competition must 
 have its ruthless way. Who would dare to put 
 
 [119] 
 
INDUSTRY AND PROGRESS 
 
 forth in Congress today the political mummery 
 thus set forth by a member of Parliament a little 
 more than lOO years ago? 
 
 "It was necessary that the bulk of the people should be 
 very poor in order to render them laborious; that the 
 lower ranks should have but little prosperity, in order to 
 excite their industry; and that there should be some ex- 
 tremely rich, to supply the state in cases of imminent exi- 
 gency, and advance schemes and enterprises which re- 
 quired capital." 
 
 Democracy seems to make for morals in most 
 of the great departments of our lives. How long 
 ago was bribery respectable in England? Slavery 
 died but yesterday. Not ten years ago rebates 
 were granted and received without a question; 
 almost no one realized a sin in the conspiracy of 
 railroad and shipper to murder a competitor. 
 The country needed to be educated to the evil of 
 selling falsely labeled and adulterated food be- 
 fore the pure food bill could become a law. We 
 are only beginning to realize the moral obliquity 
 of inside speculation by corporation directors. 
 When I was a boy, sharpness in business, "Yankee 
 shrewdness," was admired by a type of mind 
 which now regards with distress the ruthless 
 overreaching of our fellows. In my own pro- 
 
 [120] 
 
PROGRESS 
 
 fession there are greater seriousness and sense of 
 responsibility than there were fifteen years ago. 
 A general heightening of the moral tone can be 
 seen everywhere — slow, no doubt, and subject to 
 setbacks, but still a power. As long as one genu- 
 inely believes in progress he can walk through 
 oceans of mediocrity, undiscouraged. The 
 strength or courage or persistence which used to 
 go to storming citadels or burning heretics will 
 be turned toward eradicating the common house- 
 fly, stopping habits which breed or spread disease, 
 perfecting machinery, planting trees, increasing 
 efficiency, securing better houses, or fairer wages, 
 or shorter hours. In pursuing such ends scope 
 can be found for the human virtues, practical and 
 ideal, although it requires more imagination, no 
 doubt, to discover inspiration in new tasks than to 
 read in literary masterpieces about what other 
 ages have accomplished. 
 
 In this progress I think the step we most need 
 now is to free ourselves from that degree of 
 luxury which means enslavement. "Caesar once," 
 said Plutarch, "seeing some wealthy strangers at 
 Rome, carrying up and down with them in their 
 arms and bosoms young puppy-dogs and monkeys, 
 embracing and making much of them, took occa- 
 
 [121] 
 
INDUSTRY AND PROGRESS 
 
 sion not unnaturally to ask whether the women In 
 their country were not used to bear children." 
 Too heavily laden dinners, poisonous drinks, need- 
 less lackeys, and similar destructive encumbrances, 
 ought to be seen in a clearer light. It would be 
 a gain Indeed If society could see something 
 coarsely wrong in whatever is morally injurious to 
 the owner and a burden to his struggling fellow 
 man. Perhaps If many thousands of the most 
 favorably placed persons could realize that their 
 power to do good depends, directly or Indirectly, 
 upon their freedom from many possessions, it 
 might be possible to establish new standards of 
 social praise. Spiritually he can accomplish most 
 who has the fewest lowering needs. If there are 
 any final solutions to the Intricate problems by 
 which the world is faced, those solutions will re- 
 quire, in every case, an increasing trend in us all, 
 and especially in the well-to-do, toward simplicity, 
 toward an intimate concern for those who are less 
 favorably placed, and for those who, coming after, 
 are to enter a world prepared by us for their recep- 
 tion. 
 
 The bread returns upon the waters. A life Is 
 measured not by its specific pleasures, but by the 
 sense of worth with which It Is Interfused. It Is 
 
 [ 122 ] 
 
PROGRESS 
 
 not the worker for Ideal ends whose own hand 
 Impatiently draws for himself the final veil, foy 
 turns to ashes only when It Is souglit in things 
 which are too near and small. 7'he man for 
 whom the simple moral principles are not only 
 spoken but also lived in truth and filled with 
 light, — he is a man for whom vanity of vanities 
 Is the worst of all descriptions for the world he 
 loves. Nothing Is more entirely proved by the 
 most ordinary experience than the superior happi- 
 ness of the man or woman whose ego Is almost 
 forgotten In the universe of which it Is a helping 
 part. We think often of this ethical progress as 
 If It meant a sacrifice by the prosperous; as indeed 
 It does, but a sacrifice of the limited to the abun- 
 dant; a sacrifice which, if truly made, Is paid for 
 many fold. Is virtue dull? It Is the only thing 
 that never can grow dull. In the Intellectual rich- 
 ness of the Christian gospel, no sayings are pro- 
 founder than those which tell how the Individual 
 multiplies his own life by devoting it; and what 
 the Bible thus says, the philosophers and poets of 
 all time have said, and are saying now, and must 
 ever say, since It Is true. 
 
 [123] 
 
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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
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