THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 RIVERSIDE 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 Dr. Gordon Katkins
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY
 
 Instincts in Industry 
 
 A Study of 
 Working-Class Psychology 
 
 By 
 Ordway Tead 
 
 Boston and New York 
 Houghton Mifflin Company 
 
 Stc JEUberf (be 9rtM. taxaktOtat
 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY ORDWAY TKAD 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
 Published October igi8
 
 TO 
 MY PARENTS 
 
 ^
 
 When it is known what types of instinc- 
 tive mechanisms are to he expected^ and 
 under what aspects they will appear in 
 the mind, it is possible to press inquiry 
 into many obscurer regions of human 
 behavior and thought, and to arrive at 
 conclusions which while they are in 
 harmony with the general body of biolog- 
 ical science have the additional value of 
 being immediately useful in the conduct 
 of affairs, 
 
 WILLIAM TROTTER 
 
 in The Instincts of the Herd in Peace and Wat
 
 PREFACE 
 
 There has thus far been little serious study of 
 the industrial activities of manual workers in 
 the light of our increasing body of knowledge 
 about human nature and the structure of human 
 beings. The fears, ambitions, attitudes, and 
 achievements of working-people have been stud- 
 ied in relation to economic history, climate, 
 ethics, and religion; but attempts to show the 
 connection of their conduct with the realities 
 of human nature are few. This is to be regretted 
 because there is reason to believe that an exami- 
 nation of human behavior in industry will dis- 
 close vital relationships between those malad- 
 justments which we call "labor problems," and 
 the functioning of that complex of inherent tend- 
 encies and acquired characteristics which is 
 human nature. In due course such examination 
 promises to lead to a vastly better understand- 
 ing of events and their causes, and to a delib- 
 erate attempt to mold the world nearer to the 
 necessities of the nervous system and the mind. 
 
 A comprehensive survey of man's conduct in 
 industry, of his endowments and capacities in 
 the light of modern anthropology and the so- 
 called "behavioristic" psychology, is beyond 
 the scope of the present study. The aim is far 
 less ambitious. It is to show, by means of a 
 varied collection of facts, incidents, and anec- 
 dotes, that human conduct tends to become not 
 only more intelligible but more amenable to control 
 as we view it in the light oj an understanding of the 
 
 ix
 
 PREFACE 
 
 instinctive mainsprings of action. And a further 
 limit is set by reason of my confining myself to 
 the behavior of manual workers. I have three 
 reasons for thus concentrating attention upon 
 working-class conduct. 
 
 First, it is now all too plain that the under- 
 currents of industrial unrest and discontent 
 which come to the surface w^th increasing fre- 
 quency have had their source in an unconscious 
 but tremendously eifective repression of human 
 aspiration and desire. The release of energy and 
 vigor, which is needed to clear the air, will not 
 come until we see human nature as it is. 
 
 Second, the mind of the Worker is grievously 
 misunderstood. At a time in the country's his- 
 tory when a common knowledge of the motives 
 and attitudes of its manual workers is most im- 
 perative, we have little real understanding of 
 people which traverses class lines. Efforts toward 
 "social justice" or "industrial democracy" are 
 doomxcd to be fumbling and inept if there is no 
 attempt to envisage and reckon with a point 
 of view among the workers which is the inevitable 
 by-product of the treatment of any human be- 
 ing under similar circumstances. 
 
 And third, the "psychology," or mental proc- 
 esses and habits, of the employers as a class has 
 already been interpreted by other writers.^ 
 
 At this hour in the world's history beyond any 
 other, the task of shaping a civilization in which 
 the democratic enterprise can be further experi- 
 
 ^ See: Frank W. Taussig, Inventors and Money- 
 Makers ; Werner Sombart, The Quintessence of Capi- 
 talism.
 
 PREFACE 
 
 merited with in safety, carries with it an extraor- 
 dinary challenge. The experiment cannot go 
 far unless we know the conditions under which 
 the individual can act safely from the point of 
 view of his own mental integrity. What demands 
 can the world confidently make upon each of us 
 in terms of our capacity to cooperate, to act with 
 discrimination, to perpetuate a sound physical 
 and mental inheritance what demands can 
 it make and be reasonably sure that each of us 
 will or can deliver, can go the pace? What, every 
 thoughtful student of reconstruction is asking, 
 are the limitations which our physical and nerv- 
 ous inheritance imposes upon human achieve- 
 ment; and what are the positive human forces 
 which can surely be counted on as the rock-bot- 
 tom basis for any stable readjustment? 
 
 A study of the limitations upon human achieve- 
 ment is in effect a study of the forces at work 
 to make conduct what it is. To know these 
 forces requires that we identify the elements of 
 human nature. This is our first task. Recent 
 psychological research has thrown real light 
 upon this problem, and while there is no abso- 
 lute consensus of opinion as to the elements of 
 human nature (and especially as to the names of 
 these elements), there is a reasonable agreement 
 among psychologists upon the nature of the 
 essential human characteristics. With these in 
 mind, I propose to state and consider a variety 
 of examples of familiar types of behavior in 
 industry to see, in the second place, to what 
 extent conduct does become more intelligible in 
 the light of a knowledge of psychological habits 
 and predispositions.
 
 PREFACE 
 
 In other words, this study will proceed from 
 two known factors the human impulses and 
 the conduct of people in industry to some 
 third fact, to whatever conclusion about the 
 relation of these two, which a study of them 
 admits. 
 
 This customary method of proceeding from 
 the known to the unknown has determined the 
 confessedly artificial method of treatment of 
 this study. The vital instincts of human beings 
 are enumerated and, in connection with each, 
 illustrations of conduct are considered which 
 seem to reveal the operation of specific innate 
 influences. Nevertheless no precise pigeon-hol- 
 ing of activity is intended and it should not, of 
 course, be countenanced. Conduct can prob- 
 ably never be submitted to completely accurate 
 dissection. It can never be tied up in neat par- 
 cels and tagged as embodying this or that in- 
 stinct alone. The unknown and unmeasured 
 causal elements are legion. The best that we 
 can do is to make a beginning in interpretation. 
 And in such beginnings it is inevitable that facts 
 which I use to exemplify the influence of one 
 instinct will appear to the reader to indicate the 
 prompting of some other tendencies either sin- 
 gly or in combination. 
 
 Illustrations are, therefore, to be taken not so 
 much as making out a case for the relation be- 
 tween any one instinct and activity, but rather 
 as showing the vitally dynamic relation between 
 the total of instinctive predispositions and activ- 
 ity. Directly or indirectly, immediately or re- 
 motely, some one or a combination of instincts 
 is destined to have a hand in conditioning the 
 
 xii
 
 PREFACE 
 
 critical choices of conduct. Because this is true, 
 it becomes our business in the troubled affairs 
 of industry to find out what instincts are opera- 
 tive and in what ways they determine and limit 
 behavior. 
 
 In order, then, to be quite clear as to the limits 
 within which the present study is undertaken, 
 let me recapitulate before proceeding. I am not 
 attempting here to interpret conduct in terms 
 of any arbitrary classification of instincts, or to 
 attribute specific courses of complex activity 
 to unduly simple motives. The aim throughout 
 is to establish an understanding point of viezv toward 
 familiar activities in the industrial world a point 
 of view which construes human behavior as hav- 
 ing an organic relation to the human nervous 
 system and its environment, past and present. 
 
 The value of this method of approach to the 
 human problems in industry has only recently 
 been grasped. But there is justification for the 
 hope that scientific knowledge of human nature 
 can give us a sound basis for concrete attack 
 upon industrial maladjustment; can offer prac- 
 tical suggestions as to ways of squaring indus- 
 trial practices with known facts about human 
 nature, and can afford an approximately sound 
 basis for prophesying the course which events 
 will take under given circumstances. It is to 
 point out what this justification is and to suggest 
 the hopes about industrial life to which it gives 
 rise that this study is devoted. 
 
 With this purpose in view my volume is ad- 
 dressed to all who have contacts with the work- 
 ers who must deal with them, speak for them 
 or of them. The book is an effort toward a better 
 
 xiii
 
 PREFACE 
 
 understanding of people in their capacity as 
 manual workers. My endeavor is to provide 
 a weapon by which the mind can so far as this 
 is intellectually possible - envisage the prob- 
 lems of human beings in different economic 
 strata, can cut across class lines, see over class 
 barriers and overlook group antagonisms. To- 
 day as never before, the professional men, the 
 employer, the employment manager and fore- 
 man, the labor leader and social worker all 
 are under the necessity of knowing what the 
 workers are thinking and feeling, of discovering 
 the content of their mental life and the impulses 
 by which they are moved. 
 
 To the brain-workers this volume is addressed 
 in the hope that the great gulf which separates 
 them from the hand-workers of the world may 
 in the years of reconstruction be narrowed, and 
 a common ground be discovered for cooperative 
 effort toward a social organization which will 
 make use of the best in human nature. 
 
 I have, finally, a profound indebtedness to 
 acknowledge. This book is my own only in 
 the sense that I have elaborated the suggestions 
 of a friend. I met Professor Carleton H. Parker, 
 then of the University of California, when he 
 came to New York in the winter of 191 6-17. 
 And in the course of a conversation about the 
 way in which a knowledge of modern psychology 
 explains and renders intelligible the behavior of 
 people, he said: "I should think that your work 
 in factories would bring to your attention many 
 admirable illustrations of this. You ought to 
 collect them." 
 
 Professor Parker's untimely death prevented 
 
 xiv
 
 PREFACE 
 
 me from submitting to him this evidence of my 
 obedience to his suggestion. I can only make 
 this tardy acknowledgment of obligation, and 
 hope that the present volume proves a not too 
 inadequate testimonial of my gratitude and of 
 my desire to give currency to a point of view 
 which Professor Parker was eager to see ex- 
 tended. 
 
 O.T. 
 
 New York City, 
 
 July IS, 1918.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 I. What ARE THE Instincts? , . I 
 II. The Parental Instinct .... 14 
 
 III. The Sex Instinct 33 
 
 IV. The Instinct of Workmanship, Con- 
 
 trivance, OR CONSTRUCTIVENESS . . 44 
 
 V. The Instinct of Possession, Ownership, 
 
 Property, or Acquisitiveness . . (yj 
 
 VI. The Instinct of Self-Assertion, Self- 
 Display, Mastery, Domination, Emu- 
 lation, or "Give-a-Lead" ... 86 
 
 VII. The Instinct of Submissiveness or 
 
 Self-Abasement 113 
 
 VIII. The Instinct OF THE Herd . . .131 
 
 IX. The Instinct of Pugnacity , . 156 
 
 X. The Play Impulse 171 
 
 XI. The Instinct of Curiosity, Trial and 
 
 Error, or Thought 179 
 
 XII. Conclusion , . 209
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 WHAT ARE THE INSTINCTS? 
 
 There was in operation for some years at the 
 leper colony off the Philippine Islands a sys- 
 tem of weekly gratuities to each man, woman, 
 and child confined in the island colony. From 
 the women and children no accounting for 
 this subsidy was required. But from the men 
 a certain amount of manual labor about the 
 island was exacted upon penalty of having the 
 pocket-money withheld. From the adminis- 
 trative point of view this had seemed an easy 
 solution for the difficult problem of getting 
 adequate labor in an isolated place inhabited 
 largely by the victims of a dread disease. But 
 the men patients took vigorous exception to 
 this form of compulsory labor and finally made 
 complaint about it to the Philippine Govern- 
 ment. An investigation into the unrest at the 
 leper colony was instituted and the Secretary 
 of the Interior visited the island and heard all
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 complaints in person. As a result of his study 
 the system of gratuities for the men was wiped 
 out. And the necessary work on the island 
 was paid for at an agreed rate which, it ap- 
 peared later, was less than the previous gratu- 
 ity. Nevertheless, the men found the new 
 system preferable; there was no more com- 
 plaint; the necessary work was done; the men 
 who were inclined to work received their 
 weekly stipends and the others did not. But 
 from that day to the present, trouble on this 
 score has been unheard of. 
 
 This is a true story of the instincts in indus- 
 try. It illustrates how a practical apprecia- 
 tion of the deep-seated characteristics of hu- 
 man beings sheds light on actual issues. The 
 tendencies to self-assertion which are more or 
 less strong in all people had prompted these 
 men to rebel at a condition of what they con- 
 ceived to be compulsory labor. Their desire 
 for self-direction and for self-expression in their 
 work was thwarted and an unhappy state of 
 mind resulted. The Secretary of the Interior, 
 conscious of unsoundness in the situation, pro- 
 ceeded in a way calculated to remove the cause 
 
 2
 
 WHAT ARE THE INSTINCTS? 
 
 of the trouble ; and by an intelligent handling 
 of the question of work in its relation to pay, 
 he recognized and dignified the claims of hu- 
 man nature while at the same time meeting 
 the obvious demand for a supply of labor. 
 
 We have here a man responsible for the 
 direction of other men. We have a correct per- 
 ception of the way to handle a delicate (if 
 comparatively simple) human situation. It is 
 highly doubtful whether the Secretary con- 
 sciously undertook any elaborate analysis to 
 discover what instincts had been repressed, or 
 made any reasoned reference to a formulated 
 conception of human nature and its demands. 
 But it still is true that he acted wisely because 
 his action did square with the facts of the men- 
 tal life and structure of human beings. If, in 
 addition to acting shrewdly because of native 
 common sense, the Secretary had had in the 
 back of his mind a fairly clear idea of the in- 
 stinctive desires and emotional characteristics 
 of people, his decisions might have been uni- 
 formly wise and effective in handling similar 
 questions. 
 . Most leaders of men are natively shrewd in 
 
 3
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 dealings with their fellows. But they would, 
 like this Secretary of the Interior, profit by a 
 more graphic knowledge of human nature. Now 
 they consult a knowledge of people's reactions 
 gained through long personal experience. They 
 might, I should like to show in this book, con- 
 sult a wider knowledge, refer their problems 
 to a body of fairly stable facts and inferences, 
 which promises to throw light on conduct and 
 motive. This method of approach, which sees 
 conduct in terms of the inherent dispositions 
 of human nature, is immensely suggestive and 
 illuminating. We can, I believe, come to a 
 profound understanding of the elements of the 
 labor problem from this angle of vision, an 
 understanding made possible by increasing 
 knowledge about the working of the human 
 mind. 
 
 Human behavior ranges in its complexity 
 from the simple reflexes of the physical organ- 
 ism to elaborate courses of conduct planned 
 out long in advance of the performance. Be- 
 tween these extremes we find conduct of every 
 degree of deliberate control and self-direction. 
 Given this possible range for behavior, the 
 
 4
 
 WHAT ARE THE INSTINCTS? 
 
 problem is to get a sense for that type of activ- 
 ity which is most prevalent. We want to know 
 the dominant characteristics, the normally 
 prevailing influences which are helping to 
 shape the action of ordinary people under rep- 
 resentative conditions. That is why I am 
 here considering the relations of instinct to 
 conduct. For it is the instincts, I believe we 
 shall find, that have as much to do in the long 
 run with the determination of people's con- 
 duct as any other single factor. That is not to 
 say that instinct exercises exclusive control in 
 behavior. By no means unless the word 
 ** instinct** be applied in a loose and uncritical 
 way. Scientifically, as we shall presently see 
 in defining the word, instincts are only those 
 forces in our mental life which appear to have 
 a deep-rooted basis in the nervous structure 
 of the individual and the race. It is, indeed, 
 because instinctive behavior has this univer- 
 sal quality because the instinctive endow- 
 ments of men as *' domesticated higher mam- 
 mals" are inherently and broadly speaking 
 identical the world over that an under- 
 standing of the place of instinct in the initia- 
 
 5
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 tion of human conduct is so important. If we 
 can visualize the part that instincts, singly and 
 in combination, are playing day by day in the 
 affairs of men, we shall have gone a long way 
 toward a knowledge of the inner reason for the 
 vast majority of human events. 
 
 We shall require for this task a preliminary 
 statement of the nature of instinct and of the 
 more or less simple elements into which for pur- 
 poses of analysis the instinctive equipment of 
 human beings may be divided. These are needed 
 in order not only to make more easy the work 
 of interpreting conduct, but also to put us on 
 our guard against certain popular assumptions 
 which are in danger of creeping in and leading 
 to conclusions at variance with the facts. We 
 must not, for example, assume that conduct is 
 the manifestation of a pure and uncomplicated 
 instinct; that instincts dictate and control con- 
 duct to the exclusion of all other factors ; that 
 the promptings of instinct offer a safe guide 
 to conduct; or that the full satisfaction of an 
 instinct is either necessary or desirable. 
 
 That these assumptions are inadequate and 
 inaccurate will be seen only when "instinct" 
 
 6
 
 WHAT ARE THE INSTINCTS? 
 
 IS defined and its manifestations illustrated. 
 For scientific purposes the word is narrowly 
 limited in content and application. First, 
 therefore, I shall avail myself of two accredited 
 definitions, which supplement each other most 
 helpfully: 
 
 We may define an instinct as an inherited or 
 innate psycho-physical disposition which deter- 
 mines its possessor to perceive, and to pay atten- 
 tion to, objects of a certain class, to experience 
 an emotional excitement of a particular quality 
 upon perceiving such an object, and to act In re- 
 gard to it in a particular manner, or, at least, to 
 experience an impulse to such action.^ 
 
 Instinctive behavior comprises those complex 
 groups of coordinated acts which, though they 
 contribute to experience, are, on their first oc- 
 currence, not determined by Individual experi- 
 ence, which are adaptive and tend to the well- 
 being of the Individual and the preservation of 
 the race; which are due to the cooperation of ex- 
 ternal and Internal stimuli; which are similarly 
 performed by all members of the same more or 
 less restricted group of animals; but which are 
 subject to variation and to subsequent modifica- 
 tion under the guidance of individual experience.^ 
 
 ^ See William McDougall, An Introduction to Social 
 Psychology, p. 29. 
 
 ^ See C. L. Morgan, on "Instinct," Encyclopedia 
 Britannica (iith Ed.), vol. xiv, p. 648. 
 
 7
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 The essential points in these definitions are 
 almost identical. They both agree that the 
 individual is born with certain fairly pro- 
 nounced dispositions or tendencies. These tend- 
 encies are variable; they are adaptive; they 
 are held in check by the desire for preserva- 
 tion. In other words, the biological economy, 
 instead of requiring each organism to learn 
 anew the whole wide range of experience 
 which is safe and has ** existential value," (to 
 borrow James's phrase,) endows each organism 
 with a strongly compelling urge to activities 
 which contribute to survival. We speak loosely 
 of an instinct of self-preservation. In fact, 
 each instinct's raison d'etre is to protect, con- 
 serve, and perpetuate the individual or the 
 species. If this be true, the central fact is not 
 the individual instinct, but rather the strength 
 of the tendency to survival. So that specific 
 instincts, while tending with differing inten- 
 sity from time to time to usurp a leading role 
 in people's lives, are normally held in check 
 and counterbalanced not only by other in- 
 stincts, but by an imperious will to live. 
 
 Understanding of this truth is vital to a clear
 
 WHAT ARE THE INSTINCTS? 
 
 conception of the widely varying influences 
 which different instincts exert on individuals 
 and groups at different times. No less neces- 
 sary to this understanding is an appreciation 
 of two other universal tendencies which most 
 psychologists agree in omitting from their lists 
 of instincts, but which play a considerable 
 part in determining conduct. The tendency 
 to do what we see others doing suggesti- 
 bility or imitativeness has always to be 
 reckoned with as a modifying force. And the 
 tendency to act in habitual ways, along lines 
 of least resistance, because the individual has 
 acted that way before and a "brain path" is 
 already formed this is, a distinctly qualify- 
 ing factor in behavior. We have always to 
 remember, in short, that tendencies to act 
 safely, to act in line with strong suggestions 
 and in line with previous actions, are at work 
 to modify the dictates of instinct, and to over- 
 throw any calculations based on the assump- 
 tion that **pure instinct'* is ever in the saddle. 
 What specific instincts are there, then, which 
 may have a causal relation to conduct in in- 
 dustry? Unfortunately there is no complete 
 
 9
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY ' 
 
 agreement among scholars as to the number 
 and character of the instincts, and it is no easy 
 matter to adopt a terminology which is not 
 open to the charge of inaccuracy from some 
 quarter. In this situation, devoted as the pres- 
 ent study is to the practical purpose of seeing 
 how facts about a certain aspect of human na- 
 ture throw light upon people's conduct, I can 
 only do my best to steer a middle road be- 
 tween the ultra-scientific and the ultra-popular. 
 I am, in short, less interested in the names 
 of mental phenomena than in the facts behind 
 those names. And we do find to-day a fairly 
 universal agreement upon the general nature 
 of those facts. For the purpose in hand I shall, 
 therefore, name the instincts in accordance 
 with the trend generally manifested in recent 
 psychological literature.^ The instincts whose 
 
 ^ See in this connection: William James, Principles 
 of Psychology, vol. ii, chap, xxiv; William McDougall, 
 Social Psychology; Maurice Parmelee, The Science of 
 Human Behavior; Graham W^allas, The Great Society, 
 chaps, i-x; William Trotter, Instincts of the Herd in 
 Peace and War; Thorstein Veblen, The Instinct of 
 Workmanship, especially the Introduction; Edward 
 L. Thorndike, The Original Nature of Man (vol. i in 
 Educational Psychology) ;Wcs\ey C. Mitchell, ""Human 
 
 lO
 
 WHAT ARE THE INSTINCTS? 
 
 functioning throw light upon human behavior 
 as it is revealed in industry are (i) the parental 
 instinct, (2) the sex instinct, (3) the instinct 
 of workmanship, (4) the instinct of acquisi-, 
 tiveness, (5) the instinct of self-assertion, 
 (6) the instinct of self-abasement, (7) the herd 
 instinct, (8) the instinct of pugnacity, (9) the 
 play impulse, (10) the instinct of curiosity. 
 Since we are less concerned with the consti- 
 tuent nature of these impulses than with the 
 character of the behavior to which they 
 prompt, it is irrelevant to discuss whether 
 certain of them are or are not reduced to their 
 simplest terms. Scholars may decide that the 
 impulse to workmanship is only a specific 
 manifestation of the instinct of self-assertion 
 or that the herding tendency is a complex 
 of the pugnacious, parental, and some other 
 instincts. Their decisions will affect only 
 slightly the validity of the conclusions reached 
 by such studies as this. My aim is to esti- 
 mate the influences exerted in industry by 
 
 Behavior and Economics," Quarterly Journal of Eco- 
 nomics, November 1915; C. G. Jung, The Theory of 
 Psycho-Analysis ; I. I. Metchnikoff, The Nature of 
 Man. 
 
 II
 
 y 
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 widely acknowledged constitutent elements of 
 human nature, not to subject those ele- 
 ments to more refined analysis. 
 
 The order in which the instincts have been 
 listed and will be discussed indicates no opin- 
 ion as to their relative importance. The rela- 
 tive strength of instinctive responses neces- 
 sarily varies from group to group and from 
 individual to individual depending on many 
 factors which it will eventually be necessary 
 to consider. 
 
 Armed with this brief outline of the nature 
 of instinct and of the names of our fundamental 
 tendencies, we can proceed to consider whether 
 or not under scrutiny the conduct of people 
 tends to become more intelligible and perhaps 
 more susceptible to wise control than is now 
 the case. Only one further qualification is 
 necessary before undertaking this major in- 
 quiry. The foregoing paragraphs have as- 
 sumed an identity between ''human nature" 
 and the sum of our instinctive endowments. 
 This is not wholly accurate. Figuring in hu- 
 man nature are to be found "reflexes" and 
 ** tendencies"; to say nothing of the fact that 
 
 12
 
 WHAT ARE THE INSTINCTS? 
 
 differences of race, climate, and civilization 
 (to name only three) may so modify human 
 organisms as to cause radical differences in 
 what is in substance our "unchanging and 
 inherent'* human nature. The present dis- 
 cussion, as its name implies, is attempting to 
 discuss only the working-out of the instincts 
 in industry. It has not attempted that im- 
 mensely needed exposition of human nature 
 in our economic life which will do justice to 
 the complexities of the problems of contact and 
 adjustment between individuals and groups.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE PARENTAL INSTINCT 
 
 The conduct prompted by the parental in- 
 stinct is calculated to further the existence and 
 happiness of one's immediate family. We in- 
 vest liberally in the well-being of those closest 
 to us an investment of time, thought, and 
 personality until they are literally **our 
 own," part and parcel of our beings. Parents, 
 wife, and children become an extension of a 
 man's self, and his instinctive desire for sur- 
 vival, mastery, and acquisition are naturally 
 extended to include participation by his family 
 in his own satisfactions. 
 
 It is illuminating to see in what contrary 
 ways this desire to provide for one 's own can 
 express itself. There are South European peas- 
 ants who will not emigrate to America until 
 they can come all together as a family; and 
 actuated by the same motives there are those 
 who will not allow their families to brave the 
 uncertainties of the trans-Atlantic trip until 
 
 14
 
 THE PARENTAL INSTINCT 
 
 they have gone ahead and established them- 
 selves in comfort in the new world. The woman 
 who will not enter the mills, because her chil- 
 dren will be left continually in the street un* 
 cared for and without a home, is prompted by 
 the same impulse as is the operative who ac- 
 companies her husband to work in order to 
 increase the family income and thus provide a 
 better home. Unfortunately the mill-owners 
 have themselves taken a hand in making the 
 latter expression of the parental instinct the 
 necessary one. And the idea is now well estab- 
 lished in our Northern textile cities that wages 
 will be paid, not on a family, but on an indi- 
 vidual, basis on the assumption that all 
 adult members of the family will work to bring 
 in sufficient weekly income for the family. It is 
 this same prompting which makes the low-paid 
 pregnant mother conceal her condition and 
 keep at the loom or spindles until she is sent 
 home by the overseer only a few days or weeks 
 before her confinement. The parental desire is 
 there ; the mother is anxious to provide all she 
 can in advance of the child's coming, and her 
 very zeal is in danger of defeating its own ends. 
 
 IS
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 For we know only too well the abnormally 
 high death-rate of babies in mill towns where 
 the mothers go out to work. 
 
 The same diversity of behavior is to be seen 
 in connection with the reactions of workers 
 to strikes. Men have again and again refused 
 to join or sanction a strike, or having joined, 
 they have abandoned it, because they could 
 not bear to see their families even temporarily 
 deprived of their meager means of support. 
 This was patently true in the New York street- 
 railway strike in 19 16 where, because of tac- 
 tics on the part of the labor leaders which the 
 public believed to be unfair, public support of 
 the strike was withdrawn and the men were 
 left to continue a nominal strike and face 
 starvation, or to return to work and acknowl- 
 edge defeat. Faced with these alternatives 
 most of the men chose to return to work and 
 provide for their families and the strike was 
 lost. The brutality of the conflict in cases of 
 this sort may become acute. In another large 
 city, during a recent street-car strike, strike- 
 breakers were imported and trained. The 
 strike wore on for several months and when a 
 
 16
 
 THE PARENTAL INSTINCT 
 
 settlement was finally effected there were over 
 four hundred former employees for whom the 
 transit company could find no place and v/ho 
 had in consequence to turn elsewhere for em- 
 ployment and subsistence. Here again in the 
 complex of current economic forces a legiti- 
 mate and necessary individual impulse and 
 group agitation for better wages led to results 
 which, temporarily at least, were disastrous to 
 the participants. Obedience to instinct alone 
 did not bring the desired benefits. 
 
 In his *' Strife" Mr. Galsworthy has with 
 classic restraint set forth the universal con- 
 flict and the anguish to which the intrusion 
 of the alternatives of loyalty to family or to 
 fellow- workers give rise. Readers of that play 
 will remember the figure of Roberts, leader of 
 the men, making his valiant speech to the strik- 
 ers "in the gray, fading light" of a winter after- 
 noon. "T is not for this little moment of 
 time," he is saying, "we're fighting not for 
 ourselves, our own little bodies, and their wants, 
 't is for all those that come after throughout 
 all time. ... If we can shake that white-faced 
 monster with die bloody lips, that has sucked 
 
 17
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 the life out of ourselves, our wives and children, 
 since the world began. If we have not the 
 hearts of men to stand against it breast to 
 breast ... it will go on sucking life; and we 
 shall stay forever what we are, less than the 
 very dogs." And in the awed silence, as the 
 tragic conclusion to his plea, comes the mes- 
 sage, "Your wife is dying"; and he knows that 
 his supreme choice has worn to death the frail 
 woman whom he loves. 
 
 Workers have in some cases reluctantly 
 joined a strike because they would not submit 
 to the stigma to which the family of the " scab " 
 is heir. "It is no use," says one trade-unionist, 
 "playing at shuttlecock in this important 
 portion of our social life. Either mingle with 
 these men in the shaft, as you do in every other 
 place, or let them be ostracised at all times and 
 in every place. Regard them as unfit compan- 
 ions for yourselves and your sons, and unfit 
 husbands for your daughters. Let them be 
 branded, as it were, with the curse of Cain, as 
 unfit to mingle in ordinary, honest, and respect- 
 able society. Until you make up your minds to 
 thus completely ostracize these goats of man- 
 
 i8
 
 THE PARENTAL INSTINCT 
 
 kind, cease to complain as to any results that 
 may arise from their action." ^ Such ostracism 
 for one's wife and the indignities which one's 
 children must undergo at the taunting hands 
 of the neighbors' children, are, even if only 
 temporary, enough to make the most stolid 
 individual reflect before refusing to stand by his 
 fellows. 
 
 In its special report on the Bisbee, Arizona, 
 deportations, the President's Mediation Com- 
 mission 2 said that **Many of those who went 
 out did not in fact believe in the justice of the 
 strike, but supported it, as is common among 
 working-men, because of their general loyalty 
 to the cause represented by the strikers and 
 their refusal to be regarded in their own esti- 
 mation, as well as in the minds of fellow- 
 workers, as * scabs.' " ' 
 
 Again, other workers have rushed gladly 
 into action at a strike call because they have 
 been taught to see that collective action gets 
 
 ^ Quoted by Sidney and Beatrice Webb, History of 
 Trade-Unionism, p. 280. 
 
 ^ Report of President Wilson^s Mediation CommiT- 
 sion, on the Bisbee, Arizona, deportations, Novem- 
 ber 6, 1917. 
 
 19
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 results which means more food and clothing. 
 Interesting evidence of the direct action which 
 comes when this idea becomes fixed, not only 
 in the minds of the workers, but of their fami- 
 lies, is seen in the following excerpt from a 
 strike story in the Boston Herald of February 
 22, 1917: 
 
 The women's demonstration reached a climax 
 in the riot following a meeting held late to-day. 
 The wives, mothers, and daughters of the strikers 
 determined to march In a body to the refinery 
 and demand that the concession sought by the 
 men be granted. As they marched through the 
 streets, the women cried that they were starving. 
 
 The women were led to the refinery by Mrs. 
 Florence S , thirty-three years old, who car- 
 ried a baby in her arms, as she shouted encour- 
 agement to her followers. During the melee, as 
 the police were about to open fire on the strikers 
 who ran to the aid of their women-folk, a patrol- 
 man seized Mrs. S and dragged her and the 
 baby to safety. She was arraigned and charged 
 with inciting a riot. 
 
 As the striking employees ran toward the 
 screaming group of women, police, mounted and 
 on foot, flung a cordon about the riot zone. Many 
 of the missiles struck the police, who began firing 
 into the group of strikers. Scores of the work- 
 men and police were hurt by flying missiles. 
 
 A riot call brought out every high official of 
 20
 
 THE PARENTAL INSTINCT 
 
 the police department and every available re- 
 serve south of M Street was rushed to the 
 
 refinery. Superintendent of Police R ordered 
 
 the closing of two saloons near the refinery. Most 
 of the women in the riot were of foreign birth. 
 
 This quotation well illustrates how complex 
 can be the origins of a course of conduct which 
 seems simple only because it has become so 
 familiar. We see a group of women leaving the 
 quiet routine of tenement duties to help their 
 husbands win more wages. One woman (prob- 
 ably for want of another place to leave him) 
 carries her baby and finds herself, after her 
 parental passion for the preservation of her 
 child has abated, arraigned in court. The men- 
 folk come to rescue the women from the hands 
 of the police. The situation is complicated by 
 the arrival of strike-breakers, who are thor- 
 oughly hated by the strikers for their anti-| 
 social behavior in striving to deprive them or! 
 employment. And a small riot is precipitated 
 in which primitive impulses, not only paren- 
 tal, but the self-assertive, pugnacious, and 
 herd instincts have ample opportunities for 
 expression. 
 
 Those who followed the famous Lawrence, 
 
 21
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 Massachusetts, strike will remember the at- 
 tempts which were made to appeal to the 
 public's parental feelings by transporting the 
 strikers' children to homes out of the city 
 where they might be adequately cared for 
 during the strike. The managers of the strike 
 were unwittingly successful in this project be- 
 cause of the dramatic, unexpected, and appar- 
 ently quite unwarranted, interference of the 
 police at the railroad station where the chil- 
 dren were to entrain. One party of children 
 was not allowed to leave the city; and the 
 publicity which this incident obtained and the 
 opportunity which it afforded to call attention 
 to the impoverished condition of the strikers' 
 children, both helped greatly to strengthen the 
 workers' cause in the public eye. The appeal 
 was clearly and legitimately to the ** heart in- 
 terest," which is the man in the street's name 
 for interests and ties of home and family which 
 are near and dear. 
 
 There is a statement in the President's Medi- 
 ation Commission Report ^ that in the Chi- 
 
 ^ Report of the Presidents Mediation Commission 
 to the President oj the United States, p. i6. ' 
 
 22
 
 THE PARENTAL INSTINCT 
 
 cago packing situation **the claim was made, 
 and validly made, that the wage scales, par- 
 ticularly for the great body of unskilled work- 
 ers, were inadequate in view of the increased 
 cost of living.** This maladjustment of wages 
 to living costs has been a familiar attendant 
 of the war situation and it has uniformly 
 caused unrest. Nor should this cause surprise. 
 The high cost of living threatens family life 
 at its very roots. Perhaps the most moving 
 bit of testimony offered before the Shipbuild- 
 ing Labor Adjustment Board at its Washing- 
 ton hearings was the faltering utterance of a 
 gray-haired boiler-maker. **It's awful hard,'* 
 he said, '*to sit down to a good meal of meat 
 and potato like what I have to eat to be able 
 to work, and have the wife and the kids eat 
 bread and tea. And the kids look at you with 
 hungry eyes and try not to complain.** The 
 man realized the deep instinctive necessity 
 for an income that would yield food enough 
 for his entire family. He pointed to the fact 
 that the cost-of-living argument in wage con- 
 troversies is psychologically basic, is biologi- 
 cally unanswerable. 
 
 23
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 It is this fact which gives such great value 
 to the declaration of Judge Alschuler in the 
 packing industry dispute, that no wages should 
 be paid below a reasonable ** comfort" mini- 
 mum; and to the announcement by the Taft- 
 Walsh Labor Board that it favors as a na- 
 tional policy the payment of wages which 
 cover the costs of subsistence. 
 
 Yet the demand for more money has, as the 
 
 Times Annalist ^ points out, another aspect. 
 
 The worker, it says 
 
 wants more than necessities. He wants the luxu- 
 ries he believes the employer is enjoying as a re- 
 sult of the war. Even though his wages keep 
 pace with the cost of living, he feels he is no bet- 
 ter off than he would be with lower wages and a 
 decreased living cost. In other words, his larger 
 wages represent no profit which may be put aside 
 as he believes the employer is putting aside mil- 
 lions, and, in many cases, a bonus only tends to 
 increase the feeling because the worker often 
 regards the bonus as nothing more than an at- 
 tempt to dodge a demand for a well-deserved 
 wage increase, or else, as an admission on the part 
 of the employer that he is getting more out of 
 his labor than is his legitimate right. 
 
 Unquestionably, this desire for something 
 * March 25, 1918. . 
 24
 
 THE PARENTAL INSTINCT 
 
 in the pay envelope which covers more than 
 a comfort minimum is compounded of several 
 motives. But second to none in importance 
 is the motive of desiring to attain status, per- 
 manence, security and respectability for one's 
 family. A worthy motive surely, and one 
 which the community can safely build on far 
 more than it yet has. But in order to build on it 
 the community must be at pains to help with 
 the provision of the means which will give the 
 instinct a chance to flourish. 
 
 A great deal of the working-man's theory 
 and action about *' holding down a job" is 
 not readily understood by the public because 
 its relations to his instinctive needs in general 
 and to the parental desire in particular is ig- 
 nored. There is a strong undercurrent of sym- 
 pathy among manual workers in favor of 
 "making work," "going it easy," limiting the 
 number of workers at a job or craft, and op- 
 posing the application of machinery to jobs, 
 which has its roots in the absolute necessity 
 of having a job if one is to live and give one's 
 family a living. This seems very simple to the 
 worker, even if as a matter of psychology it 
 
 25
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 is quite complex. As long as he can keep the 
 work going, he has a job. As long as there is 
 a job, there is pay. As long as there is pay, 
 there is sustenance for self and family. 
 
 An enlightening answer was given at one 
 of the Pacific Coast hearings of the Shipbuild- 
 ing Labor Adjustment Board to the question 
 of a member of the board, "Do you feel that 
 pay or the wages should be dependent in any 
 way on the fitness of the man who gets the 
 wages?" To which the union representative 
 who was testifying replied, ** Above the mini- 
 mum I do. I believe the union should establish 
 a minimum wage according to the circum- 
 stances of iiving, but it is entirely optional with 
 the employer to grade his men according to 
 their value above that scale." 
 
 The relation of all the much-condemned 
 "ca*canny" policies to the desire for adequate 
 family maintenance is direct and important. 
 Indeed the immediacy of this necessity for 
 holding fast one*s job goes far, to explain, if 
 I may anticipate, why the instinct of work- 
 manship is suppressed when a choice comes 
 between doing a good job and doing a job at 
 
 26
 
 THE PARENTAL INSTINCT 
 
 the rate of speed the employer demands. Con- 
 fronted, as vjhe worker often believes he is, 
 with the alternative of getting quantity (at 
 the expense of quality) or of being discharged 
 as a slow (if careful) worker, the choice of 
 quantity put through in ** slap-dash" fashion 
 is inevitable, since this choice means a job and 
 a living. Workmanship suffers accordingly 
 and the worker's reputation for skill is ques- 
 tioned, rather than the adequacy of methods 
 of selecting or training workers, of planning 
 work or of estimating the amount of good work 
 which can be done in a given time. 
 
 Robert Tressal, in an intimate study of Eng- 
 lish working-class life,^ has naively "brought 
 together an accumulation of illustrations of 
 this whole undercurrent of attitude and of the 
 conditions which cause it. His entire story is 
 a veritable source-book of specific and homely 
 examples of how this and other instincts oper- 
 ate to determine conduct. Nothing could bear 
 clearer testimony than does his narrative to 
 the truth of my thesis, that we understand the 
 
 ^ The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. Stokes, 
 New York, 1914. 
 
 .27
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 inwardness of events and enable ourselves to 
 condition the circumstances of activity only 
 when we know the elements of human motives 
 and desires. 
 
 A remarkably shrewd practical application 
 in industrial management of the idea that the 
 way to a man's heart and mind is through his 
 family interest and parental feeling is seen in 
 the recent institution by a large corporation 
 of a ^* plant mother." This ''mother" is sup- 
 posed to be motherly to appeal to the men's 
 respect and feeling for the maternal. It is her 
 duty, using this motherly disposition and atti- 
 tude as an entering wedge, to go among the 
 men and help to straighten out their troubles 
 with the management. And one of the most 
 successful weapons of appeal with her is said 
 to be that she puts employees' problems in 
 family terms. For example, a man will want 
 to quit because of a slight ruction with a fel- 
 low-worker or superior, whereupon she will 
 remind him that his little Johnny should not 
 be forced by father's unemployment to leave 
 school to go to work or that another baby is 
 coming in a couple of months and that he 
 
 28
 
 THE PARENTAL INSTINCT 
 
 mustn't cause anxiety to "the wife." Upon 
 the legitimacy of this type of appeal it is im- 
 possible to generalize; but it obviously has its 
 limits and its dangers. Its interest for us lies 
 simply in the fact that this method of human 
 approach is consciously used to effect desired 
 ends in industry and that its use brings results. 
 This particular '* plant mother," I am told, 
 has been instrumental in reducing the labor 
 turnover to an astonishing extent. 
 
 Another type of behavior which results from 
 a combination of family pride with self-asser- 
 tion and the desire to possess, is seen in the 
 the struggle, familiar in working-class neigh- 
 borhoods, to keep one's living standards on a 
 par with and preferably superior to those of 
 one's neighbors. The leisure class has no cor- 
 ner on conspicuous waste. Bleak, unused front 
 parlors with crayon portraits of the father and 
 mother at the time of marriage; the boasted 
 size of the family subscription to the church- 
 building fund; the well-concealed deprivation 
 as a result of which the oldest daughter is sent 
 to business college; these are all evidences 
 of a deep family feeling registering itself in the 
 
 29
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY' 
 
 way best calculated to impress the neighbors 
 and advance the family status. The same 
 motive is at work to prevent the wife of the 
 regular city employee at $2.50 a day from 
 having dealings with the wife of the casual day 
 laborer who earns but $i a day. English muni- 
 tion workers are not renowned for their love 
 of music or ability to play the piano. Yet, "I 
 was told," says a writer in the Manchester 
 Guardian^ "that in this purely working-class 
 town the sellers of pianos on the hire system 
 are doing the trade of their lives. The piano, 
 of course, is the token of respectability in 
 every artisan household." And as such its 
 possession satisfies family pride and connotes 
 prosperity and distinction. 
 
 The movement for continuation schools and 
 a more thoroughly efficient industrial educa- 
 tion in a Massachusetts mill city was blocked 
 by trade-union officials who said that they 
 were not interested in industrial training for 
 their children, but preferred them to study 
 piano, drawing, and millinery. And it is a com- 
 monplace of the New England textile cities, 
 that English, Scotch, and Irish operatives will 
 
 30
 
 THE PARENTAI. INSTINCT 
 
 not send their children to work in the mills 
 where they have spent their own restricted 
 lives. The result is that the children become 
 clerks in the stores and banks, and, impelled 
 by family ambition, are postponing marriage 
 because they cannot afford to keep a family 
 at the standard of living they believe neces- 
 sary. The strength of the parental desire may, 
 indeed, become a grave obstacle to being a 
 parent if a person is doubtful of his ability to 
 support a family on the scale which he knows 
 is necessary for its proper maintenance. A 
 desire that the children should have to work 
 less hard than the parents, that they should 
 have greater advantages, that their standards 
 of living should be advanced this can be 
 counted upon to actuate any normal work- 
 ing-class parent in the present generation. 
 The strength of this desire is adding momen- 
 tum of daily increasing weight to the demands 
 of disaffected workers for better terms and 
 less arduous conditions of employment, and 
 is augmenting incoherent unrest into a def- 
 inite sense that labor is stunted, thwarted, 
 and repressed in an ill-organized community. 
 
 31
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 Come what may, those who marry and have 
 children, or those who intend to marry, are 
 declaring in one way or another an imperious 
 determination to provide decently for their 
 own. In a new sense the hand that rocks the 
 cradle wills to rule the world !
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE SEX INSTINCT 
 
 The stubbornly insistent instinct of sex is 
 perhaps less directly accountable than some 
 others for conduct immediately associated 
 with industry. But the effects of its suppres- 
 sion ramify in many directions with the result 
 that they often play an unsuspectedly influ- 
 ential part in industrial problems. 
 
 There are, first, certain definite and direct 
 relations between industrial practices and the 
 promptings of sex which are of no little im- 
 portance. There are industries like the tex- 
 tile, candy, and garment manufacturing where 
 women employed by male foremen or employ- 
 ers are wholly dependent for employment 
 upon the pleasure of the boss. And the power 
 over a girl's destinies which this situation puts 
 into a man's hands can be and has been 
 abused. In New York dress- and waist-shops 
 girls have actually been forced to strike to 
 put a stop to the familiarities of a "superior 
 officer" in the organization. In a small Massa- 
 
 33
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 chusetts town it was found to be an estab- 
 lished practice for the superintendent of a mill 
 to indulge his passions at the expense of any 
 of his giri employees who were at all anxious 
 to hold their jobs. And these cases might be 
 multiplied. Where a man can prey upon giris 
 sufficiently under cover to allow his intimida- 
 tion to become complete, he can have his way 
 with pitiful ease. 
 
 It is to be anticipated, however, that as the 
 foreman's power to hire and discharge is more 
 and more frequently transferred to a central- 
 ized employment department, abuses from 
 this source will be reduced. An interesting 
 illustration of this last point occurred in a 
 factory which had a central employing office 
 in absolute control of hiring and discharge. 
 Many of the workers, who had previously 
 been in a mill where the foreman was all-pow- 
 erful, were accustomed to present him with 
 gifts at Easter and Christmas. It was only 
 with some difficulty that they could be per- 
 suaded that at the new factory it was un- 
 necessary to continue the practice of bribing 
 foremen in order to hold their jobs. 
 
 34
 
 THE SEX INSTINCT 
 
 The administration of the Munitions Act in 
 England brought to light difficulties in which 
 the sex motif was dominant. The Act, before 
 an amendment corrected the feature in ques- 
 tion, required employees wishing to leave a 
 ** controlled establishment" to secure a ** leav- 
 ing certificate,'* the granting of which was in 
 the hands of a local munitions tribunal. 
 
 A number of the women applied for their leav 
 ing certificates on the ground that a man em- 
 ployed also on the night shift had been "rude" 
 to them. Pleading before a tribunal when the 
 chairman and the two assessors were men, this 
 was the way the girls, timid and reluctant to 
 state exactly what had occurred, put their case. 
 The chairman was refusing their applications 
 on the grounds of insufficient evidence when a 
 woman official of the Women's Federation . . . 
 wrote on a slip of paper a brief account of what 
 had really happened, and passed it up to the 
 chairman. He was profoundly shocked, and after 
 some questioning he discovered what the shy 
 and frightened girls had really been subjected 
 to and the case was decided in their favor. ^ 
 
 In quite a different direction we see the sex 
 instinct, probably in combination with the 
 
 * London correspondent to National Labor Tribune. 
 February 3, 1917. 
 
 35
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 impulse to self-assertion, prompting factory 
 and store girls to bedeck themselves in rai- 
 ment as superficially fine as it is fantastic. 
 Fancy shoes, ostrich plumes, silk stockings, 
 and thin shirt-waists these are some of the 
 adornments which not only embellish the per- 
 son, but satisfy the starved emotional life of 
 the working-girl. To attract and hold the 
 attention of the male must always be a legiti- 
 mate and dominant, if sometimes unconscious, 
 motive of the female. For this reason the 
 problem of getting women-workers especially 
 the j'^oung girls to wear suitable clothes and 
 adequate protection for their hair in machine- 
 shop work is a formidable one. And there is 
 no solution unless some form of costuming and 
 hair-dressing is discovered which the girls agree 
 is not too unbecoming. 
 
 The classic truth that woman's beauty 
 arouses the interest and attention of men is 
 capitalized in business in all sorts of ways. 
 The dress models of the wholesale clothing 
 shops of New York are undoubtedly an enor- 
 mously important and determining factor in 
 the sale of women's dresses. These girls, 
 
 36
 
 THE SEX INSTINCT 
 
 chosen for their good figures and attractive 
 appearance, walk about in front of the buyer 
 begowned in the latest models, and their 
 method of presentation may make or mar 2 
 sale. Similarly in other types of salesmanship, 
 the beauty of the saleslady is an established 
 and demanded part of the purchase. This is 
 true in certain candy shops and restaurants. 
 Indeed, there is one famous eating-house in 
 New England which has achieved its reputa- 
 tion and popularity upon two items its 
 mince pie and the good looks of its waitresses. 
 Men will stand-in line waiting to be served 
 by **my waitress" rather than go to another 
 table where service might be more immediately 
 obtained. These instances, it should be em- 
 phasized, are not cited in any invidious spirit. 
 It is only important that we have consciously 
 before us the psychological facts of the situa- 
 tion. We cannot and should not attempt 
 necessarily to remove sex interest from in- 
 dustrial life. But we should proceed in what- 
 ever direction we take with open eyes, with 
 full knowledge of the risks and dangers which 
 we are setting in people's way. It is probablfe 
 
 37
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 that as our knowledge of human nature be- 
 comes more extensive and mature, this "ex- 
 ploitation of sex," which is an uncontested 
 fact of contemporary industry, will serve ends 
 which are joyous, social, and beautiful rather 
 than selfish, ugly, and sinister. Advance in 
 this direction waits upon a more profound 
 understanding of the relation of sex to the 
 creative activities of life. 
 
 The flowering of the sex instinct is frequently 
 accompanied, at least for a time, by a height- 
 ened susceptibility to beautiful things and by 
 a powerful urge to creative and serviceable 
 activity. Energy surges vigorously and exu- 
 berantly in the springtime of life, and in some 
 form or other this exuberance must work it- 
 self out. This has all been said many, many 
 times, and yet our civilization continues with 
 complete perversity to recruit the great ma- 
 jority of boys and girls from fourteen to 
 twenty years old for work in offices and fac- 
 tories where the required pursuits are restrictive 
 and repressive. Little positive and constructive 
 material is presented to challenge and engage 
 the mind of youth. The stuff of which dreams 
 
 38
 
 THE SEX INSTINCT 
 
 are made and with which yearnings are satis- 
 fied is not there. In this critical, romantic 
 period most work is emotionally unsatisfying, 
 unbeautiful, and apparently purposeless. 
 
 The results can be easily forecast. The 
 thoughts and activities of the young man or 
 woman are a prey to the most insistent, that 
 is the most instinctive, desires.^ Hypersensi- 
 tive concern for sex and all its demands be- 
 comes the almost inevitable condition. The 
 all but pornographic appeal of the burlesque 
 shows which circuit through manufacturing 
 cities is made to an emotionally impoverished 
 audience, largely of men, who have never been 
 taught where to look for beauty and never 
 given a chance to satisfy the dumb, expansive 
 desires of youth. 
 
 * For extensive and discerning accounts of the rela- 
 tion of sex to working-class life see Jane Addams, 
 Spirit of Youth in the City Streets; Woods and Ken- 
 nedy, Young Working Girls; Mary K. Simkhovitch, 
 The City Workers^ World. See also the testimony re- 
 garding the sex life of the "California Casual," by 
 Carleton H. Parker, in the Quarterly Journal of EcO' 
 nomics, November, 1915: ". . . In the California 
 lumber camps a sex perversion within the entire group 
 is as developed and recognized as the well-known 
 similar practice in prisons and reformatories." 
 
 39
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 It was my enlightening duty to attend reg- 
 ularly for some weeks the shows at one of the 
 most notorious burlesque houses in New Eng- 
 land. The impression left by those potpourris 
 of music, color, glitter, humor, legs, and lewd- 
 ness is most instructive. For it was clearly 
 true that while the vulgarity was universally 
 enjoyed and even rolled as a sweet morsel 
 under the tongue, the central values of the 
 show were sound. It was ministering to legit- 
 imate psychological needs. The theater af- 
 forded a spacious, warm, and light abiding 
 place after the narrow, dingy squalor of the 
 tenements next door. The music, although 
 not classic, was the symphony concert of the 
 poor. There were bright color, pretty modish 
 frocks, interesting changes of scene, and a thin 
 thread of plot to tie the whole together. There 
 was hi6nor largely of the slap-stick sort 
 and very broad. And when the ingenue came 
 down the aisle and got all the " boys " to whis- 
 tling or singing one of the popular favorites, 
 a real and complete emotional release and 
 satisfaction was bestowed. Truly, it is hard 
 to be censorious! We have a first duty of un- 
 
 40
 
 THE SEX INSTINCT 
 
 derstanding. And the life of the tenement- 
 dweller is not to be understood or improved 
 until we make common cause with his essential 
 humanness. That he is the victim of an over- 
 whelming repression is the central fact of his 
 emotional life. 
 
 Indeed, the sex instinct offers familiar illus- 
 tration of this principle which seems to under- 
 lie the functioning of all innate tendencies, 
 namely, that if a strong instinct is thwarted 
 and the energy it summons is not turned into 
 other satisfying channels, it still seeks its own 
 satisfaction with increased intensity in a per- 
 verted form and with consequent indiscretion. 
 This is the familiar "suppressed desire" of the 
 Freudians. On the other hand, that there is a 
 certain choice in the channels of instinctive 
 expression, a real diversity of possible ways for 
 the instincts to function, is a recent contribu- 
 tion to psychologicaftheory which in its broader 
 outlines has gained wide acceptance.^ 
 
 The application of the theory to other in- 
 stincts gives such fruitful results that it can 
 constitute for the present a tentative working 
 * See Jung, The Theory of Psycho-Analysis. 
 41
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 hypothesis. Conduct which might otherwise 
 appear to be completely capricious and mali- 
 cious will be seen to be the perverted outcome 
 of a cruel suppression of natural tendencies 
 when viewed as tardy satisfactions of imperious 
 impulses. And acts whose violence and extrava- 
 gance are incomprehensible can be understood 
 as the inordinate satisfaction of long inhibited 
 desires. The facts of suppression, perversion, 
 and unrestrained indulgence may appear most 
 obvious in connection with sex phenomena. 
 But the mental conflicts, the unconscious but 
 carking yearnings for expression, the brave 
 effort to gain an outlet in one direction when 
 another is hopelessly blocked these are 
 common to other impulses as well. In fact 
 the current industrial unrest is due in great 
 part to the enormous accumulation of sup- 
 pression which the instincts of workers have 
 undergone in the grim effort to get a living. 
 
 The most important fact about the relation 
 of sex to industry has already been suggested. 
 We must become sex-conscious in our indus- 
 trial dealings conscious of the place and 
 potency of sex, not in a smirking, apologetic 
 
 42
 
 THE SEX INSTINCT 
 
 way, but conscious of it as an essential and 
 essentially sound and wholesome constituent 
 of human nature. It is not the knowledge of 
 sex matters and motives that need alarm us so 
 much as it is the use of this knowledge for 
 ulterior and hurtful ends. We are at a point 
 in our dealings with affairs ^f sex where our 
 salvation is not in stopping halfway, but in 
 going on, in making current and accepted the 
 fact that our sex life is not an evil thing and 
 that the promptings of sex are not vicious and 
 low unless they are deliberately made so. And 
 there is the further suggestion which any inti- 
 mate knowledge of the grind of present-day 
 industry provokes, namely, that the creative 
 and expansive desires of youth furnish a fair 
 and valid criterion in the light of which our 
 productive mechanism is to be judged and 
 evaluated as a channel and medium for human 
 nature's unfolding.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE INSTINCT OF WORKMANSHIP 
 CONTRIVANCE, OR CONSTRUCTIVENESS 
 
 There is in most people a fairly well-defined 
 impulse to engage their energies upon some 
 project which will grow under their hand a 
 delight in creation or at least in activity to 
 which some use is imputed. Where the in- 
 stinct of workmanship has been operative 
 there is generally also a certain sense of pro- 
 prietorship over the thing created. In fact the 
 contriving impulse seems normally to mani- 
 fest itself in conjunction with the possessive 
 instinct. It may well be, therefore, that the 
 thwarting of the sense of proprietorship ex- 
 plains why the workmanly tendencies are not 
 more active than they are in the world of in- 
 dustrial manual labor. 
 
 The thesis that present-day methods of 
 factory production offer little stimulus or 
 satisfaction to the instinct of workmanship is 
 already well established. The subdivision of 
 tasks, the monotonous repetition, the speed- 
 
 44
 
 THE INSTINCT OF WORKMANSHIP 
 
 ing-up of work all militate against any 
 vital sense of creativeness. Workers in most 
 factories have rarely been outside of the de- 
 partment where they work and are often un- 
 able to tell the relation of their own product 
 to the finished article. It was the profoundly 
 significant remark of a well-known student 
 of the feeble-minded that the mentally handi- 
 capped make the best machine feeders. The 
 implied indictment of industrial processes as 
 vehicles of the workmanly impulses of normal 
 men is probably deserved. 
 ' The remark does at the same time suggest 
 that the potency of this impulse is somewhat 
 in proportion to the amount of the individual's 
 physical and nervous energy. Those, for exam- 
 ple, who have grown up in the mental aridity of 
 a city slum or company-owned town, with little 
 education, poor food, and long hours of work, 
 often appear to find in unskilled, monotonous 
 labor a really pleasant respite from the fatiguing 
 complexity of life.^ There is no call upon them 
 
 ^ See the evidence collected and presented in Gra- 
 ham Wallas, The Great Society, p. 341. See also the 
 testimony of Professor Hugo Miinsterberg in chap. 
 XVI, Psychology and Industrial Efficiency. 
 
 45
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 for craftsmanship, and if there were it would 
 find them wearied and harassed by its excep- 
 tional demands. Devitalizing influences are in 
 the ascendant and a call for creative work- 
 manship would impose a burden which there is 
 not energy enough to carry. This fact does not 
 of course disprove the existence of the instinct. 
 It shows rather that it atrophies where the 
 whole being is occupied with the task of keep- 
 ing going physically on a too narrow margin 
 of vitality. 
 
 If, however, this instinct influences the con- 
 duct of normal people under ordinary condi- 
 tions, how are we to account for the absence 
 of craftsmanship in those branches of indus- 
 try where there is still occasion for its use ? 
 There is in certain of the building trades, for 
 example, a fairly continuous opportunity to 
 use ingenuity, to do good work, to master 
 thoroughly a technique the application of 
 which to varied problems requires constant 
 attention. Plumbers, masons, structural iron- 
 workers, electricians, all do work in which 
 the instinct to contrive finds more or less ex- 
 pression. And yet there is chronic complaint 
 
 46
 
 THE INSTINCT OF WORKMANSHIP 
 
 among the purchasers of their services that 
 these artisans often do a poor job at a desul- 
 tory pace. If this complaint has any elements 
 of truth, as the unanimity with which it is 
 voiced leads one to believe, how is the scarcity 
 of good workmanship to be explained? Are 
 there other instincts which determine conduct 
 in these instances and inhibit the activity of 
 the constructive impulse? 
 
 There is to-day a minimum of training in the 
 skilled crafts. The apprentice system has 
 proved ill-adapted to modem conditions. And 
 no adequate substitute has yet been devised. 
 Neither the employer nor the trade-unions 
 have felt that they had the time or the money 
 to spend in training workers. And there exist 
 few public educational institutions in which 
 ideals of workmanship can be properly fos- 
 tered. In a word, one reason why better work 
 is not done is that workmen do not know how 
 to do it. Or if they do know how, they have 
 often found in working for building contrac- 
 tors that their employers were more inter- 
 ested in getting work done on the date of de- 
 livery than in its quality. 
 
 47
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 A second tendency to be noted is the in- 
 creasing use of building equipment which is 
 already made up. Modern plumbing outfit- 
 ting is manufactured in such a way that the 
 Workman has only to screw parts together. 
 Wood-working is done almost entirely in door 
 and window-sash factories. Where concrete 
 takes the place of brick, the work requires 
 brawn rather than deftness once the moulds 
 are built. In short, there is evident, even in 
 the work still remaining to the craftsman, a 
 drift to ready-made equipment and greater 
 division of labor. 
 
 Thirdly, there is throughout industry and 
 particularly in the building trades, an aston- 
 ishing insecurity in the tenure of employment. 
 The holding of a job is of such vital impor- 
 tance to the worker that the terror of unem- 
 ployment leads consciously and unconsciously 
 to the adoption of a ** make-work" policy, 
 or a policy to do work, like plumbing-repair 
 work for example, inefficiently in order that 
 it may have to be frequently re-done. 
 
 There is, furthermore, no sense of owner- 
 ship in the things created under present in- 
 
 48
 
 THE INSTINCT OF WORKMANSHIP 
 
 dustrial conditions; one man builds and an- 
 other occupies. Those who make clothing are 
 not the best-dressed. The boot and shoe 
 workers are not to be distinguished by superior 
 footwear. The maid who washes her mistress's 
 dishes is less careful than is the same maid five 
 years later in her own home washing her own 
 best china. The material which the modern 
 wage-earner manipulates belongs to some one 
 else ; this is true when it is raw goods and when 
 it is finished product. 
 
 Again, the sentiment against the "profiteer" 
 arises from a recognition that he is always "on 
 the make," less interested in quality than in his 
 own returns. The profiteer to-day dramatizes 
 in the worker's mind the anomalous fact of the 
 possibility under present conditions of making 
 a living by owning and bargaining rather than 
 by working. So that when to this consciousness 
 of working that another may enjoy is added 
 rankling feeling of a strange injustice inherent 
 in the industrial system, indifferent workman- 
 ship is not hard to explain. 
 
 It has also to be remembered that the work- 
 ing pace of manual workers has to be set in 
 
 49
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 relation to a lifetime of employment at the 
 same type of work. This truth is often lost 
 sight of by casual observers of those workmen 
 who appear to be so completely dilatory in 
 their working tactics. And what is more seri- 
 ous, this is often ignored by the *' time-study" 
 experts who are interested in setting a daily 
 or hourly "task'* for the worker and who 
 are likely to demand a speed that would " scrap 
 the men at forty." All pace-setting, all speed- 
 ing-up, must, if it is to be just and socially 
 expedient, bear in mind that a man*s working 
 life should be not twenty, but nearer forty, 
 years; and if society chooses to decree other- 
 wise because of demands for high productiv- 
 ity, it is society's immediate dutj'' to provide 
 for the discarded workers by old-age pensions 
 (which begin far lower than at sixty-five or 
 seventy years) or by some other adequate and 
 humane system. 
 
 Low pay puts a still further obstacle- in the 
 way of the constructive impulses, since it 
 causes lessened energy and harassing anxiety; 
 and reduces incentive. And finally, there may 
 be deliberately unsocial ideas at work in tlie 
 
 50
 
 THE INSTINCT OF WORKMANSHIP 
 
 minds of workers, who may on some occasion 
 have been intimidated by a fellow-worker 
 or converted to a destructive programme 
 for gaining constructive ends, or who may 
 have become despondent, la2y, or irrespon- 
 sible. 
 
 The propaganda for sabotage clearly exem- 
 plifies how the instinct of workmanship can 
 be more or less effectually displaced by more 
 immediate, and therefore more intense, im- 
 pulses. Throwing the wrench into the ma- 
 chine, putting sand in the gears, spoiling work 
 deliberately these measures have been ad- 
 vocated in extreme cases by certain radical 
 leaders who saw no other way of bringing their 
 case to the attention of employer or consumer. 
 Nevertheless, the virulence of the exhortation 
 needed to bring about sabotage, the reluc- 
 tance with which it is practiced and the horror 
 with which it is received, all tend to indicate 
 that any deliberate damage of goods or of 
 equipment in order to secure desired ends will 
 be undertaken only as a last extremity and 
 under great provocation. In short, sabotage 
 **goes against the grain" and the antipathy 
 
 51
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 it arouses reveals in its true light the vigor 
 of the constructive impulse. 
 
 The problem of recruiting shipyard labor 
 has emphasized what the workers believe to 
 be one of the greatest obstacles to craftsman- 
 ship." The situation in our own country when 
 the shipbuilding programme was undertaken 
 upon our entry into the war was somewhat as 
 follows: There was little shipbuilding and few 
 men trained in the distinctly shipyard crafts, 
 although many workers in closely allied crafts 
 could be rapidly instructed. The most eco- 
 nomical procedure would therefore be to call 
 in the boiler-makers, carpenters, machinists, 
 etc., who were already proficient in tlieir call- 
 ings. Pursuant to the Government's policy dur- 
 ing the war of dealing with the workers through 
 the unions, the logical next step was there- 
 fore to invite the unions to supply members 
 of their own organizations who were unem- 
 ployed, to break in on the shipyard jobs. The 
 presumption was in favor of this being the 
 easiest way to be sure that men with training 
 in related trades were being utilized. The 
 trade-union membership in these kindred 
 
 .52
 
 THE INSTINCT OF WORKMANSHIP 
 
 crafts is made up of men who have served an 
 apprenticeship of from three to five years or 
 who have qualified through other practical 
 experience. While by no means an infallible 
 test, the holding of a union card indicates at 
 least an average degree of proficiency. Cer- 
 tainly it is a better credential than no test at 
 all of the worker's practical ability. 
 
 But because certain of the shipyard em- 
 ployers were opposed to and afraid of the in- 
 troduction of trade-union workers, the men 
 who did come from the unions were at first 
 discriminated against; and the employers 
 made every effort to break in non-union, un- 
 skilled men. The result was that in one yard 
 the management boasted that it had broken 
 in over eighty bartenders, over a hundred 
 jewelers, and many waiters and clerks. In 
 regard to one occupation at this same yard the 
 union representative testified before the Ship- 
 building Labor Adjustment Board that ten 
 of his members could handle all the work for 
 which the company was employing twenty- 
 seven men. Even if there is a pardonable 
 exaggeration in this proportion, there still 
 
 53
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 remains a considerable margin of waste and 
 inefficiency. In short, the trade-union conten- 
 tion has from the start been that in the Atlan- 
 tic Coast shipyards there has not been effi- 
 ciency, not been real craftsmanship, because 
 the employers were **more interested in killing 
 the union,** as one union official said to me, 
 "than in building the ships." Whatever the 
 facts may be in this whole situation, it is note- 
 worthy that the workers have taken sj>ecial 
 pains to repudiate absolutely the charges of 
 inefficiency made against them. The war's 
 demands for output have made them more 
 than ever alive to the importance of cherish- 
 ing the ideal of workmanship. 
 
 We see the desire to cherish this ideal also 
 active in the vigorous opposition with which 
 organized labor has met the scientific man- 
 agement movement. One of labor's chief 
 counts against the "Taylor System'* and all 
 its ramifications has been that it subdivides 
 work, takes all planning away from workers, 
 makes each operation a meaningless, machine- 
 like job at which no craftsmanship can be 
 exercised and from which consequently no joy 
 
 54
 
 THE INSTINCT OF WORKMANSHIP 
 
 can be derived. The truth of these objections 
 concerns us here less than the fact that they 
 arise out of an attempt to preserve the chances 
 for craftsmanship. They come, of course, 
 largely from the craft unions whose very ex- 
 istence is jeopardized by the minimizing of 
 craft distinctions ; and the danger of weakening 
 these unions and thereby reducing the protec- 
 tion offered to the members, stands as a reason 
 for opposition to scientific management which 
 is as strongly instinctive as the opposition on 
 grounds of a lessened scope for craftsmanship. 
 On the one hand, the individual feels his 
 chance for self-expression reduced; on the 
 other, the group feels its life threatened. In 
 consequence, trade union opposition to sci- 
 entific management has insistently called at- 
 tention to the increasingly limited chance for 
 manual dexterity and for the satisfaction of 
 the contriving impulse which the machine 
 world offers when present tendencies are car- 
 ried to their logical conclusion. It is empha- 
 sizing that unless the modern industrial world 
 can offer free play for our normal creative im- 
 pulses, it is weak and unworthy at a vital point. 
 
 55
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 It is interesting to consider in passing 
 whether two possible modifications of indus- 
 trial practice would offer outlet and scope for 
 this instinct. There is, first, the possibility 
 of acquainting workers fully with the place 
 in the scheme of things which the product 
 which they help to create occupies.^ Whether 
 the worker's ability to see his job in relation 
 to the whole creative enterprise of industry 
 can ever give satisfaction to the instinct of 
 workmanship is, however, a question which 
 cannot yet be answered. We shall not know 
 until we experiment. 
 
 In the second place, it is possible that the 
 assumption by the workers of greater control 
 over the conduct of industry will give more 
 adequate chance to satisfy this instinct. 
 
 This, too, is a diflficult question to approach 
 deductively. But if we can judge from simi- 
 lar and parallel examples of the present-day 
 cooperative movement and profit-sharing ven- 
 tures, if we can judge from the workers' own 
 direction of trade-union affairs, we are fairly 
 
 ^ See Jane Addams, Democracy and Social EthicSy 
 chap. VI. 
 
 S6
 
 THE INSTINCT OF WORKMANSHIP , 
 
 safe in saying that more representative control 
 will bring with it a wider distribution of 
 responsibility,- interest, sense of participation, 
 and proprietorship, all of which are closely 
 related to this desire to construct and create. 
 If we conceive of this impulse as including not 
 only manual endeavor, but the intellectual 
 labor necessary to carry through plans large 
 and small, we shall get a fairer and more 
 hopeful grasp of the place that workmanship 
 may occupy as industrial government becomes 
 more representative. For the mental labor 
 needed to accomplish a genuinely social control 
 of industry must be widely shared and ability 
 to plan and execute orders must become com- 
 mon. 
 
 It is probable, indeed, that all proposals 
 which involve an extension of representative 
 government in industry will, by the very fact 
 of distributing responsibility more widely, 
 involve a new stirring of interest and effort. 
 The problem of completely scientific applica- 
 tion of intelligence to process, to machinery, 
 and to motions cannot be solved until the 
 workers are asked both to contribute their 
 
 57
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 knowledge to the upbuilding of standard prac- 
 tice and to the control of conditions and terms 
 on which that practice is introduced. Sidney 
 Webb ^ has well phrased this alternative when 
 he says : 
 
 You must not dream of taking a single step 
 in the direction of scientific management until 
 it has been very elaborately explained to, and 
 discussed by, not only the particular men with 
 whom you are going to experiment, but also by 
 the whole workshop. It will. If you handle It 
 with any competence, be a matter of Intense 
 interest to them. You must talk to them both 
 publicly and privately, with magic-lantern slides 
 and experimental demonstrations, answering 
 endless questions, and patiently meeting what 
 seem to you frivolous objections. The workshop 
 committee or the shop stewards will naturally 
 be the first people to be consulted. Remember, 
 it is the men's working lives (not your own life) 
 that you are proposing to alter, and their craft 
 (not yours) that you may seem to be going to 
 destroy. You will be making a ruinous blunder, 
 fatal to the maximum efficiency of the works, 
 if you content yourself with bribing, by high 
 rates, bonuses, or rewards, just the few Individ- 
 ual men whom you propose to put on the new 
 system, whilst leaving the opinion of the rest of 
 the staff sullenly adverse. The others will not 
 
 ^ The Works Manager Today ^ pp. 137-138. 
 
 58
 
 THE INSTINCT OF WORKMANSHIP 
 
 be appeased merely by the fact that a few se- 
 lected men are making "good money!" 
 
 And you must, of course, make it clear in some 
 way, to your own men as well as to the trade- 
 union concerned, that what you are proposing 
 to introduce will not merely pay the first lot of 
 selected workmen, and not merely the present 
 generation, but also will have a good influence 
 on the prospects of the whole stafl", and will not 
 have any adverse effect on the standard rate, 
 now or hereafter. Unless you can demonstrate 
 this unless you in some way automatically 
 protect the piecework rates from being "cut" 
 at some future time possibly by som^ future 
 manager you will be met (and in the national 
 interest you ought to be met) with unrelenting 
 opposition; and, if you impose the change by 
 force or by individual bribery, you will inevi- 
 tably encounter the reprisals of "ca'canny." 
 
 This exhortation to managers is not a bit 
 too strong if it is the preservation of a sense 
 of workmanship that we desire. The policy 
 of progressively working shop output up to a 
 higher point and at each stage having the piece 
 rate cut to keep the workers* total earnings 
 at little if any above his original wage has been 
 widely experienced by workers. It has been 
 the rule, rather than the exception, to an ex- 
 tent that the practice of rate-cutting alone 
 
 59
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 can stand as one of the strongest reasons why 
 " efficiency" has little appeal for the working 
 class. This was clearly recognized by the Ship- 
 building Labor Adjustment Board when in its 
 awards during the spring of 191 8 it required 
 employers to post notices in the shipyards 
 that no piece rates would be cut for the period 
 of the war. 
 
 It is obvious that the instinct of workman- 
 ship is a beneficent and fruitful impulse. It 
 is equally obvious that among the great 
 mass of wage-working people it to-day gets lit- 
 tle chance for expression. This is the instinct 
 which, next to the possessive and submissive, 
 explains the great complex structure of our 
 capitalist states. But, as with the possessive 
 instinct, its satisfaction iii the men who have 
 molded the great economic forces of the last 
 century, has meant its repression in the men 
 who were their agents and instruments. Our 
 problem is to secure the chance for satisfaction 
 in ownership and in constructive effort for the 
 dispossessed and circumscribed. We must look 
 to the activity of this instinct to create and 
 universalize conditions under which workman- 
 
 60
 
 THE INSTINCT OF WORKMANSHIP 
 
 ship can more adequately find its expression. 
 Indeed, this instinct is already prompting 
 humanity to the creation of new methods, the 
 contriving of new schemes, in which the instinct 
 of workmanship has its chance and the instinct 
 of possessiveness has its opportunity for normal 
 satisfaction. We have here too valuable and 
 creative a tendency to allow it to be longer 
 neglected, thwarted, or dissipated. The as- 
 sertion of its importance must, however, 
 carry with it more than a pious wish about 
 creativeness. Thoughtful consideration of its 
 place and importance must inevitably lead to 
 suggestions for reorganization which will al- 
 low wider latitude to the workmanly tend- 
 encies. And if it should prove that industry, 
 because of the high development of the mar 
 chine, cannot offer this latitude, we must 
 utilize our leisure in less sophisticated and more 
 normal pursuits. 
 
 The character and policy of the labor move- 
 ment of the future are bound up with its ac- 
 ceptance of workmanship and responsibility 
 for production. I have rehearsed at length 
 the reasons why it is not strange if present- 
 
 6i
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 day workers are not workmanly. These reasons 
 are overwhelmingly explanatory. But some of 
 them are destined to have less rather than more 
 force as years go on. Organized labor's influence 
 is in the ascendant. It will undoubtedly, as its 
 share of responsibility for production becomes 
 more definitely established, adopt some more 
 affirmative policy toward genuine efficiency 
 and workmanship. Not only must provision 
 for the exercise of this instinct be made in in- 
 dustry, but it will be largely up to the unions 
 to help in making it. In this demand upon 
 their foresight and energy is coming a supreme 
 test of labor's ability to take over industrial 
 control. It becomes daily clearer that the com- 
 munity as a whole waits only for tangible evi- 
 dences of the workers' competency to entrust 
 them more and more fully with the direction 
 of production. 
 
 Already there are signs that this new inter- 
 est is being aroused. In England in its resolu- 
 tions on Reconstruction the Labor Party says : ^ 
 
 * See Arthur Gleason on "British Labor and the 
 Issues of Reconstruction." The Survey^ August 3, 
 1918. 
 
 62
 
 THE INSTINCT OF WORKMANSHIP 
 
 That the conference cannot help noticing how 
 very far from efficient the capitalist system has 
 been proved to be, with its stimulus of private 
 profit, and its evil shadow of wages driven down 
 by competition often below subsistence level; 
 that the conference recognizes that it is vital 
 for any genuine social reconstruction to increase 
 the nation's aggregate annual production, not 
 of profit or dividend, but of useful commodities 
 and services; that this increased productivity is 
 obviously not to be sought in reducing the means 
 of subsistence of the workers, whether by hand 
 or by brain, nor yet in lengthening their hours of 
 work, for neither "sweating" nor "driving" 
 can be made the basis of lasting prosperity, but 
 in the socialization of industry In order to secure^ 
 (a) the elimination of every kind of inefficiency 
 
 and waste. 
 {b) the application both of more honest de- 
 termination to produce the very best, and 
 of more science and intelligence to every 
 branch of the nation's work; together with 
 
 (c) an improvement in social, political, and 
 industrial organization; and 
 
 (d) the indispensable marshaling of the na- 
 tion's resources so that each need is met in 
 the order of, and in proportion to, its real 
 national importance. 
 
 And in our country the following utterance 
 of the president of the International Printing- 
 Pressmen's and Assistants' Union, is indicative 
 
 63
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 of a changing emphasis. In an address to the 
 local union at Scranton, Pa., Mr. Berry, the 
 president, said : 
 
 A great educational campaign has been taken 
 up by the International Union. It has realized 
 of its own initiative that there are Incompetents 
 and seml-competents engaged In the printing art, 
 and it has said to the industry, both employer 
 and employee: "We propose to assist In the elim- 
 ination of incompetency in our business to the 
 end that a high standard of craftsmanship shall 
 be given In the Interest of the Industry as a whole. 
 When I say that this organization has spent 
 nearly ^200,000 in the establishment and main- 
 tenance of a trade school with ^128,000 worth 
 of printing machinery of modern type, with all 
 the labor-saving devices Included, you can best 
 understand the intensity of our interest In craft 
 improvement. ... 1 am sorry to say that the 
 employers of this country have looked upon this 
 educational effort ... as an institution of the 
 union. This is an unfortunate mistake. The 
 employers of this country are as much obligated 
 to assist in the furtherance of the possibilities of 
 this system of education as are the employees. . . . 
 
 Another hopeful and enlightening earnest of 
 labor's attitude was seen recently on the Paci- 
 fic Coast, where one large shipbuilder stood 
 out against all his compeers in contracting 
 
 64
 
 THE INSTINCT OF WORKMANSHIP 
 
 with the unions and building ships under 
 union conditions. The unions, seeing an op- 
 portunity to make public capital out of the 
 splendid achievements of its members, came 
 out presently with a statement pointing out 
 that the yard which employed union labor 
 was building its ships in a very much shorter 
 time than were the non-union yards. They 
 showed, moreover, according to press reports, 
 that the local Chamber of Commerce had been 
 so prejudiced against them that at a banquet 
 held to boom shipbuilding it had refused to 
 make any acknowledgment of the fact that it 
 was organized labor's superior efficiency and 
 productivity which enabled the yard in ques- 
 tion to launch the first ship of the new mer- 
 chant fleet. 
 
 With the instinct of workmanship under- 
 stood and given guidance and direction, there 
 need be few fears for the future of the workers 
 or for the future of workmanship. We have 
 only to understand that there is no true joy 
 in work and no true workmanship apart from 
 an appreciable degree of self-direction and self- 
 control. 
 
 65
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 But if, as is not unlikely, we find upon can- 
 did examination, that even under self-direc- 
 tion, there is still much machine work which 
 offers no outlet for creative energy, we can 
 vary the work. And we can shorten the work 
 day to a point where a compensatory leisure 
 can offer the time needed to foster healthy 
 activity which is interesting and spontaneous.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE INSTINCT OF POSSESSION, OWNERSHIP' 
 PROPERTY, OR ACQUISITIVENESS ^ 
 
 The essential tendency connoted by these 
 various terms is the desire to identify prop- 
 erty whether in things, people, or ideas, with 
 one's self; or the desire involving less imme- 
 diate personal possession which derives satis- 
 faction from ultimate control. This distinc- 
 tion between possession and control is one 
 which must be drawn in the face of modern 
 industrial conditions. 
 
 There is comparatively little physical or 
 real property which most of us care to 
 possess directly and permanently. But our 
 desire to have enough control over property 
 to permit us the use of it is a desire which 
 grows from what it feeds upon. 
 ' Specifically, the worker in a spinning-room 
 is not anxious to own bobbins or spinning- 
 frames or yarn. But she may have a desire 
 to participate in the control of a factory to the 
 
 67
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 point where she can secure higher wages. The 
 shopgirl may not want to own a beach lot, but 
 she properly resents it if she is not allowed 
 to walk along the shore of somebody's " pri- 
 vate property." The instinct for ownership can, 
 in short, satisfy itself in varying and in very 
 indirect ways. 
 
 The activity of this sense of proprietorship 
 is so often manifested in little incidents about 
 a factory that its identity should be estab- 
 lished. The writer in a visit through a gar- 
 ment shop came across a young girl who was 
 sitting at a sewing machine crying and sobbing 
 violently. Inquiry revealed the cause of her 
 sorrow to be that " her own'* machine had 
 broken down and she was being required in 
 the hour's interval to use another machine in 
 perfect repair and of identical make and ca- 
 pacity. A book bindery in which the work was 
 seasonal undertook to distribute jobs by trans- 
 ferring the girls among the departments. The 
 effort was met at the outset by a strong feel- 
 ing that the particular process which the girl 
 already knew was " her job," and she neither 
 wanted anybody else's nor wanted any one 
 
 68
 
 THE INSTINCT OF POSSESSION 
 
 to learn hers. When a spinner in a yarn mill 
 was asked to change from some "frames" 
 which she had worked for several years she 
 abruptly left with no explanation. In another 
 factory I had occasion to settle a dispute be- 
 tween the management and the truck-driv- 
 kJFS. The management had decided to employ 
 a stable-man to tend the horses and care for 
 the harness. The intention was to cut off at 
 least an hour from the working day of each 
 driver. But objection soon developed because 
 the men wanted to tend "their own" horses, 
 and would trust them to no indifferent "lum- 
 per" in the barn. In a large foundry when 
 the management found itself with a strike on 
 its hands, it discovered that the men had all 
 the forges numbered among themselves and 
 each man was definitely assigned by the group 
 as a whole to one which he had grown accus- 
 tomed to by years of use. The attempt of a 
 new foreman to transfer the man at ''number 
 one forge" to a different work place brought 
 the whole department about his ears and 
 created a perfect storm of resentment. In- 
 stances of this sort could be multiplied with- 
 
 69
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 out number to show the strength of the feel- 
 ing of "mine and thine," and the part it plays 
 in the detailed running of industry. 
 
 The sense of property right in jobs, an in- 
 stinctive feeling of possessiveness over one*s 
 means of sustenance, gains constant strength 
 among workers, by virtue of existing side by 
 side with the employers' conviction that the 
 jobs they have to offer are theirs, that the 
 workers *'can take them or leave them, and 
 if you don't like them you know what you can 
 do." The workers' feeling does, indeed, have 
 such deep-rooted causes that it seems destined 
 to gain more serious recognition in our social 
 institutions and in the eyes of the law. Fail- 
 ure to recognize this growing sense of proprie- 
 tary right in employment will in consequence 
 give rise to a stronger and stronger conscious- 
 ness of injustice or to unconscious suppressed 
 desires. Evidences that desire in this direc- 
 tion has been thwarted are not be be ignored 
 to-day. The itinerant workers who supply 
 the labor for the seasonal demands of the 
 farmers on our Western coast are preponder- 
 antly single men without attachments of home 
 
 70
 
 THE INSTINCT OF POSSESSION 
 
 or family.^ They form a peculiarly unleav- 
 ened group, high-handed and irresponsible, 
 whose work under present conditions is fre- 
 quently unreliable and inefficient. 
 
 Again, part of the obloquy which falls upon 
 the **scab" is due to his failure to understand 
 that the striking workers believe that jobs are 
 theirs and that they are only temporarily ab- 
 senting themselves pending settlement upon 
 terms of employment to which they can sub- 
 scribe. The ruling of many employers that 
 an employee who strikes is automatically 
 discharged is regarded by the workers as an 
 absurd denial of a cardinal principle. 
 
 Not a little of the trade-union psychology 
 concerning "closed" or union shop is expli- 
 cable from this point of view. Workers who 
 have by banding together succeeded in bet- 
 tering working conditions feel that they have 
 a right to the vacant positions which is prior 
 to that of the individualistic artisan who, 
 
 ^ According to Professor C. H. Parker there are 
 over sixty thousand people in the labor camps of 
 California. See "The California Casual and his Re- 
 volt," QuarUrly Journal of Ecofiomics, November, 
 191S. 
 
 71
 
 / 
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 while he gladly accepts the benefits of union 
 conditions, will undertake none of the risks or 
 costs of collective action. The union position 
 is well expressed in the dictum: "Let the man 
 that helps make the job decent have the job." 
 And a metaphysical "freedom of contract" 
 or " right to stay out or join the union as the 
 workman sees fit " seems to have a less realis- 
 tic psychological basis than the union attitude 
 which says that he who would claim an equity 
 in a job must help to support the group which 
 keeps working conditions tolerable. But in 
 any case an equity in the job is predicated and 
 the legal facts are yet to be reconciled with 
 the psychological. 
 
 Not alone the legal facts, but the current 
 phraseology as well, has still to be reconciled 
 to a more social view of industrial opportu- 
 nity. The employer still "gives'* a job; asks 
 the cooperation of "his" employees; and re- 
 sents it when a neighboring manufacturer 
 ** steals his help." So pervasive, indeed, is 
 this sense of ownership in a business which a 
 man has done so much to build up that it 
 stands to-day as an obstacle to necessary so- 
 
 .72
 
 THE INSTINCT OF POSSESSION 
 
 cializing tendencies. I addressed a forum in a 
 New England city, and in asking a question 
 upon some point in my address an aged gen- 
 tleman arose fairly choleric with rage and 
 shouted, " Do you mean to say, young man, that 
 I have n't got a right to do as I please with 
 the business I have built up in the last forty 
 years?" It was gratifying to note that the 
 audience, by its immediate applause at my 
 answer, agreed with me that while his question 
 was well-meant, his assumption that he, and 
 he alone, was responsible for his business suc- 
 cess would not bear scrutiny, and that only 
 in a very restricted sense was it truly his busi- 
 ness to dispose of as he saw fit without regard 
 to all those whose employment had been 
 essential to his prosperity. 
 
 I am under no illusion that this sense of 
 owning the jobs which an employer has "to 
 sell " is not present with anybody who becomes 
 a labor manager. Undoubtedly any group put 
 in the same position of control over workers 
 tends to react in the same way. At the 1917 
 annual convention of the American Federation 
 of Labor there was some debate over the 
 
 .73
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 granting of a charter to a union of office 
 workers and typists which well illustrates the 
 point. Wholly apart from the merits of the 
 question upon which I do not attempt to pass 
 judgment, it is interesting to see the familiar 
 attitude taken by some of the union leaders 
 who, as their employers, opposed the organiza- 
 tion and the recognition of the stenographers. 
 Their words might have been taken verbatim 
 from the lips of the average employer whom 
 they are daily trying to outwit. Like the em- 
 ployer, these trade unionists conceived of the 
 office force of the unions as "theirs," and 
 thought themselves fully able to judge what 
 the best interests of the stenographers were. 
 I am indebted to Mr. John Fitch ^ for the 
 following account of the controversy: 
 
 The delegates, especially those who were offi- 
 cers of international unions, did not feel that 
 they were dealing with a union of coordinate 
 rank they were employers who were con- 
 fronted with a proposition from the union of 
 their own employees. So they acted and talked 
 just as employers do. William Dobson, secre- 
 tary of the Bricklayers' International Union, re- 
 
 * See The Survey^ December i, 191 7. 
 
 74
 
 THE INSTINCT OF POSSESSION 
 
 marked, "The employees of the international or- 
 ganizations have no need of a union." He stated 
 that they have short hours, good wages, and 
 that, so far as he was concerned, "I go around 
 every morning and speak to the employees, say 
 good morning, and if any of them are not feeling 
 well, I send them home." 
 
 Dobson was very indignant over the attitude 
 of the stenographers' union. He said that be- 
 cause their employers are union men, they think 
 they can hold them up. "I for one," he told the 
 convention, "refuse to be blackmailed." The 
 convention saw the matter in the same light as 
 did the international officials, and refused a 
 charter to this impertinent organization. 
 
 Mr. Laidler cites an interesting case which 
 well illustrates how, in order to satisfy the 
 normal claims of one instinct, people will em- 
 ploy the whole social organization of life 
 and the control of the remaining instincts. He 
 says : 
 
 In northern France, the farmers, renters of 
 land, claimed not only the right of perpetual 
 enjoyment of the plot of land which they occu- 
 pied, but also power to dispose of this right to 
 their representative by sale or will. They also 
 denied the right of the landlord to let or sell their 
 land over their heads, to evict them from their 
 holdings, to raise the rent or to refuse to lease 
 
 75
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 the land to their nominees. For this right, which 
 was in conflict with the French law, the farmers 
 paid a certain premium, and if the landlord had 
 the temerity to refuse to recognize these unwrit- 
 ten laws, the aggrieved renter would hasten to 
 the village cabaret, and indignantly inform his 
 neighbors, "/<? n^ai jamais demonte personne; 
 j^espere que personne ne me demontera." (I have 
 never yet dispossessed any one; I hope that no 
 one will dispossess me.) The farm was then boy- 
 cotted by the countryside. It was almost im- 
 possible to rent it. A new tenant was denounced 
 as a land-grabber. He could not hire labor. His 
 sons obtained no employment; his daughters, 
 no husbands. He was ostracized by his neigh- 
 bors, who refused him assistance. His fields were 
 often sown with tares by men with masks; his 
 implements were broken; his cattle mutilated; 
 his houses burned; and sometimes he himself 
 was fiercely attacked. In one instance, when a 
 farmer was hanged for participating in these 
 onslaughts, his fellow-farmers decreed that the 
 wealthiest bachelor in town should marry the 
 dead man's widow, and secure a dower from the 
 town, ^'et la chose fute executee.'' This system 
 lasted from 1697 until far into the nineteenth 
 century, and resulted in many bitter feuds. ^ 
 
 This bit of history is valuable as showing 
 how, by an appeal to the sense of family pride, 
 
 * See Harry W. Laidler, Boycotts and the Labor 
 
 Struggle, p. 28. 
 
 76
 
 THE INSTINCT OF POSSESSION 
 
 personal prestige, group loyalty, the fighting 
 spirit against the landlord, and the farmer's 
 interests in good agricultural workmanship, 
 the individual renter is made to stand pat on 
 his possessions. 
 
 The desire for a home grows, in part at least, 
 out of the strength of this instinct of posses- 
 sion. We get a better understanding of the 
 restlessness of workers when we remember the 
 extent to which desire for a home and for the 
 few permanent possessions which it involves 
 is to-day denied. The ordinary manual worker 
 lives in a hired tenement of from two to five 
 rooms which he pays for by the week and 
 from which he may be evicted at short notice. 
 This means that the picture of his own old age 
 which the manual worker foresees is one in 
 which he is either dependent upon the gratuity 
 of his children or the charity of the State. If 
 in addition the worker happens also to live in 
 a ** company house,** or in a ** company town," 
 his sense of empty-handed impotence is in- 
 tensified many fold. **Home" has in this event 
 little permanent or deeply emotional meaning. 
 The landlord employer owns the employee's 
 
 77
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 job, his house, perhaps his church, the streets, 
 and the school where his ^ildren are being 
 educated. What of stability, security, tran- 
 quil **at-homeness'* can the tenant wage^ 
 earner feel as he smokes his pipe on the hired 
 front doorstep which overlooks the mill ? 
 
 This situation in its vamng stages of acute- 
 ness lends meaning to all the impassioned 
 activity of workers who are seeking a sufficient 
 wage to admit of insurance and of saving for 
 old age. Indeed, when we realize that the 
 parental instinct, the instinct of possessbn, 
 of self-assertion, of gregariousness, and of pug- 
 nacity are all focused in this struggle for the 
 higher economic status which is implied in 
 having a home, we begin to see valid biolog- 
 ical reasons why passion and violence attend 
 the contest for more wages, shorter hours, and 
 better conditions. And we see further why, 
 when these instincts have been strongly re- 
 pressed, they finally work themselves out in a 
 way completely contrary to their normal ex- 
 pression and with redoubled animus. At such 
 times workers become either carelessly or 
 aggressively indifferent to property which is 
 
 78
 
 THE INSTINCT OF POSSESSION 
 
 not their own. A deliberate delight in de- 
 struction may creep in; and a seemingly un- 
 natural satisfaction in it be evidenced. This 
 was precisely what took place in East Youngs- 
 town, Ohio, under exactly the conditions we 
 have enumerated : 
 
 ... A mob of strikers . . . suddenly turned 
 themselves loose to burn and pillage and destroy, 
 and had not stopped until many had been 
 wounded three men fatally and four com- 
 plete city blocks, mostly of brick exterior, and 
 parts of other blocks had been given to the flames 
 and utterly destroyed.^ 
 
 Indeed, this tendency toward careless dis- 
 regard of the property of others evidencing 
 also apparently a degree of pugnacity may 
 show itself in many ways which seriously 
 handicap the economical running of industry. 
 Take, for example, the problem of spoiled 
 material. Unless there is some specific effort 
 to counteract it by campaigns of record-keep- 
 ing or other means, employers are almost sure 
 to be confronted with an unnecessarily high 
 percentage of waste and scrap. We see em- 
 
 ^ John A. Fitch, "Arson and Citizenship," in The 
 Survey, January 22, 191 7. 
 
 .79
 
 mSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 ployees negligent of machinery and likely to 
 handle destructively toilet facilities, toweling, 
 and the like. On the occasion of a walk-out 
 in a large tire factory the workers took par- 
 ticular care to leave at an hour when the vulcan- 
 izers were full of tires which would spoil com- 
 pletely if not promptly removed. 
 
 In factories, on the other hand, where there 
 is a sense of proprietorship gained through 
 profit-sharing or some other device, we find 
 workers* instinct of possession extending 
 throughout the whole factory to the point 
 that they watch carefully the conduct of each 
 new employee to be sure that he is working 
 at maximum economy and efficiency. And 
 they are quick to make plain to him their dis- 
 approval if he is wasteful or lazy. 
 
 The instance of the Maison Leclair, the 
 famous cooperative decorating concern of 
 Paris, is of special significance in this connec- 
 tion.^ A substantial part of the success of this 
 establishment comes from the saving in mate- 
 
 ^ See an interesting account of this enterprise in 
 Copartnership and Profit-Sharing, by A. Williams, 
 Home University Library Series, pp. 29-42. 
 
 80
 
 THE INSTINCT OF POSSESSION 
 
 rial by cooperating workers and from the fact 
 
 that they work harder than do hired artisans 
 
 of the sort pictured in Robert Tressal's novel. * 
 
 And the dominant fact about the Maison Le- 
 
 clair is that the workers are its owners. 
 
 It is also true, as the following quotation 
 
 points out, that the possession of property 
 
 up to a certain point is encouraged by astute 
 
 employers in order simply to offset demands 
 
 for fundamental justice. Say the authors of 
 
 *' Profit Sharing, Its Principles and Practice":'' 
 
 There can be no doubt that stock plans are 
 frequently introduced because of the desire to 
 prevent or to weaken the organization of labor, 
 the hope that expensive strikes and industrial 
 disputes will be done away with, and the wish 
 to lessen the antagonism of workmen towards 
 the corporation. Such plans rest largely upon 
 the assumption that an employee who is a stock- 
 owner in the concern will be less likely to go out 
 on strike, will be less easily influenced by "agi- 
 tators," and will be more likely to take the view- 
 point of the owners or managers. The sense of 
 proprietorship in the business which may arise 
 from stock-ownership will, it is hoped, bear fruit in 
 an increased loyalty to the interests of the concern. 
 
 * See antey p. 27. 
 
 2 A collaboration published by Harper & Brothers, 
 New York, 19 18. 
 
 81
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 Out of the promptings of this instinct which 
 impels us to acquire and to accumulate grows 
 in substantial measure the average working- 
 man's sense of being thwarted and cheated in 
 the distribution of this world's goods. It is 
 around property and the acquisition of prop- 
 erty, with all the satisfactions which that may 
 involve, that the antagonisms of modern in- 
 dustry so largely arise. The essential nature 
 of our economic system is to be comprehended 
 only as we visualize this conflict of interests 
 which the legitimate desire for goods accen- 
 tuates. The effort to satisfy the yearning for 
 ownership arrays us against each other indi- 
 vidually and in groups whose kindred economic 
 interests have become apparent. And the 
 conflict which comes out of this strong desire 
 and this alignment of groups is to be lessened 
 only by giving the desire some measure of satis- 
 faction or by turning the attention and the 
 impulse in another direction. 
 
 This last suggestion carries with it an in- 
 teresting implication which some shrewd man- 
 ufacturers have seen and acted upon. They 
 have found that, by paying wages and giv- 
 
 82
 
 THE INSTINCT OF POSSESSION 
 
 ing working conditions that are substantially 
 more attractive than those of their competi- 
 tors, they are able to keep just ahead of the 
 demands of their workers; and by so doing 
 they create an appearance of generosity and 
 contentment which distracts the attention of 
 employees from their normal desire to get as 
 much pay as they can and as the success of the 
 business warrants. Indeed, certain employers 
 have thus held in abeyance for years the con- 
 flict to which the desires of employees naturally 
 impel. Contrast with this policy the experi- 
 ence of a highly prosperous New England 
 textile factory where wages were low. There, 
 upon the newspaper announcement of company 
 earnings much higher than the usual dividend, 
 the weavers sent the management an ultima- 
 tum to the eff^ect that unless a wage increase 
 demand was granted by noon they would walk 
 out. And they walked out. 
 
 The strength of the instinct to possess and 
 accumulate has undoubtedly been popularly 
 overestimated. It is true that it has no in- 
 herent limits at which satisfaction is secured. 
 But it is also true that the extent to which 
 
 83
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 it is modified by the operation of other in- 
 stincts has been underestimated. To con- 
 ceive of the majority of people as potential 
 hoarders and fanatical accumulators is to at- 
 tribute the instincts of the squirrel or bee to 
 organisms which are vastly more complex in 
 function and motive. The accentuation of this 
 instinct has come about through a long dis- 
 cipline of poverty, material deprivation, and 
 *' deficit," as Professor Patten has expressed 
 it. ' The difficulty of obtaining adequate sus- 
 tenance in the temperate zones has placed a 
 premium upon thrift, forethought, and ac- 
 cumulation. We have not, until recently, en- 
 joyed an " economy of surplus " ; and even now 
 when war interrupts our industrial life we are 
 faced with the problem of " hoarders, " who 
 in self-protection seek to anticipate a food or 
 coal or clothing shortage. Normally, however, 
 if our system of distribution were a compe- 
 tent one, there are enough of the material 
 necessities to go around; and whenever we 
 decide to guarantee the necessaries of life to 
 all deserving citizens we shall unquestionably 
 witness some relaxation of this feverish anx- 
 
 84
 
 THE INSTINCT OF POSSESSION 
 
 lety to amass wealth and goods. It can be 
 confidently predicted that this instinct will 
 not resume a more normal functioning until 
 people can more nearly take for granted the 
 self-preservation which it is calculated to 
 assure. 
 
 But this is not the whole story. In the 
 money economy under which we live the ex- 
 tent of possession is the measure of the indi- 
 vidual's place and prestige. A situation has 
 been created in which people desire to pos- 
 sess, not to satisfy so much the possessive as 
 the self-assertive impulse. As long as this re- 
 mains true, as long as this inordinate desire 
 conspicuously to display one's material advan- 
 tage gives in the minds of others a psychologi- 
 cal advantage, this abnormal zest for pecuni- 
 ary accumulation will endure.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE INSTINCT OF SELF-ASSERTION, SELF- 
 DISPLAY, MASTERY, DOMINATION 
 EMULATION, OR "GIVE-A-LEAD" 
 
 The kernel of fact about human nature rep- 
 resented by these names is the familiar im- 
 pulse to rise above the dead level of human- 
 ity and be an individual. And they may con- 
 note an additional urge to impose one's self 
 and one's will upon one's fellow-men. The 
 mere statement of this characteristic leads to 
 a realization that we have here a valuable 
 impulse which is allowed little satisfaction in 
 industry to-day. 
 
 To be sure, the degree of its intensity varies 
 enormously among individuals. Indeed, there 
 are those who will say that this variation 
 which occurs to a greater or less extent in 
 the intensity of all the instincts precludes 
 the possibility of a ** problem" as to whether 
 impulses do or do not gain expression. This 
 raises a fundamental question which may as 
 well be met at this time. The contention is, 
 
 86
 
 THE INSTINCT OF SELF-ASSERTION 
 
 of course, that if the individual has strong de- 
 sires he will act upon them; if he does not act 
 the desires are not present or at least are 
 not sufficiently urgent to make their repres- 
 sion a matter of any concern. But clearly the 
 extent of one's efforts to give expression to 
 his impulses is no guide to their strength or 
 intensity. Men isolated in construction or 
 lumber camps do not have adequate oppor- 
 tunity to satisfy the sex instinct. The desire 
 for play and relaxation may amount to a pas- 
 sion in a group of overworked mill hands or 
 store clerks, but if they are so thoroughly ex- 
 hausted at the day's end that they can only 
 throw themselves on their beds, the recreative 
 impulse gets no outlet. It becomes obvious, 
 therefore, that the fact of non-satisfaction of a 
 native impulse is of itself no indication of the 
 strength of that impulse. There will be times 
 when the surface evidences of repression are 
 few, which is one of the most important 
 reasons why a knowledge of previous behavior 
 under similar circumstances, and a knowledge 
 of the causes of that behavior, is of value in 
 helping us to anticipate and prevent difficul- 
 
 87'
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 ties. Under present industrial conditions, 
 moreover, the endowments of thousands have 
 never had a fair chance to be known or ex- 
 pressed. " The constant and gratified surprise 
 with which Hannibal, in Mr. McFee's ** Cas- 
 uals of the Sea," discovers the reserve powers 
 in himself as circumstances call them out ; the 
 pitiful grief with which Lord Jim in Joseph 
 Conrad's novel of that name discovers his 
 limitations under the crucial strain these 
 illustrate how wary we must be of saying that 
 the world has allowed the individual a repre- 
 sentative chance to act in proportion to the 
 strength of his powers. Our instinctive re- 
 sponses are modified by environment, by 
 training, by the relative strength of inherited 
 tendencies. 
 
 Although manual workers in consequence 
 of a long tradition of servility may appear 
 at times to be without a normal sense of asser- 
 tiveness, the appearance cannot be trusted. 
 The writer visited a meeting of a local trade- 
 union in the Middle West in the evening after 
 an investigation of the shop in which nearly 
 all the men worked. And the most note- 
 
 88;
 
 THE INSTINCT OF SELF-ASSERTION 
 
 worthy impression derived from the gather- 
 ing was of the initiative and ability of men 
 who in a conference held in the forenoon with 
 the shop foreman had hardly dared to open 
 their mouths. The testimony is general that 
 away from the accustomed restrictions of the 
 bench, workmen display an ability and leader- 
 ship which would be wholly unexpected from 
 their conduct in the shop. It must be remem- 
 bered that it is precisely these docile and 
 deferential employees who have been the 
 agents of the progress of organized labor, of 
 fraternal organizations, of the consumers* 
 cooperative movement, and of lesser working- 
 class movements of a religious, political, and 
 protective character. 
 
 Despite their reputation for docility and 
 meekness, it is inevitable that our southern 
 and eastern European immigrant workers 
 should occasionally belie their reputation and 
 participate in a brave frenzy of self-assertion. 
 The whole atmosphere of our country, with 
 its aggressiveness and individualism coupled 
 with the fact of their exploitation, tends to 
 rouse these workers to demonstrate in blind, 
 
 89
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 eager, and intense ways that they are not 
 pack-animals but human beings. The im- 
 passioned uprising at Trinidad, at Mesaba 
 Range, at Bayonne, at Youngstown, at Law- 
 rence, and at Paterson are only the normal 
 fulfillment of this expectation.^ And instead 
 of being provoked or puzzled at the white 
 heat which their revolt sometimes kindles, we 
 should be gratified lo find that the essential 
 humanity of these hard-pressed workers is 
 still unimpaired. 
 
 Further discussion of this instinct will gain 
 in clearness if we differentiate in self-asser- 
 tiveness between love of prominence and a 
 love of power. The desire for prominence has 
 already been recognized in a practical way 
 by those managers of industry who make use 
 of friendly rivalry and competition within and 
 between departments. Only recently a manu- 
 facturer admitted to me, almost with chagrin, 
 that the response in better work and quan- 
 tity was almost unbelievable when he pre- 
 
 ^ In The Dzvelling-Place of Light, Winston Church- 
 ill's recent novel, there is a spirited narration of one 
 such uprising, the details of which are obviously sug- 
 gested by the Lawrence strike. 
 
 90
 
 THE INSTINCT OF SELF-ASSERTION 
 
 sented from month to month a silken gold- 
 lettered banner to the department with the 
 best production record for the preceding month. 
 He stated that workmen would see the banner 
 leave their department with tears in their 
 eyes! Mr. Charles Schwab tells of going into 
 one of his foundries and asking the number of 
 heats which the shift had done that day. He 
 chalked the number, which was seven, on the 
 foundry wall and left without further com- 
 ment. The next shift, having asked the mean- 
 ing of the figure on the wall, erased it at the 
 end of their work and wrote the figure eight. 
 In a few days the amount of production of the 
 foundry had been substantially and perma- 
 nently increased. 
 
 The Manchester Guardian ^ tells a similar 
 tale from a munitions plant in which 
 
 the daily output of each of the three shifts is 
 chalked on a blackboard. The numbers are care- 
 fully scanned by each group of workers and the 
 maximum is the standard each sets out to 
 achieve. In a neighboring establishment a shield 
 is awarded to the shift v/hich tops the list. It 
 is made of paper, and the honor of winning it is 
 
 ^ Manchester Guardian^ November 12, 1915- 
 
 .91
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 its only value, but the sporting instincts of York-' 
 shire men and Yorkshire women prompt them 
 to double their energies to gain it. The knowl- 
 edge that they have earned a title to a scrap of 
 paper is as proud a possession to these humble 
 toilers for the empire as were the laurels given to 
 the Greek Marathon victor. , 
 
 Kirkaldy ^ indicates in the following quo- 
 tation how this tendency may be abused 
 an incident which illustrates also how com- 
 plete satisfaction of an instinct may be harm- 
 ful:- 
 
 To the woman worker, undoubtedly, this bo- 
 nus is a very strong temptation to injurious 
 over-exertion; and one example was given in the 
 course of the inquiry where a woman had won 
 a "shift" bonus by turning out 132 shells (nose- 
 profiling) in one shift where the normal output 
 was 100 shells, and had had, as a result, to re- 
 main in bed on the following day. When it was 
 pointed out to her later that she had acted fool- 
 ishly, her reply was that she knew, but she 
 "was n't going to be beat." 
 
 The men workers who have been at the 
 game longer have found it necessary to make 
 specific provision to protect themselves from 
 
 2 Kirkaldy, A. W., Labour, Finance, and the War^ 
 p. 117. 
 
 92
 
 THE INSTINCT OF SELF-ASSERTION 
 
 workers with this indomitable spirit of not 
 "going to be beat." Individual ambition and 
 emulative spirit would naturally prompt a 
 body of men working regularly together to 
 friendly competition in the amount of output. 
 Yet in the face of this natural tendency the 
 unions have nearly always insisted upon the 
 necessity for uniform standard rates of pay 
 for week work and for fairly well-established 
 maximum and minimum earnings where piece- 
 work was in vogue. And the reason for this 
 stand is well suggested in the above illustra- 
 tion. The union wants to preserve a safe, long- 
 time working pace ; and it wants, moreover, to 
 have some assurance that where increased pro- 
 duction results labor shall have some voice in 
 dividing the surplus income. It would be most 
 unsound to conclude that labor organizations 
 wish to place self-assertiveness under a ban; 
 their intention is merely to protect the less 
 aggressive and less ambitious men from being 
 pushed to the wall in any fruitless struggle 
 for a survival of the fit in each shop. In this 
 case, naive obedience to instinct would be 
 disastrous. Each individual worker produces 
 
 93
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 all he can only at the probable danger of soon 
 wearing himself out and of seeing his rate of 
 pay fall lower and lower. 
 
 It is in part due to a tacit recognition of the 
 vitality of this instinct that the "task and 
 bonus'* method of payment has been evolved 
 by the scientific management group. If in the 
 day's work there is offered the chance to excel 
 by means that bring public and pecuniary 
 acknowledgment, people are normally to be 
 counted upon to accept the challenge. The 
 publication of " efficiency ratings," the honor- 
 ing of the "fast team" by putting its picture 
 in the company paper, the bestowing of yearly 
 prizes these are all methods calculated to 
 give satisfaction to the employees' sense of 
 "give-a-lead" a satisfaction in which the 
 employer shares because of the increased pro- 
 duction which accrues and the proportionately 
 larger fraction of the gain which falls to him. 
 
 The desire for prominence and display may 
 also, as we have pointed out in discussing the 
 parental instinct, lead to a standard of living 
 and to a scale of expenditure quite unwar- 
 ranted by one's income. The family which 
 
 94
 
 THE INSTINCT OF SELF-ASSERTION* 
 
 mortgages its house to buy an automobile, the 
 employee who " has n't missed a day in fif- 
 teen years," the laborer who sends all his sons 
 to high school all are endeavoring in their 
 own way to make their impress on the world. 
 
 The yearning for place and power in the 
 working-class is doubly intensified by Xhj6 
 difficulty of shaking one's self free from the 
 deadening drag of factory labor. The auto- 
 cratic manner and even the high-handed 
 methods of occasional trade-union leaders are 
 to be understood, not as arrogant expression 
 of authority felt to be absolute, but rather 
 as growing out of the instinctive necessity to 
 assert power for the satisfaction to be derived 
 from the assertion. There have unquestionably 
 been instances where the will to power has 
 run away with labor leaders precisely as it 
 has with influential capitalists. But it is not 
 to be wondered that the labor leader of incon- 
 spicuous origin should upon accession to power 
 feel impelled to satisfy his sense of mastery 
 even at the sacrifice of his other interests. 
 
 Interesting examples of this almost indis- 
 criminate assertion of power are to be found 
 
 95
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 occasionally in trade-union circles. In one case, 
 a caulker was discharged because he could not 
 get along with the superintendent of the ship- 
 yard. The union apparently agreed that he 
 was better occupied elsewhere and his fare 
 was paid to another yard where employment 
 was secured. In three days the caulker was 
 back demanding reinstatement, and he had 
 his whole union "by the ears" trying to get 
 him back. I recall a similar instance in a local 
 union of painters where five out of a member- 
 ship of one hundred and twenty-six were dis- 
 affected about the terms of employment and 
 they were able by wearisome reiteration to 
 impress the rest with the necessity of making 
 new demands. I am not citing these as exam- 
 ples necessarily of unstrategic assertiveness ; 
 but there does often come a time when from 
 the outsider's point of view the wiser course 
 is in the direction of a less rigid stand for one's 
 "rights." 
 
 Not infrequently, on the other hand, the 
 will to power may bring the leader among 
 working-men into such sharp conflict with 
 those who hold the economic or political power 
 
 96
 
 THE INSTINCT OF SELF-ASSERTION 
 
 that the. price paid for an attempt to satisfy 
 the impulse will seem out of proportion to the 
 satisfaction. The committee of three trade- 
 unionists who recently signed a protesting 
 communication to a large metropolitan street 
 railway were summarily discharged. Those 
 known to be union officials are again and 
 again discriminated against in the factory in 
 all sorts of ways. In fact, one of the crucial 
 reasons why the business agent of the union 
 is necessary and powerful is that he can speak 
 for men in a shop who are afraid to speak 
 for themselves because of the likelihood of 
 discharge or adverse discrimination. This in- 
 stinct of assertiveness is not one, therefore, 
 which gets any large encouragement in work- 
 ing-class environment. Indeed, it gets far less 
 than its merits. 
 
 Among the reasons for this self-repression 
 of individuality is the fear of being cut off from 
 a job and the sources of livelihood. Condi- 
 tions in one Eastern city were to my knowl- 
 edge such that if a group of men gathered in a 
 boarding-house in the evening to make plans 
 for an effective protest at their low wages, 
 
 97
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 every one of the men was picked out in the 
 shop with unerring accuracy the next day and 
 discharged. And the names of the ringleaders 
 were known and communicated to the secre- 
 tary of the local and county manufacturers* 
 association who kept a list, politely known 
 as the " employment list," of men who were 
 known to be faithful and obedient workers. 
 To the extent that employers are known to 
 employ detectives and to buy their way into 
 union councils, it is not surprising that work- 
 ers are cautious, mutually suspicious, and un- 
 cooperative. Unfortunately employment of 
 detectives as a means of anticipating trouble 
 in the shop does not seem to be on the decrease ; 
 and so long as this pernicious and cowardly 
 practice is countenanced we can expect no 
 liberal display of the best sort pf working class 
 initiative and no diminution of that attitude 
 of suspicion and hostility to the management 
 which prevails in factories where detectives 
 are known to be at work. 
 
 Another example of this kind of practice 
 recently came to light in a large department 
 store where the workers were known to be 
 
 98
 
 THE INSTINCT OF SELF-ASSERTION 
 
 anxious to organize unions. The employer, 
 in order " to nip the movement in the bud,'* 
 got hold of a disgruntled employee and ar- 
 ranged that he should seemingly lead in the 
 moveriient to organize the clerical employees. 
 A meeting at which the "black-leg" presided 
 brought together nearly thirty nien, all but 
 one of whom signed a paper signifying their 
 desire to join the union. The next day every 
 one of the signers was summarily discharged, 
 despite the fact that several of them had been 
 faithful and satisfactory employees for oyer 
 twenty years. 
 
 In the same city, at the time of this con- 
 certed interest in department store organiza- 
 tion, the members of a new organization in 
 another store were discovered through the 
 theft by an agent of the company, of the union 
 secretary's minute book which contained the 
 names and addresses of the members; and 
 they too were discharged. At the Philadelphia 
 hearings of the Shipbuilding Labor Adjust- 
 ment Board in Deceqiber, 191 7, one of the 
 workers said: "In some yards men are liable 
 to lose their jobs if they object to conditions 
 
 99
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 established there. . . . What good would it 
 be for a man to make a complaint under those 
 conditions?" 
 
 Similar testimony was brought before this 
 same board in Portland, Oregon. The em- 
 ployer in a big metal-working shop refused 
 absolutely to negotiate a collective agreement 
 with the union, but he was willing and did 
 enter into a written understanding with his 
 own employees. Six months later, during 
 some further trouble, the fact developed that 
 only one member of the original workers' com- 
 mittee which made the demands was still em- 
 ployed. The others on one pretext or another 
 had been quietly dropped from the pay-roll. 
 Under those conditions, as the Philadelphia, 
 journeyman pertinently inquired, what good 
 would it do for a man to complain r 
 
 The price of a working-man's self-asser- 
 tlveness can indeed be terrifically high. I 
 have known several able and powerful figures 
 in the more radical wing of the labor move- 
 ment who after years of effective leadership 
 have for one reason and another been super- 
 seded by younger men. Their plight is pitiable. 
 
 100
 
 THE INSTINCT OF SELF-ASSERTION 
 
 They are known in the employing world as 
 pro-labor; and they are not made use of by 
 the labor world itself. Their means of support 
 are greatly restricted and their pride naturally 
 forbids the seeking of charity or subsidy. We 
 are wont to lament the submissiveness of the 
 working-class; it is indeed a cause of anxiety. 
 But let no one speak lightly of the valiant 
 efforts which have been made to lead the work- 
 ers into a more secure and respected position 
 in the community. We must in every con- 
 ceivable way make it possible for the manual 
 worker to assert himself without the appalling 
 sacrifice which he must now endure. The 
 pathetic figure of Joe Kramer in Ernest Poole's 
 "The Harbor" has its counterpart in real life 
 in the head of one of the strongest interna- 
 tional unions. When recently threatened with 
 a prison sentence this man said scornfully: 
 "What have I to fear or to lose? I have given 
 everything I had to the labor movement. I 
 have no wife, no home, no friends." And this 
 was true. 
 
 Not the least of the effective restraints upon 
 the activity of this impulse is the fact that it 
 
 lOI 
 
 LIBRARY 
 UNIVERSITY or CALIFORNIA
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 IS limited by the amount of surplus energy 
 possessed by the individual or group. That 
 indefinable attitude of aliveness and surging 
 vitality which results when energy is not com- 
 pletely absorbed in the daily grind seems to 
 be indispensable to a display of individual 
 initiative and assertiveness. If this is true, 
 it has a valuable suggestion as to the way in 
 which this impulse may be stimulated. In- 
 deed, the relation of self-assertiveness to phys- 
 ical and nervous vigor has been interestingly 
 illustrated in the experience of certain manu- 
 facturers with welfare work. There are plants 
 where everything conceivable has been done 
 for the workers* welfare. Towns have been laid 
 out, houses built and sold on moderate terms, 
 gardens ploughed, clubs and bands organized 
 everything calculated to make provision 
 for the employees' needs has been provided 
 not only in the community, but in the shop. 
 Yet in these same factories have occurred some 
 of the bitterest strikes that American industry 
 has seen. Are those strikes to be attributed to 
 ingratitude and selfishness? Is no more pro- 
 found explanation of their occurrence at hand? 
 
 I02
 
 THE INSTINCT OF SELF-ASSERTION 
 
 In the light of our approach to the question 
 there would certainly seem to be a more rea- 
 sonable explanation. The workers are simul- 
 taneously affected by two influences. They 
 are treated like grown-up children, which they 
 resent. And they are provided for materially 
 in such an adequate way that a sufficient sup- 
 ply of energy and initiative is gradually stored 
 up and confined. When some crowning indig- 
 nity finally comes they have developed the 
 self-respect to resent it acutely, and they are 
 in possession of enough spirit to make their 
 resentment take tangible shape. A sense of 
 a thwarted impulse of self-expression has ac- 
 cumulated, a yearning for adequate release 
 gets the upper hand; and individuals who were 
 formerly tractable and submissive are found 
 in a time of strike to have developed unbe- 
 lievable resources of energy, initiative, and 
 independence. The trouble has not been with 
 the unruly workers, but with the paternal 
 methods of treatment to which they have been 
 subjected. This lesson has, unfortunately, still 
 to be learned by many employers whose out- 
 lay on welfare work will never bring in the 
 
 IP3
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 dividends that are anticipated so long as hu- 
 man nature remains as elastic and dynamic as 
 it is. 
 
 While it is true that the sources of efficiency 
 and contentment and stability depend to a 
 considerable extent upon the material secur- 
 ity of the workers, it is also true that men who 
 are assured the elementary wants are soon 
 looking for new worlds to conquer, new heights 
 of activity and achievement to attain. And 
 the only manufacturer who is playing into the 
 hands of the future is the one who is making 
 provision not only for bodily wants, but for 
 the larger, more generous spiritual aspirations 
 of the workers. The wise employer is now pro- 
 viding scope for that element of self-asser-, 
 tiveness which is furnishing motive power to 
 the movement for the democratic control of 
 industry and of the whole community. The 
 essence of democracy lies in the securing by 
 each and every individual of an adequate 
 chance for self-expression. Democracy is not 
 sought as an end; it is the attendant condition 
 of that free play of human impulses which 
 is essential to life which is life. Indeed, 
 
 104
 
 THE INSTINCT OF SELF-ASSERTION 
 
 whatever will strengthen the physical basis of 
 self-assertion and arouse the hig^her nervous 
 centers into self-expressive activity is to be 
 adjudged of value in the effort to secure for 
 society the maximum contribution of every 
 individual, and to secure from society the 
 maximum benefit for all its members. 
 
 How direct and definite in its influence the 
 failure to provide a proper channel for expres- 
 sion can be is clearly indicated in the following 
 analysis: ^ 
 
 While not expressed in so many words, the 
 dominant feeling of protest was that the indus- 
 try was conducted upon an autocratic basis. 
 The workers did not have representation in 
 determining those conditions of their employ- 
 ment which vitally affected their lives as well 
 as the company's output. Many complaints 
 were, in fact, found by the commission to be un- 
 founded, but there was no safeguard against 
 injustice except the say-so of one side to the con- 
 troversy. In none of the mines was there direct 
 dealing between companies and unions. In some 
 mines grievance committees had been recently 
 established, but they were distrusted by the 
 
 ^ Report of President's Mediation Commission to 
 the President of the United States, pp. 6-7. 
 
 los
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 workers as subject to company control, and, In 
 any event, were not effective, because the final 
 determination of every issue was left with the 
 company. In place of orderly processes of ad- 
 justment, workers were given the alternative of 
 submission or strike. 
 
 The men sought the power to secure indus- 
 trial justice in matters of vital concern to them. 
 The power they sought would in no way impinge 
 on the correlative power which must reside in 
 management. Only by a proper balance of ade- 
 quate power on each side can just equilibrium 
 in industry be attained. In the minds of the 
 workers oi;ily the right to organize secured them 
 an equality of bargaining power and protection 
 against abuses. There was no demand for a 
 closed shop. There was a demand for security 
 against discrimination directed at union mem- 
 bership. The companies denied discrimination, 
 but refused to put the denial to the reasonable 
 test of disinterested adjustment. 
 
 The men demanded the removal of certain 
 existing grievances as to wages, hours, and work- 
 ing conditions, but the specific grievances were, 
 on the whole, of relatively minor importance. 
 The crux of the conflict was the insistence of the 
 men that the right and the power to obtain just 
 treatment were in themselves basic conditions 
 of employment, and that they should not be 
 compelled to depend for such just treatment on 
 the benevolence or uncontrolled will of the em- 
 ployers. 
 
 io6
 
 THE INSTINCT OF SELF-ASSERTION 
 
 We come finally to that aspect of the self- 
 assertive impulse which, although most famil- 
 iar, is also most ignored. The instinct of self- 
 assertion is in its simplest form a craving for 
 treatment that respects the self. People want 
 in the first instance to have their self-respect 
 unassaulted and unimpaired. It is interesting 
 to run through Mr. Bruere's record of West- 
 em employers* and officials' estimates of the 
 I.W.W. activities,^ and see how such sentences 
 as the following recur: 
 
 The Wobblies kept the peace from that day. 
 What worked the miracle I have never been 
 able to understand, unless it was that we guar- 
 anteed them equal treatment under the law and 
 conferred with them as if they were human beings. 
 
 I talked very plainly to them, but I talked to 
 them as human beings and jiot as outcasts and 
 criminals. 
 
 I never saw a crew more radical than that 
 crew was when I first appealed to them, and I 
 never saw a more loyal crew than most of them 
 under fair treatment. 
 
 All our experience convinces me that these 
 local I.W.W. men are amenable to reason and 
 fair treatment. 
 
 ^ Robert W. Bruere, Following the Trail of the 
 I.W.W. Reprint from New York Evening Post. 
 
 107
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 Colonel Disque recognized their assertion of 
 human dignity. . . . He sent his agents into the 
 woods to talk to the lumber jacks with kindly 
 good-nature and tact, to explain to them what 
 the war was about and to enlist their coopera- 
 tion in his enterprise. In return he guaranteed 
 them equal treatment before the law . . . and 
 promised to take up their grievances on their 
 merits. 
 
 That this demand for self-respecting treat- 
 ment has its suggestion for successful factory 
 practice, is patent. The process of selecting 
 employees, for example, is one that can run 
 counter to every rightful claim of the indi- 
 vidual for dignified and self-respecting treat- 
 rnent. Employment to the worker is not merely 
 "getting a job"; it involves a decision about 
 the way in which a man will spend three fourths 
 of his waking time, and it means the securing 
 of adequate maintenance for his family.' To 
 the worker emplo3mient is a serious matter. 
 To the employer, for his own reasons, it should 
 also be a serious matter. But what often hap- 
 pens? Men stand in line before an "Employ- 
 ment Office." They are interviewed by a man 
 behind a counter, or through a glass door with 
 a small round hole ; they are asked a few ques- 
 
 lo8
 
 THE INSTINCT OF SELF-ASSERTION 
 
 tions which they must answer with all the other 
 applicants standing about. The method has 
 under these conditions three outstanding char- 
 acteristics: it is perfunctory; it is cursory; 
 it is humanly undignified. There is no proper 
 respect of persons, of personal reserves or sen- 
 sibilities. 
 
 Contrast with this, the treatment of appli- 
 cants described in the following^: 
 
 There Is a factory at Glasgow which may 
 serve as an example. When a workman applies 
 at the door, he is shown into a waiting-room 
 furnished like the waiting-room of an ordinary 
 office, and there the foreman comes to see him. 
 He is interviewed alone, addressed as "Mr." and 
 treated as a self-respecting member of Society. 
 The way to encourage self-respect in a man is 
 to show him respect. 
 
 No less significant in this same direction is 
 the rule of a large department store that " all 
 persons applying for employment in this 
 house who are turned away must be treated 
 so that they will go away wishing to be em- 
 ployed here as much or more than when they 
 applied." 
 
 * Sidney Webb, see The Works Manager Today^ 
 p. 109, note. 
 
 109
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 Recognition by factory managers of the 
 business value of understanding human nature 
 could not be better illustrated than in this con- 
 nection. This instinct of self-assertion, even 
 at its weakest, will lead to a demand by work- 
 ers for more and more considerate treatment. 
 A technique of "personnel management" and 
 "personnel service work" is developing to 
 meet this need. But no degree of expertness 
 in manipulating people with due regard for 
 their self-respect will avail if it does not reckon 
 with the depth of the roots from which this 
 respect of self springs. Superficial good man- 
 ners can never be a substitute for an attitude 
 of genuine humanity and equality. Each per- 
 son's instinct of self-assertion certainly re- 
 quires that good manners characterize other 
 people's dealings with him; but the instinct 
 will never be satisfied until it secures for the 
 self, consideration on terms of equality and 
 amiability. 
 
 The President's Mediation Commission was 
 speaking to this point when it said : 
 
 There is a commendable spirit throughout 
 the country to correct specific evils. The leaders 
 
 IIO
 
 THE INSTINCT OF SELF-ASSERTION 
 
 in industry must go further; they must help to 
 correct the state of mind on the part of labor; 
 they must aim for the release of normal feelings 
 by enabling labor to take its place as a cooperator 
 in industrial enterprise. (Italics mine.) 
 
 And finally a successful and highly practi- 
 cal manufacturer ^ has this to say: 
 
 We make it a policy to record the operations 
 of the individual workmen in such a way that 
 they have some means for recording their prog- 
 ress and are thereby able to realize just what 
 their efforts are producing. This brings out 
 what we call the creative faculty of the man to 
 the fullest extent; he is able to really enjoy his 
 work by being given opportunity for self-ex- 
 pression. In all of our operations we work to 
 produce this result, realizing that we are pri- 
 marily developing human beings and that plant 
 efficiency is not an end in itself; but that the real 
 aim is the development of men. I could tell you 
 some very interesting things that have happened 
 to men in our employ who have changed their 
 habits of living, decidedly for the better, simply 
 because they were being given opportunity to 
 find joy in their work, and have changed from 
 men doing negative, destructive work to men 
 
 * Robert B. Wolf in Proceedings of the Employ- 
 ment Managers' Conference, Philadelphia, Pennsyl- 
 vania, April, 1917. Bulletin 227, U.S. Bureau of 
 Labor Statistics. 
 
 Ill
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 doing positive, constructive work. It is a fact 
 that Is beginning to be recognized to-day by 
 men who are thinking deeply along these lines 
 that a man is internally purified by doing work 
 which is fundamentally creative in nature. The 
 desire for self-expression is one of the most fun- 
 damental instincts in human nature, and unless 
 it is satisfied it is bound to manifest itself In all 
 sorts of abnormal ways which to-day are working 
 such havoc in society.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE INSTINCT OF SUBMISSIVENESS OR SELF- 
 ABASEMENT 
 
 Individuals in whom the tendency to sub- 
 mit is strong are more numerous than those 
 in whom the tendency of self-assertion as- 
 sumes influential proportions. Especially in 
 mdustry do we see incontrovertible evidence 
 that people desire to be led and to have aims 
 and ends imposed upon them or at least de- 
 fined for them. In fact, many people seem to 
 derive a downright pleasure from being bossed. 
 To be sure, this pleasure is not always a simple 
 emotion. It may come from a sense of oneness 
 with one's fellows who are also being bossed, 
 or from conviction that the leader is right or 
 infallible, or from intellectual inerria. But 
 to rest back upon the dictates of another is 
 to most people one of the deeply satisfying 
 experiences of life. "Eternal independence 
 and its necessary strife are too wearing on the 
 common man and he longs for peace and pro- 
 tection in the shadow of a trust-inspiring 
 
 113
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 leader. To submit under right conditions is 
 not only psychically pleasant, but much of 
 the time to be leaderiess is definitely distress- 
 ing." ^ For this reason we are embarrassed 
 by a wealtli of examples which illustrate the 
 activity of an instinct to submit. 
 
 For convenience' sake it will be well to dis- 
 tinguish between submissiveness born of fear 
 and that bom of admiration. How valid the 
 distinction is psychologically it is impossible 
 to say since fear and admiration are complex 
 emotional states that probably partake of 
 common elements. There is nevertheless a 
 phase of submissiveness that is socially desir- 
 able and necessary; and there is a type of 
 abasement that is apparently debasing. The 
 instinct working out in one direction serves 
 beneficent ends, working out in another it 
 appears to block progress and impede wise 
 developments. 
 
 As hero worship, submissiveness may or 
 may not be salutary depending wholly on 
 
 ^ Carleton H. Parker, on "Motives in Economic 
 Life," Proceedings, American Economic Association, 
 p. 225; American Economic Review, Supplement, 
 March, 191 8. 
 
 114
 
 THE INSTINCT OF SUBMISSIVENESS 
 
 the character of the hero. A thoughtful edi- 
 torial in The Public'^ in discussing this subject 
 in relation to California labor politics, said 
 plainly: 
 
 The worship of the strong man is often di- 
 verted to some labor chieftain. In San Francisco 
 there are labor leaders who belong to fashionable 
 clubs, who are seen at every prize-fight and every 
 gala event in the smartest of clothes and with 
 conspicuous diamonds. All their followers ask 
 is that in a narrow segment of the common life 
 they "deliver the goods" in an occasional wage 
 increase or an occasional personal favor, and, by 
 efficient management of the union's affairs, they 
 maintain it as a bulwark against petty tyranny 
 and a means of fostering its members' independ- 
 ence and self-respect. But outside of this field 
 they not only expect their leaders to wax fat on 
 the perquisites of politicians, but they actually 
 glory in the fatness and sleekness and prestige of 
 their chief. It is enough for them that now and 
 then he can get a friend out of jail or do some 
 other favors of the sort that are at the disposal 
 of a political machine. That machine may have 
 twin roots in the tenderloin and in the inner office 
 of a public-service corporation, but the rank and 
 file are tolerant. 
 
 And to point by contrast to the attitude of 
 some other labor leaders the article goes on: 
 * December 28, 191 7. 
 
 "5
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 Mr. W. S. Carter, president of the Brother- 
 hood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen, 
 spoke from the heart recently when he said, in 
 addressing an audience of Brotherhood men, 
 "Congressmen have long since learned that to 
 oppose the designs of the wealthy men of the 
 United States is to bring upon themselves an 
 avalanche of political opposition that surpasses 
 in its intensity and eiRciency even Prussian mili- 
 tarism. When members of these Brotherhoods 
 can readily be hired by the funds contributed 
 to a political campaign by these same wealthy 
 men to defeat for election Congressmen and 
 others who fought for the legislation objection- 
 able to wealth, let us not be too quick to con- 
 demn Congressmen for not already having put 
 an end to profiteering and not already having 
 taxed war profits out of existence. When work- 
 ing-people are politically honest and have suffi- 
 cient political intelligence to distinguish friends 
 from foes, much of which they now bitterly com- 
 plain will disappear as does a morning mist be- 
 fore a morning's sun." 
 
 Here, then, out of the mouth of one of 
 labor's own leaders we have testimony as to 
 the submissiveness of labor to leaders whose 
 reputation will not bear careful scrutiny. 
 
 The writer was recently present at a turbu- 
 lent union gathering which had been called 
 at a critical moment in the contest with a 
 
 Ii6
 
 THE INSTINCT OF SUBMISSIVENESS 
 
 powerful corporation. The local members 
 were clearly eager for immediate and direct 
 action, and would hardly keep silent to hear 
 their local speakers. But when the national 
 leader entered the atmosphere changed. He 
 was a popular favorite, a successful organi- 
 zer. He harangued the men earnestly for half 
 an hour in favor of watchful waiting; he ad- 
 vanced few if any arguments save that he 
 would ask them to do nothing which was not 
 for their own good; and he won a unanimous 
 decision for his position. He may have thought 
 and they may have thought that he persuaded 
 them. He did not; he won them to him by the 
 zeal and sincerity of his presence by his 
 personality. 
 
 This same domination of the strong person- 
 ality was observable in the local union organi- 
 zation in one of the Eastern garment trades. 
 But there the controlling clique became so 
 strong, it enforced submission so successfully 
 and so continually, that the humanly inevi- 
 table happened. The "machine" was sud- 
 denly ousted by an insurgent group who had 
 submitted longer than they could endure. And 
 
 117
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 what the old leaders felt to be the basest in- 
 gratitude was in reality a far more unreasoned 
 reaction to a prolonged submission. 
 
 Instances in which the employer or manager 
 is an heroic figure in the eyes of employees are 
 for obvious reasons growing rare. But one 
 successful department store in a large Eastern 
 city is in charge of a man who is really admired 
 by his employees. To this manager, who wants 
 to run his store on genuinely democratic lines, 
 the subservience of the workers is a constant 
 source of irritation. He stands up in meetings 
 of the store employees and berates them 
 roundly for their lack of initiative and aggres- 
 siveness. The spectacle of this gentleman be- 
 laboring the workers about their reluctance 
 to assume leadership and responsibility is one 
 to make the student of industrial democracy 
 ponder and inquire more deeply into the psy- 
 chological springs of action. 
 
 The same acquiescent submissiveness was 
 illustrated at the writer's recent visit to a 
 Middle Western plant where a meeting of all 
 the employees was about to be held to take a 
 referendum on some debated question. The 
 
 Ii8
 
 THE INSTINCT OF SUBMISSIVENESS 
 
 manager of the factory explained in conver- 
 sation before the meeting that there was a 
 division of opinion as to whether the shop 
 should close all day Saturday before a legal 
 holiday which fell on the following Tuesday, 
 or work all day Saturday and not open again 
 until Wednesday. For some reason the man- 
 agement preferred the former arrangement. 
 The owner winked at me and remarked with 
 a smile that he could guess beforehand the 
 outcome of the balloting. He excused him- 
 self to preside at the meeting; and returned 
 with the same bland smile to say that the vote 
 was as he had anticipated: " In fact there was 
 hardly any opposition; I made a speech and 
 
 Mr. [the welfare secretary] made a speech; 
 
 and then we voted " The extraordinary 
 part of it was that this owner thought he was 
 running a democratic shop. 
 
 It is probable, however, that this last illus- 
 tration shades off into the realm where sub- 
 mission is attributable to fear. This is surely 
 the case in those companies which make it a 
 practice to allow employees to appeal their 
 grievances to the president of their corpora- 
 
 119
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 tion. Often these companies pride themselves 
 on their generosity; but they are relying more 
 or less consciously on the submissive tenden- 
 cies of their workers to safeguard them in their 
 show of liberal administration. For the plan 
 generally works in some such way as this: 
 When an appeal occurs the worker is taken 
 into the president's office with its expensive 
 and exalted atmosphere. There is the sense 
 of being in the presence of the great and im- 
 portant. The president presses a button and a 
 stenographer attends upon him. The whole 
 situation is highly artificial and calculated to 
 induce an unreal attitude of humility, insigni- 
 ficance, and weakness in the mind of the em- 
 ployee. The result must almost inevitably be 
 that he hastens to acquiesce in whatever deci- 
 sion the president announces.^ 
 
 ^ Mr. John Fitch in discussing "Two Years of the 
 Rockefeller Plan" in The Survey^ October 6, 191 7, 
 throws light on this point. He says: "If the miner 
 with a grievance prefers he may appeal from the de- 
 cision of the superintendent to the president's indus- 
 trial representative and he may then appeal, if he 
 wishes, to *the division manager, assistant manager 
 or manager, general manager, or the president of the 
 company in consecutive order.' Or after the superin- 
 
 120
 
 THE INSTINCT OF SUBMISSIVENESS 
 
 In contrast to this policy is that of a Boston 
 department store where no one is discharged 
 without appearing before a committee com- 
 posed only of store employees who in the last 
 analysis have the power of discharge in their 
 hands. It was this store's experience in a re- 
 cent year that under this arrangement a half 
 of the discharges were sustained and a half 
 rescinded. It is not strange, therefore, that 
 the unions are generally so anxious to safe- 
 guard the discharge policy. The individual 
 worker faced with removal must submit; even 
 if he appeals there is the probable antagonism 
 to live down of the superior against whom he 
 appeals. Only in league with his fellow-workers 
 can he present a sufficiently effective front to 
 assure that his case is decided on its merits. 
 
 tendent, some higher official, and the committee on 
 conciliation and cooperation have in turn passed on 
 his case he may appeal to the Industrial Commission 
 of the State. It is n't easy to conceive of the miner 
 who would go through all that system of appeals. If 
 he went through it and won, how happy his position 
 would be back on the job in the mine under the whole 
 hierarchy of officials over whose heads he had appealed 
 from pit boss to general manager! So far only one 
 case has been appealed to the Industrial Commis- 
 sion." 
 
 121
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 Convincing and graphic testimony of the 
 way in which pressure is exerted on workers 
 appears in a letter submitted by a group of 
 workers in Portland, Oregon, to the Ship- 
 building Labor Adjustment Board on October 
 16,1917: 
 
 For some years previous to 1907 [it says] a 
 number of trades employed in the metal trades 
 -industry enjoyed union shop conditions, with the 
 result that there existed a more harmonious feel- 
 ing between the employer and employees. 
 
 Some ten years ago the National Metal Trades 
 Association, an organization of employers, was 
 formed and they immediately adopted and 
 started to put in force their so-called "open 
 shop" policy. The result of putting this policy 
 into effect, several of the trades at different 
 periods went on strike against the enforcement 
 of the open shop policy. The labor organizations 
 were defeated and the open shop policy has pre- 
 vailed in Portland and vicinity for ten years or 
 more. 
 
 The association of employers maintains an 
 office and a paid official. Men applying for work 
 at their respective trades were told to make 
 application through this office if they desired 
 employment. When the man making application 
 appeared at this office they were forced to give 
 a complete record of their past life and the in- 
 formation secured In this manner was filed away 
 
 122
 
 THE INSTINCT OF SUBMISSIVENESS 
 
 for future reference when the men applied for 
 work elsewhere. One of the many questions asked 
 was, "Do you belong to the union?" and if the 
 man answered in the affirmative he was either 
 refused employment or told that there was no 
 work at the time. Under their system men 
 belonging to the union were unable to secure em- 
 ployment unless they dropped their union affilia- 
 tions. In a number of cases men were forced to 
 bring their union card to the employer and the 
 employer proceeded to destroy the card and the 
 men were allowed to go to work. 
 
 The result of the employers adopting this 
 policy was the moving to other localities of a 
 number of the men and those that remained were 
 either forced to drop their union affiliations or 
 endure long periods of idleness. 
 
 The Association policy was followed by a very 
 noticeable decrease in wages in this vicinity. 
 
 Men were prohibited from leaving one shop 
 to go to another to secure better conditions of 
 employment. Quite a number of obnoxious con- 
 ditions were imposed upon the men, such as bad 
 shop conditions and inefficient fellow-servants 
 that endangered men's lives. 
 
 As a result of the oppression of the anti- 
 union policy enacted by the employers, three 
 classes of men remained in Portland and vicin- 
 ity, the others preferring to move to localities 
 where they might receive more consideration at 
 the hands of the employers through the efforts 
 of organized labor. 
 
 123
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 THe three classes of men who remained to 
 endure the anti-union policy were as follows: - 
 
 First, the men who by reason of their domes- 
 tic relations or for the sake of the little home 
 owned or perchance hoped to own some day, and 
 the part ownership of which represented all they 
 had saved, and might be snatched away from 
 them if they were unable to continue payments 
 thereof; 
 
 Second, those men whose very nature compels 
 them to submit to every abuse to the very limits 
 of human endurance; 
 
 Third, that class of men who are shunned by 
 members of labor organizations for atrocities 
 directed by them against members of labor 
 organizations. 
 
 This letter deserves a second reading, so 
 clear is its statement of the repressive tactics 
 that have kept the workers down, accentuated 
 the submissive tendencies, and created a state 
 of mind in which vital impulses are held in 
 check and thwarted in their expression. It is 
 incidents like this which led the President's 
 Mediation Commission to say: 
 
 Repressive dealing with manifestations of 
 labor unrest is the source of much bitterness, 
 turns radical labor leaders into martyrs and thus 
 increases their following," and worst of all, in 
 the minds of workers tends to implicate the 
 
 124
 
 THE INSTINCT OF SUBMISSIVENESS 
 
 Government as a partisan in an economic con- 
 flict. The problem is a delicate and difficult one. 
 There is no doubt, however, that the Bisbee and 
 Jerome deportations, the Everett incident, the 
 Little hanging, and similar acts of violence 
 against workers have had a very harmful effect 
 upon labor both in the United States and in 
 some of the allied countries. Such incidents are 
 attempts to deal with symptoms rather than 
 causes. The I.W.W. has exercised its strongest 
 hold in those industries and communities where 
 employers have most resisted the trade-union 
 movement and where some form of protest 
 against unjust treatment was inevitable. 
 
 But the most dramatic example of the domi- 
 nance of self-abasement is the structure and 
 character of our present system of producing 
 goods the essence of which is the control 
 of production by capital-holders. It creates 
 the master and servant, employer and em- 
 ployee, boss and gang, vested interest and 
 landless proletariat relationship a situation 
 in which submission is at present essential 
 to the earning of a livelihood. With absolut- 
 ism of control in the ordinarj^ non-union large- 
 scale shop, corporations have been able to 
 rely upon the meekness of disposition among 
 workers to "get away with" the rules ini- 
 
 125
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 posed and the disciplinary methods used. 
 When we recall that the management hires, 
 promotes, fires, discharges, demotes, decides 
 hours and wages without interference where- 
 ever it can, we must realize that "the Neme- 
 sis of docility" is at hand. And what makes 
 matters worse is that submission on one side 
 fosters domination on the other until a theory 
 has developed and is openl}'- supported by 
 many employers that a benevolent but firm 
 despotism is the secret of successful factory 
 management. And as a temporary expedient 
 the theory is unfortunately all too true. The 
 rub comes, as has been pointed out, when the 
 workers have been cared for long enough to 
 store up energy and be filled with disgust at 
 paternalism. 
 
 The strength of the instinct of self-efface- 
 ment seems, in other words, to be in direct 
 proportion to the physical or nervous weakness 
 of -the individual or group. Just as in times of 
 loss or depression or discouragement the indi- 
 vidual is most forcibly impelled to submissive 
 recognition of a higher power, so when he has 
 not the energy or intelligence to impose his 
 
 126
 
 THE INSTINCT OF SUBMISSIVENESS 
 
 will on the environment, he is compelled to 
 accept the commands of this world's leaders. 
 The first condition of revolt is not a long-con- 
 tinued abject destitution (which breeds in- 
 difference); it is a minimum physical basis of 
 health and vigor which permits the direction 
 of attention to other affairs than the imme- 
 diate hour-to-hour problem of keeping body 
 and soul together. That this fact of submis- 
 sion not only in the form of hero worship or 
 fear, but in lethargy, is recognizably at the 
 root of some of the most serious industrial 
 problems is appreciated in the following dis- 
 cussion of the English cooperative movement.* 
 The quotation points to the same fact which 
 is being noted here and shows clearly the dan- 
 gers into which this too great self-abasement 
 brings industry: 
 
 We cannot resist the inference that it is in 
 this tendency of the average man to relapse into 
 apathy and indifference, with regard to all forms 
 of social organization not affording a perpetual 
 daily stimulant to personal activity that the 
 Cooperative Democracy (equally with other 
 democracies) will find its most serious obstacle. 
 
 ^ Supplement to The Neto Statesman, May 30, 1914. 
 127
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 The apathy and indifference of the Cooperative 
 membership fosters some of the besetting evils 
 of the movement. It tempts the executive to 
 slackness, and it makes it possible for favorit- 
 ism or corruption to creep in. At best, it fosters 
 the growth of a bureaucracy, which may or may 
 not be efficient, but which seldom has a good 
 effect on the members. 
 
 Professor Parker has gone much farther 
 than this, claiming that the repression which 
 accompanies at least the itinerant workers' 
 economic subjection is noticeably pathological.^ 
 
 The western hobo [he says] tries in a more or 
 less frenzied way to compensate for a general 
 all-embracing thwarting of his nature by a won- 
 derful concentration of sublimitation activities 
 on the wander instinct. The monotony, indig- 
 nity, dirt, and sexual apologies of, for instance, 
 the unskilled worker's life bring their definite 
 fixations, their definite irrational, inferiority 
 obsessions. 
 
 The balked laborer here follows one of the 
 two described lines of conduct: (i) he either 
 weakens, becomes inefficient, drifts away, or 
 (2) he indulges in a true type inferiority com- 
 
 * Carleton H. Parker on "Motives in Economic 
 Life." Proceedings, American Economic Association, 
 p. 230; American Economic Review, Supplement, 
 March, 19 18. 
 
 128
 
 THE INSTINCT OF SUBMISSIVENESS 
 
 pensation, and in order to dignify himself, to 
 eliminate for himself his inferiority in his own 
 eyes, he strikes or brings on a strike; he com- 
 mits violence, or he stays on the job and injures 
 machinery, or mutilates the materials. He is fit 
 food for dynamite conspiracies. He is ready to 
 make sabotage a part of his regular habit scheme. 
 His condition is one of mental stress and un- 
 focused psychic unrest, and could in all accuracy 
 be called a definite industrial psychosis. He is 
 neither willful nor responsible, he is suffering 
 from a stereotyped mental disease. . . . 
 
 I suggest that this unrest is a true revolt psy- 
 chosis, a definite mental unbalance, an efficiency 
 psychosis, as it were, and has its definite psychic 
 antecedents. 
 
 If this is true, if there really does result a 
 mental unbalance because the worker has been 
 so long "jobless, voteless, and womanless,** 
 students and reformers are surely overlook- 
 ing the results of the submissive type of in- 
 stinctive behavior, as well as its prevalence. 
 Professor Parker, in consequence of his analy- 
 sis, was engaged at the time of his death in 
 an effort to make the life of the itinerant 
 worker more endurable to enfranchise him, 
 to recover him to community and family con- 
 tacts, to surround him with wholesome work- 
 
 129
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 ing conditions. "The cure lies," he said, "in 
 taking care of the psychic antecedents." 
 
 When, therefore, the scoffers at the possi- 
 bilities of democracy in the control of insti- 
 tutions point to the present acceptance of 
 domination and exploitation, we must remind 
 them that people are responding to a situa- 
 tion in a one-sided and therefore dangerous 
 way. The instinctive basis for their conduct 
 has been abnormally restricted and is unduly 
 simple. The instinct to submit has the upper 
 hand. But there are other more liberating 
 instincts which when properly quickened re- 
 spond with a vigor that gains in potency with 
 training and use. People are submissive, not 
 because submissiveness is normally the domi- 
 nant trait, but because adverse conditions of 
 heredity and environment have made ser- 
 vility most easy or most expedient.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE INSTINCT OF THE HERD 
 
 The instinct of the herd is the impulsion to 
 be and stay with those of one's kind. Presum- 
 ably this tendency was originally simple and 
 direct. But as the "herd" has grown in size 
 and as various groups have sprung up within 
 it, this instinct has come to manifest itself si- 
 multaneously in respect to various groupings. 
 What, then, is the herd and what are the 
 characteristic responses which this instinct 
 elicits ? 
 
 The herd is to-day the group which is able 
 to impress its protective value upon the indi- 
 vidual to the point of his accepting its dic- 
 tates. If this is true it is clear that the same 
 individual can simultaneously or successively 
 belong to different groups which under chang- 
 ing circumstances impress him with their 
 worth as protecting agencies. Indeed, in con- 
 temporary human affairs we face a situation 
 which is unique in point of the extent and 
 
 131
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 quality of the protecting groups. Neighbor- 
 hoods, labor-unions, employers' associations, 
 churches, cities, states, nations these are 
 some of the most compelling and effective 
 groupings toward which we may expect mani- 
 festations of the instinct of the herd. 
 
 If we consider the situation in England at 
 the outbreak of the war we see this diversity 
 of loyalties asserted in unmistakable fashion.^ 
 It was with great effort that the rank and file 
 of British trade-unionists were finally con- 
 vinced that this was a war in which they had 
 any vital interest as citizens of Great Britain. 
 They had been familiar so long with a state of 
 affairs in which the Government represented 
 an exploiting and opposing interest, that it 
 was well-nigh impossible for them to believe 
 the national group as such was threatened to 
 an extent which made it necessary for loyalty 
 to it to take precedence over the allegiance 
 demanded by the working-class movement. 
 
 The "fall of the international," as the fail- 
 ure of the working-class groups in the warring 
 
 * For detailed examination of this evidence see 
 G. D. H. Cole's Labor in War-Time, especially chap, i, 
 
 132
 
 THE INSTINCT OF THE HERD 
 
 countries to refuse to fight their fellow-workers 
 has been characterized, is another evidence that 
 an instinctive loyalty can be and is transferred 
 from one group to another whenever this 
 change is believed to be necessary for self- 
 protection. 
 
 The conclusion to which the facts point re- 
 garding the way in which this instinct finds 
 its objects of stimulation is this: The instinct 
 of the herd will manifest itself most completely 
 in connection with the group which at the 
 moment offers what appears to be the most 
 urgently needed protection; and it will shift 
 its attachment as the need for protection 
 shifts. In the absence of any consciousness of 
 the necessity for protection, the individual's 
 behavior will be determined by that of the 
 people with whom he associates. 
 
 This brings us to the second question, 
 namely, as to the characteristics of the be- 
 havior which is expressive of gregariousness. 
 Trotter * differentiates several elements at 
 least two of which are being specifically treated 
 
 * W. Trotter, Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War^ 
 p. 112 ^/ seq. 
 
 133
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 in this discussion in connection with other 
 impulses. He ascribes to this instinct: 
 
 1. The fear of solitude. 
 
 2. Greater sensitiveness to the voice of the 
 herd than to other voices. 
 
 3. Heightened suggestibility to the passions 
 of the herd both in aggressive violence and 
 in panics of fear. 
 
 4. Heightened susceptibility to leadership. 
 
 5. Necessity for having identity recognizable 
 if relationship to the herd is to be main- 
 tained. 
 
 (i) At first blush the fear of solitude would 
 not seem to help in accounting for conduct in 
 industrial affairs whose essence is the coopera- 
 tion of large groups of people. The tendency 
 does, however, offer a practical clue to events 
 of both minor importance and large signifi- 
 cance. 
 
 Employees whose work requires them to 
 be alone in stock-rooms, storage-places or at 
 watchmen's jobs have often to be paid addi- 
 tionally or to be transferred occasionally to 
 other jobs, or they will leave. It is also true 
 that the maximum volume of output is achieved 
 only in a room where there are other people, 
 although too many others may prove equally 
 
 134
 
 THE INSTINCT OF THE HERD 
 
 distracting. Experiment is still needed to 
 establish the degree of solitude which contrib- 
 utes best to production, and it is probable 
 that in each type of industry a different basis 
 of association will be found to be most satis- 
 factory. 
 
 Another interesting example of what may 
 be in part the working-out of this impulse is 
 the unwillingness of girls to go into domestic 
 service where they are alone in a kitchen for 
 thirteen hours a day. While this is, of course, 
 a phenomenon of complex causes, it seems 
 reasonable from the evidence at hand that 
 this explanation is a real if partial one. The 
 available figures about the occupations of girls 
 with illegitimate children show that there are 
 more who have been formerly in domestic serv- 
 ice than in any other one occupation. That 
 this is an evidence of loneliness and solitude 
 compensated for at the highest price, seems a 
 fair construction of the facts. 
 
 But the more impressive illustrations of the 
 working-out of this trait are more general in 
 character and less susceptible to proof or con- 
 firmation. It may, for example, be plausibly 
 
 135
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 speculated that dislike of solitude promoted 
 the rapid creation of the propertyless working 
 groups which have been flocking to the cities 
 throughout the last two centuries, not only 
 in this country, but throughout the civilized 
 world. Love of kind undoubtedly keeps many 
 people constantly shut up in city tenements 
 and apartments, although that manner of life 
 costs them dearly in money and health. Only 
 those who have been connected with "back- 
 to-the-land," "garden-city," or "model-vil- 
 lage" movements know how great is the effort 
 required to get city workers even to consider 
 moving into the suburbs to live. And the rea- 
 son advanced ten times for every other excuse 
 is that "it's so lonely out there." 
 
 (2) The fact that we are more sensitive, 
 which generally means more submissive, to 
 the voice of the group than to any other voice 
 is exemplified so constantly and in so many 
 ways as hardly to need elaborate illustration. 
 Its practical importance is, of course, enor- 
 mous. For it is this sensitiveness which helps 
 to secure that conformity, discipline, and co- 
 herence which are essential to effective group 
 
 136
 
 THE INSTINCT OF THE HERD 
 
 activity. But the characteristic is a source of 
 weakness when it helps to keep those members 
 who have new ideas silent and oppressed. It 
 works, for example, to keep labor leaders from 
 proposing reforms which they may see to be 
 necessary, but for which they dare not take a 
 stand with their constituents; it helps to pre- 
 vent workers from trying to overthrow leaders 
 with whom they disagree, but whose ability 
 to carry the crowd they at the same time fear. 
 A good illustration of the leaders' sensi- 
 tiveness to the voice of the group was re- 
 cently afforded in a textile center where the 
 local trade-union official had been discharged 
 from the mill in which he worked on grounds 
 that were universally conceded to be justi- 
 fied. This official had boasted of his ability to 
 "get away with" little and careless work be- 
 cause of his position as president of the local 
 union. (In this, of course, his unsatisfied in- 
 stinct to domination was getting thorough, if 
 unwise, expression.) After giving him every 
 chance the management finally had to let 
 him go, whereupon he proceeded to call a 
 strike. The employer at once called in a union 
 
 1^7
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 official whose jurisdiction was State-wide and 
 had him investigate the situation. The State 
 official admitted that the local agent was in 
 the wrong, but said that he would neverthe- 
 less have to uphold him. The only valid ex- 
 planation for such conduct seems to be that 
 the State labor organization was reluctant to 
 do anything to displease or weaken its local 
 branch. It was, in a word, highly sensitive 
 to the voice of this group, while wholly dis- 
 regarding the opinion or judgment of any 
 other group in that community. 
 
 (3) The fact of the heightened suggesti- 
 bility that exists among individuals in a group 
 has become commonplace. In every gather- 
 ing of human beings called together for what- 
 ever purpose the evidences of this suggesti- 
 bility will be abundantly found. 
 
 The previously cited ^ incident of the union 
 meeting which was addressed by the national 
 organizer who persuaded the men to delay 
 their strike illustrates very typically the way 
 in which a group, almost against its will, is 
 brought to believe that its opinion has been 
 * See ante p. 117. 
 138
 
 THE INSTINCT OF THE HERD 
 
 changed by argument, whereas in reality it has 
 been brought about by the impact of the sug- 
 gestions of a platform full of accredited leaders. 
 If, in this instance, the leaders had had to con- 
 vert the members in individual conference, it 
 is doubtful whether they would have had the 
 slightest measure of success. A similar con- 
 clusion seems inevitable with regard to the 
 outcome of the employees* referendum men- 
 tioned in our discussion of submissiveness.^ 
 Had it been possible for the workers in that 
 plant to have gone into booths and voted by 
 the Australian system a day after their meeting, 
 it is improbable that they would have voted 
 so unanimously with the management. 
 
 (4) That the group is more easily capti- 
 vated by the leader than is the individual, is 
 only another evidence that groups respond 
 more instinctively than individuals to given 
 stimuli, because they respond more fully, un- 
 critically, and rapidly. The strategic place 
 which the leader can and does assume has 
 already been pointed out in discussing sub- 
 missiveness. 
 
 * See anu pp. 118, 119. 
 139
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 (5) The biological necessity of recognizing 
 the members of one's own herd, flock, or tribe 
 carries over to some extent into the field of 
 modern human affairs. An immediately con- 
 crete case in point was revealed in the labor 
 troubles at Everett, Washington, where, *'in 
 breaking up the crowds gathered to hear the 
 speakers [of the I.W.W.] the deputies tied 
 white handkerchiefs around their necks *so 
 we would n't hammer our own men* as one 
 of them explained on the stand." ^ 
 
 One of the things which makes the organizing 
 of labor in this country such a slow, uphill fight 
 is reluctance to be identified with the working- 
 class group and the difficulty of immediately 
 "placing" people socially and economically. 
 One of the obstacles to be overcome by union 
 officials in organizing certain of the garment 
 trades of our large cities has been the unwill- 
 ingness of ambitious workers to be known as 
 "manual laborers" because of their hope of 
 one day setting up as employers themselves. 
 
 The domestic servant, the store clerk, the 
 
 ^ See article on "The Verdict at Everett," in The 
 Survey, May 19, 191 7. 
 
 140
 
 THE INSTINCT OF THE HERD 
 
 college graduate, the stenographer all step 
 forth from their day's occupation with the 
 marks of class or trade more or less effectu- 
 ally obscured, not accidentally, but inten- 
 tionally. This obliteration of special identify- 
 ing marks, with the intention which prompts 
 it, is to a large extent responsible for the lack 
 of group activity where there might well be 
 group-conscious organizations to assure ade- 
 quate protection. It is this conscious inten- 
 tion which prompts to an obliteration of spe- 
 cial identifying marks that raises the great 
 psychological barrier to working-class organi- 
 zation. This unquestionably has its advan- 
 tages in a country where the creation of class 
 lines is supposed to be undemocratic and dis- 
 ruptive. But it has its difficulties in that it 
 blinds people to the necessity of maintaining 
 some sort of definite, reciprocal relations with 
 the economic group with which they have 
 common interests. The protection which should 
 properly come to the unskilled workers, to 
 store clerks, to office employees, by virtue of 
 an organization based on common economic 
 interests, is to-day largely lacking because the 
 
 141
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 ambition and pride which the American spirit 
 fosters, renders us unwilling to be classed and 
 organized as "common workers." One of the 
 complicating factors in the attempt to organize 
 women wage-earners in particular is just this 
 reluctance to be known as a worker, which has 
 grown out of the age-old tradition that it is 
 unladylike to go out to work. 
 
 The same inability to identify the group 
 with which one has common cause is to be 
 observed where the common bonds of language 
 and past association are lacking.^ There are 
 
 ^ Interesting confirmation of this observation is 
 to be found in the Report of the President's Media- 
 tion Commission, where it says: "The polyglot char- 
 acter of the workers adds the difficulty of racial diver- 
 sities. In one camp twenty-six and in another as 
 many as thirty-two nationalities were represented. 
 The industry contains within it,self the Balkan prob- 
 lem on a small scale. In other camps, even where 
 there was not great racial diversity, large numbers 
 were non-English speaking, particularly Mexicans. 
 The seeds of dissension among the workers render 
 difficult their cohesion, and the presence of non-Eng- 
 lish speaking labor tends even to greater misunder- 
 standing between management and men than is normal 
 in American industry. ... The trade-union move- 
 ment is the most promising unifying spirit among 
 the workers. The progress of the movement, however, 
 is impeded by the traditional opposition of the com- 
 
 142
 
 THE INSTINCT OF THE HERD 
 
 employers who have a definite policy of hiring 
 several different nationalities in one depart- 
 ment of a factory in order that workers may 
 be less able to communicate effectually and 
 therefore less able to cause trouble. It will, in- 
 deed, take a new sort of experience for Magyar, 
 Greek, Pole, Turk, Armenian, Russian Jew, 
 and Sicilian to realize that as common toilers 
 in a single factory they have identical aims 
 and should stand together in a group loyalty 
 which is of a more urgent character than the 
 ancient animosities which they still cherish. 
 Nevertheless, there is abundant evidence that 
 the herd instinct is beginning to manifest it- 
 self even in this situation. No vestigial enmi- 
 ties can resist the insistent claims of self-pres- 
 ervation which prompt to joint action with 
 one's bench-mates. The demands for self- 
 protection are immediate and imperious. Be- 
 fore them, discriminations of race, color, sex, 
 
 panics, by difficulties due to racial diversities and by- 
 internal dissensions in the miners' International. 
 The resulting weakness of the organization deprived 
 the industry of the discipline over workers exercised 
 by stronger unions and gave the less responsible 
 leaders a freer field for activity." 
 
 H3
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 and age can be counted on to dwindle and 
 eventually disappear. Employers cannot hope 
 to foil for very long the operation of this in- 
 stinct which tends to seek its vital expression 
 in terms of an immediate, practical situation. 
 
 In addition to these five characteristics 
 of the herd instinct which affect group con- 
 duct, other instincts are also manifested in 
 herd behavior such as pugnacity, self-asser- 
 tion, and self-abasement. Their presence and 
 influence give rise to further possible complexi- 
 ties, for we have seen already, in treating these 
 instincts as they show themselves in indivi- 
 dual conduct, that there are three possible 
 alternative results of their existence. Instincts 
 may find expression; they may be repressed or 
 suppressed; they may be "sublimated" 
 that is, the energies they arouse may be di- 
 rected into channels other than the usual ones. 
 The same alternatives are present in the mani- 
 festation of instincts by human groups. But 
 in group conduct the dangers of expression 
 and suppression are intensified and the likeli- 
 hood of sublimation is decreased. The danger 
 of expression is, of course, the danger of over- 
 
 144
 
 THE INSTINCT OF THE HERD 
 
 doing, of over-satisfying an instinct in relation 
 to the other instinctive claims and activities of 
 life. The workers of Youngstown, Ohio,^ who 
 made a clean sweep of a group of saloons in 
 which not a mirror or bottle was left whole, had 
 just such a satiating orgy of revenge and de- 
 struction. Similarly, lumber jacks who come to 
 town with their pockets full of money and are 
 penniless after the debauches of a few days, are 
 the victims of an over-satisfaction of certain 
 instincts. 
 
 The dangers of suppression we have already 
 discussed in relation to individual activity. 
 But serious as suppression is to the individual, 
 its dangers seem to increase in geometric pro- 
 portion where whole groups are involved. One 
 starving man standing before an open fruit 
 store may be a potential thief of a crude, petty 
 sort; a thousand starving strikers rushing into 
 the market-place can be a goaded mob of be- 
 deviled human animals. Indeed, one of the 
 most urgently practical lessons which is to be 
 learned from a study of applied psychology 
 is that many aspects of the labor problem 
 * See antf, p. 79.
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 to-day present pathological characteristics be- 
 . cause of the suppression of one or another com- 
 pelling instinct. And a kind of diagnosis and 
 treatment is required which must be as pene- 
 trating and drastic as the original repression 
 was stupid and severe. 
 
 The energies of a group are normally less 
 easy to divert or sublimate than those of an 
 individual. The discovery of new and satisfy- 
 ing channels of expression, which successful 
 sublimation entails, demands time and ex- 
 periment; and adjustment to the discovery 
 requires a still longer period. But a group, 
 especially if it is organized to enforce its de- 
 sires, tends to act impulsively, on the spur of 
 the moment. A will-organization or an en- 
 thusiasm-creating body wants no obstacles to 
 a quick response. A thought-organization on 
 the other hand is by deliberate intention freer 
 from this danger. Hence, if we are to talk 
 intelligently of the possibility of sublimating 
 group instincts, we must discover first the 
 purpose of the group and the conditions under 
 which it acts and should act best to achieve 
 its ends. In this direction lies a fruitful field 
 
 146
 
 THE INSTINCT OF THE HERD' 
 
 for further inquiry. Indeed, the relation of the 
 sublimating process to the whole educational' 
 scheme, to the possibility of progress, to a 
 criterion of "civilization," has only begun to be 
 realized. The question inevitably arises: can 
 we hope to secure among people acting in large 
 groups that balance in their reaction to all 
 the extraordinary stimuli of the modern world 
 which will conserve their own vitality and 
 assure the group's perpetuation? The ques- 
 tion can be crudely but vividly put in another 
 form: can we educate for freedom and indivi- 
 dual self-expression; or do the demands of 
 our huge group enterprises require that we 
 educate for a quite docile regimentation of 
 human units ? And can we do the latter with 
 safety, looking at the problem simply from the 
 point of view of our knowledge of the assertive 
 and self-directive behavior to which the human 
 nervous organism seems committed? 
 
 We do know, I believe, that protective 
 groups will tend to change the direction or 
 milieu of their instinctive responses less rap- 
 idly than individuals, since their reactions are 
 likely to be relatively direct and impulsive. 
 
 147
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 Groups or associations, whether of trade- 
 unionists, employers, or consumers, are na- 
 tively more intense, fickle, and primitive than 
 are their constituent members as individuals. 
 This is borne out by all experience with group 
 activity and the only reason for stressing the 
 point is that it makes the passion that charac- 
 terizes strikes and class hatred more readily 
 understandable. The strong instinctive rea- 
 sons for fighting in groups which underpaid, 
 exploited, and voiceless strikers possess, lead 
 inevitably to direct, instinctive methods of 
 carrying on the fight and of conducting the 
 protective group. 
 
 In the animal world Trotter distinguishes 
 between herds which secure their protection 
 by aggression and those which secure it by 
 defensive association. The wolf and the cow 
 are taken as typifying the two methods. The 
 distinction is not one that carries over into 
 human groupings in any very hard-and-fast 
 way. Biologically man's groups are normally 
 more defensive than otherwise. But given 
 the large defensive group, like a nation, in 
 which protection from outside forces is as- 
 
 148 
 
 /
 
 THE INSTINCT OF THE HERD 
 
 sured, smaller groups will inevitably appear 
 within to assert their own special interests. 
 Such groups often reveal an aggressively prop- 
 agandist behavior because the only reason 
 for rallying a strongly protective group is the 
 sense of a wrong to be righted or an injustice 
 to be redressed. On the other hand, a group 
 may arise in response to a demand for the per- 
 formance of some function less educational 
 than administrative in character. 
 
 Labor-unions are aggressive groups of the 
 former origin. They came into being in re- 
 sponse to intolerable conditions of exploita- 
 tion to which workers found themselves sub- 
 jected. Their function has been essentially 
 and aggressively protective which implies a 
 zealous, uncritical attachment to the obvi- 
 ously immediate interests of the group. The 
 protective work has been and still is essential. 
 But in industries where labor is better organ- 
 ized there is being demanded of unions a more 
 positive acceptance of responsibility for the 
 control of affairs. The community is begin- 
 ning to ask them to assume a super-protec- 
 tive character; to become a partner to the 
 
 149
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 productive enterprise. And the community, 
 especially the employers, have already become 
 exceedingly impatient at the unions for not 
 having taken a more responsible interest in 
 production as such. 
 
 This is poor psychology on the employers' 
 part. Unions cannot be expected to undertake 
 the anxieties and responsibilities of produc- 
 tion until their anxiety about the fundamen- 
 tal matters which brought them into being 
 is allayed. The instinct for workmanship can- 
 not assert itself actively until the instincts 
 more directly concerned with immediate sur- 
 vival are given satisfaction. And thus far the 
 members of any but the strongest unions do 
 not occupy a place of extraordinary economic 
 security. Nevertheless, the demand that work- 
 ers in shop committees and even on boards of 
 directors take a part in directing the produc- 
 tive processes will grow greatly in the next 
 decade. The present war has added extraor- 
 dinarily to the sentiment in favor of working- 
 class representation in the government of 
 industry. And this representation will inevi- 
 tably carry with it the necessity for taking a 
 
 ISO
 
 THE INSTINCT OF THE HERD 
 
 closer interest in the mechanism of production. 
 In this new likelihood of a larger share in con- 
 trol, labor will, if it plays a statesman's role, 
 find a needed leverage for immediately secur- 
 ing the guarantees of an adequate minimum 
 subsistence. 
 
 It is the absence of these immediate guar- 
 antees which constitutes the fundamental rea- 
 son why the incorporation of trade-unions 
 and the including of loss-sharing features in 
 profit-sharing schemes cannot be at present 
 accepted by the workers. They must first 
 have some assured margin of subsistence upon 
 which they can fall back. 
 
 Concrete evidence of what I mean is seen 
 in the proposals of the British Trade-Union 
 Congress of 1916 for an industrial truce of 
 three years at the conclusion of the war. Here 
 we see the unions deliberately offering to throw 
 over the right to strike which they have al- 
 ways held to be their chief protective device. 
 But they will renounce this right, they say, 
 only on a basis of the employers' acceptance 
 of the following terms: a forty-eight-hour 
 week, a compulsory minimum wage of thirty 
 
 151
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 shillings per week, recognition of the unions, 
 and Government unemployment insurance.^ In 
 other words, -assure them enough to support 
 their families when there is work; give them 
 an adequate subsidy when there is no work; 
 assure a working week of decent length and 
 an organized procedure of discussing working 
 conditions and grievances and they will 
 work in the expectation of settling secondary 
 controversies by peaceful means. 
 
 It would be hard to find a more apt illus- 
 tration of my point. A group instinctively 
 protective in function can expand its function 
 and become a responsible partner in produc- 
 tion only as its original reason for being is ful- 
 filled. Which means that labor groups will 
 become responsible and cooperative, not with 
 exhortation, but by being assured decent mini- 
 mum working standards on a basis of which 
 other interests can be attended to. 
 
 We can conceive of the American Federa- 
 tion of Labor assuming a place of responsible 
 participation in the control of industry more 
 readily than the Industrial Workers of the 
 * Manchester Guardian^ October 28, 1916. 
 152
 
 THE INSTINCT OF THE HERD 
 
 World. And the reason is that the A.F. of L. 
 is more firmly intrenched in the community. 
 It is a strong organization ramifying into poli- 
 tics, with sick and death benefits in some of 
 its branches, with legislative agents, with an 
 increasing number of collective agreements to 
 which it is a party. Whereas the I.W.W. has 
 thus far been the friend of the friendless; it 
 has had to fight hard on every side for every 
 inch of gain; its members are unlettered; even 
 its theories are the logical corollary of its 
 espousal of the dispossessed. The whole ^ ter- 
 minology of the I.W.W. and the tone of its 
 literature are those of an uncompromising 
 "fighting organization." And it is inevitable 
 that it should be so. For its primary mission 
 as an aggressively protective group is as yet 
 unaccomplished. Indeed, the members of the 
 group from which this organization is drawn 
 only slowly and spasmodically reach the point 
 where they can identify their common interests, 
 and understand that power comes with cohe- 
 sive action. This alone can account for the 
 
 See Carleton H. Parker, "The I.W.W.," Atlantic 
 Monthly^ November, 191 7. 
 
 153
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 slowness with which it or any other organi- 
 zation of the unskilled gains in numbers and 
 power. 
 
 Our discussion of the manifestation of herd 
 instinct in industrial affairs confirms the point 
 that existing loyalties and groupings are not 
 static and given. They vary with the kind 
 and extent of protection needed. Several 
 necessary groupings and loyalties can and do 
 coexist. And for any group to be able success- 
 fully to make prior claim upon the loyalty of 
 the individual it must convince the individual 
 of its supreme efficacy. But it is almost impos- 
 sible to-day for any one group to make good 
 its claim to priority. The protection which all 
 of us require is not accorded by any supreme 
 group; it is distributed among several. Hence 
 it comes about that sovereignty, to use a re- 
 cent writer's phrase/ has become plural. And 
 for this fact of plural allegiances there are good 
 psychological reasons in addition to those in 
 the world of political theory. It becomes ur- 
 gently necessary, in consequence, for each in- 
 
 ^ See Harold J. Laski, The Problem of Sovereignty^ 
 Yale University Press, 191 7. 
 
 154
 
 THE INSTINCT OF THE HERD 
 
 dividual to sense the relative value, purpose, 
 and potential effectiveness of the several groups 
 with which he is in contact, especially those in 
 connection with industry. This understanding 
 is to be achieved only by study of the past 
 experience of groups and by deliberately plan- 
 ning and experimenting with them to see how 
 the needed protection and correlation of efforts 
 is to be achieved. 
 
 In other words, thought is required to bring 
 groups to vital usefulness. We look to thought 
 to discover and to help into articulate being 
 those various kinds of associations which will 
 protect the individual in the conflicting cur- 
 rents and maladjustments of the economic 
 world. But discussion of the uses of thought 
 must be temporarily postponed. For our 
 immediate purpose we turn to a discussion of 
 an instinct which, if we read the newspaper 
 headlines, might appear to have every oppor- 
 tunity to-day for complete satisfaction the 
 instinct of pugnacity.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE INSTINCT OF PUGNACITY 
 
 The instinct of pugnacity is the prompting to 
 fight. The nature and character of the fight 
 can vary enormously, although in its begin- 
 nings the instinct presumably sought satis- 
 faction in a sense of mastery gained from 
 hand-to-hand physical conflict a satisfaction 
 gained from hopes of self-preservation. 
 
 Thorndike^ diff^erentiates several forms of 
 pugnacity: (i) activity directed toward escape 
 from restraint, (2) toward overcoming a mov- 
 ing obstacle, (3) an irrational response to pain, 
 (4) a counter-attack. Exhibitions of pugnacity 
 in industrial affairs give evidence of all of 
 these forms. 
 
 (i) The strike at Ludlow, Colorado, in 1914, 
 illustrated the first form admirably. The 
 town was a company-owned town; food and 
 shelter were to be bought only at company 
 
 ^ See Thorndike, The Original Nature of Man, pp. 
 22-25 (condensed edition). 
 
 156
 
 THE INSTINCT OF PUGNACITY 
 
 prices ; the coal at the mouth of the mine was 
 weighed by a company representative; the 
 local courts were corrupt, there was no redress 
 for grievances. Mr. Fitch, in his dispassion- 
 ate discussion ^ of this prolonged conflict, has 
 vividly suggested the peculiarities which sur- 
 round such a situation : 
 
 Coal mines are not developed like a factory 
 at a convenient place outside some town or 
 "camp." A shaft is sunk wherever the coal hap- 
 pens to be. If there is no town at hand, and 
 there generally is not, the operator must build 
 one before he can get men to come and work in 
 his mine. 
 
 Having assembled a group of people in a place 
 remote from other towns, it becomes necessary 
 to provide them with foodstuffs and other essen- 
 tials. There must be a store, and usually there is 
 no one with requisite capital to build and main- 
 tain one but the operating company. There is 
 no coal-mlning State whether East, West, or 
 South, where this system of private town owner- 
 ship, despite occasional exceptions, is not the 
 historic and expected condition. 
 
 This, of course, creates a situation with re- 
 
 ^ See J. A. Fitch, "Law and Order," The Survey, 
 December 3, 1914. This whole article should be read 
 by any one interested to see how the psychological 
 point of view can enhance our understanding of the 
 phenomena of industrial unrest. 
 
 157
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 spect to local government and the relationship 
 between landlord and tenant very different from 
 that obtaining in villages that have grown up 
 in the ordinary way. . . . The coal miner must 
 go away from home to get off his employer's 
 property. He is on it when asleep in bed. He is 
 still on it if he stands on the street. He does not 
 escape by going to church, and in many cases his 
 children are still on company property when 
 they are at school. The employing company is 
 frequently^ the only taxpayer in the camp, and 
 so exercises a greater influence in all phases of 
 local government than do the people who make 
 their homes there. . . . 
 
 It must be evident that this gives the em- 
 ployer a degree of control that he could not pos- 
 sibly exercise if he were conducting an enterprise 
 in a manufacturing town. For example, the lease, 
 under which employes of the Colorado Fuel and 
 Iron Company occupy houses belonging to the 
 company, contains a clause providing that it 
 may be terminated by the company on three 
 days' notice and the occupant dispossessed. The 
 same provision or a similar one appears in the 
 leases of the other companies also. A man can- 
 not offend his employer without getting into 
 trouble with his landlord at the same time. 
 
 That this is a wholly natural development is 
 
 clear. The companies are not to be blamed for 
 
 it. On the contrary, they would be most severely 
 
 taken to task if they should fail to provide suit- 
 
 \ able dwellings, and where necessary, a store. 
 
 IS8
 
 THE INSTINCT OF PUGNACITY 
 
 It is also clear, however, that this system of 
 private ownership of towns gives a power to the 
 coal operators that they could not dream of 
 possessing if they were conducting an enterprise 
 in an established city. . . . 
 
 In Colorado, mining camps are referred to as 
 "closed" or "open." . . . An open camp is one 
 which has an open highway leading to it. The 
 closed camp is entirely surrounded by private 
 property and there is no highway entering it. 
 There are roads, of course, leading to these 
 camps, but the roads are on private property 
 just as are the streets in the camps themselves. 
 A traveler upon these roads is a trespasser and may 
 be turned back by an agent of the coal company 
 owning the land. There is nothing to prevent a 
 traveler's approaching an open camp, but once 
 there he may be prevented from walking upon 
 the streets, which are private property. . . . 
 
 The camp marshal usually stations himself at 
 the entrance of the camp and stops every stranger 
 who approaches and questions him as to his 
 purpose. It is easy to keep watch because the 
 camps are located in caiions, and there is usu- 
 ally but one road by which a traveler may ap- 
 proach. If the traveler cannot give an account 
 of himself that is satisfactory to the marshal, he 
 will be ordered back. 
 
 A strike that arises under these conditions 
 is not inaptly characterized as a response actu- 
 ated by a " desire to escape from restraint.*' In 
 
 159
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 the situation here recounted the restraint is 
 the more galling for having been so complete 
 over body and mind, and so openly exercised. 
 A more absolute denial of the natural claims 
 of human nature for all-around expression, 
 could hardly be equaled in modern industry; 
 so that under these circumstances the desire 
 to fight hard and furiously is not to be mar- 
 veled at. 
 
 (2) Pugnacity to overcome a moving ob- 
 stacle is plainly evidenced in the following: A 
 crowd composed largely of workers from New 
 York's East Side was, just before our entrance 
 into the war, emerging from Madison Square 
 Garden after a strongly socialistic anti-war 
 meeting. A luxuriously appointed limousine 
 containing two men who were living images 
 of the Beef-Trust cartoons found itself stalled 
 in the middle of the throng. As soon as he 
 realized the situation, the owner of the car 
 leaned across to the chauffeur and gave the 
 word to go ahead regardlessly. Whereupon 
 the car started and began to knock people to 
 right and left. In an instant the crowd swarmed 
 over the machine so that it came to a stand- 
 
 160
 
 THE INSTINCT OF PUGNACITY 
 
 still, and the occupants were in danger of los- 
 ing their Hves when the police interfered. The 
 fighting response which that moving embodi- 
 ment of blatant wealth called forth was as 
 deep-rooted as it was instantaneous. 
 
 (3) To see the type of behavior occasioned 
 by an irrational response to pain, watch a 
 policeman using even the mildest force in keep- 
 ing back a crowd at a parade or fire. The peo- 
 ple may be as amiable and tractable as you 
 please, but let a number of them get stepped 
 upon or pushed about severely, or even touched 
 by the policeman or his stick so that actual 
 pain is inflicted or pride wounded, and an 
 ugly temper will be quickly aroused. In a 
 strike where feelings are running high the 
 very presence of police or militia has again 
 and again proved enough to arouse all the 
 latent pugnacity of crowds both in resentment 
 of possible pain and in definite planning of 
 attacks upon the "guardians of the law." 
 
 (4) The Ludlow strike affords a graphic 
 illustration of the pugnacity aroused in a 
 counter-attack. Mr. Fitch's exposition of this 
 affair continues : 
 
 161
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 It was the next day that the cave was discov- 
 ered that ought to be known as the "Black Hole 
 of Ludlow." In it were the bodies of two women 
 and eleven children. Nothing so completely 
 illustrates the unspeakable horrors of industrial 
 warfare carried to the utmost extreme. As to 
 responsibility for this tragedy, the evidence is 
 again hopelessly conflicting. I can only record 
 my belief and I confess that an apparently 
 good case can be made against this belief that 
 despite the despicable and criminal acts of some 
 of the militiamen that day, they were not re- 
 sponsible for these deaths. The women and 
 children had not been shot. They had not been 
 burned by the fire of the tents. Apparently all 
 were suffocated because there was not enough 
 air in that hole in the ground to sustain so many 
 people. In my opinion they were not murdered 
 by the militia. They were innocent victims of 
 one of the most cruel and barbarous and un- 
 necessary of industrial wars. 
 
 After that, the strikers went mad. For a week 
 they were bereft of reason. The belief that the 
 Ludlow tent colony had been deliberately at- 
 tacked by the soldiers of the State, and the fact 
 that women and children were dead as a result, 
 led them to believe that a war of extermination 
 was on. They determined that if they must fight 
 they would be the aggressors. A call to arms was 
 issued. Working-men all over the State were 
 appealed to, to secure arms and begin to drill. 
 
 The chronology of the events of the next few 
 
 162
 
 THE INSTINCT OF PUGNACITY 
 
 days was given by the operators in their brief 
 submitted to the Congressional Committee, as 
 follows : 
 
 April 20. Battle between strikers and militia 
 at Ludlow. 
 
 April 22. Empire mine burned; three mine 
 guards killed by strikers in battle; 
 strikers fire on Hastings and Dala- 
 gua. Skirmish between militia and 
 strikers in Black Hills. Southwestern 
 mining camp captured by strikers. 
 
 April 25. Truce was declared between the 
 striking miners and the militia. 
 
 April 25. While truce was still in force, Chand- 
 ler mining camp was captured, build- 
 ings looted, and one man killed and 
 one wounded. 
 
 April 28. Lynn depot robbed of ammunition. 
 Battle at Royal Mine. Primrose 
 and Ruby camps fired upon by 
 strikers. Thirty people entombed 
 in Empire mine. 
 
 April 28. Strikers attack and capture Forbes 
 mine, kill 9 employes and burn build- 
 ings, etc., etc. . . . 
 
 In this situation the fighting spirit of the 
 miners had been stirred to its depths because 
 of their belief that the militia had attacked 
 them, and because their families had suffered 
 irreparable injury. The facts of this conflict 
 
 163
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 serve to illustrate only too clearly the strength 
 of the passion to fight back in reprisal of pre- 
 vious attacks. 
 
 The question that presses for answer to-day, 
 therefore, as urgently in industrial situations 
 as internationally, is this: Can the prompting 
 to fight be satisfied otherwise than in combat 
 where there is physical contact and a deep 
 stirring of hate ? The emotional release which 
 accompanies fighting is possibly one form of 
 relaxation and purging. Is it a necessary 
 form.? Fighting taps unrealized sources of 
 energy, and unifies, for the time at least, action 
 and life. Can nothing else accomplish these 
 ends ? 
 
 The answer seems to be that we do not 
 know because we have never really tried a 
 deliberate and systematic sublimation of this 
 instinct. But there are indications that we can, 
 if we will, supply in other ways the needed 
 stimulus, the desired release, the ringing sum- 
 mons to action and achievement. Industry 
 properly organized can probably offer some 
 partial outlet to the pugnacious tendencies. 
 Presumably one of the incidental glories of 
 
 164
 
 THE INSTINCT OF PUGNACITY 
 
 the competitive system has been the oppor- 
 tunity it afforded for a "cut-throat'* engage- 
 ment between individual employers no less 
 than between capital and labor. It is not only 
 conceivable but likely that the struggle for 
 sound social and industrial organization can 
 for some decades to come give substantial 
 satisfaction for the fighting spirit of many 
 men. Indeed, this is one of the criteria by 
 which industrial reorganization must be judged. 
 Does it tend to provide outlet for the fighting 
 energy in useful or at least innocuous chan- 
 nels ? 
 
 In the consumers' cooperative movement, in 
 the trade-union movements, in agricultural 
 associations like the Non-Partisan League, 
 in the movement among managers to "human- 
 ize" industry, there is ample scope for all the 
 zeal, abandonment, consecration, and desire 
 for distinction and supremacy in conflict, 
 which the cruder sorts of fighting may elicit. 
 Sacrifices have been made in these directions 
 and reputations won without a thought of 
 pecuniary gain. If what we seek in giving 
 scope for the fighting spirit is release, self- 
 
 l6s
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 abandonment, a unified purpose, and a clear 
 summons to action in behalf of a great end, 
 then the chances for conflict are still numer- 
 ous. 
 
 And even within the factory reforms are to 
 be accepted only as they promise to provide 
 an outlet for the combative energies. Those 
 proposals which tend to depersonalize the 
 enterprise, to render it bureaucratic, inflex- 
 ible and standardized, to center thought, 
 initiative, and control in a few hands these 
 are destined to kill assertiveness and eliminate 
 that passionate struggle for accomplishment 
 which gives life zest. What is rather needed is 
 a forceful challenge to the abilities of every 
 man. In the light of our knowledge of this 
 aspect of human nature we can therefore afford 
 to be highly critical of prospective reforms 
 which do not liberate vital human energies 
 and make it possible for them to struggle into 
 fullness. 
 
 Industry is, to be sure, only one of the ac- 
 tivities of life, occupying normally only two 
 thirds of our waking hours. And it is not to 
 be expected that it alone can afford a chance 
 
 i66
 
 THE INSTINCT OF PUGNACITY 
 
 for complete sublimation of the bellicose tend- 
 encies. It may be claimed that recreation 
 of all sorts must offer this outlet or religion, 
 or politics, or a combination of activities in 
 pursuit of life's purposes. 
 
 But apparently the human animal must 
 somewhere and somehow show its teeth, if it 
 be only so much as a slight sneer. We are 
 dealing with the instinct originally most 
 closely associated with the dire immediacies 
 of self and group preservation. It is powerful 
 with the power of life itself. It cannot be ig- 
 nored. And if the labor of bread-winning 
 occupies nearly all the waking hours, and if 
 human beings are continually sweating in 
 effort without making any advance, like the 
 horses in the stage representation of Ben Hur's 
 chariot race, something must finally break. 
 And industry, as the milieu in which these 
 cramped lives move, is likely to provide the 
 field for the fray. 
 
 That there may, however, be alternative 
 channels for exhibiting fighting spirit is further 
 suggested by the discussion which was cur- 
 rent in socialist circles at the outbreak of the 
 
 167
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 present war as to the motives behind it. Tliere 
 were not a few who contended that the capi- 
 tahsts of Europe were deUberately intent upon 
 diverting attention and energy from the in- 
 dustrial conflict to the international. And this 
 point was based on the assumption that the 
 workers of the world were gradually gathering 
 their forces for an effective struggle with the 
 so-called owners of industry. Shallow as this 
 explanation may appear, it does indicate a 
 recognition that the instinct of pugnacity is 
 not static or fixed in the manner or direction 
 of its expression. 
 
 The practical implications of this discussion 
 are manifold. But one illustration of its rele- 
 vance to actual affairs must suffice. The chief 
 of police and all his officers in every industrial 
 center should understand the psychology of 
 pugnacity. Picketing can with a little thought 
 be kept legitimate and harmless ; or it can with 
 a little stupidity give a chance for an unbridled 
 display of primitive passion. Crowds can be 
 kept orderly and in good temper; or they can 
 be excited to the indiscretions of mob violence. 
 Strikers at the pitch of nervous excitement 
 
 i68
 
 THE INSTINCT OF PUGNACITY 
 
 can be kept on edge and fretted into a fury; 
 or they can be left quietly alone and appar- 
 ently disregarded until the heat of hate has 
 cooled.^ 
 
 It seems obvious that if we know the typical 
 conditions which make for a show of destruc- 
 tive pugnacity we can guard the community 
 and all its constituent individuals from occa- 
 sions where it might become inevitable. If 
 
 ^ A paragraph from an editorial on "Strike Poli- 
 cies" in the New Republic for April 15, 1916, is sug- 
 gestive in this connection: "In time we shall be forced 
 to recognize the fact that industrial disputes are a 
 normal, healthy element in our economic system, at- 
 tended, like all other mass phenomena, by occasional 
 pathological lapses, injurious to all parties concerned, 
 but easily made the subject of partisan loyalty. When 
 a strike is called, the commission will of its own voli- 
 tion send investigators to confer with both parties 
 to the quarrel, to suggest means for reducing the 
 number of points of friction, and will supply such a 
 body of strike police as conditions may require, with 
 power to suppress provocative action on the part of 
 the employers as well as violence on the part of labor. 
 Under this plan it would be possible to utilize fully 
 the forces in both hostile camps making for the main- 
 tenance of order. The strike police would not be re- 
 garded, as ordinary police or militia now are, as hire- 
 lings or partisans of the employer. If compelled to 
 make arrests, they should not appear, as now, to be 
 making capital in public sentiment for the employer.'* 
 
 169
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 knowledge is to be of any value, it must be in 
 this direction of protecting people from the 
 folly of their own instinctive reactions. Given 
 conditions at Ludlow and the show of violence 
 was a foregone conclusion; and the same is 
 true of the other places which have witnessed 
 the battles and riots of our industrial warfare. 
 Pugnacity may have its amiable phases and 
 its positive values, but known by its fruits this 
 instinct certainly points its finger in solemn 
 warning at our current methods and practices 
 in the conduct of large-scale business. 
 
 The likelihood is not great that industry 
 will ever offer proper channels for universal 
 and completely satisfactory expression of our 
 fighting zeal. We must seek for some other 
 activity. The suggestion that in recreation the 
 individual can have his fight leads to a dis- 
 cussion any adequate treatment of which is 
 beyond the scope of this essay; but a brief 
 consideration of the play instinct will serve to 
 indicate its place and importance in relation 
 to the industrial problem.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 THE PLAY IMPULSE ^ ' 
 
 The play impuke urges to activity in which 
 there is Httle attention to conscious ends, but 
 where the object biologically considered is 
 (i) to learn necessary activities by playing at 
 them, or (2) to work off surplus energy, or 
 (3) to re-create one*s self physically and in 
 every other way. Although these three em- 
 body the important theoretical explanations 
 of play, only the latter two are applicable to 
 the play of adults. And perhaps only the 
 third is of real significance in relation to the 
 play of manual workers. For the essence of 
 physical labor is its absorption of both mus- 
 cular and nervous energy, so that instead of 
 there being a surplus there is a deficit. 
 
 This whole essay is in one sense an explana- 
 tion of why play is instinctive even for adults. 
 Life, we are saying, demands a working ad- 
 justment among the impulses in the face of 
 their anarchic and imperious claims for fulfiU- 
 
 171
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 ment. Work does not, probably cannot, afford 
 a complete and satisfactory fulfillment for 
 them all. Play can and should enter to give 
 opportunity for more satisfactory adjustment, 
 to give opportunity for instincts and interests 
 otherwise ignored to be expressed and har- 
 monized. This is the reason for its peculiar 
 importance in a day when the industrial sys- 
 tem offers to the great majority undue lati- 
 tude to the instinct to submit and to follow 
 the lead, but provides negligible scope for all 
 the rest. 
 
 The sort of play which is best calculated to 
 give relaxation is still somewhat an open ques- 
 tion. There has been too little imaginative 
 experimenting in the "redemption of the peo- 
 ple's leisure." We do know, however, that the 
 sort of vicarious sport which is represented 
 in England by the working-class betting on 
 the horse-races and in America by its absorp- 
 tion in the baseball bulletins is a poor substi- 
 tute for a more individual expression of blithe- 
 ness, irresponsibility, love of nature, well-being 
 in physical strength, and whatever other ele- 
 ments may inhere in play. We know also that 
 
 172
 
 THE PLAY IMPULSE 
 
 constant nervous and physical exhaustion lead, 
 not to any normal form of relaxation, but 
 eventually to excessive drink, sexual over- 
 indulgence, and physical degeneracy.^ 
 
 As the exhaustion becomes more complete 
 the instinctive demand becomes more insistent 
 and less discriminating. Professor Patten's ' 
 illustration of the working-girl's delight in the 
 "dip the dip" and of the profound satisfaction 
 it brings to her jaded nerves, is daily confirmed 
 on a large scale at all the commercial recreation 
 parks adjoining our industrial centers. 
 
 Indeed, Coney Island and its lesser lumi- 
 naries adjacent to the other industrial cities of 
 our country are fruitful laboratories for the 
 psychologist of industry. The shows which are 
 the most popular are those that give the 
 sharpest excitement, the most immediate nerv- 
 ous stimulation. And it is interesting to see 
 that since industry has forced the habit of 
 
 ^ See G. T. W. Patrick, The Psychology of Relaxa- 
 tion. See also Ellsworth Huntington, Civilization and 
 Climate (Yale University Press) for the way in which 
 the physiological demands of unsuitable climates 
 lead to the same results. 
 
 ' See Simon N. Patten, The New Basis of Civili' 
 zation.
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 association on a larger and larger scale, people 
 are unable to get satisfaction for the play im- 
 pulse except in a crowd. The nervous organ- 
 ism comes to be pitched to such a high key 
 that none of its tendencies manifest themselves 
 without the stimulus of a large group present 
 and indulging in the same satisfactions. It is 
 a grave question, in this situation, how much 
 further strain we can impose on our physical 
 equipment without a break. If the necessary 
 reaction from modem industry is the greater 
 elaboration of our amusement park technique 
 of thrills and horrors, modern industry must 
 plead guilty to a charge of fundamental im- 
 portance. The play of the husking bee, 
 charades, dancing at home among friends, 
 outdoor picnics, and the other homely enjoy- 
 ments is not to be sighed for simply because it 
 attached to a simple manner of life. Its loss 
 is to be lamented because apparently it was 
 the more normal psychological form of play in 
 a generation when all the claims of life on the 
 nervous system were less wearing and exacting 
 than is the case to-day. 
 Application of our knowledge about the value 
 
 174
 
 THE PLAY IMPULSE 
 
 of play has already led to a certain amount of 
 recreative activity in connection with indus- 
 trial establishments. Factories have baseball 
 teams, dramatic and glee clubs, annual dances 
 and outings, and garden contests all with a 
 view to securing enough change and variety in 
 the routine of life to make it more enjoyable 
 and to make the individual more willing and 
 able to work. Apart from stated recreational 
 events of definite business value as advertising 
 or as conducing to better esprit de corps, of 
 which an annual company outing is an exam- 
 ple, it is, however, to be doubted from the 
 point of view of human nature whether play 
 should normally attach itself to industry rather 
 than to the civic or neighborhood side of life. 
 There seem to be sound psychological reasons 
 for believing that the relaxing, irresponsible, 
 and care-free atmosphere in which play thrives 
 centers naturally about the older, more natural, 
 more instinctive human groups to wit, the 
 family and the neighborhood rather than 
 about such a completely artificial thing as the 
 modern factory in a large city. Where the fac- 
 tory exists as the one gathering-place of a mill 
 
 17S
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 town the situation is manifestly different and 
 recreation can function differently. But in the 
 typical industrial city the social and recreative 
 life normally falls into channels of home or 
 lodge or church or neighborhood, and little or 
 nothing is to be gained by forcing the creation "' 
 of an industrial recreative unit. 
 
 Recognition of the importance of the play 
 instinct and of the possibility of using it con- 
 structively to make amends for the inroads that 
 industry makes upon personality is destined to 
 lead to a i^ew and more wisely conceived pro- 
 gramme both in factory and community. This 
 recognition is turning a spot-light upon the 
 long hours, machine-like routine and absence 
 of annual vacations in many factory organi- 
 zations. It is not unlikely that the near future 
 will see a widespread shortening of working 
 hours, a general introduction of fifteen-minute 
 rest and recreation periods in the middle of 
 the morning and afternoon, and the granting 
 of a two weeks' vacation with pay to all em- 
 ployees. 
 
 Not a little of the impetus of the national 
 prohibition campaign has come from employ- 
 
 176
 
 THE PLAY IMPULSE 
 
 ers and some few courageous labor leaders who ' 
 are persuaded that alcohol falls far short of j 
 providing workers with the ideal form of re-, 
 laxation and rehabilitation. Employers and 
 workers are both beginning to realize that for 
 sheer survival there must be fuller and more 
 normal satisfaction of this desire to play which 
 has its roots in an instinctive yearning for vig- 
 orous, well-rounded, abounding life. 
 
 We have throughout our discussion used 
 expressions to indicate that human beings are 
 not completely driven by their impulses, but 
 do show a critical discrimination; do appear 
 to select in some small part the channels into 
 which they shall direct their energies ; do util- 
 ize accumulation of experience to save them- 
 selves from repeating mistakes either in giving 
 way to impulses or in not giving them ade- 
 quate expression. 
 
 In other words, we have been assuming that 
 behavior is not naively instinctive, but that 
 an element of thought enters in an impulse 
 to reflect -which may in its turn be a part 
 of our instinctive equipment. We have as- 
 
 177
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 sumed, because the facts seem to call for such 
 an assumption, that instinctive conduct is far 
 from being synonymous with fatuous, heedless, 
 unintelligent conduct. Let us, then, see what 
 this other instinct is which can remove the 
 tinge of fatuity and the curse of stupidity 
 from behavior. To know what the character- 
 istics of such a tendency are, and how it func- 
 tions, will be vital to a clear grasp of human 
 nature in its relation to industrial reorganiza- 
 tion.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE INSTINCT OF CURIOSITY, TRIAL AND 
 ERROR, OR THOUGHT 
 
 It is beyond the scope of this book to discuss 
 whether there is an instinct to intellectualize. 
 I assume that the constant alertness of human 
 beings to carry new experiences back to their 
 collection of past experiences and to compare 
 one with the other is so characteristic as to 
 be, for our purpose, instinctive. And I am 
 further assuming that the curiosity which 
 prompts to this comparison of past with pres- 
 ent, also prompts to a trial of successive 
 methods of action, and to a conscious process 
 of trying to associate causes and effects which 
 is an instinctive rationalizing or thought proc- 
 ess. 
 
 That this assumption of an instinctive will 
 to think has profound effects upon our ideas 
 of human society is being realized on every 
 hand.^ And it has especial significance in a 
 
 ^ See how the implications of this assumption 
 vitalize such widely different books as Graham Wal-
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 discussion of the instincts in industry if we 
 are not to be led to the superficial conclusion 
 that human behavior is irremediably arbi- 
 trary, capricious, and irrational. 
 
 I am not, on the other hand, saying that 
 man is a rational animal. It is rather that he 
 is a rationalizing animal. His other instincts 
 must be stirred to their very depths for him 
 to act without some element of reflection fig- 
 uring in his conduct. The occasions when 
 one or even a complex of cruder instincts take 
 the reins are comparatively rare. A crowd in 
 an angry passion, a thoroughly frightened 
 person, an individual in the heat of sexual 
 desire, may act "instinctively" as we say. 
 But for most conduct there is instinctively a 
 weighing of probabilities and conflicting claims 
 which sets at nought the attempt to pigeon- 
 hole action or analyze it with undue refine- 
 ments. In qualification of this statement I 
 
 las, The Great Society; Walter Lippmann, Drift and 
 Mastery; Bertrand Russell, Why Men Fight; A. E. 
 (George Russell), The National Being; H. G. Wells, 
 The Research Magnificent; Anonymous, The Great 
 Analysis; A. E. Zimmern, The Greek Commonwealth; 
 John Dewey, Creative Intelligence, chap. i. 
 
 i8o
 
 THE INSTINCT OF CURIOSITY 
 
 must add, however, that the extent to which 
 rationalization is indulged in, depends upon 
 factors such as the amount of the individual's 
 surplus energy, the hslbits of the community 
 in education, and its general level of intelli- 
 gence. 
 
 Indeed, the first and most interesting ques- 
 tion which presents itself in connection with 
 this instinct is as to the circumstances which 
 give rise to its activity. What are the occa- 
 sions for and the objects of curiosity or thought ? 
 How can thought, if it does have important 
 survival value, be fostered and encouraged? 
 This question is so important that I intend 
 to discuss this instinct from quite a different 
 angle than the rest. From the behavioristic 
 point of view it is difficult to know or state 
 the degree of thought which enters into a given 
 act, since the whole method of the behavioris- 
 tic psychology is to study any given act 
 the behavior objectively, without inquiry 
 into the conscious processes of the actor. Nor 
 would the use of introspection or any so-called 
 "psycho-analysis" help us greatly to find out 
 how much deliberate thought has contributed 
 
 i8i
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 to the modification of conduct. Hence dis- 
 cussion of typical activities is not of prime 
 value in this connection. Confronted, as we 
 are, by an impulse which appears to have 
 made such a relatively poor showing in hu- 
 manity's career, maximum value will be de- 
 rived from this study if we examine the reasons 
 for its prolonged suppression, or at least 
 inactivity, and consider the efforts which 
 are necessary for its liberation. To do this 
 we must first find out under what conditions 
 thought is provoked or required. 
 
 The few suggestions which follow, as to what 
 are the most successful stimuli to rationaliza- 
 tion, are made tentatively, however, because 
 it is obvious that nearly all experience de- 
 mands and succeeds in securing some measure 
 of reflection upon it. The simple answer to 
 the question as to what will provoke thought 
 would be to say that any activity and any per- 
 ceived object may be the occasion of thought 
 (as distinct from perception). But in relation 
 to the present inquiry I am particularly in- 
 terested to discover how, if at all, the func- 
 tioning of this instinct can modify the opera- 
 
 182
 
 THE INSTINCT OF CURIOSITY 
 
 tion of all the rest as they manifest themselves 
 in industrial behavior. I shall, therefore, spe- 
 cify what actions and objects appear to me as 
 most provocative of curiosity and thought; 
 and then proceed to discuss the practical pro- 
 cedure necessary to release the thought im- 
 pulse in industry. 
 
 There is curiosity as to why things happen. 
 
 There is curiosity as to how things happen 
 and how they can be made to happen differ- 
 ently. 
 
 There is curiosity as what is a fair propor- 
 tion of activity among the various impulses 
 of human nature ; in other words, 
 
 There is curiosity as to how the instinctive 
 cravings of human beings can be adjusted to 
 the immediate circumstances of life. 
 
 There is curiosity as to how the circum- 
 stances and institutions of life can be so ordered 
 as to harmonize with the claims and limitations 
 of human nature. 
 
 There is curiosity as to how in all of the 
 above pursuits ends can be achieved with the 
 minimum of effort, along lines of least resis- 
 tance. 
 
 183
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 In a word, this instinct has profound sur- 
 vival value. We are curious about the working 
 of affairs that concern our existence and well- 
 being. We are forced to be so concerned in 
 order to modify our environment to life and 
 to adapt life to its environment. 
 
 Why, then, is it so difficult to think? Why- 
 is there so little thought in this sense of a 
 curious, critical, persistent study of past ex- 
 periences with a view to making future experi- 
 ence more palatable and life more happy? 
 
 I raise these questions here not so much be- 
 cause their answer forms a part of this study 
 as because they inevitably arise. And they 
 arise with some insistence if we are trying to 
 discover how the instincts do and should 
 function in industry. 
 
 I suggest, therefore, that thought demands 
 attendant conditions of the following favor- 
 able character. 
 
 There must first be sufficient individual 
 energy and vitality. Our thought product is 
 directly dependent upon a curious "nervous 
 energy" which, while it may not exactly flow 
 from a surplus of physical energy, is to some 
 
 184 
 
 I
 
 THE INSTINCT OF CURIOSITY 
 
 extent conditional upon it, as that in turn is 
 dependent on the weather, climate, the di- 
 gestion, heredity, and the rest. 
 
 There must be time and leisure if there is 
 to be productive thought. 
 
 There must be a habit of thought, and an 
 atmosphere in which the habit is at least not 
 discouraged. If a suggestion is presented, 
 this instinct, like the others, tends to act upon 
 it. If, on the other hand, the situation is such 
 that the habit of submission, acceptance, and 
 conformity to the "cake of custom" is ascen- 
 dant, thought is difficult, and, from the point 
 of view of immediate results, not very useful. 
 
 There must be the stimulus of a recognized 
 problem or dilemma or hardship. Conscious- 
 ness of the need of adjustment to surrounding 
 conditions and events is the raison d'etre of 
 thought. 
 
 The possession of commanding aims, ends, 
 and purposes can be a powerful stimulus to 
 thinking. 
 
 Finally, and second to none as an important 
 condition, there must be a method of thinking. 
 We are not natively sound reasoners. The 
 
 i8s
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 scientific method comes hard, and post hoc 
 ergo propter hoc argumentation dies slowly. 
 The trial-and-error method of gaining knowl- 
 /cdge is, to be sure, a naive one, but it is a 
 I painfully slow method of procedure in com- 
 parison with that device of experimentation 
 I where the several variable factors are under 
 'control and where hypotheses can be formu- 
 lated and tested at will. 
 
 This rehearsal of familiar truths about the 
 successful functioning of the thought process 
 is of value because it brings to light the rea- 
 sons why thinking is so rare not only among 
 manual workers, but among us all. Nearly 
 all the illustrations I have used thus far can 
 be used to show how infrequently all the fav- 
 orable attendant conditions of sound thought 
 are to be met. Indeed the situation is so 
 serious that further illustration of the absence 
 of right attendant conditions for thought is 
 needed to establish the point with perfect 
 clearness. 
 
 A surplus of nervous and physical energy 
 has never been the common heritage of lab- 
 orers. Those from among the manual workers 
 
 i86
 
 THE INSTINCT OF CURIOSITY 
 
 who have shown unusual energy have been 
 spotted all too rapidly and converted into fore- 
 men; and as such their interests and loyalty 
 have gradually gone over to the employers. 
 And since the direction which energy takes 
 as it is being expended has a great deal to do 
 with determining the things about which we 
 shall think, it is easy to see why the attitude 
 of foremen is one of indifference to working- 
 class problems. Indeed, the typical-up-from- 
 the-ranks foreman is likely to be particularly 
 inflexible toward his men. 
 
 There is a sound psychological reason for 
 this. The foreman has expended an extraor- 
 dinary amount of energy in impressing his 
 employer with his worth and fitness to be fore- 
 man. He has come early and stayed late, 
 taken work home or thought out problems at 
 home, has striven to embrace those qualities 
 of submission, loyalty, and industry which the 
 employer desires. In many cases he has be- 
 come thoroughly fatigued in the pursuit of 
 his position of foremanship and the fatigue 
 converts itself into loathing and disgust for 
 the things against which he has had to fight. 
 ,187
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 And one of the most insistent of these things 
 was his own sense as he worked along in the 
 ranks that his interests were divided, and that 
 he must bring harmony out of the division 
 a harmony in which his interests were to be 
 not one with the workers' but one with the 
 employer's. He saw, for example, that the 
 eight-hour day obstructed his path to fore- 
 manship; that a uniform weekly wage rate 
 offered him no extra compensation for extra 
 effort; that he as worker had other rights to 
 protect, which as prospective company-man 
 he must ignore. In other words, the very sur- 
 plus energy which gives rise to ambition turns 
 the direction of this exceptional workman's 
 thought from workers' to employer's prob- 
 lems. This skimming-off of the cream of lead- 
 ership which might with advantage stay at the 
 top of the labor movement explains, as much 
 as any one thing can, the paucity of strong 
 leaders in the American labor movement. The 
 conditions and capacities which are required 
 for the successful leadership of labor are also 
 required and are paid for more generously 
 and immediately in the management of 
 
 i88
 
 THE INSTINCT OF CURIOSITY 
 
 factories. If we could know the number of 
 capable union agents who have risen to fore- 
 man's rank and never renewed their union 
 membership, we should have at hand the un- 
 mistakable explanation of the unfortunately 
 mediocre abilities which too many union offi- 
 cials display. 
 
 As for those courageous, energetic ones who 
 do remain to lead the labor movement, their 
 place is achieved at such terrific cost of time 
 in petty administration and intellectual con- 
 formity to familiar group purposes and dogmas 
 that it is well-nigh impossible to expect vital, 
 affirmative thought from them. Energy that 
 might go to blaze a trail is consumed in gain- 
 ing the right to be known as a trail-blazer. 
 
 The present situation in the American labor 
 movement is amenable to precisely this inter- 
 pretation. The leaders of the American Fed- 
 eration of Labor have fostered that movement 
 from its infancy. The organization in all its 
 thirty years has had, with the exception of 
 one year, but one president. In consequence 
 the national organization officially sanctions 
 many policies long since discarded by many 
 
 189
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 of the affiliated organizations and less promi- 
 nent leaders. There has been for several years 
 an increasingly severe contest for leadership 
 between the dominant faction and that headed 
 by avowed socialists. Up to the present the 
 old guard, although still rallying under famil- 
 iar battle-cries, has held the field. In conse- 
 quence, able and devoted as the present lead- 
 ership has been in bringing the movement to 
 its present significant place, it is to-day un- 
 questionably lacking in creative intellectual 
 energy. And we are witnessing the familiar 
 spectacle of a large group following the leader 
 in a devotion which betokens inertia, uncriti- 
 cal loyalty, and an absence of realistic think- 
 ing. 
 
 As there must be energy, so there must be 
 leisure for thought. And the working-class 
 poverty in leisure is a commonplace. 
 
 It is n't that people stand about in their 
 leisure hours and "have ideas" in vacuo. But 
 there is a whole process of m.ental stimulation 
 which comes from personal contacts, a reading 
 of the daily news and weekly comment, and 
 the visit at church, lodge, or labor union. And 
 
 190
 
 THE INSTINCT OF CURIOSITY 
 
 this sort of pleasant excitement and exchange 
 ' does not take place often enough for the man 
 who is at his bench ten hours a day, and doz- 
 ing beside the kitchen stove until he retires at 
 nine or ten o'clock at night. No more vivid 
 proof of this difficulty is to be seen than in our 
 public night schools. Many earnest foreigners 
 gather there to learn English and civics. Ses- 
 sions are usually from seven until nine in the 
 evening. It is the testimony of pupils and 
 teachers alike that learning is slow and the 
 tendency to listlessness and drowsiness almost 
 insurmountable. The writer has been present 
 in night schools where there were students 
 sound asleep with their heads in their arms on 
 the desk. It takes exceptional energy to fight 
 off the results of long hours of work. 
 
 But, some one may ask, why cannot work- 
 ers "think" while they work? The organized 
 cigar-makers in some cities hire a reader to 
 sit on a raised stand among them and read 
 aloud for a certain period each day. These 
 men, however, have the advantage of a hand 
 trade with no machines; they work on light, 
 noiseless material with a uniform and com- 
 
 191
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 paratively simple operation to perform. These 
 conditions are exceptional. The noise of the 
 loom, the power sewing-machine, the com- 
 pressed-air drill, the power-transmission belt- 
 ing these familiar concomitants of the mod- 
 ern shop minimize the possibility of thought 
 and conversation even if there were not other 
 distractions incident to doing the job. Our an- 
 swer to the question is, therefore, that to-day 
 the nature of work is such that on the whole 
 the conditions are the exact opposite of those 
 which conduce to thought. 
 
 There arises, then, a second question as to 
 why workers do not make more effective use 
 of the leisure which they have. We hear much 
 querulous scolding at the working-class for 
 not having "intellectual interests" not using 
 time effectually.^ But what is an effective 
 use of leisure.? We have already pointed out 
 that for sound biological reasons a less respon- 
 
 ^ Rebecca West, in the New Republic of October 
 13, 191 7, cites a typical illustration of this attitude: 
 "At a time when most munitions makers were on 
 twelve-hour shifts I heard a woman who was going 
 to become a welfare worker say, ' I shall enjoy teach- 
 ing the poor creatures how to use their spare time.' '* 
 
 192
 
 THE INSTINCT OF CURIOSITY 
 
 sible, more purposeless activity is essential to 
 the human organism submitted to the con- 
 stant strain of the one-sided activity of mod- 
 ern factory work. The need of the normal per- 
 son who has done his day's labor is not for 
 different work, like intellectual effort, but for 
 play re-creation. The only circumstances 
 under which we can ever hope for sound 
 thinking are those which will demand the 
 absorption of less energy, "take less out of* 
 men, and give them a leisure which need not 
 be wholly preempted by the necessity for re- 
 laxation and rest. 
 
 I have said that there must be a habit and 
 atmosphere conducive to thought. So rare is 
 this in the life of the average worker that I 
 turn again to accessible literary illustrations 
 to exemplify the point. Typical of the atmos- 
 phere in which much working life is lived is 
 that depicted in "The Ragged Trousered 
 Philanthropists."^ The good fellows who 
 were unable to follow the somewhat pedantic 
 discourses of the hero of that tale had lived 
 their whole lives in a muddled atmosphere 
 ' See anUy p. 27.
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 of newspaper catch phrases, tobacco smoke, 
 and whiskey fumes until consecutive intellec- 
 tual effort had become impossible. On the 
 other hand, the earnest, eager group of Rus- 
 sian Jewish radicals pictured for us in "Com- 
 rade Yetta" breathed an air in which books 
 and ideas and intellectual pursuits were the 
 common property of all and by which all were 
 stirred to their bit of intellectual achieve- 
 ment. 
 
 But the atmosphere of intellectual avidity 
 in which our Russian Jews thrive cannot be 
 taken as characteristic of the mental environ- 
 ment of all American manual workers. We 
 have rather to remember that the results of 
 contemporary grammar-school instruction on 
 the human thinking apparatus are not en- 
 couraging and that, despite this grave fact, 
 about ninety per cent of our children get no 
 other formal stimulus to intellection. The 
 result is easily foreseen. Conformity in all 
 lines of thought and action is looked upon as 
 the great virtue. 
 
 It is a mistake to think of the rank and file 
 of workmen as radicals. They are not; they 
 
 194
 
 THE INSTINCT OF CURIOSITY 
 
 are religiously, politically, and economically 
 "orthodox" with a tendency toward progres- 
 sivism.^ We see in their life the insidious po- 
 tency of the instinct to be led. And when this 
 tendency dominates, where there is a pervasive 
 sense of restfulness and ease in accepting the 
 ideas of priest, ward boss, employer, or trade- 
 union official, there is little encouragement 
 to originality, curiosity, and thought. When, 
 however, we consider that a condition of 
 hardship or intolerable injustice is another 
 possible prod to thought, it would seem 
 that the manual workers of to-day are amply 
 goaded. 
 
 The difficulty here is that for various reasons 
 there is not among the workers, except sporad- 
 ically and occasionally, any compelling rec- 
 ognition of their own hardship, of the prob- 
 lems, and dilemmas to which their subjection 
 bears witness. The suggestions that reach the 
 worker through the press, pulpit, and plat- 
 
 ^ Intimate studies of working class neighborhoods 
 in this country confirm this view. See Lillian Wald, 
 The House on Henry Street; R. A. Woods, Americans 
 in Process; R. A. Woods, The City Wilderness; Mary 
 K. Sirakhovitch, The American City Workers^ World. 
 
 195
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 form are largely in the nature of red herring 
 drawn sometimes deliberately across the 
 troubled track of life. Repetition of the catch 
 phrases of politics, the artificially stimulated 
 enthusiasm for professional baseball, the play- 
 ing-up of the sensational murder or divorce are 
 among the activities calculated not only to 
 nullify the thought process, and to negate 
 suggestions of hardship and oppressiveness in 
 working-class living conditions, but also to 
 occupy leisure time fully with matters which 
 are of only transient interest and of no signi- 
 ficance. 
 
 It is in relation to precisely this fact that 
 the psychological meaning of the older social- 
 ists' constant harping on the importance of 
 "class consciousness" is to be understood. 
 "Class consciousness" is intended to connote 
 not so much a stirring to physical conflict or 
 trial at arms as a consciousness of exploita- 
 tion, expropriation, and "wage slavery"; 
 recognition that capitalism means chronic 
 over-production with the search for foreign 
 markets and consequent wars, with recurring 
 cycles of depression and unemployment 
 
 196
 
 THE INSTINCT OF CURIOSITY 
 
 in all of which the worker is regarded as sim- 
 ply the "labor commodity." The workers are 
 urged to be class conscious because that means 
 having an acute sense of existing personal in- 
 justice and externally determined misery, which 
 will prick to thought, action, and solidarity. 
 
 The reasons why this appeal has not bitten 
 more deeply into the minds of the workers in 
 this country become plainer in the light of 
 this study. They are, it would seem, the very 
 reasons that we are advancing to show why 
 thought itself is not more prevalent. The 
 socialist propaganda has had the handicap of 
 being to a considerable degree couched in an 
 academic, intellectualistic lingo which was less 
 reflective of an accurate analysis of American 
 conditions than of an exegesis of Marx uncrit- 
 ically applied to them. For a long time Amer- 
 ican socialists were not at pains to meet the 
 working-class on its own ground. They have 
 themselves been the victims of their devotion 
 to a leader exactly as were the workers they 
 were exhorting to "awake" and "unite." 
 
 The Marxians can point the moral also to 
 another tale. In the first instance they were 
 
 197
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 close and serious thinkers passionately in 
 search of that truth which would set the work- 
 ers free. Later the evidences of dogmatism 
 were unmistakable ; ^ and the difficulty of se- 
 curing straight thinking great. This course of 
 events is all too familiar in the history of ideas. 
 Dogmatism, although not the inevitable re- 
 sult of thinking, has constantly to be guarded 
 against as the thought process flows on. There 
 is but one antidote for this condition; be 
 sure that the process which goes on is a thought 
 process and not one simply reiterative of ideas 
 worked out when energy, patience, and a 
 spirit of inquiry were at the maximum. It is 
 only such a persistent effort in thinking close 
 to the facts which will lead workers to under- 
 stand that their present condition is neithei 
 foreordained nor necessary. 
 
 Another way of stating this point, that 
 there must be consciousness of maladjustment 
 to arouse thought, is to say that there must be 
 a desire for a better standard of living. This 
 
 ^ See Vladimir G. Simkhovitch, Marxism versus 
 Socialism. See also in order that the whole contro- 
 versy may be available, I. M. Rubinow, Was Marx 
 Wrong ? 
 
 198
 
 THE INSTINCT OF CURIOSITY 
 
 standard is largely a psychological concep- 
 tion that derives from the activity of the in- 
 stincts of family, self-assertion, possessiveness, 
 and the desire to have not only the means 
 of existence assured, but also an opportunity 
 for leisure, companionship, and thought. The 
 agencies which point the way to a higher 
 standard be they advertisements of desira* 
 ble comforts, novels, moving pictures, glimpses 
 of well-bom and cultivated people are agen- 
 cies of discontent and precursors of the stir- 
 ring question, "How can I be more like that?" 
 It is, in fact, to this popularization of the rudi- 
 ments of culture and refinement that we owe 
 the feeling of insecurity felt by the present 
 holders of power in church, state, and indusr- 
 try. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, 
 not to those who have it, but to those who 
 have more knowledge and have abused the 
 power that it brings. 
 
 Are we, then, brought to this dilemma, that 
 we become discontented only when we think 
 and that we think only when we become dis- 
 contented? The answer must be in the nega- 
 tive. We are discontented because we are 
 
 199
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 human, because our impulses in their con- 
 stant impact on Hfe never come to an equili- 
 brium that is, to harmonious adjustment 
 with our environment. And it is the function 
 of thought to help us secure that adjustment 
 and approach an equiUbrium as a Hmit. 
 
 The extent of discontent among manual 
 workers has been affirmed again and again in 
 this discussion. Yet I have also emphasized 
 the underlying trend to orthodoxy and sub- 
 missiveness in working-class opinion. The two 
 are really obverse sides of the same pheno- 
 menon. If I have stressed the part played by 
 submissiveness, it is not to deny the existence 
 of discontent, but rather to imply that a re- 
 pression of impulses is now taking place. For- 
 midable suppressed desires are being created 
 which must some day come to an abortive 
 expression in the course of which little thought 
 will be possible, just as little thought is pos- 
 sible when one is pursued by a river which has 
 broken over its dikes. Submission is present 
 because submission has been necessary for 
 survival; but discontent is also simultaneously 
 present because some more adequate expres- 
 
 r 
 
 200
 
 THE INSTINCT OF CURIOSITY 
 
 sion of the other instincts is also necessary to 
 survival. The time comes when people weigh- 
 ing the evils which they endure in one hand 
 and those involved in an effort toward release 
 in the other, decide in favor of the latter; and 
 thus, if judgment has been wisely exercised, 
 secure relief and survival. 
 
 If, now, over and above the desire to be 
 adjusted to one's environment or to improve 
 one's standard of living there exists a pur- 
 pose for future fulfillment such as "the 
 kingdom of God on earth" or "socialism" or 
 the " cooperative commonwealth " this pur- 
 pose may also become a fruitful source of 
 thought as to the best means of realizing it. 
 Or it may, as I have hinted, through the in- 
 fluence of dogma seal the mind to thought so 
 that exaltation becomes a curse. Similarly, 
 thought may be inhibited by a rapt contem- 
 plation of the end desired. These familiar 
 truths are interestingly illustrated in the con- 
 trasted policies of the English Fabian Society 
 and in the orthodox socialist attitude in Amer- 
 ica as we see it manifested in the party press. 
 The English organization has been opportun- 
 
 20I
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 ist and constructive in interest and effort, seek- 
 ing to work out step by step the details of 
 democratic government in a great industrial 
 commonwealth. The American party has 
 tended to set a rather static "socialism ac- 
 cording to Marx" as its goal and anathema- 
 tized measures and advances which were in 
 the direction of "social reform." All new ideas 
 are brought to the touchstone of a given dogma 
 and praised or blamed as they correspond 
 with a preconceived criterion. 
 
 Another undoubted, although less tangible, 
 source of inhibition to thought has been the 
 belief that the injustices of this world are to 
 be righted in the next; that although earth is 
 a "desert drear" a heaven of great comfort is 
 in store. Escape as the chief aim in life has 
 always proved sure death to realistic intellec- 
 tion. 
 
 Fortunately the purposes of life which are 
 dominant to-day are more provocative and 
 more immediately compelling. Industrial in- 
 justice gets its hold upon our minds and hearts 
 because of hopes of brotherhood, fraternity, 
 democracy and similar aims more or less 
 
 202
 
 THE INSTINCT OF CURIOSITY 
 
 definitely conceived. Back of the A.F. of L., 
 back of the I.W.W., He deep-rooted aspira- 
 tions of this generous character which, at 
 least in a general way, give momentum and 
 direction to the attitude and policy of those 
 organizations. 
 
 There remains to consider the importance 
 of a method of thinking. The dogmatism of 
 social groups of all sorts political parties, 
 trade-unions, churches grows from the fact 
 of group submissiveness and inertia. But it 
 also grows from the sheer inability of group 
 members to think critically, positively, and 
 clearly. Why is the A.F. of L. still reluctant 
 to support a legislatively secured eight-hour 
 day for men? Has there been an exhaustive 
 compilation of relevant evidence? Have the 
 cases where it has been tried been studied to 
 see the effect on unionism? Why is the A.F. 
 of L. so absolutely opposed to the scientific 
 management movement? I am not raising 
 here any question as to the tightness of their 
 opposition,^ but rather as to the method of 
 
 ' I might with equal relevance ask why the leaders 
 of the scientific management movement have been so 
 
 203
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 arriving at important judgments. Has it 
 studied the effects of work on the workers in 
 scientifically managed shops? Has it found 
 Gilt exactly what the workers in those shops 
 think about the system? Does it know the 
 relative importance of the different elements 
 of the "Taylor System" in different shops in 
 the light of recent partial applications of Tay- 
 lor's methods ? I am not citing the attitude of 
 the A.F. of L. in any invidious spirit; it sim- 
 ply furnishes a convenient and familiar illus- 
 tration (of which there are legion in all classes 
 of society) of the lack of an impartial, scientific 
 habit of thought and inquiry on problems re- 
 garding which it has very positive convictions. 
 This is not the place to expound the scien- 
 tific method of thinking. My attempt is sim- 
 ply to emphasize that the scientific method is 
 still relatively unknown and unused. By a 
 great majority of people ideas are rarely ac- 
 cepted after a process of examination of the 
 
 bitter against the unions. A brief but suggestive 
 statement of the elements of this controversy from the 
 employer's point of view is to be found in C. Bertrand 
 Thompson, The Theory and Practice of Scientific Man- 
 agement. Houghton Mifflin Company, 191 7. 
 
 204
 
 THE INSTINCT OF CURIOSITY 
 
 facts out of which they grow. The tendency 
 of the human organism is to get along on as 
 narrow a margin of intellectual effort as pos- 
 sible. An attempt to justify all one's ideas 
 by a study of their correspondence to the real- 
 ities of any situation is an effort made only on 
 strong provocation by persons of extraordi- 
 nary energy and spirit. 
 
 This last statement does not, of course, 
 contradict my point that the initial impulsion 
 to thinking is instinctive. If we bear in mind 
 that the instincts exist to conduce to self and 
 group preservation, it becomes clear that the 
 survival value of thought will vary from time 
 to time, just as does the survival value of 
 fighting. And exactly as it is true to say that 
 we get on with as little fighting as we safely 
 can, so it is logical to conclude that most of 
 us think only when and to the extent that we 
 are forced to. That this does not set neces- 
 sarily narrow limits to the thought function 
 will be clear when we recollect the great num- 
 ber of problems which to-day confront society 
 for solution if we would have any peace of mind 
 or comfort of body. 
 
 20S
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 One further important fact about the opera- 
 tion of thought remains to be noted. I refer 
 to the effect of fear on thought. Fear paralyzes 
 the mind and inhibits thought. Fear is the 
 emotional accompaniment of real or supposed 
 danger to the individual or group. In a situ- 
 ation where the terror of annihilation is pres- 
 ent no new ideas can enter. The attention is 
 hypnotized by the one problem of getting out 
 of danger of self-preservation. 
 
 This fact is of great significance in the in- 
 dustrial world. At the core of existence for 
 many workers is a paralyzing fearfulness : fear 
 that the job is going to stop ; fear that the doc- 
 tor's bill will be too great; fear that another 
 child is to be born fear, in other words, that 
 income will prove inadequate for decent liveli- 
 hood. Life lived constantly under or near to 
 such a cloud of terrorism can never know the 
 meaning of real thought; can contribute little 
 to the energies and effective protest of group 
 revolt. The "slum proletariat" has ever been 
 recognized as that remnant of the working-class 
 which could be reached last by the customary 
 methods of labor agitation and organization. 
 
 266
 
 THE INSTINCT OF CURIOSITY 
 
 Does the evidence indicate overwhelmingly, 
 then, that this job of thinking is one which is 
 undertaken infrequently and with little suc- 
 cess? I answer that this seems now to be the 
 case; but that it need be the case I am less 
 prepared to admit. Rather must we be at 
 pains, in view of our knowledge of the neces- 
 sary conditions, the difficulties, and the im- 
 portance of thought, to create situations in 
 which intellection becomes more possible and 
 more easy. The proper "organization of 
 thought " ^ is a problem crying out for inten- 
 sive deliberation and invention. Upon suc- 
 cessful accomplishment in this direction will 
 depend the rapidity of our progress in bring- 
 ing the facts of human nature and the prac- 
 tices of industry into working harmony. 
 
 But think what we lack to-day: physical 
 vitality, leisure, habits of thought, a recognition 
 of hardship, clear social purposes or any pur- 
 poses at all, a right and economical method of 
 thinking. When, and only when, we are pre- 
 pared on a universal basis to make good these 
 deficiencies, can we expect people to become 
 
 ^ See Graham Wallas, The Great Society^ chap. xi. 
 207
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 thoughtful, intelHgent, and mentally active. 
 Happily none of these attendant conditions 
 are impossible to secure, once we set out to get 
 them. Thus far there has not been enough 
 popular faith in the possibility of wise, human 
 control of life to make us undertake to uni- 
 versalize intelligence. The day is coming, 
 however, when we shall have a real vision of 
 the happiness which an intelligent control of 
 the world's material and spiritual forces can 
 bring. And when that day comes, we shall call 
 into play, as we never yet have, the human 
 being's native desire to be intellectually master 
 of his fate.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 Our sketch of the characteristic types of in- 
 stinctive behavior among workers in modern 
 industry is now completed. The attempt has 
 been to suggest, in connection with each of a 
 number of undeniably influential instinctive 
 endowments, what their eff^ect upon conduct 
 is and can be expected to be. The facts are 
 matters of common observation. What, then, 
 do they mean? Do they mean that our in- 
 stincts are playing at hide and seek with each 
 other and with us; that conduct is "predeter- 
 mined," capricious, and subject to the pull 
 and haul of impulses as if it were a carcass 
 being pulled in as many directions as there are 
 hungry wolves with teeth embedded in its 
 flesh? Or can we point to some place where 
 the element of plan and will and intention enter 
 in? Can we from this array of incidents de- 
 duce any valid conclusions as to a sound rela- 
 tion between the conduct of industry and the 
 conduct of the individual? 
 
 209
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 Human nature in the sense of being a total 
 of innate tendencies cannot, it is true, be 
 changed. It is given. But our reactions to 
 situations change whether we wish it or not, 
 and they can be made to change both in kind 
 and in degree. The causes of some of these 
 changes we have already indicated. A more 
 complete list of the influences which can enter 
 to modify instinctive reactions is now neces- 
 sary as serving to emphasize not only the 
 strength and number of forces which alter the 
 expression of native tendencies, but also the 
 subtlety required in analysis. 
 
 Observation shows that the following influ- 
 ences are among the most important in their 
 modifying effect on individual conduct: There 
 are the environmental factors to which adap- 
 tation is made for purposes of survival ; namely, 
 climate and weather. Instinctive responses 
 will vary with the degree and kind of stimula- 
 tion, with the motives which individuals or 
 groups have conceived as actuating their con- 
 duct, with the sex, with the relative strength 
 of instincts inherited by the individual, with 
 the age and physical condition of the individual 
 
 2IO
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 and with his race, with the habits instilled in 
 youth and the institutions which prevail in 
 the community, with the system of education, 
 and with the meaning which is imputed to life. 
 With such an array of variants and modi- 
 fiers to our instinctive responses I will seem 
 bold, indeed, in venturing to assert that one 
 value of a closer knowledge of the operation 
 of instinct is as an aid in forecasting conduct. 
 But such is nevertheless the case. As our 
 knowledge increases and as our technique of 
 human analysis develops,^ the elements of 
 
 * An interesting concrete case in point comes to 
 hand in a recent report (Memorandum i8) of the 
 British Health of Munition Workers Committee. In 
 studying how to secure maximum output with a 
 minimum of fatigue it has become possible for Dr. 
 Vernon to prophesy variations in the quantity of 
 product through the week as well as to say approxi- 
 mately how many hours a week can profitably be 
 spent by an individual at his machine. For example, 
 he says, regarding a group of eighty women whom he 
 studies, "had these women been working uniformly 
 a nominal fifty-hour week, their gross output would 
 have been as large as when they were working a nomi- 
 nal sixty-six-hour week, and considerably greater 
 than when they were working a seventy-seven-hour 
 weeL In other words, a considerable addition to the 
 leisure time of the operative would have substantially 
 improved the output of the factory." 
 
 211
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 each situation tend to stand out in clearer 
 relief and the forces at work to produce new 
 situations become more capable of estimation 
 and even measurement. Our increasing pro- 
 phetic power is not, of course, to be applied 
 in any meticulous or trivial way. The pre- 
 dictability of conduct stands rather as a broad 
 truth to be broadly applied. There is no occa- 
 sion to let the mind run riot as to unessential 
 details of the prospective conduct of individ- 
 uals or groups. But there is every reason to 
 understand the social and economic conditions 
 and characteristics of a town, state, or nation 
 which are manifestly repressing human nature 
 and making life ignoble and mean. For we 
 do know how human nature has reacted to 
 certain typical situations. We know the limits 
 of human endurance. We know increasingly 
 the potentialities of people under stated limi- 
 tations. 
 
 More than this is a necessary prerequisite, 
 however, of any accurate guess as to the re- 
 sponse which human nature will make under 
 defined circumstances. It must also be estab- 
 lished that under the same stimuli and with 
 
 212
 
 CX)NCLUSION 
 
 similar attendant surroundings human nature 
 will react in identical ways; that it is, in other 
 words, subject to law. Whether the scattering 
 evidence which has been here brought together 
 lends plausibility to the assertion that the 
 elements of human nature are subject to law, 
 remains, of course, for the reader to deter- 
 mine. But that like stimuli produce like re- 
 sponses would seem to be a fair inference from 
 our facts. The history of familiar working- 
 class behavior from the Jewish uprisings in 
 Egypt against Pharaoh, through the revolts 
 of the Spartan slaves, the propaganda of the 
 Gracchi, and the overthrow of the feudal 
 lords, down to the proletarian movements of 
 to-day, bears witness to a similar response to 
 psychologically analogous situations. 
 
 Moreover, a forecasting of conduct is made 
 more and more possible, easy, and socially 
 useful because it implies among other things 
 a close study of the individual and of his en- 
 vironment. The very complexity of human 
 motivation and endowments invites special 
 "case" analysis. We cannot modify activity 
 or divert conduct into safe channels unless we 
 
 213
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 know our man. The first enormous gain of a 
 psychological approach to industry is a new 
 sense of the importance of the individual per- 
 sonality/ and of the limits within which it 
 works. The individual or the specific group 
 achieves a place in constructive thought about 
 situations, which is not only more conspicu- 
 ous than formerly, but more provocative of 
 wise emphasis in the future. Under these 
 circumstances treatment of people becomes 
 more considerate, discerning, and deft. "The 
 discovery of the individual" takes place, of 
 course, recurrently every few generations. But 
 to see the individual as a compact of ascer- 
 tainable impulses and tendencies joining with 
 other individuals of like structure to carry on 
 the vast modern enterprise of our economic 
 life, is to see empires in terms at once realis- 
 tic, vivid, and wieldy. It is to get a really 
 new and fresh outlook on people and progress. 
 
 ' Compare The Athenceum (English), August, 
 1917, p. 382: "The significance of the new trend of 
 thought in trade-unionism and of syndicaHsm and 
 Guild socialism, lies in the fact that they are a reac- 
 tion against the sacrifice of the producer to the con- 
 sumer. They proclaim the doctrine that a place must 
 be found for human personality in industry." 
 
 214
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 This is an incalculable gain. Industry has 
 been in danger of losing sight of the person. 
 Now we get back to people to men and 
 women whose passions energize the structure 
 of industry. Workers cease to be "hands" 
 and numbers, and become human beings. We 
 hear much of "humanizing" our industrial 
 system. What is involved in this is nothing 
 more nor less than a discovery of personali- 
 ties, a knowledge of their human natures, and 
 an effort to give those natures a chance. 
 
 No exhaustive analysis of the elementary 
 characteristics of people has been here at- 
 tempted. But we have seen that certain out- 
 standing traits are causally related to much of 
 the prevailing conduct in modern industry. 
 And a knowledge of the human tendencies 
 from the parental through the entire list to 
 curiosity has thrown light on events which 
 may heretofore have seemed to be without sense 
 or reason. The individual is now seen as a 
 compact of ascertainable impulses, who acts as 
 he does because known forces, external and in- 
 ternal, are at work to, influence his behavior. 
 
 The individualization of industry demands, 
 
 215
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 however, something more than a regard for 
 the conduct of each person separately. Sound 
 analysis demands that such study be inex- 
 tricably tied up with the attempt to apply 
 our fragmentary knowledge about the struc- 
 ture, functions, and characteristics of groups 
 and group behavior. We have seen how largely 
 the conduct of men is determined by their 
 group associations, and it is idle to suppose 
 that in the absence of light upon their loyal- 
 ties and attachments we can calculate their 
 individual reactions. To be sure, our knowl- 
 edge about group reactions is far from ade- 
 quate, but there is sufficient promise in what 
 we have to afford encouragement. It seems 
 probable, for example, that there is great prac- 
 tical value in the application of the idea that 
 instincts, if not expressed or successfully di- 
 verted into channels of equivalent impulsive 
 value, are a source of increasing danger as the 
 suppression goes on. If it is true that three 
 alternatives are present in the working-out 
 of all natural tendencies; namely, expression, 
 suppression, or sublimation this opens up 
 an extraordinary field for social experimenta- 
 
 216
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 tion. The possibilities in the direction of sub- 
 limation of those traits for which civilization 
 seems to have comparatively little use, appear 
 to be infinite. In one sense the central problem 
 of progress hinges upon this very question. 
 Can people, our study forces us to ask, find 
 in the institutions and environment of modern 
 life conditions which allow for proper play of 
 all the inherent impulses which demand ex- 
 pression and some measure of satisfaction? 
 And this problem, we must understand, is 
 preponderantly a group problem. For to-day, 
 as never before, we live in such immediate 
 contact with so many people that our satisfac- 
 tions and activities have to come to us largely 
 in group events and in the behavior of people 
 associated together for special purposes, of 
 which the purpose of producing goods in 
 industry is the one to which we here have 
 given special attention. 
 
 The conduct of groups in industry, like that 
 of individuals, is also to be more readily under- 
 stood when we know even a little about the 
 moving energies out of which it proceeds. 
 This means, of course, that a change in causes 
 
 217
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 will bring a change in efifects. And experience 
 shows that this is true. If, to take an example 
 which is impossible only in degree, a twenty- 
 five per cent increase in the wages of all mem- 
 bers of a mill community would in a given period 
 of time halve the arrests, would increase the 
 births, reduce the sick-rate by twenty per cent, 
 and add forty per cent to the saving banks' 
 deposits, there would seem to exist in hu- 
 man affairs an element of organic relationship 
 which opens the door to wise control and 
 effective interposition. 
 
 In other words, industry discovers again the 
 precious value of each individual. But that 
 value, we now see, is to be realized only as we 
 give measurable latitude to the behavior of 
 groups trade-unions, cooperative societies, 
 political parties no less than to the activities 
 of the individuals within them. If we are really 
 to set up personality as one of the major ends 
 in life, we must see to it that all the impulses 
 secure expression; and not the least important 
 of these is the desire (and necessity) for con- 
 certed action in associations of various sorts. 
 Personality as a touchstone requires the pro 
 
 218
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 vision of chances for rounded self-expression 
 and for conscious self-direction. The institu- 
 tional arrangements which assure these are 
 naturally democratic in method and in spirit. 
 The demand for a recognition and for a free 
 play of instincts in industry ends, if the testi- 
 mony of this study is accurate, in a demand 
 for democracy in industry. 
 
 Our facts, therefore, appear to have brought 
 us to several fairly definite conclusions : 
 
 First, that the causes of the conduct of in- 
 dividuals and groups are knowable. Although 
 there are subtleties and complexities we can 
 come to approximate knowledge of the origins 
 of the characteristic reactions of people to 
 given types of situations. We can begin to 
 answer with some beginnings of accuracy the 
 question which is so often put: "Why do they 
 act that way?" 
 
 Second, that human nature and its elements 
 are subject to law a fact from which we 
 may properly derive a modicum of hope and 
 encouragement as to the future of the race; 
 because this fact carries with it the conclu- 
 sion: 
 
 219
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 Third, that conduct, if subject to law, can 
 be controlled if we can control its causes. Hu- 
 man nature will respond in varying ways to 
 varying stimuli, and if we supply a stimulus 
 which is calculated to evoke only the more 
 socially beneficent impulses of human beings 
 (assuming that we know which these are), we 
 can rely upon the desired reactions taking 
 place. 
 
 Fourth, that the determining conditions 
 of conduct, being in origin economic, geo- 
 graphic, physiological, and psychological, are 
 definitely capable of a measure of manipulation 
 and variation. 
 
 Fifth, that since adequate expression of in- 
 dividual and group impulses requires a con- 
 siderable measure of self-direction, it seems, not 
 unlikely that the demand for an extension of 
 the democratic method is in fundamental har- 
 mony with the facts of human psychology. 
 
 We seem, therefore, to be entitled to a point 
 of view toward the problems of adjusting in- 
 dustry to instinct which is on the whole hope- 
 ful and affirmative. Reasons, remedies, and 
 new criteria begin to materialize where many 
 
 220
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 have thought that only caprice and chance 
 obtained. Human nature begins to seem more 
 comprehensible, more tangible, more suscepti- 
 ble of approach and control. And people, as 
 we see them in their active associations and 
 individual preoccupations, take on a certain 
 significance and richness of which the machine 
 era has tended utterly to strip them. Each 
 stands out strikingly different and unique, yet 
 all conform broadly to a common (and increas- 
 ingly understandable) type. Each presents a 
 problem of adjustment and growth which is 
 fascinating in its delicacy and infinite in its 
 possibilities. We get a fine sense of the artistry 
 of life; of a potential flowering of personality 
 which will give to life the grace and charm of 
 a waste place made beautiful with trees and 
 flowers. We know that if only we had the 
 patience and insight to see each other as we 
 are, we should not be racked wanderers "on 
 the sea of life enisled," but comrades on a 
 joyous quest. 
 
 Are we, then, to say that industry must 
 square its practices with the facts of our hu- 
 man structure and impulses? Or are we to 
 
 221
 
 INSTINCTS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 say that human nature must by some wise 
 discipline be made more amenable to the pur- 
 poses of our economic life ? Or are we rather 
 to say that knowing the demands which in- 
 dustry must set itself to supply and knowing 
 human nature as it is, we should seek both 
 institutions and purposes for life which will 
 make possible a reconciliation of our needs, 
 our knowledge, and our limitations? 
 
 Such questions inevitably present them- 
 selves in reflection upon our facts. But the 
 answers to them lead out and beyond the field 
 of immediate inquiry. I shall be content if 
 the foregoing suggestions and questions about 
 the springs of human behavior throw some 
 light upon the confused affairs of modern in- 
 dustry; give a sharpness of outline to its most 
 salient defects; and hint ever so tentatively 
 and broadly at the kind of economic organi- 
 zation we must demand if human nature is to 
 be coped with and the richness of human life 
 enhanced. 
 
 THE END
 
 CAMBRIDGK . MASSACHUSETTS 
 U . S . A
 
 Date Due 
 
 JAN 28 
 
 
 
 
 DEC 17 
 
 1966 
 
 
 
 DEC 1 9 
 
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