NMAN 
 
 IN INDUSTR 
 
 ARTHUR 
 
 i ! :;
 
 91 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 SANTA BARBARA 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 GERALD HOWLAND
 
 THE IRON MAN 
 IN INDUSTRY 
 
 AN OUTLINE 
 OF THE SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE 
 
 OF 
 
 AUTOMATIC MACHINERY 
 
 BY 
 
 ARTHUR POUND 
 
 BOSTON 
 THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY PRESS
 
 Copyright 1922, by 
 THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY PRESS, Inc. 
 
 Printed in United States of America
 
 This book is inscribed to the memory of 
 
 WILLIAM A. PATERSON 
 1838 1921 
 
 In his youth a master craftsman at the 
 forge, and for more than half a century 
 an employer who kept faith with his 
 men, his market, and his community.
 
 PREFACE 
 
 IT has been my luck, for twenty years, to work in fac- 
 tory towns at a trade which kept both mind and 
 office open to all comers. I have been employer and em- 
 ployed, reporter, editor, and printer, proprietor, part- 
 ner and shareholder of and in various enterprises, most 
 of them concerned with spreading news and views. 
 With enough experience of business, if assimilated in 
 the usual way, to have made me a business man, I 
 remain a newspaper man. Business men must be 
 specialists; newspaper men ought to be generalists. 
 
 Libraries are full of books on industrial problems, 
 which I have not had time to read; but there is no 
 type of man in industry that I have not met and 
 heard through to the end of his string. Such slight 
 researches as I have made, however, indicate that 
 the favored styles in books on industry are two: the 
 coldly analytical and the hotly polemical. The re- 
 sults prove that, in books, life may be analyzed into 
 lifelessness and beaten to death with verbal lashes, 
 while outside their covers life and work push on re- 
 gardless. So it seemed worth while to attempt a dis- 
 cussion of the industrial problem which should be 
 neither hot rhetoric nor cold analysis, but rather a 
 calm synthesis, calm yet not altogether devoid of 
 warmth, and so far new as to take into account 
 impacts of new tools and methods upon human na- 
 ture and the social order. 
 
 Large numbers of persons, most of them unwit- 
 tingly, have assisted me in this work through the
 
 viii PREFACE 
 
 conversations of many talkative years. I am most 
 grateful, however, to Mr. Ernest F. Lloyd, of Ann 
 Arbor, Michigan, a former manufacturer of gas-ma- 
 chinery and operator of gas companies, who, after a 
 busy life, retired to the academic atmosphere of a 
 college town, to reflect upon his experience. Entering 
 the University as a special student in economics when 
 past middle age, he reversed, with most interesting 
 results, the educational process. His forthcoming book 
 on "The Wages System" is the clearest analyis yet 
 made of our industrial system as it operates; and I 
 joyfully advertise his priority of thought in many 
 conclusions reached in this volume. Those chapters 
 which stress the economic aspect are, in effect, the 
 fruits of joint authorship; and throughout I have 
 had the benefit of his accurate knowledge of in- 
 dustry and his firm grip on economic theory. With- 
 out his aid this book scarcely could have been written, 
 though I make haste to absolve him from responsibil- 
 ity of agreement in all its conclusions, since we have 
 our individual points of view on many of the issues. 
 
 My thanks are likewise due to Dr. C. B. Burr, 
 author of "Practical Psychology and Psychiatry," for 
 expert advice and steady encouragement; to Dr. G. 
 K. Pratt of the Massachusetts Society for Mental 
 Hygiene, and to Dr. Arnold L. Jacoby, psychiatrist 
 of the Municipal Courts of Detroit, for assistance 
 in endeavoring to untangle the mental threads of the 
 complex. 
 
 ARTHUR POUND.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 Page 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 I FROM LAND TO MILL . . . . . . i 
 
 II THE- LEVELING OF WAGES . . . . 18 
 
 III MIND AND MACHINE .. 36 - 
 
 IV THE IRON DUKES , . 62 - 
 
 V INDUSTRY AND * STATE . . . . 87 * U 3 
 
 VI THE CHANGING CORPORATION . . . 1 14 // 5^- 1 5 ) 
 
 VII THE JOB AND SOCIETY 141 ' $* 
 
 VIII WAR AND WORK ... . . . . 153 *el 
 
 IX Sits, IRON MAN'S LEGACY . , . . 170 - / 
 
 X EDUCATION FOR LEISURE ; . . . i9^*'> 
 
 XI GOD AND MAN . ..... .\2i6-ltJ
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 IN the pastoral age, affirms the poet Tagore, man 
 explored space, and exploited it through the media 
 of his nibbling beasts. Through agriculture he ex- 
 plored time, laboriously binding the seasons to his 
 purposes. There Eastern civilization remains to-day, 
 having added, of its own free will, only the handi- 
 crafts, though slave power permitted such enormous 
 extension of hand-processes that many of its public 
 works remain notable for size as well as detail. But 
 the Western peoples, more ambitious and less contem- 
 plative, crept out of agriculture and the handicrafts 
 by harnessing natural forces, and building machines 
 that multiplied man-power. They wedded science to 
 toil, and system to acquisitiveness. They educated 
 other peoples, as well as themselves, in wants ; organ- 
 ized international exchanges of goods and services; 
 policed the high seas ; and swept on to the political 
 hegemony of the planet. 
 
 As the beast was the essential of pastoral life, and 
 the tool the essential of agricultural life, so the ma- 
 chine is the essential of the industrial civilization in 
 which we dwell. We tend our flocks of machines as 
 zealously as Abraham's servants tended his herds, and 
 for the same reason because they are the means of 
 existence. We ply our reapers to the same end that 
 Cain plied his sickle. Our cranes, lathes, and steam-
 
 xii INTRODUCTION 
 
 shovels are to us precisely what the lever was to the 
 builder, the chisel to the shaper of stone and metal, 
 and the spade to the villein, in the centuries between 
 Solomon and Napoleon means of reducing matter 
 to the use and comfort of man. 
 
 Machine-mounted, we tilt furiously at time and 
 space. A chase foredoomed to failure, say the phi- 
 losophers. So be it; yet, except at rare intervals, we 
 heed these croakers little, each generation confident, 
 almost to the grave, that through speed and quantity 
 man shall yet break through to the millennium. But 
 no matter how swiftly our inventors improve our 
 steel steed, somehow we never succeed in lessening 
 perceptibly the distance to that far horizon. 
 
 At times, in spite of warning signals, we come crop- 
 pers that invite despair, as in 1914. In such situa- 
 tions we gaze panic-stricken upon the wreckage of 
 humanity and the wastage of its heritage through all 
 the ages. But we are of breeds not easily cast down, 
 breeds avid of power and conscious of high destinies. 
 So, after agreeing that we must have come the wrong 
 road, we reconnoitre the ground, only to develop the 
 uncomfortable truth that we cannot go back. There 
 is too much debris, of our own making, behind us, to 
 permit retreat. Scouts, self-appointed but desperately 
 in earnest, bring in word of glimpses of fair and level 
 roads to right or left the Radicals saying left, and 
 the Conservatives right; but most of us conclude 
 that the intervening jungle presents insuperable 
 obstacles to any drastic change in civilization's right 
 of way.
 
 INTRODUCTION xiii 
 
 Above the turmoil, the drivers and mechanicians 
 lift voices to command or implore. "A few light re- 
 pairs," they say, "and we will soon have the old ma- 
 chine under way again, practically as good as new, 
 providing labor takes hold with a will. Lay to, men!" 
 But labor mutters and draws back. 
 
 Others insist that the thing to do is to improve the 
 road from this point, on to infinity. Still others 
 declare that it is time to lighten cargo, to throw over- 
 board age-honored and hard-won possessions, tradi- 
 tions, customs, conventions, laws the baggage of 
 society. 
 
 In all this agitated company there remain but few 
 who, bearing no grudges and offering no panaceas, 
 seek the outskirts of the milling throng. There, by ones 
 and twos, ignoring importunities to get busy, they 
 reflect upon the complex "why" of the catastrophe; 
 and consider what more is likely to happen if the 
 same pilots push the same machine ahead, at the old, 
 heart-breaking pace, heedless of the degenerating 
 effect of jolt and friction upon its fine-wrought parts 
 and upon the even more delicate minds and bodies, 
 faiths and loyalties, of their myriad fellow passengers. 
 And what of those frail but indispensable fibres 
 of human confidence and sympathy, which bind in- 
 dividuals into groups, inducing a cohesion whereby 
 those groups may realize something of their com- 
 mon yearnings in institutions in homes, schools, 
 churches, associations, corporations, unions, societies, 
 and states. 
 
 In short, civilization has had a desperate mauling.
 
 xiv INTRODUCTION 
 
 Certain forces and mechanisms, brought into the 
 House of Life as servants, have usurped undue au- 
 thority, on the flashy but insufficient warrant of the 
 wealth they produce. It is time to show them their 
 places and keep them there.
 
 THE IRON MAN 
 IN INDUSTRY 
 
 FIRST, the man and the beast; then, the man and 
 the hand-tool ; now, the man and the machine- 
 tool! 
 
 This is the century of the automatic machine. The 
 social problem is to accommodate the use of auto- 
 matic machinery to the well-being of the masses; our 
 political problem is to avert class and state wars 
 growing out of quarrels over the profits, powers, and 
 privileges accruing through the production and mar- 
 keting of goods. Much of our modern heart-searching, 
 if intelligently directed, leads down to the Iron Man 
 at the base of the industrial structure. He claims the 
 twentieth century as his; the social and economic 
 forces that he releases are those most likely to carry 
 on into the future the reality of our day. 
 
 ' ' M achine-tools may be classified in two main groups : 
 those which lengthen and strengthen the arm of 
 the worker without displacing his will as the vital 
 function of work, and those whose principal func- 
 tion is to supplant the worker, or to reduce his 
 function to a minimum." (Lloyd)
 
 2 THE IRON MAN 
 
 An example of the first class is the jib crane. The 
 operator must direct the machine; his mind must 
 work with his muscle precisely as his forbears had to 
 apply both mind and muscle to their simple levers. 
 
 In the second class, the ability to do the work is a 
 primary function of the machine itself, and inherent 
 in the mechanism. Designed to accomplish its task 
 independent of human direction, the attendant need 
 not know the necessary steps that the machine takes 
 in doing the work. He need not know how to repair 
 it in case of a jam : that is another man's job. All the 
 attendant is required to do is to feed the machine with 
 material and relieve it of produce. Even starting and 
 stopping the machine may be done by another, so 
 minutely is the work-function divided. 
 
 Of course, there are varying degrees of complete- 
 ness in the application of the self-functioning prin- 
 ciple to machinery. Some machines are nearly auto- 
 matic. The pneumatic riveter, for instance, requires 
 skill for its operation, but the technique is more easily 
 attained than that of the hand-riveter. However, the 
 trend toward complete automatization is strong and 
 steady throughout industry. 
 
 I have witnessed, recently, the premier of a com- 
 pletely automatic machine in a branch of production 
 which, fifteen years ago, was prosecuted almost en- 
 tirely by hand. This automatic cost upwards of 
 $30,000 to install, supplanting a semi-automatic ma- 
 chine, which called for the exercise of two distinct 
 acts of judgment on the part of its attendant. Fre- 
 quent bungling of these two operations spoiled so
 
 THE IRON MAN 3 
 
 much material that the new machine is considered a 
 marked advance. The attendant now is practically 
 without other responsibility than that of inserting the 
 material and withdrawing the product. 
 
 This illustrates the steady progress toward auto- 
 matization, a progress dictated by economic consider- 
 ations of the first magnitude, and certain to continue 
 until the highest possible application of the automatic 
 principle has been reached. The flour mills of Min- 
 neapolis and Kansas City are probably our best 
 examples of automatic production, the wheat being 
 milled, measured, and packed for shipment by ma- 
 chinery so comprehensive that very few operatives 
 are required ; and as a result, the milling industry has 
 no bothersome labor problem. 
 
 The principle of automatic functioning in machin- 
 ery is almost as old as machinery itself; but its com- 
 mon application is comparatively recent so recent 
 that the beginning of the twentieth century may be 
 considered a turning-point. As a determining factor 
 in modern industry, it dates from the late eighties, 
 when the moulding machine first appeared in Amer- 
 ican foundries. In this machine the automatic prin- 
 ciple, which hitherto had been more or less casually 
 applied, found an abiding-place. Its potency seems 
 not to have been generally recognized ; but employers 
 found in it an aid to strike-breaking. With its assist- 
 ance, an unskilled laborer, after short training, on 
 certain kinds of work could equal the best efforts of 
 the old-time moulder. The new device threw down the 
 gage of battle to organized labor in one of its most
 
 4 THE IRON MAN 
 
 completely organized fields. No one saw in it the 
 herald of an industrial revolution, or discerned in its 
 operations the beginnings of a new evolutionary force 
 in social relations. Through the nineties the mould- 
 ing machine fought its way against the conservatism 
 of employers and the opposition of union labor. By 
 1900, it had reached a highly improved form, capable 
 of making an enlarged variety of articles of intricate 
 and complex patterns. 
 
 This practical testimony to the validity of the 
 automatic principle in production encouraged its 
 application to complementary trades. Inventive 
 America quickly produced the turret lathe, the screw 
 machine, the pneumatic hammer, the grinding ma- 
 chine, and scores of other devices designed to multiply 
 man-power and reduce the individual operative's 
 responsibility for the quality of the finished product. 
 As skill became less and less essential, the apprentice- 
 ship system died a natural death. Factories were 
 opened to unskilled workers. At the same time, the 
 quantity of output per worker increased, and its 
 quality improved. The Iron Man, having no nerves, 
 and being created for a single purpose, did "repeat" 
 work better than trained men. Production increased 
 rapidly; the power of man to satisfy his expanding 
 wants leaped ahead. This increase marked one of 
 those abrupt turns on the road of industry which 
 impart to civilization a new direction. 
 
 It is noteworthy that the general acceptance and 
 rapid development of automatic machinery coincided 
 with the acceptance and development of the automo-
 
 THE IRON MAN 5 
 
 bile. As a commodity, the automobile was accepted 
 by the public almost overnight; as a human want, 
 it burst into being rather than grew. Moreover, the 
 automobile was not a development of an existing 
 method of transportation, but was in itself a new 
 means of transportation. Its manufacturers, con- 
 sequently, faced their all-demanding market with 
 open minds. They had little or nothing to junk in 
 order to install the latest machines; the rewards of 
 enterprise were so great that the best automatic ma- 
 chinery quickly paid for itself and produced profits. 
 Quantity production, standardization of parts, ex- 
 treme accurac y these ensured wide scope for auto- 
 matic machinery in automobile production. 
 
 The war, with its insistent demand for quantity and 
 its terrible drain upon labor-power, immensely stim- 
 ulated the development of the Iron Man. Shifting 
 the industrial function from the man to the machine 
 produced, and is still producing, corresponding shifts 
 in other fields of action. The balance of economic 
 power was disturbed, with consequent notable reac- 
 tions upon society, precisely as the political structure 
 of the globe shakes whenever the economic balance of 
 power is upset. 
 
 Perhaps the most apparent of these reactions was 
 the unsettling of the ratio of population between city 
 and country. The slogan "Back to the Land" is 
 about twenty years old. By 1905 the chorus grew so 
 loud, that President Roosevelt appointed a Country- 
 Life Commission, to formulate a programme for keep- 
 ing people on the farms. Its exhaustive report had
 
 6 THE IRON MAN 
 
 little effect: cities continued growing at the expense 
 of the countryside. The 1910 census verified alarm- 
 ist predictions; nevertheless, in spite of agitation, the 
 current grew in breadth and speed, until by 1920 it 
 had become a flood. For the first time in American 
 history, January, 1920, saw more than half the 
 people of the United States living in cities and vil- 
 lages of more than 2500 population. 
 
 By chance, the 1920 census was taken at the peak 
 of the flood, and represents a high-water mark of 
 urban congestion. The situation suddenly reversed 
 itself. In midsummer of 1920, people began to leave 
 town. Practically all cities dependent upon industry 
 lost in population. As might have been expected, 
 those which had grown most rapidly lost most rapidly, 
 since, with man as with nature, quick growth means 
 weak roots. Perhaps the heaviest losses were sus- 
 tained by cities equipped for automobile production. 
 The trend of population now sets unmistakably 
 toward the rural districts. 
 
 Why this sudden shift? What counter-force, sud- 
 denly applied, sufficed to check so quickly a force 
 operative for twenty years, and so powerful that it 
 defied the denouncements of articulate public opinion? 
 There is nothing subtle or hidden about that counter- 
 force. Economic advantage brought country-folk to 
 town, and now takes them back to the land. They 
 came cityward for jobs, stayed as long as the jobs 
 lasted, and turned landward when the jobs failed. 
 They came to operate, or rather to tend, automatic 
 machinery. When that machinery, with their assist-
 
 THE IRON MAN 7 
 
 ance, glutted the market for the time being, as many 
 of the operatives as could make the change advanta- 
 geously cut back toward the old homestead and the 
 familiar rural scene. While the city' of Detroit was 
 losing approximately 200,000 in population in six 
 months (part of which has since been regained), 
 Michigan villages have been growing. While Flint, 
 Michigan, lost 15,000, the village of Montrose, eight- 
 een miles away, gained one hundred, or 20 per cent of 
 its census enumeration. Two thousand persons are 
 reported to have left Akron, Ohio, in a single day, 
 heading back toward locations where work on the 
 land is the chief pursuit of man. 
 
 The Michigan Congregational Conference reviewed 
 the situation which presented itself to rural pastors 
 when the "prodigal sons, without jobs or funds," 
 returned to the rural districts in droves. The return 
 was not as pleasant as the going; the economic pull 
 toward good fortune is far easier on human nature 
 than the economic push away from short rations. 
 They went in hope, and returned disillusioned. 
 Nevertheless, they did return, thereby relieving the 
 crowded housing conditions of manufacturing towns, 
 and filling with labor-power many crevices and hol- 
 lows in the vast, and of late undermanned, field of 
 rural economy. They will return to town if and when 
 wanted. The Iron Man of Industry beckoned them 
 to town; the market glut created by multiplication 
 of man-power drove them back to the villages and 
 farms; and the Iron Man will bring them back when 
 real factory-wages temporarily rise above real farm-
 
 8 THE IRON MAN 
 
 wages. By removing the ancient obstruction in the 
 pipe-line connecting town and rural labor-supplies, 
 the automatic tool wrought a channel for free labor- 
 flow between town and country. 
 
 Let us examine more closely the manner in which 
 the automatic tool forced this leveling of labor. In 
 1901, the International Order of Machinists called a 
 nation-wide strike. Through strict control of the 
 apprentice system, the machinists had limited their 
 numbers rigidly. As the aristocrats of the labor 
 world, enjoying top wages, they were well financed for 
 the struggle. That strike was one of the decisive bat- 
 tles of industrial history; its stake, although scarcely 
 realized at the time, was control of the conditions 
 under which automatic machines would be operated, 
 which, in turn, would have meant control of America's 
 future. 
 
 The strikers lost ; from that blow union labor never 
 fully recovered. Thenceforth the growth of the open 
 shop was sure as fate. The strikers lost, because 
 enough automatic machinery had been installed to 
 produce essential supplies, and because employers 
 not so equipped saw that by installing the new tools 
 they could carry on with less dependence upon skilled 
 help. Immediately industries of all sorts entered the 
 market for automatic machinery. The demand, so 
 fanned, brought forth a steady stream of inventions 
 and improvements, which, continuing to this day, 
 has created a new set of industrial relationships, with 
 all manner of direct and indirect effects upon social
 
 THE IRON MAN 9 
 
 and political institutions. America, since 1905, 
 has marched to the staccato tune of the automatic 
 tool. 
 
 Immediately, the factories began to draw upon 
 the countryside for labor. Toward the beginning of 
 the century, the rural districts possessed a surplus 
 population accumulated during the preceding decade. 
 Country birth-rates are usually higher than city 
 birth-rates, and rural death-rates lower than city 
 death-rates. It is an axiom that the country produces 
 population, and the cities consume population. From 
 1800, the surplus farm-population had been drained 
 steadily away from its points of origin by the opening 
 of the West. American farm-folk, aided and abetted 
 by immigrant farmers, pushed the frontier steadily 
 from the Alleghanies to the Pacific. These pioneers 
 found fertile land, much of it almost ready-made for 
 farming and requiring little capital to fit it for ex- 
 tensive agriculture. By 1890, however, only the 
 inferior spots and less accessible areas of the once vast 
 public domain remained open to homesteaders. These 
 leavings required more capital per acre before they 
 could be worked profitably. The day had passed 
 when the young farmer could make good on a home- 
 stead through his own labor and the small financial 
 assistance to be counted upon from home. Conse- 
 quently, westward migration slowed down; the new 
 crop of country boys and girls stayed closer to home; 
 gradually, surplus population appeared in the rural 
 districts. This slowing down of the westward mi- 
 gration contributed greatly to the "hard times" of
 
 io THE IRON MAN 
 
 the early nineties. Then, as now, a depressed agri- 
 culture means a depressed nation, economically. 
 
 Do not infer that the surplus rural population so 
 created was unemployed. Rather, it was under- 
 employed, not utilized to full advantage. Its mem- 
 bers worked steadily as long as there was work to do. 
 They earned their livings; little more. Wages were 
 low ; employment, seasonal ; existence, practically on 
 the subsistence basis. For the married farm-hand or 
 woodsman there was no chance to get ahead except 
 by grinding thrift and low-standard living. Farm 
 tenants and small-farm owners were little better off, 
 and Populism flourished as a natural result. 
 
 This growing labor-surplus acted as a check upon 
 farm-machinery sales. Man-power on the farm 
 became so cheap that farm-implement makers feared 
 that improved machines might not be salable. When 
 the West was being brought under control by the 
 American farmer, he needed machines to multiply 
 man-power; and those he left behind needed ma- 
 chinery to make up for his absence. Demand brought 
 forth improved farm machines, in such abundance 
 and of such economic effects, that it is not stretching 
 the truth to say that without them Europe's indus- 
 trial development could not have reached its ante- 
 war proportions. 
 
 In this sense Cyrus McCormick, or whoever it 
 was that invented the reaper, McCormick's priority 
 being questioned, was one of the real founders of 
 modern Germany. Except for cheap food produced 
 with machine assistance, the industrial cities of
 
 THE IRON MAN n 
 
 Western Europe could not have attained their 
 present size. 
 
 However, the situation that brought forth these 
 improved farm machines had changed considerably 
 by the nineties. The farmer, with grown sons and 
 daughters to feed, faced the problem of keeping them 
 economically employed. He was not likely to buy a 
 machine that would throw his own flesh and blood 
 out of work, unless the lad, or girl, could go elsewhere 
 and support himself. Consequently, manufacturers 
 of farm machinery, competing against cheap labor 
 and family loyalty, concluded to standardize their 
 lines. The future, they believed, called for every 
 possible economy of manufacture and distribution, 
 even to the point of possible monopoly control of the 
 market. They began to merge plants; to cooperate 
 instead of compete. The year 1902 saw the Inter- 
 national Harvester Company the giant in its field 
 organized, after negotiations covering several 
 years. It is possible, of course, to interpret such 
 mergers as brazen assaults on the public purse ; but in 
 this case, it seems to have been rather a case of manu- 
 facturers running to cover in common cyclone-cellars, 
 before the storm-cloud of threatening conditions for 
 their particular industry. Little did these manu- 
 facturers guess that the automatic tool was about to 
 relieve their machines of cheap-labor competition, 
 and in a few years produce such a shortage of rural 
 labor that every improvement in farm machinery 
 would become immediately salable. 
 
 Farm laborers, in this plight, turned longing eyes
 
 12 THE IRON MAN 
 
 toward the towns and cities. Against all obstacles the 
 country has persisted in feeding the cities, not alone 
 with food, but also with youth. At this juncture, 
 however, the urban prospect was about as bad for the 
 country boy as it had ever been. He was expected 
 to remain, and usually did remain, on the place 
 as a boy-helper without wages, until he reached his 
 majority. If he turned to town at from twenty-one 
 to twenty-five, he found the ranks of casual labor 
 overcrowded. Unless he went through an apprentice- 
 ship of several years, his only chance to get into a 
 factory was as a roustabout. Skill, born of training 
 and experience, dominated the situation; trained 
 mechanics held the good jobs; their sons filled the 
 apprentice-rolls. If the farm youth entered ap- 
 prenticeship, he worked alongside boys much younger 
 than himself, who lived at home and contributed 
 their small earnings to the family welfare, even as he 
 had done. His apprentice wage would be only a 
 fraction of what he could earn, by strength alone, at 
 unskilled labor. Of course, some farm boys per- 
 severed against this handicap, and rose to become 
 sound mechanics, and even heads of industrial enter- 
 prises. Others were indentured early by farsighted 
 parents. But we are dealing with mass effects. In 
 general, conditions inherent in the differing economies 
 of farm and factory conspired to seal factory gates 
 against farm boys. 
 
 This was the situation when automatic machinery 
 began to be applied in quantity to industrial pro-
 
 THE IRON MAN 13 
 
 duction a turning-point which may be roughly 
 considered as coincident with the opening of the 
 twentieth century. The first effect of the automatic 
 tool was to deal the apprentice system a death-blow. 
 It lingers on in many trades, but is no longer a de- 
 termining factor in the basic industries, because 
 automatic machinery has forced factory gates ajar for 
 all men of ordinary intelligence and average manual 
 dexterity. Gradually, but in increasing volume, the 
 surplus labor of the countryside, whose power was not 
 being fully exploited on the land, began to flow toward 
 higher wages and the comforts and amusements to be 
 purchased with those wages. 
 
 The flow slowed down somewhat in 1913, when 
 industry marked time appreciably, indicating that 
 production had outrun consumption. By the latter 
 year industry had drawn off the surplus farm popula- 
 tion ; and it might have rested there, content with the 
 farm youth. But, at the close of 1914, with enormous 
 war-profits in the offing, and heavy orders from 
 Europe showing that the war-torn Continent would 
 pay well for the produce of American machines, in- 
 dustry reached out for the farm men. By overbidding 
 rural employers, the mills got their men in such 
 numbers that the industrial cities could not house 
 them and their families. Farm-wages and prices, 
 gradually rising all through this transition, now leaped 
 upward; but not fast enough to prevent farms from 
 being abandoned. 
 
 The post-war period of industrial expansion, on the 
 shaky base of inflated currency and credits, brought
 
 i 4 THE IRON MAN 
 
 the townward movement to its apogee. In Michigan, 
 where the common use of automatic machinery in 
 automobile production had forced a larger percentage 
 of urban growth than in any state in the Union, the 
 authorities, in the spring of 1920, reported 30,000 va- 
 cant farm and village dwellings, at the same time that 
 every industrial city in the state was wrestling with 
 the problem of housing its new-won population. But 
 the moment sound finance called the turn on inflation 
 and expansion, economic necessity swung the human 
 tide back toward the countryside. 
 
 Still another large class of workers, designated, 
 perhaps unjustly, as unskilled, found economic re- 
 lease from low wages through the introduction of 
 automatic machinery. These were women domestic 
 servants. Housework, until quite recently, was the 
 chief economic refuge of untrained women without 
 means. Some city girls went into stores and offices, 
 laundries, and light manufacturing, particularly tex- 
 tiles and clothing; but the other important factory- 
 industries had remained more or less closed to women. 
 Women never would have entered upon apprentice- 
 ships in large numbers, even if freely admitted: for 
 the good reason that most women at the apprentice 
 age are looking forward to marriage and housekeeping, 
 in which occupation specialized trade skill is largely 
 wasted. Domestic service, in fact, is better training 
 for wifehood than any mill occupation. 
 
 These considerations kept the ranks full in spite 
 of low wages. Moreover, in the rural offing, there 
 were always plenty of "hired girls" ready to come
 
 THE IRON MAN 15 
 
 into town the sisters of the farm boys whose 
 economic progress has been already noted. They 
 were encouraged to come, because one less mouth to 
 feed left more for the others. At the close of the 
 century, it was not even economical to use these girls 
 on the land, because male labor was so abundant and 
 cheap. When male help became scarce enough to 
 make women's cooperation in the active outdoor 
 work of the farm profitable, farmers' daughters began 
 to don overalls and produce crops. Not chivalry, but 
 economics, had dictated their previous immunity 
 from field labor; our prejudice against such work did 
 not stand the economic test. 
 
 However, automatic machinery opened factory 
 gates to women as well as men. Since men were pre- 
 ferred for most factory jobs, by reason of their greater 
 occupational permanence and resistance to fatigue, 
 domestic servants entered industry less rapidly than 
 did the farm males. Some of them found their way 
 gradually into industry before 1914; but the great 
 feminist drive upon machines did not start in earnest 
 until the war reduced the man-power available for 
 machine labor. Then the home women, with a soli- 
 darity that could hardly have been improved upon by 
 organization, left house-service for the mills. In a 
 few months domestic-service-wages leaped to a parity 
 with real mill-wages, as farm-wages had done pre- 
 viously over a longer period. When the hand that 
 tends the range can tend the lathe as well, why take 
 less for one job than for the other? 
 
 But no sooner had the factories begun to slow
 
 16 THE IRON MAN 
 
 down, than domestic servants became more plentiful. 
 Like the boys from the farms, some of the women are 
 going back to housework, disillusioned, fed up on 
 factory employment, with its haste, nerve-strain, and 
 insecurity of tenure. But they are in the minority, 
 and do not affect the general proposition, that the 
 automatic tool has brought the home and the mill 
 into direct competition for labor. 
 
 What does all this mean for the future of America? 
 History even recent history means little to 
 America except as a basis from which to project the 
 future. As a people, we prefer looking forward rather 
 than back. This force, which has worked so power- 
 fully upon us, leveling wages, shifting population, 
 determining home-sites and living conditions, is still 
 in its infancy. Presumably it must continue its power 
 into the future, leaving no department of life unmoved 
 by its impact. What, in short, are likely to be the 
 effects of the common and growing use of automatic 
 machinery in industrial production upon American 
 life, political institutions, and social standards, upon 
 homes, schools, and children? 
 
 This is an inquiry as broad in scope as humanity 
 itself, and cutting down to the roots of life. And it is 
 so complicated that, in projecting the view, we must 
 be content with citing tendencies and making due 
 allowances for unknown quantities in the equation, 
 even at the risk of vagueness. But the essential im- 
 portance of the inquiry cannot be overestimated. If 
 we catch, even hazily, some idea of what reasonably
 
 THE IRON MAN 17 
 
 may be expected, we are not likely to be shocked into 
 combating the inevitable; but, instead, shall ac- 
 commodate ourselves to it like sensible beings. Since 
 the automatic tool works upon human nature as 
 directly as it works upon materials, which physical 
 action trained minds forecast accurately, qualified 
 intelligences should be able to forecast, at least in 
 part, the economic, social, and political effects of the 
 same machinery. By no other method can we come 
 upon the path to the rational evolution of industrial 
 society ; certainly we shall never find it by idle drifting 
 or hateful smashing of our institutional birthrights. 
 To focus the attention of clear and open minds upon 
 this new reagent in the social equation the Iron 
 Man in Industry is the object of this book.
 
 II 
 
 THE LEVELING OF WAGES 
 
 OPERATING an automatic machine requires no 
 more than average manual dexterity and or- 
 dinary intelligence. In some cases, where the ma- 
 terials in process are heavy, it requires considerable 
 strength and, where several machines are grouped in 
 one man's care, considerable agility. If the operative 
 is willing to trust the company to figure his pay with- 
 out checking up in his own interest, no book knowl- 
 edge is necessary. Simple arithmetic and ability to 
 sign one's name are the top intellectual requirements. 
 Most manufacturers, however, prefer to have their 
 employees read, write, and understand English, 
 though this knowledge is by no means necessary. 
 Consequently, many companies provide instruction 
 in English for immigrants. In general, the ordinary 
 public-school instruction, up to and including the 
 eighth grade, gives a youth all the mental furnishing 
 he needs to function efficiently in automatic produc- 
 tion. Considered strictly as an economic being, he 
 could get along with less. When we come to the 
 salaried workers, the so-called white-collar group, we 
 find public education reinforcing the leveling ten- 
 dency in those branches, just as automatic machinery 
 does in the mills. 
 
 Thus far we have considered the automatic ma- 
 chine leveling wages and distributing labor as between 
 the farm and factory, home and mill. In much the
 
 THE IRON MAN 19 
 
 same way, the spreading use of automatic machinery 
 tends to level wages in all plants so equipped, though 
 hindered at many points by special conditions and 
 special labor contracts. Certain automatic machines 
 are widely scattered, and can be found in every in- 
 dustrial centre. Many others present family like- 
 nesses. Even the greenest of green workers needs 
 but short tutelage at his assigned machine; while the 
 man who knows how much or rather how little 
 is expected of him, can shake down quickly into effi- 
 cient production. The per-capita cost of labor turn- 
 over on the 1920 basis of pay ranged from $25 to $100 
 per man in the more efficiently organized automobile 
 plants, this cost including the pay of the novice and 
 his teacher, the overhead on machine, and allowance 
 for spoiled work. This verifies the evidence presented 
 by a survey of certain large allied plants, to the effect 
 that 70 per cent of the employees could be fitted into 
 their jobs in three days or less. This means that a 
 worker can shift from one line of production to an- 
 other without grave loss of time. He may be a wood- 
 cutter or harvest hand this month, and a producer of 
 automobile parts the next. If of a roving disposition, 
 in a single year he may can salmon on the Pacific 
 Coast, pour cement on an irrigation dam in Idaho, 
 mill flour in Minnesota, cut pearl buttons in Iowa, 
 mould iron in Ohio, weave silk in Jersey, and make 
 rubber tires in New England. If this is not an exact 
 statement at this writing, it is fast coming true, as skill 
 is more and more transferred from man to machine. 
 The outcome of such easy transitions must be a highly
 
 20 THEIRONMAN 
 
 efficient distribution of labor-power on the one hand, 
 and, on the other, a progressive leveling of wages as 
 among all automatized industries. "The old trade- 
 demarcations," says Lloyd, "have largely ceased to 
 exist ; and with their passing the old differences of pay 
 have correspondingly declined." f 
 
 This leveling tendency, moreover, is no respecter 
 of sex. Since women can tend many automatic tools 
 as well as men, it follows that the wages of the two 
 sexes must draw together. They may never reach 
 uniformity, because many women view jobs as tem- 
 porary stop-gaps on the road to marriage, and this 
 handicaps them as yet in the eyes of many employers. 
 This, and kindred non-economic considerations, may 
 affect the result ; but they cannot stop the drift toward 
 equality of wage. It is no unusual thing, even now, to 
 find a young wife earning as much as, or more than, 
 her husband. As time goes on, this will become too 
 common to command notice. 
 
 Likewise, automatic machinery tends to break 
 down the former disparity of wage as between age 
 and youth. Children of twelve can tend many auto- 
 matic machines as competently as adults. Youths, 
 in fact, approach their highest wage during the very 
 years in which the boys of a generation ago were earn- 
 ing less than living wages as apprentices. Eighteen 
 to twenty-five are the most gainful years for the "ma- 
 chinate mammal." 
 
 The leveling proceeds with ruthless disregard for 
 race or nationality. While a knowledge of the native 
 tongue may be desirable, it is by no means essential.
 
 THEIRONMAN 21 
 
 Witness the widespread employment of our newly 
 arrived immigrants on automatic machines, their earn- 
 ings on a par with those of native-born products of our 
 public schools. Notwithstanding that the color-line 
 rarely gives the negro a chance at automatics, the 
 black populations of our northern industrial cities 
 increased faster than the white populations from 1910 
 to 1920. ' Bringing black labor north became a highly 
 organized enterprise. The pay for negroes, generally 
 speaking, maintained a parity with white labor on the 
 same kind of work; and while blacks are not often put 
 on machines, there is no doubt that many blacks can 
 fill the requirements of machine attendance. Whether 
 they can stand the steady grind as well as whites, or 
 whether the color-line is justifiably drawn at the ma- 
 chine, are moot points, reserved for future discussion. 
 But the general effect of the automatizing process has 
 been to bring the average wages of the two races 
 closer together, not only in the industrial cities, but, 
 to an even greater extent, in those sections where the 
 black does most of the field-work. Increased cotton- 
 picking costs and increased wheat-growing costs both 
 resulted from the drain which automatic production 
 put upon rural labor-supplies. 
 
 Automatic machines in offices affect the "white- 
 collar" group in industry precisely as shop- workers 
 are affected. With adding machines and other mech- 
 anisms, and standardized office-systems, need for 
 special skill is decreasing among office- workers. The 
 old-fashioned bookkeeper, the aristocrat of fin-de- 
 siecle offices, is fast becoming as obsolete a type as the
 
 22 THEIRONMAN 
 
 old-fashioned mechanic, the one-time aristocrat of the 
 shops. Stenographic skill is subject to the competi- 
 tion of the phonograph; the typist is entering into 
 competition with the duplicating typewriter. Mean- 
 while, public schools and business colleges are pro- 
 ducing an abundance of persons sufficiently educated 
 for the simplified office tasks. In addition, the higher 
 social status enjoyed by such workers can be de- 
 pended upon to furnish surplus labor for such activ- 
 ities in ordinary times; with the result that we pay 
 practically the same rate to washerwomen and typists ; 
 also to cooks and stenographers, when board-and- 
 lodging costs are considered. These influences tended 
 to bring office-work down to the wage-level of factory- 
 work before the war; as office- workers began to go 
 over into the ranks of factory- workers, owing to war- 
 wage rates in the factories, office-wages began to rise. 
 From this time on, owing to the fact that labor can 
 flow from one group to the other more easily than 
 ever before, disparity of wage between the two groups 
 will tend to correct itself promptly. 
 
 Transferring the vital function of production from 
 the operative to the machine involves taking a certain 
 skill away from the rank and file and concentrating 
 it in the directing and organizing end of industry. The 
 heats of competition, playing through machine im- 
 provements, evaporate skill from the lower reaches 
 of industry and distill it in the upper reaches. Fewer 
 producers need skill; but those few require much 
 longer training and more highly intensified mental 
 powers. It is up to them, not only to design, build,
 
 THEIRONMAN 23 
 
 place, and adapt machines to involved tasks, but also 
 to work out systems under which the production of 
 those machines can be coordinated and the produce 
 distributed. 
 
 To fit an automatic machine for its production- 
 cycle requires high skill in tool-designing and pattern- 
 making. Head and hand must work together; jigs 
 and dies must be of the utmost precision. The num- 
 ber of skilled workmen required for this task is small 
 compared to the whole number of industrial em- 
 ployees; but the group is of key importance. In the 
 past, these men were trained under the apprentice 
 system; but that system being in decline, industrial 
 executives are greatly concerned for the future supply 
 of such craftsmen. They look to public education to 
 guard against a famine of skilled artisans; and such 
 is their influence, that they are not likely to look in 
 vain. The call of industry has been answered already 
 by the establishment of technical high-schools and 
 colleges in many industrial cities, as well as by the 
 erection of private trade-schools. In desperation 
 some employers have established their own trade- 
 schools; but the outlook is that public education, thus 
 challenged, will take up the burden of providing in- 
 dustry with skilled mechanics. Once adequate facil- 
 ities are provided, we may look with assurance for 
 the greater mental interest attaching to that work 
 to provide candidates in abundance, and so in- 
 crease the number of qualified men to the point 
 where the pay shall approach that of the machine- 
 tender always being enough more, presumably,
 
 24 THE IRON MAN 
 
 i 
 
 to make up for the time and cost of training. 
 
 The next layer in the skill compartment contains 
 technical experts, shop-organizers, and salesmen. The 
 third layer includes the executives. It is in these 
 two layers that the thought-processes of modern in- 
 dustry centre ; and the demands for special knowledge 
 are such that their personnel must be far better 
 equipped than their predecessors in the old regime. 
 In the swift expansion of automatized industry they 
 have been forced further and further afield, for labor 
 and materials on the one hand, and for markets on 
 the other hand. They have been required to finance, 
 not only the inflow of men and machines, but also 
 the outflow of goods a task so vast and compelling 
 that it has brought into being a distinct adaptation 
 of the banking function to industrial needs. 
 
 In a very real sense, bankers are the aristocrats of 
 modern industry sitting apart from the actual 
 processes of production and distribution, but furnish- 
 ing the lifeblood of capital, and through that power 
 exercising a genuine, and usually salutary, control. 
 How are these thought-men of industry going to be 
 affected by these leveling forces at work in modern 
 society? Are they going to be leveled economically 
 by the same forces that brought them such large 
 rewards? Of late years, in the era of industrial ex- 
 pansion, they have commanded large salaries. What 
 is likely to happen to them now that the wheels of 
 industry are slowing down? 
 
 So far as the technical experts chiefly chemists 
 and engineers are concerned, the situation is fairly
 
 THEIRONMAN 25 
 
 clear. They are being turned out in such numbers by 
 colleges and universities that, except in sudden bursts 
 of industrial expansion, the supply tends to outrun the 
 demand. There is no wide rift between the pay of a 
 Bachelor of Science, just out of college, and the pay 
 of a factory operative. A city-engineering depart- 
 ment can hire draughtsmen about as cheaply as 
 common laborers. All institutions of higher learning 
 are growing in attendance, particularly in the tech- 
 nical branches. Also, the training tends to become 
 more thorough, hence more productive of men fitted 
 to move in the highest circles of industrial production. 
 From all indications, universities and colleges are as 
 apt to flood the market with engineers and chemists 
 as the mothers of the country are to flood it with 
 unskilled labor. Public education, therefore, tends to 
 level toward the general average the pay for such 
 service. 
 
 Salesmanship is similarly affected. The personal 
 element does not play the large part that it once 
 played in disposing of goods. The influence of ad- 
 vertising is to create a market condition in which the 
 salesman becomes more and more of an "order-taker," 
 disposing of standardized, guaranteed goods at prices 
 and on terms set by his superiors in the organization. 
 As dickering is thrust out of the sales-equation, the 
 personal shrewdness of the salesman counts for less 
 and less. His efficiency comes- to depend less upon 
 native traits and more upon what can be taught him. 
 Salesmen of the old school were born, not made; but 
 salesmen of the new school can be made out of any
 
 26 THE IRON MAN 
 
 normally aggressive public-school product. Schools 
 for salesmanship, established here and there, are 
 likely to succeed. In general, the process of distrib- 
 uting goods tends to become more scientific and less 
 personal; and, as that change proceeds, the humbler 
 members of the sales-organization become less im- 
 portant, and more candidates are available. The net 
 result is that the salesman's wage tends toward the 
 common wage-level. The retail sales-clerk, male or 
 female, earns no more than he or she could earn in a 
 factory. 
 
 The small retail grocer, whose chief function is that 
 of taking orders, complains because he is being run 
 out of business by a chain store, whose manager is 
 frankly an order-taker, and earns, usually, no more 
 than the average wage of the community. His em- 
 ployer, safeguarded by the cash register and an office- 
 system imposing a close check, finds it unnecessary 
 to pay a bonus for character and honesty. The 
 traveling salesman is not the bold, free man of other 
 days; he covers more territory than the "drummer" 
 of twenty years ago, but he does not have equal re- 
 sponsibility. The tendency, all along the line, is for 
 salesmen's wages to keep in closer touch with the 
 wage-level in the producing end of the business. 
 
 The situation as respects employers is even more 
 difficult to analyze, because executive ability is so 
 largely applied native force, energy, will-power. Ex- 
 ecutives, up to date, have been largely self-trained. 
 However, of late, the universities and colleges, recog- 
 nizing that industrial executives are the most power-
 
 THE IRON MAN 27 
 
 ful figures in an industrial civilization, have taken 
 steps to train men for these posts. Hence their 
 schools of finance and commerce; hence their courses 
 in business practice; hence the announcements that 
 the universities must train "for life." 
 
 If the educational system makes good on this pro- 
 gramme, it is evident that executive salaries must fall. 
 They have always been higher here than abroad. 
 Foreign managers are content with less pay and more 
 prestige. Already the trend is downward. In prac- 
 tically every industrial receivership, the receiver's 
 first step has been to reduce executive salaries. This 
 leveling-down is matched by an equally significant 
 recent leveling-up in the salaries of minor executives, 
 who were left behind in the war raises for the rank 
 and file, by means of which the laborer, in many 
 cases, came to earn more than the man from whom 
 he took his orders directly. The Pennsylvania Rail- 
 road, for example, some months ago raised all its 
 operating officials up to the grade of superintendent, 
 while the higher executives were not raised. 
 
 Consideration of executive salaries, from this 
 standpoint of wage-leveling, is complicated by the 
 fact that many executives play a dual role in industry. 
 They are heavy stockholders as well as managers of 
 other persons' capital. Some managers, in fact, own 
 majority interests in the corporations they captain; 
 the corporation, then, is actually the lengthened 
 shadow of the man and none too lengthened, at 
 that. In such cases, managers draw as salaries part 
 of the profits which otherwise would be apportioned
 
 28 THEIRONMAN 
 
 as dividends, since competition for leadership does 
 not enter into the equation. This practice has been 
 accelerated by the excess-profits tax. 
 
 This dual relationship of the executive to his job 
 seems, however, to be a passing phase. As business 
 institutions age and expand, they tend to divide the 
 functions of management and ownership. Personal 
 enthusiasm and vigor start business projects, but 
 they proceed toward cooperation under the corporate 
 form, with increasing stress upon order and system. 
 Those which survive several generations usually are 
 found operating under other leadership than that of 
 the owners. Accident of birth may produce owners ; 
 but it cannot be depended upon to produce those 
 leaders who must be found if the property is to 
 flourish under competition. 
 
 Few of our younger captains of industry own dom- 
 inant holdings in the corporations they manage; 
 some own no stock in their companies. There is no 
 reason why they should; they are there by reason of 
 their personal powers their industrial statesman- 
 ship. They are actually freer to hold the balance 
 true as against the demands of labor, capital, and the 
 market their workers, their stockholders and bond- 
 holders, and their customers than they would be 
 if strong financial interest pulled them to one side! 
 Homer Ferguson, president of the Newport News 
 Shipbuilding Company, calls himself a "plain hired- 
 man," owning no part of the property he manages; 
 he has elaborated the reasons why that aloofness from 
 ownership strengthens him in his work. He may
 
 THEIRONMAN 29 
 
 earn less money in his present job than he would earn 
 running a business of his own; on the other hand, he 
 has more prestige, greater opportunity. Judge Gary 
 dominates United States Steel, not by stock-owner- 
 ship or stock-jobbing, but by the power of a wise and 
 courageous mind. In his case, too, the chief reward 
 lies in doing a big work and winning the applause of 
 the public, not in his salary check. You cannot pic- 
 ture either man, or any other industrial leader worthy 
 of rank alongside them, as quitting his job in the face 
 of a salary-cut, or as higgling over the price of his 
 preferment in the first instance. 
 
 In the future, industrial leaders will tend more and 
 more to be picked men, not owners in any important 
 sense. Their salaries will depend upon the number 
 of qualified men in the market, and the existing de- 
 mand for their services. The lure of such positions, 
 and the determined efforts being made to educate for 
 business leadership, are sure to increase the number 
 of qualified candidates. The demand is, of course, 
 uncertain; but the chances are that it will not main- 
 tain itself relatively to supply, now that education, 
 both public and private, has set itself to increase the 
 supply. In that case, the present high level of execu- 
 tive salaries cannot be maintained. All indications 
 point to the executives of the future carrying their 
 loads of responsibility less because of the money re- 
 ward and more because of personal pride and public 
 spirit. Business leadership seems likely to become a 
 profession, with professional standards and standing, 
 as well as professional limitations as to pay.
 
 30 THE IRON MAN 
 
 The learned professions, so-called for tradition's 
 sake, are easier to dispose of, because, in each case, 
 the leveling tendency is reinforced by an established 
 professional ethic. Teachers, preachers, writers and 
 artists generally, for centuries have regarded their 
 wages, not as pay, but as their living, their real re- 
 wards being service to their ideals and humanity, 
 established social position, and the regard of their 
 fellow men. These non-economic lures attract human 
 nature so strongly that the rewards in these lines 
 sometimes fall below those of unskilled labor. Poets 
 have starved in garrets; ministers are notoriously 
 underpaid; and of late years comparison of the 
 pinched professor and the silk-shirted yokel has led 
 to "Feed-the-Prof." campaigns. 
 
 Law and medicine, because they work more di- 
 rectly upon life, have been more affected by the 
 industrial swirl ; but they, too, are bound to swim out 
 of the commercial current to the high ethical shore. 
 Even now, though physicians may talk about their 
 business, they respond to many humanitarian de- 
 mands; and there exist some lawyers, if not many, 
 who put the eternal cry for justice ahead of fees. So, 
 the leveling influences of automatic machinery are 
 bound to be reinforced and strengthened by the 
 example of professional men, no less than by the 
 teaching of those among them who see service as the 
 high goal of human endeavor. 
 
 Thus far we have considered the leveling of labor, 
 as dictated by the automatic tool, solely from the 
 standpoint of production. That is its direct action.
 
 THE IRON MAN 31 
 
 Automatic machinery works indirectly toward the 
 same end, however, through the market through 
 consumption. As the total cost of the product is the 
 total cost of the brain-labor and hand-labor involved, 
 an immediate effect of production through automatic 
 machines is to reduce the cost of the units produced. 
 The economic advantage of such machinery is so 
 manifest that there can be no stopping its progress 
 short of the point where productive power so far out- 
 ranges the world's market ability to consume, that 
 further multiplication of man-power is not worth 
 while. No one can foresee whether that point is 
 centuries removed, or merely decades. Theoretically, 
 the capacity of the human race to consume goods is 
 infinite ; but actually it is at all times in competition 
 with the universal human demand for leisure. No 
 matter how cheap goods become, there is a point of 
 accumulation beyond which some men will say, "Let 's 
 knock off and have some fun." The ranks of labor 
 developed plenty of such cases in 1919. 
 
 Short of that point, however, the market repays 
 intensive cultivation. The cheaper goods become, 
 the more of them can be sold, provided pur- 
 chasing power does not drop coincidentally with 
 prices. It follows that, with increasing automatiza- 
 tion in production, competition among sellers of 
 goods on the one hand and buyers of labor-time on 
 the other must push prices and wages toward a point 
 where maximum production and maximum con- 
 sumption tend to coincide. Such is the variety of 
 human nature and the insistence of human desire
 
 32 THE IRON MAN 
 
 that they may never reach absolute coincidence; but 
 the prospects are that they will approach one another 
 with lessening fluctuations. In this country, mass- 
 buying makes the market for most commodities. A 
 broad division of the proceeds of industry stimulates 
 buying far more than a narrow one; hence influences 
 flowing from the sales-end of industry will tend to 
 strengthen that leveling of labor which is predeter- 
 mined by competition among buyers of labor-power 
 for use on automatic machines. 
 
 It must be borne in mind that, under competition, 
 some degree of wage- variation always will exist, from 
 causes lying within the individual, as, for example, 
 the varying wages of operatives under piece-rates. 
 For, while the automatic tool works within a fixed 
 cycle, it is not the precise counterpart of the ancient 
 treadmill. Within narrow and unimportant limits, its 
 productiveness varies somewhat with variations of 
 personal energy and attentiv.eness. Likewise, there 
 are sure to be variations in different parts of the 
 country, due largely to uneven supply of labor-power 
 resulting from differing local birth-rates and non- 
 economic hindrances to economic shifts of base. 
 Home and family ties, love of one's native environ- 
 ment, stock-ownership by employees, and personal 
 loyalties in work-relations, probably always will in- 
 fluence human beings considerably, and deter them 
 from following the main chance absolutely. Baro- 
 metric pressure always tends to uniformity, yet is 
 never uniform. The wind blowing where it listeth 
 has its counterpart in the now fluid movement of
 
 THE IRON MAN 33 
 
 labor in search of employment, higher pay, or, per- 
 haps, only escape from monotony. Enough men and 
 women can be depended upon to follow the main 
 chance, to effect a fairly even displacement of labor- 
 power and to enforce by economic law a fairly even 
 wage-scale over the entire country. 
 
 Not the least interesting part of this leveling ten- 
 dency is that it runs directly toward that Socialist 
 dream equality of income. Yet it proceeds with- 
 out any assistance from the Socialists, solely as the 
 result of the installation of automatic machinery by 
 capitalists. The tendency itself is strictly economic, 
 and conceivably might work out to its ultimate con- 
 clusion without calling forth political action, amend- 
 ing the institution of private property, or changing 
 the present relations between employer and em- 
 ployee. Nothing so simple is to be expected; not so 
 easily does humanity accept revolutionary changes 
 in its methods of sustaining life. Farmer-labor parties 
 in the United States and Canada, recently formed, 
 may be taken as evidence of belated appreciation of 
 the economic solidarity of town and country labor 
 under the new conditions of industry. 
 
 Woman suffrage gained influence in direct propor- 
 tion as women became engaged in industrial produc- 
 tion. The automatic tool will be the force behind 
 most of our legislation for the next fifty years, just as 
 it will be the mainspring of our educational pro- 
 gramme, once its significance is understood by edu- 
 cators still fumbling for the key to modern life. To 
 lads who come as beardless boys into their greatest
 
 34 THE IRON MAN 
 
 purchasing power, something must be taught other 
 than has been taught, if they are ever to use their 
 leisure and their economic power aright. The army 
 of homeless, wifeless men and foot-loose women is 
 growing; the automatic tool has cut marriage-knots 
 as well as steel bands. Let all who think in terms of 
 public recreation, domestic relations, charity, re- 
 ligion, morals, child-welfare, and social science ponder 
 those reactions of the automatic tool that daily pro- 
 ceed under their eyes. 
 
 In other parts of the world classes are wrestling 
 bloodily for the control of machinery. They are of 
 breeds to whom compromise is difficult. It is our 
 boast that we, as inheritors of the Anglo-Saxon tra- 
 dition, can settle peaceably clashes of interest over 
 which other humans fight. But we shall never be 
 able to settle peaceably and creditably all the prob- 
 lems arising out of the common use of the automatic 
 tool in industrial production, unless we grasp the 
 social and political possibilities of its evolution. 
 
 America gave the automatic tool its chance. Its 
 blessings are evident; but, unless controlled by social 
 conscience, it may develop curses equally potent. 
 America's high duty is to guide the continuing evolu- 
 tion of the Iron Man intelligently. For the economic 
 forces which he releases are of such intense reality 
 and abundant vitality, that they will break govern- 
 ments which blindly oppose them just as quickly as 
 they will undermine societies which yield too supinely 
 to machine dictation. Governments now stake their 
 existences upon controlling men ; in the dawning age,
 
 THE IRON MAN 35 
 
 the acid test of sovereignty may be control of machines. 
 Through such control the leveling tendency, inherent 
 in automatic production and reinforced by popular edu- 
 cation, may be directed toward the goal of true democ- 
 racy; whereas, undirected, it may push the human 
 race into a new slavery, or stampede it into a new 
 anarchy.
 
 Ill 
 
 MIND AND MACHINE 
 
 MEN go to machines under the same compulsions 
 which have sent them into field and forest, 
 ocean lane, and battlefield, since ever the world began 
 their needs and their instincts. To supply ever- 
 expanding wants with least effort has called forth, 
 from one generation to another, enough ingenuity and 
 adaptability to lift certain breeds from lawless indi- 
 vidualists, with scant possessions and moving in re- 
 stricted circles, into responsible units in a complicated 
 social and industrial order, where life is reasonably 
 secure, where wealth is abundant though unevenly 
 spread, and where the production and distribution of 
 marketable goods proceeds largely through interde- 
 pendent groupings of many individuals. Within 
 these groups the many work at the direction of the 
 few, under discipline approaching military exactitude, 
 for all that it is based upon bargaining between equals 
 under the law. Leaders and led alike perform certain 
 organically selected functions essential to the group, 
 the community, and the state. Through division of 
 function, through subordination of personalities to 
 leadership in organizations applying force to matter 
 with scientific precision, life has been ameliorated as 
 well as vastly complicated. That this amelioration 
 of life, which we call civilization, is still a going con- 
 cern, full of vitality, is proved by the very stresses 
 and pains which its innovations rouse.
 
 THE IRON MAN 37 
 
 Continuing attempts by the innovating animal, 
 Man, to feed, clothe, and satisfy himself with the 
 least effort, brought forth naturally, and in process, 
 the application of machinery to production, at first 
 haltingly, but latterly with a rush that finds this 
 generation well on its way to as complete automatiza- 
 tion as human nature is capable of sustaining. Eco- 
 nomically the course is clear enough plain sailing 
 between this point and some future point, where men, 
 with minimum effort of mind and muscle, shall do the 
 essential work of the world mechanically, in so far as 
 machinery can be adapted to the task. The limiting 
 force resides, not so much in the ability of our most 
 enterprising selectmen to mechanize the planet, as in 
 their seemingly more restricted ability to make the 
 job appear worth while to those who come to grips 
 with machinery in action the common folk. 
 
 Economic Man is an abstraction essential to scien- 
 tific inquiry, though nowhere found in the flesh, and, 
 where approximated, not pleasant to have as a 
 neighbor. Homo sapiens is social man and political 
 man and religious man as well as economic man. He 
 follows the instinct of self-preservation, not only 
 economically, but also biologically. He loves, mates, 
 breeds, fights for and labors for his wife, his home, 
 his children. And presently he dies, in the hope of 
 an extension of life beyond the grave, and is buried 
 with honor by his kind. In his life he has many 
 governors ; among them the state is sovereign and the 
 shop parvenu. 
 
 This composite mystery enters the shop, and takes
 
 38 THE IRON MAN 
 
 his place beside the machine, to use a small but 
 definite fraction of his powers in assisting it to pro- 
 duce and distribute goods. Call him Number 3141 
 if you choose; nevertheless, he differs from numbers 
 3140 and 3142 and all other men, living or dead. No 
 one, from this time forward to eternity, ever will be 
 cast in exactly the same mould as he. Labor is more 
 than labor; each labor unit is also an individual, 
 immeasurably dear to himself, even in despair. 
 
 What the shop precisely wants, it cannot hire. It 
 may want, though never wisely, mere hands and feet 
 and backs; they do not exist detached from lusts, 
 faiths, superstitions. It may want eyes, sensitive 
 fingers, or specialized knowledge; they are not to be 
 divorced from nerves and prejudices. Instead, the 
 labor market presents men and women in infinite 
 variety; but in each is incorporated something, be it 
 little or much, which the shop cannot use. The shop 
 picks and chooses, combs and examines, consults 
 records; nevertheless, the chosen ones carry inside 
 the gates that which may result in an appeal from its 
 regimen to the anarchy of force, or to the authority 
 of the state the appeal to Demos or to Caesar. 
 
 This mental luggage, largely superfluous from the 
 standpoint of immediate industrial need, may be 
 catalogued for analysis; but the catalogue, however 
 extended, remains a convenient lie, since each ele- 
 ment merges with all the others and affects all the 
 others. With this attainder established, the mental 
 luggage of the man going to the machine may be 
 listed briefly as instincts, emotions, traditions, beliefs,
 
 THE IRON MAN 39 
 
 habits of thought and conduct those qualities of 
 mind and spirit which, in their interplay, not only 
 establish the individuality of their possessor, but also 
 govern his reactions to authority and to the responsi- 
 bilities involved in home and social relationships. 
 
 These primary qualities of the mind have their 
 roots in the dawn of life on this planet; in Creation, 
 if you deny Darwin; in intertidal scum, if you accept 
 Wells. But, whatever their origin, they are the fruits 
 of race-experience through many generations; and 
 under the lash of sex we shall pass them on, perhaps 
 with minor changes, to our successors. Our con- 
 tribution to the subconscious mind is not likely to be 
 as rich and important as the press-agents of our 
 braggart era declare. Indeed, we may influence the 
 subconscious more than any preceding generation, 
 and yet add but a mite to its store, so ancient is its 
 origin and so vital its accumulations. The subcon- 
 scious mind may be reckoned the reservoir of human 
 experience; here is the cause of Man's rise to com- 
 mand on the planet ; here the rough foundations of his 
 social and political institutions; here the explanation, 
 perhaps never to be unraveled, of his greeds, wars, 
 sins, as well as of his virtues, loyalties, and visions. 
 
 i Subtract the subconscious from high intelligence 
 the residue is not Man, with his hates and loves, urges 
 and repressions, but a monstrosity of greed and 
 reason. Subtract it from a person of low intelligence; 
 and the result is a semblance of the bestial. Both are 
 asocial; the one, a menace through his efficiency; the 
 other, a menace through his deficiency. Therefore
 
 4 o THEIRONMAN 
 
 it is of the subconscious mind that one may say, 
 "This is the reality of human existence. The truth 
 about human affairs is not to be found altogether in 
 what is written in the bond and certified to in the 
 records. You must consult the instincts; you must 
 go back to the wells of life. Peer into those misty, 
 uncertain depths diligently enough, and you may get 
 some hint, however faint, of the reality of the human 
 spirit in travail or in joy." 
 
 Comes now this heavy-laden, complex Ego to the 
 machine. Pleasant, indeed, for both parties, if the 
 management could separate the workman from such 
 mental luggage as is superfluous inside, and check it 
 at the door, to be reassumed upon return. How sim- 
 ple if the mental man could shuck his cravings as the 
 physical man doffs his coat! Yet, until we know 
 more of the meaning of life, it is perhaps just as well 
 that Man is indivisible, and that the shop must take 
 the useless with the useful, the bitter with the sweet. 
 For it is the unknown and unassayable which gives 
 life its zest, labor its hope, and industry its adventure. 
 
 No doubt, those mental traits and prepossessions 
 which we group and label under the convenient title, 
 " subconscious," at one time had clearer economic 
 significance than they possess at present. However 
 men compete for their livings, those attributes which 
 make for survival tend to be passed on, while those 
 less utilitarian are eliminated under the stern pres- 
 sure of necessity. Every piece of subconscious lug- 
 gage which the modern carries to the machine must 
 at some time have been of conscious value to enough
 
 THEIRONMAN 4 i 
 
 of his ancestors to fix that trait for survival. Else it 
 must have been sunk without trace in the laborious 
 business of keeping alive. 
 
 Labor is the price of life. The tree labors in 
 growth; the field-mouse labors in each search for 
 grain. Man differs from other animals in that he is 
 conscious of his labors and articulate concerning 
 them. Labor-pain stirs him to thought and expres- 
 sion ; but he may be even more distressed by, though 
 less conscious of, his indirect labor-strains. Industrial 
 labor-pain, being easily recognized for what it is, can 
 be alleviated or compensated for inside the shop; 
 labor-strain, on the other hand, less simple of diag- 
 nosis, has a way of eluding direct action and spread- 
 ing out and down, until, massed and complicated, it 
 presents itself, not to the principals in their principal 
 relation, but to society and the state to the prin- 
 cipals, that is, in their more remote relations as 
 neighbors and citizens. Labor-pain, by and large, 
 gives us labor problems into which the state injects 
 itself only as a last resort; while broad and con- 
 tinued labor-strain begets social and political prob- 
 lems, powerful cross-currents of opinion, which first 
 agitate the homes of the humble, and in due course 
 agitate the parliaments of the world. 
 
 With this distinction between labor-pain and labor- 
 strain established, but remembering always that the 
 twain are more easily separated on paper than in the 
 flesh, let us examine the effect of automatic and semi- 
 automatic machinery upon the minds of its attend- 
 ants the mill operatives.
 
 42 THEIRONMAN 
 
 Such machines make relatively small demands upon 
 the wits of their companions; the operative's job is 
 more passive, mentally, than active. Once his 
 limited function is learned, once the man knows how 
 to place standardized material in proper, predeter- 
 mined fashion, he can earn his pay without further 
 mental effort. He must be attentive, must " dot and 
 carry one " exactly so, because the machine is valuable, 
 and failure to move when and as directed may cost 
 his employer more in spoilage than the operative's 
 yearly wage. The man is not so much driven, as 
 paced ; his usefulness depends upon his never failing 
 the strident call of the Iron Man. He nurses his 
 charge, feeds it, relieves it of produce, and perhaps 
 makes slight repairs in a jam. But, if the case is 
 serious, he calls a machinist, just as an infant's nurse 
 calls for the physician in emergency. 
 
 I watched a man shove metal rings across six inches 
 of space, to a guide from which they were taken 
 automatically through the machine, emerging slotted 
 some seconds later, without more human ado. That 
 was his job from morning until night, his pay de- 
 pending upon how many slotted rings passed inspec- 
 tion. Eyes concentrated on his little platform, one 
 hand moving thus, the other so, in unending repeti- 
 tion, he missed not one revolution of the wheels, 
 which were grinding out his life, even as they ground 
 out the goods. Economically he was part of the ma- 
 chine an automatic feeder, who chanced to be 
 flesh-and-blood-and-mind. Presently, no doubt, he 
 will be relieved of that particular job by a mechanical
 
 THE IRON MAN 43 
 
 extension of that particular Iron Man, since the 
 human was doing nothing that could not be done 
 better by metal in motion. 
 
 Assembling of interchangeable machined parts 
 proceeds, in efficient plants, with almost equally 
 minute division of function. Your automobile frame, 
 let us say, is hoisted so that it may acquire axles. 
 Then it moves along a conveyer, before gangs of men, 
 each of whom performs thereon a certain specified 
 task for which just so much time is allowed, because 
 the conveyer moves at a fixed rate of speed, and each 
 gang is allotted a space alongside, and moves forward 
 and back in that space as the conveyer works. One 
 attaches the right front- wheel ; another the left rear- 
 wheel; a third tightens certain screws with a pneu- 
 matic wrench. Let a single human fail in his assign- 
 ment, and rather than permit that delay to clog the 
 whole line of cars in process, the lagging unit is pulled 
 out of line, to await the next shift. Thus, within an 
 hour from the time a naked frame starts down the 
 assembly line, a shrewd and swiftly moving division 
 of labor has completed thereon a finished motor- 
 car, capable of moving to the loading docks under its 
 own power. Its power-plant has been both painted 
 and dried within the hour. To it have been given a 
 body highly polished, curtains, cushions, tools, and, 
 finally, a tag setting it apart for someone near or far 
 Doc Kennicott of Gopher Prairie, or the Gaekwar 
 of Baroda. 
 
 In that swift progress hundreds of men have worked 
 upon each car, combining into effectiveness the work
 
 44 THE IRON MAN 
 
 of other thousands, whose produce is brought up by 
 truck from storerooms and source-factories, and 
 rushed into assigned positions. Each man performs 
 the same task over and over: tightens identical nuts, 
 lifts identical parts off a rack, and applies each one of 
 them precisely to a something that is exactly like its 
 predecessor to the thousandth of an inch . This accurate, 
 monotonous toil goes on swiftly, amid hissing air- valves 
 and paint-streams, roar of dryingovens, clatter of tools, 
 thunder of trucks arriving and departing. As evi- 
 dence of the organizing faculty in master minds, as a 
 study in unity and synchronized power over divers 
 beings and things, the action is impressive, in totality 
 almost beautiful; but for its individual contribution 
 it leaves something to be desired as an expression of 
 the art of life. Not altogether for this, surely, is man 
 made. 
 
 Some of these operations involve much muscular 
 effort, others little; but, whether little or much, each 
 operative uses the same set of muscles, for approx- 
 imately the same length of time, in each repetition of 
 his assigned operation. Roustabouts enjoy far more 
 of the luxury of variety in toil than machine tenders 
 in automatized factories. 
 
 The operating of automatic and semi-automatic 
 machinery evolves evidence tending to show that 
 fatigue, instead of being simply weariness from mus- 
 cles stretched too much or too often, is rather a 
 pathological condition, due to the poisoning of the sys- 
 tem through oversecretion of the endocrinal glands. 
 Whatever the theorizing as to endocrinal glands,
 
 THE IRON MAN 45 
 
 it is probably true that there is an excessive out- 
 pouring under nervous tension, when effort is pro- 
 longed beyond the normal fatigue limit, which out- 
 pouring causes pathological fatigue, indicated by 
 preternatural activity. This theory, held by compe- 
 tent investigators, and advanced by them with reser- 
 vations proper in a matter where exactness is difficult, 
 seems to explain, as well as receive support from, many 
 of the reactions of our industrial operatives to their 
 labors. 
 
 In general, machine-production of goods involves 
 less muscular and sensory strain than that put for- 
 ward under the handicraft system. Fatigue in in- 
 dustrial workers must be ascribed more to monotony 
 in movement and problem than to foot-pounds of 
 energy expended. One may use merely his finger-tips 
 feeding metal discs into a machine, and yet be as 
 weary in the evening as if he had been swinging an 
 axe. The lumberjack's weariness is an all-round 
 fatigue, and he is ready for bed at sundown ; whereas 
 industrial workers seem moved to abnormal activity 
 after working hours. My fellow citizens, most of 
 whom work in factories where the industrial function 
 is minutely divided, and where machines set the pace, 
 display astonishing energy in after-work pursuits. 
 The married men reestablish their equilibrium by 
 gardening prodigiously, and tinkering furiously 
 around their homes a socially satisfactory adjust- 
 ment. The homeless rush hither and thither by motor 
 when they are flush ; or wander aimlessly around the 
 streets when they are broke. Books and quiet con-
 
 46 THE IRON MAN 
 
 versation are a bit too tame for men who feel that, 
 while they get their livings in the shop, they must 
 live their lives outside the shop. 
 
 This may be explained as Nature's effort to correct 
 a nerve-distortion resulting from the exercise of cer- 
 tain muscles and faculties while all others are held 
 out of use. Glandular secretions, roused by an over- 
 stressed fraction of the anatomy, spread beyond that 
 fraction, to stimulate the rest of the man into height- 
 ened activity. These men are in a condition parallel 
 to that in which many a business man finds himself 
 after prolonged concentration upon a problem which 
 defies satisfactory solution. He becomes too tired to 
 sleep; works feverishly; and, unless he lets down, 
 breaks down. Either type is apt to seek relief in 
 stimulants, and to crave thrills temporarily blotting 
 out the discontent that overlays their lives. 
 
 At the root of this discontent lies the difficulty of 
 adjusting human beings to modern industry. Race- 
 inheritance fits us for other, simpler pursuits. For 
 unnumbered generations we white folks have been 
 building up resistance to, and recovering from, the 
 fatigue which follows muscle-labor. Except for the 
 comparatively small fraction of our ancestors who 
 went in for learning, trade, or the handicrafts, the 
 life of the masses, until the Industrial Revolution 
 began in England, about 1765, had been the slow life 
 of soil and water agriculture, hunting and fishing, 
 with occasional relapses into war; occupations re- 
 quiring intense physical exertion through short 
 periods, and allowing frequent let-ups. Until so
 
 THE IRON MAN 47 
 
 recently Man worked by the sun and the seasons, 
 instead of by the calendar and the clock. Even the 
 villein ploughing his lord's glebe could stop for a 
 chat with his neighbor passing on the highway. 
 Thrills a-plenty filled common lives; there were the 
 touch-and-go of the chase; rustic ceremonies at seed- 
 time and harvest; a chance to look in through the 
 servant's door upon the festivities of the manor-house ; 
 and always a close, if servile, relation with his boss. 
 Bond the villein was, but his bond held both ways 
 upon master no less than upon man. The worker at 
 least had the blessing of security in his job, now so 
 uncertain; he could not be fired, even as he could not 
 hire himself away. 
 
 That simple existence seems to be the kind of life 
 for which the common man is constituted. Physi- 
 cally, he goes his best gait for a hundred yards, fells 
 his third tree more accurately than he fells his thir- 
 tieth, ploughs his straightest furrow toward the rising 
 sun. He needs a measure of monotony in toil; shift- 
 ing at quick-step from this job to that bothers him; 
 but the work which gives him most satisfaction, and 
 which, all things considered, he does best, is that 
 furnishing variety in detail with sameness in essen- 
 tials. Were every tree placed exactly like every other 
 tree, to be felled from a like stance in the one direction, 
 with no nice problem of adjustment presenting itself 
 to the common sense and skill of the axe-man, then 
 our lumberjack would return to his shack, not only 
 more fatigued in body than usual, but infinitely more 
 weary in his mind. If a high-grade carpenter faced
 
 48 THE IRON MAN 
 
 the prospect of building identical houses all the rest 
 of his life, with never a chance to revel in a bit of im- 
 provisation, would he relish that prospect? Hardly. 
 What he wants what every man above the grade 
 of moron craves in toil is a chance to express his 
 personality within the limits of a specialty in which 
 he knows himself proficient. Even the scavenger is 
 not without his craft-pride. Your carpenter desires 
 no other trade; he would rather build a hen-coop 
 than paint his own dwelling; but inside his trade he 
 wants a bit of leeway to devise ways and means, and 
 a living hope of quiet adventure. Not enough variety 
 to upset him, but enough to stimulate the exercise of 
 his full powers in security such is the common 
 man's ideal job. 
 
 Variety in minors compensates for the major 
 monotony. In the beginning, and for aeons thereafter, 
 when Man, in an environment niggardly in food and 
 crowded with dangers, was "getting set" in build and 
 character, labor the price of life must have been 
 a constant succession of adventures. Merely keeping 
 alive involved prowling and stalking, sally, pounce, 
 battle, flight. Power to put all into a single effort 
 determined whether one returned to the home-lair or 
 died miserably on the heath. 
 
 Little by little, to satisfy accumulating economic 
 wants and social ambitions, Man tied himself down 
 to occupations more prosaic to agriculture, to the 
 tedious shaping of tools from stone, and the applica- 
 tion of manual skill and fire to earth-materials. 
 Ability to withstand monotony then acquired sur-
 
 THE IRON MAN 49 
 
 vival value ; but there continued that zest for variety 
 inside the frame of monotony, that desire to project his 
 unique self upon his environment. 
 
 From the projection of these individualities upon 
 matter through toil followed many of the subsequent 
 changes in Man's estate. Simple tools, now standard- 
 ized, must have measured the individuality of their 
 originators and adapters, just as innovations in mod- 
 ern mechanics publish to a critical world the personal 
 triumphs of those who dare to originate. The more 
 play we allow this instinct for variation, the swifter 
 economic evolution must be; and, conversely, when 
 it has no play, innovation ceases. Civilization, on 
 its material side, has been built little by little, through 
 trial and error rather than design by the personal 
 energies of the world's artificers and organizers rather 
 than by the plans of its statesmen. 
 
 Monotony in labor, then, is the price men pay for 
 living together in order and security one of the 
 returns that society exacts from the individual in 
 exchange for safety, comfort, and opportunity for 
 advancement within the group. But monotony in- 
 tensifies labor-strain; and unless the laborer can find 
 release therefrom, through variations of physical and 
 mental effort in the minutiae of the job, his weariness 
 sits upon him like an incubus. 
 
 Let him do this thing a little differently from that; 
 let him use what ingenuity he has; and his Ego, some- 
 what different from all others under the sun, is com- 
 pensated in a degree for the surrender of his freedom 
 in the larger concerns of group-living, which sur-
 
 50 THE IRON MAN 
 
 render society demands and enforces through law 
 and custom. 
 
 But, lacking this compensation of variety in toil, 
 human nature finds the social order oppressive. This 
 seems to me at least as definite a cause of the present 
 resentment against the established order as those 
 more frequently cited; and the situation is not alto- 
 gether relieved by reflecting that, as long as the in- 
 stinct toward variation is repressed by the machines 
 themselves, its consequences will continue in some 
 measure as long as machines are operated, no matter 
 whether they are owned by private persons or by the 
 state. 
 
 How long may a person's innovating tendencies be 
 repressed without dulling his mind? Suppose our 
 first-rate carpenter undertook a two-year stint laying 
 identical floors in identical one-story houses. Would 
 he be as good an all-round craftsman, as good a stair- 
 builder and root-builder, at the end of his grind? Ob- 
 viously not. He might grow more deft in what he had 
 to do; but surely he would grow more clumsy in what 
 he had no chance to do. He would emerge from that 
 job less efficient for the all-round work of the com- 
 munity, less sure of himself, less secure in his home 
 and his living, less interesting as a personality and 
 less valuable as a neighbor and citizen. To what ex- 
 tent this decline in the individual might affect his 
 descendants, and through them the race, is an in- 
 teresting question reserved for future discussion. 
 Here the influence of automatic machinery upon the 
 mind of those who come into close and continued
 
 THE IRON MAN 51 
 
 contact with it is considered only with relation to the 
 present actors immediately involved, without refer- 
 ence to the extension of that influence through hered- 
 ity and race-evolution. 
 
 This devolution of the individual is what Secretary 
 Hoover notes when he says: "The vast, repetitive 
 processes are dulling the human mind." And again: 
 "We must take account of the tendencies of our 
 present repetitive industries to eliminate the creative 
 instinct in their workers, to narrow their fields of 
 craftsmanship, to discard entirely the contributions 
 that could be had from their minds as well as from 
 their hands. Indeed, if we are to secure the develop- 
 ment of our people, we cannot permit the dulling of 
 these sensibilities." 
 
 So far as the great majority of the workers are con- 
 cerned, modern industry presents this phenomenon 
 the dulling of the mind on a scale unequaled in 
 extent, and to a degree unequaled in intensity, by 
 anything on record in history. Slavery of the galley 
 was not more uninspiring, per se. Military orders 
 may be more imperious than those of industry; but 
 at least the military life provides change of scene and 
 problem from time to time, some release from routine 
 on pay, much companionship, and occasional thrills 
 all appealing to the common man because they fit 
 in so neatly with the inherited memories lying at the 
 back of his mind. Industrial efficiency calls for the 
 elimination of many of these boons for close con- 
 centration upon the unvarying task, for suppression 
 of variations in toil, for rigid control of the work-
 
 52 THE IRON MAN 
 
 environment, for elimination of distracting excite- 
 ments, for subordination of personalities, for the re- 
 duction of the common man to the status of autom- 
 aton. 
 
 Who is this common man? He is the fellow who 
 made up the ranks of the army as examined for the 
 draft an adult male with an intelligence, by 
 test, of from fourteen to sixteen years. He is a de- 
 pendable being on the average, capable of taking care 
 of himself and his family in ordinary times and not 
 too complicated situations; fairly adaptable; amen- 
 able to law and social usages ; requiring and accepting 
 leadership in all pursuits calling for special knowledge 
 or quick decision ; fundamentally loyal to his country 
 and its institutions; inherently conservative and pro- 
 vincial; shaking down after the first flush of youth 
 into a steady, plodding citizen, more prone to excite- 
 ment over little things than to thought over funda- 
 mentals; strongly sexed, but controlling his sex-calls 
 more or less successfully with the aid of church and 
 state, of which institutions he is ever the pillar and 
 support. Not a complete portrait, but 'twill serve! 
 
 This is he who, in the main, mans industry; and 
 upon whom modern industry grinds. It grinds less 
 upon those definitely above or below this level. More 
 effective, more adaptable persons, keen in devising, 
 sage in planning, and strong in pushing men and ma- 
 terials into action these find in industry broad and 
 lucrative outlets for their relatively stronger instincts 
 toward dominance. Industry gives them opportu- 
 nity to express their egos in great works, to lead, to
 
 THEIRONMAN 53 
 
 build, to amass, to commandeer social recognition 
 through the exercise of economic power. Men of this 
 sort find capital, invent machines, improve processes, 
 route materials, organize shops, produce goods in 
 quantity, and sell them to the ends of the earth. Their 
 methods are direct, often ruthless; their code an odd 
 mixture of jungle law and altruism. No danger of 
 repetitive processes and automatic machinery dulling 
 these high-powered minds ; on the contrary, these are 
 as manna to their hungry souls. By reducing room 
 for error in operations, by contracting the play of 
 human fallibility in toil, by increasing man-power, 
 the Iron Man has freed business of important limita- 
 tions, relieving enterprisers of what were once serious 
 difficulties. 
 
 But the slack so gained is more apparent than real. 
 Competition, never resting, drives them on ever and 
 ever to more refined machines, better coordination of 
 effort; and presently they find in social unrest, plant 
 obsolescence, high labor- turnover, and lowered morale, 
 that they have merely substituted one sort of execu- 
 tive vexation for another. In the old days of more 
 skill and less machines, the executive problem was to 
 master materials; now the executive problem is to a 
 much greater degree the handling of men. 
 
 Neither does the Iron Man get on the nerves of 
 those below the average mentality. He is a consistent 
 friend of the defective. Just as deafness is an ad- 
 vantage in certain industrial occupations, our 
 shops employ many mutes with satisfaction both 
 ways, so mental lacks may become assets for cer-
 
 54 THE IRON MAN 
 
 tain industrial purposes. Given enough sense to 
 master simple routine occupations, and enough ap- 
 preciation of duty, or fear of relatives, to come to the 
 shop regularly, the below-average person can soon be 
 adjusted industrially. And, when adjusted, the 
 moron will be found immune to many of the pricks 
 which irritate the normal man into seeing red, less 
 fretted by monotony, less worn by rhythmic clatter. 
 There is less in his soul striving to release itself; he 
 has brought into the shop comparatively little that 
 the shop cannot use; and so he accepts dumbly his 
 appointed place in the scheme of things industrial, 
 remains unbitten by ambition, and reacts not at all 
 against subordination. The less mind one has, the 
 less it resents that invasion of personality which is 
 inseparable from large-scale and mechanized enter- 
 prises. I have heard industrial engineers and welfare 
 workers say that industrial efficiency, as working out 
 in our day, puts a premium on mental deficiency. 
 
 Men who take more to the machines than do 
 the morons are subjected to a rigid selective process 
 by the Iron Man. The law of "use or lose" begins 
 its inexorable operation upon their minds as well as 
 upon their muscles and nerves. Just as muscle or 
 nerve, unused, refuses to yield its utility without a 
 struggle, causing its possessor pain and inconvenience, 
 so those mental qualities unused in toil continue to 
 struggle for existence to the limit of their strength. It 
 is easy to find in any industrial town the shop-sick 
 man upset, out of sorts, doubtful if he can stick it 
 out. * The man is out of harmony with himself; his
 
 THE IRON MAN 55 
 
 mind is divided against itself. The weaker the Ego 
 at the start, the shorter the struggle, and the more 
 quickly does the individual become "shop-broke." 
 Some refuse to wait so long, and get out, either fired 
 for insubordination, which is more often an attack of 
 "nerves" than meanness, or going out voluntarily to 
 search for jobs more to their liking. Sometimes they 
 merely shift from one shop to another ; every factory 
 town has its disappointed rainbow-chasers, who never 
 stay put, and who never learn that the Iron Man is 
 about the same everywhere. Many, however, drift 
 back to the farm and other less mechanized occupa- 
 tions. 
 
 Labor- turnover is heavy; that is where this labor- 
 strain shows in the shop records. The workman and his 
 boss may adjust, in one way or another, disputes on 
 wages and shop-conditions; but of necessity they 
 have difficulty in treating this intangible, indefinite, 
 not always recognized, or recognizable, work-neurosis 
 arising from the cleavage between old and new, be- 
 tween the innovation the Iron Man and that 
 ancient inheritance of the human the mind. So 
 one man goes, and another, and another ; their several 
 departures, listed together, become evidence of so 
 many loss-items to the shop. The expense of breaking 
 in a single novice may be small ; but multiplied many 
 times, it becomes something to reckon with in quan- 
 tity, and a definite economic back-lash. Moreover, 
 the departure of even a single cog in the synchronized 
 process of production, where many await the output 
 of one machine, may delay production, at a cost far
 
 56 THEIRONMAN 
 
 in excess of the direct expense of substituting the 
 human factor. Let a key-machine be idle even a few 
 hours, and bang goes far more than sixpence! 
 
 So the leaders of industry are forced, from strictly 
 economic motives, to consider the psychological as- 
 pects of toil. The remedies they apply are of infinite 
 variety, shifting men from one job to another as an 
 antidote for monotony and a cure for maladjustments; 
 more rigid selection in employment, with growing 
 emphasis on the mental as well as physical fitness of 
 the novices for the jobs open; welfare- work in all its 
 phases ; housing developments, grievance committees, 
 shop-councils, employee representation, bonus and 
 profit-sharing plans, all aimed at relieving in one 
 way or another, either directly or by distraction of 
 interest, the nerve-tension under which the average 
 man suffers when he is brought into double harness 
 with the Iron Man. 
 
 However, the best friend of both man and master, 
 in this connection, is habit simple, old-fashioned 
 habit. If one does the same thing over and over, 
 action tends to become automatic. Attention may 
 be trained through use, even to the point where the 
 tender of the machine may do his work accurately 
 without undue strain, while his mind busies itself 
 elsewhere. The strain increases, of course, as the 
 work is prolonged; but given reasonable time-limits, 
 there is ground to believe that a man, thoroughly 
 shopbroken and well adjusted to his job, may get a 
 good deal of pleasure from this autistic thinking 
 while at work. But autistic thinking may be painful
 
 THEIRONMAN 57 
 
 as well as pleasurable. The day-dreaming of a well- 
 balanced, not too highly organized mind, at peace with 
 itself and with the world, is one thing; the fretting of 
 a mind under worry or injustice is quite another. 
 
 If we conceive habit to be a barrier behind which 
 the mind may shelter itself against fatigue, then we 
 may say that the assaulting force must succeed, if 
 the work-period be stretched unduly; and, moreover, 
 that it will carry the habit-barrier much sooner than 
 that, if the mental forces behind the barrier are dis- 
 cordant and undisciplined. Consequently, the con- 
 structive effort to harmonize automatic machinery 
 and mental health must take a threefold path : first, 
 to select individuals carefully for given jobs; second, 
 to adjust both pace and hours to the individual's 
 powers of resisting fatigue ; and, third, to hasten such 
 changes in the shop, home, and community as will 
 tend to content the common man with his lot, reduce 
 his worry and envy, and increase his delight in life. 
 
 At the automatic machine a man must stew, men- 
 tally, in his own juice; in so far as he thinks at all, his 
 thought must range away from his task. If he fears 
 dismissal, if he thinks of himself as bested by un- 
 known forces or cheated by individuals, if he finds 
 himself and his home the playthings of tragedy or 
 the butts of injustice, then his autistic thought is 
 bound to be subversive. One sort of man becomes 
 melancholy ; another rages against things as they are. 
 On the other hand, he whose life is even and sustained 
 by faith, he whose memories and prospects are alike 
 pleasurable, has time inside the task to plan his holiday,
 
 58 THEIRONMAN 
 
 turn over again the delights of last week, and settle the 
 small but inspiring problems of his home and garden. 
 
 To put the machine operative into this frame of 
 mind, where he is insulated more or less against the 
 early coming and more devastating inroads of patho- 
 logical fatigue, must ever be a first concern of in- 
 dustrial society, as well as of the shop which profits 
 by his content. The state must do its bit by seeing 
 that he gets full measure of justice; the community, 
 by providing facilities for mental and physical recrea- 
 tion; and the shop, by internal adjustments calculated 
 to increase the worker's confidence in the security of 
 his job and his sense of cooperation in the enterprise. 
 
 All important, also, is the cultivation of self-dis- 
 cipline in the individual. Much restlessness arises 
 from envy, lack of disposition to make the best of 
 things until better appears, and failure to train the 
 emotions toward cheerfulness. Mental hygiene in 
 home and school is a positive need for a rising genera- 
 tion destined so largely to associate with machines 
 and cooperate in large-scale enterprises. 
 
 How the emotions may be schooled is set forth 
 briefly in Dr. C. B. Burr's trenchant little book, 
 " Practical Psychology and Psychiatry," now in its 
 fifth edition a mine of wisdom! ' The relation of 
 emotion in the abstract to muscular expression is 
 profitable for study," says Dr. Burr, "not only be- 
 cause of its psychological interest, but because of its 
 practical bearing upon human conduct. Clench the 
 fist and shut the teeth firmly, and there immediately 
 arises in consciousness a sense of resentment, of pug-
 
 THEIRONMAN 59 
 
 nacity. Draw down the corners of the mouth, and the 
 emotional tone takes on a shade of depression. This 
 has an important relation to mental development. To 
 cultivate the muscular play that accompanies pleas- 
 urable states of feeling must inevitably affect the 
 disposition of the individual in a favorable manner." 
 Thus, he who does the necessary with a show of 
 willingness finds, before the task is done, that he is 
 truly willing its accomplishment. 
 
 "Be good and you'll be happy" is a precept of 
 practical religion. "Make good or you'll be miser- 
 able" is a precept of business which seems to have 
 crowded the older ideal out of public education, and 
 to have jostled it sadly, even in the home. An educa- 
 tional system overemphasizing efficiency must needs 
 wreck itself in time, because there can never be quite 
 enough of the good things of life at hand to satisfy all. 
 A homely philosophy of give-and-take, a gospel of 
 endurance as contrasted with acquisition, the truth 
 that life's best values are spiritual rather than econ- 
 omic these the school should teach, no less than 
 the home, to young folk who presently shall take 
 their places beside the machines in industrial routine. 
 
 Yet such preparation will not be sufficient of itself. 
 As those once more potent ideals of contentment in 
 toil have been pushed aside so strenuously by in- 
 dustrialism, so also they cannot be rehabilitated in 
 any compelling measure until the industrial status quo 
 is modified by state, community, and shop, in such 
 wise that training for contentment may withstand 
 the attrition of work-relations in adult years. As
 
 60 THE IRON MAN 
 
 long as life reneges on promises made to youth that 
 joy, honor, and abundance shall reward toil, sobriety, 
 and loyalty, it is idle to expect any generation of 
 American factory-hands to bear stoically their par- 
 ticipation in industry. 
 
 However successful these efforts may be, there is 
 likely to remain an unavoidable residuum of labor- 
 strain. This, spread as it is over the mass, filters 
 down upon home and state, generating social prob- 
 lems which, in a democracy, shortly become political. 
 In our average man, as we have seen, the will to sur- 
 vive is more potent than the will to power; security 
 means more to him than opportunity; he is static 
 rather than dynamic; and the state is the highest 
 expression of his dominant ideal to live comfort- 
 ably under conditions in which he can be true to his 
 not-too-demanding nature. To the state, therefore, 
 the man of the masses gives, as clearly as he can, his 
 mandate. First, labor-strain rouses thought, then 
 speech, then writings in the press, then debates in 
 parliament, then if checkmated all along the line 
 in mobs and armies. The politician with his ear to 
 the ground serves this function, at least he gets the 
 case of the plebs before the state. Ensues then a new 
 phase of the old, old duel between the state and the 
 captains going forward in our day as the state 
 versus its legal children, the Corporations, in which 
 the captains, for greater power and profit, group 
 themselves. 
 
 One finds in the current phase of this contest small 
 promise that the state, by legal processes, can relieve
 
 THEIRONMAN 61 
 
 the common man from the labor-strains incident to 
 automatic production. It may relieve his feelings 
 temporarily, with restrictions that are more noise than 
 substance; he may draw some comfort from seeing 
 the state crack its long whip over the boss; but po- 
 litical coercion has its limits, both economic and 
 constitutional. Regulation toward fair play in in- 
 dustry is right and proper, but may so easily be over- 
 done that the state's most telling contribution to the 
 mental hygiene of industry may be considered that 
 of education the marshaling of the public schools 
 for the teaching of contentment in toil and culture in 
 leisure. 
 
 Because mind must be cured by mind, or stay sick, 
 because human maladjustments yield only to the 
 human touch, the mental phase of the problem of 
 automatization in industry challenges particularly 
 the community and the shop ; to them we must look 
 for the chief ameliorating influences which shall per- 
 mit the common man to withstand, without deteriora- 
 tion of mind, association with the Iron Man. And 
 because the man at the desk moves more swiftly than 
 the folk in the town-meeting, the shop may well 
 become the more effective of the two. Once manage- 
 ment grasps clearly the situation created by the 
 grinding of the automatic machine upon the mind of 
 the worker, the challenge to proximate service and 
 ultimate interest can not but inspire the directing 
 intelligences of American industry. Their hegemony, 
 indeed, depends upon their leaping into this breach 
 without delay.
 
 IV 
 THE I RON DUKES 
 
 THE more monotonous the plain, the more impres- 
 sive are the peaks. As the development and grow- 
 ing use of machinery reduce, little by little, the play of 
 personality in toil for the masses who work beside it, 
 those who rise above its leveling influences take on 
 increased social significance, As labor becomes more 
 and more impersonal, as labor-time crowds out skill 
 and initiative as the chief economic determinant of 
 the mass, those who can take advantage of this situa- 
 tion to employ or direct large numbers of individuals 
 stand out as marked men. They are the stars of the 
 industrial drama. Upon them the limelight beats; 
 upon them are showered applause and riches in such 
 profusion as to rouse the envy of the chorus. For 
 them, too, are the hisses sometimes heard in the pit, 
 and occasional missiles launched in wrath. 
 
 Ability heads toward power. When the big busi- 
 ness of the country was the establishing, organizing, 
 and defending of the state, supremely able men turned 
 their talents toward statecraft, just as, in former 
 times and older lands, they went into the church 
 when religion was esteemed the path toward greatest 
 influence. When the political stability of this Re- 
 public had been achieved, America's ablest organizers 
 were attracted, naturally, to the prospect of power at- 
 tainable through exploiting the natural resources of an 
 undeveloped continent. Their imaginations fired, 
 they went overseas for capital, built railroads, razed
 
 THE IRON MAN 63 
 
 forests, made goods, and improved methods of mar- 
 keting. 
 
 Desire to win subsistence and make the futures of 
 themselves and their families secure may have been 
 the tap-root of these undertakings; but there were 
 sturdy brace-roots as well the urge to build, to cre- 
 ate, to coordinate ; the will to power, to prominence, 
 to dominance. Even the roughest of these economic 
 adventurers could scarcely escape being stirred some- 
 what by the thought that what he was doing was of 
 service to his fellows, and would continue to be of 
 service long after he himself had vanished from the 
 stormy scene. He and his kind must have been sus- 
 tained, at many points in their none too easy lives, by 
 that faith seldom put into words. Less glib, surely, 
 than our generation in talking "service," such men 
 served posterity as well as themselves and their 
 legatees. 
 
 We see now that men like Stephenson and Hill, 
 Maudslay and McCormick, Bessemer and Carnegie, 
 made something more than money by harnessing nat- 
 ural forces, perfecting machines, and organizing men 
 and capital into effective combinations for laying rails, 
 running trains, fabricating steel, and selling reapers. 
 They pioneered for civilization. While some of them 
 gathered vast fortunes for themselves and their heirs, 
 each did his bit toward lifting the economic level for 
 whole groups and sections, enriched and extended 
 his country, and gave life in such abundance that 
 the population of the earth doubled within a single 
 century of industrial control. We know that these
 
 64 THEIRONMAN 
 
 men, and thousands of other leaders in the economic 
 development of the Western world, possessed high 
 survival value. Their works live; their contributions 
 are still being used; they released certain energies of 
 nature and man, never again to be prisoned ; and all 
 of us are distinctly their heirs and debtors. Indeed, a 
 good half of us could not find a living, a foothold on 
 earth, but for them and their kind. 
 
 Individual achievements broaden down in time to 
 social assets. The mass inherits what the class creates, 
 whereupon the class carries on to a new objective. 
 The process is seen clearly enough in the case of the 
 railroads. The state is now the overlord, and masses 
 of small holders are the owners, of railroads which 
 dominant individuals built, because the state would 
 not accept responsibility for construction. The state 
 chose- and the common sense of the time approved 
 to let private persons adventure in providing steam 
 transportation. The common sense of our time ap- 
 proves payment of rental to those who have come into 
 possession of those holdings ; but it still refuses to take 
 the risk of operation, while determined to hold the 
 rewards of operation down to fixed limits by rate- 
 control. 
 
 In the railroad-building era, enterprising youth and 
 far-visioned men went to the rails as deer to the salt- 
 licks because it was their nature so to do. No calm 
 process of reasoning directed their choice of life-work. 
 They plunged into that "game" instinctively, because 
 it seemed the most worth-while of all pursuits, the 
 field in which a man could most nearly realize all that
 
 THEIRONMAN 65 
 
 was in him. Men of the same sort plunged, in a later 
 generation, into electric transportation first urban, 
 then interurban. In the last twenty years many of 
 them have gone into industry, into what we call inter- 
 changeable manufacturing, but which the Germans, 
 with their penchant for verbal exactness, call "Me- 
 chanofabrik " the quantity production of standard- 
 ized goods on power-driven machines, and the dis- 
 tribution thereof over wide areas. And latterly, 
 when it became apparent that the financing of quan- 
 tity production and wide distribution was a function 
 so important to society that it returned both profits 
 and power, such went into banking also. Indeed, 
 industry could scarcely have reached its present pro- 
 portions if banks and bankers had not grown with it. 
 
 The reasons for the shifting of our self-appointed 
 captains -our ablest practical-minded citizens 
 from statecraft, through transportation, to industry 
 are not far to seek. The state not only had been se- 
 curely founded, but also had grown strong enough to 
 inject itself firmly through federal, state and local 
 governments into the business equation as a regula- 
 tory force. 
 
 The will to power always mates ill with state con- 
 trol. The transportation field had been pioneered, 
 opportunity for profitable adventuring in that line 
 reduced ; but thereby ways and means had been cre- 
 ated to distribute goods widely and swiftly. Popula- 
 tion had increased, and the standard of living risen. 
 In other words, a broad and absorbent market existed, 
 into which cheap goods could be poured at a profit.
 
 66 THE IRON MAN 
 
 The incentive, consequently, was present, to apply as 
 swiftly as might be the idea of skill-transference to 
 machines, "so that unskilled workmen," to quote 
 Roe, "might be made to produce the same results as 
 skilled labor." This shift of vital function from the 
 worker to the tool inevitably engaged the attention of 
 men keen to exercise the realities of power, since it 
 enabled larger numbers and more capital to be con- 
 centrated, organized, and commanded by a single di- 
 recting mind. 
 
 Though automatic machinery had to await the 
 market for its goods before becoming common enough 
 to gain marked social significance, which occurred co- 
 incidentally with the slowing-up of railroad-building 
 in the eighteen-eighties, the idea of skill-transference 
 appears far earlier, and was applied here and there. 
 Sir Samuel Ben tham, brother of Jeremy, faced with the 
 problem of building and outfitting ships on the Black 
 Sea, for Catherine the Great of Russia, in a terri- 
 tory containing few skilled artisans, practised "skill- 
 transference," with some success, as early as 1787. 
 Back in England, with the help of Brunei and Mauds- 
 lay, he later applied it on a large scale, in a new fac- 
 tory for the interchangeable manufacture of ship- 
 blocks at Portsmouth (1808). 
 
 Meanwhile, Eli Whitney, at New Haven, was 
 equally alert. Seeking a small-arms contract in 1812, 
 Whitney wrote to Washington of his plant, that "its 
 great leading object is to substitute correct and effec- 
 tive operations of machinery for that skill of the artist 
 which is acquired only by long practice and expe-
 
 THE IRON MAN 67 
 
 rience, a species of skill which is not possessed in this 
 country to any appreciable extent." Those who 
 would delve further into the hazy beginnings of the 
 Machine Age are referred to J. W. Roe's "English 
 and American Tool-Builders," an excellent piece of 
 research in a supremely important field. 
 
 That olden, far-off note of enthusiasm for the ma- 
 chine-escape from human ineptness was sounded 
 again, after more than a century, by Karl W. Zimmer- 
 scheid, Vice- President of the General Motors Com- 
 pany, in these words: 
 
 11 The most potent single factor in the brilliant rise 
 of the mechanical industry in America is the almost 
 universal adoption of the principles of interchangeable 
 manufacture. There are underlying economic reasons 
 for the opportunities which have arisen continually 
 before us; but no nation with so few skilled mechanics 
 as ours ever would have taken advantage of those op- 
 portunities so adequately, without possessing the 
 genius to conceive the idea of assembling things from 
 parts wholly produced by automatic machinery ; nor 
 could even such genius have brought success, had the 
 final conception failed to include the masterly yet 
 simple provision that all such automatically produced 
 parts should be so alike as to be perfectly interchange- 
 able from one assembly to another. Given this sys- 
 tem in its present stage of development, problems of 
 vast quantity production at remarkably low costs, of 
 easy and rapid assembly, and of inexpensive mainte- 
 nance, become fascinating play. The seeming miracles 
 of such intricate, though widespread, products as the
 
 68 THE IRON MAN 
 
 sewing machine, the harvester, the dollar watch, the 
 talking machine, and the automobile, become but the 
 obvious fruits of a natural evolution." 
 
 This may be fascinating play for the directing 
 minds, but it is the reverse of fascinating for those who 
 operate the machines; and hard, solid work, not play, 
 for the social workers and statesmen who somehow 
 must ameliorate the effects of the Iron Man, lest the 
 race degenerate, society collapse, and the twin pillars 
 of the modern state constitutionalism and private 
 property be torn asunder. Scarcely, either, are 
 those financiers enthusiastic who must wrestle with 
 the credit problems arising from over-production or 
 under-consumption whichever you choose to saddle 
 with responsibility for the post-war glut of goods 
 turned out under direction of our fascinated, almost 
 hypnotized, players in the game of business. 
 
 It is the pleasant habit of biographers, presenting 
 successful men to the public gaze, to emphasize the 
 superior ratiocination of their subjects. A succeeded 
 in this great project because he made a wise decision 
 at a certain stage in his career; B, because of his per- 
 sistence in fighting for what seemed to be a lost cause, 
 which he alone of all men knew must be ultimately 
 victorious. Of course, we cannot eliminate intellect 
 altogether as a source of strength in competition ; but 
 with superiors, as with the common run of folks, 
 reason usually comes in to justify and explain deci- 
 sions already made on the basis of the emotions. 
 James J. Hill, for instance, went into railroading be- 
 cause he was a dreamer of dreams ; his nature reacted
 
 THE IRON MAN 69 
 
 instinctively to the challenge of the broad Dakota 
 prairies. Colt clung to his idea of a pistol with a re- 
 volving cartridge-chamber, when other men gave 
 theirs up, because he was more obstinate than they, 
 not because he had better reasoning faculties. The 
 hero of W. L. George's " Caliban," a capital study of 
 the driving type in modern industry, is exceedingly 
 human in this, that he is more emotional than rational. 
 
 The superior mind, of the sort attracted by the mill 
 and the market-place, soon establishes its superiority 
 in an environment where the satisfaction of material 
 wants is of prime importance to society. This domi- 
 nant type of mind may be more difficult to analyze 
 than the mediocre mind, but the difference is one of 
 degree rather than of kind, since all men and wo- 
 men, too dominate as far as they can. Intellect and 
 training are worth while in boss-ship ; but when one of 
 our chief industrial leaders boasts of his ignorance of 
 history, art, and philosophy, and manages his com- 
 mercial undertakings well, minus those backgrounds, 
 we must agree that other factors weigh somewhat 
 heavier. 
 
 No analysis of this type of mind can be complete; 
 but its high spots are plain. First, the universal in- 
 stinct to dominate is highly developed. The man is 
 the child of the lad who ran around the corner in ad- 
 vance of his mates first in their play, first in their 
 mischief, also. As he develops, he shows a determina- 
 tion to amount to something out of the ordinary; 
 some invisible goad spurs him on to efforts which to 
 the unambitious average man seem little short of
 
 70 THE IRON MAN 
 
 superhuman. Then the fellow shows marked adapta- 
 bility. Your picked man, who picks himself, has a 
 superior elasticity. Down to-day, he is up to-morrow ; 
 backed into a corner, he dodges out; thwarted in one 
 direction, he tries, undismayed, another tack. His 
 eye ever on the goal, he twists round many a sharp 
 corner while the wiseacres are predicting disaster. He 
 comes quickly to decisions, and takes prompt advan- 
 tage of chance developments. Circumstance, a run of 
 luck, underlying economic causes, over which he has 
 no control and which he perhaps does not even under- 
 stand these may determine the extent of his fortune 
 and influence; yet the man himself must be credited 
 with daring to put himself in their path, come weal, 
 come woe. 
 
 Experience is his chief school ; but it is one in which 
 he soaks in lessons like a sponge. But, equally im- 
 portant are his gift of getting and holding confidence, 
 and his ability to pick men for their jobs and keep 
 them working together, in spite of personal and pro- 
 fessional jealousies. He must be at once a captain, a 
 coach, and a field-marshal, dealing with all sorts and 
 conditions of men, binding them together in loyalty to 
 himself and the business group. He is a general who 
 maintains discipline in his army, not through power of 
 life or death and the prestige of the state, but by using 
 justly his power of the purse and exerting fairly the 
 pressure of his personality. Indeed, power of purse 
 avails him only with the weak; and it is the strong he 
 must have with him to save his institution unimpaired 
 in the daily battle of the market-place.
 
 THE IRON MAN 71 
 
 So, from whatever standpoint you analyze the men- 
 tal traits of industrial leaders, you come round to the 
 common-sense, blanket explanation of their success 
 personality; always a riddle to read, and here so often 
 electrified by a mystic current of uncertain voltage; 
 now almost dormant, now searingly alive. They do 
 because they are, and favoring circumstances so re- 
 inforce their efforts that there is no stopping them. 
 Sometimes they overdo, whereupon more sober, com- 
 monplace men reap where they have sown. No 
 matter, they have made their contribution. 
 
 In our days these men exert immense power. One 
 such may hold power of the purse over hundreds of 
 thousands of workers and their dependents. Within 
 limits set by economics on one hand and law on the 
 other, he influences their standard of living, their 
 homes, their diet, the education of their children; 
 whether he pays high wages or low, takes on or lays off 
 help, he influences real-estate values and the general 
 prosperity in many communities, and through them 
 the tax-moneys available for schools, parks, play- 
 grounds, and other such compensations for the social 
 sacrifices inherent in industrial processes. 
 
 Again, within the limits set by economic law, what 
 he brings to market and the price he puts upon it 
 affect the well-being of millions of consumers here and 
 abroad. One such man can change the character of a 
 community in five years; transform a quiet country 
 village into an American Essen in ten ; uproot thou- 
 sands of farm-hands from their birth-areas and put 
 them to tending machines; educate whole peoples in
 
 72 THE IRON MAN 
 
 wants; and, in short, shift our world somewhat from 
 what it was economically, socially, politically. Our 
 earth, with petroleum-burning China on its breast, 
 is not what it was before Standard Oil cultivated that 
 market. From whatever aspect you look at them, 
 these are the key-men of the present generation. With- 
 out them we should not be what we are. 
 
 Every industrial community knows its leaders. 
 They are the men behind the pay-rolls. If the big 
 boss, as usually happens, is courting capital in New 
 York, or the state in Washington, or orders in the 
 market-place, or pleasure at Palm Beach, then his 
 chief deputy speaks with the voice of authority. Main 
 Street the bankers and business and professional 
 men knows who's who; likewise the politicians and 
 the press. Of course the work- folk know; they feel 
 the reality of things too well to have illusions on that 
 score. The best story a steel-town paper can print is 
 the one that concerns Gary; the Duponts are now 
 prime news in General-Motors towns, where the name 
 scarcely had been heard before the World War. Get 
 the names of the men behind the pay-roll on your 
 petitions, and the rest is easy. Aldermen withdraw 
 their opposition to public improvements, boards of 
 education reverse themselves overnight, at the sight 
 of those puissant signatures. Mayors are not averse 
 to consulting with factory heads on matters pertain- 
 ing to the general welfare ; and the advice they receive, 
 in all matters not affecting the corporate interest di- 
 rectly, is apt to be thoroughly sane and sound. 
 
 Useless to pout about this deference shown the in-
 
 THE IRON MAN 73 
 
 dustrial leaders of the community. It is rooted deep 
 in reality. The fact is, that any man who exercises 
 such power over the community becomes more than a 
 private citizen. He is a public man, ipso facto, and is 
 treated as such. He means as much to his town as the 
 lord in his castle meant to the mediaeval community 
 clustered about its rocky base ; probably more, since he 
 is less the tax-gatherer and more the cooperator. 
 Through him, in the last analysis, the community 
 functions; through him it gets its goods to market; 
 through him it draws the wherewithal for upkeep, 
 security, growth. The masses may hate their master, 
 or feel toward him admiration akin to love; but what- 
 ever their feeling, they have common sense enough to 
 recognize his mastery, and to accept his leadership in 
 the vital concerns of communal life. 
 
 The analogy with feudalism can be carried further 
 in the larger industrial cities where are many leaders. 
 Community of interest and taste tends to draw the 
 industrial leaders together into a sort of rough-hewn, 
 dominating oligarchy. Like all oligarchies, it has its 
 inside feuds; sometimes there is even a persistent 
 rebel, like Ford in Detroit; but usually, in those mat- 
 ters in which industry touches the community, indus- 
 trial leaders will be found presenting a united front. 
 This unity manifests itself, naturally enough, in de- 
 fending property, combating "agitators" and up- 
 holding law and order. 
 
 But, where these primary interests are not chal- 
 lenged too seriously, the enterprisers frequently orig- 
 inate and push through to completion social-reform
 
 74 THEIRONMAN 
 
 measures of the highest value to the people. After 
 all, they are citizens, with vast appetites for improve- 
 ment, lusting after progress, and chronically out of 
 patience with the slow, feckless methods of govern- 
 ment. They are all for getting things done, and not 
 at all averse to standing well with their fellows. So, 
 from a variety of motives, ranging from lofty ideals of 
 service, through personal vanity, down to sheer self- 
 interest in placating the plebs, they initiate, found, 
 and finance all manner of good works hospitals, 
 charities, clinics, art galleries, symphony orchestras, 
 even as the grandees of olden Europe. 
 
 The people, as older peoples have done, take these 
 things calmly, as a matter of course, without dis- 
 playing too much interest, unless hurried too fast; 
 whereupon they react by voting down a perfectly 
 good charter, or something of the sort, simply to 
 prove that they do not like to be hustled too briskly 
 along the path of progress. 
 
 The leaders of our greatest corporations, in their 
 powers, and their social significance to industrial so- 
 ciety, are modern counterparts of the dukes in days 
 when dukes had power. Duke, from dux, from ducere 
 to lead. Our dukes have won their power in com- 
 petition of the stiffest ; or, if coming to leadership by 
 easier means, they keep it by their talents for ordering 
 and governing. Their dukedoms are holding-corpora- 
 tions, under whose authority are ranged "held" cor- 
 porations, captained by lesser chiefs, each aspiring, in 
 the grim old human way, for higher place and power. 
 A half-dozen such recently rebelled against a new boss,
 
 THEIRONMAN 75- 
 
 and followed their old chief out into a new venture, as 
 boldly as Bonnie Dundee rode out of Edinburgh 
 town. 
 
 The dukes have their official cabinets and their 
 expert advisers, not only in the special concerns of 
 business, but in their broader relations with society, 
 which provide them with markets, labor, funds. They 
 have their economists, psychologists, publicity agents, 
 chaplains. Injecting ministers into departments of 
 personal relations and welfare-work is too common 
 now to be worth a "story" in any publication above 
 the grade of house-organ. The big chiefs have men to 
 write speeches for them, men to interpret news for 
 them, men to study problems for them. Otherwise, 
 they would never get their work done, for all their 
 high speed and long hours. 
 
 United States Steel is one of our modern dukedoms, 
 with holdings in many states and foreign climes, with 
 vessels and railroads at command, with an army of 
 stockholders and a still vaster army of workmen. 
 Ford heads another, and in some ways an even more 
 interesting one, because it has grown up under our 
 eyes in a single generation and is even yet merely the 
 definitely prolonged shadow of an original personality, 
 with a desire to humanize industrial relations. 
 
 Just as the feudal leader who captured the imagina- 
 tion of his followers became the object of a hero-myth, 
 so the Ford myth may be discerned cumulating to- 
 day. The mystic strain in the man draws heavily 
 upon the mysticism of the masses. He is the wonder- 
 worker; at his edict wages rise, and defunct railroads
 
 76 THE IRON MAN 
 
 earn dividends. Able, he must be ; and yet he rose on 
 favoring circumstances, and more than once has been 
 saved by the inexorable operations of economic causes 
 which he gives no hint of comprehending. But there 
 is no use citing those causes to a Ford enthusiast ; the 
 Ford myth is already too strong. Some day it may be 
 as hard to discover the cold truth about Ford as it is 
 about Cromwell, Napoleon, or Washington. The 
 Roosevelt myth is already set, adamant and inde- 
 structible; the Ford myth is still growing, gaining 
 strength and depth day by day. Well, we cannot es- 
 cape our myths and must live with them, for better 
 or worse. The point is that, since myths accumulate 
 around none other than socially significant persons, 
 the Ford myth validates Ford as socially significant in 
 the court of last resort the soul of the masses. 
 
 The significance of industrial leaders in our days 
 may be measured almost mathematically. When a 
 smith employing two helpers bargained with the third, 
 the newcomer was one fourth as significant as the 
 boss. When the boss has 20,000 men under him, 
 then the man on the outside, looking in for a job, is 
 only 1/20002 as significant as the other, and the boss, 
 for practical purposes, bulks as large in the commu- 
 nity as 20,000 helpers. Probably more, because, the 
 more power is concentrated, the deeper it cuts through 
 the social strata. 
 
 How significant an industrial leader can be to a 
 town is brought forcibly home by a sudden shift in the 
 succession of grand dukes in our town. The former 
 incumbent, whose industries employed 25,000 of our
 
 THEIRONMAN 77 
 
 100,000 population, was a native son, who started on 
 a shoestring and went far enough to be deposed in 
 Wall Street. He was a mighty seller of goods, not 
 primarily a financier; and, in order to have goods to 
 sell, he built, it seems, somewhat too fast and furi- 
 ously. In building factories he also built a city 
 13000, to 100,000, in twenty years. 
 
 Ten years ago or so he left us for New York, thereby 
 becoming an absentee duke; but occasionally he re- 
 turned on flying trips, which were duly noted in the 
 public prints for our guidance and satisfaction. Even 
 in absentia, however, he remained our leading citizen. 
 We leaned upon him in ways that must have tried his 
 patience. We could get no highly important public 
 enterprise under way until he had given it his sanction 
 by telegraph or messenger. Ever and anon we held 
 him up for money. His name was on our lips oftener 
 than that of any president except Roosevelt. So he 
 was our hero, actual at the start, mythical toward the 
 end almost our god. In fact, I fancy some of our 
 real-estate men prayed to him o' nights, since he so 
 clearly possessed the power to make or break them. 
 All the young fellows admired him, because he was 
 doing precisely what they would have liked to do if 
 they could ; the elders were grateful to him for boost- 
 ing the value of their holdings. Even those too con- 
 servative to buy his stocks found their realty values 
 soaring as he built. He was our bridge to fortune ; we 
 relied upon him for prosperity, and usually got it 
 with little trouble. Our local autocrat was Billy, yet 
 he graciously kept the velvet glove over the iron hand,
 
 78 THE IRON MAN 
 
 and preferred to stand among us rather as first among 
 equals. 
 
 In return, we gave him loyalty, and as little bother 
 as a pioneer engaged in large-scale operations could 
 expect. Labor troubles were rare. His old workmen 
 knew him, and talked about him to the new ones. All 
 were aware that he played baseball as a kid, sold fire 
 insurance as a youth, and battled through to the top 
 by himself. All agreed that he was generous and 
 democratic, called folks by their first names, and was 
 not above darting into a quick lunch for a sandwich. 
 Our newspapers never missed an opportunity to 
 praise at once his eminence and his commonplaceness. 
 Labor was for him on two counts : first, he paid high 
 wages and never cut them; second, he did not fit in 
 neatly with the Wall Street scheme of things. Wages 
 were cut when he was out of the saddle and Wall 
 Street in the saddle; ergo, Billy was the friend of the 
 boys, and Wall Street their enemy. As a matter of 
 fact, perhaps, if costs had been watched acutely, 
 there would have been no need to go to Wall Street 
 for funds. But that question need not enter here. 
 
 Now the "boys" have a new boss, whom they have 
 never seen, and they have taken a wage-cut. The 
 morale in the factories is low; the men are working 
 efficiently with " the fear of God " in their hearts. But 
 the fear is not so much of God as of the Big Stick. 
 Loyalty has worn thin; their hero has departed; the 
 rank and file have lost their comforting myth and 
 face stark reality. They speak of the notable Ameri- 
 can family now in control, and with a century-old 
 
 '
 
 THEIRONMAN 79 
 
 record of fair dealing with labor, as " them Jews from 
 Wall Street." These new bosses they have never 
 seen, and they have no conception of them as other 
 than a power over their lives, a far-away, intangible 
 power, impersonal almost as the Deity. The men, as 
 I write, are sore, feeling themselves caught and about 
 to be sacrificed to a money Moloch. This may be, I 
 think it is, nonsense; but it is mental poison to Tom, 
 Dick, and Harry; and time the sovereign antidote 
 will be required to disillusion them. Another myth 
 must grow up around the central figure in their work- 
 relations before they can forget Duke Billy, and fol- 
 low confidently their new leader. 
 
 It has become rather the fashion for our modern 
 dukes to leave their plants to assistants, and take 
 themselves off to New York, where they pay court to 
 King Capital as assiduously as the dukes of France 
 courted the Bourbons. There must be some economic 
 advantage in this hegira; but there certainly are dis- 
 advantages. This is the last step in the separation of 
 the man and his boss in sympathies, in mutual re- 
 sponsibilities as citizens in the community. Even 
 Billy was growing away from us toward the end; a 
 less imaginative man would have done so long before. 
 
 The simple lives of workingmen, their hard-won 
 homes and brave efforts to maintain the American 
 standard of living in those homes these ought to be 
 under the eyes of their real boss most of the time. 
 Statements of accountants, earnings-sheets and cost- 
 records, show less than the great employer needs to 
 know. The best welfare-work many a corporation
 
 8o THE IRON MAN 
 
 chief could do would be to come home and take a per- 
 sonal interest in the human problems of his factory. 
 But where the big boss has a dozen, or two dozen, 
 plants in his string, what then? The evil holds; the 
 remedy is not so apparent. 
 
 This brings us face to face with one of the puzzles 
 of the Industrial Age. How far can concentration of 
 industry go? Has it reached its limits? No categor- 
 ical answer is possible ; but the evidence leans toward 
 the affirmative. 
 
 While the law may set temporary limits upon com- 
 binations, economics has the last word. Business is 
 personality applied to the satisfaction of material 
 wants through cooperating humans. The cooperat- 
 ing group which the leader captains is likely to be a 
 measure of his ability to lead, since the group will not 
 long remain efficient beyond the limits of his author- 
 ity. If the big boss cannot bring his will to bear upon 
 the furthest-removed laborer in the company's fur- 
 thest-removed mill, then the corporation is too large to 
 function economically under him. Competition will 
 enforce one of two changes either the group will be 
 reduced in size to the point where the management 
 functions efficiently, or a new manager must be 
 sought. If a new manager cannot be found, efficient 
 enough to cope with the extended problem, the group 
 proceeds toward dissolution, usually not in one slide 
 into bankruptcy, but by a gradual descent, inter- 
 rupted by stages where things are held steady by 
 efficient management. At any of these stages, how- 
 ever, the problem is precisely the same as it was at
 
 THE IRON MAN 81 
 
 the beginning; if the manager is bigger than his job, 
 the concern can grow up to the limit of governing cir- 
 cumstances; otherwise, it will take another slide. The 
 decline of a corporation, like the decline of a state, 
 the Roman Empire, for example, is marked by a 
 feverish search for leaders, and by stages of advance 
 or retreat, according as those leaders meet effectively 
 the circumstances confronting them. 
 
 The extent to which industry may be concentrated, 
 therefore, depends upon two factors: the personal 
 force behind the decision, and the receptivity of labor 
 to that thought-transference. The further away labor 
 stands from the real boss, in space, ideals, habit of 
 thought, and manner of life, the more difficult it be- 
 comes to maintain authority in toil, side by side with 
 democracy in politics. Since, in a pinch between the 
 two, the latter may be considered the stronger and 
 more enduring, the tendency of the future, in theory, 
 must be toward smaller units rather than larger, un- 
 less some unforeseen improvement in communication 
 is effected. Practically, of course, the amelioration of 
 present-day discontent by compromises toward co- 
 operation may check the theoretical tendency; and 
 it is even possible that, as industry advances toward 
 more complete cooperation, still larger units may be 
 agglomerated under one head. But that will merely 
 be the substitution of a mental getting- together for 
 the physical getting-together which meant so much 
 to labor in the old days, and the loss of which now 
 distresses the laborer. Needless to say, the path 
 toward this mental rapprochement is roundabout and
 
 82 THE IRON MAN 
 
 difficult, as compared with the direct short cut of the 
 boss on the job; and it may not be worth the effort, 
 when the man behind the pay-roll can come home 
 and get on the big end of his job work-relations. 
 Finance is a necessary evil ; speculation an unnecessary 
 evil work is neither, and must be served. 
 
 From not more than twenty per cent of the popula- 
 tion is drawn the industrial aristocracy whose tenure 
 of power rests absolutely upon their ability to think 
 and do. That group contains those who have risen from 
 the ranks, as well as those coming, ready financed, 
 to the seats of the mighty. But it is worthy of note 
 that, while inherited wealth may place a man aloft, 
 it cannot guarantee his continuing in authority. There 
 is always room at the top, because the mortality rate 
 in industrial leadership is so high. One stumble, 
 and the victim usually may as well hand in his resig- 
 nation. If he is too firmly fixed in his seat for quick 
 removal, competition whittles away at the foundation 
 of his structure. Make good or go down that is 
 the iron law of industry. 
 
 There is this ever-present social danger in competi- 
 tion that it drives men to decisions oftentimes 
 harsher than they would make if they were not under 
 its pressure. To preserve his group-organization his 
 corporation solvent and efficient must ever be the 
 chief concern of the industrial leader. Competition 
 may not always give him time to work out plans fruit- 
 ing far away; the financial situation may force him 
 to adopt a harsh course with labor to-day, for in- 
 stance, when he knows full well that, in the long run, a
 
 THEIRONMAN 83 
 
 more considerate policy would be beneficial. Gener- 
 ally speaking, the man of ideals in industry finds play 
 for his idealism in proportion as his enterprise is com- 
 fortably financed ; when capital the power to wait 
 gives him a chance to take at leisure hurdles which 
 less-well-financed concerns must take in a rush. The 
 better his position, the stronger he is for the long run. 
 
 A noteworthy example is that of Judge Gary in de- 
 clining to cut wages as swiftly as minor concerns did, 
 either through necessity or choice. The so-called 
 soullessness of corporations is subject to this qualifi- 
 cation : in so far as money and prevision can compen- 
 sate for the human touch, the larger the business, the 
 fairer are its practices. Here, again, the reaction of 
 the corporation to ethics in trade and employment is 
 largely the reaction of its leader. Big business cannot 
 afford to be mean and small ; its shop policy must be 
 as straight as its market policy; and where either is 
 crooked, the fault lies usually with a subordinate or 
 distributor, who has played the company false. I 
 refer here to conscious crookedness, and not to in- 
 justices which sometimes flow from mistaken policies 
 applied with overbearing weight. 
 
 How to keep competition on a plane where enter- 
 prisers ethically inclined can satisfy labor, their stock- 
 holders, and the market is a chief concern of the 
 public in our day. Cheap goods are a boon; but if 
 competition toward cheapness grinds labor down in 
 morale and buying power, the worth-whileness of 
 cheap goods vanishes into thin air. We heard much, 
 some years ago, about fair competition, which was
 
 84 THE IRON MAN 
 
 interpreted to mean the restricting of competition to 
 a point where small-scale operators could continue 
 production when opposed by large-scale operators. 
 There is, of course, much to be said for that; but, on 
 the other hand, there would equally be something to 
 be said on the advisability of protecting large-scale 
 enterprises, with liberal labor policies, against small- 
 scale competitors, whose labor-code is more primitive. 
 Certainly the ethics of employment an advancing 
 code, upon which I pin more faith than upon any 
 other factor for the unraveling of the tangle of inter- 
 ests and instincts into which the common use of auto- 
 matic machinery has brought modern society 
 scarcely can reach fruition in an absolutely free and 
 open field, where the least ethical travel light, and the 
 more ethical are under self-imposed weights. Yet 
 dynamic forces cannot be standardized. Associations 
 of producers may go some distance in relieving this 
 situation. Public opinion, perhaps, may do more by 
 supporting the citizen-boss and frowning upon the 
 miser-boss. If these do not serve, then the state 
 doubtless will try its hand whether for good or 
 evil, none may say in advance of trial. 
 
 For the state must reckon with the men who boss 
 automatic machinery, whose commands bring forth 
 new machines and shift populations, whose success 
 fills the coffers of the Federal treasury with taxes, 
 whose exports create trade-balances, and whose im- 
 ports create treasury-balances. If the state had no 
 concern for the common man in his wrestling with 
 the Iron Man, if the state were pure capitalist, it still
 
 THEIRONMAN 85 
 
 would have to reckon with the uncommon man in the 
 industrial saddle. But a state tinged ever so little 
 with democracy, even faintly conscious of its respon- 
 sibilities to the mass, must consider how the mass 
 fares under its bosses while operating these new tools. 
 In this America of ours, founded in revolt and geared 
 to universal suffrage, there is no dodging that issue, 
 even for an instant. 
 
 Our industrial leaders, rather than the statesmen 
 and educators, carry the destinies of modern America 
 on their shoulders. They are doing some very won- 
 derful things, some of which they but dimly appre- 
 hend. At the same time that they are raising the 
 standard of living, they are contributing to a solidar- 
 ity of labor and a mediocrity of type hitherto un- 
 known in America. Variations of earning power and 
 social position, based on craft-skill, are disappearing 
 from our world. Rural and town labor are fusing in 
 ideas as in function. Our ablest minds set the 
 public a pace so fast that weak spots are uncovered 
 in the mental armor of less competent individ- 
 uals, a process tending toward lower levels in the 
 plebs. 
 
 But perhaps the most important thing that they 
 are doing, of which they are not altogether conscious, 
 appears on the credit side of the ledger. They are 
 training the workaday world in cooperation. No 
 such school of cooperation in mundane affairs has 
 ever been set up as that operated for profit by Amer- 
 ican corporations. With every improvement in proc- 
 ess and every expansion of scope, the day is brought
 
 86 THE IRON MAN 
 
 nearer when the lesson shall have been learned and 
 the attempt to apply it made. 
 
 Whether the attempt to amend the basis of indus- 
 trial cooperation in the popular interest shall succeed, 
 depends in large measure on the orientation which our 
 driving men of affairs make in the face of the growing 
 demand by the workers for a larger share in shaping 
 their own destinies. As I see the situation, the at- 
 tempt will fail unless practical, experienced minds 
 give it direction and leadership. We shall have ex- 
 actly as much, perhaps more, need for industrial 
 leaders then, need for their adaptability, their deter- 
 mination ; and we shall have to make such terms with 
 them as will keep them in the game, or else let civiliza- 
 tion slump. The trend toward cooperation proceeds 
 with infinite variety of adjustments between dynamic 
 forces, and must go forward in that way; standardiza- 
 tion would be fatal to our whole order. 
 
 But the impulse toward cooperation is strong and 
 determining one of those popular, settled mandates 
 before which the few must bow or yield. The few can 
 best serve society and themselves by yielding grace- 
 fully but not too soon ; seeking always to preserve the 
 identity of their groups; building upon the public 
 service which those groups indubitably perform, and 
 trusting the public to recognize that service in due 
 time; contenting themselves with the social by-prod- 
 ucts of power eminence, public regard, and clear 
 consciences in lieu of the baser satisfactions which 
 minister to individual wants and vanities.
 
 V 
 INDUSTRY AND THE STATE 
 
 SPEAKING of John Marshall, former Senator 
 Beveridge says: "He was a true gentleman, in 
 that he respected the personalities of others, even of 
 the humblest." The Iron Man, from this standpoint, 
 is no gentleman, since his invasion of personality is 
 instant and ruthless. Men schooled in independence 
 and fed high on the truths, half-truths, and fallacies of 
 democracy, resent this invasion instinctively, though 
 they may be brought by training and experience to 
 accommodate themselves to it. Necessity forces a 
 compromise with the feelings, and habit comes to their 
 rescue; nevertheless, millions of self-assertive egos 
 struggle every hour of our days and nights against the 
 monotony and subordination involved in the "vast, 
 repetitive processes" of modern industry. The de- 
 fective may not be irked by the grind, the effective 
 may be roused to enthusiasm by opportunities which 
 automatic machinery and interchangeable manufac- 
 ture offer to his ambitions ; but the mass lying between 
 these upper and nether layers of the social cake is 
 neither content nor thrilled. Hence the widespread 
 fretfulness which we call social unrest. 
 
 The articulate note of this unrest, and its chief polit- 
 ical aspect, is resentment against owners and managers 
 of machines, against capitalists, bosses, and propri- 
 etors. It has many catch-phrases, of which "indus- 
 trial democracy" is just now the most meaningful. In
 
 88 THE IRON MAN 
 
 deference to this outcry from the mass, legislatures 
 here and abroad have busied themselves for many 
 years in passing laws in control of work-relations and 
 abridging individual liberty in the use and disposition 
 of property. A goodly share of current legislation is 
 of this regulatory character ; and of late we have seen 
 an extension of this influence in the granting to certain 
 groups of citizens notably to farmers organized into 
 cooperative societies and laborers organized into 
 unions of a license to do what groups of managers 
 and proprietors may not do. Nevertheless, unrest 
 continues, and more persons listen daily without 
 protest to proposals that the institution of private 
 property either be destroyed, root and branch, or at 
 least excluded from control over all socially necessary 
 forms of wealth. 
 
 Champions of these extremist proposals have not 
 overlooked the asocial and anti-social effects of grow- 
 ing automatization. They consider that the increasing 
 use of automatic machinery under private ownership 
 presents to society and the state the evils of industrial 
 capitalism in such concentrated form, that the prole- 
 tariat must come into control of the machines, or 
 descend into a new slavery. Industry, they say, is 
 not worth preserving unless socialized. Socialists 
 would effect this through the state; Communists 
 through group administration of property held and 
 worked in common a modern adaptation of the 
 ancient commune. Anarchists prefer a governorless 
 society, in which the nice adjustments of modern in- 
 dustry, based as they are on enforceable contracts,
 
 THEIRONMAN 89 
 
 could not be maintained. Inside these major align- 
 ments are many divisions, which so far weaken the 
 practical politics of the opposition that the institution 
 of private property, firmly rooted in the instincts, 
 continues to function in countries nominally Socialist, 
 and to gain strength month by month even in Com- 
 munist Russia. 
 
 Observing labor's dissatisfaction to be increasing, 
 despite increased reward and higher standards of liv- 
 ing, it is inevitable that men take to explaining 
 radicalism in non-economic terms. One says "work- 
 neurosis"; another, " overstimulation of modern life"; 
 still another, Stewart Paton of Princeton, stresses 
 "the defense reactions of inadequates." Granting a 
 measure of truth to each diagnosis, no single one is 
 altogether satisfactory; and, even lumped together, 
 they do not quite satisfy. To say that individuals suf- 
 ficient to influence social judgments are inadequate 
 to meet their personal problems competently, is quite 
 as severe a judgment upon the civilization presenting 
 those problems to frail humanity as it is upon frail 
 humans for being downhearted in their presence. 
 When a system of living becomes too complex for the 
 common man of good-will to adjust himself thereto 
 with reasonable comfort and confidence, the inade- 
 quacy is the system's, not the individual's. Life and 
 human nature are primary; civilization and industry 
 are secondary to them, and cannot be maintained 
 unamended much longer than the masses find them 
 worth while. He who forgets this elemental fact builds 
 his theories upon the sand; the state which does not
 
 9 o THE IRON MAN 
 
 reckon with it at every turn is preparing for revolution. 
 
 Regulation of industrial processes by the state in 
 the interest of society, therefore, is sound in principle, 
 however ill devised its regulating ordinances may be, 
 however cumbersome and wasteful its administrative 
 processes. States may not be proceeding by the most 
 direct routes to correct the social weaknesses which 
 modern industry develops ; but the people surely have 
 shown common sense in insisting that each state at- 
 tend to the situation as best it can before the case 
 gets out of hand. Perceiving the foundations of so- 
 ciety to be shaken by the competitive strivings of our 
 effectives, the potency of machine industry to breed 
 war, shift populations, cause the race to degenerate, 
 and rob life of many of its humbler compensations, 
 our people would ill deserve their political heritage 
 did they not strive, however blindly, to correct the 
 balance by calling in their sovereign ally the state. 
 The call has been sounded and heard. The state may 
 have fumbled; nevertheless, it has moved. To-day 
 the danger is not so much that the state may lag, as 
 that it may move too fast and too far, shifting over 
 from a reasonable control, in which innovators may 
 work out their ideas without substantial distress to 
 the public, to arbitrary direction under which bu- 
 reaucracy stifles individual initiative and autocracy 
 nullifies group-decisions. 
 
 There is apparent in the civilized world to-day a 
 drift toward state control of industry, so marked that 
 it may bring us shortly to a conscious revival of 
 "state mercantilism." Read out of court long since
 
 THE IRON MAN 91 
 
 by Adam Smith in his "Wealth of Nations," political 
 manipulation of trade draws renewed strength from a 
 number of sources. Foremost, of course, is this de- 
 fensive reaction, wide and strong, by the people 
 against submergence in automatism. Coal-and-iron 
 states depend for solvency more than ever upon busi- 
 ness earnings. Nationals expect their states to pro- 
 tect their overseas profits and investments, from 
 which develops the corollary that states must guard 
 against possible consequences by approving overseas 
 economic adventures in advance. Political invasion 
 of business, breaking down easily into class and spe- 
 cial legislation, offers unusual opportunities to poli- 
 ticians to expand their influence and emoluments, and 
 is as water on the wheels of bureaucracies keen to 
 perpetuate themselves. Improvements in transpor- 
 tation and communication now make comparatively 
 easy intense economic unity in even the largest of 
 industrial states. Their governments, too, are mov- 
 ing consciously to alleviate domestic unrest and build 
 up nationalist strength, by assisting their nationals to 
 export goods and import raw materials on favorable 
 terms, to the end that jobs may be plenty and ques- 
 tions few. 
 
 Many lesser considerations might be listed, among 
 them the witless habit of the press in forever calling 
 upon the state to do something about something, usu- 
 ally something which the press soon will have for- 
 gotten and later shall regret. The result of all these 
 forces is a steady drift toward popular acceptance of 
 the state as a sovereign economic as well as a sover-
 
 92 THE IRON MAN 
 
 eign political unit; but here again the pragmatist in 
 politics perceives the danger as one of excess rather 
 than of direction. 
 
 Before establishing the state as the everyday dicta- 
 tor of business, before advancing the statesman from 
 the role of referee to that of manager, it is well to 
 consider gravely the character and limitations of the 
 state and its animators. The people, feeding on 
 phrases, take as inspired revelation too much clap- 
 trap. It is high time to discuss in terms of reality in- 
 stitutions usually dismissed in shibboleths. The 
 words "industrial democracy" stand out nobly by 
 themselves; but it is worth pondering whether, in 
 practice, industrial democracy would not degenerate, 
 as political democracy has degenerated, into a mazy 
 intrigue of wordy place-hunting and piffling confer- 
 ences, in which facile chaps who will promise any- 
 thing too often outstrip blunt men who can promise 
 nothing. A political democracy so poisoned and en- 
 snared may be borne with, in spite of its disabilities, 
 for the sake of its past and for the faith in its future. 
 But to make and sell goods on that basis would be as 
 impossible as for Uncle Sam to lift himself by his 
 boot-straps. A strong commercial nation can carry 
 poor government a long way without breaking; yet 
 the most efficient government so far organized by 
 man would be helpless in the industrial complex that 
 free peoples have developed through bargaining. 
 
 To admit the practical limitations of state sover- 
 eignty is exactly as important as admitting the state's 
 vital interest in just work- relations. By common
 
 THE IRON MAN 93 
 
 consent we accept the sovereignty of the state, for the 
 sake of tranquillity at home and safety abroad. Those 
 powers which, in private hands, lead to the oppression 
 of the many by the few, the right to make and en- 
 force laws, to maintain armed forces, make war, levy 
 customs and taxes, these inhere in the state as we 
 know it. Yet the truth is that these sovereign powers 
 are the result of growth, accretion, conquest, and are 
 maintained only by ceaseless vigilance. The state, 
 here and there, is even now extending its dominion 
 over education to include supervision over private 
 educational institutions. And it seems likely that, 
 presently, it will have to resist the invasion of its 
 monopoly over armed forces by declaring against the 
 growing tendency of corporations to rely for property 
 protection upon companies of private guards, a prac- 
 tice common in sparsely settled sections and often 
 producing grave results, as in West Virginia of late. 
 Broadly speaking, whatever power the state may 
 gain is never yielded except on compulsion or through 
 negligence. Revolution active or passive is the 
 only certain means by which the governed can re- 
 cover valid freedom of action in lines over which the 
 state has assumed sovereignty. This fact alone ought 
 to be enough to give us pause in the process of ex- 
 panding sovereign powers over business. To yield 
 rights is easier far than to regain them. Those liberties 
 for work and trade, which we enjoy so carelessly and 
 seem to value so lightly, were wrung from states by 
 men who knew the oppressions of state management, 
 and esteemed such rights the essence of freedom. To
 
 94 THE IRON MAN 
 
 surrender them at whim, or fired by ideas which time 
 is likely to prove fallacious, is absurdly imprudent. 
 
 Theoretically, the state can commandeer the per- 
 sons and properties of its citizens; actually, the proc- 
 ess is difficult, except when the nation is one with 
 the state in purpose. But the state's empire ends 
 with tangibles ; it cannot coerce the intangibles ; can- 
 not summon talents and loyalties by fiat. At every 
 point in its progress, the state wins and holds loyalty 
 only by conferring benefits, real or fancied ; and upon 
 penalty of utter stagnation, it must give talent 
 elbow-room. 
 
 Political history reveals a never-ending conflict be- 
 tween the mass and the class for the control of the 
 state's political machinery. In a democracy the con- 
 flict may be considered as resolved in favor of the 
 mass, in theory, if not always in practice. The very 
 existence of the state is, indeed, a triumph for the 
 common man ; the institution is his champion against 
 defective and effective alike; the state is his, and he 
 made it in his own image. 
 
 Deep in his heart the common man is conservative. 
 Social revolutions are begun by extraordinary men of 
 Utopian vision ; but after a while, the cloud-compellers 
 must come down to earth and make good a programme 
 of simplification. Usually they move too slowly toward 
 moderation to satisfy the people, and so lose their 
 heads along with their leadership. The French Revo- 
 lution erected a state which was to enforce Liberty, 
 Equality, and Fraternity, and ended in enforcing 
 peasant-proprietorship. Russia is headed in the same
 
 THEIRONMAN 95 
 
 direction; the Bolshevist swing from left to right is 
 in the nature of things. The complications of the 
 Communist regime have bitterly disappointed the 
 peasantry, who thought life under the Empire and in 
 the Mir already too complicated, and fancied that life 
 might be simpler with those institutions abolished. 
 Madero talked the Brotherhood of Man to his Mex- 
 icans for years; but not until he promised them "forty 
 acres and a mule" did his campaign sweep the coun- 
 try. Indeed, the equivalent of forty acres and a mule 
 security and independence made certain in some 
 time-honored, clearly understood way is precisely 
 what the common man needs and wants. Our radi- 
 cals of to-day play, consequently, upon a resentment 
 conservative at base the distress of simple natures 
 at impacts of forces beyond their ken ; the hankering 
 of the many to get back to a scheme of life in which 
 they can be more self-reliant and lean less upon factors 
 beyond their control. 
 
 Too much emphasis has been given, I think, to the 
 hypothetical quarrel over the division of profits, as an 
 incentive to social unrest. That has its influence, of 
 course ; but too much can be made of it. Our common 
 man, now as ever, expects from life little more than a 
 living sensible view, since that is all he gets, and 
 probably all he ever can get. His chief quarrel lies, 
 I think, not with the pay, but with the work and the 
 conditions under which it goes forward. Above all 
 else, he prefers to earn his living in old, tried ways, 
 without too much fretting and shifting. He resents 
 change ; his chief grudge against his leaders and mas-
 
 96 THE IRON MAN 
 
 ters of to-day is that they will not let him alone, to do 
 as his fathers did before him, to do now as he himself 
 did ten years ago. Left to himself, he would have 
 settled with the machine at its birth by torch and 
 axe. 
 
 Progress may deliver physical comfort and conven- 
 ience ; but to minds essentially static, these boons may 
 be bought at too much of mental discomfort and in- 
 convenience. Progress involves insecurity along with 
 change; since security is a primal need of his nature, 
 the common man is bound to doubt the desirability of 
 progress. He has succeeded in passing this doubt 
 along to the state to this extent, that the state stands 
 first of all for security, and is suspicious of novelty. 
 The state is a reservoir, sometimes stale and foul, of 
 tradition and precedent, a bulwark of order and me- 
 diocrity, and the most static thing in a changing uni- 
 verse, except its former team-mate the church. 
 The very name the state implies no change ; a 
 misnomer, perhaps, yet significant as expressing the 
 mass ideal of security. 
 
 The sovereign state represents the common sense 
 of common folk. "Better one master than many," 
 say the people, ever and ever, after trying the many; 
 "better even tyranny than oligarchy; better to be 
 chained to an immovable post than batted through 
 life by irresistible forces." So the masses have de- 
 cided time and again, and must ever decide when 
 the issue is drawn between institutionalized and per- 
 sonalized power. Their decisions, in the past, have 
 seldom been articulate; but their acquiescence comes
 
 THE IRON MAN 97 
 
 down to the same thing. The strong can protect 
 themselves ; they have no need of law, while the weak 
 need it every hour. 
 
 Political action, then, is the answer of those who 
 plod to those who leap. Through statutes and 
 courts are expressed, in due course, verdicts enforce- 
 able because approved by settled public opinion. In 
 the very nature of the state itself, the sovereign ver- 
 dict is normally negative. ' ' Thus far and no farther, ' ' 
 says the state to these gifted individuals who, singly 
 or in groups, and answering egoistic urges, would 
 drive the masses ahead of them, in order to satisfy 
 measurably their personal instincts toward domi- 
 nance. In emergencies the state assumes positive 
 direction, and speaks in the affirmative, saying, "Go 
 and do," instead of the usual " Halt and do not." But 
 for a democracy this right-about-face is a forced putt, 
 and wearies folk who fret under compulsion in any 
 form, and resent it all the more in unaccustomed 
 forms. Democratic governments take the initiative 
 at their peril: vide our mid-war elections. Even 
 an autocratic state plays with fire when it marshals, 
 economic forces and attempts to direct progress ; soon 
 it must return to its static ideal, perhaps to dry-rot 
 the faster for the lianas of red tape generated in its 
 enforced activity. 
 
 In proportion as our government departs from rea- 
 sonable control of individual and group efforts, it 
 vitiates its constitutional principles and slides toward 
 autocracy, no less autocratic because power may 
 have shifted from rich to poor, from informed to ig-
 
 98 THE IRON MAN 
 
 norant. Moreover, democracy never creates : men 
 gifted individuals plunge out of the mass, to create, 
 in the sight of their less gifted but envious fellows, 
 those ameliorations of life which, in their complex and 
 imperfect workings, constitute civilization. Conse- 
 quently, control, and not direction of personal and 
 group efforts, is and should remain the accredited 
 means of protecting our society from becoming the 
 pawns of its industrial leaders. Other peoples, less 
 individualist in tradition and with less to lose, may go 
 further; but for us the losses involved in state-led 
 industry must far exceed the gains. 
 
 There was a time when this conflict between mass 
 and class, between mediocrity and ability, between 
 the state and outstanding individuals, was compli- 
 cated by the overshadowing tradition of the Rights of 
 Man certain inalienable rights, vested in each of 
 us by mere accident of birth. Fortunately, these need 
 not becloud the present situation. When business 
 leaders of a century or more ago, seeking limitation 
 of risk, struck that bargain with the State of New 
 York, resulting in the first general incorporation law 
 (1811), they exchanged a measure of commercial lib- 
 erty for a measure of legal protection. Now that 
 business functions almost entirely through corpora- 
 tions, the state's ultimate authority over business 
 stands undebatable. The state charters the corpora- 
 tion ; licenses it to live so many years, for purposes of 
 profit, in the doing of this or the holding of that. The 
 created never can rise superior to its creator. No 
 matter how great a corporation or the whole net-
 
 THE IRON MAN 99 
 
 work of corporations grows, the masterful busi- 
 ness bloc, a genuine community in thought if not in 
 loco, never can dodge the dour truth that there is a 
 greater than itself the state. 
 
 Furthermore, the business bloc must realize that the 
 state acts, ultimately, upon the mandate of the people. 
 The state, on receipt of that mandate may delay, con- 
 sult its beloved precedents, mark time to escape the 
 possible errors of snap judgment, and to give counter- 
 propaganda a hearing; but if popular pressure be 
 maintained, eventually it must act as directed, on 
 penalty of revolution. Even so conservative a body 
 as the Supreme Court discovers that it is possible to 
 change opinions from one decade to another, without 
 bringing the Constitution down in ruins; indeed, if the 
 masses remain insistent, a quiet mental revolution in 
 high places is the approved method of averting a 
 noisy physical revolution in the streets. 
 
 ' The great cause of revolution," according to 
 Macaulay, "is this, that while nations move onward, 
 constitutions stand still." Yes, but interpretation is a 
 buffer absorbing many shocks ; the legal mind, pressed 
 hard enough, discovers divers ways of letting "free- 
 dom broaden slowly down from precedent to prece- 
 dent," that would astonish the Fathers. Call up all the 
 traditions you please; they have but advisory, not 
 primary, value. The adjustment between the state 
 and the corporation proceeds, therefore, on the basis 
 of expediency. The people, through their coercive 
 agent, the state, will go as far as need be to pro- 
 tect their primary interests; and stop, presumably,
 
 ioo THE IRON MAN 
 
 only when convinced that nothing can be gained by 
 going further. 
 
 In other times and places states have fought their 
 aspiring individuals on battlefields and battlements; 
 now the state proceeds in law and courts and legisla- 
 tures, though none the less vital for all its peaceful 
 setting. Two projections of Man's imaginative fac- 
 ulty grapple there with one another. Neither was in 
 the beginning, yet it is impossible for most of us to 
 imagine the end of either. They are will-associations, 
 become so natural to us that life without them would 
 be chaos. Yet even in their most desperate clinches, 
 the animating minds behind each are aware that each 
 is essential to the other, and that, were one to fall, the 
 other must be dragged in its train. So they face each 
 other, mutually distrustful, mutually dependent, like 
 Siamese twins, who never agree completely, yet must 
 agree somewhat to get anywhere. 
 
 On the one side is the highest expression of the so- 
 cial will, the state, captained by two sorts of men 
 able tribunes and mouthy demagogues, and manned by 
 bureaucrats fatuously obsessed, for the most part, by 
 the status quo. On the other side are ranged lusty, 
 virile children of their stodgy sire business organi- 
 zations in which many persons, following the univer- 
 sal instinct to get the most at the least effort, cohere 
 under the leadership of gifted individuals spurred to 
 achievement by overmastering instincts toward dom- 
 inance. One, the apotheosis of political genius, fixed, 
 august a unity; the other a coherence of economic 
 genius, ganglion of many groups, each highly adapt-
 
 THEIRONMAN 101 
 
 able. The latter capable of doing anything well, pro- 
 vided there is money in it, and few questions asked; 
 applying boldly what power it has, and avid for more ; 
 the former fumbling over tasks that its servants ought 
 to know well ; yet scrupulous to a hair, and chary of 
 exercising its full powers except in emergencies. 
 
 The state is a conscience, slow, majestic, just, more 
 concerned with principles than returns, with methods 
 than results; the corporation is a will, effective, 
 shrewd, justifying means by ends, born to make 
 money by getting things done, and impatient at what- 
 ever baulks the fulfillment of that destiny. The one 
 is static, cleaving to precedent, cherishing tradition 
 and gratefully adopting new myths, as such spring 
 from the incurable mysticism of the masses. The 
 other is dynamic, blind to the past, keen toward the 
 future, ignoring costs which do not show on the ledger, 
 and prone to pass along those costs among which are 
 the asocial and anti-social effects of automatic ma- 
 chinery to the state for settlement. 
 
 This is merely a new phrasing of a problem old as 
 history, in fact, the key-problem of civilization, 
 how shall the mass preserve its rights and grow in the 
 fullness thereof, and yet give dominant individuals 
 enough leeway to contribute to life ameliorations 
 which they alone can give in abundance, contributions 
 which eventually become part of the social heritage? 
 In a democracy whose founders bargained in council 
 to establish the state, and for a people who live by 
 bringing things to market almost entirely upon the 
 basis of the bargain, this is the root-bargain of all.
 
 102 THE IRON MAN 
 
 How the bargain is struck, what are its terms and im- 
 plications, and how it is enforced and amended in 
 these terms may nations be interpreted, as they 
 move toward unity or dissolution. 
 
 France, through the Middle Ages, relieved her 
 nobles of power and left them their privileges. The 
 monarchy became absolute, the nobles, courtiers; and 
 Louis XIV could say with truth, "I am the state." 
 Descendants of great captains, local leaders who had 
 kept provinces and populations in line for the state, 
 degenerated into puppets. Since the state did every- 
 thing, they had nothing left to do ; and presently were 
 able to do nothing more meaningful than watch Louis 
 don his shirt. When a smile from the King's mistress 
 came to mean more than famine in their titular do- 
 mains, revolution waited just around the corner. 
 Then, when the monarchy had sore need of men to 
 plan, to organize, to fight, these tissue-leaders had 
 nothing with which to brace the state which had 
 sucked away their birthrights neither wills, nor 
 funds, nor men-at-arms. 
 
 Political development in Germany took another 
 tack. Lacking a stay-at-home overlord, the emperors 
 being off at wars beyond the Alps, the German dukes 
 retained both power and privileges. Hundreds of po- 
 litical subdivisions, yeasty bubblings of sovereignty 
 many of them, made mediaeval Germany a checkered 
 cockpit, alike for civil and foreign wars. Thus the 
 unifying of Germany was delayed until 1870, a chronic 
 belligerency strangling parliamentary politics and in- 
 uring anciently free peoples to autocratic rule.
 
 THE IRON MAN 103 
 
 The English, folk of give-and-take, followed the 
 middle course in this respect, as otherwise. They re- 
 fused their aristocracy privileges, but left them power 
 political and economic power, rooted in land own- 
 ership. Commons, expressing the common sense of 
 the public, played King against nobles, and vice versa, 
 backing the King when the nobles bore down too se- 
 verely, backing the nobles when the monarchy leaned 
 toward despotism and the destruction of olden liber- 
 ties. Thus, when kings fell, as fall they did, there re- 
 mained dukes and earls and squires, strong in will and 
 purpose, to administer the government. 'T is said 
 the English love a lord; well, they may, considering 
 the services of so many of them. Holding firmly to its 
 power to tax, which was based on faith that the people 
 would pay tax- moneys only as it decreed, the Com- 
 mons came forward, clinging now to the royal vest- 
 ments, now to the stirrups of the aristocrats, until 
 such time as it could dominate the realm. Long ago it 
 reduced the King to a functionary, a personalization 
 of the state, a regal rubber-stamp. And finally, by 
 threatening to apply this rubber-stamp on sufficient 
 warrants of nobility, it reduced the House of Lords to 
 minor status by breaking its power of absolute veto. 
 Whether this act in the political drama of the Empire 
 be good or ill, the method of democratic infiltration 
 which accomplished it must be rated successful, since 
 it bridged the gap from feudalism to popular govern- 
 ment without a destructive revolution, giving Britain 
 world-leadership while France was still in chaos, and 
 Germany as yet merely a geographical description.
 
 io 4 THE IRON MAN 
 
 Industrially England followed the same course. 
 From 1765, when inventions for applying steam- 
 power to manufacture gave the factory system firm 
 footing, down to the Reform Bill of 1832, British en- 
 terprisers had a free hand. They originated, organ- 
 ized, and directed, harnessed natural forces, built new 
 towns and merchant fleets, sent their goods across the 
 seas, made London the centre of world-trade and 
 finance, and took toll from the labors and resources of 
 the whole planet, bringing in abundant wealth upon 
 which the state levied taxes. Their enterprises forced 
 government, often dilatory and unwilling, to regular- 
 ize unbecoming situations overseas by hoisting the 
 royal standard, where the Union Jack first appeared 
 for "business as usual." 
 
 As might have been expected, evils appeared coin- 
 cidentally with benefits. Comparatively free of state- 
 control, masters, in competition with one another, 
 followed their inclinations too far for the common 
 good. Labor cowered under brutal laws in restraint 
 of combinations for wage-bargaining. Working condi- 
 tions so vile that none but a virile race could have 
 survived them obtained side by side with a standard 
 of living crowded down toward the starvation-point. 
 Actually, there were years when British labor earned 
 less than a living, though working long hours, the differ- 
 ence being made up in poor relief. The class refused 
 to pay the mass living wages, but consented, quixoti- 
 cally, to be taxed for the difference between real 
 wages and living wages. To read this record (John L. 
 and Barbara Hammond: "The Village Labourer";
 
 THE IRON MAN 105 
 
 ''The Town Labourer ") is to shudder at what indus- 
 trial leaders will do in competition with one another, 
 when the state remains deaf to the travail of the 
 masses. Given equal opportunity, I fancy our enter- 
 prisers would do as ill, not because they are wicked, 
 but because they are intensely human, and dis- 
 covering moral justifications for whatever leads to 
 one's power and prosperity is as instinctive as the 
 desire to gain those boons. 
 
 Rather than countenance the faintest return to such 
 mass misery, I would agree to the state's clipping the 
 wings of industrial genius afresh each morning. Yet, 
 after all, these same builders of British industry, in 
 their struggle with the landlords, secured the enfran- 
 chisement of their workingmen ; whereupon the latter, 
 in due course, undertook the protection of their work- 
 interests through organization and of their social in- 
 terests through legislation. The liberalizing of the 
 British political system was in large part a by-pro- 
 duct of the self-seeking of British industrialists. Also, 
 these leaders, in return for nothing more tangible than 
 freedom to trade, and paying taxes the while, contrib- 
 uted more to the state in territory, wealth, and pres- 
 tige than the state could have secured by exercising all 
 its sovereign powers in the most arbitrary fashion. 
 Measured merely by the yardstick of service to the 
 state, and to the hitherto unenfranchised masses, 
 their contribution is incredibly vast and valuable, in 
 spite of the miseries incident to its inception and 
 growth. No Briton lives to-day who is not to some 
 extent the heir of the labors of those industrial leaders
 
 io6 THE IRON MAN 
 
 and especially of the early innovators of machine-tools 
 Watt, Wilkinson, Bramah, Maudslay, Brunei, 
 Clement, Whitworth, and the rest. 
 
 This brief hark-back to the infancy of the industrial 
 system indicates what a state's creative citizens can 
 do, both for evil and for good, when permitted to fol- 
 low the main chance full-tilt to any lengths. Their 
 social contributions, though usually by-products, are 
 none the less invaluable to peoples adaptable enough 
 to withstand the strain of progress. James J. Hill 
 built his railroads, not to serve the state, but to serve 
 his Ego. He kept at it long after he might have re- 
 tired, a made man, because railroad-building had be- 
 come his medium of self-expression. As an artist loves 
 to put oil and color on canvas for the good of his soul, 
 so Hill loved to conquer space with steel ; perhaps also 
 he cherished the adulation which comes to a picked 
 man after he picks himself and proves the wisdom of 
 his choice. But the fact is that, whatever Jim Hill 
 thought or willed in the matter, actually he served the 
 state and society, and his by-product of service ex- 
 ceeds what the state would have wrung from him as 
 direct product under duress. Indeed, in a state which 
 built its own railroads, Hill must have died a village 
 teamster; his type prefers to run peanut-stands " on 
 its own" than to go through the palavering incident 
 to getting things done through government. And 
 while we may always pay the Hill heirs hire for that 
 service, capitalized full well, still the Northwest is sure 
 to think well enough of its bargain to teach in its pub- 
 lic schools the parenthood of its railroads.
 
 THE IRON MAN 107 
 
 Effectives like Hill possess in a superlative degree 
 survival value ; they live in works which pass into pub- 
 lic possession, either in fee simple or for use at rates 
 which the state sees to it, soon or late, are reasonable. 
 To deny such individuals reasonable scope for action 
 is to impoverish posterity. There are not too many 
 of them. At heart we know them to be our dear ones, 
 doing that which each of us would do if he could ; we 
 must be choice of them, for our own sake and that of 
 our children ; but but the eternal but we must 
 keep them from eating us up in the fascinating play of 
 that mad game of theirs, in which they jostle one an- 
 other for elbow-room, wealth, and eminence. 
 
 There is a good deal of nonsense talked by indignant 
 business men these days which can be explained only 
 by lack of background. Their chambers of commerce 
 feed them with everything but that which they most 
 need philosophy. Yet amid so much smoke there 
 must be some fire; and I think business men are jus- 
 tified in resenting the state's inability to approach 
 them without suspicion, and with some appreciation 
 of their services. Every corporation worthy of the 
 name, whether it produces shoestrings or transporta- 
 tion, serves the public at the same time that it serves 
 its stockholders. In so far as its goods or services 
 ameliorate life, it contributes something to society 
 which, rightly used, has ethical value. The motive of 
 civilization is economic, but its goal is ethical. The 
 industrial leader wants to be understood, wants credit 
 for the ethical by-product of his economic efforts. But 
 the state, with so many dry-as-dust officials watching
 
 io8 THE IRON MAN 
 
 industry lest it slip, looks upon shoelaces and trans- 
 portation alike as subject-matter for statistics first, 
 and taxation second. Instead of rating producers ac- 
 cording to the justice of their labor policies, and their 
 fairness to customers, the state appears to judge them 
 by the completeness of their records; and the scarlet 
 corporate sin of the moment is to fail to supply quite 
 all the information that a bureau clerk needs, to keep 
 him busy the rest of his uneventful days. 
 
 This suspicious attitude is, perhaps, an inevitable 
 outcome of corrupt corporate practices. In the name 
 of business, practical men, esteeming themselves 
 pillars of the established order, have in the past sinned 
 grievously against the state and society. A few have 
 been caught and convicted ; more have been held up to 
 shame in the public prints ; but the majority, no doubt, 
 have escaped either fate, through insufficiency of laws, 
 venality of the courts and legislatures, the studied 
 indifference of the press, or the skill of their lawyers. 
 Their steals run the whole gamut of respectable vil- 
 lainy, from fraudulently sequestering the public do- 
 main to milking absentee stockholders through false 
 reports and cheating the public by combinations to 
 hold up prices. Books have been written about them, 
 and to the end of the chapter honest business must 
 suffer in fame and purse through these lapses from 
 common honesty and fair play. 
 
 It would be easy to write a sensational chapter on 
 the cheating of minority stockholders. So common is 
 such abuse of confidence that " blue-sky" legislation 
 is popular, on the theory that the money of the people
 
 THE IRON MAN 109 
 
 should be protected no less than the people themselves. 
 Yet this corporate sabotage against capital in small 
 lots is far less serious than other corporate evils of 
 which the state takes little cognizance. Whoso buys 
 common stock does so in expectation of profit, specu- 
 lating for an uncertain income instead of investing for 
 a settled one. His cooperation in the enterprise, there- 
 fore, is on quite another plane from that of the ordi- 
 nary industrial worker, who must work or starve. The 
 consuming public is in somewhat the same predica- 
 ment, since the people must consume or perish. The 
 establishment of work-standards and market-stand- 
 ards rests, therefore, upon the fundamental of pro- 
 tecting life and its amenities under pressure. 
 
 On the other hand, the common-stock holder enters 
 and leaves the corporation at will, for profit only, and 
 is not ill-used if required to take the bitter with the 
 sweet. He cannot in fairness claim more protection 
 for his speculative capital than is already his under 
 the "false-pretense" section of the criminal code in 
 most states, with rights of recovery, as established in 
 civil law, for the safeguarding of minority stock- 
 holders. Since the state has every reason to promote 
 investment and discourage speculation, state control 
 of security issues should be concentrated upon estab- 
 lishing the soundness of fixed-interest issues. Mean- 
 while, through schooling and publicity, the sober 
 economic truth should be drilled home, that he who 
 buys common stock buys at his peril the greater 
 the return, the greater the risk. For the state to place 
 any sort of protective covering over common-stock
 
 no THE IRON MAN 
 
 speculations, while savings banks, life insurance, and 
 a well-filled bond market are open to the public, is 
 unsound economically and politically. 
 
 At this pass, the finding of funds for industrial 
 operations seems of prime importance ; but as the co- 
 operative spirit gains headway, industries are likely 
 to draw less and less upon the public savings. Even 
 now, the corporation whose machines are manned by 
 operatives eager to produce worthy goods, whose em- 
 ployees hold no grudge, can finance itself abundantly 
 through profits won fairly in free markets. Unfortu- 
 nately, such corporations are few. 
 
 Between the corporation and capital exists no clash 
 of wills, but merely a discrepancy of interest ; the clash 
 comes between many men and much capital. Capital 
 and Labor stand on either side of a widening chasm, 
 across which only the stronger laborers may leap, and 
 across which men of good-will have increasing difficulty 
 in making themselves heard. So the relation of the state 
 to industry comes down, at the moment, to an issue of 
 state-backed labor versus the corporations. 
 
 Thus far, state backing for labor has brought forth 
 two sorts of government action laws affecting all 
 industrial labor (in the main beneficial), and laws and 
 rulings affecting and benefiting only unionized labor. 
 In steam-transportation the Federal government, 
 heeding the loudest voice, accepted the brotherhoods 
 so completely that the Pennsylvania's plan of em- 
 ployee representation is held unworkable by Mr. At- 
 terbury, in the face of pro-union decisions by the 
 Railway Labor Board.
 
 THE IRON MAN in 
 
 In mill operations, however, craft-unionism is a dead 
 issue, largely because of automatic machinery. There 
 the gap must be bridged by employers dealing directly 
 with their own men ; otherwise, it will not be bridged 
 at all. Consequently, the sooner the state ceases look- 
 ing upon unionism as a panacea for all industrial labor 
 ills, so much the better. The labor problem spreads 
 far beyond union limits. The existence of the political 
 status quo has come to depend upon the restoration of 
 confidence between employer and employee. Exactly 
 how it shall be restored, and through what media, is 
 less important than the speed and completeness of its 
 restoration. Those in command of large-scale indus- 
 tries are mostly committed to non-recognition of 
 craft-unions, a policy based more upon instinct than 
 upon reason, but, nevertheless, binding. They resent 
 the intrusion of special pleaders from outside their in- 
 dustrial vale a state of mind easy to understand 
 in view of the sorry experience of managers in certain 
 unionized lines of production, notably the building 
 trades. However, many of the industrial leaders are 
 moving directly toward a rapprochement with their 
 employees, by various methods, all aimed at creating 
 solidarity of the producing group as opposed to that 
 craft-solidarity which is the union ideal. Statesmen 
 might well consider whether, for industries localized 
 and automatized, this development is not more logical 
 and satisfactory than the other; and if so, devote more 
 attention to hastening the process. 
 
 Obviously we are coming to perform, as large, co- 
 ordinated groups, those economic life-processes which
 
 ii2 THE IRON MAN 
 
 our ancestors performed singly, or by twos and threes. 
 'Whether this be good or ill is not determinable ; the 
 shift has its compensations as well as its difficulties. 
 Mountainous as the latter seem at times, we are still 
 far from having tried out all the controls, and are not 
 likely to exchange our industrialized existence for 
 something simpler until we arrive at our wits' ends. 
 Thus far, political controls, forced upon business by 
 the state as a penalty for past sins and protection 
 against present puissance, have received far more at- 
 tention than the efforts put forth by corporations to 
 make industrial toil fit in with the physical, mental, 
 and social well-being of their employees. Enlightened 
 employers have been caught in the network of legisla- 
 tive inhibitions, along with the most benighted, not- 
 withstanding the efforts of the former to undertake, at 
 their own risk, betterments inuring to the comfort of 
 the people and the safety of the state. 
 
 Obviously there is need here for discrimination ; but, 
 unfortunately, discrimination is not one of the state's 
 strong points. The happiness of the mass is the 
 state's ideal; but in a workaday world the state fre- 
 quently stumbles, on its way thereto, over precedents, 
 and its progress is woefully hampered by predilections 
 toward order and uniformity. So far its servants seem 
 unable to grasp the possibility of aiding mass happi- 
 ness by giving men and corporations of good intent 
 more leeway to extend experimentally the cooperative 
 principle inherent in corporate operations, and already 
 being pressed to good purpose by many business 
 groups.
 
 THE IRON MAN 113 
 
 Yet the limitations of rigid political control of busi- 
 ness, which tends inevitably toward state socialism, 
 are so adamant to a people of our individualist heri- 
 tage, and the freezing of our semi-fluid industrial so- 
 ciety into class-conscious orders of employers and 
 unionized workers seems so foreign to our traditions, 
 that the state ought to make every possible concession 
 to the principle of autonomous control before finally 
 establishing its mastery, or clearing the way definitely 
 for the Capital-Labor dog-fight sure to follow the in- 
 tensification of class loyalties. To make the corpora- 
 tion, in which many already cooperate in the produc- 
 tion and distribution of goods and earnings, a medium 
 for the cooperative production and distribution of 
 spiritual values as well, seems at all points the Ameri- 
 can way to harness the Iron Man to the common good, 
 as automatization in industrial plants proceeds toward 
 its predestined goal.
 
 VI 
 THE CHANGING CORPORATION 
 
 TH E Iron Man is owned by the corporation. One 
 is as much an invention as the other; each repre- 
 sents an evolution, in which .adaptations have been 
 piled upon simple legal and mechanical principles. 
 The automatic machine is as much a mechanical per- 
 son as the corporation is a legal person. The two have 
 long kept step with one another. Without the corpora- 
 tion to finance its development and distribute its 
 produce, automatic machinery would still be in em- 
 bryo museum models instead of effective complexes 
 grinding out goods, creating wealth and comforts, in- 
 tensifying social and political problems. And without 
 the Iron Man to make the ordinary run of humans 
 useful in the production of intricate goods, corpora- 
 tions could not have reached their present proportions 
 and influence. Automatic machinery is one of the 
 forces establishing the truth of Lloyd's dictum, that 
 "the natural person, as an enterpriser of consequence 
 in industry, has ceased to exist." 
 
 Together, the corporation and the automatic ma- 
 chine form a team capable of prodigious feats of 
 strength; but in their straightaway pull for profits, 
 they plough a pitiless furrow through the crust of 
 custom. Strong their drivers must be, and are; but 
 the masses, paced by the machine in the shop and sel- 
 dom outside the shop escaping from an environment 
 motivated by industry, wonder if the controllers of 
 their destinies are altogether to be trusted. And the
 
 THE IRON MAN 115 
 
 analytic observer, too, must sometimes doubt whether 
 even altruistic drivers may alter materially their 
 course. Though vast ameliorations of life have flowed 
 from this union, these have been by-products. A 
 world grown more conscious of life-processes, a public 
 seeking social welfare, waits to see if the corporation 
 and the automatic machine can be swung somewhat 
 away from private gain, and somewhat more toward 
 public good. 
 
 The masses turn instinctively toward their cham- 
 pion the sovereign state ; laws in restraint of corpora- 
 tions multiply upon the statute books. The people are 
 less aware than the politicians of the difficulty of 
 applying political action to industrial ills. So the re- 
 mote consequences of such application may be worse 
 than the original infirmity. I recall that Governor 
 Cummins converted the country to the "Iowa idea"; 
 and I have lived to see Senator Cummins lead in re- 
 turning the railroads to their owners on terms more 
 expensive to the people than those in force when rail- 
 road-baiting began. 
 
 Since the state creates the corporation, one might 
 infer complete mastery. Actually, the relationship is 
 more that of a stout and querulous old mother to her 
 lusty, ambitious sons. Corporations cannot be too 
 closely bound to their parent without defeating the 
 purposes of their creation. For one thing, the state 
 cannot find elsewhere revenue so easily; the old wo- 
 man calls upon her sons to bring taxes to her lap, and 
 they come bearing, not only taxes, but other gifts also, 
 strange gifts, things which the stout parent never
 
 n6 THE IRON MAN 
 
 dreamed of having new fruits of faith and vision 
 and toil which, in due time, become the accepted diet 
 of a public forgetful of their origin. In this welter of 
 novelty, the parent state clings stubbornly to tradi- 
 tions and principles ; she may exult in the revenue her 
 sons deliver and the gifts they bring: but her massive 
 common sense enables her to see that such are of little 
 worth if justice and mercy, and the common weal of 
 her people, be sacrificed in the scramble for wealth 
 and power. One can fancy her saying with a discon- 
 certing naivete : 
 
 "This is the stuff of life you bring me; but it is not 
 life. I need these things; but, after all, they are not 
 enough. I can't tell you just what to do, over and 
 above bringing in my taxes ; but I have no hesitancy in 
 telling you what you may not do, as light comes to me. 
 In order to keep you fit, I put you more or less on your 
 honor ; and I hope you will always behave better than 
 I know how to make you behave. You move so fast, 
 you really keep me quite fuddled ; but every rule I lay 
 down I mean for the best, anyway." 
 
 In the adjustment to be reached between public 
 content and private interest, the most hopeful factor 
 is the corporation. In itself a compromise between 
 two instincts running constant in human nature, 
 the desire for gain and the desire for security, the 
 corporation is the instrument through which the so- 
 cializing process now under way may work out most 
 comfortably. It is a regulated vehicle of group-activ- 
 ity amenable to political control. Intangible and im- 
 personal, existing only in the contemplation of the
 
 THE IRON MAN 117 
 
 law, it possesses a superhuman virility, rising superior 
 to death, accident, and many ills which beset frail 
 humans. Given sound management and an acquies- 
 cent state, corporations may live forever. They par. 
 take to this extent of the static nature of the parent; 
 yet are far more flexible in getting finite things done 
 swiftly and cheaply. On the other hand, they are 
 more dependable than individuals. They escape per- 
 sonal bias, wrath, prejudice, emotion; their nervous 
 systems react keenly to but one set of stimuli those 
 of profit and loss. Still, they are not unresponsive to 
 public opinion; and may perhaps be controlled more 
 effectively thereby than by law. The public, you see, 
 butters their bread. 
 
 One who puts forth the corporation as a means of 
 grace champions an institution with abundant faults. 
 Some of these inhere in the corporate form ; others, the 
 more evident and galling, are less serious because re- 
 sulting from decisions of persons in corporate author- 
 ity. The more important of these lapses may be dealt 
 with under criminal procedure ; others may be amelior- 
 ated by pressure of alert public opinion. In general, 
 I accept Samuel Fel ton's verdict, that corporations, 
 like individuals, prosper in degree as they serve the 
 public honestly and fairly. 
 
 Corporations have been described as "soulless," 
 and from the nature of their legal origin, the descrip- 
 tion has a certain validity. But, after all, "soul" is 
 impossible of satisfactory definition. There is no room 
 for metaphysical reflection in the corporation; yet, if 
 "soul" be the source of faith, "the substance of
 
 n8 THE IRON MAN 
 
 things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen," 
 corporations may be soulful, since through them men 
 bring visions to reality. Daily some corporation de- 
 livers, after a long obstacle-race, a message of achieve- 
 ment to its waiting Garcias the stockholders. And 
 if "soul" be the motive behind square dealing in the 
 market-place, the best corporations are at least as 
 soulful as the best individual traders. Littleness and 
 trickiness are boon companions. Where policy counts 
 more than personality, the corporation possesses con- 
 science ; its failures to play fair come more often from 
 heedlessness than from design. Its stake is too great 
 for meanness, but the corporation has its blind side 
 the feelings. 
 
 However, the case for the recognition of the cor- 
 poration as the most practical way out of the present 
 discord rests upon more solid grounds than mere feel- 
 ing. Yet with all its faults, the corporation is the most 
 successful agency of human cooperation yet devised 
 by the mind of man. In one account the savings and 
 inheritances of thousands are massed for use ; energies 
 and talents of masses of individuals are sifted and ap- 
 plied intelligently to the making and distributing of 
 intricate goods over wide areas. Science searches 
 every phase of business, and genius climbs the ladder 
 in record time. In an age tending toward socialization, 
 with a people much preferring even predatory indi- 
 vidualism to lifeless state-control, the middle course 
 lies in the path of group-organization, midway of 
 which we find the corporation, strongly entrenched in 
 law and custom. Consequently, being what we are,
 
 THE IRON MAN 119 
 
 where we are, let us use the corporation in the social 
 advance, before abandoning it for the untried, and 
 before settling down in discontented acceptance of 
 things as they are. 
 
 Effectively as the corporation brings individuals 
 into cooperation for economic ends, many industrial 
 activities, proceeding under that form, strain the so- 
 cial fabric, and thwart the play of the human spirit. 
 Are these anti-social by-products inevitable? Or may 
 they not be overcome, at least in part, by guiding the 
 evolution of corporations somewhat away from direct 
 and immediate profits, and toward the indirect and 
 deferred profits which come from stability, satisfied 
 labor, and the public esteem? For this man-made and 
 law-born abstraction, the corporation, has been in 
 evolution for more than a century, is considerably 
 different to-day from what it was when the State of 
 New York passed the first general incorporation act 
 in 1811, and will be different again a hundred years 
 hence, no doubt. The question is not, Shall the cor- 
 poration evolve? but, How shall it evolve? It is 
 somewhat our duty to see that it evolves toward 
 eliminating its social weaknesses instead of toward 
 strengthening its economic excellencies, since compe- 
 tition can be depended upon to continue amply de- 
 veloping the latter. 
 
 In viewing this cooperative star of the first magni- 
 tude, one notes that the cooperators move on different 
 planes and hold different tenures. The common work- 
 man has no authority and no security, for he may be 
 dropped from the pay-roll without notice; whereas
 
 120 THE IRON MAN 
 
 the head of the enterprise has authority over all oper- 
 atives, and his tenure is usually subject only to return- 
 ing satisfactory dividends. The chief and his principal 
 subordinates know that security on the job depends 
 primarily upon returning service; the workers, on the 
 contrary, know that they are insecure. They may be 
 laid off for good reason or none foreman's prejudice, 
 cancellation of contracts, onset of business depression. 
 The most excellent of workers, tragically enough, may 
 have the ill luck to place himself with an employer 
 unequal to the strain of competition. This fear of the 
 future haunts the common man in industry all his 
 days; combating it is one of the chief motives of his 
 life, a motive working out in labor-organizations, 
 savings accounts, domestic worries, and shop politics, 
 good and bad inextricably mixed. The startling 
 rise in suicide within these twelve difficult months is 
 another index of the terror that workingmen and 
 workingwomen face when they lose their jobs. Life 
 itself is insecure, and insecurity means effort; as the 
 saying goes, " It puts the fear of God in men's hearts, 
 and makes them value their jobs." A measure of in- 
 security is essential to efficiency I know these 
 things and do not underrate them. Nevertheless, 
 there is too much discrepancy now between the rela- 
 tive security of the boss and the positive insecurity of 
 the worker. 
 
 In an inquiry of this sort one treads a narrow trail 
 between the ethical height and the economic abyss. 
 Every attempt to scale the height involves a risk of 
 falling into the abyss, since economic law is as inevi-
 
 THE IRON MAN 121 
 
 table in its operations as gravitation. The bankruptcy 
 chasm is strewn with the wrecks of reputations and 
 institutions once great and too greatly daring. Con- 
 sequently, he who presumes to chart a course must do 
 so warily, and without assumption of final authority. 
 
 As a starting-point let us say that the able and sat- 
 isfactory employee should hold his job as securely as 
 the boss holds his. That eliminates, at the outset, 
 those of low efficiency in group-operation, whether 
 through inexperience, unsteadiness, or disloyalty to 
 group-interests. Such must ever remain on the margin 
 of employment. But, unfortunately, as things go, de- 
 pressions recur in which even ably managed corpora- 
 tions must reduce their staffs, in order to remain 
 solvent. So our first adventures toward industrial 
 security should be concerned with these higher human 
 values. 
 
 Depressions recur so relentlessly, that statesmen 
 seek relief in state control of credits. Theoretically 
 the state, through the banks, may check expansion 
 in brisk times by withholding credits before the dan- 
 ger-point of expansion is reached, and stimulate 
 employment in dull times by granting credits before 
 the ebb of economic exhaustion has been reached. On 
 the sensible theory that what goes up must come 
 down, it is argued that business can be depressed no 
 further below normal that it has risen aboye normal ; 
 and that, consequently, if the enthusiasm of enter- 
 prisers is checked by the state-brake upon credits, the 
 slide into the vale of depression will be checked at a 
 point where business can climb out with slight assist-
 
 122 THE IRON MAN 
 
 ance. Theoretically, and perhaps practically, there- 
 fore, the restraining influence of the Federal Reserve 
 Bank is likely to be of social value. 
 
 Fairly and intelligently applied, and we can 
 be entirely sure of neither, central control of 
 credits should render jobs more secure, by reducing 
 the chances that the efficient boss may be requiredjto 
 lay off his able workmen. But complete security in 
 employment, or any other phase of business, can be 
 bought only at the price of stagnation. Commercial 
 equilibrium is impossible until all the dynamic forces 
 in human society are under control. Trade is born of 
 the instincts, and draws from all their manifestations, 
 big and little. Politicians, diplomats, and generals, 
 all had their fingers in the business pot which boiled 
 over in 1919 and boiled low in 1921. Markets, in the 
 last analysis, are made in child-bed. The instincts 
 that lead our people to produce and consume goods, 
 to plan and dominate, to save and safeguard, defy 
 all attempts at standardization; and as long as Man 
 shall do, can he be kept from occasionally over-doing? 
 Even if we should compass the miracle of dead-level 
 business, as an export nation we should still need to 
 accommodate ourselves to the ups and downs of trade 
 overseas, in localities where our credit writ does not 
 run. Conversely, citizens of a state which binds busi- 
 ness too closely through credit-control cannot long 
 hold their own in open markets against traders from 
 more elastic business nations. So, while the state may 
 reduce insecurity, it can bind commercial energies 
 closely only at a price too great for folk of our kind to
 
 THE IRON MAN 123 
 
 pay. We must look further before exhausting all 
 the possibilities of harmonizing security in toil with 
 industrial effectiveness. 
 
 During the recent depression, certain corporations 
 pursued interesting deviations from normal business 
 practice. Departments, in effect courts, were set up 
 to try cases of dismissal. Instead of accepting the 
 foreman's word on lay-offs, the company delegated 
 authority to qualified persons to judge each case, not 
 only on its economic merits, but also with reference to 
 social significance. A married man was likely to be 
 retained in preference to a single man, and a single 
 man with dependents in preference to an unentangled 
 individual. Plants which might have been run more 
 economically on full time, with fewer helpers, were 
 run on part time with more, to stretch the pay-roll as 
 far as possible. Managements and technical staffs 
 shared wage-cuts in exact proportion to the men, 
 without reference to their higher economic signifi- 
 cance. These shifts evidence ethics at work with eco- 
 nomics, in the emergency, to divide loss and reduce 
 insecurity. Such innovations have their economic 
 limits, and at best are suited only for particular con- 
 ditions through short periods. 
 
 Two widely advertised cure-alls for unemployment 
 are state insurance and public works. Countries thor- 
 oughly industrialized may have no other recourse than 
 state insurance; but even there such programmes in- 
 volve severe strains. Funds must be built up through 
 taxation in busy years, to cope with the lean years, 
 thus creating a large "frozen credit" applicable^in
 
 i2 4 THE IRON MAN 
 
 the emergency to buy subsistence food, fuel, cloth- 
 ing, and shelter for those out of work and their 
 dependents. These "out-of-works" form merely a 
 part of the whole body of the nation, yet their doles 
 are subtracted by taxation from the earnings of the 
 whole. Moreover, in any depression, the majority of 
 the out-of-works are sure to be the less effective 
 workers and least valuable citizens the relatively 
 inefficient, irresponsible, and thriftless. Others, of 
 course, will be caught short in the slump; but these 
 down-at-the-heel folk will predominate. Of these, 
 many will loaf on a subsistence basis rather than seek 
 employment. To reduce the individual's incentive to 
 seek employment is a blow at the national economy, 
 because every day that a potential producer is idle 
 means just so much loss to himself, the community, 
 and the state. Emergence from depression requires 
 redistribution of labor-power among plants, industries, 
 and localities, on the basis of most economical use. As 
 long as any person is subsidized to stay where he is, 
 sure of support until his former job is ready, readjust- 
 ment lags. The state can protect itself against the 
 economic backwash of state insurance only by making 
 its acceptance contingent upon involuntary servitude 
 the power to force men to work when and where 
 the state dictates. For us, that is impossible. If the 
 country were to continue industrial growth at the 
 old rate, the government might be forced to accept 
 the burden of unemployment insurance without re- 
 dress; such is the peril of democracy; but as all signs 
 point toward a gradual stabilizing of industry at or
 
 THE IRON MAN 125 
 
 below its present limits, the issue may never be forced. 
 
 Prosecution of public works, when private work is 
 scarce, presents a fairer face to the analyst. Maximum 
 effectiveness requires, however, careful planning. 
 Plans must be prepared for deferable works, funds 
 accumulated, and skeleton organizations maintained, 
 which may be expanded rapidly by adding unskilled 
 labor as men are thrown out of their regular employ- 
 ments. Wages should be sufficiently below industrial 
 rates to encourage prompt return to industrial em- 
 ployment. Under such conditions morale would be 
 chronically low, and organization unsteady. The pub- 
 lic would probably pay as much for the job as it would 
 have paid in brisk times, at high wages. The process 
 is palliative rather than economical, and disappoint- 
 ment easily may follow too great reliance thereon. 
 
 Fundamentally, insecurity of work- tenure in indus- 
 try is no labor problem at all, because the boss is 
 powerless to correct it under present conditions. Since 
 it transcends the employer's power of adjustment, 
 unemployment is rather a social problem, with roots 
 running back to feudalism. In English industrial his- 
 tory, of which our development is an extension, it 
 traces directly to the enclosures of common lands, to 
 which village workers had access for subsistence when 
 cut off from wage-jobs. Insecurity, indeed, is the other 
 side of the shield of freedom ; a free man is free either 
 to stand or fall ; a bond holds a man up in distress just 
 as it holds him down in prosperity. Every factor, 
 therefore, which has contributed to turn dependence 
 into independence and independence into interde-
 
 126 THE IRON MAN 
 
 pendence, is in part responsible for the insecurity of in- 
 dustrial employment. Thus, a reorientation of indus- 
 try, in which all those factors participate, is required in 
 order to ameliorate naturally their resultant insecurity. 
 
 For individuals to stand alone, economically, be- 
 comes more difficult. To be useful, a man must ally 
 himself, directly or indirectly, with others in toil. In 
 large-scale industry this community of interest in pro- 
 ducing and marketing of goods engages many thou- 
 sands in well-defined, legally functioning organiza- 
 tions. Here, obviously, is a rock upon which to build. 
 
 At root, the fundamentals of subsistence are food, 
 clothing, shelter, and fuel. Lack of these is what men 
 fear most when their jobs go by the board. They can 
 dispense with comforts and luxuries for a time, with- 
 out damage and even with benefit; will do so gladly 
 when their enthusiasms are roused, as in war. Given 
 these, a man can hold out ; his standard of living may 
 fall uncomfortably, still he and his will live to see 
 better times, no matter how low prices fall. 
 
 The farmer has his living; he can survive on his 
 produce; can warm himself with wood; the landlord 
 is not hounding him for rent from month to month : 
 and, if need be, he can wear homespun like Isak of 
 Sellenraa. That explains why, in pinches, the country- 
 side can and does absorb so many marginal workers 
 driven from the mills. The boys from the factory 
 towns, pushed back to the old homestead, find plain 
 fare and ample space plenty of both, such as they 
 are ; and if Nature has endowed them with brains, time 
 to think.
 
 THE IRON MAN 127 
 
 There was a time, in England, when marginal 
 workers had their own land common land. When 
 wages were lacking, they worked for subsistence. The 
 shift was easy, because the industries were village 
 concerns. Then, new tools were developed, and be- 
 came concentrated in the towns. Means of industrial 
 production were shifted from villages to towns, com- 
 mon lands enclosed, the marginal worker's refuge 
 upon the land destroyed; and thenceforward, down 
 to the present, insecurity in labor has kept pace with 
 urban development. 
 
 Ever since industry took to the towns and set sail 
 toward intense specialization and automatization, its 
 insecurities have impelled revivals of communal pro- 
 duction. Idealists like Robert Owen have tried to 
 reestablish the partnership between industry and 
 agriculture by taking industrial tools back to the land. 
 Mostly these experiments failed: some soon, through 
 inability of the cooperators to agree on division of 
 power and profits; others faded away unmourned, 
 through sheer stagnation. They could not maintain 
 virility in uniformity. If the vital spark of human 
 rivalry won, the commune was destroyed ; if uniform- 
 ity won, the commune decayed, because the spur to 
 adaptability had been cast outside along with the 
 rebels. The root-cause of break-up or decay was 
 chronic inability to pro-rate rewards and responsi- 
 bilities according to the economic significance of the 
 several producers. If the community were democratic, 
 each shared alike produce and responsibility. None 
 save dullards were completely satisfied ; their superiors
 
 128 THE IRON MAN 
 
 bickered the project into oblivion. If the community 
 were patriarchal, it became too wooden to meet the 
 dynamic environment set up by its neighbors free 
 men cooperating in government, toil, and trade. 
 
 The weakness of the commune, at bottom, is its 
 inability to measure and reward services. Given a 
 cooperating group possessed of ability and means so to 
 discriminate, there is no reason why such a group could 
 not reunite industry and agriculture on an efficient 
 basis. This the corporation might do. It already re- 
 wards many of its workers on the basis of their eco- 
 nomic significance through varying work-rates ; and the 
 ease with which reward may be apportioned through 
 shares-ownership would permit even adventitious 
 earnings to be distributed with far more regard to the 
 individual contribution to the joint product and in- 
 dividual stake in the enterprise, than the commune 
 possibly could do on its one-man, one-mouth, one- vote 
 basis. Theoretically, a corporation owningland enough 
 to provide its workers with fundamental subsistence 
 could maintain its organization intact at all times; a 
 skeleton organization of experienced farmers could 
 cultivate extensively for profit during brisk times, with 
 details of extra helpers from the mill during harvest; 
 while in depressions the land could be cultivated in- 
 tensively by more laborers. Farming in its major ac- 
 tivities is seasonal, and certain corporations would 
 find it economical to make most of their factory produce 
 in the winter, devoting the summer to agriculture. 
 This seasonal shift, in itself, would be an escape from 
 monotony, a step forward in both mental and physical
 
 THE IRON MAN 129 
 
 hygiene, for the workers on automatic machinery. 
 In accepting the back-to-the-land movement for the 
 corporation as the vital element in regaining a reason- 
 able security for labor, one need not push the idea to 
 absurd lengths. Manifestly such a move would be 
 illogical for many corporations ; moreover, in order to 
 relieve the social tension caused by insecurity, it must 
 be remembered that only the marginal workers at 
 the most twenty per cent need protection against 
 the "downs" of industry, and then only for limited 
 periods. The efficient employees of efficient employers, 
 even in the darkest days, continue to gain subsistence 
 at their accustomed tasks, since trade never stops 
 entirely. Certain lines of production, moreover, es- 
 pecially those in which raw material is cheap, fabri- 
 cation simple, product durable, and of relatively stable 
 economic significance, reduce their staffs only slightly 
 in ordinary depressions, because they are safe in stock- 
 ing up heavily on a low- wage level against the cer- 
 tainty of renewed demand. On the other hand, pro- 
 ducers of goods containing a luxury element, which 
 causes rapid fluctuations in the economic significance 
 of those goods in the market, take heavy risks in 
 amassing surpluses. Workers in such industries are 
 relatively insecure. Producers of such goods, however, 
 have much at stake in maintaining their organizations 
 in shape to take quick advantage of market oppor- 
 tunities; hence it is in such lines that industry logi- 
 cally may be expected to leave the city and come to 
 grips on the land with a basic difficulty of modern 
 industry insecurity for labor.
 
 130 THE IRON MAN 
 
 The corporate form, by making feasible the sharing 
 of rewards according to economic significance, re- 
 moves one of the barriers separating industry and 
 agriculture. The automatic machine removes another 
 the skill-barrier. Labor now flows, as we have seen, 
 from country to city, from farm to mill, and back 
 again. While the industrial process, as a whole, has 
 been growing more complex, the contribution of the 
 individual machine-tender to that process has been 
 growing more simple. When tools were simple things, 
 they were close to the soil : now that the tools them- 
 selves incorporate the skill-function, their operation 
 is simple enough to make land-labor efficient beside 
 them, and vice versa. Their demand upon labor intel- 
 ligence is no greater, probably less, than that of the 
 simple tools of the pre-industrial era. Hence modern 
 tools can be brought back to the land, under certain 
 conditions and in certain industries, with no consid- 
 erable loss of economic efficiency, and, in some cases, 
 with definite gains in efficiency. Given just and ef- 
 ficient transportation, fair railway rates, and good 
 roads, many sorts of goods may be produced as 
 cheaply, or even more cheaply, in villages within fifty 
 miles of the swollen town as in the town itself. One 
 sees already the beginnings of industrial migrations 
 from large cities to towns and villages shifts in- 
 spired by economic motives solely. This tendency 
 seems likely to develop slowly, until enough industries 
 have reoriented themselves as regards subsistence to 
 reduce the insecurity of the whole body of labor. These 
 questions, the most fascinating in the entire range of
 
 THE IRON MAN 131 
 
 this inquiry, are being elaborated and closely analyzed 
 by my friend and coworker, Ernest F. Lloyd, who 
 was kind enough to place the fruits of his long business 
 experience and later research freely at my disposal. 
 
 Corporations, the economic significance of whose 
 product fluctuates widely, are likely to accept this 
 insecurity phase of their labor problem seriously in 
 the future. One can picture a landed industrial cor- 
 poration taking on its men as potential stockholders, 
 as cooperators. Its selective process would be care- 
 fully ordered with reference to mental as well as 
 physical hygiene ; an effort to assay the whole man as 
 well as his muscles and senses. The worker would be 
 picked, not so much because he is needed, as because 
 he is wanted. Attention would be paid, not only to 
 his capacity for work, but also to his dependability 
 as a citizen and comrade, his outlook on life, his in- 
 fluence upon, and acceptability to, his fellow work- 
 men and their families, with whom he associates in 
 leisure. His introduction into the shop would be in 
 the nature of an initiation, the binding of one to many, 
 the acceptance of enduring responsibilities, the pledg- 
 ing of one's character to the upholding of a group- 
 character, a connection not lightly to be entered upon, 
 because likely to endure for long. 
 
 Such a corporation in effect a work-clan would 
 necessarily be interested in how its employees lived 
 and played in sufficiency and decency of housing, 
 and ordering of community recreation. In short, such 
 a corporation would be, like the commune, a self- 
 sufficient grouping of self-respecting folk; but in cer-
 
 132 THE IRON MAN 
 
 tain vital respects it would be unlike any commune 
 known to history. It would possess superior tools, and 
 show a greater variety of incomes and living standards ; 
 but more distinguishing would be its division of owner- 
 ship and reward upon the basis of individual, trans- 
 ferable shares. Stockholders, by delegation of author- 
 ity as now, would admit individuals to, or dismiss 
 them from, membership; but the dismissed would 
 continue to own his shares and their accumulations 
 during employment, with full rights of sale. In order, 
 however, to protect the group in such transfers, cer- 
 tain adjustments in corporate law would have to be 
 made. 
 
 Since economic development was but one of several 
 factors contributing to the growth of industrial in- 
 security, the ameliorating process must embody other 
 adjustments. Corporations are creatures of the law, 
 and law has limited as well as promoted their develop- 
 ment. Consequently, there are steps toward security 
 which can be accomplished only through legal revi- 
 sions. Present legal barriers to the extension of the 
 cooperative principle inside the corporation must be 
 qualified; and in this release public approval of the 
 newer concept is the logical compelling force. 
 
 The present legal concept of the corporation, ar- 
 rived at by applying the shares idea, with strict logic, to 
 private property, vests the reality of the corporation 
 in the holders of its common shares. The public con- 
 cept, on the other hand, more often identifies the cor- 
 poration with its outstanding personality: United 
 States Steel is Judge Gary; Standard Oil persists in
 
 THE IRON MAN 133 
 
 being Rockefeller. The workers conceive that reality, 
 however, as located in the front office, from which 
 proceeds power to hire and fire. But the man in the 
 front office may see the reality of the corporation as 
 hanging in the air above scattered directors, who oc- 
 casionally meet, hear reports, and decide policies. Or, 
 if his directors merely ratify his recommendations, his 
 situation may be such that he knows the corporate 
 court of last resort to be the banker who discounts the 
 corporation's accommodation paper, and floats its 
 securities among his clientele, vouching for the cor- 
 poration to the financial world and the saving public. 
 The great " Class A" corporations would be impossible 
 without him. But, the banker is a permissive and con- 
 trolling agent, not a positive, constructive, and operat- 
 ing force, except when he steps upon dangerous ground 
 outside of his fiduciary relation. 
 
 All these views, in the intense light of the present, 
 appear a little out-of-date ; but perhaps the most anti- 
 quated of all is the judicial view. When common stock 
 in great corporations is sold on exchanges as freely as 
 sugar in corner groceries, when lists of common-stock 
 holders vary day by day, and only a fraction of those 
 stockholders profess to know anything about the proc- 
 esses and policies of the corporations, it seems a bit 
 old-fashioned for the law to point to that shifting mob 
 of humans, and say : ' ' There 's your corporation, each 
 according to his holding." When common stock repre- 
 sents the company's assets unimpaired by mortgage, 
 there is wisdom in that view; but the fact is that 
 nearly all large corporations have pledged their plants
 
 i 34 THE IRON MAN 
 
 as security on borrowings up to the value of those 
 holdings at forced sale. What common-stock holders 
 own is usually a slender equity in the property, and 
 a good- will which may easily become no good. In 
 addition, they have the gamble of future earnings. 
 Expectations as to the amount of those excess earn- 
 ings set the market-value of common stocks. To in- 
 sist that those standing upon this raw edge of adven- 
 ture, and voting by proxy "sight unseen," are the 
 ones who hold power of purse over the nation's in- 
 dustries and nearly half its people, is simply not true 
 in any broad economic, social, or political sense. 
 
 The fact is that the corporation is the corporation. 
 Not in the part, but in the whole, resides its reality. 
 Not alone capital, but also labor, give life and mean- 
 ing to the enterprise ; neither common-stock holders by 
 themselves, nor managers by themselves, are the cor- 
 poration; but all who have funds invested therein in 
 any form, and likewise all who work for the corpora- 
 tion all these, cooperating on the bases of innumer- 
 able bargains under the law of the land, make up the 
 reality of the corporation. Their totality is the cor- 
 poration. Individuals pass in and out; the institution 
 inherits their good work and bad, gradually acquiring 
 a code and method, a group-personality. The intan- 
 gible, impersonal being becomes a living thing, which 
 dies when taken apart. Yet so important are these 
 business groups to state and people, that the extinc- 
 tion of a great corporation is a calamity. As in the 
 passing of a feudal barony, many must shift uncom- 
 fortably, in perplexity, and oft in woe.
 
 THE IRON MAN 135 
 
 The state, at present, guards the public to some 
 extent against these difficulties in respect to corpora- 
 tions classed as public utilities. These must operate 
 at all hazards; give service even at a loss; the mails 
 must move in time of strike. The public stake in these 
 operations is so heavy, their continuance so vital to 
 civilized life, that the state, to preserve itself, insists 
 that their wheels keep moving. Every year the con- 
 cept of what constitutes a public utility is broadened. 
 The United States uses the courts and the military to 
 keep coal coming out of the ground, because coal is 
 now a political as well as an economic necessity. 
 
 One of the first and most significant steps toward 
 writing into law the fundamental and common in- 
 terest in continuous corporate functioning was taken 
 in the Canadian Industrial Disputes Investigation Act 
 of 1907. Canadian corporations performing services 
 or delivering goods essential to the public welfare may 
 not lock out their men without investigation by the 
 state, due procedure, delays, and public hearings. 
 Employees of such corporations may not walk out 
 without meeting the same conditions. This estab- 
 lishes the public interest as paramount in certain es- 
 sentials. The more recent Kansas Industrial Court 
 goes a step further in the same direction, in declaring 
 the production and distribution of food, fuel, and 
 clothing to be invested with a public interest so vital 
 that (in effect) continuity of operation shall apply 
 thereto. 
 
 The line between public utilities and other corpora- 
 tions simply will not stay put. Of late, the United
 
 136 THE IRON MAN 
 
 States government and several of its subdivisions 
 have handled labor crises in coal-mining as if the 
 mines were public utilities, which they are, in fact, 
 while avoiding establishing them as such in law. 
 In due time, no doubt, law will follow fact in this re- 
 spect, as in others. And if a coal-mine shall be kept 
 open despite the labor and capital directly involved, 
 why not other enterprises producing goods and serv- 
 ices vital to the public? In general, I think, every 
 corporation employing enough labor and capital to 
 bring wares or services to market in any considerable 
 quantity is, and ought to be rated, a public utility. If 
 this seems too broad a generalization, the way to con- 
 strict it is to refuse corporate charters to business or- 
 ganizations so minute in size that their operation or 
 decease presents no difficulty to consumers or the 
 community. As a matter of fact, corporate charters 
 are too freely granted by most of the states a laxity 
 which results in promotion scandals on the one hand, 
 and in individuals hiding behind the limited liability 
 safeguard, on the other. The mere acceptance of the 
 principle that every corporation is a public utility, 
 and a means toward group-cooperation and subject to 
 control as such, would go far toward correcting these 
 current abuses of corporate provisions. 
 
 If the foregoing seems a shocking invasion of the 
 institution of private property, beware of what is to 
 follow ! I accept the institution of private property as 
 an obvious result of human instincts and a valuable 
 motive-force in civilization. I would as soon think of 
 quarreling with it as with a result of gravitation. Yet
 
 THE IRON MAN 137 
 
 the institution of private property is merely an ad- 
 justment between private and public interests, per- 
 sonal and social instincts. Where government owner- 
 ship promises any pronounced social advantage, let 
 it be applied. But warily, for government is such a 
 feckless manager, that it is idle to push the public- 
 utility theory of the corporation far enough to include 
 all the means of production. However, in order that 
 corporations may work out to the ultimate their po- 
 tentialities for cooperation, some group-grip upon 
 private capital industrially employed is essential. 
 
 At bedrock, successful cooperation in industry de- 
 pends upon having something to divide. A cooperative 
 enterprise, in which all workers share upon the basis 
 of discoverable economic significance, would be as 
 dependent for discipline and harmony upon the re- 
 turns from its labors as a corporation in which workers 
 have no share. Brains must be compensated in one 
 way or another, interest paid on invested capital, 
 funds set aside against contingencies. The worker 
 who pays in a hundred dollars wants his per cent as 
 much as or more than the outside investor who risks 
 his thousands. However, the worker has contributed 
 somewhat more than the outsider toward the creation 
 of that dividend. It is difficult to measure exactly the 
 contribution of any individual's brain or brawn, study 
 or labor-pain, to any corporate result, and compensate 
 it exactly on the pay-roll. Few employers make the 
 effort ; they buy their labor in the open market, where 
 men are under pressure to sell their time. So it may be 
 said that corporate earnings contain a leakage which
 
 138 THE IRON MAN 
 
 labor has lost, and capital has gained, an adventitious 
 profit, not normally by any means as large as extrem- 
 ists claim, but something over and above the rental 
 value of the money used, figured at the "going rate." 
 The quarrel over the division of profits is serious only 
 as it applies to this indefinite element in the industrial 
 equation, since employees generally recognize that 
 capital must secure a reasonable reward, else there is 
 no incentive to save and no capital to hire. 
 
 Obviously the workers in any corporate group I 
 make no distinction between office and shop should 
 get this leakage, if a sane method of recovering and dis- 
 tributing it can be found, short of upsetting the wage- 
 system. To this end I believe, in common with my 
 friend Lloyd, that corporations henceforth chartered 
 should be vested with the right of eminent domain 
 over their common stock; empowered, that is, to buy 
 such stock from non-employees at its intrinsic worth, 
 whenever this class of security is desired for re-sale 
 to employees and none is available at unforced sale. 
 This would restrain the speculation that irritates labor 
 so acutely, and so often embarrasses conservative 
 managers as well, by divesting industrial capital of 
 its entrepreneur function and recognizing it frankly 
 for what it has become a commodity. This would 
 give the men behind the goods assured opportunity to 
 increase reward through sharing adventitious profit, 
 to the extent that thrift or efficiency gives them con- 
 trol over common stock. Corporate rights to recall 
 stock for cooperative ends might be abused, and safe- 
 guards would have to be thrown around any plan ; but
 
 THE IRON MAN 139 
 
 on the theory that most men and most corporations 
 are honest, the apparent advantages recommend a 
 trial. Once capitalists realize the greater safety of in- 
 vestment in enterprises binding employees closely to 
 themselves through stock-ownership, the way will be 
 cleared for setting up a no-par-value common stock, 
 acquirable in whole, eventually, by the working group 
 and sharing control with invested capital on terms 
 mutually agreeable and well denned. Leeway, of course, 
 should be left by the law, in order that the various 
 interests involved may bargain themselves into sub- 
 stantial harmony. Freedom to bargain, here as else- 
 where, is essential. 
 
 In approaching these adjustments, we shall en- 
 counter, and perhaps lose our way in, a maze of 
 legalism. Forty-eight sovereign states, with as many 
 corporation codes and innumerable court decisions 
 pendent therefrom, furnish a tangle from which all 
 save lawyers shrink in dismay. Some day we shall 
 need perhaps bitterly enough uniform practice 
 over the whole country for corporations engaging in 
 interstate commerce ; but when or where or how that 
 can be brought nearer, I do not prophesy. Still we 
 shall find a way; "needs must when the Devil drives." 
 
 The corporation was attended at birth by a mid- 
 wife, the Law, a fussy creature, but necessary 
 withal. We shall never get these or any changes in 
 corporate practice wrought without her aid ; but even 
 so, there is still room for the Greathearts of Industry 
 to go a long way toward giving their corporations a 
 grip upon the affections of the people, as now they
 
 i 4 o THE IRON MAN 
 
 grip their needs. Some already have gone far in that 
 direction, against the advices of the elders and sus- 
 picions of inferiors. Offering advice to such pioneers 
 is insult; to them these words are but recommenda- 
 tions which, along with news of their own accomplish- 
 ments, they may pass on to backward brothers. For, 
 until the backward brother comes to realize his social 
 significance and the tremendous power for good or 
 evil of this man-made creature he captains, the cor- 
 poration will remain under the suspicion of the state 
 and the curse of the mob. Especially may we hope 
 that the evolution of the corporation toward greater 
 cooperation and security for the workers will not be a 
 blind process, but one steadied and hastened by the 
 leaders of industry, each applying courageously in his 
 own way, to his particular problem, the utmost al- 
 truism that may be used within the limits of sound 
 economy and valid social concepts.
 
 VII 
 THE JOB AND SOCIETY 
 
 IN "The Bronze Woman" the plutocrat's wife says: 
 "Social unrest! Indeed, if the laboring classes 
 want more rest, why don't they take it? " Escorting 
 a more charming, but equally sheltered, representative 
 of the fortunate class to luncheon, I once met a picket- 
 line of cooks and waiters at their moment of impact 
 with the police. 
 
 "What are they fighting for? " asked my companion. 
 
 "Their jobs," I replied. "Cooks' and waiters' 
 strike." 
 
 "Strange," she observed, "that anyone would fight 
 for the chance to stand over a cookstove." 
 
 Later, in a serve-self, I tried to enlighten her ; but it 
 was love's labor lost. Indeed, I am sure the job is 
 something of a mystery to most of us an impene- 
 trable mystery to those who never have known in- 
 security, and hardly better understood by those who 
 live by and for their jobs every day of their lives. 
 
 In a list of the things men fight for, the job ranks 
 well toward the top. Many a man, who must be 
 drafted to fight for his country, rushes to the defense 
 of his job with clenched fists. Tame men, who have 
 to be spurred by oratory and propaganda to throw 
 themselves into great causes, come up bristling like 
 terriers for the job's sake. Men who actually hate 
 their jobs nevertheless fight for those jobs, risking 
 broken heads and jail sentences. No fiercer hatred 
 can be roused in human breast than that which flares
 
 i 4 2 THE IRON MAN 
 
 in the heart of the common man against his enemy on 
 the job the "scab." I once heard a union leader 
 give his complete opinion of the scab, and, for searing 
 hate, it outdid war profanity. 
 
 A man will leave his job on strike, for reasons which 
 appear absurd to the calm observer, and yet rage like 
 mad at whoever steps into his shoes. In his calm 
 moments he may subscribe to the theory that every 
 man has a right to work ; but he never concedes to any- 
 one else the right to work at a job that he considers 
 his, by reason of recent occupancy and willingness to 
 return under certain conditions. 
 
 He who depends upon a job vests himself with a 
 proprietary interest therein. Instincts remaining im- 
 mune to legal distinctions, he speaks of "my job," 
 when he may be tossed out of it within the hour. No 
 ordinary human ever doubts that he is entitled to the 
 means of life; therefore, the wage-employee instinc- 
 tively assumes proprietorship over that which is es- 
 sential to his life. In industrial civilization the job is 
 essential to the common man. His defense of his job, 
 his reaction against the invader who comes between 
 him and his job, is as instant as his defense of his life, 
 his home, or his woman. His job, indeed, is the first 
 line of home-defense. Job gone, the home is in sore 
 danger; unless another job can be found before the 
 savings go, the home is ruined. Moreover, unless he 
 can keep the job up to standard, he cannot keep his 
 home or himself up to standard. The job is the meas- 
 ure of social fitness, of his standing in the community; 
 by it the common man rises and by it he falls. Hence
 
 THE IRON MAN 143 
 
 the apparent anomaly, of a man fighting for that niche 
 in the workaday world which he walked out of, is no 
 anomaly at all. The striker leaves the job, not of his 
 own free will, but impelled by a conviction that the 
 job needs improving. It is still, in his view, his job ; but 
 not worth keeping on existing terms except as a last 
 resort, under pressure of necessity. When he strikes, 
 he expects to return. 
 
 Carleton Parker goes the whole way to accepting 
 the job-man'spointof view. "The job, "he says, "is the 
 worker's property , because the latter has nothingelse." 
 That is sophistry: property is based on possession, 
 not lack. And the jobless worker has something else: 
 his time, his arms and legs, muscles, nerves, powers of 
 will and mind, all of which may be taken into the mar- 
 ket and sold, as preliminary to the setting up of 
 another job on such terms as the market offers. 
 Property, on the contrary, is tangible, transferable. 
 Two men can trade properties without the consent 
 of a third ; they cannot so trade their jobs. The job, 
 in short, is not property, but is, instead, a personal 
 relationship, which, like so many others, is fast be- 
 coming a social relationship. 
 
 In a time of depression, large numbers of jobs vanish 
 into thin air. Within a week, a thousand jobs may de- 
 part from a community because of the market's un- 
 willingness to take the produce of the jobs at the terms 
 offered. The employer must retrench ; to delay brings 
 danger of bankruptcy. The men so laid off have n't 
 their jobs, and the employer has n't them, and cannot 
 hope to re-create them until he can induce the market
 
 i 4 4 THE IRON MAN 
 
 to take his accumulated stocks. He would much 
 prefer to have his plant working full time ; each slack 
 day costs him, or his corporation, dearly for deprecia- 
 tion, interest charges, and overhead expense. But for 
 the life of him he cannot revive those jobs until the 
 market, properly courted, comes to his rescue. Until 
 then, all he possesses is the mere shell of the vanished 
 jobs the work- places, standing-room, and the tools 
 of production upon which the market of consumers 
 enforces temporary idleness. 
 
 So the job, having departed from both employer 
 and employee, awaits the commanding touch of the 
 market before it can live again. What, pray, is the 
 market? None other than society, the totality of per- 
 sons and institutions in the trading area. The job de- 
 pends, therefore, upon consumption; if jobs belong to 
 anyone, they belong to society. Which is equivalent 
 to repeating, in another way, that jobs are not prop- 
 erty, because society owns nothing. Individuals and 
 their various associations of record own everything 
 appropriable thatis worth appropriating. Thestate, our 
 most inclusive association of record, is held loosely ac- 
 countable by society for order and general well-being; 
 but until the state can force folk to live according to 
 regimen, consuming thus and so and not otherwise, 
 the job remains at loose ends, in the air. The free job 
 free in the sense that it exists as a result of bargain- 
 ing among free men under the law is a result of 
 freedom in the larger sphere. It was not present in 
 serfdom, but came into being with freedom; and all 
 efforts to harness it involve a diminution of freedom.
 
 THE IRON MAN 145 
 
 The unions, when they try that, encroach upon the 
 liberties of both employers and union members; the 
 employers, when they try it, trespass upon the lib- 
 erties of individuals; and the state that tries it edges 
 away from liberty. To stabilize the social order, prog- 
 ress in that direction may be necessary; nevertheless, 
 it is an infringement of personal liberty, and every 
 prospective advance in that direction ought to be 
 judged from that point of view as an invasion of 
 freedom. 
 
 The right to work means one thing to John Doe, 
 and something else to his neighbor. Capital and labor 
 each has its interpretation ; the spokesmen of both 
 often talk nonsense ; there are rogues and dullards on 
 both sides of the fence. But certain aspects of the case 
 are clear as day. No rights can long remain vested 
 where the corresponding duties are refused. If labor 
 insists on the right to quit, it cannot logically insist on 
 the right to work. Labor, it seems to me, should cleave 
 to the right to strike, because the exercise of that 
 right has brought the masses real boons; but, if so, 
 it must cease claiming that work for pay, on the 
 materials and with the tools of others, is a right. 
 Work on such terms is not a right, but a social priv- 
 ilege. Some day it may become a right: there are 
 tendencies working in that direction now; but the 
 process can be completed only by men voiding other 
 rights they now hold dear, and assuming as duties in- 
 hibitions they now hold to be intolerable. 
 
 Both strike and lockout are weapons inevitably 
 called into play when employer and employee contest
 
 146 THE IRON MAN 
 
 to determine the conditions of jobs after bargaining 
 fails. Use of one cannot be denied fairly, unless the 
 other is also denied; neither, in my opinion, can be 
 dispensed with while men remain free alike to work 
 and own. However, let it be noted that neither strike 
 nor lockout is used until bargaining has been invoked, 
 and has failed, either because one side would not bar- 
 gain, or because the bargain, once begun, was not 
 completed. 
 
 Moreover, neither strike nor lockout is applied un- 
 less the applier is convinced that he can win by so 
 doing. No body of men ever yet went on strike for 
 pure principle, in a cause they knew to be hopeless; 
 and no employer ever locked out men simply to make 
 good a point in policy. This is a rough world, but as 
 yet its inhabitants fight for objectives instead of ex- 
 citement. The railway unions stayed at work in 
 November, 1921, simply because a majority of their 
 leaders became convinced that a strike at the date 
 advertised would be lost. Their eleventh-hour decision 
 not to strike was merely good generalship, with noth- 
 ing of altruism or accommodation to public needs in 
 it. But better generalship would have been (i) to lie 
 low, like Br'er Rabbit, for a better opportunity; or (2) 
 to say, "We yield to save the public inconvenience," 
 which would have been as untrue as most propaganda, 
 but time-serving and face-saving a proclamation 
 for political purposes only. 
 
 Evolution toward industrial security involves in- 
 evitably some diminution of industrial freedom for 
 individuals; each generation must choose between
 
 THE IRON MAN 147 
 
 having more of the one and less of the other ; both can- 
 not be maintained coincidently. The drift now is 
 toward security and away from freedom; the social 
 order gains at the expense of individualism; but thus 
 far the fringe of freedom sheared off has been of small 
 value, because reality departed from it before the 
 knife began to cut. When individuals find it increas- 
 ingly difficult to produce independently of others; 
 when many are under practical necessity to toil on 
 materials and at machines owned by a corporation 
 which, in turn, is owned by numbers of scattered 
 stockholders, there is no paramount advantage in 
 retaining, undisturbed, arrangements effective when 
 individualism in toil was real and personal independ- 
 ence easily maintained. 
 
 To put the case concretely, the laborer who could 
 escape from the pay-roll to free land was in a far dif- 
 ferent situation from his successor, who finds the na- 
 tional domain practically appropriated and farm-lands 
 selling above the capitalized value of their earnings. 
 The freedom of the first producer was absolute: he 
 could go or stay ; the other's is relative : he can go only 
 under favoring circumstances not easy to control. The 
 first might resent an interference which the other 
 would welcome, providing it brings compensation in 
 the matter of security. And, likewise, an employerwho 
 is keen to defend his right to exploit an expanding 
 market as he sees fit, may welcome restraint when he 
 sees trade slowing down, and realizes that the un- 
 trammeled instincts of enterprisers inevitably lead to 
 over-production, which threatens his own security
 
 148 THE IRON MAN 
 
 along with that of his employees. Federal control 
 of credits, which, in the last analysis, means control 
 of business and a more stabilized production, was not 
 badly received by the business world. 
 
 The fringe of industrial freedom is now dead tissue, 
 though once tingling with life. The causes of decay 
 in that tissue are many; but prominent among them 
 must be listed the growing influence of automatism, 
 standardization, and interchangeability in fabricating 
 goods. Machinery has increased the insecurity of the 
 common man's position in the wage-system, by in- 
 creasing the number of potential competitors for his 
 job. The balance between security and individualism 
 has been destroyed, with the result that personal free- 
 dom in work-relations no longer seems worth fighting 
 for, and a new balance must be struck. When per- 
 sonal skill was a prime factor in industry, the indi- 
 vidual artisan occupied a fairly safe position, because 
 substitutes were few a security which had its in- 
 evitable offset in the fact that, since shop-practices 
 were not standardized, he had difficulty fitting in else- 
 where, and so was more or less tied to the job. The 
 point is that, if he was tied to the job, so likewise was 
 the job tied to him. The management disliked to see 
 him get out of town. 
 
 Note the contrast with the present. To-day, he 
 who does ordinary work in a plant highly automatized 
 is in potential competition with every idle man in a 
 far-spread labor market and, unless the task is ar- 
 duous indeed, with many women, also. The skill- 
 barrier has been trampled down so completely by the
 
 THE IRON MAN 149 
 
 Iron Man, that whoever possesses ordinary intelli- 
 gence and strength can take the machine-tender's 
 place after short instruction. The common man's grip 
 on his job has loosened. If he does n't like the place, 
 let him get out ; plenty of persons can fill his shoes in 
 short order. And if he must be laid off, there is no 
 need to worry about keeping a string on him until 
 happier times. Out with him; and never mind what 
 becomes of him. Let the man, the community, and 
 the state fret over that. 
 
 I do not mean to say that all employers, or any con- 
 siderable proportion of them, are so ruthless ; some of 
 them have gone so far as to risk insolvency out of 
 human, non-economic consideration for their help; but 
 that is the power which automatic machinery puts 
 into employers' hands power which the least ethical 
 will be prompt to use ; power which competition may 
 force even the most ethical to use, in order to keep his 
 corporation solvent. 
 
 The increasing influence of automatic machinery 
 promotes industrial insecurity in another way, by 
 speeding up market gluts, as a result of which jobs 
 vanish as if by magic and are only gradually reestab- 
 lished. The first English factory equipped for inter- 
 changeable manufacture that at Portsmouth, in 
 1808 at once multiplied the productivity of the in- 
 dividual producer of ships' blocks by ten. From that 
 time on, we have gone along multiplying man-power 
 as measured in goods, and there is apparently no limit 
 at which the process, economically, can be stayed. In 
 spite of tremendous efforts to educate backward
 
 150 THE IRON MAN 
 
 peoples in wants, and force goods into use in trading 
 areas not accustomed to them, efforts which created 
 part of the background of the World War, market 
 gluts and their resultant depressions are recurrent 
 phenomena. 
 
 I know that plenty means cheapness and extended 
 use; nevertheless, it is apparent that the social, po- 
 litical, and financial fabric of civilization is not suffi- 
 ciently sensitive to accommodate itself to these in- 
 creases in production rapidly enough to avoid vast and 
 poignant distress. Recurrently, production runs ahead 
 of consumption ; population increases, but not swiftly 
 enough; wants increase, but not fast enough; the 
 standard of living rises, but not far enough. The pa- 
 tient, society, unable to digest such enormous masses 
 of goods, becomes nauseated and needs purging. Doc- 
 tors rally to the bedside; nevertheless, recovery is slow. 
 All sorts of persons suffer in these fits of social sickness, 
 but those who suffer most are they who customarily 
 labor for wages with the tools of others. Given the 
 ballot, it is inevitable that they should use it to com- 
 bat such difficulties. 
 
 From the standpoint of national economy, a capable 
 and willing man out of a day's work is a calamity. 
 Multiplied by millions, the situation is a threat against 
 the state. There was a time when England said to her 
 unemployed : " Emigrate" ; then she kept them up out 
 of the rates; now she combines state relief and doles. 
 No one dares to hint that starvation is expected of the 
 unemployed. Some reactionaries may think it, but 
 they dare not say it. In such a pass the government,
 
 THE IRON MAN 151 
 
 torn between threats of insolvency and revolution, 
 must find jobs a task for which the state is by its 
 nature unfitted, and which America, more favorably 
 situated, may avoid. Not that we would behave differ- 
 ently under like extremity; but, by taking thought, 
 we may escape the extremity, at least until our popu- 
 lation becomes considerably more dense than it is 
 to-day. 
 
 Fortunately, the automatic machine and public edu- 
 cation provide an ameliorating influence. As wages 
 tend toward a common level, and capital gradually 
 loses its entrepreneur function, considerable progress 
 will be made toward a relative equalizing of incomes. 
 There would remain, of course, .incomes derivable 
 from rent and interest; but for all that we can see to 
 the contrary, super-taxes will discourage such accu- 
 mulations and gradually shred away large wealth- 
 holdings. As wages are leveled, not absolutely but 
 relatively, so also are incomes likely to be leveled 
 relatively. This involves, of course, a reduction in 
 society's power to produce capital by saving a seri- 
 ous sacrifice, no doubt (but one which apparently must 
 be made, in order to permit the producer to consume 
 more nearly the equivalent of his product) . If produc- 
 tion and consumption were exactly equal there could 
 be neither glut nor dearth; but, even in a static world, 
 capital would be destroyed in use, and must be re- 
 stored, in order to keep labor effective. 
 
 This hazily forecasted change involves time, per- 
 haps more than the passions of the post-war era will 
 permit. Meanwhile the virtues of both strike and
 
 152 THE IRON MAN 
 
 lockout will continue to be abused, and government 
 will continue to burn its clumsy fingers in the fires of 
 class-discord. I detest programmes, and would avoid 
 even the appearance of prescribing definite remedies. 
 But if you insist on a programme, and the ordinary 
 person will not be content without some positive di- 
 rection, then, without any fear of the consequences, 
 I recommend the cooperation of working shareholders 
 in corporations animated by zeal for the group good, 
 but adhering to the sound practice of rewarding 
 workers according to their economic significance in 
 production and their thrift in contributing capital to 
 the enterprise. Where feasible and advantageous, 
 such groups should ensure their continuity by possess- 
 ing a grip on the land now, as ever, the source of 
 man's subsistence and his haven of refuge in all ages. 
 Some, at least, of the millions who now live in fear for 
 their jobs from one day to another could thus antici- 
 pate the day when the further organization of life and 
 industry, by methods impossible to foresee, will com- 
 bine reasonable security for rank-and-file producers 
 with all the freedom compatible with such tenure. 
 
 The job is a social grant, as well as a lease on life ; 
 and, unless all signs fail, it must eventually gain social 
 guaranties. But whatsoever those guaranties are, they 
 must be bought and paid for at a price. Our bitter 
 quarrel over the job is founded on a false assumption 
 of proprietorship over a relationship which eludes ap- 
 propriation. Soon or late those vitally concerned are 
 going to realize that truth, cease fighting, and begin to 
 negotiate more constructively.
 
 VIII 
 WAR AND WORK 
 
 IN America we invent, manufacture, and use in the 
 production of goods, an infinite number of ma- 
 chines; but we pay scant heed to the effect of these 
 machines upon the evolution of society. Out here, in 
 our great Middle West machine-shops, where the auto- 
 matic principle of machine production has reached 
 its highest development and broadest application, we 
 possess tools superior to those of Paris. Yet it would 
 never have occurred to any of us to say in 1914, as did 
 Bergson in addressing the French Academy : 
 
 "Many years hence, when the reaction of the past 
 shall have left only the grand outlines in view, this 
 perhaps is how a philosopher will speak of our age. He 
 will say that the idea, peculiar to the nineteenth cen- 
 tury, of employing science in the satisfaction of our 
 material wants had given a wholly unforeseen ex- 
 tension to the mechanical arts, and equipped man, 
 in less than fifty years, with more tools than he had 
 made during the thousands of years he had lived upon 
 earth. Each new machine being for man a new organ, 
 an artificial organ, his body became suddenly 
 and prodigiously increased in size, without his soul 
 being, at the same time, able to dilate to the dimen- 
 sions of his new body." 
 
 Bergson pictures the " machinate mammal" of But- 
 ler's striking phrase as a dread, autogenetic being, 
 adding limbs and organs ad infinitum, without corre- 
 sponding growth of soul a modern monster set going
 
 154 THE IRON MAN 
 
 by our busy Frankensteins, the inventors. Let us 
 consider, rather, man in society, organized into states, 
 and observe some of the political and social results 
 which have followed, and are likely to follow, multi- 
 plication of man-power by machinery. 
 
 Multiplying man-power by machinery sets in mo- 
 tion certain forces and tendencies in key with but 
 not at all points parallel to those set in motion in 
 other times by brisk breeding. However generated, 
 new peaks of human energy strain social and political 
 systems evolved to carry currents less high. Unless 
 the current is cut down, or the system of distribution 
 readjusted to carry the new peak-load, something 
 breaks. War is simply one method of restoring equi- 
 librium between the kinetics of human energy and the 
 statics of social order. 
 
 Machine use, on the expanding scale of recent years, 
 multiplies goods production over and above any point 
 attainable by natural increase without machine as- 
 sistance. Power over machines enabled the coal-and- 
 iron members of the great-nations group to establish 
 world-leadership in the years between the industrial 
 revolution and the World War. Not only did popula- 
 tion in the industrial states increase absolutely, but the 
 effectiveness of those increased populations in wealth 
 production multiplied over and over. States with 
 more machines assumed preponderant political influ- 
 ence over those with less. 
 
 Because the nations of leading power at the opening 
 of the twentieth century were all white and all Chris- 
 tian, a false idea arose that this overlordship rested
 
 THE IRON MAN 155 
 
 upon race or religion; but Japan's entrance, following 
 victory over Russia, proved the acid test of world- 
 power to be industrial prowess. Enough productivity 
 to furnish, year after year, a considerable excess of 
 goods for export, and to support naval and military 
 forces proportionate to the resulting extensive overseas 
 interests these were the prime desiderata of power ; 
 and the nation possessing them could be sure of its 
 place in the sun, regardless of color or the constitution 
 of its godhead. 
 
 Machine-power not only strengthened nationalism 
 by slowing down dispersion through emigration, but 
 also intensified it, by generating real need for group 
 action to ensure subsistence from foreign sources. To 
 make the industrial centre secure, its economic hinter- 
 land must be likewise secure; states were constantly 
 urged by groups oppressed by the conviction of inse- 
 curity to move outward toward the control of that 
 ever- widening hinterland, without whose produce and 
 consumption the industrial complex at home must 
 languish in unprofitable depression. 
 
 In earlier times natural increase set in motion cen- 
 trifugal forces, which machine increase shifted into 
 centripetal forces. Nations in effective possession of 
 coal and iron held their nationals, because machines 
 permitted the use at home of more labor and more 
 capital per acre. Instead of sending forth surplus pop- 
 ulation at the former rate, the industrial states sent 
 forth, in ever-increasing volume, surplus goods to 
 compete with those of their rival nationals in world- 
 markets. The descendants of men who had won sus-
 
 156 THE IRON MAN 
 
 tenance at the spear-point in forced migrations now 
 fought one another with goods, and recorded their 
 victories in ledgers instead of sagas. Upon the profit- 
 able and certain sale of these goods depended national 
 solvency and domestic content, the hunger or plenty 
 of millions of wage-earners, the revenues which sup- 
 ported governments, military establishments, educa- 
 tional institutions in short, modern Western civil- 
 ization. Realizing the vulnerability of their economic 
 supports, the industrial societies of the Old World 
 grew more and more state-conscious, and drifted into 
 more and more echinate relations one with another. 
 Thus modern nationalism developed a sinister accent. 
 Given the determining mechanisms, this develop- 
 ment was sure as fate. Arteries of national existence, 
 inextricably interwoven, came to thread the Seven 
 Seas. Though the bulk of imported nourishment grew 
 in stabilized quarters, certain essentials of industrial 
 life were gathered from lightly settled districts of un- 
 certain political complexion, where the white man's 
 code did not run. Concessions and capitulations, ex- 
 tra-territoriality and economic penetration these 
 satisfied neither natives nor invaders. Willy-nilly, the 
 situation made for imperialism. Wherever moneys 
 were owing and courts were not; wherever raw ma- 
 terials needed in the mills back home could be pro- 
 duced ; wherever goods could be sold to the heathen if 
 the latter could be educated sufficiently in wants; 
 wherever capital could be multiplied by exploiting 
 cheap labor there industrial societies, though lo- 
 cated on the other side of the earth, had stakes, vital
 
 THE IRON MAN 157 
 
 stakes of existence. The temptation was powerful, 
 indeed, to change these stakes of existence into stakes 
 of empire. Africa was partitioned; western Asia be- 
 came a bickering ground; China was divided into 
 spheres of influence, and must soon have been parceled 
 out if the United States, not yet hard pressed econom- 
 ically, had not initiated the saving reprieve of the 
 "Open Door." 
 
 So far toward the war had the nations traveled by 
 the beginning of the century. Thereafter came in- 
 trigue after intrigue for adjustment and review. Only 
 by stating and restating the Monroe Doctrine, in 
 terms which would have amazed Monroe, were we able 
 to fend off itching hands from South America, per- 
 chance to keep for ourselves freedom of action in that 
 quarter at some later date. Elsewhere the game went 
 on with ever-increasing openness as the economic needs 
 of Europe became more acute. The nations looked 
 sharply to navies, coaling-stations, merchant marines, 
 as so much national insurance under the conditions 
 imposed by the Iron Man. Popular hate must be 
 roused, to wring funds for naval expansion from par- 
 liaments and taxpayers. Enter propaganda, the press 
 doing its share, and navy leagues the rest. Diplomatic 
 incident followed incident, well named because so ob- 
 viously incidental eruptions of the primary force that 
 made peace ever more difficult to keep. Algeciras, 
 London, The Hague all vain while factory- wheels 
 continued to move at an ever-accelerated pace, and 
 statesmen continued thinking in terms of politics in- 
 stead of economics. Back of all this diplomatic jock-
 
 158 THE IRON MAN 
 
 eying and military picketing, commercial zeal and 
 naval expansion, the mo tor- force behind all these 
 expressions of national will, operated unceasingly 
 the overload of human energy released by machine 
 multiplication of man-power. 
 
 Responsibility for this dangerous evolution rests 
 upon political rigidity rather than upon industrial 
 progress. Internally each of the industrial states 
 maintained such a division of the returns of industry 
 that its full production could not be consumed at 
 home ; internationally trade and finance reached plan- 
 etary proportions without correspondingly broad po- 
 litical and legal controls. Failing such controls, the 
 situation marched swiftly to its conclusion. Almost 
 to the last, either of two denouements was possible 
 either the boundaries of industrial states must burst 
 under inequalities of pressure generated by increased 
 populations and increased machines, or the machines 
 themselves must be slowed down by eliminating prof- 
 its from their operation. The first meant war the 
 World War; the second meant war also, but of a 
 different sort the war between classes, the social 
 revolution. 
 
 In midsummer of 1914, it was nip and tuck which 
 method of bleeding the too-vital patient would be 
 adopted. Had Juares lived, who knows how changed 
 the face of history might be? The state- war method 
 won the desperate race against time. At the moment, 
 decision rested with certain Germans, who may have 
 been influenced, consciously or unconsciously, by 
 the hovering spectre of social and political revolution.
 
 THE IRON MAN 159 
 
 If deferred then, the decision a little later might have 
 rested upon other persons elsewhere; and if so, the 
 answer must have been the same war. Useless to 
 apply ethical rules at such a pass; indicting forces is 
 even more absurd than indicting nations. The im- 
 portant thing to understand, here and now, is that, 
 given nationalism as the dominant social fact of the 
 planet, sea-striding industrialism as its dominant eco- 
 nomic fact, and the control of weak peoples by strong 
 as its dominant political fact, peace in or near the year 
 1914 could not be maintained without qualifying one 
 or all of the three. It was not done. There was none 
 big enough to do it. To that extent, the war may be 
 considered inevitable. 
 
 Has Europe's blood-letting, plus its post-war So- 
 cialism and Communism, rid the world of wars bred 
 in the market-place? The situation does not make for 
 confidence. State competition, intensified by hunger, 
 hate, and debt, is not yet restrainable by international 
 bonds. Russia's experiment does not recommend the 
 class-war as a means to peace. Just as industry and 
 nationalism conceived and brought forth the World 
 War, without knowing quite either when or how con- 
 ception occurred, so they may add to the Martian 
 family in the future. Indeed, certain tendencies of 
 modern industrialism, in its new automatic phase, as 
 yet but dimly understood, seem destined to put even 
 more strain upon the political framework of the planet 
 than that under which the same framework cracked in 
 1914. 
 
 One such aspect of industrialism is its tendency to
 
 160 THE IRON MAN 
 
 spread. Born in England, the factory system has mi- 
 grated to northwestern Europe, northern Italy, the 
 United States, and Japan. It has healthy roots in 
 Canada, less healthy ones in Mexico. It appeared in 
 Russia, and contributed to that debacle. China is 
 getting under industrial way, slowly, but with a 
 steady ponderosity which Ross, Stoddard, and Weale 
 agree means nothing less than an economic upheaval 
 certain to affect every nation and individual on earth 
 as time runs on. India, too, is on the way, quickening 
 step during the war. Australia, by erecting a tariff 
 wall, encourages domestic industries. Thus industry 
 travels; how far can it go? 
 
 The spread of industry among colored and Slavic 
 populations has been retarded appreciably by the fact 
 that, in the past, industrial production required the 
 application of certain traits, natural or acquired, 
 which, for historic reasons beyond the scope of this 
 paper, are more apparent in the white peoples than 
 in others. The skill element was paramount. Now, 
 industry has machines so highly perfected that highly 
 specialized skill is not required. Ordinary intelligence 
 and average manual dexterity are the top require- 
 ments, from the standpoint of production only, for the 
 operative or attendant of automatic machines. He 
 who brings maximum endurance to the shop at mini- 
 mum cost will profit his employer most. On this basis 
 the Chinese coolie, at first glance, appears unbeatable. 
 If not the best individual, his cheapness still may give 
 his produce an advantage in the market. The Jap- 
 anese have demonstrated a considerable degree of
 
 THE IRON MAN 161 
 
 Oriental adaptability to modern machines. The 
 Hindu, on test, may not be far behind. And since the 
 tendency in machine-development is always toward 
 less and less mental demand upon the operative, there 
 is the possibility that even more backward peoples 
 than these may some day find machines attuned to 
 their mental and manual capacities. The huge profits 
 likely to follow promptly upon the putting of cheap, 
 low-standard labor at work upon automatic and semi- 
 automatic machines should be enough to ensure that, 
 soon or late, all peoples will be brought to the ordeal 
 by the Iron Man. 
 
 But whether browns, blacks, and yellows can with- 
 stand this ordeal is another matter. Theoretically, 
 expansion of industry should proceed until export 
 trade in manufactured goods is much curtailed. But 
 there are offsets to consider capital, coal, iron, oil, 
 water-power. Dearth of these bars industry from 
 many quarters. Far more important, however, are 
 the varying abilities of races and peoples to meet the 
 social and political problems presented by machine 
 industry. The white race is progressive; the historic 
 concept which has motivated Western history gives 
 it a superior elasticity of adaptation to changing con- 
 ditions. Yet the war proves that even we favored 
 whites could not escape at least one terrific setback 
 resulting from industrial impact. The depth and 
 breadth of present social unrest further emphasizes 
 the difficulties of adjustment on that side of the equa- 
 tion. Since the colored races have not yet been tried 
 in the fiery crucible of industry, no one can prophesy
 
 162 THE IRON MAN 
 
 their reaction to the impact of modern industry. 
 Consider from this angle some of the vital demands 
 that industry makes upon government and upon so- 
 ciety. Industry requires a government at once strong 
 and flexible. Government must preserve domestic 
 order against class jealousies that fatten upon the dis- 
 parity of wealth inevitably arising from industrialism 
 under private ownership as King demonstrates in 
 his comparison of incomes in Prussia and Wisconsin. 
 It must uphold contracts under conditions in which 
 contractual relations become increasingly complex. It 
 must protect the people from their employers and from 
 themselves ; it must maintain such hours of labor and 
 working conditions as will save the workers from being 
 ground down in ruthless competition, or enfeebled by 
 their own weaknesses. It must encourage the public, 
 and find ways and means to compensate it for the so- 
 cial sacrifices involved in industrial production, which 
 compensations must be provided outside of factory 
 walls and enjoyed at leisure. To provide these seda- 
 tives requires the presence of an imaginative, strongly 
 functioning public spirit outside of the industrial 
 group, and the finding of funds to make expensive 
 dreams of social progress come true, at least suffi- 
 ciently to allay discontent. 
 
 The dilemma presented by heavy social needs, and 
 the very real danger of overtaxing industry, is not an 
 easy one to solve, even for states highly organized ; it 
 may well prove insoluble for states which, like China 
 and Turkey, reveal chronic inability to establish 
 sound public finance. Finally, history gives no ground
 
 THE IRON MAN 163 
 
 for believing that industry and autocracy are com- 
 patible; in the long run, so strong are the social pres- 
 sures involved, a successful government of an industrial 
 state must grow out of the conscious will of its people, 
 represent their ideals, and be amenable to those ideals 
 as they change from generation to generation. Even 
 in Japan the advent of industry brought constitutional 
 forms, not yet nationally digested. Those states in 
 which representative democracy had reached its high- 
 est expression emerged from the desperate test of war, 
 and the grind of war-production, with the least po- 
 litical and social damage. 
 
 Industry prospers best under capitalism and under 
 representative democracy ; I cannot conceive industry 
 functioning well under other dispensations. German 
 autocrats might introduce state socialism as they 
 pleased: the fact of autocracy remained a threat to 
 German industry. And because no colored race equals 
 the white in its power to create the social and political 
 setting in which machine industry thrives, I am unable 
 to follow Lothrop Stoddard to the lengths he goes in 
 forecasting the shrinking of the white man's markets 
 in his book, "The Rising Tide of Color." 
 
 Indeed, the impact of industry upon colored races 
 seems as likely to weaken them as the reverse. Modern 
 industrialism places both the individual and society 
 under severe and continued strains, physical, mental, 
 moral. The more static the society, the more custom- 
 tied the individual, the more severe the strain. The 
 English people have been evolving with and in indus- 
 try, under representative government, for six cen-
 
 164 THE IRON MAN 
 
 turies; for two centuries they have been applying 
 power to machines and building up a factory system. 
 All this time they have been building up definite im- 
 munities against industrial ills, and definite predispo- 
 sitions to bargain themselves out of industrial ills. 
 Yet they are never out of hot water, politically and 
 industrially. I do not see how peoples without that 
 background, or something like it, lacking alike polit- 
 ical flexibility and industrial experience, can stand the 
 attrition of industrial life. Industrialism in its 
 functioning and growth and it is still growing 
 requires never-ending readjustments, compromises, 
 and concessions which are born of freedom and re- 
 sponsibility the right of individuals and groups to 
 bargain freely, and the duty, freely accepted, of living 
 up to the bargain after it is made. Where these con- 
 cepts have no place in the popular mind, there in- 
 dustry will have rough sledding, and can become 
 efficient only through a system of force and repression 
 which eventually defeats itself. 
 
 It is easy, under the automatic regime, for a man 
 to stand beside a machine and produce goods, and 
 difficult for him to stay there and remain a reasonably 
 satisfied, contributing member of a political and social 
 group, strong enough to maintain itself, yet flexible 
 enough to give him reason to believe industrialism 
 worth while. Mexico's experience is a case in point/ 
 Diaz, proceeding toward the industrialization of his 
 country with the aid of foreign capital, enterprisers, 
 and engineers, unmistakably bettered the economic 
 condition of Mexican labor. Nevertheless, the peons'
 
 THE IRON MAN 165 
 
 ideal of life remained agricultural ; Madero won their 
 backing with his promise of forty acres and a mule. 
 Carranza, inheriting from Madero, frankly declared 
 his country's antipathy to industrialism. Whatever 
 his faults, Carranza sized his Indian up correctly. 
 Though the Mexican peon has certain innate capac- 
 ities for factory work, notably high manual dexterity 
 and stolid patience, he prefers to half-starve on the 
 land rather than work upon modern machines indoors, 
 at wages that would enable him to maintain a higher 
 standard of living. Necessity may bring him to the 
 factory, if we whites insist; but he will remain a rebel, 
 active or potential, against industrial organization so 
 imposed. 
 
 The Mexican's instinctive reaction against indus- 
 trial organization differs in degree, but not in kind, 
 from that of many of our own shop-workers. There 
 develops among the workers in highly automatized 
 plants a chronic dissatisfaction, which cannot be ex- 
 plained away without reference to nerves. It seems to 
 be proof against high wages and good conditions. Wel- 
 fare-work, bonuses, shop-councils, even profit-sharing 
 do not drive it out. So pervasive is this malady that 
 it might be described as a work-neurosis. Clatter and 
 haste are contributing factors ; so also are indoor con- 
 finement, monotony of task, distance from the real 
 boss, repression of personality, strict regimentation 
 of effort, and the scant opportunity afforded for the 
 play of the craftsman instinct, the joy in production. 
 
 But the basic cause lies deeper. All of us are de- 
 scended from ancestors who, a comparatively short
 
 i66 THE IRON MAN 
 
 time ago, were farmers, hunters, and fishermen with 
 occasional experience as fighting men. Their work 
 held considerable variety, called for great outbursts 
 of physical energy interspersed with frequent let- 
 downs. They had their labor-thrills along with their 
 labor-pains. Even the simple annals of the mediaeval 
 poor must have been crowded with adventure, as 
 compared with the systematic, colorless, bare-of- 
 drama tasks of the modern factory. Your worker is 
 there in the factory, not because he wants to be, but 
 because he needs the money, and can discover no other 
 means of getting it. Yet there is that stirring within 
 him which informs him, even before the voice of the 
 agitator reinforces the conviction, that this is no life 
 for a real man. He gets, literally, no fun out of his 
 labors. His environment irks him, and out of that at- 
 trition is born an Arbeitschmerz as real as the Welt- 
 schmerz that Goethe discovered. Our tenders of ma- 
 chines are being starved in their souls ; and while there 
 may be sedatives for that malady, there is no specific. 
 
 That seems to me the root of social unrest in Amer- 
 ica ; and it is probably equally true in Europe. Under 
 our political and social controls, in a people naturally 
 robust and hopeful in spirit, the sickness may not run 
 its course. Though half our mechanics talk radicalism 
 they vote with the others for Harding, play baseball 
 in our parks, and get some relief and encouragement 
 out of being literate citizens of a republic whose evo- 
 lution tends, however slowly, toward the interests of 
 the masses. 
 
 But what will this chronic work-pain drive other
 
 THE IRON MAN 167 
 
 breeds to do breeds that get no relief out of sport 
 and voting? Well, to cite the shining example, it 
 seems to have poisoned Russia's industrial workers 
 against the only system of industry under which in- 
 dustry functions profitably in our day ; the Commu- 
 nists of Russia come from her few industrial towns. 
 Signs of similar explosions are not lacking in Japan. 
 No matter how shops are organized, no matter how 
 profits are divided, this fraying of nerves in industry 
 continues. Industry may stir temporarily the simple 
 folk of Mandalay and Peshawar; but can they stand 
 the shock any better than the Amerind withstood the 
 white man's methods and the white man's whiskey? 
 Modern industry is strong drink; those who have lived 
 long with it, despite partial immunity born of expe- 
 rience, are none too happy; and those less experienced 
 dally with it at the risk of their health, customs, gen- 
 eral effectiveness, and political stability. 
 
 Viewing from these angles the possibility of spread- 
 ing industrialism, a tremendous dilemma presents it- 
 self. On the one hand, the economic forces that spread 
 industrialism outward from its English inception are 
 still operative, and more vigorous than before. To the 
 constant of self-interest is added a heightened state- 
 interest flowing from huge debts. These converging 
 interests now have tools at their disposal which admit 
 to efficient production breeds of cheap men not hither- 
 to available as industrial workers. These dynamic 
 forces are not to be denied their trial of strength. On 
 the other hand, peoples about to be introduced to in- 
 dustrialism must overcome grave social and political
 
 i68 THE IRON MAN 
 
 inhibitions before they cut down materially the de- 
 mand for the white man's goods, and so restrict his 
 influence in the world. These contrary forces one 
 set positive, the other negative; one the essence of 
 progress, the other the essence of conservatism are 
 bound to do battle with one another on the world- 
 stage. Upon the outcome depends the future of ter- 
 restrial society. 
 
 Alarm as to the outcome has been sounded vocifer- 
 ously enough ; and though the warnings may be more 
 strident than the dangers are imminent, still the out- 
 look calls for the highest statesmanship. The trial 
 period, while the old and new do battle in Asia, is sure 
 to be an era of extreme nervousness in international 
 relations. During this period the white nations must 
 strive toward a genuine solidarity, at the very time 
 when their traders and governments are forced by 
 powerful economic motives to cut into each other's 
 markets. At a time, too, when rankling hate persists, 
 and statecraft is still under the shadow of chauvinism. 
 Any statesman who does not make an effort to over- 
 come these difficulties deserves ill of posterity ; because 
 the situation is one in which peace must be labored 
 for, and of which war is the logical outcome. 
 
 There can be no durable peace, and no effective 
 white solidarity, so long as the coal-and-iron states 
 continue treading the path of economic competition 
 toward another Armageddon. A sword is suspended 
 over civilization, and that sword can be sheathed only 
 by such a reorientation of industrialism as will permit 
 the aggressive nationalism it fosters to die of inanition.
 
 THE IRON MAN 169 
 
 Much may be done by international agreement, with 
 force back of the agreement ; more may be done by the 
 forward spirits in each industrial society forcing into 
 public attention these internal adjustments necessary 
 to bring social and political evolution into line with 
 industrial evolution. The more energy goes into in- 
 ternal developments, the less will press outward to 
 complicate international relations. There is plenty of 
 work for all governments to do at home, before their 
 populations recover their pre-war trust in govern- 
 ments. 
 
 Every alert man or woman recognizes that the masses 
 are critical of governments in this year of grace. 
 The conviction is growing that the war was of eco- 
 nomic origin. Men are no longer willing to turn out 
 war as a by-product of goods on machines. Since a 
 prime source of belligerency is goods-competition, 
 sovereignty has become a matter of control over ma- 
 chines as well as over men. That is the direction in 
 which competent governments must move ; and those 
 which fail to keep step will possess no valid reason for 
 existence in the automatic-machine age. The peoples 
 of the earth look to governments to set up a moral 
 control over machine use ; and this instinctive turning 
 to the state for relief is sound to the core, since states 
 are the only groupings of humanity strong enough to 
 harness the Iron Man to the chariot of human well- 
 being.
 
 IX 
 THE IRON MAN'S LEGACY 
 
 WHY all this bother about industry? Why worry 
 ourselves attempting to understand life and 
 evaluate its processes, when our test of life is short 
 and our recommendations of doubtful validity? 
 
 The answer is bound to be mixed. For instance, I 
 write this partly to prove my uniqueness among men, 
 since no other could, or would, do this task in just 
 this way. Also, I do it to satisfy my will to power, 
 since to influence other minds is to dominate them in 
 some degree, even though the method be the gentle 
 one of persuasion. But to some extent I do it out of a 
 sense of responsibility to posterity, to the race. 
 
 One's feeling of responsibility for the future meas- 
 ures one's progress in civilization. The primal savage 
 bears no such burden ; but let him grow ever so little 
 civilized, to the point, let us say, of founding a 
 home, and the future overtakes him. He may con- 
 cern himself only with the possible weal or woe of his 
 own household after he is gone, and the disposition 
 of his trophies and gear; but responsibility for the 
 future is likely to widen and deepen as the social group 
 expands. The clansman gives thought to the future 
 of his clan, the tribesman to the future of his tribe, the 
 citizen to that of his state ; and those whose intellects 
 and sympathies transcend state boundaries are fated 
 to feel a responsibility for the future of all men. 
 
 Our whole civilization is geared, in one way or an- 
 other, to the future. There is a selfish motive in that,
 
 THE IRON MAN 171 
 
 to be sure, since we expect posterity to pay our public 
 debts. But fundamentally our sense of responsibility 
 for the future is unselfish. We work and save and plan 
 and fret so prodigiously in the present, in the hope 
 that our children and our neighbors' children, unto 
 the thousandth generation, shall live more gloriously 
 than ourselves, and realize more nearly the utmost 
 material and spiritual values of life. Vain thought, 
 perhaps ; nevertheless compelling enough to influence 
 not only most public expenditures, but much private 
 spending and giving. Children, born and unborn, are 
 the finite reason for civilization; adults toil to main- 
 tain and improve civilization, in order to bestow it as 
 a going concern upon posterity. We fling the torch, 
 and trust that those who catch it may not get their 
 fingers burned as badly as we have. 
 
 The thought of Chinese worshiping their ancestors 
 amuses us, yet we proceed with no better reason to 
 worship posterity. The Chinese, at least, know what 
 their ancestors have done to deserve sacrifices, while 
 we have n't the faintest idea whether our descendants 
 are going to be worthy of our sacrifices. We take pos- 
 terity on faith. Yet, if this element of futurity were 
 eliminated, civilization would be meaningless, a trav- 
 ail not worth while for the masses, and a meaningless 
 adventure in control for the directing class. If evolu- 
 tion is simply change, and not progress ; if the human 
 family cannot advance in morality, justice, and fair 
 play beyond existing norms, then all who can might as 
 well go on vacation and let things slump. It is pre- 
 cisely because our sort of man cherishes the idea of
 
 172 THE IRON MAN 
 
 race-betterment, that he keeps on trying. He is often 
 betrayed, and more often betrays himself; and when 
 he succeeds he frequently finds the results of change 
 worse than no change would have been; nevertheless 
 the ideal remains undamaged. This habit of looking 
 forward instead of backward, of prospection instead 
 of introspection or retrospection, is what, at bottom, 
 has put the white race in command of human affairs. 
 
 Consequently the effect of the functional revolution 
 of the automatic machine upon the race is bound to 
 be the most important of all its effects. Its material 
 advantages are of no surpassing moment, unless they 
 can be transmitted beneficially ; its ills are' of no great 
 consequence, if they can be overcome before they break 
 down the fibre of the race too far for recovery. In as- 
 saying the value of adjustments in industry, whether 
 they be economic, psychological, social, or political, 
 or a medley of these, we are bound to consider 
 what their effect is likely to be upon race-evolution. 
 We shall not be here when the verdict comes in; never- 
 theless there is that in us which insists that we pose 
 the question, make the inquiry, and proceed with the 
 ultimate in view of benefiting posterity. 
 
 In spite of the scientists, there is none too much 
 light at hand. The natural laws affecting heredity are 
 still far from precisely outlined; there are gaps in the 
 testimony, which still make life a mysterious, august 
 riddle. Nevertheless, in all humility, let us proceed. 
 
 As far as we are aware, every mental and physical 
 attribute of man once possessed definite survival value, 
 and, for all that we know to the contrary, may still
 
 THE IRON MAN 173 
 
 possess that value. In a changing environment, over 
 immeasurable periods of time, these became fixed in 
 the main, but continue variable in minors. The aver- 
 age cephalic index of a tribe is approximately standard 
 over the tribe; but few out of many will have heads 
 matching exactly the average measurement for the 
 whole group. The human hand has become standard- 
 ized at five fingers; yet skin remains unstandardized, 
 and no two humans have the same finger-prints. As 
 the conditions of life change, certain attributes, men- 
 tal and physical, gain, while others lose, importance. 
 A keen sense of smell is a nuisance to a modern ; hence 
 noses grow less sensitive. So, likewise, the subcon- 
 scious mind is an inchoate network of inherited mem- 
 ories, which it is conceivable we might do without; at 
 times they are most embarrassing; still, for all we 
 know, shifting circumstances may call some of them 
 definitely into consciousness at any moment ; and what 
 to a utilitarian seems like useless lumber in the for- 
 gotten attic of the mind may prove to be quite the 
 most valuable heritage we can leave our children. 
 
 How far the individual mind may be dulled by close 
 daily association with automatic machinery depends, 
 of course, upon the variety of interests that intrigue 
 that mind after working hours, and what defenses it 
 can set up against the inroads of pathological fatigue 
 while at work. To apprehend the factors entering into 
 that phase of the Iron Man's progress, however, is 
 child's play compared with discovering to what extent 
 the effects of such dulling are transmitted to succeed- 
 ing generations. After interminable argument, we are
 
 174 THE IRON MAN 
 
 still far from unanimous upon the relative weight of 
 environment and heredity in determining mind, body, 
 and character. In general, we know that like tends to 
 bring forth like, in certain ratios established by Mendel 
 and dignified by the name of the Mendelian Law; but 
 that there are limits to this sort of determinism may 
 be deduced from De Vries's experiments with "sports." 
 And finally, no one can estimate with any certainty 
 how many generations of minds may be dulled, 
 and how many generations of bodies stunted, before 
 such shortcomings become fixed enough for inevitable 
 transmission. Anywhere within a thousand years, at 
 least, we must qualify the potency of heredity by say- 
 ing that in a single generation of favorable environ- 
 ment one individual in a race series may advance as 
 far as many generations of his forbears declined ; and 
 that the sustaining of favorable environment through 
 several generations may wipe out, for practical pur- 
 poses, traces of a much longer decline. Nevertheless, 
 we have no reason to bank upon such good fortune 
 coming adventitiously, or by sport, to any racial line ; 
 and hence the dependable way to promote race-better- 
 ment is by grappling here and now with the degener- 
 ating tendencies in our common environment. 
 
 The effect of industry upon race is a question so 
 broad that it may be divided into two parts : how far 
 does industry cause average folk to degenerate, and 
 how far does it assist or restrain defectives from 
 multiplying? 
 
 Indirect as well as direct effects may be noted in any 
 industrial city. Long habituation to a monotonous,
 
 THE IRON MAN 175 
 
 machine-paced task must tend to render the operative 
 less adaptable and less alert than he would be if em- 
 ployed in an occupation permitting more variety of 
 effort and thought. In turn, lessened adaptability 
 renders him less able to cope with his environment 
 successfully. This is a direct effect; and enough has 
 already been said on this theme to make detail un- 
 necessary here. 
 
 An indirect effect, perhaps of equal seriousness, 
 flows, not from the tool, but from its location. In- 
 dustry is a town-process, and city life presents patent 
 race-dangers. Rural birth-rates usually exceed city 
 birth-rates, and city death-rates exceed rural death- 
 rates, at least among homogenous and long-settled 
 populations. Recent figures on occupational life-ex- 
 pectancy rate farmers highest and office-workers and 
 clerks lowest; the average farmer lives to be fifty-eight 
 years of age, the average office- worker to be thirty-six. 
 Indoor vocations are more deadly than outdoor voca- 
 tions; the average stonemason lives longer than the 
 average machine operative. The English observed, 
 fairly early in the industrial era which swelled old 
 towns and built new ones, Carlyle's "ant-hills," 
 that cities consume population. They put it long 
 ago into a mathematical ratio sanctioned by common 
 observation : fifty miles distant from London a family 
 will last a hundred years; a hundred miles, two hun- 
 dred years; the more easily a family gets to town, the 
 more time it stays in town, and the quicker it disap- 
 pears. Quick transportation no doubt has reduced the 
 differentials in family death-rates by hastening the
 
 176 THE IRON MAN 
 
 process of decay all round. Gal ton, proceeding statis- 
 tically, found that London families run out in four 
 generations; unless London were recruited constantly 
 by new blood from the countryside, it would degener- 
 ate into a hamlet within a hundred years. Havelock 
 Ellis, examining the biologic influence of London upon 
 British genius, says of 1030 leading figures through 
 seven hundred years: " It seems impossible to find any 
 eminent person who belongs to London through all 
 his grandparents. It very rarely occurs that even one 
 grandparent was born in London." Great men and 
 women were born in London, and great men and 
 women were born in the country, of London-born 
 grandparents; but within three generations eminence 
 had departed from strictly city-bred lines. The evi- 
 dence indicates that cities cause populations to de- 
 generate in quality as well as to decrease in quantity. 
 Of the two effects, the former, of course, is the more 
 serious ; quantity will usually take care of itself, while 
 quality is something which must be either fought for or 
 sought. That is to say, conflict, in a primitive society, 
 enforces a standard of excellence automatically ; while 
 a civilization less brutal can achieve an equal stand- 
 ard of excellence only by taking thought for the 
 morrow. 
 
 City life, with its hurry, noise, and confinements, 
 puts the human organism under obvious strains. As 
 Dr. Arnold L. Jacoby, psychiatrist of the Detroit 
 Municipal Court, says, "City living uncovers weak 
 spots in the mental armor, which might never have 
 appeared under the calmer and less grinding condi-
 
 THE IRON MAN 177 
 
 tions of rural and village life." Certain races stand 
 the racket of the towns better than others. The Jews, 
 probably owing to immunity born of compulsory city 
 life through many generations, are biologically the 
 most successful city-dwellers; Negroes, a large pro- 
 portion of whom are comparatively fresh from the 
 soil, the least successful. Anglo-Saxons, if London be 
 taken as an example, fare ill in towns. In general, 
 swart, short folk withstand congestion better than 
 fair-haired, long-geared peoples of the Nordic strain, 
 who seem to need space for their labors and adven- 
 ture for their souls. In so far, then, as the Nordic 
 strains are esteemed superior contributors to the in- 
 stitutions we value most highly, industry has helped 
 to depreciate race-quality by concentrating machines 
 and men so thickly in cities. 
 
 Lothrop Stoddard puts the case squarely: "The 
 racial displacements induced by a changed economic 
 or social environment are, indeed, almost incalculable. 
 .... Two hundred years ago the Mediterranean 
 element in England was probably very small. The 
 industrial revolution reversed the selective process and 
 to-day the small, dark types in England increase not- 
 ably in each generation. The swart cockney is a re- 
 surgence of the primitive Mediterranean stock. . . . 
 An ill-balanced faulty environment penalized the su- 
 perior strains and favored inferior types." 
 
 And again : ' ' The cramped factory and the crowded 
 city weeded out the big, blond Nordic with portentous 
 rapidity; whereas the little brunette Mediterranean, 
 in particular, adapted himself to the operative's bench
 
 178 THE IRON MAN 
 
 or the clerk's stool, prospered and reproduced his 
 kind." 
 
 In his "English Traits," written in the eigh teen- 
 forties, Emerson said : "The robust, rural Saxon degen- 
 erated in the mills to the Leicester stockinger, to the 
 imbecile Manchester spinner, far on their way to be 
 spiders and needles." Far likelier, the Saxon, broadly 
 speaking, stayed on the land and sent his increase 
 overseas (whole townships of my native county were 
 cleared by such stalwart sons of England) ; while the 
 human "spiders and needles" spawned from other 
 and less sturdy strains, more amenable to discipline 
 and less irked by routine. But, after all, it is less im- 
 portant to know precisely how industry causes depre- 
 ciation in the British people than to realize (1) that 
 England contains a smaller proportion of strong, 
 beautiful, and independent beings than it did before 
 Watt invented the steam-engine; and (2) that industry 
 is in no small degree responsible for that depreciation 
 in human values. 
 
 Striking evidence on this point appears in Philip 
 Gibbs's " Now It Can Be Told." Two typical English- 
 men fought the war. One was a cockney, small, nerv- 
 ous, nervy; the other, taller, more dogged, with more 
 bottom for a long pull, revealing the traits long held 
 characteristic of Englishmen. The latter predomi- 
 nated in country regiments, the former in city regi- 
 ments. ' ' The Bantams ' ' did not represent the extreme 
 decline of British manhood, but merely registered the 
 decline down to a certain standard, below which 
 throng still more unfit shoals of humanity, valueless in
 
 THE IRON MAN 179 
 
 the supreme test of war. Below regulation height, but 
 full of spirit, these Lilliputians tried their level best to 
 play the man; but they could not walk fast enough, or 
 carry pounds enough; and, after ordeal by battle, were 
 taken out of the line and given less trying tasks. 
 "Most of them" (says Gibbs) "came from Lanca- 
 shire, Cheshire, Durham, and Glasgow, being the 
 dwarfed children of industrial England and its mid- 
 Victorian cruelties. Others were from London. . . . 
 Some of them had big heads on small bodies, as if they 
 suffered from water on the brain. . . . General Hal- 
 dane, as commander of the 6th Corps, paraded them 
 and poked his stick at the more wizened ones, the ob- 
 viously unfit, the degenerates, and said at each prod, 
 " ' You can go You You.' " 
 
 General Haldane poked the Bantams with his stick 
 and bade them begone. Whither? Whither, indeed, 
 but back to their machines, where they belonged and 
 from which they never should have been divided by 
 duty. And there, to paraphrase the nursery rhyme, 
 they function very well, better perhaps than the big 
 fellows. At least, if not more efficient per man, they 
 are no doubt more efficient per unit of output, else 
 from such beginnings they would not have been pro- 
 duced in such numbers. Where the race was to the 
 strong, they failed ; but where the race is to him who 
 turns out most goods at least cost, they hold their own 
 and increase, if for no other reason than that they eat 
 less. In a strictly utilitarian world, which ours may 
 become if we don't watch out, to raise men taller than 
 convenient machine-height may be esteemed a wan-
 
 i8o THE IRON MAN 
 
 ton waste of food-stuffs. Economic efficiency, in that 
 case, would be attained at the price of physical 
 deficiency. 
 
 Bantam body, too, may mean a bantam brain; in 
 our section of America, where industry is new, but 
 powerfully equipped with machinery admirably de- 
 signed to oust mind from the common man's produc- 
 tion, more than one leader close to the grind has told 
 me that industrial efficiency, as carried on to-day, 
 makes also for mental deficiency. One of my fellow 
 citizens in charge of the industrial relations of a large 
 factory shocked an audience of industry-adoring 
 business men by saying, "We are putting the brand 
 of industry stupidity upon the brows of our 
 workers." 
 
 The tongue of the people speaketh much truth; 
 twenty years ago we spoke of " the submerged tenth" ; 
 now, since the army tests showed that approximately 
 one fifth of the registered adult males in the United 
 States between 18 and 45 possessed mentalities below 
 age fourteen, by test, we must speak of the "sub- 
 merged fifth." And, lest it be argued that accumulating 
 physical weakness and mental weakness in industrial 
 countries are not incompatible with moral strength, 
 let us recall that the average female delinquent now 
 makes her first appearance before the police two years 
 earlier than she did ten years ago. The average age of 
 such appearance is now fourteen to fifteen years; it 
 used to be sixteen to seventeen years. 
 
 Where and as functioning, machine industry and 
 its accompanying urban congestion make survival
 
 THE IRON MAN 181 
 
 easier for inferior strains and more difficult for su- 
 perior strains. Genetic values, we are told, run con- 
 stant; but automatic machinery tends, both directly 
 and indirectly, to reduce the incentive for high genetic 
 stocks to reproduce at former birth-rates, while in- 
 creasing the incentive for rapid growth of low genetic 
 stocks. Certain disgenic influences such as poor 
 housing, inadequate feeding, youthful excesses, lack 
 of moral discipline, and an educational system not 
 adjusted to compensate for the inhibitions of mech- 
 anized toil may be overcome in the main ; never- 
 theless, the tendency of our times is toward lower 
 physical and mental levels for the led majority of the 
 industrial group. There are offsets, of course, not- 
 ably higher standards of living for many families, and 
 a growing power in labor to find leaders to bespeak its 
 needs, but as yet these are not potent enough to 
 balance the scale. 
 
 We have been considering the effect of machinery 
 upon normal folk; the parallel question of its effect 
 upon the multiplication of defective mental types 
 now presents itself. The highest type of mental de- 
 fective, the moron, is defined by Pierce Bailey as "one 
 capable of earning a living under favorable circum- 
 stances, but incapable of competing on even terms 
 with his normal fellows." Below the moron status, this 
 inability to compete becomes more and more marked ; 
 until, in the congenital idiot, it reaches the absolute. 
 The idiot is either cared for or he starves. 
 
 This inability to compete for livelihood on equal 
 terms exercised, from the very beginnings of human
 
 182 THE IRON MAN 
 
 existence, a salutary check upon the multiplication 
 of mental defectives. In the old days, when man com- 
 peted nip-and-tuck against his fellows and the beasts, 
 the less adaptable, slower thinking and moving mem- 
 bers of the tribe were eliminated more speedily than 
 we eliminate our weaklings. As long as skill remained 
 the dominant element in winning subsistence, the less 
 skilled were handicapped in finding wages, and so 
 found it difficult to marry, support a home, and bring 
 their young to maturity. Agriculture for the back- 
 ward boys, domestic service for the backward girls 
 these were economic refuges for the inefficients. For 
 those who could not meet the requirements of these 
 occupations self-support was impossible. The Iron 
 Man has now added simple routine factory work to 
 the list. 
 
 The more simple and monotonous factory work 
 became, the more advantageously the factory could 
 use persons whose wits were neither keen enough nor 
 elastic enough to master processes requiring skill and 
 training. To acquire a hand-trade was beyond them ; 
 to use a simple machine judiciously, beyond most of 
 them. However, as division of labor developed toward 
 its present minuteness, higher-grade defectives were 
 relieved to some extent of a burden under which their 
 kind had labored from time immemorial. Automatic 
 machinery gives countless men and women of low 
 mentality economic opportunity, at wages approxi- 
 mately equal to those earned by higher types working 
 at like jobs. Indeed, automatization has now reach- 
 ed a point where individual capacities of workmen
 
 THE IRON MAN 183 
 
 count for so little that large employers of labor find 
 less keen minds cheaper than keen minds in many 
 berths, because the less keen mind presents fewer 
 labor complications to the boss, is more easily satis- 
 fied, feels labor-strain less, and is less trouble all round. 
 In other words, the intellectual level of labor fixed by 
 the Iron Man is such that a moron trained in habits 
 of doing, regularity, and obedience, is, for many prac- 
 tical purposes, more valuable to his boss for goods- 
 production than one higher in the mental scale. Hav- 
 ing brought to the machine less mental luggage of 
 sorts not required by the shop, his adjustment to the 
 present needs of industry is simpler for both parties to 
 the labor-bargain. 
 
 This economic brace which the Iron Man gives to 
 the defectives in their hitherto unequal struggle for 
 existence translates itself to some extent into vital 
 statistics. The twelve-year-old man (mentally) of 
 grown stature, who works well in his machine-niche, 
 may sustain a home and rear children in a security 
 impossible to one of the same mental age a century 
 ago. His wife may work in the mill, if she chooses; his 
 children can get on the machines not long after the 
 state gives them working papers. Since the low- 
 grade man is always able to outbid and outbreed his 
 betters, because content with a lower standard of liv- 
 ing, the influence of automatic machinery and extreme 
 division of labor is to drive higher mental types out of 
 the shop, and draw lower mental types into the shop. 
 This tendency battles at present against the shop's 
 need to recruit foremen, superintendents, tool-makers,
 
 184 THE IRON MAN 
 
 and other men of skill and leadership, to give point 
 and direction to the routine labors of the massof work- 
 ing folk ; but this check may not long continue to be as 
 important as it now seems, since manufacturers are 
 beginning to look to public education to provide them 
 with skilled mechanics, and presently may do likewise 
 for foremen and superintendents. At any rate, since 
 the thought-compartment of modern industry con- 
 tains a minority of employees, and that minority tends 
 to decrease in numbers relatively to the led majority, 
 thepressureof the Iron Man biologically, at this stage, is 
 toward descent-in-type. The few cannot lift the many 
 biologically ; the best they can do is to protect them- 
 selves against admixture through eugenic matings 
 a defense reaction laudable enough, but of extremely 
 limited effect on the matings of the multitude. 
 
 Obviously, this view of the case leads one a step 
 further along the path toward the pessimistic conclu- 
 sion that industrial efficiency is forcing a cleavage be- 
 tween the masses and the classes, in mental as well as 
 in financial and social status. We who live in factory 
 towns know how steadily this gulf is widening; in spite 
 of conscious and intelligent efforts put forth, it is be- 
 coming more and more difficult to establish and main- 
 tain social contacts between those who live on wages 
 and those who live on salaries, rents, and dividends. 
 The class-hired delegates to good works meet the bor- 
 der-line folk professionally, now that their principals 
 have pretty much ceased to meet the masses socially; 
 but uplift can scarcely be considered a social contact. 
 Indeed, we seem well on our way to develop, with the
 
 THE IRON MAN 185 
 
 help of the Iron Man and despite public education, 
 an American proletariat, definitely shut off by mental 
 lacks from the upper reaches of society a consider- 
 able class numerically, whose contribution to the state 
 is labor-time and children capable only of supplying 
 more labor-time. The Romans named their lower 
 class of freemen the proletariat, because its members 
 proliferated freely, supplying the state with one es- 
 sential to its life soldiers. We seem by way of creating 
 its duplicate, except that, in addition to supplying 
 man-power for war, our proletariat may also be ex- 
 pected to do work for which the Romans depended 
 upon their slaves. 
 
 This is a dire prospect, and a good deal is likely to 
 happen to prevent it. But we must admit the ten- 
 dency, and admit further that this tendency of mod- 
 ern industry to stabilize an ever-increasing body of 
 deficients into a controlled servile class, to do our 
 mean and monotonous work for us, draws strength 
 from experiments in practical psychology. One such 
 experiment, widely commented upon, was conducted 
 by Elizabeth B. Bigelow, to determine the possibilities 
 of subnormal girls in factory work. The field chosen 
 was the production of rubber goods, in which process 
 division of labor is less advanced than in many other 
 lines of production, and hence presents more diffi- 
 culties to the subjects up for training. Relating her 
 experience in Mental Hygiene for April, 1921, she 
 concludes that, with proper training, even those de- 
 ficients previously discharged for cause can be trained 
 to function efficiently.
 
 186 THE IRON MAN 
 
 "It is now generally known that the effectiveness 
 of a mental defective depends less, within certain 
 limits, upon the grade of mental defect, than upon the 
 habits of doing that he has acquired. An individual 
 with a mental age of eight years, who has definitely 
 acquired habits of industry, obedience, and regularity, 
 is a far more useful member of society than a high- 
 grade moron who has never acquired such habits." 
 
 If industry is unwilling to take the expense of train- 
 ing defectives, Miss Bigelow thinks it would be well 
 worth while for the state to pay the salary of a director. 
 Both Miss Bigelow and Dr. Arnold Gesell, who com- 
 ments on her report in the same issue of Mental 
 Hygiene, commend vocational training for defectives 
 in the public schools, in order to fit them for industrial 
 work. 
 
 These and other investigators in the field of in- 
 dustrial psychology, in their zeal to render defective 
 individuals self-supporting and bring forth the full 
 productive power of the nation, may be overlooking 
 some of the vital consequences of their programme. 
 It is one thing to relieve society in this generation of 
 the cost of maintaining a maladjusted moron or an 
 institutionalized imbecile, and quite another to lower 
 social tone and race-quality by enabling such, through 
 economic adjustment, to count for more in the com- 
 munity and to rear more numerous offspring than he 
 or she could as a derelict upon the ragged edge of ex- 
 istence. In practice, to make a moron's life more se- 
 cure may be to make some more capable person's life 
 less secure, if they chance to be competitors for the
 
 THE IRON MAN 187 
 
 same job. In that case, you have change but no prog- 
 ress. Race and state, indeed, lose more than industry 
 gains. 
 
 For the state to accelerate the progressive mental 
 impairment of the race, by training defectives for 
 industrial pursuits, seems to me the height of folly, 
 unless, at the same time, it moves toward restraining 
 the fecundity of those it places. Since a mental de- 
 fective, on a machine job keyed to his powers, may be 
 an industrial effective, his economic security is likely 
 to work out in the normal directions of home and 
 family. It may be feasible, as proposed, to control 
 defectives industrially trained so closely outside of 
 working hours that they do not propagate; but the 
 dividing line between the normal and subnormal is 
 so hazy that it seems unlikely society ever can re- 
 strain, by police power,' the marital inclination of 
 those just under the border-line. As long as a man 
 keeps out of jail and meets his family responsibilities 
 halfway well, the state scarcely can regulate the most 
 intimate of his relations. 
 
 I have stated this problem of the biologic effect of 
 automatic machinery to three psychiatrists. They 
 agree that modern industrial conditions make for the 
 perpetuation and increase of subnormal types. One 
 voiced the opinion that border-line cases, through 
 having more to offer economically, might secure 
 better mates than their forbears, and so improve the 
 strains. The others fell back upon the "servile class" 
 theory. Briefly, that theory is this : since most of the 
 work to be done in the world is of a monotonous, un-
 
 i88 THE IRON MAN 
 
 inspiring sort, and more of it is coming to be done 
 under conditions which strain painfully the average 
 human of to-day, the development of a numerically 
 large class of laborers, attuned to perform that labor 
 at the least cost to themselves and society, is in the 
 nature of an inevitable evolution. Highly sensible, 
 thought one; while the other had his doubts. He con- 
 sidered it likely that the proletariat, after being leveled 
 and debased by the Iron Man, might undertake to do 
 so much leveling on its own account that civilization 
 would be impossible. 
 
 To accept this theory of the servile class is to deny 
 democracy, because the servile class could not govern 
 itself. Whether those above that level governed ill or 
 well, the result would not be democratic government, 
 but aristocratic government. It is extremely doubtful 
 if our people, possessing the ballot, will accept the 
 logical working-out of current tendencies. They are 
 far from ready, now, to accept without protest the de- 
 cay of traditions of equality and opportunity, which, 
 however weak in reality, are still dominant in thought. 
 Therefore, the state, in order to preserve the present 
 order, cannot let things slide to the point where the 
 "have nots" accept solidarity as an accomplished 
 fact. No matter what may be the temper of other 
 nations under class alignments, the common American 
 is not likely to acquiesce without argument in his 
 being allotted a definitely servile status in society. 
 
 But whatever the state does to preserve its people 
 from degeneration can scarcely become effective ex- 
 cept after much turmoil, unless those who direct
 
 THE IRON MAN 189 
 
 work-relations join with the state in combating the 
 degenerating effects of automatic machinery. The 
 enterprisers of modern industry may better afford to 
 forego the economic advantage of hiring the least able- 
 minded they can use, for the sake of maintaining an 
 able-minded citizenry. Reason, after all, has its util- 
 ity, not so much nowadays in mass-production, as in 
 determining mass-action out of the shop at the 
 polls and in the streets. 
 
 Faced with a choice between docile, stupid labor 
 and alert, less pliable labor, there is no doubt where 
 the choice of the employer will fall who follows the 
 economic motive strictly. Miss Bigelow says : "It is 
 the quality of labor that has been given, rather than 
 the intellectual level, that concerns the employer of this 
 variety of labor." How far any employer follows that 
 motive depends partly on competition, and partly 
 on what he considers his duty as a citizen and leader. 
 If pressed too hard by competitors, he may hold that 
 he has no choice but to hire the cheapest, least trouble- 
 some individuals in the market for his routine jobs. 
 But usually there is some room for the boss's ideals of 
 serviceable citizenship to function in his business. An 
 employer minded to make normal men fairly content 
 on jobs in which defectives would consider themselves 
 in clover, certainly could go a long way in that direc- 
 tion, provided the community and the state equally 
 did their duty by giving the employed an inspiring 
 social environment beyond the factory walls. To ex- 
 pect such an attitude from the leaders of American 
 industry may be putting too much faith in human
 
 i 9 o THE IRON MAN 
 
 nature, as it grinds out goods and profits; but, after 
 all, many of these men are great citizens as well as 
 great manufacturers, and their sense of responsibility 
 as citizens may reinforce their fear of social revolution 
 sufficiently to move them to consider the intellectual 
 level of their workers rather more than Miss Bigelow 
 thinks. 
 
 Yet, when all is said and done, the utmost effort 
 put forth against the degenerating influence of auto- 
 matic machinery is likely to come, not from the state 
 or the boss, but from those most injured by the mul- 
 tiplication of defectives the workers in the shops. 
 It is quite within the bounds of possibility that workers 
 above moron grade will resent the introduction of de- 
 fectives so keenly that bosses dare not make room in 
 the mills for low mentalities as fast as they are pro- 
 duced. Even in unorganized shops negroes are now 
 being kept off machines well within their mental 
 range, because the settled public opinion of the shop 
 draws the color-line. The employees simply refuse to 
 associate themselves in toil with persons whom they 
 hold to be inferior. Conceivably, labor may draw a 
 mental line of exclusion as effectively as it now draws 
 the color-line, and for the same reason dislike to 
 associate in toil with persons considered inferior and 
 the desire to protect their jobs against such inroads. 
 Insistence of craft-unions upon skill-requirements, even 
 after machine-developments have vitiated those stand- 
 ards economically, draws a measure of social justifica- 
 tion from this source the standard so set protects 
 the trade against mental as well as physical dilution.
 
 THE IRON MAN 191 
 
 The social necessity for more worker-cooperation in 
 industrial processes finds one of its strongest argu- 
 ments precisely here. If workers in unorganized shops 
 at present can exercise a taboo against persons con- 
 sidered inferior by the working group, a kindred taboo 
 against mental defectives will be effective in propor- 
 tion as the workers gain cohesion and influence within 
 the corporation. As group-pride rises, the stronger 
 will be the protest against admitting to the group 
 those who do not reach its standard of fitness, not 
 merely for a particular job, but also for association in 
 counsel and recreation. Here lies the most effective 
 resistance industry can offer to the racial degeneration 
 likely to follow upon the increasing industrial effi- 
 ciency of mental defectives. 
 
 One swims even further into uncharted currents 
 when one attempts to discover what the defectives 
 themselves are likely to decide with relation to their 
 own destinies. They lack normal initiative, and hence 
 take kindly to direction and control; yet each con- 
 tinues to form judgments and act upon them as op- 
 portunity permits. What will be their attitude, for 
 instance, toward birth-control? Their fecundity, to 
 date, has resulted from necessity in which passion and 
 ignorance join; pride of race and responsibility to the 
 future certainly have not braced these slow-wit 
 mothers for their ordeal . There is no reason for believ- 
 ing that the mentally defective woman wants more 
 children than her abler sister; in fact, her attitude 
 toward her infants indicates the contrary. If she 
 knew how to avoid childbearing, the chances are that
 
 i 9 2 THE IRON MAN 
 
 she would avoid that ordeal sedulously, simply be- 
 cause children are a bother, involving sacrifice and 
 forethought, both of which attributes are in her most 
 imperfectly developed. Notwithstanding laws against 
 abortion, against the sale of contraceptive devices and 
 drugs, and against the dissemination of information 
 upon the subject, birth-control is a growing phe- 
 nomenon. The state, whose continued existence re- 
 quires children in quantity, has an excellent reason 
 for continuing to outlaw the subject; nevertheless, 
 birth-control is practised and gradually permeates 
 lower and lower social strata. Along with syphilis and 
 tuberculosis, abortion and contraception must be 
 reckoned prime causes for the decline in the negro 
 birth-rate in the United States in the last ten years. 
 Twenty years ago there was talk of the negro eventu- 
 ally ousting the white race from America, through 
 faster breeding; now the tables have turned, the white 
 is winning the race, and the negro in America hardly 
 more than holds his own from year to year. 
 
 Without attempting to draw any comparison be- 
 tween the average negro and the white moron as to 
 mental capacity, I think we must agree that both are 
 under certain disabilities predisposing them toward 
 race-suicide. Neither possesses anything like social 
 equality, or complete freedom of economic opportu- 
 nity ; both are under bans which may well lead adults 
 to conclude that life is not greatly worth living for 
 themselves, and presumably would not be valued by 
 their descendants. When folk in that depressed state 
 of mind know how to limit offspring, their women will
 
 THE IRON MAN 193 
 
 dodge motherhood rather often, especially as home 
 economic difficulties are equally eased by limiting the 
 number of children born therein. Since defectives run 
 greater risks than normals of death between birth and 
 working age, it follows that any considerable decrease 
 in births in families of low mentality might go a long 
 way toward counteracting the biologic effects of their 
 increased economic security in the Automatic Age. 
 
 Here, again, is a test of strength between economics 
 and what may be called social education, the educa- 
 tion of the times rather than of the schools. The 
 schools do not teach birth-control, but the times un- 
 questionably do; and if the most defective mentally 
 are isolated in institutions, then those nearer the 
 border-line may be held within bounds, themselves 
 assisting. 
 
 Finally, a more stable balance in life and toil may 
 be expected from this time on, a settling process, draw- 
 ing strength from too many sources to permit of dis- 
 cussion here. At the moment this works grave hard- 
 ship upon many wage-earners ; but eventually it must 
 inure to their benefit, as well as to that of the succeed- 
 ing generations, since stability means rather more to 
 the mass than flash opportunity. Emerson remarked, 
 of England, that there is a temperance to be observed 
 in making cloth, as in eating a point worth noting 
 and coming to be noted, never fear. To some extent, 
 at least, overgrown industrial cities will be demobi- 
 lized, and cities generally revert to their ancient status, 
 as marts for the produce of adjacent territory. A folk 
 nearer the land, and moving at a slower pace, may not
 
 i 9 4 THE IRON MAN 
 
 press forward with such mighty leaps as we Americans 
 have taken of late; but, so circumstanced, we shall be 
 more firmly fixed and less affected by the degenerating 
 tendencies of city living and mechanized toil, and 
 have more time and opportunity to purge the body 
 politic of poisons as they develop. Nature, the great 
 physician, can help us there. 
 
 It remains to be seen how far our civilization, by 
 forethought and decisive action, can overcome those 
 declines in racial values which have unseated other 
 civilizations and must destroy our own, unless checked. 
 Civilization is a process in ameliorating life; and as 
 life grows easier, weak strains in the population, pre- 
 viously kept under by hardships, increase in numbers. 
 Machine industry accelerates the process, while sci- 
 ence and altruism preserve to maturity weaklings 
 who, under fiercer competition and harsher conditions, 
 could never have lived to add their frailties to the 
 stream of life. Gradually the weaklings accumulate 
 in numbers, until the social structure disintegrates. 
 Collapse, partial or entire, may follow war; in a rough 
 world such is usually the case ; but dry-rot within the 
 walls is a standing invitation to the invader. Social 
 revolution may be passive as well as active; peoples 
 may have no will to defend the state, even though 
 lacking initiative enough to change it through revo- 
 lution. And until birth-control is world-wide there 
 will always be potential invaders somewhere, waiting 
 as waited Goth and Vandal beyond the Alps, for op- 
 portunity to inherit that which they could not build. 
 States come and go, for all their emphasis upon the
 
 THE IRON MAN 195 
 
 static ; civilizations rise and fall ; race remains and life 
 continues. He who attempts to evaluate the effect 
 upon race-evolution of these newer elements of life, 
 its modern tools and processes, can do scarcely 
 more than outline the problem, since we are here face 
 to face with the eternal riddle of life itself. One may 
 say with confidence merely this and no more: the 
 Automatic Age places the human family under bonds 
 to posterity to use all its resources and wisdom in 
 combating the degenerative tendencies of functional 
 machinery in race-evolution. The battle for a better 
 world may be won with the help of the Iron Man, but 
 not through machines only; and not at all, unless 
 reason replaces in large degree the captaincy which 
 instinct now holds over industry and society.
 
 X 
 
 EDUCATION FOR LEISURE 
 
 A YEAR ago I sat in a meeting of schoolmen and 
 leading citizens, who were wrestling with plans 
 for a new high school and technical college. The lead- 
 ing citizens were manufacturers of motor-cars, be- 
 cause our town's reason for existence is the production 
 of such cars, of which we can be relied upon to deliver 
 upwards of one hundred thousand a year, when the 
 public buys them fast enough to clear the loading 
 docks. Our leading citizens, consequently, are leaders 
 in their industry as well. For downright public spirit, 
 no more satisfactory group of employers can be found 
 anywhere. They took it for granted that our new 
 high school and technical college was to be keyed to 
 utility. They wanted practical education, or, as one 
 phrased it, " education for life." As their programme 
 unfolded, it seemed that their goal was, rather, educa- 
 tion for production. They may have seen new light 
 since the wheels slowed down, but neither then nor 
 later did the schoolmen offer any protest. 
 
 As an outsider, a member of neither group, I sat 
 there dazed, silent, a little dashed and fearful, as one 
 amid new ruins. I knew there was something wrong 
 with the programme of these manufacturers ; but what 
 it was, I could not say. Now I know, because I have 
 been studying the reactions of automatic machinery 
 upon social relationships. 
 
 There is no better place for such a study than this 
 town of ours. It exists for, and accepts the dictation
 
 THE IRON MAN 197 
 
 of, industry highly automatized. In brisk times more 
 than twenty thousand men and women work for three 
 corporations, whose plants are full of automatic ma- 
 chinery. When these marvelous tools are busy, the 
 town is prosperous, gains population, spends lavishly, 
 yet saves much withal ; when the tools are stilled, the 
 town loses population, develops poverty, and lives on 
 its savings. 
 
 In 1900 this was a quiet little manufacturing city of 
 13,000. In 1904 it produced its first motor-car, and 
 growth from that time was rapid and sustained, drain- 
 ing away the surplus labor of near-by farms and vil- 
 lages. The 1910 census showed 38,550. In the next 
 ten years, the city achieved a population of nearly 
 100,000, acquiring, among other interesting phe- 
 nomena, a Little Poland, a Little Hungary, a Little 
 Serbia, other immigrant colonies, and a Cosmopolitan 
 Club financed by the Chamber of Commerce. We 
 built a Polish church and school, two Russian churches, 
 a Czech church, and presently we shall have a Jewish 
 synagogue. During the war we imported camps of 
 negroes direct from the Black Belt. All these non- 
 natives, about 75,000 in the twenty years, came either 
 to tend automatic machines, to supply the economic 
 and domestic wants of the operatives, or to cooperate 
 in a scheme of production in which the automatic tool 
 was the decisive factor. 
 
 Of course, this growth induced the usual and to-be- 
 expected rise in rents and land-values. We built 
 houses as fast as we could find the money; but, in 
 spite of enormous profits to constructors and in-
 
 198 THE IRON MAN 
 
 vestors, we could not provide housing fast enough to 
 satisfy the industrial leaders. In 1919-20 the corpora- 
 tion controlling our two largest plants built thousands 
 of homes. As a strike ensued, the builders fell back 
 upon the principle which had profited them in auto- 
 mobile manufacture, substituting for skilled labor, 
 machinery and unskilled labor. 
 
 In 1920, production on automatic machines here 
 and elsewhere having outrun consumption, the wheels 
 slowed down to a fraction of their former speed. Im- 
 mediately our town began to lose population; thus 
 proving that, with cities as with plants, quick growth 
 means weak roots. Coincidentally rural districts be- 
 gan to gain. While we were losing 15,000 out of our 
 100,000, a village eighteen miles away added 20 per 
 cent to its 1920 census of 400. Money brought these 
 people into town, and, jobs failing, lack of money took 
 them out again into the fields, woods, and villages. 
 Michigan woods were full last winter (1920) of men 
 who, the year before, were tending automatic ma- 
 chines. What back-to-the-land propaganda failed to 
 do through twenty years, economic necessity accom- 
 plished in six months. The Pied Piper of modern 
 times is the Iron Man, the automatic tool. Its stac- 
 cato tune lures adults from their homes as inevitably 
 as the Piper's tune drew the mediaeval children of 
 fable. To their ruin? Perhaps. 
 
 Of all the states, Michigan shows the greatest per- 
 centage of urban growth from 1910 to 1920. It also 
 reveals the greatest growth in the use of automatic 
 tools. This is because our state is the automobile
 
 THE IRON MAN 199 
 
 state. An interesting study of the parallel develop- 
 ment of the automatic tool and the automobile may 
 be found in the June (1919) number of the Journal 
 of Political Economy, under the title, "The Amer- 
 ican Automatic Tool." The author, Mr. E. F. Lloyd, 
 shows that the automobile, as an economic want, 
 burst into being rather than grew. It was a new means 
 of transportation, not the development of an older 
 means. Its makers faced the markets with open minds, 
 and almost empty hands. They had no well-estab- 
 lished shop-practice to consider, little or no machinery 
 to junk. Their margins were large enough to ensure 
 that whatever increased production would return 
 profits. Moreover, the nature of their business re- 
 quired large outputs of identical parts, accurately 
 machined, standardized, and interchangeable. Hence 
 the automobile industry is to-day the most highly 
 automatized. Hence the reactions of automatic ma- 
 chinery upon human nature and the social order may 
 be observed here in all their vigor. 
 
 Those machines which tend to replace the worker, 
 or reduce his function to a minimum, are described as 
 automatic. They are so designed that the worker need 
 not know the vital steps which the mechanism takes 
 in producing the desired result. The dividing line 
 between these tools and those that merely lengthen 
 or strengthen the arm of man is nowhere definite and 
 precise, but examples will help to point the distinction. 
 
 With the power wool-clipper, as with the sheep- 
 shears, the mind of the operator must work with his 
 muscle, to extract from use the increased efficiency of
 
 200 THE IRON MAN 
 
 the tool. But with an automatic tool, the attendant 
 is required only to feed the machine and relieve it of 
 its produce from time to time. There are a good many 
 semi-automatic machines; but the tendency is toward 
 their complete automatization. Each year sees semi- 
 automatic machines develop toward automatic per- 
 fection ; each month sees the scope for skill in industry 
 lessened, particularly in those basic industries which 
 concentrate large numbers of workers in given centres, 
 and so exercise a determining influence upon social 
 relations. 
 
 Skill, of course, is still vital; but the need for skill 
 has passed upward. Machine-design, shop-organiza- 
 tion, routing of materials, and distribution of produce 
 these require a concentration of skill and technical 
 knowledge far beyond the similar requirements of 
 non-automatic industry. The rank and file need use 
 only a fraction of their native intelligence and manual 
 dexterity, while the skill-requirement, which formerly 
 spread more or less over the whole shop, is distilled 
 into a relatively small group of engineers and execu- 
 tives. 
 
 This shift of vital function from the man to the 
 machine is the key to many problems. It affects all 
 departments of life. We have seen how it broke down 
 the barrier of apprenticeship which had sealed fac- 
 tories more or less against rural labor and brought 
 raw farmboys into town, leveling farm and factory 
 wages, lifting food-prices. We have seen the power of 
 the Iron Man to pull the negro north and the peasants 
 of Europe west. And we have seen something, but not
 
 THE IRON MAN 201 
 
 all as yet, of his influence in shifting women from the 
 home to the mill. The clear, unmistakable tendency 
 of automatic machinery is to level labor, both as to 
 supply and wage. 
 
 Certain collateral effects are equally impressive. 
 Many automatic machines can be operated as well by 
 a child of twelve as by his parents. In fact, the tender 
 of automatic machines reaches his or her highest 
 economic power early in life, when nerves are stead- 
 iest. The strain involved in nursing automatic ma- 
 chinery is a repetition-strain, complicated by clatter. 
 The operative does the same thing over and over, 
 amid rhythmic sounds, in an atmosphere frequently 
 stale with oil or dust. 
 
 Youth stands this better than age, because youth 
 reacts more quickly. Whereas, in the old days, 
 a man used to come more slowly into earning power, 
 reach his highest pay at thirty-odd, and continue 
 fully competent until age began to slow him down at 
 sixty-odd, his son leaps into high pay as a hobblede- 
 hoy, reaches his economic apogee short of twenty-five, 
 and from thirty-five to forty-five slides swiftly down- 
 hill. He is a better earner at twenty than his father 
 was ; but the chances are that he will be a poorer pro- 
 vider at fifty. 
 
 I prefer not to be too dogmatic on this point. Auto- 
 matic machinery is so new, having been in common 
 use about twenty years and still being in its infancy, 
 that present deductions on economic life-expectancy 
 are founded upon too few instances to be altogether 
 conclusive. Moreover, the swift decline of earning
 
 202 THE IRON MAN 
 
 power in middle life may be partly due to causes only 
 indirectly related to industry poor housing, youth- 
 ful excesses, and the like. However, present indications 
 point to the correctness of the cycle outlined above. 
 
 Now the difficulties of the problem presented to 
 educators by automatic machinery begin to emerge. 
 The majority of youths, male and female, no longer 
 need to be taught how to earn their living. Three 
 days after the law that sets limits on child-labor leaves 
 them free to work at the machines, they will be earn- 
 ing big money practically as much as they will 
 ever earn. There is little to learn ; the mills can teach 
 that better and cheaper than the schools. 
 
 The pockets of these children are full of money at 
 an age when their fathers earned less than a living 
 wage as apprentices. They are economically inde- 
 pendent of home and social control. They have the 
 eternal belief of youth, that the preceding generation 
 is fossilized, and the buying power to act upon their 
 belief. They are foot-loose to go wherever automatic 
 machines are turning. They can buy their pleasures, 
 and they do. They can afford to flout age and author- 
 ity; they do. Their very active minds have no back- 
 ground, and feel the need of none. They have no 
 conception of the cost of civilization; no standard of 
 reference by which to judge social and political ques- 
 tions. They have not even lived long enough to learn 
 the simple truth, that common sense and wisdom 
 spring from the same root. With far greater need for 
 early thrift than their elders, because their effective 
 economic life may be shorter, they spurn the homely
 
 THE IRON MAN 203 
 
 virtue of economy. They buy pleasures, buy com- 
 panions, buy " glad " raiment; they try desperately 
 to buy happiness. And fail. 
 
 Yet they are splendid raw material for citizens. Let 
 a great cause kindle them, and they rise to it like 
 knights and ladies noblesse oblige. They met every 
 war need more than halfway; fought and fell; sacri- 
 ficed and saved during the emergency. Their 
 faults are those of youth, plus affluence. 
 
 Here is the explanation of our youthful delinquency. 
 Our "bad men" of this winter are mostly minors. 
 "My court," said a Detroit judge, "is the scene of a 
 procession of beardless boys." They acquire appe- 
 tites, expensive appetites; pleasure leads into bad 
 company. A prank gone wrong, an unfortunate slip, 
 a month without a job and nothing laid by and we 
 have the beginning of what we call the crime wave. 
 
 All this, of course, is more marked in brisk times 
 than in dull times, but even in dull times youths so 
 employed earn as much as older men ; and, lacking 
 the domestic responsibilities of the latter, are able 
 to flourish independently of their parents and devote 
 to youthful pleasures a buying power roughly equal 
 to that of adults. 
 
 Much as this situation complicates the educational 
 problem, the school system somehow must be adapted 
 to it. Somehow these children must be brought up to 
 a mental and moral level approximating the economic 
 level upon which they set foot immediately after leav- 
 ing school. This is a grim task. In the public schools, 
 certain things must be taught before the age of six-
 
 2o 4 THE IRON MAN 
 
 teen, which now are taught only in college, and to 
 which many college students appear to be immune. 
 The proposal itself would be revolutionary if it did 
 not arise from a new set of industrial conditions, to 
 which society is accommodating itself clumsily, but, in 
 the main, peaceably. As such, the change, though 
 startling, is clearly evolutionary and inevitable. 
 
 What are the positive educational requirements of 
 the machine age? To clear the ground, let us elim- 
 inate the non-essentials. The child who is going to tend 
 an automatic machine does not need, in any economic 
 sense, to read more than a shop poster or direction 
 sheet. If he can sign his name to a pay check, that is 
 enough. If he is willing to trust the shop to figure out 
 his pay, he need not know his numbers. For the time 
 he stands beside the machine, his earning capacity is 
 not increased by anything he knows. Knowledge may 
 be useful in getting him away from the machine, but 
 that escape is going to be more difficult as automatiza- 
 tion proceeds toward its logical conclusion. Such 
 knowledge as the operative comes by in school pos- 
 sesses for him only a cultural value. It does not help 
 him in the least to earn his living; but it helps him 
 immensely to spend his leisure. 
 
 For these children these prosperous, precocious 
 children possess leisure, and the means to make the 
 worst of it. They work, most of them at least, no more 
 than eight hours a day. Presently, it may be seven, 
 even six. As production becomes more and more 
 automatic, the wants of men can be supplied with less 
 and less labor. Consumption, of course, may expand
 
 THE IRON MAN 205 
 
 enormously ; yet the demand for goods remains ever in 
 stiff competition with the universal demand for leis- 
 ure. " I Ve got enough ; let 's go fishing," was a state 
 of mind so common in 1919 that it disturbed factory 
 schedules, roused employers, and set tongues wagging 
 about labor-profiteering. 
 
 Employers may fight the tendency toward the 
 shorter working-day, but theirs is a losing fight. For 
 a time, in our town, we went along, producing on a 
 five-hour schedule all of our kind of automobiles that 
 the restricted market would absorb. Every day was 
 a half-holiday for thousands. More recently hours 
 were lengthened, and the number of days of work per 
 week decreased. If a factory operative got in more 
 than three days' productive work in the week, he 
 was lucky. Saturday has been a workless day in 
 one of our great plants all winter. We have discov- 
 ered that with picked men, heightened morale, and 
 a closer synchronizing of all the elements involved, 
 production per man can be greatly increased, even 
 doubled . I f the present highly effective organizations 
 are slowly enlarged, thus preserving their efficiency, 
 it is difficult to see how the market, under normal 
 conditions, can absorb more than eight hours' pro- 
 duce from day to day. 
 
 If this seems to contradict previous observations 
 on the elimination of the personal element through 
 machine use, please note that the improvement is due 
 largely, if not altogether, to the work done by the 
 engineers and executives in more efficiently routing 
 materials to the machines. Under boom conditions,
 
 206 THE IRON MAN 
 
 the stream of supply was often interrupted, thus 
 throwing the machines out of production. This has 
 been largely corrected; also, in the meantime, the 
 machines have been tuned up, and new ones added in 
 some cases. The attendant of the automatic machine 
 remains just where he was; but the machine has the 
 chance to do more and better work. Of course, even 
 in a highly automatized plant, there remain a good 
 many jobs that require either no machinery or semi- 
 automatic machines, and in such cases the recent 
 weeding-out of the ineffectives does produce beneficial 
 results. If the market will not absorb the products of 
 the longer working-day, on the present more efficient 
 per-man per-hour basis, then it seems apparent that, 
 viewing the country as a whole, industry will have to 
 adjust itself to eight hours or fewer, probably fewer. 
 The nation's supply of automatic tools is not going to 
 be decreased simply to lengthen the working-day ; on 
 the contrary, competition continually forces more and 
 more of such tools into operation. 
 
 A shorter working-day manifestly means greater 
 leisure for the masses. Whether the free time comes 
 from choice or necessity, from labor-bargains or lay- 
 offs, that free time is none the less leisure. Now it 
 is everlastingly true that the bulk of human mischief 
 is done in spare time. There is precious little chance 
 for original sin, or any other kind of sin, to work it- 
 self out under the strict regimen of a modern factory. 
 While human beings are at work, they are, perforce, 
 reasonably decent. The employer sees to it that the 
 time he buys is not wasted; but no one exercises an
 
 THEIRONMAN 207 
 
 equal degree of control and supervision over a man's 
 unbought time, his leisure, unless it is the man 
 himself. 
 
 In a town dominated by automatic machinery, 
 therefore, the educational problem is to train youth 
 for the right use of leisure. Why waste time teaching 
 city children how to work, when their chief need is to 
 know how to live? 
 
 Precisely here is the point of my argument. Educa- 
 tion for leisure, under the conditions of automatic 
 production, is education for life. The attendant of 
 automatic tools does not live while he is on the job; 
 he exists, against the time when he can begin to live, 
 which is when he leaves the shop. His task does not 
 call for a fraction of his full powers as a sentient being, 
 or monopolize his interest. If he could buy the same 
 amount of well-financed leisure as easily in any other 
 way, he would shift jobs to-morrow. It is impossible 
 for him to grow mentally through his work. So he 
 comes to his post as a slave to the galley, and leaves 
 it with the gladness of a convict escaping prison. 
 Psychologists say that a large part of industrial unrest 
 is due to the inhibition which automatic tools place 
 upon the expression of personality through labor. Be 
 that as it may, the fact is, that the hours given to 
 tending automatic machines are given to buy leisure; 
 and in that leisure the operative lives. He lives in his 
 sports, at the movies, at the prize-fights, at the blind 
 pig, as well as at the theatre, the lecture, the library, 
 in the park, and on the front porch of his inamorata. 
 
 In general, it has ever been true that leisure is the
 
 208 THEIRONMAN 
 
 cream of life. We have tried desperately to build up 
 an immunity to leisure, with our dull gospel of work 
 for work's sake. There is a glory in creative work; but 
 even that becomes pain and weariness if we are kept 
 too long at it. All labor produces, sooner or later, 
 weariness and pain, nature's signal to quit and go 
 a-playing. When does that most stolid of men, the 
 peasant, live most fully when he plods the endless 
 furrow, or when, at evening, he sings his songs, dances, 
 prays, and courts his maiden? When did the skilled 
 mechanic of another day feel his manhood soar highest 
 above clod and worm when he was chasing a screw 
 with a cold chisel, or when he was taking the air in his 
 garden, or, perchance, hobnobbing with his mates in 
 the corner saloon? Is the tireless business man better 
 company when he is chasing a golf-ball or when he is 
 chasing a profit? Is the banker best satisfied with him- 
 self when he is figuring interest or when he is hip-deep 
 in the stream, figuring trout? I think that men of the 
 better sort reach their furthest north in life, not in 
 the hours they pay for life, but in the hours they spend 
 in living. Certain am I that none but an imbecile 
 could find much delight in sharing the daily toil of our 
 mill-workers, so mechanized has it become. Conse- 
 quently, education for leisure is precisely education 
 for life; and education for life comes down, squarely 
 down, to education for culture. 
 
 To apply the early Victorian ideal of education to a 
 machine age, to call upon Matthew Arnold to pre- 
 scribe for a flurried and worried democracy, may seem 
 absurd. But that is what the situation needs; and the
 
 THEIRONMAN 209 
 
 necessary is never absurd. That cultural ideal was to 
 fit for leisure those who had leisure a small minor- 
 ity. With certain reservations in the interests of 
 truth, it may be said to have produced a few first-rate 
 minds and a very considerable number of gentlemen 
 and gentlewomen. Now, because leisure has broadened 
 out to include the majority, we must cultivate gentle- 
 men and gentlewomen en masse. What was once a 
 privilege for an arrogant aristocracy has become a 
 necessity for an arrogant democracy. Unless our 
 American gentlemen and gentlewomen appear in due 
 time and in sufficient numbers, civilization will be 
 wrecked by machine-made barbarians, unable 
 though their machines compass the globe to replace 
 what they have destroyed. 
 
 What is the first requirement for the right use of 
 leisure? Self-restraint. Leisure is liberty from an ex- 
 acting, definite control that of the boss. In leisure a 
 man is subject only to the state. When the worker 
 leaves the shop, he passes from a positive control to a 
 negative control. Inside, he is required to do certain 
 things; failure to do them results in sure discovery. 
 Outside he is required not to do certain things; al- 
 though , if he does them, no penalty may follow. Thus 
 we see that it is immensely more difficult to train hu- 
 man beings for life and leisure than for toil ; and that in 
 Americaonly oddand unusual persons get very much out 
 of leisure. About all that a retired business man feels 
 equal to is golf and musical comedy. The workers offer 
 more encouragement Brashear and Henry George 
 showed what laboring men could do in spare time.
 
 210 THEIRONMAN 
 
 Need for self-restraint increases in direct proportion 
 to leisure and affluence. Temptations to break the 
 law beat upon the impecunious idle ; but temptations 
 of another sort, scarcely less subversive to character, 
 beset the idle youth with money in his pocket. I am sure 
 that eight dollars a day at eighteen and some of 
 our lads earned much more than that would have 
 corrupted me beyond repair. The wonder is, not 
 that some of these highly paid striplings go wrong, 
 but that all do not do so, considering the oppor- 
 tunity offered them by their cynical and predacious 
 predecessors. More even than wild oats, I am sure 
 that such buying power early in life would have in- 
 sulated me against right relationship with the world 
 of ideas and ideals, past, present, and future, by blast- 
 ing nascent inquiry and speculation. 
 
 The establishing of this relationship in youth is, I 
 take it, the end of all true and worth-while education, 
 involving as it does the subjugating of the assertive, 
 unbaked Ego to the social well-being, as manifested 
 in the legal, moral, and ethical codes prevalent in one's 
 environment, and enforced, more or less, by the power 
 with which common consent invests political institu- 
 tions. Respect for authority, even that qualified as- 
 sent involved in the pragmatic view of established 
 institutions, has extreme difficulty in getting a root- 
 hold in a generation whose youth is economically self- 
 sufficient. 
 
 It follows that knowledge, as the chief restraining 
 influence in the youthful mind, is the substitute that 
 education must establish in place of the set of controls
 
 THE IRON MAN 211 
 
 which formerly resulted from the young man's pov- 
 erty, or fear of poverty. Remembering that the rising 
 generation reaches its highest economic utility early in 
 life, and that it soon, relatively speaking, reaches the 
 economic status of old age, I think we must agree that, 
 unless youth is taught thrift, pauperism will lengthen 
 and strengthen from this point in time. A grievous 
 outlook, to be forestalled at any cost. 
 
 There is need, therefore, to drill thrift into children; 
 let the experts busy themselves on methods. The 
 whole field of economics must be opened earlier, and 
 charted more simply. Is it not odd, in a nation that 
 bows down to economic fact, to find that the teaching 
 of economic theory is almost wholly a college mo- 
 nopoly? It ought to be possible to begin the teaching of 
 economics in the kindergarten, and to bring the pupil 
 along so that, before he becomes a part of the eco- 
 nomic machine that supplies human wants, he may 
 understand at least its delicate nature. Suppose a 
 child of five were set to moving by hand a given num- 
 ber of blocks, from this space to that an hour's work. 
 Then suppose the child were given a basket to ease 
 the job time, ten minutes. Then, suppose further 
 that an intelligent teacher explained that the basket 
 wascapital, the result of previous thrift, of labor in past 
 time. That lesson would stick. Somehow to get this, 
 and other fundamentals, into the mind when it is 
 plastic, is the supreme educational task of the future. 
 
 So with the idea of law. My children know, among 
 other surprising things, the chief products of every 
 state in the Union ; but they have no conception of the
 
 212 THE IRON MAN 
 
 legal system which enforces equity and fair play in the 
 exchange of those products. It seems the simplest 
 thing in the world to teach them that laws exist to 
 protect the weak from the strong, the just from the 
 unjust, the person of good intent from the swindler. 
 Once they had mastered that idea, they might see the 
 policeman as a friend rather than as an enemy, and 
 our economic- juridical system as something to be pro- 
 tected instead of destroyed. A generation so reared 
 might insist upon the law doing its primal duty; but 
 it would be evolutionary, not revolutionary, in its 
 demands. 
 
 But self-restraint is not, of course, all that a man 
 needs in order to make something out of leisure. A 
 man may be ever so self-restrained, and yet be des- 
 perately bored at the prospect of spending an hour 
 in his own company. Self-restraint is merely the brake 
 upon the ego-motor; it will keep the individual from 
 running amok in society, but it will not start any- 
 thing. Its virtue is negative. What the ego-motor 
 needs in leisure is fuel, something upon which it can 
 travel, progress, journey into new realms of thought. 
 The best fuel for the purpose is compounded of inter- 
 est in the present, understanding of the past, and 
 sympathy with the future. History, literature, sci- 
 ence, art, music all these give to life meaning, and 
 to leisure, inspiration ; a reasonable concern in all that 
 man has done, is doing, or is about to do upon this 
 planet with such equipment any fool could use 
 leisure aright. To sow that seed is the first duty of 
 educators, now as always, now more than ever.
 
 THE IRON MAN 213 
 
 So much for the background. But backgrounds are 
 always hazy ; let us concentrate. Since work is coming 
 to be no longer a primary interest for the child of the 
 masses in civilized lands, it is incumbent upon us to 
 provide, in so far as they can be provided, other pri- 
 mary interests through which the individual can justify 
 his existence, interests which, rising out of, and sus- 
 tained by, his background, shall flourish like the green 
 bay tree all the days of his life. Every man, whether 
 he works a turret lathe or a comptometer, needs a 
 hobby to busy himself with, in this age of growing 
 leisure. We hear less of vocational training than we 
 did for good reason, since its utility is passing. 
 Presently we shall hear more of avocational training, 
 which shall give every youth destined for the mill or 
 office a hobby for the centre of his garden of leisure. 
 
 In a machine age the applied sciences are para- 
 mount. Let them remain so. There are important 
 posts on the peaks of industry which must be filled. 
 Let us see to it that every mind fit to join the direc- 
 torate of industry gets its educational opportunity. 
 Machinery is undeniably one of the prime intellectual 
 interests of the American masses; in leisure an in- 
 formed generation would continue inventing, perhaps 
 invent faster than ever. Therefore let us give youth 
 all it can stomach of the sciences, deepened and 
 broadened to the uttermost. But by no means should 
 we submit to the specialist's obsession, that, with the 
 key to universal knowledge in his hand, he travels 
 down a walled alley, shut off from the humanities, 
 from philosophy, from religion, from life.
 
 2i 4 THEIRONMAN 
 
 I am not competent to provide the synthesis for this 
 analysis, to describe the educational reforms which are 
 necessary, and which, I am sure, are on the way. That 
 is a task for many and mature minds. But certain 
 key-points emerge out of the haze. We must, I think, 
 insist upon ten years' schooling for every child, as an 
 irreducible minimum, before plunging into the whirl 
 of automatic production. There should be four school 
 terms instead of two, with a brief holiday between; 
 the long summer vacation is an anachronism in a fac- 
 tory town. So also is the Saturday holiday six 
 days a week in school henceforth. There is so much 
 to be taught, and there are so few years to teach it 
 in, that youth must hurry. At the same time, school 
 should be so much more interesting, that the charge 
 of drudgery could not hold. 
 
 Then, too, there must be more teachers, and smaller 
 classes; better equipment, more money spent all 
 round. Finally, there should be a complete system of 
 continuation schools, wherein those who desire to use 
 their labor-bought leisure by securing further instruc- 
 tion, could be accommodated on their own time. All 
 graduates presumably will have been so far inoculated 
 with the intellectual virus that they will go on im- 
 proving their minds in leisure to some extent, thus 
 demonstrating on a wide scale that education is not a 
 matter of youth, but of life. With such a start, the 
 many will read, discuss, and enjoy the noblest works 
 of man. And some among them, have no fear, will 
 create as well as recreate. 
 
 But the programme, after all, may be left safely to
 
 THE IRON MAN 215 
 
 the specialists, now that the problem is stated for 
 their attention. They may have been a bit tardy in 
 seeing how the Iron Man is frustrating their efforts, 
 and why; but that is because they have been concen- 
 trating upon an even more wonderful mechanism 
 the human mind. Let them quarrel, as no doubt they 
 will, over the details of the programme; but they can 
 be trusted to accept the statement, once they 
 square the facts by the rule of reason, that the wel- 
 fare of our people and the preservation of our insti- 
 tutions depend upon our educating youth to use rea- 
 sonably and gloriously the growing leisure which the 
 common use of automatic machinery has in store for 
 humanity.
 
 THREE innovations in a single notable year so 
 affected the development of modern Western 
 civilization, that the new world may be considered as 
 born in 1776, when Adam Smith published his "In- 
 quiry into the Wealth of Nations," the American 
 colonies revolted from Great Britain, and Wilkinson 
 made Watt's steam-engine a commercial success by 
 boring cylinders capable of holding compression. 
 
 The effects of the first two are tritely acknowledged. 
 Smith's logic broke down the so-called mercantile 
 system of state control, freed trade from many of its 
 political inhibitions and opened the door to individ- 
 ualism and commercial opportunity. Here, on our 
 eastern seaboard, the search for freedom, renewed 
 under favoring circumstances in a rich environment, 
 resulted in a representative government amenable to 
 democratic ideals a consummation so appealing to 
 men, that the political trend thereafter in all en- 
 lightened lands has been away from personal power 
 and toward constitutionalism, away from feudalism 
 and toward democracy. 
 
 Not the least important of those three great ad- 
 ventures was that in tool-making. Until Wilkinson 
 perfected his boring machine so that cylinders could 
 be produced true "to the thickness of a thin sheet of 
 paper," Watt's engine remained merely an interesting 
 and ineffective model. But no sooner could steam- 
 engines be produced in numbers, than Watt's con-
 
 THE IRON MAN 217 
 
 tribution became a mighty force, not only in fabricat- 
 ing and transporting goods, but also in fabricating and 
 transporting civilization. Hard, indeed, to find a man 
 or institution on this planet not in some way affected, 
 for better or worse, by the steam-engine and the 
 industrial civilization built on that base. Even the 
 Sacred Lama of Tibet has seen an Englishman, a 
 camera, a repeating rifle, and a dotted line upon which 
 to sign away some of his sovereign powers to inheritors 
 of the steam-engine. The applied science of Watt and 
 Wilkinson has been as revolutionary in its effects as 
 the politics of Jefferson and the economics of Adam 
 Smith. 
 
 No event of first-rate importance since 1776 can be 
 explained satisfactorily without reference to the three 
 forces then released. The trio have pulled in harness, 
 and while one might at some point seem to be carrying 
 most of the load at any given time, the fact is, that all 
 three were in the news every day, though often un- 
 recognized. To discern where the paramount influence 
 of one ends and that of another begins calls for more 
 application than is worth while, since the workings of 
 each have been qualified by the others, and the three 
 together propel modern Western civilization. 
 
 These three politics, economics, and science, in 
 their modern manifestations as democracy, competi- 
 tion, and the harnessing of natural forces through 
 mechanics and chemistry have brought vast boons 
 and vast sorrows. They have given us tubes under 
 London and trenches in Flanders, the ocean liner and 
 the submarine, motor-cars and depth-bombs, laugh-
 
 218 THE IRON MAN 
 
 ing gas and poison gas. They have enriched life abund- 
 antly and destroyed it ruthlessly, letting poor folks 
 have luxuries that kings could not enjoy of old, doub- 
 ling the population of the earth in four generations, 
 and killing, maiming, and starving some 40,000,000 
 in four years. They have given us means to more 
 material prosperity than our higher natures can as- 
 similate, lifting the standard of living without lifting 
 equally the standard of conduct. The soul of man 
 wanders dismally among his marvelous machines, try- 
 ing to salvage the tattered bits of his ideals, and piece 
 them together into chains strong enough to bind again 
 the greedy beast he knows his lower self to be. Still 
 searching! Thank God for that! 
 
 This is a tragic time. With small heart for the task, 
 we are mopping up after a debacle. We take our wages 
 grudgingly. Even the least of us seems to be aware 
 that we shall fail if no vision comes to us; even the 
 hardest pressed knows that cash in hand, be it large 
 or small, is not enough to nerve the soul of man for 
 victory over himself. Having won a victory over Na- 
 ture, and turned the spoils of that victory against 
 himself in his madness, Man now contends for victory 
 over himself. If he fails, his civilization must perish 
 in a morass of materialism, where men contend for 
 wealth and power as swine at the trough. In that 
 case, we shall have created our own barbarians, and 
 our spectacular civilization will deserve engulfment 
 in another Dark Age. 
 
 Each golden age in history has had its denouement 
 in which fair promises come to wreck upon the points
 
 THE IRON MAN 219 
 
 of unseen rocks whose bases are primordial human 
 traits. There is that in human nature which checks 
 our species short of realizing the dreams of its noblest 
 sons. In part, the reason is economic; alas, we must 
 eat and be clothed, and contend for the privilege of 
 living. And yet these difficulties are not insuperable, 
 considering the enormous productivity of our modern 
 tools and processes. Primarily the failure is due to the 
 fact that each generation must be schooled anew in 
 restraint, while the instincts, and likewise the tools 
 and processes that lend themselves so readily to the 
 gratification of those instincts, are inherited intact 
 and vigorous. The apparent weakening of the religious, 
 moral, and ethical controls since the Industrial Revo- 
 lution began may be relative rather than actual. Those 
 controls may be stronger than they were, and yet, so 
 much more intense are the material forces against 
 which they must contend, the controls seem relatively 
 too weak to hold. 
 
 If 1776 be considered the beginning of an epoch in 
 which politics, economics, and science increased their 
 influence steadily, and at a constantly accelerated 
 pace, over human affairs, then 1918 maybe considered 
 a halfway point in the great historic cycle. Not 
 merely the other side of a circle, because history is a 
 whorl; the figure, if you please, is one in solids, and 
 the plane of the beginning impossible to regain. But, 
 at least, the trend henceforth, for many years to come, 
 must be back toward the beginnings. One would be 
 blind, indeed, to miss the accumulating evidence that 
 the human spirit, weary of what men have done for
 
 220 THE IRON MAN 
 
 the most part unwittingly by and through politics, 
 economics, and science, looks back despairingly from 
 new to old. The Prodigal, reeking of the fleshpots, 
 turns toward home. 
 
 After much experience with democracy, we are 
 forced to qualify democracy. The "free and equal" 
 clause of the Declaration of Independence is a dead 
 issue, no longer valid among us either practically or 
 theoretically. We are forced to recognize inequality 
 as inherent in human nature, and accept class-dis- 
 tinctions as having psychologic as well as economic 
 bases. Opportunity to climb from one class to another 
 or to sink from one class to another, is as close an 
 approach as this generation can honestly make to 
 professions of equality. No matter how thoroughly the 
 progress of automatic machinery levels wages, or how 
 incomes are leveled by super-taxes, ability and in- 
 tellect will herd together and lead. We perceive that 
 the hope of the world lies in the exalted leadership of 
 an aristocracy recruited from all classes of society on 
 the basis of merit ; and that, while the common sense 
 of the masses may be trusted in fundamental decisions, 
 the complications of civilization are such as to make 
 the mass-verdict of value only on simple issues where 
 ample time is available. So far have the theories of 
 democracy been qualified by the wisdom of experience. 
 
 Likewise, the evolution of our times proceeds re- 
 lentlessly, despite terrific opposition, toward a revival 
 of mercantilism through state control of business. 
 11 Do as you please as long as you pay your taxes" is 
 as dead as that ultimate of laissez-faire economy
 
 THEIRONMAN 221 
 
 free trade. Individualism took too large a dose of its 
 own medicine, and fades day by day. The tradition of 
 personal independence dies hard ; yet die it must when 
 confronted with the reality of personal interdepend- 
 ence. We rely upon the state and the community 
 to preserve the amenities of social life against the 
 ultimate effects of economic pressure. Coalescence of 
 individuals into groups has progressed so far that 
 cooperation is essential to the civilization we know. In 
 the extension of the cooperative principle resides our 
 best hope of industrial peace, and yet confidence 
 enough to make cooperation work is lacking and must 
 be rebuilt. Our world is full of social controls unknown 
 to our forefathers ; but an older world than theirs knew 
 something like them in the far-away days when in- 
 dividual initiative was hampered by the state at many 
 points, and the church, as a sub-government, touched 
 all lives. 
 
 The analogy of "return" may be pushed even 
 further. Our corporate groupings take on more and 
 more the look of feudal groupings. Insecurity in toil 
 and station has made good its curses as well as its 
 blessings. Labor searches for security as well as for 
 reward; and the renewal of labor's confidence in the 
 capitalist system seems likely to await the success of 
 efforts being put forth to harmonize security with 
 freedom a task desperately difficult, perhaps in- 
 superable. 
 
 In all these respects, and many others, a disillu- 
 sioned world seems to be retracing its steps toward a 
 point where life was simpler and more easily reduced
 
 222 THE IRON MAN 
 
 to rule. It is a weary round, because we moderns, in the 
 meantime, have come by so much disconcerting 
 knowledge and have had so little time to reduce it to 
 comprehension. Mountains of facts weigh us down, 
 and we have no aeons of time at our disposal, to let 
 natural forces work these facts into strata of gold and 
 dross, easily recognizable for what they are worth. 
 Many things appear important to us which probably 
 are not important at all, but seem so because we have 
 lost our old standards of selection and appraisal, and 
 lack new ones whose validity is commonly accepted. 
 In the press, for instance, enough energy and material 
 is wasted girding at women's clothes to go some little 
 distance toward implanting economic sense and social 
 ideals in the minds of the people. A noisy evangelist, 
 by circus methods, stirs thousands of weak minds to 
 acknowledge a Master they forget next month. A 
 captain of industry is advertised into mythical hero- 
 ship by an energetic press-agent, and the country 
 thinks it has discovered someone worth while. These 
 are vain things; fortunately time will blot them out, 
 and history contain no record of them, except perhaps 
 in satire. Nevertheless, they keep us from sane judg- 
 ments. Our minds are open channels, through which 
 ideas rush without finding lodgment or stiffening into 
 convictions. 
 
 Difficult, too, to keep the plane of return an ascend- 
 ing plane. How much easier it is to let industry de- 
 grade the masses, than to give them a leg up through 
 cooperation, and a hand up through cultural educa- 
 tion. Easier to accept the moral code of a given mo-
 
 THE IRON MAN 223 
 
 ment as sacrosanct, and strive for a lifeless morality 
 through law, than to examine that code, bring it down 
 to date, and educe goodness through suasion. Simpler 
 also, to accept cold formalism in religion, than to seek 
 for the spirit behind the forms, or to strive for a new 
 definition of the Deity acceptable to generations 
 steeped in Darwinism. Why bother with trying to 
 bargain ourselves into a modus vivendi which shall 
 compass both social welfare and individual growth, 
 when we can have the whole dreary round soon over 
 by rushing pell-mell into state socialism and risking 
 the consequences? Now, as ever in such heartaches, 
 men are sorely tempted to try short cuts. The highway 
 following the folds of nature is long and flinty, and our 
 feet are bleeding. Yet short cuts, now as ever, end in 
 quicksand. 
 
 If I knew of other controls than religion, morality, 
 and ethics, for the ills of materialism that beset the 
 workaday world, the temptation to present them in 
 this conclusion would be too great to withstand. I 
 have made bold to point out, with appropriate reser- 
 vations, certain sedatives ; but I repeat that there is no 
 panacea short of revising our whole attitude of life 
 toward wealth production and distribution. That, I 
 am satisfied, is impossible: the instincts toward pos- 
 session and dominance are too strong. The best we 
 can do is to strengthen where faint, and renew where 
 absent, those ancient religious controls which brace 
 men for duty, justice, and mercy. 
 
 No one knows better than I the insufficiency of 
 saying, at this pass, "Morals" to the mass, "Ethics"
 
 224 THEIRONMAN 
 
 to the class, and "Religion" to all and sundry, mean- 
 while pushing briskly by on the other side of the road. 
 Morals, we have been told too often, are matters of 
 convenience and custom, latitude and longitude. 
 Ethics, unless reduced to code, are too hazy for guid- 
 ance, and, when codified, are soon outworn in this 
 changing scene. Both morals and ethics may be at- 
 tainted as born of expediency, except where they 
 spring unbidden to the surface in a character fertilized 
 by religion. 
 
 A self-made banker put the case neatly : ' ' Ethics ! ' ' 
 he said brusquely; " I know how to spell the word; no 
 more. Yet I am reputed an ethical banker, in a day 
 when opportunities to make tainted money safely in 
 my business are many. What keeps me from taking 
 them? No fine-spun ethical notions, I assure you. 
 Simply old-fashioned religion, learned in an old-fash- 
 ioned home." 
 
 One heard in the boom days much talk of service 
 and ethics, and many protestations of business morals, 
 at luncheon clubs and the like ; but these did not hin- 
 der business men from canceling contracts right and 
 left when prices were fluctuating rapidly, and thus 
 contributing to a destruction of confidence which is 
 certain to afflict the trading and working world for 
 years to come. Even business honor, the ethics of 
 counting-room and market-place, needs a firmer base 
 than expediency. In the most materialistic concerns 
 of life, practical men have been surprised to discover 
 that the spirit animating the disposition of resources 
 is of prime importance. Bricks, we are relearning to
 
 THEIRONMAN 225 
 
 our sorrow, do not make a wall unless the bond be- 
 tween them holds fast against ill winds. 
 
 We moderns suffocate under an avalanche of facts; 
 our distress is due, not to the facts, but to our diffi- 
 culty in discovering their relationships, and reducing 
 them to comprehensible order. Our age, more than 
 any other, is oppressed by a necessity to reckon with 
 relations between things and ideas; we understand 
 with growing clearness that in life all is intertwined. 
 That which gives the infinite concerns and phenomena 
 of life meaning is the bond holding them together. 
 Civilization is a synthetic process, a truth which those 
 who have been trying to save it by analysis and spe- 
 cialized thought do not seem in the least to appreciate. 
 
 The most durable bond that Man has yet succeeded 
 in discovering is belief in God. The fact that one can 
 write indefinitely long of industry and make no men- 
 tion of God may be at the root of more of our indus- 
 trial and social troubles than we imagine. Adam Smith 
 saw no future for the corporation except in a few lines 
 easily routinized, such as life-insurance. Little did he 
 foresee that inventions would so increase the routin- 
 izing apparatus available for use by compelling per- 
 sonalities, that the corporation would become in our 
 day the established form under which business pro- 
 ceeds. Equally, we give no sign of comprehending 
 that human beings are routinized along with business. 
 Something infinitely precious evaporates from the 
 soul of man in the desert of routine. The idea of God 
 has less and less chance to express itself in the work- 
 life of the common man, as chance is crowded out of
 
 226 THE IRON MAN 
 
 his toil. For God is the essence of freedom; He alone 
 has the freedom of omnipotence; and when work is 
 mechanized to the point where outside, uncharted 
 forces cannot affect production, God is reduced from 
 a partner to an onlooker. 
 
 I refuse to add another unsatisfactory definition of 
 God to all those on record. An extensive theological 
 library (inherited) shows me the folly of that. Let 
 who will declare God a person or a force. I have never 
 had a mystical experience of God, and find myself un- 
 able to subscribe with a whole heart to any creed I 
 have ever read. I know not whether God is one, or 
 three, or a thousand. The Invisible King of Mr. Wells 
 is as unsatisfactory to me, and no more so, than the 
 Jahveh of Joshua. It is not my province to find a 
 Deity acceptable to the modern world; but rather to 
 point, unwillingly and from laggard conviction of 
 necessity, that it is high time for us moderns to quit 
 considering our systems and machines as all-impor- 
 tant, and to search for God with what strength is left 
 in us. 
 
 There was a time when I subscribed to the anthro- 
 pomorphic conception of God: that man made God 
 in his own image an extended and glorified image, 
 to be sure, but essentially man, multiplied in goodly 
 personal power and shorn of the baser traits of hu- 
 manity. For all I know to the contrary, that may be 
 the case; but if Man did invent God, I hold that in- 
 vention to be the masterpiece of human wisdom, far 
 outstripping in usefulness any and all subsequent 
 innovations of the "brave, little biped." That, if so,
 
 THE IRON MAN 227 
 
 was the first step in progress from beasthood toward 
 manhood, the essential without which self-restraint 
 and social order are impossible. With God, however 
 discovered, in the saddle, Man was ready to march, 
 as he could not otherwise have marched, toward the 
 command of all things terrestial. Assuredly he could 
 not have come so far without God ; and unless he keeps 
 his faith in God, this present quagmire is a turning-point 
 in the journey, and " Retreat " the order of to-morrow. 
 
 I have come to this conclusion from inner com- 
 pulsion, after viewing the evidence, and against the 
 protests of some, more sage than I, who hold that 
 Darwin and his successors ruined the concept of God 
 past repair. If so, then the scientists planted the 
 seeds of ruin in our industrial civilization even as they 
 built it, because industrial civilization cannot hold 
 together unless the idea of God as Universal Father 
 and All-wise Judge increasingly restrains the follies, 
 greeds, hates, and ambitions of men. 
 
 There is pathos in a trade-paper tale out of India, 
 wherein Hindu steel-workers are described as decking 
 their machines with garlands on holy days, as once they 
 decked their bullocks and their ploughs. We smile in- 
 dulgently ; what pleasant, simple children, so likely to 
 be cheated in a game in which we are grown stale ! And 
 yet that naive reaction to machine-power is no more 
 absurd, and rather more picturesque, than our organ- 
 ized efforts to bring God into machine-shops through 
 welfare work. And its very spontaneity is in refreshing 
 contrast to our penchant for the mechanized, de- 
 partmentalized activities of the modern institutional
 
 228 THEIRONMAN 
 
 church, fit refuge for standardized souls, and as near 
 like a factory as ever a church can be. 
 
 The masses remain incurably mystic, but to-day 
 their mysticism moves them less toward organized re- 
 ligion than toward social revolt. How much of the 
 machine-tender's unrest is due to the feeling that he 
 is forsaken of God in his toil, no one can say. He is 
 sick, I think, of working for bread alone. The success 
 of the A. Nash Company, with its Golden-Rule policy, 
 indicates that men relish being considered, not as 
 numbers in a card-index and as companions of ma- 
 chines, but as members of a fellowship founded upon 
 common consent of God and common descent from 
 God. Kneeling together, praying together, and sing- 
 ing hymns together may be all very well, but, if no 
 religion can be injected into working together, then 
 God has been crowded out of the most influential 
 phase of modern life, and the confident continuance of 
 the wages-system awaits His return. 
 
 Assuredly many of us are daily doing God's work, as 
 the statesmen tried to do it at Versailles, without 
 daring to assert their conviction of its acceptability to 
 Him. We are grown strangely reticent on religion, 
 and strangely immodest on personalities. We are for- 
 ever chattering about the big men in industry; but if 
 one of these forceful beings should say, "This I do to 
 the glory of God," we should hold him a blasphemer. 
 Yet such thoughts, no doubt, inspire men to unselfish 
 action even yet; and, if avowed, might be understood 
 by those who cannot stomach, at this pass, pretensions 
 to moral and ethical elevation.
 
 THE IRON MAN (229 
 
 The religion of toil, if one may dare a division of 
 religion for the sake of emphasis, is neither ecstatic 
 on the one hand nor formalized on the other, but 
 quiet, unpretentious, and vocal through deeds rather 
 than words. And where breaking into words, seldom 
 do the words convey a tithe of the full meaning behind 
 them. On certain massive stone arches, at the borders 
 of two industrial cities in New York State, are graven 
 these words: "The Square Deal Towns: Erected by 
 the employees of the Endicott- Johnson Company." 
 They bear the likenesses in bas-relief of two men. I should 
 like to know more of those men, and get at the reasons 
 why they inspired those unique community memorials. 
 If all is as it appears, then those arches seem to me more 
 significant than the Arc de Triomphe, or any other 
 marker of victory. Indeed, they evidence a more 
 unusual victory, the triumph of mutual service in 
 toil, and are as honorable memorials to the thou- 
 sands who erected them as to the two commemorated 
 thereon. The builders might have added, "To the 
 Glory of God" ; but there is no need: the phrase 
 speaks in the work; for where men work in faith and 
 confidence one for another, there God manifests Him- 
 self unceasingly. And until that faith and confidence 
 return, God shall be sore needed in industry. 
 
 Politics, economics, and science these sustain 
 and order life; but the life they offer is too barren of 
 spiritual satisfaction to give joy in and of itself; too 
 harsh to hold the loyalty of those who fail to win its 
 high prizes of cash and place; and too complicated for 
 ordinary folk to reduce to inner harmony, unless they
 
 2 3 o THE IRON MAN 
 
 take much on faith and have in God a unifying concept. 
 
 The duel is on between that culture of the active 
 soul which democracy offers as a final value of life 
 and a mechanization of mundane affairs so complete 
 that democracy as we know it must perish under its 
 sway. Our successors shall not come out of this con- 
 flict spiritually victorious unless they are sustained 
 by faith that their labors are acceptable of God. 
 
 Further evolution of automatic machinery may 
 cancel from the equation difficulties which now seem 
 important. Fatigue may depart from industrial toil 
 as machines become more and more perfect. But 
 even so, an adjustment between human interests 
 and machine interests must still be made somewhere 
 if not in the shop, then in the streets, homes and 
 legislatures. As machines come to do more of the 
 necessary work of the world, the right use of leisure 
 as an antidote for sloth and luxuriousness and as a 
 means of mental, moral, and physical health becomes 
 essential to national vigor. Likewise, as human beings 
 become increasingly dependent upon machines for the 
 means of life, who shall own those machines and how 
 shall their produce be divided ? In escaping from one 
 sort of travail, man runs straightway into another. 
 
 Consequently, whatever the trend and pace of evo- 
 lution, Man will have need of Divine assistance 
 toward wisdom and patience in order to emerge 
 strong and serene from the struggle with the Iron 
 Man. 
 
 Seaver-Howland Press, Boston.
 
 University of California 
 
 SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1388 
 
 Return this material to the library 
 
 from which it was borrowed.
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 A 000712527 1