ROBINSON CRUSOE, SOCIAL ENGINEER "Robinson Crusoe, a fairy tale to the child, a book of adventure to the young, is a work on social philosophy to the mature. It is a picture of civilization. The essential moral attributes of man, his innate impulses as a social being, his absolute dependence on society, even as a solitary indi- vidual, his subjection to the physical world, and his alliance with the animal world, the statical elements of social philos- ophy, and the germs of man's historical evolution have never been touched with more sagacity, and, assuredly, have never been idealized with such magical simplicity and truth/' FREDERIC HARRISON ROBINSON CRUSOE SOCIAL ENGINEER How THE DISCOVERY OF ROBINSON CRUSOE SOLVES THE LABOR PROBLEM AND OPENS THE PATH TO INDUSTRIAL PEACE BY HENRY E. JACKSON AUTHOR OF "THE NEW CHIVALRY," ''A COMMUNITY CENTER/' ETC. PRESIDENT OF NATIONAL COMMUNITY BOARD Robinson Crusoe is the epic of self-help. JOHN MORLEY. NEW YORK E. P. BUTTON & COMPANY 681 FIFTH AVENUE Copyright, 1922 By E. P. Button & Company H All Rights Reserved PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA Dedicated TO ALL WHO LABOR IN MODERN INDUSTRY, BOTH MANAGERS AND MEN, IN THE HOPE THAT THROUGH THE NEW SCIENCE OF HUMAN ECON- OMY THEY WILL DISCOVER THAT THEY ARE NOT RIVALS BUT ALLIES IN A COMMON ENTERPRISE. FOREWORD IN remote recesses of lonely mountain sides trav- elers frequently have found the skeleton remains of two animals lying side by side, as if they had per- ished together by mutual consent. It is a curious phenomenon. It means that two buck deer had engaged in mor- tal combat and locked horns in a war of extermina- tion, from which the only escape was by slow star- vation. It was a peace without victory for either. It was the peace of death. Neither could entangle the other without entangling himself. You cannot hold another man down in the gutter without remain- ing down in the gutter with him. The tragedy of the horn-locked deer aptly exhibits the condition of capitalists and laborers during the past one hundred and fifty years. They, too, as in the case of the deer, have like interests. These like interests are common interests. Industrial conflicts are, therefore, civil wars. Mutual hatred, as with the deer, has blinded them to this fact and produced tragic results. The aim of this book is to state, in popular and picturesque fashion, what the discovery of a commu- nity of interest would mean to modern industry. The vii viii FOREWORD author believes that a policy built on this discovery is the path to industrial peace, and that there is no other. He also believes that this principle has the creative power to build a New Industrial America. HENRY E. JACKSON. Washington, D.C. September, 1922. CONTENTS PART I. THE SECRET OF ROBINSON CRUSOE'S POPULARITY CHAPTER 'AGE I. AN UNDISCOVERED BOOK 3 II. A BOOK CAPTURED BY BOYS ..... 9 III. A JOKE ON THE BRITISH NATION .... 16 IV. JOURNALISM BORN IN A GOAL .... 21 V. LYING LIKE THE TRUTH 23 VI. THE FIRST MODERN NOVEL 28 VII. ROMANCE WITHOUT A LOVE STORY . . .31 VIII. THE CHARM OF UNCERTAINTY . . . .37 IX. ROMANTICIZING THE COMMONPLACE . . . 40 X. EVERY INCH A MAN 46 PART II. ROBINSON CRUSOE'S CHALLENGE TO MODERN INDUSTRY I. GREATNESS UNAWARES 53 II. CRUSOE AS A RIP VAN WINKLE .... 56 III. THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION .... 61 IV. THE DESERTED VILLAGE 67 V. THE CRY OF THE CHILDREN 73 VI. WHY LABOR UNIONS AROSE 83 VII. LABOR AS A COMMODITY 91 ix x CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE VIII. THE RIGHT TO GET DRUNK 97 IX. NOTHING BUT WAGES 105 X. A DIVIDED HOUSE 114 PART III. HOW ROBINSON CRUSOE SOLVES THE LABOR PROBLEM I. POLITICS AND INDUSTRY 123 II. FRACTIONIZING A MAN 135 III. MAN AS A "TIME-BINDER" 141 IV. A MAY-DAY PARTY 155 V. WHOSE BUSINESS is THIS? 159 VI. CREATING A DISPUTE 174 VII. REVOLUTION BY CONSENT 208 VIII. A BILL OF PARTICULARS 227 IX. NEW INDUSTRIAL AMERICA 256 X. SPORTSMANSHIP 277 AFTERWORD 291 LIST OF REFERENCES . 293 INDEX . 297 PART 1 THE SECRET OF ROBINSON CRUSOE'S POPULARITY "Robinson Crusoe" contains, not for boys but for men, more religion, more philosophy, more political economy, more anthropology, than are found in many elaborate treatises on these special subjects. FREDERICK HARRISON. PART I THE SECRET OF ROBINSON CRUSOE'S POPULARITY CHAPTER I AN UNDISCOVERED BOOK / "T" N HAT "Robinson Crusoe" challenges modern industry on the foundation of its structure and also offers the solution of its problem which, if operated, guarantees to open the path to permanent industrial peace, is the audacious proposition which this book undertakes to demonstrate. It looks like a big contract. It is. But the writer believes that it is not only not an impossible task, but will reveal the obvious and only solution of industrial unrest. Inasmuch as the obvious is always the last thing discovered, it will be necessary, for the sake of clarity, to take the reader on a quest for the secret of the amazing popularity of "Robinson Crusoe." When this secret is made apparent, it will lead us by an unmistakable path to the heart of our ques- tion. As compensation to the reader for the delay in coming to grips with the subject, the romantic 3 ROBINSON CRUSOE, SOCIAL ENGINEER >; :thb> remarkable book will entertain him sufficiently while he journeys toward the application of its secret to the labor problem. It is rare pleasure to a writer or speaker, when he feels that he is introducing his audience to a subject new and fresh. It is likewise a pleasure to his audience. Such a pleasure is now ours, for my subject is : "The life and strange, surprising adven- tures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner, who lived eight and twenty years all alone in an uninhab- ited island off the coast of America, near the mouth of the great river Aroonoque; having been cast on shore by shipwreck, wherein all the men perished but himself. With an account how he was at last as strangely delivered by pirates. Written by him- self." The title page here quoted undoubtedly has a familiar sound and carries us far back across the years to the days of fresh delight, when as boys we joined Crusoe in our imagination in those strange adventures out into the big world, and often wished we might have done so in reality. For almost every boy and girl has entertained the secret desire and purpose to run away from home, because they find the world of adulthood too tame and too oppressive. To that mood in a boy's life, Crusoe makes an irresistible appeal and also supplies a soothing antidote. At least he can make his adven- ture by proxy and enjoy the thrill of it vicariously. How then can it be said that a book is new and AN UNDISCOVERED BOOK 5 fresh which has been read by every boy and girl in the English-speaking world for the past two hun- dred years? No kind of subject is so difficult to understand the inner meaning of as is the thing we think we already know. The significance of the commonplace eludes us just because it is regarded as commonplace. It is handicapped by too much superficial familiarity. Every one, for example, is quite sure that he knows the color of apple blos- soms or the meaning of the Lord's Prayer, whereas a few test questions disclose the fact that it is rare to find anyone who understands either of them. In order to learn the true nature of familiar things, it is necessary to go through the process of unlearning the false. But to unlearn is a painful process, especially if the process runs counter to self-interest, or to childhood impressions. Both of these influences have delayed the discovery of the real "Robinson Crusoe." It may serve to awaken us to the value of this undiscovered book, if we observe the curious use made of it by one of the characters in Wilkie Collins' "Moonstone." In this story, the old servant, Gabriel Betteredge, has a superstitious reverence for "Robinson Cru- soe." The book is his Bible. "I have read," he says, "a heap of books in my time; I am a scholar in my own way. Though turned seventy, I possess an active memory, and legs to correspond. You are not to take it, if you please, as the saying of an ignorant man, when I express my opinion that such 6 ROBINSON CRUSOE, SOCIAL ENGINEER a book as 'Robinson Crusoe' never was written be- fore, and never will be written again. "I have tried that book for years generally in combination with a pipe of tobacco and I have found it my friend in need in all the necessities of this mortal life. When my spirits are bad 'Rob- inson Crusoe.' When I want advice 'Robinson Crusoe.' In past times, when my wife plagued me ; in present times, when I have had a drop too much 'Robinson Crusoe. 7 "I have worn out six stout Robinson Crusoes with hard work in my service. On my lady's last birth- day she gave me a seventh. I took a drop too much on the strength of it; and 'Robinson Crusoe' put me right again. Price four shillings and sixpence, bound in blue, with a picture into the bargain." Betteredge consulted the book frequently for prophetic warning and counsel. On one occasion, for example, he was trying to dissuade Dr. Jennings from a certain medical experiment he was trying. "Mr. Jennings, do you happen to be acquainted with 'Robinson Crusoe'?" I answered that I had read "Robinson Crusoe" when I was a child. "Not since then?" inquired Betteredge. "Not since then." He fell back a few steps, and looked at me with an expression of compassionate curiosity, tempered by superstitious awe. "He has not read 'Robinson Crusoe' since he was a child," said Betteredge, speaking to himself not to me. "Let's try how 'Robinson Crusoe' strikes him now!" AN UNDISCOVERED BOOK 7 "When the work-people are gone, my feelings as a man get the better of my duty as a servant. Very good. Last night, Mr. Jennings, it was borne in powerfully on my mind that this new medical enter- prise of yours would end badly. If I had yielded to that secret Dictate, I should have put all the furniture away again with my own hands, and have warned the workmen off the premises when they came the next morning." "I am glad to find, from what I have seen up- stairs," I said, "that you resisted the secret Dic- tate." "Resisted isn't the word," answered Better- edge. "Wrostled is the word. I wrostled sir, between the silent orders in my bosom pulling me one way, and the written orders in my pocket-book pushing me the other, until, saving your presence, I was in a cold sweat. In that dreadful perturbation of mind and laxity of body, to what remedy did I apply? To the remedy, sir, which has never failed me yet for the last thirty years and more to This Book! "What did I find here," pursued Betteredge, "at the first page I opened? This awful bit, sir, page one hundred and seventy-eight, as follows: 'Upon these, and many like Reflections, I afterward made it a certain rule with me, That whenever I found those secret Hints or Pressings of my Mind, to doing, or not doing any Thing that presented; or to going this Way, or that Way, I never failed to obey the secret Dictate.' As I live by bread, Mr. 8 ROBINSON CRUSOE, SOCIAL ENGINEER Jennings, those were the first words that met my eye, exactly at the time when I myself was setting the secret Dictate at defiance ! You don't see any thing at all out of the common in that, do you sir?" "I see a coincidence nothing more." "You don't feel at all shaken, Mr. Jennings, in respect to this medical enterprise of yours?" "Not the least in the world." Betteredge stared hard at me, in dead silence. He closed the book with great deliberation; he locked it up again in the cupboard with extraordinary care; he wheeled round, and stared hard at me once more. Then he spoke. "Sir," he said, gravely, "there are great allowances to be made for a man who has not read 'Robinson Crusoe' since he was a child. I wish you good- morning." The supreme place assigned to "Robinson Cru- soe" in this old man's affections may seem to some too exalted, but his fine scorn of the man who has not read it since he was a boy is a point well taken. The book may be enjoyed by a boy; it can only be known by a thoughtful man. CHAPTER II A BOOK CAPTURED BY BOYS \T 7TTH no desire to indulge in unseemly boasting, but simply to point out an interesting fact, I venture the assertion that I have accomplished a task which has not been performed by one man in a thousand; I have read the whole of "Robinson Crusoe." Not that this is especially a praiseworthy performance, but it shows how little is generally known of "Robinson Crusoe," beyond the story of his shipwreck and island life. There are three parts to "Robinson Crusoe." First the story of the ship- wreck and the lonely island life, known to almost all. Second, the story of his second visit to the island and his journey to the Far East, returning through China and Siberia, known to a few. Third, the Serious Reflections of Robinson Crusoe, known to almost none. The first part of Robinson Crusoe became so immediately and universally popular and was found to be so rich a vein of gold that Defoe could not resist working it still further by producing a second and even a third part. He realized the danger of weakening his first success by trying to add to it, for in his preface to the second part he says, "The 9 10 ROBINSON CRUSOE, SOCIAL ENGINEER second part, if the editor's opinion may pass, is (contrary to the usage of second parts) every way as entertaining as the first." The world has not agreed with the editor. The most the majority of men know of "Robinson Crusoe" is half of the first part. I say half of the first part, because when a boy reads it, as all boys do, the serious and moral reflections, which it con- tains, are neither a comfort nor discomfort to him. He just plods through them. They mean nothing to him, and since few read the book, when they become men, the thing which they remember, as men, is the story only. It is a significant fact that the part of "Robinson Crusoe," which Defoe regarded as subordinate and which he half apologized for, is the part which the world has chiefly prized, and the part which he chiefly prized, the world has mostly neglected. In the preface to the second part, he says of the first part, "The just application of every incident, the religious and useful inferences drawn from every part are so many testimonies to the good design of making it public and must legitimate all the parts that may be called invention or parable in the story." He even becomes pugnacious in his further re- mark that, "Abridging this work is as scandalous as it is knavish and ridiculous; seeing while to shorten the book they may seem to reduce the value, they strip it of all those reflections which, as A BOOK CAPTURED BY BOYS 11 well religious as moral, are not only the greatest beauties of the work, but are calculated for the infinite advantage of the reader." Defoe felt that the moral reflections were the real beauties of the work, and that the story needed them to make its use legitimate. But the world has completely reversed his judgment. And for good reason. The eighteenth century novelists were essentially preachers. Richardson and Fielding preach quite as much as Defoe. They were like {Stevenson, who said that he "would rise from the idead to preach." But none of them had learned, as Stevenson did, that it adds nothing but weakness to a story to tag it with a moral, that every good story does its own preaching more effectively than any moral tag can do. Moreover as a work of art, "Robinson Crusoe" ends when he leaves the island, although the second part contains many passages of real interest. The third part is well worth reading on its own account. It is in fact a collection of six moral essays on such subjects as "Solitude," "Honesty," "Conversation," the point of departure in each essay being some point of contact with the experience of Crusoe. They are quite worth reading. Yet the second and third parts add nothing to the first as a work of art. When Crusoe ceases to be a solitary and is brought into touch with civilization, the dramatic interest in the story, as well as its significance, ceases, so far as his own day was concerned. But the dramatic 12 ROBINSON CRUSOE, SOCIAL ENGINEER interest and significance have been given rebirth by the English Industrial Revolution which occurred since Defoe wrote. A second part could not have been written with success in his day; it can now. Defoe ran a real risk in attempting to prolong his first success, a risk which the fate of the second and third parts abundantly shows. It is a striking con- firmation from literature of the great principle in Hesiod's apparent parodox that the half is more than the whole. It is like the story of the young gentleman who wished to signalize the birthday of his lady love by sending her twenty roses, one for each year of her life. He had been lavish in his expenditure at the florist shop and that worthy, on receiving an order to send the finest roses, re- gardless of expense, bettered his instructions and sent the young lady thirty roses. The result may be imagined. Twenty roses were an appropriate gift; thirty were an insult. One old horseshoe is good luck; a wagon load of them is junk. It was undoubtedly to the first part that Dr. Johnson ap- plied his remark when he asked, u Was there ever anything written by mere man that was wished longer by its readers excepting 'Don Quixote,' 'Robinson Crusoe/ and the 'Pilgrim's Progress?' ' If no one can read the first part without wishing it longer, Defoe ought not to be blamed too severely for yielding to this desire and making it longer. When the first part is considered alone it is not quite fair to Defoe to say that he tagged a moral to A BOOK CAPTURED BY BOYS 13 his story. The fact is, he tagged the story to the moral. The fable is always made for the moral, he says, not the moral for the fable. That is to say, his purpose was to write a serious philosophical book and he used the story to illustrate his moral principles. He distinctly says in the preface, "The story is told with modesty, with seriousness, and with a religious application of events, to the uses to which wise men always apply them, namely, to the instruction of others, and the editor thinks, with- out further compliment to the world, he does them a great service in the publication." The use which the old servant in Wilkie Collins' "Moonstone" made of it, as a practical moral guide- book, although whimsical, was nevertheless the use which Defoe intended should be made of it. The fact about the book, to which I call particular atten- tion a fact very frequently overlooked is that "Robinson Crusoe" is primarily a deeply religious and philosophical book. It, therefore, is enjoyed by two classes of people : by the boy for the sake of the story; by the man for the sake of the. philosophy. It is good story-telling and good philosophy both in one. But the philosophy was first in Defoe's mind. This fact has, of course, been frequently recognized. At one time during the period of the French Rev- olution the book was excluded from the public schools of France on the ground that it was too religious. Such men as Franklin and Lincoln have left it on record that "Robinson Crusoe" was one of 14 ROBINSON CRUSOE, SOCIAL ENGINEER the few books that influenced them permanently for good. Their judgment is trustworthy for they were not surfeited by too many books. Someone made the brilliant remark that Lincoln was raised on five books and consequently he grew up with "an unlit- tered mind." It is one of the curious accidents of literary his- tory that the best boys' book ever written was never intended to be such at all. It was not written for boys; it was captured by them. "Robinson Crusoe" was not written for children, because at the time Defoe wrote it, there were no children; there were only grown-ups. The little people were not treated as children, or educated, or written for, or read to as children. The discovery of childhood is a comparatively recent discovery. The adaptation of material for children, however, should not lead us to suppose that it must be weakened. Children are fortunately different from adults, but not inferior. Quite the contrary. It is the commonest of mistakes to underrate them. It has helped us to discover the capacity and seriousness of children to notice that the best books for boys are books not primarily written for them. "Robinson Crusoe" is the out- standing illustration of this fact. Defoe was doubt- less totally unaware that he had written one of the few immortal books in the English language and the best boys' book ever produced. Emerson once remarked to Thoreau : "Who would not like to write something which all can read, like 'Robinson Cru- A BOOK CAPTURED BY BOYS 15 soe ?' ' Defoe did not consciously try to write some- thing that all could read. He did not write down to children. What happened was that the romantic and philosophic interest in his story was discovered to be so universal as to appeal to boys and men alike. CHAPTER III A JOKE ON THE BRITISH NATION * I V HE origin of the book is quite as astonishing as ** the book itself. It is a real romance in the history of literature. It was on this wise : Defoe had been a favorite with King William, because of the publication of a pamphlet in rhyme, called, "The True-Born Englishman." Its object was to show that those, who found fault with King William, because he was a foreigner, had no ground for their criticism, for the whole population of England was made up of the mingling of different nationalities and every man ought to be judged, therefore, by his devotion to the interests of Britain, not by his race or birth. After showing that the true-born English- man is a myth, because the English are a hopelessly mixed race, he proceeds: From this amphibious ill-born mob began That vain ill-natured thing, an Englishman. These are the heroes that despise the Dutch, And rail at new-come foreigners so much, Forgetting that themselves are all derived From the most scoundrel race that ever lived; A horrid crowd of rambling thieves and drones, Who ransacked kingdoms and dispeopled towns, The Pict and painted Briton, treacherous Scot, 16 A JOKE ON THE BRITISH NATION 17 By hunger, theft and rapine hither brought ; Norwegian pirates, buccaneering Danes, Whose red-haired offspring everywhere remains, Who, joined with Norman-French, compound the breed From whence your true-born Englishmen proceed. The poem was read by everybody and a great wave of laughter passed over London. Defoe had ridiculed out of the country the unreasoning preju- dice against the foreigner. The poem did King William immense service and Defoe made a thou- sand pounds by its sale. But the verse was not of a high order. It began with the well-known lines: Wherever God erects a house of prayer, The Devil always builds a chapel there: And 't will be found upon examination, The latter has the largest congregation. Defoe was the first rhymer of this old proverb and the rider to it is his own. He was very proud of his poetry. He entertained the opinion that this poem was a better bid for fame than was "Robinson Crusoe." When King William died suddenly from an acci- dent, Defoe's fortunes changed. The High Church party came back into power with Queen Anne. A bill was introduced in Parliament against occasional conformity, that is, the device by which dissenters managed to hold public office, by kneeling now and then at the altars of the established Church and re- ceiving the Communion. The discussions on this 18 ROBINSON CRUSOE, SOCIAL ENGINEER subject led to one of the most striking episodes in Defoe's life. He had himself written against the practice of occasional conformity as an insincere act, and had angered his own party, the dissenters, by his plain speech. But he now flew to their rescue, when the High Church party, intoxicated by their newly acquired power, began to bluster out threats against them. It occurred to Defoe that the most effective weapon to employ against the wild threats of the high-fliers was ridicule, and he used it remorselessly. He published his pamphlet, "The Shortest Way to Deal with Dissenters." It was an elaborate and serious statement of the violent talk of the high- fliers. He carried out these extreme views to their logical issue and reduced them to a practical pro- posal, the proposal, namely, that all dissenting min- isters should be hanged and their congregations broken up and outlawed. He supported this thesis with historical and logical reasons in such a masterly manner that no one suspected that it was only a boyish prank. In writing it Defoe never winked an eye. In making his proposal he was as serious as was Swift, when he proposed to utilize the super- abundant babies of the poor by eating them. De- foe's pamphlet is an amusing exhibit of the fact that one can be entirely logical and entirely wrong at the same time, just as Whately, in his carefully elaborated document, demonstrated that no such person as Napoleon Bonaparte ever existed. A JOKE ON THE BRITISH NATION 19 When Defoe's pamphlet appeared the wildest ex- citement arose. The dissenters were thrown into a panic and the high-fliers began to applaud it, es- pecially those in Cambridge and Oxford. He had exposed the real sentiments of the high-fliers and they were stupid enough to own up to it. Every one took it for genuine. The joke had to be ex- plained to the entire British public. When it was explained, a double storm broke on Defoe's head, so that he had to go into hiding. Both dissenters and high-fliers attacked him. The dissenters because of the fear he had inspired in them, the high-fliers because of the ridicule to which he had subjected them. The government took charge of the case and offered fifty pounds for Defoe's discovery. The description of the fugitive, which appeared in con- nection with this advertisement, is the only extant record of his personal appearance. It says, "He is a middle-sized, spare man, about forty years old, of a brown complexion and dark brown coloured hair; but wears a wig; a hooked nose, a sharp chin, and a large mole near his mouth : was born in Lon- don and is now owner of the brick and pantile works near Tilbury Fort in Essex." The portrait prefixed to his collected works faithfully reproduces the mole. Defoe felt as Lincoln did, when he said to his portrait-painter, "When you paint my portrait don't omit the wart." When the printer and bookseller of this remark- 20 ROBINSON CRUSOE, SOCIAL ENGINEER able pamphlet were arrested, then Defoe came out of hiding and gave himself up, so that they might not suffer on his behalf. His pamphlet was ordered to be burned by the "common hangman," and the punishment inflicted on Defoe himself was very heavy. He was sentenced to be imprisoned during the Queen's pleasure, to pay two hundred marks, and to find sureties of his good behaviour for seven years. Not only this, but he was condemned to stand in the pillory three times, before the Royal Exchange, at Cheapside and at Temple Bar. But, contrary to the gentle custom of the day, he received no insults or rotten eggs. Garlands of flowers decked the pillory and refreshments were brought to the victim. This personal triumph was achieved partly by a poem, which Defoe had written a few days before, called a "Hymn to the Pillory," published on the very day of his exposure and bought with enthusiasm by the crowd. Its spirit is shown in the familiar lines, Tell 'em the men that placed him here Are scandals to the times, Are at a loss to find his guilt And can't commit his crimes. Defoe's pluck had won the day, and turned his pun- ishment into a reflection upon those who had in- flicted it. CHAPTER IV JOURNALISM BORN IN A GAOL T T is of particular interest to modern journalism, - that during his imprisonment, Defoe did what perhaps no man before or after him has done: he originated, wrote and published a newspaper. It was called U A Review of the Affairs of France.'* It was a brilliant and graphic commentary on the political affairs of Europe, a dialogue between the imprisoned spectator of life and the busy world outside. The newspaper of that day was not like that of today, a huge sheet made up of paragraphs written by many anonymous persons. Defoe's paper at the start was limited to eight and then four small quarto pages but written entirely by himself, and he continued to write it three times a week for nine years, in the midst of a vast variety of political activities. This newspaper was the first of its kind. There were other news sheets at the time Defoe started his, but they were for the most part taken up with personal scandals. Defoe realized the popularity of this kind of news. He knew, he said, that people liked to be amused. He supplied this want in one section of his paper, under the title, "Advice from 21 22 ROBINSON CRUSOE, SOCIAL ENGINEER the Scandalous Club, being a weekly history of nonsense, impertinence, vice and debauchery." In contrasting Defoe's with a modern newspaper, it is to be observed that only a minor section of his paper was given up to such stuff, and further that the label boldly attached to this section was an honest warning to the reader as to what he may expect to find in it. It is interesting to note that from this section of Defoe's paper came to Richard Steele the first sug- gestion of the "Tatler," and from the 4< Tatler" came Addison's "Spectator." In the serious part of Defoe's paper, we have the foundation of Eng- lish journalism. It was as Defoe put it, the history of Europe written sheet by sheet and letting the world see it as it went on. We owe to him the inauguration of modern journalism which has played a critically important role in the modern world, an institution big with consequences both for good and evil, and which today constitutes the most complex and crucial of public problems in its bearing on the transportation of ideas and the moulding of public opinion. Thus did Defoe, as did Bunyan, Voltaire, and many more, transform the gaol into a hall of fame. CHAPTER V LYING LIKE THE TRUTH WHEN Defoe came out of prison, he found his fortunes ruined. But he had made a great discovery. He had paid a big price for it, but it was worth it. He had discovered a new literary method and the bent of his own genius. The stupid- ity of the public, which mistook his pamphlet for genuine, revealed to Defoe his capacity to play with perfect fidelity the part he had set himself. Thus he hit on the primary principle of modern fiction. He had learned to lie like the truth. As he himself said, "Lies are not worth a farthing if they are not calculated for the effectual deceiving of the people they are designed to deceive." He had deceived the whole country, and both political parties, by his pamphlet. He now saw that his true field was realistic fiction, so told that people will accept it as true. He made good use of his discovery. On April 25, 1719, he produced "Robinson Crusoe." He was then fifty-eight years old. It frequently takes a man a long time to discover himself. The manu- script was offered to the whole round of the pub- lishing trade and refused, until one William Taylor 23 24 ROBINSON CRUSOE, SOCIAL ENGINEER of the Ship, Paternoster Row, was induced to accept it. He became the most envied publisher of his day, for out of this single book he made his financial fortune. The greatness of a book may be measured by the criticism it receives. "Crusoe" was no exception to, this rule. As early as September of the year of its publication, bitter attacks were made upon it. Critics made merry over the trifling inconsistencies of the story. How, for example, they asked, could Crusoe have stuffed his pockets with biscuits, when he had taken off all his clothes before swimming to the wreck? How could he have been at such a loss for clothes, after those he had put off were washed away by the rising tide, when he had the ship's stores to choose from? How could he have seen the goat's eyes in the cave when it was pitch dark? How could the Spaniards give Friday's father an agreement in writing, when they had neither paper nor ink? How did Friday come to know so intimately the habits of bears, the bear not being a denizen of the West Indian Islands? Defoe yielded to this attack so far as to let his hero wear breeches in later editions. But such tri- fling criticisms are as wide of the mark as that of George Cruikshank, one of Crusoe's illustrators, who had become rabid in his teetotalism and ob- jected to the use of rum in the story. Dickens made a protest against introducing crotchets of any kind into fairyland, in his article in Household Words LYING LIKE THE TRUTH 25 entitled "Frauds on the Fairies." "Imagine," he says, "a total abstinence edition of 'Robinson Crusoe' with the rum left out. Imagine a peace edition, with the gunpowder left out and the rum left in. Imagine a vegetarian edition, with the goats' flesh left out. Imagine a Kentucky edition to introduce a flogging of that 'tarnal nigger,' Friday, twice a week. Imagine an Aborigines Protection Society edition to deny the cannibalism and make Robinson embrace the amiable savages whenever they landed. 'Robinson Crusoe' would be edited out of his island in a hundred years, and the island would be swal- lowed up in the editorial ocean a misfortune which happily has not yet come to pass." "Crusoe" as it stands needs no apology. The stock criticism, which has now settled down into a general impression is that Defoe stole his story from Alexander Selkirk, a Scotchman from Largo, who was marooned for four years on the island of Juan Fernandez, which is off the coast of Chile, in South America. This impression was deepened by the poem, in which Cowper supposes Selkirk to record his feelings, and which begins with the well-known lines, I am monarch of all I survey, My right there is none to dispute. In the island of Juan Fernandez on the height, which Selkirk called his "look-out," two thousand feet above sea-level, a handsome tablet commemo- 26 ROBINSON CRUSOE, SOCIAL ENGINEER rates Selkirk, ana yet the island is called Crusoe's Island. Excursion boats are advertised to run to Crusoe's Island and post-cards, showing its natural features, all bear Crusoe's name. And yet the scene of Crusoe's exile was not laid in Juan Fernandez. Defoe's introduction distinctly says that the island was at the mouth of the great river Aroonoque and anyone who reads the book sees that Crusoe was going from the Brazils to Africa, when his boat was shipwrecked. The truth probably is, that Juan Fernandez, is the island which Defoe describes, but with a story- teller's license, he changed its location. For the long, low beach, the cave on the side of a rising hill, and the high lookout, are seen in the island today just as Defoe described them, and Robinson Crusoe is still the best guide to the island. It is now inhabited by ninety-three persons with an edu- cated European for governor, who is a citizen of Chile. Its one industry is a canning factory to preserve the codfish and lobsters with which the waters abound. There is no doubt that the germ of Defoe's book was suggested by Selkirk's experience. The story was told in Woodes Rogers' "Voyage Around the World" and occupied about the space of a news- paper column. Afterwards Richard Steele met Sel- kirk and described his adventure in the twenty-sixth number of the "Englishman." The story was com- mon property for several years. Anyone could LYING LIKE THE TRUTH 27 have used the bare facts to build a story on, but nobody did, until the genius of Defoe created his great masterpiece. Defoe could not have stolen his Crusoe from Selkirk any more than a man could steal a silver dining service out of pewter plate. R CHAPTER VI THE FIRST MODERN NOVEL OBINSON CRUSOE" is a novel. It is a novel of incident. It is the first English novel, in >- distinction from the old romances. Defoe is the father of modern fiction. Brander Matthews re- marks that there are four stages in the development of fiction: "First from the Impossible to the Im- probable, thence to the Probable and finally to the Inevitable." Defoe ushered in the stage of the Probable. No book ever published was more extremely and immediately popular than Crusoe. A second edition was published May 12, a third on June 6, a spurious one on August 7, and a fifth on the following day. Five editions in four months is a rare achievement. It is one of the very few books that ever ran through a newspaper as a serial, after it had been published in book form. The same year of its publication it was translated into German and French. Since then it has been translated not only into every living language of Europe, but also into the classical languages of Greece and Rome. The traveler Burckhardt found it translated into Arabic and heard it read aloud 28 THE FIRST MODERN NOVEL 29 among the wandering tribes in the cool of the eve- ning. I have seen editions of it both in Chinese and Japanese. In addition to its universai popularity, the influential impression it made on eminent men would form a suggestive chapter in the biography of the book. It occupied a prominent place in the little library that nourished Lincoln's mental life. For almost two hundred years it has been a living book and still is. There are in America alone today forty-seven different editions to be had, and to this large number the Houghton Mifflin Company re- cently thought it worth while to add a new and beautiful edition. A striking testimony to the in- fluence and popularity of "Robinson Crusoe" is the great number of books which have been written in imitation of it. There are too many to name. The best known of these imitations are, "Peter Wilkins," "Gulliver's Travels" and "Swiss Family Robin- son." Defoe wrote many other books. His output was over two hundred books in all, some of them of great merit. Some indeed think that his "Journal of the Great London Plague" is a better work of art than "Crusoe." His book on "Projects" also is a notable book, dealing with such subjects, as "Banks," "Insurance," "Stock-Gambling," and "Higher Education for Women." In it he was far in advance of his times and anticipated many future developments. Benjamin Franklin set a high value on this book. He said, "I found a work of Defoe's 30 ROBINSON CRUSOE, SOCIAL ENGINEER entitled 'An Essay on Projects,' from which per- haps I derived impressions that have since influenced some of the principal events of my life." However good these books are, it is as the author of "Robinson Crusoe" that Defoe is known. In the non-conformist burial ground at Bunhill Fields in London, where stand monuments to John Bunyan and Isaac Watts, there is also a monument to Defoe. On the flat stone, which formerly covered his grave, now stands a marble obelisk with this inscription: DANIEL DEFOE Born 1661 Died 1731 Author of Robinson Crusoe This monument is the result of an appeal in the "Christian World" to the boys and girls of Eng- land for a fund to place a suitable monument on the grave of Daniel Defoe. It represents the united contributions of seventeen hundred persons, September, 1870. CHAPTER VII ROMANCE WITHOUT A LOVE STORY A BOOK, which occupies the place in the world's **- literature which "Robinson Crusoe" has oc- cupied for almost two hundred years and still re- tains, must hold a secret calculated to intrigue one's curiosity and challenge investigation. What is it? In searching for the secret of its popularity one is surprised to discover the absence of some elements, which he might naturally expect to find. The ele- ment of love, which plays so large a part in fiction as we have come to know it, is wholly absent from Crusoe. No modern novel and no film story would dare to risk the omission of a triangle love-complex, but Crusoe is a romance without any love story at all. You nowhere in it hear the consoling voice of woman or the prattle of little children. There is no poetic description of scenery. There is no pathos and no humor in it. "You remember," says Dick- ens, writing to his friend Forster, "my saying to you some time ago, how curious I thought it that 'Robinson Crusoe' should be the only instance of an universally popular book, that could make no one laugh and could make no one cry." There is little else but a conscious choice of commonplaces and all 31 32 ROBINSON CRUSOE, SOCIAL ENGINEER told in a simple matter-of-fact way. Its secret cer- tainly does not lie on the surface. Of course it is well written. It is well worth reading for its simple pure English alone. His "natural infirmity of homely plain writing," is the way Defoe humorously described it. The charm and force of simple idiomatic English is as apparent in Crusoe, as in "Pilgrim's Progress." This is doubtless where Defoe learned its use. If so, he learned his lesson well. It has been said that in conversation with any woman, if that conversation is two or three times renewed, you can tell whether she has read "Robinson Crusoe" or not by her skill in expressing herself well or her failure to do so. Its pure English is an attractive feature, but this does not, of course, account for its popularity. There is one feature of its composition however, which does account very largely for its charm. This) is its realism, using realism in its technical and be_st sense, as opposed to romanticism. It is the attempt to describe commonplace things, to depict things as they are, and to give them a new meaning and spiritual significance. It is Defoe's aim to produce the sense of reality / and illusion of truth. For this purpose he uses the best means to produce it, namely, current memoirs with the accompaniment of a diary. He says in the preface that he is only the editor of a private man's adventures, and then he adds confidentially ROMANCE WITHOUT A LOVE STORY 33 that he believes the thing to be a just history of fact, u at least there is no appearance of fiction in it." He has written it so realistically that the fic- tion is hidden and the reader deceived. Defoe had a marvelous power of graphic detailed narrative. There is nothing on Crusoe's island, which we do not know and see as well as if we had dwelt on the island ourselves. Defoe's love of accurate, detailed description is indicated by the remark that Crusoe is the only novel in .which the characters get hungry three times a day. The story was immediately accepted as a true story of a real experience. It is still believed by many to be so. No child ever doubts its reality. It is a striking testimony to the life-likeness of Defoe's description that the invented story of Crusoe seems quite as probable as the real story of Selkirk. To grown men, Crusoe's island seems much more true and real than half of the actual islands they read about in history. We feel that Crusoe's experiences are, or could have been, our own, while we read them. Everything seems so natural and probable. A small boy once said to Edward Everett Hale, "I like 'Robinson Crusoe' because he doesn't succeed in everything. It is not, like most children's books, where the good boy makes everything come out right." This boy had an observing eye. For in- stance, Crusoe cannot make ink. It is long before he succeeds well in his pottery. He built a boat out of such heavy timber, and so far from the 34 ROBINSON CRUSOE, SOCIAL ENGINEER water, that he could not possibly launch it after it was built. He is constantly beginning things in the wrong way and has to work himself out the right way. He is not a prig. He is human. I once tested the naturalness of the story by reading it to a little ten-year old boy. He con- stantly interrupted the reading with questions, as to how certain situations came about, or why Crusoe did certain things the way he did. I often stopped to try to answer his questions, but always discovered that it was labor lost, because Defoe had anticipated every question that the little fellow asked, and answered it in the next paragraph, following the one which had raised the question in his mind. De- foe has a genius for circumstantial invention, which is the rarest of gifts. It means, as William Minto points out, that it was necessary that Crusoe's per- plexities should be unexpected and his expedients for meeting them unexpected; yet both perplexities and expedients were so life-like that when we were told them, we should wonder we had not thought of them before. This graphic, detailed description of the con- crete experience of a flesh and blood man is one of the great elements of power in the new literary method, which Defoe had discovered, and of which he was a master. It is this feature in Crusoe that holds the boy entranced with its pages. The ad- vantage of concreteness to a work of art may be illustrated by two little poems, both written on ROMANCE WITHOUT A LOVE STORY 35 the battle of Culloden. One written by Collins for the English victors: How sleep the brave, who sink to rest By all their country's wishes blest! When Spring, with dewy fingers cold, Returns to deck their hallowed mold, She there shall dress a sweeter sod Than Fancy's feet have ever trod. By fairy hands their knell is rung, By forms unseen their dirge is sung; There Honor comes, a pilgrim gray, To bless the turf that wraps their clay, And freedom shall awhile repair, To dwell a weeping hermit there ! This is fine poetry, but the figures of speech used, although beautiful, are general and therefore they do not move us deeply. The other poem was written by Burns, for the vanquished Scotch: The lovely lass of Inverness, Nae joy nor pleasure can she see; From e'en and morn she cries, alas! And ay the saut tear blin's her e'e: Drumossie moor, Drumossie day A waefu' day it was to me! For there I lost my father dear, My father dear, and brethren three, Their winding-sheet the bluidy clay Their graves are growin' green to see, And by them lies the dearest lad That ever blest a woman's e'e. 36 ROBINSON CRUSOE, SOCIAL ENGINEER Now wae to thee, thou cruel lord, A bluidy man I trow thou be, For monie a heart thou has made sair That ne'er did wrang to thine or thee! This makes much the stronger appeal, because it states the case in terms of an individual lassie's heart and her actual sorrow. This same element of con- creteness is an outstanding characteristic of Crusoe and largely accounts for its fascination. Defoe's thought is not handicapped with artificial rhetoric, but is stated naked and unadorned. He wrote not language, but meaning. Unless he had acquired the rare habit of saying clearly what he meant, his book never would have become so popular with children who are embarrassingly honest in the de- mands they make on adults. But Defoe's art in realistic description is after all a question of method and it is not sufficient to account for the permanent favor which Crusoe has won in the world. CHAPTER VIII THE CHARM OF UNCERTAINTY T?OR the real secret of the book we must look -*- deeper. We must look for some fundamental and universal human interest, which it exhibits, and on the basis of which its appeal is made. Every great work of art is built upon and con- trolled by some one central idea, which becomes its organizing principle of life, and accounts for its vitality. Is there such a principle and, if so, what is it? The formative principle around which Crusoe was organized, is, I take it, the uncertainty of life. This is the dominating idea of the book. In the preface Defoe says, u The wonders of this man's life exceed all that is to be found extant; the life of one man being scarcely capable of a greater variety." It was the variety and uncertainty of his fortune, which Defoe regarded as the main feature of Crusoe's life. In the preface to the "Serious Reflections," he makes this still more clear. He says "I, Robinson Crusoe, being at this. time in perfect and sound mind and memory, thanks be to God therefor, do hereby declare that the story, though allegorical, is also historical; and that it is the beautiful representation 37 38 ROBINSON CRUSOE, SOCIAL ENGINEER of a life of unexampled misfortunes, and of a va- riety not to be met with in the world, sincerely adapted to and intended for the common good of mankind." Defoe here clearly intimates that Cru- soe exhibited the dangers and vicissitudes of his own life. His own experience accounts for the striking sympathy, with which he followed the fortunes of his hero. There is in it an autobiographical note and this leads a man to speak from greater depth of feeling than any imaginary story could do. No principle is more calculated to make a univer- sal appeal than is the principle of uncertainty. "Leave the metaphysics of the question on the table for the present," says Van Dyke in his "Fisherman's Luck"; "as a matter of fact, it is plain that our human nature is adapted to conditions variable, undetermined, and hidden from our view. We are not fitted to live in a world where a + b always equals c, and there is nothing more to follow. The interest of life's equation arrives with the appear- ance of x, the unknown quantity. A settled, un- changeable, clearly foreseeable order of things does not suit our constitution. It tends to melancholy and a fatty heart. Creatures of habit we are undoubt- edly; but it is one of our most fixed habits to be fond of variety. The man, who is never surprised, does not know the taste of happiness, and unless the unexpected sometimes happens to us, we are most grievously disappointed. Much of the tediousness of highly civilized life comes from its smoothness THE CHARM OF UNCERTAINTY 39 and regularity." "Robinson Crusoe" lives because it is organized on this principle, which is as broad and lasting as life itself, and because Defoe works it out like an artist. CHAPTER IX ROMANTICIZING THE COMMONPLACE I T is the principle of uncertainty, which roman- ticized the commonplace and gave charm to De- foe's description of it. The element of adventure makes commonplace things uncommon. Adventure is the charm for which all men are searching. Emerson says, "Man dreams of palaces and ends by building a woodshed." Very true, but only half the truth. Is it not worth while to build an honest woodshed? "Robinson Crusoe's" chief merit lies in its ability to make the building of a woodshed seem like a worth while and poetic performance. It is both original and commonplace. Defoe had the rare and great faculty to detect and depict the poetic elements in common life. In "Robinson Crusoe" Defoe made the same achievement which Thomas Gray made in his "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard," that Dr. Johnson said em- bodied a sentiment never before expressed in liter- ature. A bill of particulars showing how the principle of uncertainty romanticizes the commonplace is read- ily furnished by Crusoe's experience. It is his un- 40 ROMANTICIZING THE COMMONPLACE 41 certain and varying fortunes that give him a true perspective on the relative value of things. This is the distinguishing doctrine in his philosophy of life and appears repeatedly in the record of his adventures. It is exhibited, for example, in his soliloquy over the money he had taken from the ship and whose value had become zero in his island prison. He un- expectedly found himself in a situation in which money ceased to have any value. To him an orange was worth more than a twenty dollar gold piece and a few kind words would have been worth a score of twenty dollar gold pieces. He, therefore, was led to inquire, how much is money worth? How much is a man worth when he has lost all his money? The idea so stimulated him that he expressed him- self with fine scorn as he smiled at the money, "Oh, drug! What art thou good for? Thou art not worth to me no, not the taking off the ground; one of these knives is worth all this heap; I have no manner of use for thee; e'en remain where thou art, and go to the bottom, as a creature whose life is not worth saving." "However, upon second thoughts, I took it away." This is a prose poem, not on money, however, but on the discovery that apart from society, money has no value. In point of fact no constructive poem on money has ever been written and for good rea- son. It cannot be done. You can write a poem on real things like work, or love, or courage, or 42 ROBINSON CRUSOE, SOCIAL ENGINEER freedom. But money is not a real thing, it is only a symbol, an artificial social tool. Crusoe, through the memory of the worship commonly paid to this tool, was betrayed into almost spoiling his soliloquy by adding a touch of human weakness, relieved somewhat by its humor, "However, upon second thoughts, I took it away." The same principle is exhibited in the episode of saving the things from the wreck, which Crusoe sorely needed for his comfort. This is the most thrilling episode in the book, excepting the finding of the footprint on the sand. Through it he learned the value of common tools and supplies, because of the ever present possibility that they might be lost. The uncertainty of securing them from the ship, adds to their charm and value, as a recent writer expresses it, "Every kitchen tool becomes ideal, be- cause Crusoe might have dropped it in the sea." The social significance of this episode cannot be overstated. It is the dramatic statement of what is typical of the entire book and one of its chief contributions. The difficulty Crusoe had in mak- ing ink, in making a boat, in making cooking uten- sils, revealed to him their undiscovered value. The decisive part played in human evolution by the in- vention of tools is one of the big romances of history. Its value in human evolution is pointedly stated by Clarence Day, Jr., in his suggestive study of "This Simian World." He says: "A tool, in the most primitive sense, is any object, lying around, ROMANTICIZING THE COMMONPLACE 43 that can obviously be used as an instrument for this or that purpose. Many creatures use objects as materials, as birds use twigs for nests. But the step that no animal takes is learning freely to use things as instruments. We ourselves, who are so good at it now, were slow enough in beginning. Think of the long epochs that passed before it en- tered our heads. The lesson to be learned was simple : the reward was the rule of a planet. Yet only one species, our own, has ever had that much brains." The power of mastery over nature added to the human hand, which itself is the best of tools, by the invention of other tools, cannot be calculated. We take for granted what it took slow and painful cen- turies of effort to produce. Centuries of discom- fort passed before we enjoyed a glass window in the house. The story of a house would be a thrill- ing story if it were written. Common tools would be romanticized for any one who comes to know their history. It is quite worth while to read "Rob- inson Crusoe" for this reason alone, because the best way to acquire a true perspective on the real value of things is to imagine them absent. The same principle is still more effectively ex- hibited by Crusoe's effort to stimulate in himself the feeling of gratitude. In order to comfort him- self, and have something to distinguish his case from a worse one, he set the good against the evil and stated it impartially, like debtor and creditor, 44 ROBINSON CRUSOE, SOCIAL ENGINEER the comfort he enjoyed, against the miseries he suffered. For example: EVIL I am cast upon a horrible, desolate island; void of all hope of recovery. I am divided from man- kind, a solitary; one ban- ished from human society. I am without any defence, or means to resist any vio- lence of man or beast. I have no clothes to cover me. GOOD But I am alive; and not drowned, as all my ship's company was. But I am not starved, and perishing on a barren place, affording no substance. But I am cast on an island, where I see no wild beast to hurt me. But I am in a hot climate, where if I had clothes I could hardly wear them. "Thus I learned," he says, u to look on the bright side of my condition and consider what I enjoyed rather than what I wanted." Then follows one of those illuminating bits of philosophy, with which the reader of Crusoe is frequently rewarded: "All our discontent about what we want appeared to me to spring from the want of thankfulness for what we have." No finer statement of the philosophy of gratitude has ever been made. It ranks with Carlyle's, that "the fraction of life can be increased in value not so much by increasing your numerator as by lessen- ing your denominator." Crusoe demonstrated Car- lyle's contention that happiness grows not by increas- ROMANTICIZING THE COMMONPLACE 45 ing one's desires, but by decreasing one's wants. It is a question of the relative value of the things one has and the things one wants. A man, who through the adventure of uncertainty, acquires the capacity to distinguish between the big and the little, and the courage to act on this knowledge, is in a fair way to become every inch a man. CHAPTER X EVERY INCH A MAN 'TpHAT is what happened to Crusoe; that is how * it happened, and that is the reason why the world fell in love with this open-minded manly mariner of York. He is not a man given to the "luxury of grieving." He does not stand and cry. He spends no time bemoaning his misfortunes. Had he given himself up to self-pity, he would have been ruined. Of course, he was not without fear and discouragement. But this is nothing against his courage, but rather in its favor. For there could be no courage if fear were not present. Courage does not mean the absence of fear, but the conquest of it. The absence of emotion and sentiment in the book only serves to heighten the effect of Crusoe's courage. It is the indomitable courage of the man under desperate circumstances, which is the first thing that charms us in reading the book. He faces the future without guarantees of any kind, and this is the essence of courage. He is not the type of man who consults fortune-tellers to pry into his future. He understands to begin with, that they know nothing 46 EVERY INCH A MAN 47 whatever about his future. He also understands that even if they did, it would damage him if they told him. If it were possible for a man to know his future, that knowledge would at once transform his future into a past and paralyze his will for pres- ent achievement. This is why Dante in his "In- ferno" punishes fortune-tellers by twisting their heads squarely around on their bodies, so that as they walk forward they look backward. That is the poet's picturesque way of saying that a man who knows his future has no future but only a past and incapacitates himself for making effective prog- ress in the present. Crusoe is typically Anglo-Saxon in his patient acceptance of fate, and his effort to make the best of it. Crusoe's gospel is the same as that of Kipling. It is the gospel of work and the gospel of courage. He faces heat, cold, hard- ship, sickness and peril, which would have shattered the mind of any man of less sturdy fiber, but which leave him unshaken and unafraid, ready always for the next duty, which lies at hand- His courage led him to take the world "as is"; not to run away from it, but come to grips with it. He blames no one but himself; a rare habit. Usu- ally when a man succeeds he takes the credit to himself; when he fails, he puts the blame on Others. Crusoe blamed himself for his failure and thereby discovered both its cause and cure. He does not face dangers with a grumble, but with an honest smile. When it was reported to Carlyle that Mar- 48 ROBINSON CRUSOE, SOCIAL ENGINEER garet Fuller said she had decided to accept the universe, the great Scotchman remarked, "Gad, she better." Crusoe accepted the universe, not in a spirit of weak acquiescence with it, but because he knew that this attitude is the secret of progress as well as of personal happiness, for if you want to get anywhere you have to start from where you are. There are plenty of things to find fault with, espe- cially if a man begins with himself, but to face life in the protesting attitude is weakness. To be so enamored with a perfect condition of things, that one can neither enjoy nor co-operate with the pres- ent imperfect one, is a malady Crusoe did not have. He saw the wisdom of making honorable compro- mise with the world, and then trying to re-fashion it as best he could with patience and good humor. This is the key to a correct analysis of Crusoe's character, and explains the universal verdict of admiration for him. His courage constitutes one of the chief grounds of the book's appeal, for it is an appeal to a fundamental instinct in all men. However much or little of courage a man may him- self possess, he always admires it in others. There is doubtless no character in fiction more than Crusoe, who has a better right to quote the great lines of Henley, as descriptive of his own mental attitude: Out of the night that covers me, Black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul. EVERY INCH A MAN 49 In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud. Beneath the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody but unbow'd. Beyond this place of wrath and tears Looms but the Horror of the shade, And yet the menace of the years Finds and shall find me unafraid. It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul. It is this conscious attitude of courage, which equipped Crusoe to capitalize his experience and acquire internal resources. It is the vast fertility of resource, developed in him by his brave effort to meet the difficulties of his uncertain fortunes, which constitute the biggest by-product of his experience, and, as sometimes happens, it is more valuable than the main product. His perplexities were very vari- ous. The expedients he devised for meeting them developed him into a self-reliant sturdy, all-round man. He was sailor, farmer, mechanic, hunter, cook, business man and philosopher all in one. This is Robinson Crusoe, the type of man he was, and the secret of his popularity. The kind of life Crusoe led, with its effect on Crusoe himself, is rich in meaning and challenge for our day, because of its contrast to present social and economic con- 50 ROBINSON CRUSOE, SOCIAL ENGINEER ditions. Very frequently I have tested the men in my city audiences by asking the question : How many men in this audience do now, or have in the past, harbored the secret desire to quit your city life, acquire a farm and lead a free and self-sufficient existence? Invariably over ninety per cent of the men raise their hands. "Robinson Crusoe" enables them to indulge this desire vicariously and this ex- plains why new editions of the book continue to come from the press. It is the unique expression of an irrepressible instinct which all normal men feel, and most men have throttled, the instinct urg- ing a man to reject the restraints and complexities of civilization and seek a mode of life natural and true. When this instinct surges up sufficiently to disturb his acquired peace of mind, he reads a book like Carpenter's "Civilization, Its Cause and Cure," and then he resigns himself to his fate with the remark, "What's the use?" Crusoe thus raises an inescapable question. He represents the type of man produced in England previous to the English Industrial Revolution; what type of man are modern industrial conditions pro- ducing, and how can industry be so organized as to prevent the denaturization of a worker's man- hood? The meaning of Crusoe's challenge to civili- zation is the subject for consideration in the next Part. PART II ROBINSON CRUSOE'S CHALLENGE TO MODERN INDUSTRY Yards of cotton, tons of coal, ingots of metal are not measures of civilization. Men and women ARE, and if you tell me the method we are about introducing, or hoping to introduce, would strike down capital to one-half of the amount employed today, but would lift men and women of Massachusetts forty per cent, above their present level, 1 would say all hail to this change. This is a true civilization. WENDELL PHILLIPS. PART II ROBINSON CRUSOE'S CHALLENGE TO MODERN INDUSTRY CHAPTER I GREATNESS UNAWARES A MONG the few men who have appreciated the * contribution of an indispensable and disre- garded element, which "Robinson Crusoe" makes to the serious study of economics, was Frederic Harrison, who said of the book: " 'Robinson Cru- soe,' which is a fairy tale to the child, a book of adventure to the young, is a work on social philos- ophy to the mature. It is a picture of civilization. The essential moral attributes of man, his innate impulses as a social being, his absolute dependence on society, even as a solitary individual, his subjec- tion to the physical world, and his alliance with the animal world, the statical elements of social phi- losophy, and the germs of man's historical evolution have never been touched with more sagacity, and, assuredly, have never been idealized with such magi- cal simplicity and truth." 53 54 ROBINSON CRUSOE, SOCIAL ENGINEER It is, of course, not to be supposed that Defoe Consciously aimed to write a book on sociology, and Mr. Harrison did not intend to convey this impres- sion. But it frequently happens that the author of a great work of art will say more to succeeding generations than to his own, not because others read new meaning into it, but because new conditions invest it with new significance. So it has happened to "Robinson Crusoe." The book has acquired new greatness unawares. It enjoys the unearned increment of a fresh greatness, acquired by subse- quent industrial events, which it did not anticipate but which it challenges. The fact that its contribu- tion to sociology is unconscious gives it enhanced value. It is not Defoe, who challenges modern in- dustry; it is "Robinson Crusoe." The challenge lies in the fact itself, for which he stands. The book taken by itself, as Mr. Harrison suggests, has a profound meaning for sociology, because it iso- lates the basic elements of society, and dramatically portrays their significance. But when the book is read in the light of what has happened since it was written, its enlarged meaning seems like a new and fresh discovery. What happened since it was written, and made this work of art to be also a big human story with a challenge, is The Industrial Revolution. Crusoe is the typical human product of industrial conditions in England previous to this revolution. No thought- ful man today can read the book without comparing GREATNESS UNAWARES 55 Crusoe to the type of man produced by modern industry. Herein lies its challenge. If we place"" Ruth's sickle along side of a McCormick reaper, it is quite obvious that we have made very commend- able progress indeed in this line of manufacture; but if we stand Ruth herself beside the young women who attended the modern reaper in a recent world's fair, is it at all obvious that we have made any progress in this line of manufacture? And yet the making of men is the mission of modern democ- racies and the acid test of their success. Crusoe's challenge concerns the human factor in industry, which is its heart. CHAPTER II CRUSOE AS A RIP VAN WINKLE /^"RUSOE was marooned on his island twenty- ^^ eight years, and absent from England thirty- five. It is not without significance that Crusoe landed on this island in September 1659, the month in which the English Commonwealth ended, and returned to England in June 1687, the month in which the Convention Parliament met to establish William III. It is the exact period during which the second Stuart reign defiled the English Govern- ment, and during which Crusoe, had he been free to choose, would have preferred to be absent, set- ting up a country of his own, in which he was king over himself. When Crusoe returned to England after his en- forced absence, as he is represented as doing, he found things in the nation, apart from the Govern- ment, just about as he had left them. His home- coming occasioned no shock or thrill except as his personal feelings were stirred by his effort to dis- cover whether his parents were still alive and by his joy in revisiting the scenes of his childhood. The social and industrial conditions continued un- changed. There are many short and some long 56 CRUSOE AS A RIP VAN WINKLE 57 periods of history, in which society has remained static, because human nature, left to itself, resists change. To such periods one may apply the open- ing remark of Mark Twain in his commencement address on "Methuselah," to the effect that, "Me- thuselah lived to be 969 years old, but he might as well have lived to be a thousand years old, because nothing was doing." But if Crusoe had been a Rip Van Winkle and returned to England one hundred years after his story was written in 1719, he would have been as shocked as though he had emigrated to another planet. He would have discovered that the Eng- land of his boyhood had ceased to exist, except in his memory, that in its place had arisen a new Eng- land, more changed than it had been during many previous centuries. During the last half of the century of Crusoe's supposed absence, there occurred two revolutions, more influential than any in human history and big with consequences for human welfare. The first of these revolutions was political. It is called the American Revolutionary War. It opened a new road to freedom and inaugurated the greatest ex- periment in democracy on a large scale, which had yet been tried. It was the brave assertion of an equality of opportunity for the self-development of all men. It had its beginning in a band of courag- eous pioneers who, a little more than a hundred and fifty years previously, had adventured into a 58 ROBINSON CRUSOE, SOCIAL ENGINEER newly discovered continent to establish "a govern- ment without a king and a church without a prelate/ 1 but the movement fruited into fact in the Revolution. It was a boon not only to America, but to England also and to all mankind as well, the significance of which is still an unfinished story. Its inner meaning for modern industry is criti- cally important and has never been more accurately stated than in the brief, dynamic words, uttered by President Lincoln, in our most sacred building, the plain brick building in Philadelphia, in which the Republic was born. "I have often pondered,' 1 said our typical American, "over the dangers which were incurred by the men who assembled here, and who formed and adopted the Declaration of Inde- pendence. I have pondered over the toils of the officers and soldiers who achieved that independence. I have often inquired of myself what great principle or idea it was that kept this confederacy so long together. It was not the mere matter of the sepa- ration of the colonies from the motherland, but that sentiment in the Declaration, which gave promise that in due time the weight would be lifted from the shoulders of all men.' 1 The same sentiment which six months later he thus expressed: "This is essen- tially a people's contest . . . for maintaining in the world that form and substance of government whose leading objects is to elevate the condition of men, to lift artificial weights from all shoulders, to clear the paths of laudable pursuits for all, to afford all CRUSOE AS A RIP VAN WINKLE 59 an unfettered start and a fair chance in the race of life." Simultaneously with this Revolution, occurred an- other far less dramatic, but far more drastic in its effect on the modern world. It is u the industrial revolution," which is still in progress. It was an astounding triumph of science and invention and produced a swift transformation in the whole aspect of the modern world. Its real significance is as yet only slightly appreciated. Lothrop Stoddard merely states the plain facts when he says: "This trans- formation was, indeed, absolutely unprecedented in the world's history. Hitherto man's material prog- ress had been a gradual evolution. With the excep- tion of gunpowder, he had tapped no new sources of material energy since very ancient times. The horse-drawn mail-coach of our great-grandfathers was merely a logical elaboration of the horse-drawn Egyptian chariot; the wind-driven clipper-ship traced its line unbroken to Ulysses's lateen bark before Troy; while industry still relied on the brawn of man and beast or upon the simple action of wind and waterfall. Suddenly all was changed. Steam, electricity, petrol and Hertzian wave, harnessed Nature's hidden powers, conquered distance, and shrunk the terrestrial globe to the measure of human hands. Man entered a new material world, differ- ing not merely in degree but in kind from that of previous generations." After Crusoe saw what had happened, he no 60 ROBINSON CRUSOE, SOCIAL ENGINEER doubt had the impulse, in his role as Rip Van Winkle, to take the next boat back to his uninhab- ited island, for with these two revolutions there arose also a fierce controversy whose end is not yet. The two revolutions stood for ideals diametrically opposed. The Revolutionary War changed tKe political status of man from that of a servant to that of a freeman. The industrial revolution changed his status from that of a freeman to that of a slave. It inaugurated an irrepressible conflict. The debate is not less but more alive than ever before and will not end until a reconciling principle is discovered and put into operation. Nothing is ever settled until it is settled right. The principle on which it can be settled right we are on the verge of discovering, although we are unexcusably late in doing so. To state this discovery is the aim of this book. CHAPTER III THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION T OOKED at in the large, the industrial revolu- ** tion seems to have occurred swiftly and all at once. It did occur more suddenly than any other big event of its kind. But nothing is wholly uncon- nected with the past or unrelated to the future. The principle of Emerson's great poem, "Each and All," may be accepted as a universal law : All are needed by each one ; Nothing is fair or good alone. The industrial revolution was no exception to this law. Every event, like every man, has a past. In the year that Crusoe was written, 1719, the first factory in the modern sense was started. That is, a factory in which the motive power was supplied from outside, human fingers were replaced by machinery, and men worked exclusively for wages. It was the silk "throwing mill," erected by the Lombe Brothers in Derbyshire. The name implies that it was imported from Italy, as it was. How John Lombe, at the risk of his life, stole the knowl- edge of the new machinery, is a thrilling and typical chapter in the pioneer story of the factory system. 61 62 ROBINSON CRUSOE, SOCIAL ENGINEER This was one among several heralds of the com- ing change. But the real beginning of the industrial revolution, the thing which gave to England her nickname "the workshop of the world," occurred and became effective fifty years later, around the period of the American Revolutionary War. It centers in particular about the inventions of four men: Kay, Hargreaves, Cartwright and Watt. John Kay invented a new shuttle for the loom. It was mechanically propelled, reducing the weaver's labor and doubling his output. It made possible the weaving of cloth wider than the distance between the outstretched arms of one operator. It not only dispensed with one worker at the loom, but enabled one weaver to handle the material supplied by six spinners. By Kay's invention, as Carlyle expressed it: '"The shuttle drops from the fingers of the weaver and falls into iron hands that ply it faster." James Hargreaves invented a new spinning wheel and, in honor of his wife, named it the "spin- ning-jenny." She deserved it. He was a poor weaver and while waiting for a supply of weft from his wife's one-thread wheel an accident occurred. Her machine was suddenly thrown into an upright position, but wheel and spindle did not cease to revolve. This flashed on his mind the possibility of driving several spindles with one wheel. He at once contrived a machine, which produced the same amount of yarn in the same time as had hith- erto been furnished by eight machines. His sense THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 63 of humor and fair play supplied the nickname, "spinning-jenny." This invention was built on the previous invention of John Wyatt, who made a machine able to spin a thread of cotton for the first time unaided by human fingers. It was in turn built on and improved by Richard Arkwright, a barber, whose machine produced yarn of greater strength; and also by Samuel Crompton a poor weaver, whose "spinning mule" produced yarn of finer quality, which could be made into materials like muslin. Edward Cartwright, a country clergyman, in- vented the power loom, which was not patented. He believed in the free use of ideas. The weaving process had been six times faster than the spinning process. But Hargreaves' invention reversed this order and made weaving to be the lagger. It was now necessary to increase the speed of weaving. The alluring principle of "keeping up with Lizzie" applies to machines as well as to people. The re- quired speed was supplied by Cartwright's power loom, which made possible the use of horses and of running water. James Watt, the son of a shipwright, invented the double-acting steam engine. He first discovered that steam could be used to work a pump. But in the engine at first contrived, only the upward stroke of the piston was acted on by the steam. Watt then made his marvelous invention of a double-acting engine, in which the steam that forced the piston 64 ROBINSON CRUSOE, SOCIAL ENGINEER up was condensed, and another jet of steam forced the piston down. Watt's genius more than met the indispensable need for mechanical power. England went "steam-mill mad." Boulton, Watt's rich part- ner, who characteristically took the lion's share of the profits, remarked to King George III : "I sell, Sire, what all the world desires power." It will be observed that these inventions were made by workingmen, not by bankers. They came not from the financial but from the engineering de- partment of industry, a fact highly significant when we come to consider the demand of workingmen for an opportunity to use their initiative and play a larger part in their own enterprise. The spiritual contribution, both for good and evil, made by mechanical inventions to the evolution of society and the progress of democracy is a story which never yet has been told effectively. Watt soon contrived steam-engines capable of operating all kinds of machines and in 1785, about the close of the American Revolutionary War, steam was used to drive the machinery of a cotton factory. It was the application of steam to machinery, which in real fashion inaugurated the industrial revolution, whose second and great period, roughly speaking, ran from 1762 to 1840. It swiftly transformed the face of things. The five decisive inventions, which have contrib- uted most to the creation of modern civilization are the compass, lens, gunpowder, printing press and THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 65 steam engine. These are the big five, the giants which have revolutionized the social life of the world, but the most potent, both for good and evil, is the steam engine. The advantages of the revolution were obvious. Machinery lowered the price of manufactured goods. It made comforts possible for the many, which once were the privilege of the few. It made the necessities of life cheaper, provided one had the means to purchase them. It increased the wages of labor. It developed a higher degree of skill of a certain type, because machinery can act, but can- not think. Modern machinery is not the triumph of matter, but the triumph of mind. The disadvantages of the revolution were equally obvious and in some respects much greater. The machine compelled people to settle around it. It created the modern city. It spoiled the beautiful landscapes of England by its ugly, brutalizing build- ings. It crowded the workers into factory towns and increased the diseases that come through crowd- ing. It lengthened the hours of labor. It made goods so fast that it glutted the market and created a new kind of famine, the famine for work. Whately Cooke Taylor says: "It vulgarizes the product, it stultifies the workman, it deteriorates public taste." If this statement is true, the machine's chief gospel seems to be the gospel of cheapness. It is a challenging paradox that machi- nery multiplied wealth enormously and at the same 66 ROBINSON CRUSOE, SOCIAL ENGINEER time multiplied poverty. From 1760 to 1818 the population of England increased 70 per cent, and the poor relief increased five hundred thirty per cent. Wealth and pauperism grew side by side. The system of producing wealth had been greatly changed; the system of its distribution had not. It is not difficult to understand why a good and great man like John Stuart Mill, who saw and studied the industrial revolution at first hand, could go so far as to say: "It is questionable, if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day's toil of any human being." Sad, indeed, if true; still sad- der if it is permitted to remain true. Was not machinery designed to harness the powers of Nature for the purpose of relieving man of back-breaking toil? CHAPTER IV THE DESERTED VILLAGE 1T7HEN Crusoe left England as a youth, seeking adventure, the prevailing type of manufacture was the system of cottage industry. It was chiefly handicraft, stimulating the worker's initiative and expressing his personality. It was free, each mem- ber of the household being at liberty to play what part in industry he liked. It was self-respecting, the workers associating with each other as equals, joined by bonds of affection and tradition rather than by bonds whose responsibility was limited to barter and exchange. It was production guided by the family spirit, production first for use; second for profit. At this period the work was entirely domestic and its different branches widely scattered. As described by Mr. James, the manufacturer traveled on horse- back to secure raw material among the farmers. It was distributed to sorters, then to combers, and then taken into the country to be spun. Here at each village he had his agents, who received the wool, distributed it among the peasantry, and re- ceived it back as yarn. The machine employed was still the old one-thread wheel and in summer weather 67 \ 63 ROBINSON CRUSOE, SOCIAL ENGINEER on many a village green might be seen the house- wives plying their busy trade, and furnishing to the poet the vision of Contentment spinning at the cot- tage door. It is a pleasant picture. One feature of it is interestingly described by Defoe in his "Tour of England." "The land near Halifax," he says, "was divided into small enclosures, from two acres to six or seven each, seldom more. Every three or four pieces of land had a house belonging to them . . . hardly a house standing out of a speaking distance from another. . . . We could see at every house a tenter, and on almost every tenter a piece of cloth. . . . At every considerable house was a manufac- tory. . . . Every clothier keeps one horse at least to carry his manufactures to the market; and gen- erally a cow or two for his family. . . . The houses are full of lusty fellows, some at the dye-vat, some at the looms, others dressing the cloths; the women and children carding and spinning, being all em- ployed from the youngest to the oldest. . . . Not a beggar to be seen, nor an idle person." Another feature of this picture is described by Thorold Rogers in his "Six Centuries of Work and Wages." "Each master of a handicraft, with his family and a few apprentices and journeymen about him, plied his trade in his home, owner of his simple tools and master of his profits. His workmen ate at his table, married his daughters, and hoped to become masters themselves when their time of edu- THE DESERTED VILLAGE 69 cation was over. He worked for customers whom he knew and honest work was good policy. He supplied a definite demand. The rules of his guild and the laws of his city barred out alien or reckless competition which would undermine his trade. So men lived simply and rudely. They had no hope of millions to lure them, nor the fear of poverty to \ haunt them. They lacked many of the luxuries accessible even to the poor today, but they had a large degree of security, independence and hope. And man liveth not by cake alone." Had Crusoe returned to England as Rip Van Winkle, he would have discovered that the domestic system had been destroyed by its deadly enemy, the capitalistic form of production. Cottage industry was gone. The factory system replaced it. The village was coming to be the deserted village. The farm laborer was ''divorced from the soil," as well as the factory worker from his work. Status was changed to contract, and personal relations were replaced by "business" relations. The workman's personal interest in his work was killed. Whole classes of laborers, both in agriculture and manu- facture were thrown out of work by the new machine industry. The factory system spread everywhere, and with it spread dissatisfaction. The change from the old system to the new was bitterly resisted. The new inventions which made the factory system possible were savagely attacked and the machines destroyed. Kay, the inventor of 70 ROBINSON CRUSOE, SOCIAL ENGINEER the new shuttle, was mobbed and his life threatened. He was driven from England to France, where he died in poverty. Hargreaves, the inventor of the spinning-jenny, was driven from his native town, and wherever the jenny was used serious riots oc- curred. So common became the destruction of machinery that Parliament passed a law fixing the death penalty as the punishment for its destruction. This action of the workmen seems stupid. They, like the rest of us, sometimes do stupid things. That the invention of machinery, which would vastly multiply wealth, make comforts available for all, and lift the burden of back-breaking toil, should have been greeted with bitter destructive protest instead of being hailed with celebrations of joy, is an appalling and puzzling fact. It is an indictment against society's intelligence. But so far as the workmen were concerned, their stupidity is only apparent. For the workman's action there's a reason. Bene- / fits of the new machines went first to the owner and CHAPTER VII REVOLUTION BY CONSENT TN the peaceful pressure of public opinion, there- * fore, and not in the application of legal or mil- itary force, lies the hope of terminating industrial conflicts. The solution of the industrial problem is to be found in industry itself. This does not mean that the leaders of industry will find this solution unaided. Their perspective is usually distorted by their nearness to their job. The tendency is for them to get buried under the machinery of their work. It is significant for our purpose to remember that almost never have the courts been reformed by lawyers, or the church by ministers, or medicine by physicians, or governmental machinery by office holders. This is likewise the fact even in science. The scientific principles like the law of conservation of energy and the mechanical equivalent of heat were not discovered by experts in physics. The reason why discoveries in organized activities are so frequently made, not by experts engaged in them, but by men with practical experience in wider fields, is because it is the lookers-on who see most of the game. The same principle applies to industry, though 208 REVOLUTION BY CONSENT 209 not to the same extent. There is far more hope of free activity in industry than, for example, in gov- ernment. Industry appeals to a man's hope; gov- ernment appeals to his fear. Industry stimulates initiative; government punishes. Industry asks what can you do ; government states what you must not do. Therefore, in business there is ample justi- fication for the attitude of expectancy, for the hope that its leaders will respond to new ideas. It is apparent, therefore, that if managers and men are to make progress towards a solution of their own problem, they need the help of an agency like a community engineering board to guide them, to give them perspective, to do for them the work of social engineering. It is equally apparent that, if such a board is to make progress in securing a re-organization of industry, the result must be se- cured by operating through the managers and men, not apart from them. It is their business we desire to transform. To produce a mental revolution in them is the path to our desired goal. It is also apparent that, the essential nature of industrial ac- tivity predisposes those engaged in it to extend' mental hospitality to new ideas. The hope of in- dustry lies in industry itself. The three cardinal facts concerning managers and men in industry their dependence on outside guid- ance, the need for their free co-operation, and their capacity for open-mindedness all necessitate the conclusion that the result we aim at must be achieved 210 ROBINSON CRUSOE, SOCIAL ENGINEER by the method not of force, but of freedom. Un- less a man gives his inward consent to a cause he cannot be said to be enlisted in it at all. The recon- struction of modern industry must, therefore, be what J. A. Hobson calls a revolution by consent. It is a significant phrase for a highly significant idea, and suggests a social policy of uncalculated value for the immediate future. The suggestion is that a revolution can be best effected in modern industry by the peaceful process of persuading the possessing class to give their free consent to it. This suggested policy rests on the assumption that an appeal to hope is stronger than an appeal to fear, that the social conscience is not atrophied in the possessing classes, that it is possible for them to discover the injustice of one class living upon the enforced labor of another, and even to rebel against being a party to a system, which degrades their fellow men. Mr. Hobson gave currency to this phrase in his latest book. It was received with somewhat scorn- ful criticism on the ground that the policy recom- mended was impossible and Utopian. This is quite a natural criticism to come from those, who think only in terms of warfare. The criticism is not with- out a touch of humor, when we consider the bold and naive assumption that the critics' method of warfare now in operation, has been productive of practical results. I do not know what answer Mr. Hobson would make to his critics, but it is here REVOLUTION BY CONSENT 211 suggested that he might have forestalled the criti- cism by answering it effectively before it was made. We are agreed that revolution by violence has been ineffective. Strikes, lockouts and political ac- tion are the methods of warfare, and while it is freely granted that they have been productive of some good in the past, they are not in any sense satisfactory. We are also agreed that an idea, if it can be gotten into general circulation, is the most dynamic weapon available for the defeat of injustice and the progressive realization of construc- tive purposes. The use of physical or political force only retards the cause in behalf of which they are employed. This has been demonstrated to the point of weariness. What Mr. Hobson did not mention, and his critics have not yet discovered, is the method by which to make effective an appeal to reason. An idea is not enough; it must be an organized community idea. To get results we need both a principle and a program. This is the amendment we would make to Mr. Hobson's proposed policy of securing revolution by consent, with which we are in enthusiastic accord. The attempt to secure the consent of the possessing class by an appeal to reason and justice, to be effective, must be made through the community and in behalf of the common welfare. The community principle is the key to its effectiveness. When any class, organized on the basis of its self-interest, makes an appeal, it is handicapped by the suspicion 212 ROBINSON CRUSOE, SOCIAL ENGINEER that it is animated by unworthy motives. But when an organized community finds its voice in an organ like a community engineering board, it speaks a dynamic and undiscounted word, a word with wings to it. The community as the spokesman in behalf of a reconstructed industry, can do more both for the working and the possessing class, than either class can do for itself. Revolution by consent is correct in principle. The community engineering board furnishes the program for putting it into effective operation. What is it to which we desire the capitalist to give his free consent? What is it, if he consented to it, that would revolutionize modern industry? He would the more readily consent to it, if he dis- covered it himself. What is it that we want him to discover? The answer to this question is so critically important that we should spare no pains in stating it accurately. For the sake of clarity, let us state it in terms of a possible experience. Let us suppose that the discovery is made by the president and part owner of a typical American factory. He is self-made and acts the part. He is healthy, accustomed to success, walks with the swing of victory. He employs driving methods. He is an individualist; thinks he has a right to do as he pleases with what he believes in his own. He resents opposition. He prides himself on being "practical." He is not devoid of sentiment, but holds it is bad policy to mix sentiment with business. REVOLUTION BY CONSENT 213 His relation to his "hands" is a money relationship only and that ends it. He has had frequent experi- ence with strikes and lock-outs and always supposed he had come out a victor. He says he is able to take care of himself, thank you. But since the war he is not so sure. Just now he is worried. He is facing a new situation. The men are dissatisfied, suspicious, resentful. He is annoyed and puzzled. He feels isolated in his own plant. Being naturally a sympathetic man, it is pain- ful to be without the respect of his fellows. He thought he was self-sufficient, but finds he isn't. Wages, higher or lower, do not remove the trouble. He is bewildered. The thing is as real as his factory walls, but he can neither analyze nor explain it. The men are "soldiering" on the job. They go through the motions as usual, but the results are not as usual. The monthly production sheets reveal a serious condition. Production has fallen off twenty, thirty, forty per cent. This is ruinous to the business. It may be necessary to pass a dividend. He has arrived at the point of distress. He goes home every night with a mental headache. One night on leaving the office he spoke to the messenger boy, whose complete absorption in a book for days past at odd moments, he had noticed. "What are you reading, son," asked the manufacturer. "The greatest book in the world," answered the boy. "It's 'Robinson Crusoe.' I've read it three times already and I'm going to read it again. You ought 214 ROBINSON CRUSOE, SOCIAL ENGINEER to read it. Crusoe had lots of fun workin' in his island, makin' ink and cookin' tools and boats. You can take the book home, if you want to; I've just finished with it for this time." The man re- membered reading it as a boy, but had not thought it worth while to read since. Nevertheless he took the book home that night, not so much because he thought it had any contribution to make to the problem of work, as because he wanted an antidote for his mental headache, and thought he might find it in an escape back into the enthusiasms of his youth. He found more than he had expected. Reading the book now as a mature man and with his factory troubles as a background, was like a fresh revelation and an undiscovered country. He had searched for silver and found gold. For two evenings he was absorbed in reading the book, indulging himself with the refreshing spirit of adventure, the desire for which may be suppressed, but never killed in a normal man. He spent more evenings in serious reflection, for out of the book he got more than adventure; he got illumination on his problem. He made an attempt to state to himself what the book had suggested to him. Crusoe's adventure was an adventure about work. How can we tie work and adventure together? If, thought he, we can introduce into work the spirit of adventure, joy, self-directed activity, we can make some prog- ress with our problem. This is the challenge Cru- REVOLUTION BY CONSENT 215 soe makes to me. I will look it squarely in the face, he said in his meditation, and extract its meaning. If my workmen were men like Crusoe, my prob- lem would be wholly different. Would I have any problem at all? Look at Crusoe there, working at his boat, sailing it out of his harbor, self-reliant, eager, expectant, absorbed in his work, doing it as if he loved it, feeling that it is his own work. What I need in my factory, is the Crusoe type of man. But how am I to get him? The key to this problem is the workman's attitude to his work. But how are we to create the right attitude? Crusoe looks as if he were ready to break out into singing as he works. But where is the singing man in my factory? He glares by his absence. If we can get men to feel like singing as they work, our problem is solved. But singing is an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual condition. We can't get sing- ing, until we change their state of mind. But if I had the Crusoe type of man, I would have to treat him very differently than I now treat my men. If I am to develop them into the Crusoe type, or retain them after I develop them, must not my treatment of them be on a different and higher basis? But is not this the natural right way to treat men, anyway? They are not on an intel- lectual equality with me, nor on a social equality with me, but are they not on a moral equality with me? This is a disturbing and revolutionizing idea. 216 ROBINSON CRUSOE, SOCIAL ENGINEER If the men are ever to change their attitude to their work, must not I change my attitude to them? Obviously, it is up to me. This is the first big idea I get from a study of the kind of man Crusoe was. But I cannot stop there. It means that these men have interests like mine. The same needs and desires and ambitions. The similarity is not always clearly apparent. Their desires are often dimly conceived and feebly ex- pressed. But they exist, and I wonder whether this is not the real cause of their unrest, even when they are unconscious of it. To be strictly honest, I confess I know some workmen who are my intel- lectual and moral superiors. But my workmen and I not only have like interests, but something more. We have common interests also. We are engaged in a common enterprise. Neither I nor they can be successful or happy in our work, without mutual aid and free co-operation. We rise and fall to- gether. We have a community of interest. I never put it that way before. I never recognized our interests as common. In fact, I have acted as if they weren't; as if these workmen were my natural enemies, whereas they are my natural allies. If that is so, then this constant conflict between us is nothing more nor less than a civil war, in which neither side can win; neither victor nor vanquished. Its continuance is suicidal. We are like horn-locked deer in the mountains, engaged in combat, in which an injury to either is an injury to both. How can REVOLUTION BY CONSENT 217 civil war in industry be stopped, until we recognize our interests as common interests, and make this fact a working principle in the conduct of industry? After he had thus stated to himself these two big constructive ideas, he felt that he had his feet planted on a path which held out the promise of leading him to a solution of his problem. He ex- perienced the elation that comes from creative ideas. He resolved that he must talk over his new discovery with someone. It would be useless to talk with his superintendent. He was afflicted with a natural inability to take in new ideas. Moreover his attitude to the men was domineering, as is fre- quently the case with men who exercise delegated authority. But he could talk with his daughter. She had informed herself about the new community movement, whose chief doctrine was the develop- ment of the individual through self-activity. Then, too, she was a woman, whose function it is to be a creator and conserver of life, and was naturally more interested in the human factor in industry than in any other. His daughter responded with sympathetic under- standing to the news of her father's new outlook. She stimulated his dissatisfaction with things as they were, by accentuating the mutual advantages that the proposed new policy would produce. She was wise enough to know that the most helpful as well as the most effective criticism is criticism by con- struction. Her father sincerely agreed with her, 218 ROBINSON CRUSOE, SOCIAL ENGINEER but her intuition told her that his courage might not be quite equal to the task of translating his new vision into practice without a little external stimulus. She, therefore, suggested that he call into consul- tation a representative of the new profession of social engineering, to get from him the assurance that his newly discovered principles were quite prac- tical. This suggestion he approved, because while he had given his full inward consent to the princi- ples, which Had gripped him, his conception of what is "practical" had been so distorted that he found difficulty in adopting them as a business policy. The social engineer came, a strong up-standing man, who saw life steadily and saw it whole. He was a practical idealist. In his work he combined principles and their practice. He had made the great discovery that the questions involved in in- dustry, like all other big questions, have two sides which are opposite, but not contradictory. The manufacturer described to him the new and recent labor troubles in his factory, what had hap- pened to his outlook through the reading of "Robin- son Crusoe," the new vision he had seen, the dis- turbance it caused him, the possibility of putting it into operation. His report was made somewhat timidly, because he felt a lurking cowardice before the seeming admission that he was permitting senti- ment to influence a business problem. His daughter, who sat in on the conference, was quick to perceive this masculine weakness, and supplemented her REVOLUTION BY CONSENT 219 father's statement, not because it needed it, but for the purpose of informing the social engineer that she was his ally, and to suggest that he was free to express his convictions without reservation. After listening with patience and understanding, asking a few questions to disclose the true inward- ness of the situation, he gave to the manufacturer his honest advice expressed in the following state- ment: "I congratulate you. Yours is the good fortune of an open mind. For any man with an open mind there is hope of finding a solution for his problems. It is because of your open-mindedness, that the read- ing of 'Robinson Crusoe 1 put you on the track of the two big discoveries you have made. It is an unusual and picturesque, and yet a perfectly simple, way of approach to these ideas. It is curious that a book which everybody thinks he knows, is very little known for what it really is. It challenges modern industry at its most vulnerable spot. It doesn't matter how you came by them, but it was a fortunate day for you, when you made these two discoveries : first, that everyone of your workmen is a possible Crusoe and must be treated as such to develop him into one; and, second, that the only way to develop them into Crusoes, and thereby in- crease production and decrease industrial civil war is to establish a community of principle between you and your workmen. "The two principles constitute one principle at 220 ROBINSON CRUSOE, SOCIAL ENGINEER heart and it is the basis on which modern industry everywhere must be reorganized, if it expects to have anything else but trouble. They are not only practical, but they are the only practicable principles there are. And for a very obvious reason; they are in harmony with human nature and the human factor is your biggest element in production. It is just the opposite of practical to run counter to human nature and yet this policy hitherto has been the common practice. To reverse this practice and assist in re- organizing industry on a sound and practical basis is one of the chief tasks of the new profession of social engineering. "I am glad you yourself made this discovery in time to save yourself unnecessary trouble. A de- cent respect for the opinion of mankind compels us to admit that industry is in serious need of recon- struction. The manufacturers, who refuse to see it are inviting trouble and are sure to get it. They ought to realize that it is not possible to reason with empty stomachs. It is futile to argue with the north wind. The best defense against the north wind, as Lowell said, is to put on your overcoat. The right time to cure trouble is before it happens, just as you are planning to do. The thing which puzzled you in the conduct of your workmen is something which has happened in Europe and America since the war, and which many leaders of industry have failed or refused to recognize. It is this : the work- man since the war, has become a new and different REVOLUTION BY CONSENT 221 kind of man. Everywhere in Europe and America he has formulated his dissatisfaction. A new con- sciousness has taken possession of him. He has resolved on a final refusal any longer to be a machine and has acquired an undefeatable determination to play the part of a man in his work. This is the real cause of the present unrest. It is not so much a complaint against details of wages and working conditions, though it often takes this tangible form; it is the structure of industry that he challenges. He makes this challenge, because he has acquired a new mental attitude toward himself. He demands that we practice the great dictum of the philosopher Kant, 'Treat every man as an end to himself, not as a means to your ends.' The problem of modern industry therefore, is a human problem. "The resultant unrest is not a thing to be dis- turbed over or to combat, but to be welcomed. It means in my judgment an uncalculated advance in civilization and human progress. The wise manu- facturer will rejoice over the present unrest, and will capitalize it to serve his productive purposes. If these workmen want to play a bigger part in their work and exercise their initiative, why don't you let them? If you did, it would greatly increase the output and make more money, both for them and you. It will pay you financially. You ought not to do it primarily for this reason, but this will be a natural by-product of such a policy. It is the simple, right thing to do, but in the long run the 222 ROBINSON CRUSOE, SOCIAL ENGINEER thing which is morally right is the only thing, which is economically sound. "But the policy based on the two principles you have discovered will produce results still more fun- damental. For example. It will elevate your busi- ness to the status of a liberal profession. What is it that justifies us in classifying a profession as 'liberal* ? The profession of minister and physician bear this label. A captain of industry should be classified with them, but he isn't, not to any con- siderable extent as yet. This is his natural position as Ruskin pointed out in his list of five professions related to the necessities of life: " 'The Soldier's profession is to defend life. " 'The Pastor's, to teach it. " 'The Physician's, to keep it in health. ' 'The Lawyer's, to enforce justice in it. 1 'The Merchant's, to provide for it. " 'And the duty of all these men is, on due occasion, to die for it. ' 'The Soldier, rather than leave his post in battle. ' 'The Physician, rather than leave his post in plague. ' 'The Pastor, rather than teach falsehood. ' 'The Lawyer, rather than countenance injustice. " 'The Merchant, what is his "due occasion" of death?' "Even the soldier, although his profession is an ugly, destructive and a morally contradictory busi- ness, is nevertheless accorded a special regard in men's thoughts, and for good reason. His service is given in behalf of a cause bigger than his personal interest, for which he is willing to spend the last REVOLUTION BY CONSENT 223 full measure of his devotion. This is why we hang over our mantlepieces a sword or musket. Why do we not hang by their side a hoe, or yardstick or piece of machinery? The reason is obvious. There is one thing, and one alone, which can give to busi- ness the status of a liberal profession, and that is to introduce into it the element of public service as a controlling motive. In his 'Business a Profession' Mr. Justice Brandeis states the three distinguishing marks of a profession to be 'preliminary training, a calling pursued largely for others and not merely for one's self, and where the financial return is not the accepted measure of success.' These three are one. A liberal profession is a public service. We all recognize that a minister or physician should receive a decent compensation for his service, but if he should make profiteering his chief motive, he would immediately lose his status in the community. Shall we require the soldier and minister and physi- cian to work for the common welfare, and permit the merchant to work for his own? Is it not both his duty and privilege to sacrifice comfort and riches rather than do injury and injustice to his fellowmen, either his competitors or his workmen? The man who does so is just as heroic as the man who dies on the field of battle if not more so, for the cour- age to live heroically is more rare than the courage to die heroically. "When you have transformed your business into a liberal profession by adopting the policy we are 224 ROBINSON CRUSOE, SOCIAL ENGINEER discussing, you will then make a further discovery, namely, that you will get real joy out of your busi- ness. Merely to make money is not a big enough aim for an able American business man like your- self, and will never satisfy you. Whatever divi- dends of money your business yields, if it does not also yield some dividends of joy, the business cannot honestly be reckoned a success. If you miss joy you miss the Hamlet of life's drama. The real thing is found, not apart from your work, but through your work. I suggest that you open a new page in your ledger and head it 'Dividends of Joy,' and keep a careful account of this product. Please note that it cannot be bought with money. It is not a com- modity or a dower, but a personal achievement. It is a by-product of service. It comes only as the natural product of the manhood policy you plan to adopt. "You will notice that I have omitted to say any- thing about the detailed application of this policy. There's a reason. In any problem the place to begin is at the beginning. It is largely labor lost to at- tempt the application of anything until we first deter- mine what it is we aim to apply. Moreover you must accept this manhood principle, not because it pays, but because it is right. If you adopt it merely because it pays, you will not understand how to operate it, and you will defeat your own purpose. We will consider its application later, but at this point let me give you a formula for the practice of REVOLUTION BY CONSENT 225 the principles you have stated. It is this: 'Stop making shoes and begin making men and let the men make the shoes.' The trouble with industry is that it is unbalanced. It has been operated by book- keepers instead of by engineers. The managers have thought almost exclusively of profits as they appeared on the books, and forgot the creators of the profits. The formula, I suggest, will restore the lost balance. It will produce more shoes, but it will do so only because the new policy enables the men to receive personal development and satisfac- tion in the process. I, therefore, earnestly urge you, as the first step toward a solution of your prob- lem, to make a decision and adopt the manhood principle as your future policy." Before the social engineer had finished these re- marks, the manufacturer's mental headache was gone and he had decided to adopt the new policy. He did it without reservation, because he did not in fact need to be convinced of the merit of the new policy. That was self-evident. What he needed was not advice, but confirmation. He also engaged the social engineer to assist him to put the new policy into operation. It is needless to add that before the social engi- neer's engagement in the factory was ended, he had contracted another with the manufacturer's daugh- ter, who had been his efficient ally in the inaugura- tion of the new policy. The event was a foregone conclusion through the operation of the law of 226 ROBINSON CRUSOE, SOCIAL ENGINEER natural selection. There was a time when her father had entertained the hope that she would marry his superintendent. But long ago he had seen how impossible it was of realization. The disparity of outlook between them on the conduct of the indus- try was too great. The moral issue involved in the industrial problem could not be confined to the fac- tory walls. It invaded his household. It would have produced a real separation in sympathy be- tween him and his daughter if he had not extended mental hospitality to the new idea. The ghost of this new idea had visited his fireside for years, and it no doubt had helped to equip him with insight to receive "Robinson Crusoe's" message. When he perceived what natural comrades his daughter and the social engineer were, he had pleasure in approving their engagement. Now he understood that similarity of mind and purpose was essential to success in marriage, just as a community of principle between him and his workmen was essen- tial for success in industry. After all, he thought, is not the extension of the family spirit to the fac- tory the real key to the solution of its problems? CHAPTER VIII A BILL OF PARTICULARS / "T" V HE magical effect of the manufacturer's final * decision and spoken word to the social engi- neer, was immediately apparent. When he returned to his factory, he was a new man. His workmen at once perceived the change. Everywhere they asked, "What's come over the boss?" Their in- stinct told them something had happened. They could see it in his eye, in his attitude toward them, in his new respect for their personality. The trans- forming power of an idea had produced a new atmosphere in the factory. An atmosphere is as real as the shoes the men are making, and quite the most important item in a factory's equipment. It cannot be produced artificially, because it is a spir- itual product, and therefore must be genuine. A genuine mental revolution had taken place in this man. And a mental revolution in the owner meant a revolution by consent in the reorganization of his industry. He perceived that his new point of view was infectious and had half solved his problem before he had begun its detailed adjustment. In his judgment this fact furnished complete confirma- tion that he had chosen the right course of action. As he considered the application of the new 227 228 ROBINSON CRUSOE, SOCIAL ENGINEER policy, it became clear to him that the manhood principle, if broken up into its constituent elements . for the sake of clarity, would logically mean such principles as these : Democracy applied to manage- ment; justice applied to profits; art applied to manual work; and leisure provided for personal growth. These are self-evident propositions. He had no hesitation about approving of them in prin- ciple. But he was an honest man; not a hypocrite. He resented the suggestion that he approve the new policy in principle, but deny it in practice. He started the search for a program. He began to formulate a bill of particulars for the actual opera- tion of the new policy. If, now, this man or any other captain of indus- try honestly desired a bill of particulars, organically related to the manhood principle, which he had mor- ally approved, what items should it contain? It is here suggested that it would contain four essential items, and that they are the sufficient and compre- hensive guides in his program of action. They are as follows: 1. Treat capital and wages on the same basis. They are both things and the same kind of things and should be classified together. Reckon a fair dividend on invested capital and a fair living wage, as constituting merely two indispensable elements in the cost of production. The question of work- men is a basically different question and requires a different treatment. A BILL OF PARTICULARS 229 2. Divide net profits among owners and work- men. By workmen we mean all workers either with brain, or hand, or with both. There should be a dividend on wages as well as one on capital. After a fair basic dividend is paid on capital and a fair basic wage is paid for labor, and after a reserve fund is provided to offset the deterioration of build- ings and machinery, and a reserve fund provided to offset the deterioration of workmen during periods of enforced idleness, the net profit should be divided in a fair and fixed ratio between the capital invested and the workmen, the two sources from which the profit was produced. This is not a bonus given as a charity; nor is it a scheme of profit-sharing as a stimulus to production; it is a division of earnings as an act of justice between partners in a joint enter- prise. 3. Put production for use in the first place and production for profit in the second place. This means the pride of workmanship in the product as a protection against the temptation against the hasty production of cheap and shoddy goods. This prin- ciple introduces the element of public service into the enterprise. It will help to insure a permanent market for the product with the consuming public. It will stimulate the element of joy in work, which has a direct bearing on production and labor turn- over. So far as it is possible to introduce the ele- ment of art into the process of work, it will be a safeguard against the spiritual blight of treadmill 230 ROBINSON CRUSOE, SOCIAL ENGINEER monotony, due to automatic machinery, which, now and during the next fifty years, will constitute one of the most serious and baffling of the problems of modern industry. 4. Make workmen members of the organiza- tion in which they work. This will enable a work- man to feel that the work he is doing is his work, which means a new world for him. Responsibility and freedom should be riveted together. It is a moral contradiction to demand responsibility and not grant freedom to discharge it effectively. To secure a man's free cooperation, he must have a voice in the management. This proposed union of managers and men as members of the enterprise must be a real union, and not a "yellow union." It must be a union with power in it, otherwise work- men will keep the union they now have. There must be no joker in it, no tricks of any kind. They always act as a boomerang and delay progress. The German Diet before the war was called U A Hall of Echoes." Its members could talk all they pleased, but could do nothing. If in an industry a proposed democratic plan of cooperation provides that all questions shall be settled in the counting room and permits the workmen to do nothing but talk, this may do some good, but it will not meet the issue. Talk is good, but talk merely for talk's sake gets us no where. It must be responsible talk, that is, the discussion of questions concerning which the talkers are expected to take some action. It must A BILL OF PARTICULARS 231 be organic democracy, and not sham democracy. If the men are given a real part to play as members of the organization, the first obvious effect will be to end strikes, because men do not strike against themselves. This is a negative result but indispen- sable as the beginning of positive and creative achievements, which constitute the new policy's chief aim. This quartet of principles is not a complete bill of particulars; just the beginning of it. But they are basic and universally applicable in adapting the policy to the particular requirements of various in- dustries. A policy based on these principles would pay financially. When one reckons the frightful loss due to strikes and lock-outs and the decreased production caused by an armed neutrality state of mind in the workmen, it would pay handsomely. But it ought not to be adopted because it pays finan- cially. It ought to be adopted because it is right, and also because we want to reap some dividends of joy as well as dividends of money. It would be a wise policy whether it paid financially or not. The manufacturer, who gets out of his business nothing but dividends in money is cheating himself and doesn't know it. The proposed new policy is simple. It is not complex, but it is difficult. Its operation will require patience, thoughtful adaptation to a great variety of details, expert knowledge of human nature, edu- cation of owners, managers and workmen, sincerity 232 ROBINSON CRUSOE, SOCIAL ENGINEER on the part of leaders, mental hospitality to new ideas. These requirements make it difficult, but the policy itself is quite simple. Its difficulty finds ample compensation in the fascination of doing creative work of this type. It is because the work is new and difficult that it calls for the service of the new profession of social engineering, which is now being created to meet the need for it. Men like Gantt, Steinmetz, Wolf, Polakov and Leitch are pioneers in it. They do not call themselves by the new title, social engineers, but this is the type of work they have been doing. This profession is destined to be of great national importance, and to rank as a liberal profession alongside of that of a physician, a minister, and a lawyer. It is essential to make a clearly marked distinction between a social and an efficiency engineer. The work of efficiency engineering is concerned with book-keeping, handling of materials and machines, elimination of waste motions and other questions of detail. These are important details, but they are details. On the contrary the social engineer deals, not with details primarily, but with policies. He treats the basic question in industry. His work is that of industrial statesmanship. Of course all good titles are so speedily spoiled by loose and care- less usage, that we need not waste time by insisting on their accurate use, so long as we have a clear conception of the two types of work. In practice A BILL OF PARTICULARS 233 they will doubtless tend to overlap, for there can be no real efficiency, while basic defects of policy continue. But no one ought to deceive himself by confusing the two types of work. Failure to make this simple distinction is so com- mon, and is so frequently a designed failure, that it will be helpful to make it clear by a pointed illus- tration. The test of sanity in some asylums is to take the patient to a trough, partially filled with water, and into which an open spigot pours new supplies of water. The patient is asked to bail the water out of the trough. If he attempts to do so without first turning off the flow, he is regarded as insane, and properly so. Efficiency engineering, as hitherto understood, assumed that a workman was a machine and concerned itself with the kind of vessel to be used in bailing out the water, the method of using the fewest motions, and similar questions of mechanical detail. On the other hand the social engineer, assumes that a workman is a human being, and concerns himself with the task of turning off the spigot, preventing troubles by dealing with their source of supply, eliminating the fundamental de- fects of the industrial type of work, and is so obvi- ously sane that the probability is that efficiency engineering will in the near future develop into social engineering, which is as it should be, for then we will have real efficiency for the first time. This hopeful outlook inspired the significant reso- lution recently adopted by the Federation of Ameri- 234 ROBINSON CRUSOE, SOCIAL ENGINEER can Engineering Societies, of which Herbert Hoover was elected the first president. It is as follows : "Engineering is the science of controlling the forces and of utilizing the materials of nature for the benefit of man, and the art of organizing and of directing human activities in connection there- with. "As service to others is the expression of the highest motive to which men respond and as duty to contribute to the public welfare demands the best efforts men can put forth, "Now, THEREFORE, the engineering and allied technical societies of the United States of America, through the formation of the Federated American Engineering Societies, realize a long cherished ideal a comprehensive organization dedicated to the service of the community, state and nation." The aim of other engineers, as this resolution indicates, is to develop material resources and use the human factor as a means to this end, but a social engineer's aim is to develop human resources and use the material factor as a means to this end. The two types of engineers have much in common and their work is harmonious, but the approach to their tasks is quite distinct and different. The fact that other engineers have recognized the necessity of directing human activities from the standpoint of public service in order to make their work effective, is a striking indication of the need for the new pro- fession of social engineering. A BILL OF PARTICULARS 235 Inasmuch as social engineering deals with funda- mental issues, it will be observed that the bill of particulars made no mention of labor unions. A labor union is not a fundamental issue but a detail. It aims to secure fundamental results, but its exist- ence or non-existence is not a basic question. It is an effect, not a cause. A union, like every other organization, is a means to an end, not an end in itself. By far too much is made over labor unions, both by capitalists and by workmen themselves. They both ought to center their attention on the real issues at stake. Most of the talk about unions is camouflage. The claim of some manufacturers that they have a right to organize for their own benefit, and their workmen have not, is nothing but comedy, if it is not something worse. It is a sug- gestion that the impartial public cannot recognize as worthy even of consideration. The attempt to carry on a war of extermination against labor unions is surprisingly stupid, as well as futile. It is the evidence either of an inexcusable ignorance of history and human nature, or an un- willingness to face the issues they raise. Labor unions are neither to be feared nor fought, but recognized with gratitude in spite of their defects. They are the most effective agencies we have for genuine Americanization, for they operate on the American ideals of free association, free speech and free action. In the light of their history and achievement, it would be nothing short of a calamity 236 ROBINSON CRUSOE, SOCIAL ENGINEER to the progress of human decency in general and to the American experiment at democracy in particular, if they should go out of existence, at least at present. The facts it seems to me make this the only fair- minded as well as the only wise attitude to take towards labor unions. Such an attitude received forceful expression in the progressive and states- manlike report recently issued by the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce. It says: "A movement is now on foot which, misusing the name of 'open shop' and 'American plan/ is smashing labor organ- izations throughout the country by locking the unions out and forcibly deunionizing the workman. Together with the abuses of unionism this move- ment is destroying the constructive substance of unionism and stifling the just democratic aspirations of the workmen. It is undermining the confidence of labor in employers and ruining the foundation for co-operation between them. Similar campaigns in former periods of depression have resulted only in redoubled growth of unionism and the adoption by it of more extreme measures in the periods of prosperity which followed and there is no reason to believe that the results of this campaign will be different. Campaigns of this nature are leading to oppression by employers and are playing into the hands of revolutionary elements. Thus the cycle continues with the participants in continuous and senseless warfare." This would be the universal opinion, if it were A BILL OF PARTICULARS 237 not for the state of war existing between organized capitalists and organized workmen. War is always the fruitful mother of prejudice. When warfare is replaced by cooperation, the owners and managers will support labor unions and assist them in work- ing out the big constructive social program, which the labor guilds once operated in Europe. In case we desired to abolish labor unions, there is one simple and effective method of doing it, a method with which workmen everywhere would be in agreement. It is to remove the reason for their existence. If this were done, attendance at their meetings would naturally diminish and they would go out of existence. Their members would not want them to continue, if they cease to have any cause to serve. Labor unions originated and now exist to work for the establishment of the manhood prin- ciple as an industrial policy, which means a just distribution of earnings, decent living conditions, a chance for joy in work and an opportunity for self- expression. The effort of workmen in behalf of this cause can never cease until they cease to be men or until God is dead. To them this cause has be- come a religion, as in fact it is. To expect them to abandon organized effort in its behalf, is the same as it would be to ask a father to abandon all effort in behalf of his own child's welfare. Let us be done with foolish and insincere talk about de- tails. Let us talk about the question itself. We are not cowards; why should there be any sugges- 238 ROBINSON CRUSOE, SOCIAL ENGINEER tion of fear to face it. It is as big and fascinating as life itself. This then is the nature of a bill of particulars for the operation of the manhood principle in indus- try. I have an intuition that at this point some reader has a strong impulse to rise to a point of information. He says: I thought a bill of particu- lars meant a detailed account of how the new policy operated in particular factories. Is it your plan to give such an account? I would say to my hypo- thetical questioner that what he asks for is not a bill of particulars on the policy itself. I have al- ready given that. What he asks for is a report or survey of some one's experiment with it, a very different thing. Such a report may reveal only an approximation to the policy, or a variety of adapta- tions of it, or it may be a distortion of it, or it may only reveal some manager's capacity or incapacity to understand it. I would also ask my questioner to note carefully that the importation into industry of certain democratic forms borrowed from politics, where they have not been a conspicuous success, are only stepping-stones toward our goal. Unless democracy in industry is some improvement over the type now in operation in politics, it will not get us far. I would also warn my questioner against the temptation and common practice to use the request for a survey as the means of side-stepping a moral responsibility. With these three safeguards in mind, I would say A BILL OF PARTICULARS 239 that accounts of the attempts to operate democracy in industry by the method of trial and error are most helpful and stimulating. I refer my ques- tioner to two recent books. First, the enterprising and suggestive book by John R. Commons, and his collaborators, called "Industrial Government," which describes eighteen various experiments with democracy in industry. Second, the illuminating book by Ray Stannard Baker, called "The New Industrial Unrest," which describes several more interesting experiments and triumphs of industrial democracy, together with a penetrating and whole- some analysis of the present unrest in industry. I confess that I had planned to include a descrip- tion of the operation of the new policy in six typical trials of it, three from my own experience, and three from that of others. I had intended to de- scribe the operation of the new policy as it has been partially adopted in the settlement which ended the recent coal strike in England. This settlement pro- vided for the establishment of a national wage pool, the acceptance of a material cut in wages, the divi- sion of surplus profits in the ratio of eighty-three per cent, to the coal hewers and seventeen per cent, to the mine owners. The immediate result of the plan was an increase in production to a point higher than before the strike, in spite of the fact that one hundred thousand fewer men are employed and two hundred pits have not been reopened. This is an astonishing result. It is unexpected, but not at all 240 ROBINSON CRUSOE, SOCIAL ENGINEER surprising. That justice is economically profitable ought not to be a surprising discovery. It would not be, if men had not usually refused to do the right thing until they had guarantees about results. But it ceases to be right, and becomes merely enlightened selfishness, if done for the sake of guarantees, and, moreover, there is no way of dis- covering what the result will be without the venture of courage to do the simple right. Therefore, for the sake of this discussion I have concluded, that it would be more helpful to omit all reports on the operation of the new policy. I am most desirous of avoiding the common danger of diverting our attention from the policy itself by a consideration of its details. I am writing this book to make a simple, clear statement, divorced from learned complexities, of the manhood prin- ciple as an industrial policy, and as the only possible solution of the industrial problem. There are so very few books which state the issue for debate in modern industry, that it seems wiser for us to do no fishing up side streams, but keep to the main current of our discussion. The industrial war is so suicidal in its waste of money and good-will, and so big with consequences for the national welfare, that we should spare no pains in the attempt to discover what the war is about. Is it not a curious tragi-comedy of modern history that we have per- mitted the industrial civil war to proceed on its destructive course for so long a period without mak- A BILL OF PARTICULARS 241 ing any attempt to discover its fundamental cause? Certainly there is little hope of finding a remedy unless we do discover the real cause and acquire the courage to face it. There is a still further fundamental reason for omitting the reports on the successful operation of the new policy. I want to utilize the omission to make emphatic my conviction that the manhood principle needs no demonstration. It is not the kind of thing to be demonstrated, but the kind of thing to be discovered and accepted. I am not stating the manhood principle as an opinion or an invention, or a theory; I am announcing it as the discovery of a formula of economics, a law of human society which any man may discover for himself. It is a self-evident proposition. It is an organic law of the universe, and therefore rests on observation and experience. It is like the law of gravitation, which needs no demonstration. You do not collect reports on the number of men who broke their legs by walking off high buildings and steep embankments before you conclude that you ought to co-operate with the law of gravitation. Just as "nature is governed only by obeying her" so human nature is controlled only by respecting her laws of behaviour. The manhood principle is manifestly a difficult law to follow. So is truth- telling; but you would not dare to commend lying not in public because truth-telling is imperfectly practiced. So is manhood suffrage ; but because a 242 ROBINSON CRUSOE, SOCIAL ENGINEER large proportion of qualified voters fail to exercise this right, we do not propose to surrender what it has taken centuries of struggle to achieve. So are the Ten Commandments; but because as yet they are nowhere in perfect operation, we do not mean to abandon our effort to make them the laws of the social order. If you still insist on a demonstration of the man- hood principle in industry, all you need to do is to look back over the industrial history of the past one hundred fifty years. The validity of an organic law is demonstrated quite as much by its infraction as by its observance. The penalties resulting from its violation constitute its sanctions. The disastrous results from the failure to practice the manhood principle during the past one hundred fifty years, and still apparent everywhere, furnish all the demon- stration any wise man needs. It is demonstration to the point of monotony. The burden of proof is not on the man who says that two plus two equals four; but on the man who denies it. The man who has attempted to prove that two plus two equals something else than four, and has failed in the attempt, has thereby demonstrated that two plus two must of necessity equal four. I do not know why it is so, but I know that the kind of universe we are now living in is so constructed that it is so. The manhood principle is a law like the laws of heat and light and electricity. No man made them and no man can unmake them. He can only adjust A BILL OF PARTICULARS 243 himself to them and prosper, or he can mal-adjust himself to them, and take responsibility for the results. It is wiser, also safer, frankly to acknowl- edge that it is impossible to circumvent God. I said just now that I am announcing this law of economics as a discovery which any man may make for himself. The hopeful thing is that a few leaders of industry, perhaps more than we realize, are beginning to make it. Thomas E. Mitten, of Phila- delphia, for example, has made it. He said re- cently: "The only big thing I did was to make a discovery a discovery which a good many people have made before me but which has not generally been applied to the rapid transit game. I discov- ered that 10,000 men could do much more than a dozen, especially if the 10,000 were on the job while the dozen were not. The best board of directors on earth cannot run a railroad. The only way a railroad can be run is through co-operation." He stated the same discovery in the form of three principles, thus: "First, that the primary purpose of a public service corporation is to give public serv- ice, and without such service none but thieves can benefit. Second, that the successful running of a railroad depends most upon the men who run the railroad, and these human beings are of more im- portance than dividends. Third, capital cannot get an adequate return for its investment, it cannot, in fact, get any return unless these principles are observed. Financiers may and sometimes do get 244 ROBINSON CRUSOE, SOCIAL ENGINEER rich by other methods, just as burglars may run away with your silverware, but what they get in that case is not dividends but swag." It ought not to be surprising; it ought to go with- out saying that these principles produced their natu- ral and logical results. When Mr. Mitten became president of the rapid transit company, the condi- tion of things he found as stated by Charles W. Wood, was as follows: "The system broken down; the cars and equipment obsolete; the employees sul- len and discontented, and the company's credit so exhausted that it was impossible to meet a raise of one-half cent per hour which had been agreed upon in the settlement of a violent strike." After operating his principles a few years the condition of things today is as follows: "Transit service was doubled; the accident list was cut in two; the whole system was re-equipped with cars; divi- dends began to be paid; the wages of employees jumped from 23 cents an hour to 72 (voluntarily reduced last year to 64) ; and, when banking in- terests which had once brought the road to ruin called a halt, men and management dislodged the bankers from the board of directors, elected a board composed of managers and employees in- stead, and now guarantee 6 per cent, dividends to stockholders and promise a 10 per cent, salary dividend to all employees." Is it not significant that approaching the labor problem from the standpoint of history and a A BILL OF PARTICULARS 245 knowledge of human nature and the impartial ex- perience of a social engineer as I have done, and that Mr. Mitten approaching it from the stand- point of the internal operating necessities of a big industry, should both have arrived at exactly the same conclusions? The significance lies in the fact that these conclusions issue from principles that are self-evident truths, obvious to all who want to see. They require no proof. No amount of practical business experience would have enabled Mr. Mitten to produce the remarkable results he has achieved. His predecessors had abundant business experience. Mr. Mitten's achievement is the result of his dis- covery. This discovery is the load-star of modern industry. And when a considerable number of in- dustrial leaders make the same discovery, the labor question will cease to be a problem and become an opportunity, as it has to Mr. Mitten. To him his business is his chief recreation. What I am seeking to make clear is that our immediate major concern is not to continue making surveys of the industrial war, but to begin making searches for a way to terminate it. We have had surveys enough, one hundred and fifty years of them. We've been surveyed and re-surveyed; what we now need is suggested remedies. The time has come to adopt the slogan, "Don't count the enemy; beat him." Suggested remedies would have real news value. We have had front page reports on the industrial war with reiterated monotony. But 246 ROBINSON CRUSOE, SOCIAL ENGINEER some ideas on the way out of the industrial disorder would be a new kind of news fresh news, good news, constructive news. All discussions and activities in this field can be grouped under three descriptive captions, things as they are ; things as they ought to be ; how to change things as they are into things as they ought to be. Under the first, we get reports of conflicts, strikes, disorders; under the second, Utopian dreams. You can secure front page space for the first type of story, and even for the second type of story, if it is fantastic enough, but especially for the first. A young modern reporter was once asked, "If you were given two assignments for a news story, one to Hell and one to Heaven, and if you wanted to make sure that your story would be accepted, which one would you take?'* He answered, "I would take the assignment to Hell. Heaven has no news value, but Hell is full of it." He knew the kind of wares his market wanted. It is this kind of news with which we have been chiefly concerning ourselves. But we have had enough news from Hell. What we need is some news about a way of escape from it. That would be news with some point to it and a touch of fresh- ness on it. Anyone can see things as they are, and anyone can dream about things as they ought to be, but how to change them is the difficult and con- structive job. News about that is what ought to concern us now. The manhood principle, as the A BILL OF PARTICULARS 247 new policy for the reorganization of industry, is here offered as having this new type of news value. Bold and clear thinking on this task is our present national need. To search for this kind of news and debate it is the challenge, which our need makes to newspapers, magazines, and public forums. When Socrates was asked: "How do you get to Mount Olympus," he answered, "By doing all your walk- ing in that direction." The time has come to turn our faces away from the past one hundred and fifty years, and direct our thinking towards tomorrow in a search for the way out of things as they are. To indicate how feasible is the application of the new policy, when once its main principle is discov- ered and accepted, whatever the skill and patience required for its execution, I will describe its appli- cation to a sugar plantation, because the conditions are primitive, and exhibit its elements in bold relief. On a recent visit to the Pan-Pacific Educational Con- ference at Honolulu, I was invited to do some social engineering work in the islands. Among other things, I was asked to examine and make suggestions on the welfare work in a certain sugar plantation. I suppress its name out of courtesy, because my recommendations are now before its board of di- rectors. On this plantation there are four large and ex- pensive types of welfare work in operation, for it covers twelve thousand acres and involves seven thousand persons. With the leader of one of these 248 ROBINSON CRUSOE, SOCIAL ENGINEER enterprises as a guide, I examined them all. With the plantation's manager, I visited the large sugar mill and a few of the forty camps on the place. Then to lunch at the palatial residence of the man- ager in the center of the plantation. During the luncheon, he requested me to state my conclusions about the welfare work. I answered that so far as it goes, it seemed to me to be very good. This woman in charge of one piece of it, is doing the best she can. I made to her four suggested improve- ments, but they were only improvements in details. I rejoice over every good effort being made, and I think I better not go further than that today. "Oh, yes, you will," he said, u we are not entirely satisfied with our work, and we want your honest criticism; also your suggestions for improvement.'* I never saw a finer exhibition of the fact that the nature of all welfare work is determined by eco- nomic conditions. Community workers are com- pelled to deal with industrial problems, whether they wish to or not, unless they are content that their work shrivel up into mere "uplift" work, and cease to have any constructive value. At that time in Hawaii, a strenuous effort was being made to influence congress to permit the importation of cheap Chinese contract laborers, and the propa- ganda in its behalf was of such a kind, that it was quite dangerous for anyone to express an opinion, if it did not harmonize with that of the financial masters of the islands. In fact, everyone either A BILL OF PARTICULARS 249 expressed agreement or kept quiet. I did not hesi- tate on this account, because long ago I adopted the policy that I would "never sell the truth to serve the hour," but I wanted to test the manager. After he requested my honest criticism, I asked, u Are you a man of courage?" He said, "I am." Desiring confirmation from headquarters, I asked his wife: "Is he telling me the truth?" She said, "He is." "Very well, then," I said, "I will tell you. Your welfare work cannot be better than it is, because your industrial policy is what it is. Your entire policy is wrong, and not only wrong, but stupidly wrong." "That sounds refreshing," he said. "I realize," I answered, "that the word 'stupidity' has a harsh sound, but it is the only word that fits. What impresses me most about you own- ers and managers, is not what you are suffering, but what you are losing. You are spending large sums as you told me, on motion pictures. Most of the people do not attend; those who do attend think you are trying to put something over on them. This is true of all your uplift work. It is wasted effort for the most part. It is very good of its type, but the type is wrong. It fails to do what it is designed to do. You need five hundred more men and can't get them. There's a reason why you can't, and it is a removable cause. Then there is a continuous silent strike in progress. This gives you not more than fifty per cent, production. This is your big loss. When you are needlessly wasting money and 250 ROBINSON CRUSOE, SOCIAL ENGINEER losing money, please suggest an adjective, which describes your policy, if 'stupid' seems unfair." u Do you mean to suggest," he said, "that we ought to install an entirely new policy?" "I cer- tainly do," I answered. "You owners and managers are most courteous and attractive people, but your industrial policy is nothing but feudalism. It is un- American and economically unsound." "Could you give me," he asked, "a bill of particulars for your suggested new policy?" "Certainly," I said. I had never seen a sugar plantation before, but the defects in the policy in operation were so obvious, that a blind man could see them, and the changes required by the manhood policy could have been suggested by anyone, who had discovered the principle of it. The manager is an honest and open-minded man. After going thoroughly over the new policy with him, he asked me to reduce it to writing, so that he could submit it to his directors. It is as follows, and it illustrates a few of the obvious items in the operation of the MANHOOD PRINCIPLE APPLIED TO A PLANTATION Causes of Trouble 1. Within the limits of the policy now in operation much good work is being done, which I gladly recognize and re- joice over. But the policy is fundamentally wrong. 2. Most of the money now spent in welfare work is wasted because it does not accomplish the object aimed at. A BILL OF PARTICULARS 251 3. Much money is also lost because you are getting only about fifty per cent., certainly not more than seventy-five per cent., of the production you ought to get, could get, and are entitled to get. A silent strike is more or less in progress all the time. 4. There is a wall of suspicion between management and men. The connection between the laborer's hand and his brain and heart has been broken. You are working with pieces of men. 5. The men are treated as cogs in a wheel, with no chance to play the part of men in their work. They are no longer content to have merely a wage relation to the plan- tation. 6. Labor is degraded by being treated as unskilled. There is no such thing as unskilled labor, for there is no kind of work which could not be made more productive and enjoy- able by devising better ways of doing it. 7. Your system is feudalism and is one hundred and fifty years behind the times. Democracy has been introduced into government, but not yet into industry. The trouble is, therefore, much deeper than a question of wages. It is a question of human welfare. The Way Out 1. If the above is a correct diagnosis of the trouble, the remedy is quite obvious. It is to remove the cause. You need not so much the importation of more cheap laborers, but the importation of a new policy. More cheap labor is no solution, but an aggravation. Cheap Chinese labor may bring you some relief tomorrow, but the day after tomorrow your condition will be the same, and probably worse. If you do get more cheap labor, you will need the new policy more than before. 2. This means a dividend on wages just as you have a 252 ROBINSON CRUSOE, SOCIAL ENGINEER dividend on capital. Your two essential items in the busi- ness are capital and labor. Fix a basic and just return on both ; in one case it is a dividend, in the other it is a wage. Regard both as operating expense with the other expenses. Anything made beyond this is profit. It should be distrib- uted proportionately between capital and wages. 3. Such distribution of profits is not only just, but will make more money for the management and men. It will have a marked influence on the attitude of the men towards their work, and on their efficiency in it. Naturally they will work harder and prevent waste, because it will in- crease the profits, in which they will then have a share. 4. There ought to be a series of regular conferences be- tween management and men for council and discussion. This will not only create a good morale by improving the men's self-respect, but will call forth many suggestions for im- provement in methods of work. 5. The forty camps on the plantation should be concen- trated into ten, in order to make units big enough to be operated advantageously. 6. The men should own their houses and pay for them. This will give them one spot, at least, where they could have freedom for initiative and self-expression, working at their houses and gardens, planting a tree and playing with flowers. 7. Organize and operate a house-owning plan, by which you build and sell houses or by which the man builds and owns his own house. If he leaves, he can sell the house back to you, and you can re-sell it to another. 8. The term "camp" should be changed to "village." In each village there should be a schoolhouse, built by public money. The land for it would have to be owned by the territory. It should be a community type of schoolhouse, in order to be available as a center of social activities for all A BILL OF PARTICULARS 253 adults and youths. You may have to supplement the public funds by a small amount to get this type of building. 9. This will give you ten school teachers, supported at public expense, who could, at the same time, be directors of social activities, for which the people themselves would take responsibility. 10. You could thus dispense with all your uplift work now in operation. The time for this type of work has gone by. It is morally hurtful to the men, as well as futile. You will need only one good man to direct the work of the ten teachers. 11. The above items are sufficient to show that the new policy would save much money. It would greatly increase production, which is the big item of saving. In addition, it would save most of the money you now spend in uplift work. Moreover, your directors would no longer feel the need of giving "conscience money" to charity, because there would be little or no need for charity. The suggested new policy operates on the principle of self-help. 12. The policy here suggested considers equally the benefit both to management and men, which are like two sides of one and the same shield and must be treated together; neither one can prosper alone. What is not good for the hive is not good for the bee. How to Start 1. The right and wise thing to be done seems clear enough; how to do it is the difficulty. But it can be done, because it has been. It is now operated in many places with marked success. 2. The new policy is not a mechanical device, but a human activity. Therefore, it has to be installed slowly and pa- tiently. Each item of the program has to be first consid- 254 ROBINSON CRUSOE, SOCIAL ENGINEER ered carefully by the directors until they understand and heartily approve. The same process has to be used with the men. It would perhaps take three months to start it. 3. To install the new policy you need a social engineer from outside, who makes a special business of this work. I am not certain that I can spare the time to install it for you, as you kindly suggested you might want me to do, although I would be glad to do it, because this is a depart* ment of our National Community Board's w r ork, and the one in which I am most interested. But whether or not I shall be able to leave my other duties, I shall gladly give you all the help I can. 4. Your labor problem at bottom is essentially the same as it is in Europe and Continental America, differing only in detail. The unrest is due to the awakened and deep desire of men to be treated like men and to play a part in their own work. It is as useless to fight it as to fight the law of gravitation. Moreover, we ought to rejoice in it, because we can capitalize it and use it to yield big dividends in money and happiness, both for management and men. If you will adopt the policy here proposed, you need not waste any more money in trying to secure favors from the Congress at Washington. The key to the solution of your problem is in your own hands. It will be observed that every item in this sug- gested program is a simple and logical consequence of the central principle, on which the program is built. A program like this cannot be adopted, nor successfully operated, if adopted, until the manhood principle is discovered and understood. This is to say that the issue before modern industry is a clean cut issue between the manhood principle and the A BILL OF PARTICULARS 255 commodity principle. It is not a question of mechanics, but of morals; a question of making our policy fit the facts of human nature. It is not a question of altruism, but of the scientific treatment of facts. Robert Briffault speaks sober sense when he says : "The necessity of ethical considerations is no other than the hard necessity of adaptation of facts as they are. There are in the relations between man and man conditions which are, and others which are not adapted to actual facts. The unadapted result in failure, the adapted in evolu- tionary growth and life." Not until the commodity principle is once for all discarded and the manhood principle freely accepted, will our industrial policy be in accord with the facts, on which the universe is constructed. When this occurs, we may hope for an end of industrial war, and the beginning of a new industrial order. CHAPTER IX NEW INDUSTRIAL AMERICA A LMOST every nation at its birth consciously -*** or unconsciously has adopted some big for- mative principle which shaped its organization, influenced the nature of its various activities and determined the worth of its contribution to prog- ress. In Palestine it was religion; in Greece it was culture; in Rome it was law; in America it is what? Fortunately the answer to this question is in no doubt. The origin of other nations lie hidden in the mists of a dim and distant past clouded by mythical traditions. The story of ours is distin- guished by this significant circumstance, that it lies wholly in the field of modern history, with all the facts exposed to view and with a clearly defined purpose. Its formative and creative purpose is the enfranchisement of manhood, the development of the individual, making available for the many what once was confined to the few, lifting artificial bur- dens from all shoulders, giving to each a fair chance in the race of life. The United States opened a new road to political freedom and started an experiment in democracy of vast consequence to the welfare of mankind. Our 256 NEW INDUSTRIAL AMERICA 257 present difficult task is to keep the road open, but we must do more. We have discovered that we must secure industrial freedom, if we would preserve our political freedom. We must re-establish indus- trial democracy, not only for its own sake, but to save our political democracy from wreckage. Our unfinished business is to create a new industrial America. The challenge of this unfinished task was recently presented to America by a well-known in- dustrial leader from Europe. Mr. B. Seebohm Rowntree is one of the most successful and liberal- minded manufacturers of England. He is an indus- trial statesman. On his recent tour of the United States to inspect our industrial development, he was courteous enough to say that he had received some helpful suggestions; he was also courteous enough not to say in which respects England was more pro- gressive than we are, although it was obvious that he could have named them. There was one statement made to him before sailing for home, which impressed him more than everything else he heard or saw on his visit, and it opened up for him the vision of a constructive pol- icy in advance of any of the reforms he had already established in his own factory. It was a statement by Robert B. Wolf, a pioneer of the new social engineering type. It is as follows: u Let the worker participate in the financial rewards of industry, and he may have his sense of justice satisfied; let him be insured against sickness, unemployment and old 258 ROBINSON CRUSOE, SOCIAL ENGINEER age and he may develop contentment of a sort; but only when the industrial processes are organized so that every worker becomes a conscious creator, so that his creative powers are released and he forgets all other considerations in the joy of the job, will the true greatness of our industrial system be understood." "That to me," said Mr. Rown- tree, u is the most inspiring word I heard in America. I believe it is the message of New America to the world. It is a message I want to carry back to England and I hope to induce Mr. Wolf to bring it personally." Mr. Wolfs statement is the accu- rate expression of the manhood principle, which is the one idea this book is written to make clear. Mr. Rowntree is quite right in supposing that on the basis of this single principle the New Industrial America will be built. Nothing less fundamental is able to bring it to pass. The nature of the opportunity which America missed and must now recover by creating a demo- cratic industrial order, is picturesquely set forth in a little drama by Rauschenbusch, laid in the council chamber in heaven, when it was announced that Co- lumbus had discovered America. It is as follows: u ln one of the azure halls of heaven is the coun- cil chamber in which the Senate of the Immortals meets. Only the wisest of all ages have a seat there : Moses and Isaiah, Solon and Aristotle, King Arthur, Dante and their spiritual peers. Equipped with NEW INDUSTRIAL AMERICA 259 the experience of their own nations, enriched by communion with men of all times, unbiased by self- ish passions, uninfluenced by party interests, they sit to consider the course of human events. u To them entered one day that vivacious and versatile Personality who once came with the Sons of God and discussed the case of Job with Jehovah. He had again come 'from going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it,' and he now reported that Columbus had just discovered America. "Immediately there rose before the prophetic minds of the great Immortals the sight of broaden- ing streams of human life pouring from the old world into the new, of communities colonizing the seaboard, pushing up the river valleys, clustering around the waterfalls, dotting the plains with homes, and building up commonwealths and nations. A great hope swept audibly through the Senate like the rushing of a mighty wind. In that new conti- nent the best in humanity would find a free course ; no inherited tyrannies seeking to perpetuate them- selves, no embittering memories of bloody wars, no classes and castes cemented with injustice to baffle brotherhood and defy the liberty of States. Swiftly they began to plan a great Charter of Rights and Liberties that would forever bar out from the new land the forces, which had ruined the other peoples. "Satan listened with an amiable smile. 'Excuse me, gentlemen, but let us get down to common sense. 260 ROBINSON CRUSOE, SOCIAL ENGINEER We've got this all fixed. You forget that the people who occupy this country will need labor force. We'll let them use up the Indians, provided they can make 'em work. After that we'll tap the reserve force of Africa and put the black race at their serv- ice. You know that the venerable institution of slavery has been indispensable in the advancement of civilization. By restricting it to the colored races, we shall save the whites from the slight hardships which naturally accompany it.' (The Senate moved uneasily.) 'Then we've got to offer incentives to thrift and enterprise. We're going to introduce the system of private property in land which worked such remarkable results in the Roman Empire.' (A shudder ran through the assembly.) 'Those who first seize an opportunity can keep it and work it. That will promote industry and progress.' " 'But the land must not be sold in perpetuity,' broke in the venerable figure of Moses. 'Jehovah forbade it. All must have a share in God's land. What shall they do who come after?' " 'They'll have to make the best terms they can with the fellows on the inside. Every man for him- self, and I'm always ready to take the hindermost, you know,' and he winked at King Arthur, who gripped his staff with brawny fist, as if he would right willingly use it. " 'As the population increases, it will be neces- sary for the sake of efficiency to consolidate the resources of the nation. The ablest men will come NEW INDUSTRIAL AMERICA 261 to hold all the important property rights and the lines of traffic. In four hundred years, say about 1<$92, they ought to have a pretty solid system. They can fix prices as they need them, and in that way they will have ample funds to finance the de- velopment of mankind and put society on a stable basis.' ; 'Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field,' exclaimed Isaiah, lifting his hands. 'What mean ye, that ye crush my people and grind the face of the poor?' " 'This is death to the liberties of the people,' cried Aristotle. 'This is the very calamity from which every patriot of Greece sought to save his commonwealth. It was in vain. Greece became a desert.' Solon covered his face. "They sat in silence, and darkness seemed to shroud the chamber. One of the attendant angels was reminded of the gloom that settled over heaven, when word was brought of the fall of man. Even from the lips of Satan the smile vanished, and he passed out." Would not a new industrial America, built in accordance with her original purpose, mean a rever- sal of the standards, which, as this drama suggests, have been old and customary rules of conduct in industry? It would. But how could the reversal of these standards be affected without a revolution? It could not. But it would be a revolution of a new sort, a revolution by consent. America established 262 ROBINSON CRUSOE, SOCIAL ENGINEER the beginning of her experiment in political democ- racy by a revolutionary war, the use of physical force. The new industrial America likewise, can- not be established without a revolution, but it will use no physical force of any kind. It will be a mental revolution, a "reasonable" revolution. The industrial revolution with its application of steam to machinery, and capitalism to the organiza- tion of industry has been called "the revolution of the rich against the poor." It was natural enough that the poor should conduct a counter-revolution against the rich. For one hundred and fifty years each class has been operating a revolution of its own, and conducting an organized war against the other. If the structure of modern industry, over which they fight, is not to be destroyed, the time has come for a new kind of revolution in which both classes shall be allies, instead of rivals. Community labor boards will be the agencies and centers of the new revolution. It will start, indeed has already started, by the peaceful but powerful pressure of public opinion, compelling both antagonists to con- sider their conflict in the light of their mutual obli- gation to the community's interest instead of their own. The initiative in the revolution for the most part should be taken by capitalists on the principle of noblesse oblige, and for the further reason, stated by Lincoln in his first message to Congress: "Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor and could never have existed NEW INDUSTRIAL AMERICA 263 if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital and deserves much the higher considera- tion." To secure the consideration of industrial disputes in the light of their relation to the public welfare instantly transforms them into very different types of problems and opens the only clear road to their possible solution on a sound basis. But this is only a beginning. If the revolution is to produce per- manent results and issue in a new industrial America, it will have to be achieved by the free acceptance of a new transforming idea, which, so far as history has yet revealed, is the only force equal to the task. This transforming idea is the voluntary organiza- tion and operation of industry on the basis of a bill of duties instead of a bill of rights. This is a mental and spiritual process. But does not this take us into the field of ethics? Certainly. This is what the labor problem is about. It seems preposterous that we should permit a destructive industrial war to continue without making a serious attempt to discover exactly what its cause is. There is no hope of discovering its cause unless we see clearly that the question at issue is not mechanical, and not financial, but ethical. It lies in the defective ethical relationship between owners and workmen. It is quite understandable by any average high school boy. "There is," said Carlyle, "but one class of men to be trembled at, and that is the stupid class, the 264 ROBINSON CRUSOE, SOCIAL ENGINEER class that cannot see, who, alas, are they mainly that will not see." Let no one be deceived by the detailed complexities of modern business. These complexities are frequently used by a certain class of men as a smoke screen to obscure the central moral issue. Many of them may be honestly self- deceived, by absorption in details, as to what the real issue is. It is a commonplace for them to attack social philosophers with the remark, "You do not understand; modern industry is too complicated for you." Whereas the social philosopher is the only man who does understand it. With the so-called "practical" business men like the ex-German Kaiser, an understanding of modern industry glares by its absence, and this defect is tragic and costly for the rest of us. One of the greatest of social philoso- phers, M. Bergson, stated the heart of the problem when he said: "Many years hence, when the reaction of the past shall have left only the grand outlines in view, this, perhaps, is how a philosopher will speak of our age. He will say that the idea, peculiar to the nineteenth century, of employing science in the satis- faction of our material wants had given a wholly unforeseen extension to the mechanical arts, and equipped man, in less than fifty years, with more tools than he had made during the thousands of years he had lived upon earth. Each new machine being for man a new organ, an artificial organ, his body became suddenly and prodigiously increased NEW INDUSTRIAL AMERICA 265 in size, without his soul being at the same time able to dilate to the dimensions of his new body." The problem could not be other than an ethical one, because it mainly concerns humans. This is where the argument has led us by a straight course, and we ought to have the courage to follow wher- ever the argument leads us. You may make any legitimate use you please of the nation's forces in times of emergency to prevent public disaster. But law and guns only prevent and destroy. They are weakness and futility compared to an ethical motive, and they touch only the fringe of our problem. We are searching for some power, not to prevent men from doing wrong but to stimulate them to do right. There is nothing that will set a man going from within so that he will run himself, and do the right thing, except a living sense of duty. Workmen are organized for the express purpose of securing and defending their rights. Capitalists are organized for the express purpose of securing and defending their rights. It is a foregone conclu- sion that on due occasion they both will fight for their rights, and this is what in fact they do. When we are thus deliberately organized for industrial warfare, what else can we expect but warfare? There is no hope for its termination until the doc- trine of rights is replaced by the doctrine of duties as the first law of social conduct. The reason why Robinson Crusoe had no labor troubles after Friday came, was because his attitude towards him was 266 ROBINSON CRUSOE, SOCIAL ENGINEER determined by the theory of duties; the sense of responsibility for his personal development. This law is not intended to apply to one class alone, but to all classes alike. It is not offered to workingmen as a pious camouflage to divert their attention from their primary and inalienable rights, which have been so frequently denied them. It is this hypocrisy, which has brought the term "duty" into disrespect, and caused the theory of duties to be treated as the antithesis of the theory of rights, as if we under-rated the importance of rights and wanted to deny them. It is fitting and sometimes imperative that men should contend for their rights. It will continue to be necessary so long as society is organized on its present low levels. What we seek is to change the level in order to obviate the neces- sity of any contention for one's rights. We chal- lenge the basis of social organization, which is both a cause and consequence of the theory of rights. The theory of rights is a space-binding concept. The theory of duties is a time-binding concept, which alone has the power to transform the basis of society and lift life to a higher level, appropriate for men rather than animals. The doctrine of duty is here considered as a scientific social law. My contention is that to base our social conduct on the rights of man is a current political fallacy, that all rights are morally condi- tioned on duties fulfilled, that to make duty a corol- lary to primary duty, is unethical and has debased NEW INDUSTRIAL AMERICA 267 our social and business standards, that the primacy should be given to duties over rights, not that we should think less of rights, but more of duties. My contention also is that to give primacy to duties is the only effective way to secure one's rights, and that if this primacy is not only approved in principle, but observed in practice, as a rule of conduct for citizens, so that they will first of all seek the com- mon good and subordinate private to public interest, there can be no sure guarantee that their own inter- ests will be safeguarded. I realize that social philosophy has not yet coined a word to express this comprehensive idea. The absence of any word for it, and the misuse of the word u duty," make it necessary to describe the idea itself, and since the idea is the reversal of a common political fallacy, which for so long has been current and unquestioned, it is the more necessary that it be made as clear as may be. The doctrine of rights was the supreme formula of the French Revolution. The convention of 1787 adopted a bill of rights. When a group of men petitioned it to adopt also a bill of duties, the con- vention voted it down, stating as the reason for its action that a bill of duties was a matter of religion. It was quite right in its judgment; quite wrong in its action. The doctrine of rights is an effective formula on which to conduct a fight against the tyranny of yes- terday; wholly ineffective as an aim for the construe- 268 ROBINSON CRUSOE, SOCIAL ENGINEER tive action of tomorrow. But ever since the epoch, begun with the American and French Revolutions, it has ruled us with sovereign sway. On the basis of rights we have won some liberty, but we have failed to inquire what we propose to do with it. Aimless liberty inevitably leads to an- archy and warfare. When men stand on their rights they will fight to secure and defend them; so will nations. Both within and among nations we are organized for warfare, because we are domi- nated by the formula of rights. All courts of law are courts of rights. Legisla- tive assemblies frequently have passed bills of rights. International conferences are wholly absorbed in the task of securing and protecting national rights. They have acted on this principle as between na- tions, because the citizens of these nations have acted on the same principle as among each other. The community movement seeks to change the basis of social organization and civilization by sub- stituting a bill of duties for a bill of rights. A community center, like the family, is an institute of duties, not an institute of rights. The most effective method of securing one's rights is to perform one's duties. My rights are what other men owe me; my duties are what I owe to them. If, then, we mutually discharge our duties, we automatically secure our rights. The only effective way to achieve disarmament between classes or nations is to operate on the doc- NEW INDUSTRIAL AMERICA 269 trine of duties. How can we expect any other kind of disarmament until we first disarm the mind? Is there any other way to disarm the mind except to substitute duties for rights? When I go to another man to render him a service I do not need to go accompanied by gunboats and rifles. They are automatically eliminated. Our inveterate inability to put ourselves by an act of intelligent sympathy in the other fellow's place, is due to the exclusive use of the principle of rights. Only when you put yourself in his place is it possible to do him justice and avoid conflict. As a mere matter of smartness the best way for one man to outwit another is to do him a service; it at once puts him on the defensive. The same is true of nations. This policy would lead a class or nation to learn from others; not impose its standards on them. It would disclose the surprising amount of ignorance every class and nation has accumulated about the others. It might in time even lead us to conclude with Mark Twain, that: "The older we grow the more we are astonished to notice how much ignor- ance one can contain without bursting one's clothes." The theory of rights is a secondary idea, a conse- quence of something else. No rights exist except as they are based on their corresponding duties. A right is the consequence of a duty fulfilled. It is not only that the conduct of nations and classes toward each other has been wrong. The disease is far 270 ROBINSON CRUSOE, SOCIAL ENGINEER deeper. Their ethical standards have been defec- tive. They have put rights in the first place; they belong in the second. This makes all the difference in the world. The persistence of armed conflict both within and among nations, is not a puzzle, but a natural product. The world has been running on a side track instead of the main track. In every program of international politics and of industrial politics a bill of duties glares by its absence. That's why they usually get nowhere except into trouble. The new epoch ushered in by the World War is morally bewildered and bankrupt for lack of a satisfying aim. The world is loosened from its old moorings and drifts without a rudder, a formative principle. It has not yet discovered a purpose road on which to travel. It's on its way but doesn't know where it is going. It has motion but no prog- ress. It lacks a formula to guide its thinking and direct its action. The formula it blindly seeks is the charter of duties. Will the world ever see the wisdom of substitut- ing its duties for its rights? No one can say. All one can say is that there is no other practical way of avoiding suicidal wreckage. The principle of duty plus the free acceptance of it, guarantees per- sonal joy and social progress. Liberty minus the principle of duty stimulates personal egotism and social anarchy. On the theory of rights the liberty of one will clash with the liberty of another in NEW INDUSTRIAL AMERICA 271 unending strife; heroism in behalf of the common good would be an absurdity; and progress would be blocked by liberty unregulated by a high purpose. But heroism in behalf of a cause bigger than one's own personal interests is the very thing the world now most admires. And what it admires it will one day grow to be like. When one realizes the ruin now wrought by the theory of rights and considers what would happen if it should become the permanent foundation of society, it seems to him unthinkable that men will continue to guarantee their own defeat, and he cries out with Mazzini: "No, certainly, it was not to attain the ignoble and immoral every one for him- self that so many great men, holy martyrs of thought, have shed, from epoch to epoch, the tears of the soul, the sweat and blood of the body." This principle, as I believe, is not only the only path to industrial peace, but is also destined to be the formula of the future in politics and religion, as well as in economics. Inasmuch as I believe that this principle is the transforming power in the evolu- tion of a new industrial America, I will emphasize it by quoting a bill of duties, which I prepared and presented to the Community Division of the Pan- Pacific Educational Congress, meeting recently at Honolulu, embracing the twenty-two nations and self-governing colonies bordering the Pacific, and which was adopted. I quote it to exhibit the prin- ciples which the theory of duties involves, and be- 272 ROBINSON CRUSOE, SOCIAL ENGINEER cause these principles apply to industrial politics exactly the same as to international politics. It is as follows: A Bill of Duties We, the members of the Community Conference of the Pan-Pacific Union, assembled at Honolulu, believing that all disputes among nations can be settled as easily and more effectively before instead of after armed conflict, but realiz- ing that the success of this process depends on operating it from the standpoint of duties instead of rights, and that only such a state of mind affords any hope of solving problems of international politics, hereby adopt the following bill of duties and pledge ourselves to work for its acceptance by the public opinion of our respective nations: 1. We will think first of our duties to other nations before we consider the corresponding rights depending upon them. 2. In all discussion of our relationship, both official and unofficial, we will put truth in the first place and not in the second place. 3. We will endeavor to acquire the habit of differing in opinion without differing in feeling. 4. We will have respect for our racial differences and accentuate the resemblances among us, as common human denominators. 5. We will exercise mental hospitality toward the stand- ards of other nations rather than seek to impose our stand- ards upon them. 6. We will aim to transform our commerce into a peace- maker by operating it as an exchange of mutual service rather than a system of exploitation. 7. We will have a decent respect for the opinion of NEW INDUSTRIAL AMERICA 273 mankind rather than regard the self-centered opinions of our own nations. 8. We will promote free trade in friendship, assisting each other by pooling our experience in science, commerce, and art. 9. We will aim to promote the prosperity of other nations, recognizing the legitimate selfishness that the pros- perity of each depends on the prosperity of all. 10. We will seek to make known the discovery that nations have like interests, to secure their recognition as common interests, and to compel the conclusion that all wars are therefore civil wars. It is highly suggestive and appropriate to borrow from the field of international politics a guiding principle to apply to our domestic industrial conflict. With clear insight Glenn Frank points out the or- ganic similarity of the problem in these fields of activity. He says : "The two fundamental problems of our time are the problem of international rela- tions and the problem of industrial relations. What is not widely enough recognized is that they are one problem, both damned by the same sins, both subject to the same solution. In both international and industrial relations we are faced with the break- down of the balance-of-power theory of government. In every instance it has ended in a disastrous con- flict. It has all along ministered to a sense of con- flicting interests where common interests should have been the basis of action. In industry we have had the old sickening cycle of competitive arma- ments, a sense of conflicting interests, a constant 274 ROBINSON CRUSOE, SOCIAL ENGINEER effort on the part of each industrial group to tip the balance in its favor, a sense of insecurity that has halted we know not how much enterprise, and the periodic industrial wars that we hide under the euphemism of a strike. Collective bargaining is a vast advance over the old unequal system of indi- vidual wage contracts, but it is only an expedient adopted on the way toward some intelligent organ- ization of industrial relations." In a recent magazine article, Walter B. Pitkin makes a pointed application of the truth of Mr. Frank's contention, which reveals still further the vital connection between these two problems. He says: "This brings us to the one obstacle to world peace which lies wholly within our own gates. We have most of the world's gold, most of the free capital, immense factories, and millions of skilled workers. The unbalance of trade has ruined our foreign trade with Europe; our exports and im- ports declined fifty per cent, in the first seven months of this year; Germany is selling textiles sixty per cent, cheaper than we can; German mills are under- bidding Pittsburgh in our domestic steel market; our automobile factories are running at fifty-seven per cent, capacity; and five million workers are idle, as winter comes on. Meanwhile, taxes refuse to shrink, and battleships are being built, while our farmers see their minute profits devoured by abnor- mal freight-rates and our builders touch only the NEW INDUSTRIAL AMERICA 275 most urgent contracts. There is but one escape from the deadly combination of war-debts, an over- expanded factory system, and a money glut. New markets must be tapped quickly, new consumers found, new desires created. But where and how?" Then he proceeds to show why for obvious rea- sons this market cannot at present be found in Europe and not in South America, and can only be found in China and Siberia. But the American business man cannot invest millions in the Far East unless his own country protects him with as much force as necessary. The alternative, therefore, is either leave Asia to the Asiatics, or else run Asia and a huge fleet. Then Mr. Pitkin very pertinently remarks that this logic is impeccable granting the premise, that we must look abroad for new markets. This is the crucial statement in Mr. Pitkin's discus- sion. Why look abroad for new markets, handicapped by such conditions and dangers, when we could have an unlimited and unutilized market at home, if in- dustry were so organized as to make it available? The great words once addressed by Tennyson to the citizens of England convey a pointed present message to American business men : Call home your ships across the Biscayan tides, To blow the battle from their oaken sides, Why waste you yonder, Their idle thunder? Why stay they there to guard a foreign throne? Seamen, guard your own. 276 ROBINSON CRUSOE, SOCIAL ENGINEER Have we the industrial statesmanship to construct a new industrial America on a democratic basis, not only for our own sake, but for the sake of the world, as once we constructed a new political democracy, which has exerted an inspiring and transforming influence throughout the world? CHAPTER X SPORTSMANSHIP TS there any ground to justify the hope that a * new industrial America will be constructed on the manhood principle? Certainly. The warrant for this expectation, stated laconically, is the fact that God is not dead. In periods of democracy's apparent failure, its sincere friends should stake their hope on the unassailable position taken by James Russell Lowell in a similar circumstance, when he said: "I have great comfort in God. I think He is considerably amused sometimes, but on the whole loves us, and would not let us get at the match box if He did not know that the frame of the universe was fire-proof." He knew, as every- one ought to know, that the principles on which the world is built are fire-proof, that ultimately they are irresistible, that the stars in their courses are fighting in behalf of democracy. It is not possible to circumvent God, however much politicians may think they can do it. Mr. Baker closes his creative and wholesome book on "Industrial Unrest" with a statement con- taining the pregnant idea, the crucial importance of which for modern industry I am writing this entire 277 278 ROBINSON CRUSOE, SOCIAL ENGINEER book to demonstrate. He says: "There is a solu- tion. It consists in the attitude, the spirit, which one maintains towards the labour problem an ad- venturous, inquiring, experimental attitude, ever hospitable toward new facts: and a generous and democratic spirit. I wonder if men can find this solution in its completeness without some high faith in God, and some vital interest in their fellowmen." No, Mr. Baker, they cannot. My conviction is that you are right. It is also my conviction that men will discover the solution in the way you sug- gest, because they will discover that every other road is a dead-end. Just as did Napoleon, who after Moscow exclaimed: "The Almighty is too strong for me." And just as did Heine, Germany's great- est satirist, who when lying on his "mattress-grave" in Paris cried out : "Alas, the irony of heaven weighs heavily upon me. The great Author of the universe, the Celestial Aristophanes, wished to show me, the petty, earthly, German Aristophanes, how my most trenchant satires are only clumsy patchwork com- pared with His, and how immeasurably He exceeds me in humor and colossal wit." The captains of industry will likewise discover that "God also is wise." Not that He is a satirist, but He seems to be determined that men shall not defeat themselves. They have freedom to choose wrong roads, but these roads are so hedged about with penalties for those who travel them, as to make the right road the only safe thoroughfare. Men may make this SPORTSMANSHIP 279 discovery either through "high faith in God" or through the logic of facts. In either case the result is the same. They will yield obedience to the social law of duty, by discovering the penalties attached to its violation; by discovering that nothing else will work; that the only real freedom is the freedom to do right, even if they are not wise enough to make the discovery without paying so high a price for it as Heine and Napoleon did. You may say anything you please against the democratic manhood principle as an industrial pol- icy, except that any other policy has ever worked any better. If no other policy has ever worked better, the burden of proof is upon those, who refuse to accept this one. Let us frankly recognize that the democratic principle, either in government or industry, is difficult to operate, as all good things are, just because they are good. The measure of its merit is the degree of its difficulty. Fisher Ames said: "A monarchy is a merchantman which sails well but will sometimes strike a rock and go to the bottom, whilst a republic is a raft which will never sink, but then your feet are always in the water." Let us even grant that it may be hot water, what then? The objection finds its complete answer in the fact, that democracy's aim is not efficiency, but the self-development of individuals. It is their right to make mistakes, because only by the method of trial and error can self-development proceed. As a matter of fact, in industry, this method proves 280 ROBINSON CRUSOE, SOCIAL ENGINEER to be in the long run more efficient, but this is not its chief aim. Another student of democracy re- marked that the way to a throne usually lies through blood, that is, it used to when the king business was popular, but that the way to the presidency in a democracy lies through mud. Very well; mud is not as bad as blood. The question as to whether the manhood principle will be adopted as an industrial policy is not an open question, but a foregone conclusion. Anyone fam- iliar with history, with human nature and with God, never doubts it. It is not a question of whether; it is only a question of when. As to when, there are signs of hope for its realization in the not distant future. What furnishes this hope is the spirit of sportsmanship, which is a distinguishing characteristic of Anglo-Saxon men, and the chief guarantee of democracy's success, aside from the fact that God is a democrat and still lives. Oliver Wendell Holmes says that sportsmanship is "to brag little ; to show up well ; to crow gently when in luck; to own up, to pay up, to shut up when beaten. " Both the leaders of labor and the leaders of capital ought to own up that they are beaten, that the method of organized conflict, on which they are operating, is a failure, and that it should be replaced by the method of free and organized co-operation. They both now ought honestly to undertake the task of learning to ride the horse that threw them. The human tendency is to try out every wrong method SPORTSMANSHIP 281 before the right one is accepted. By this time almost all the wrong methods have been tried and found wanting. If industrial leaders are true sports- men, they will freely acknowledge the fact as it is, and adopt the manhood principle, which has the promise of success. The statement that our hope for this solution of the labor problem rests on the fact that God is not dead, while accurate and sufficient, is no doubt too laconic and needs translation into particu- lars. Let me say, therefore, that my hope rests on three facts, namely: the spirit of nobility; the motive of self-interest; the increasing fear that the alternative is a social hell. I realize that the phrase "social hell" is a contradiction in terms, be- cause hell is not a social place to be in; it is anti- social. The word means "isolated." As applied to a place, it means the same as the word "idiot," applied to a person. The word "idiot" is the Greek word for "private," peculiar to one's self, unrelated to the interest of others. Hell is therefore inhab- ited only by "idiots"; a typical Hellite is an "idiot," that is, a non-cooperator. But I use this self-con- tradictory phrase to make pointed my meaning that the hell, here suggested, does not refer to one in some future world, but an industrial hell now. Past and present conditions make such an event neither inconceivable nor impossible. Military and industrial wars, together with the entailed suffering in spirit and body, make every man, who has the 232 ROBINSON CRUSOE, SOCIAL ENGINEER instincts of nobility, sometimes feel like an exile and alien in a planet like ours. He can well appre- ciate the sentiment expressed to Robinson Crusoe on his second voyage by a Russian Prince, exiled in Siberia, where Crusoe spent a winter on his return from China, through Russia to England. After hearing the account of Crusoe's island life, apart from so-called civilization, the Prince said that u the true greatness of life was to be masters of ourselves; that he would not have exchanged such a state of life as mine to be Czar of Muscovy; and that he found more felicity in the retirement he seemed to be banished to there, than ever he found in the highest authority he enjoyed in the court of his master, the Czar; that he found the mind of man, if it was but once brought to reflect upon the state of universal life, and how little this world was concerned in its true felicity, was perfectly capable of making a felicity for itself; and though the greatness, the authority, the riches, and the pleas- ures which some enjoyed in the world, had much in them that was agreeable to us, yet all those things chiefly gratified the coarsest in our affections, such as our ambition, our particular pride, avarice, vanity, and sensuality; all which, being the mere product of the worst part of man, were in them- selves crimes, and had in them the seeds of all manner of crimes; but neither were related to, nor concerned with, any of those virtues that constituted us wise men." SPORTSMANSHIP 283 The motive of fear among the three here sug- gested, I do not press as an argument, although it would be short-sighted to overlook a possible critical factor, such as this. During the critical days of 1848 in France, the following solemn words were addressed by a conservative, Alexis de Tocqueville, to the Chamber of Deputies: "For the first time I feel a certain fear for the future, and what convinces me that I am right is that this is not simply a personal impression of mine; I think I may appeal to all who are here, and all will admit that a certain uneasiness, an indefin- able fear has taken possession of all spirits, that for the first time the feeling, the sense of instability, this warning sentiment of revolution, which some- times heralds them, and at others gives birth to them, that this feeling is both intense and wide- spread. Are you certain of the morrow? Do you know what will happen in a year, a month, a day? You do not know, but what you do know is that there is a storm on the horizon, that it is descending upon you will you allow it to overtake you? "Gentlemen, I beg you not to, I do not demand, I beseech you; I would willingly throw myself on my knees before you, so real and grave do I consider the danger, so convinced am I of this, that to mention it is not a mere flight of rhetoric. If the danger is great, provide against it while there is still time, correct the evils, change the present sys- tem, for this system is leading you to destruction." 284 ROBINSON CRUSOE, SOCIAL ENGINEER This warning was given on January 27, 1848. In four weeks Louis Phillippe was swept from the throne of France by the Revolution. No one can say how pertinent a warning like this may or may not be today in America. While the argument is perfectly legitimate, yet it is an appeal to fear, and an appeal to fear is always weak, and mostly futile. It is unworthy of American citizens to at- tempt to reconstruct our industry because they are actuated by the fear of what may happen if they do not. Hope, and not fear, is the true creative principle. The second element in our hope is the motive of self-interest. The appeal to intelligent self-in- terest is higher than an appeal to fear, and is also entirely legitimate. A very firm ground of our hope is that factory owners will discover that the new policy will pay. This is a powerful and ines- capable motive. The loss resulting from all other policies is the road, which will lead them to this discovery. Lincoln once stated picturesquely the teaching value of this process. "I cannot run the political machine; I have enough on my hands with- out that. It is the people's business the election is in their hands. If they turn their backs to the fire and get scorched in the rear, they'll find they have to sit on the blister." This is a big price to pay for information, but it is worth it. Our hope lies in the fact that both owners and workmen have been sitting for so long a time on self-inflicted SPORTSMANSHIP 285 blisters, that they are now disposed to stop turning their backs to the fire and getting needlessly scorched. In the school of hard knocks they will be compelled to discover that they have like inter- ests, that these interests are common interests, and that in the civil war they are conducting neither side can win. No enterprise can escape serious loss to all involved in it, when it is conducted on the basis of a civil war. But neither the appeal to fear nor the appeal to self-interest is the real creative motive. It is the first of the three we suggested, the spirit of nobility. Not the struggle to avoid the evil, but the attempt to secure the good, has always been the key to social progress. The typical American citizen, and his number is not small, is a man with innate nobility. He understands America's original purpose; he puts the community's interest above his own; he has a genuine desire to lift artificial burdens from all shoulders and give every man a fair chance in the race of life; he understands that America's purpose cannot be fulfilled unless democracy is applied to industry; he frankly accepts Walt Whitman's true definition of democracy: "By God, I will have nothing that all other men may not have the counter- part of on like terms" : he perceives that the present basis of industry is morally wrong, and that it must be reconstructed; he is not an egotist, who boasts of his perfect Americanism and uses the boast to teach workingmen their place by the method of the 286 ROBINSON CRUSOE, SOCIAL ENGINEER club; nor is he a radical, who entertains any vain hope that the millennium can be inaugurated to- morrow; he is a balanced liberal-minded man of experience, who realizes that the industrial war, if continued, may mean ruin for his business and the failure of America and who is patiently trying to reconstruct industry on the manhood principle and searching for the best way of doing it. In the large number of this type of men among the captains of industry lies the hope of the peaceful reconstruction of industry on the manhood principle. In the face of the persistence of the sheep-nature among their fellows, these men are the bell-wethers to lead the way to a new industrial America. In his estimate of them, H. L. Gantt, a pioneer of the new America, was correct when he said: u We do not need a revolution, we do not need a class war. Most people will work for the common good if you give them a chance. The trouble is that we have been clinging to an autocratic system under the mistaken idea that it was good, at least for the aristocrat. The fact is, that it isn't. Democracy is far better for all of us. Industrial democracy will release our energies and make us the strongest people on earth." If any one protests that the hope for the volun- tary reconstruction of industry on this basis is not justified, the sufficient answer is that it has already begun to happen. The moral awakening of the wealthy is now in process. They are finding it a SPORTSMANSHIP 287 thrilling adventure. The number of industrial plants, which have already begun to apply the man- hood principle is the most inspiring event in America since the war, but that is another story and lies outside of my present purpose. If you want the story, look around you. When one large employer says, as he did recently: "I do not care to make more money, I have all the money I want. I am interested in discovering what is right in industrial relations"; when another employer, who had begun to apply the manhood principle says : "It's the most interesting thing I ever did in my life. It beats mere money-making all hollow"; when the office of one of the leading capitalists of Wall Street has framed and hanging on its wall the following quo- tation from a speech by Mr. Asquith: "The old system has broken down. War was its final declar- ation of insolvency. New factors are at work. Science not only has not said her last words but is fairly to be described as still only lisping the alpha- bet of annihilation"; when Ida Tarbell, who is a careful observer, testifies that "The new kind of employer is seeing a significance and a possibility in humanizing his relations that he formerly did not dream. He is developing the inspiring con- sciousness that it is possible for him to be not a mere manufacturer of things for personal profit, but as well as maker of men and women for society's profit." In view of these facts is it not apparent 288 ROBINSON CRUSOE, SOCIAL ENGINEER that the dawn of the new day is standing tiptoe on the mountain top? To what extent these enlightened leaders will be able to make their influence effective in promoting a revolution by consent remains to be seen, but they are making a sincere effort, which deserves unstinted recognition and cordial support by all citizens of good-will. These leaders are stimulated by the memory that America once before, witnessed an industrial revolution, when the labor status of indus- trial slaves was changed by a fratricidal war in the 1860s. They desire to avoid the tragic blunder, made at that time by some of their fellow capital- ists, a blunder typified by the hard-headed, "prac- tical" man, David Christy, who six years before the Civil War, wrote a book called "Cotton is King." He had no use for any foolish sentiment, he said. He took the hard facts of life as he found them, and he went on to show that the inter- ests of the Southern cotton-growers demanded slavery if they were to prosper; and further, that the interests of the Northern manufacturers of cot- ton in the mills of Massachusetts and New York also demanded cheap cotton, which could be best produced by slave-labor in the South; and further, that the whole American people, wearing cotton clothing, most of them, every day in the year, de- manded this same system of production; and that therefore the whole agitation about the abolition of slavery was but the troubled dream of a few SPORTSMANSHIP 289 silly enthusiasts. "Cotton is King," he said, "and it will finally determine the issue." "But hard-headed, practical man though he was," remarked Dr. Charles R. Brown, "he was utterly and eternally mistaken. Cotton was not king love was king! Love of country and love of freedom, love of humanity, and love of God love was king even in that hour when David Christy was writing out his claims about the kingship of cotton. And, indeed, before the ink was fairly dry upon the pages of his book, amid the rattle of musketry and the roar of cannon, in the quiet tones of Lincoln's inaugural address and in the prayers of millions of people, the fundamental lordship of love was being effectively asserted. Men and women did great deeds in those days; they made great sacrifices; they carried through great enterprises not because they were being paid for it in cotton they were not paid for it at all. They did it because they loved they loved their country, they loved liberty, they loved humanity, and they loved God more than any material advantage whatsoever. Love is king!" You may call it love, or God, or the manhood principle, or by whatever term you choose, but this is the creator of revolutions in behalf of the com- mon welfare. It will create the new industrial America, as once before it created America's in- dustrial revolution, which issued in her Civil War. The tragedy of the industrial revolution of 1860 290 ROBINSON CRUSOE, SOCIAL ENGINEER was that the love, which wrought it, had lightning in it. It is the sincere prayer of all true lovers of their country, and they have good reason for hope, that the new industrial America will be created by love without lightning; that it will be a revolu- tion by consent. AFTERWORD On the banks of the Potomac in the city where he was martyred, has recently been erected a fitting memorial to Abraham Lincoln. The simplicity of its Ionic columns, designed by Henry Bacon; the mural paintings on Unity, Fraternity and Charity by Jules Guerin; and above all the twenty foot statue, by Daniel Chester French, revealing Lin- coln, the lonely burden-bearer, but conscious of his strength to carry it, the terraces, trees and great reflecting pool, standing on the same axis with the Capitol Building and Washington Monument, and combining grandeur with beauty, all impressively symbolize the character of the man and make it one of the most notable monuments ever erected. It is isolated, distinguished and serene, as John Hay said it should be. During the progress of the work, covering a period of more than ten years, all concerned in it, members of the commission, architects, artists, stone cutters, laborers, showed a spirit of co-operation as if for a cause they loved. There were no strikes, no lockouts, no profiteering, no labor turn-over. The same workmen who were there at the begin- ning were there at the finish. Does any one need to 291 292 ROBINSON CRUSOE, SOCIAL ENGINEER ask why their work was a form of worship? Is the reason not obvious to all? Lincoln believed that what gave birth to the nation was the manhood principle, which he said meant to elevate the condition of men, to lift arti- ficial weights from all shoulders, to afford all an unfettered start and a fair chance in the race of life. During his speech at Independence Hall in 1860, after expounding America's purpose, he made the prophetic remark that if the nation could not be maintained on this principle he would rather be assassinated on the spot. When industry is organized on this principle, and its leaders are as true to it as Lincoln was, industry will present no problem, but rather an opportunity for the association and self-development of citizens. THE END. BRIEF LIST OF REFERENCES ABLER, FELIX. The World Crisis, and Its Meaning. New York and London: D. Appleton & Co., 1915. AMERICAN ENGINEERING SOCIETIES. Waste in Industry. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1921. ARNOLD, MATTHEW. Culture and Anarchy. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1920. BAKER, RAY STANNARD. The New Industrial Unrest. New York: Doubleday Page & Co., 1920. BRETT, SIR OLIVER. A Defense of Liberty. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1921. BRIFFAULT, ROBERT. The Making of Humanity. Lon- don: George Allen and Unwin, 1919. BROOKS, JOHN GRAHAM. Labor's Challenge to the Social Order. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1920. BURRITT, ARTHUR W., and others. Profit Sharing. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1920. CARPENTER, EDWARD. Civilization, Its Cause and Cure. London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co., 1889. CARRUTH, WILLIAM HERBERT. Each in His Own Tongue. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1909. COMMITTEE, A. The Church and Industrial Reconstruc- tion. New York: The Association Press, 1921. COMMONS, JOHN R. Industrial Government. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1921. CROSBY, ERNEST. Swords and Plowshares. New York: Funk and Wagnalls Company, 1906. CROWTHER, SAMUEL. Common Sense and Labor. New York: Doubleday Page & Co., 1921. DICKENS, CHARLES. A Christmas Carol. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1914. 293 294 ROBINSON CRUSOE, SOCIAL ENGINEER ELIOT, GEORGE. Silas Marner. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1895. GANTT, H. L. Organizing for Work. New York: Har- court, Brace & Company, 1919. GARDNER, GILSON. A New Robinson Crusoe. New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1920. GEORGE, HENRY. The Law of Human Progress. New York: Joseph Fels International Commission, 1917. GOLDSMITH, OLIVER. The Deserted Village. New York: American Book Company, 1903. GRAY, THOMAS. Elegy Written in a Country Church- yard. New York: American Book Company, 1903. GUEST, GEORGE. A Social History of England. London: G. Bell & Sons, 1913. HAMSUN, KNUT. Growth of the Soil. New York: Al- bert A. Knopf, 1921. HENDERSON, ARTHUR. The Aims of Labour. New York: B. W. Huebsch, 1917. HENDERSON, C. HANFORD. Pay-Day. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1911. HOBSON, J. A. Problems of the New World. New York : The Macmillan Company, 1921. HOBSON, J. A. Work and Wealth. New York : The Mac- millan Company, 1919. HOLYOAKE, GEORGE JACOB. The Co-Operative Move- ment To-day. London: Methuen & Company, 1891. INTERCHURCH WORLD MOVEMENT. The Steel Strike of 1919. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1921. INTERCHURCH WORLD MOVEMENT. Public Opinion and the Steel Strike of 1919. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1921. KIDD, BENJAMIN. Social Evolution. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1921. KIDD, BENJAMIN. The Science of Power. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1918. BRIEF LIST OF REFERENCES 295 KORZYBSKI, ALFRED. The Manhood of Humanity. New York: E. P. Dutton & Company, 1921. KROPOTKIN, PRINCE. Mutual Aid. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1914. LANE, WINTHROP D. Civil War in West Virginia. New York: B. W. Huebsch, 1922. LEITCH, JOHN. Man to Man. New York: B. C. Forbes Company, 1919. LINCOLN, JONATHAN THAYER. The Factory. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1912. LORIA, ACHILLE. Contemporary Social Problems. Lon- don: George Allen & Unwin, 1911. LOWELL, JAMES RUSSELL. The Present Crisis. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1844. MACAULAY, THOMAS B. Lays of Ancient Rome. New York: American Book Company, 1903. MAZZINI, JOSEPH. The Duties of Man. London: J. M. Dent & Sons; New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1915. MILL, JOHN STUART. Principles of Political Economy. New York: Longmans, Green & Company. MUIR, RAMSEY. Liberalism and Industry. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1920. PARTON, JAMES. Captains of Industry. Boston: Hough- ton Mifflin Company, 1884. PEABODY, JOSEPHINE PRESTON. The Singing Man. Bos- ton: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1911. POST, Louis F. Social Service. New York: Wessels and Bissell Co., 1910. POUND, ARTHUR. The Iron Man in Industry. Boston: The Atlantic Monthly Press, 1922. QUICK, HERBERT. The Broken Lance. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1907. RATHENAU, WALTER. The New Society. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1921. RAUSCHENBUSCH, WALTER. Christianizing the Social Or- der. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1912. 296 ROBINSON CRUSOE, SOCIAL ENGINEER READE, CHARLES. Put Yourself in His Place. New York : A. L. Burt Company. ROBINSON, JAMES HARVEY. The Mind in the Making. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1922. ROWNTREE, B. SEEBOHM. The Human Needs of Labor. London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1918. RUSKIN, JOHN. Sesame and Lilies. New York: Long- mans, Green & Co., 1905. RUTHERFORD, MARK. The Revolution in Farmer's Lane. London : T. Fisher Unwin. SMITH, ADAM. Wealth of Nations. New York: P. F. Collier & Son; The Harvard Classics, 1909. STODDARD, WILLIAM L. Shop Committee. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1919. TARBELL, IDA M. New Ideals in Business. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1917. TAWNEY, R. H. The Acquisitive Society. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1921. TAYLOR, WHATELY COOKE. Modern Factory System. London: Kegan Paul, French, Triibner and Co., 1891. TUFTS, JAMES H. The Real Business of Living. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1918. WALLIS, Louis. Sociological Study of the Bible. Chi- cago: University of Chicago Press, 1912. WEYMOUTH, RICHARD FRANCIS. The New Testament in Modern Speech. London: James Clarke and Com- pany, 1902. INDEX Aims of Labor, by Henderson, 109 Ames, Fisher, on Democracy, 279 America as a society, 115 American Revolution, the, mean- ing of, 57-58 American, a typical, 285-286 Anti-Trust Law, Clayton amend- ment to, 136 Aristotle, his significant ques- tion, 149; on friendship, 189 Baker, Ray Stannard, his The New Industrial Unrest, 239 Bentham, Jeremy, quoted, 144 Bergson, M., on why the soul of our age is too small for its body, 264 Bill of Particulars, A, for in- dustrial reconstruction, 228- 230; how it differs from a survey, 238 Blincoe, Robert, Story of his suffering, 75 Boys, the sensory type of, 164 Brandeis, Justice, on Business a profession, 223 Briffault, Robert, quoted, 255 Brown, Charles R., on Love is King, 289 Browning, Mrs., The Cry of the Children, quoted, 82 ; on machinery, 113 Burns, Robert, poem by, 35 Capital, and Labor, not the same kind of thing, 137 Carlyle, quoted, 44; 48; 62; 263 Cartwright, Edward, his power- loom, 63 Children, why they want to run away from home, 4; unrecog- nized capacity of, 14; per- sisted abuse of, 75 ; laws for their protection, 83 Christy, David, his Cotton is King, 288 Circumstantial invention, 34 Collins, poem by, 35 Commonplaces, why they are unknown, 5 ; how to romanti- cize, 40 Common Law, The, 203 Commons? John R., his, Indus- trial Government, 239 Condorcet, quoted, 87 Cottage industry, described, 67- 68 ; destroyed, 69 Courage, a description of, 46-47 Cromwell, Oliver, quoted, 120; 128 Dante, on knowing the future, 47 Defoe, his judgment on the story and reflections of Crusoe re- versed, 10-11, 13; his appear- ance, 19 ; father of modern journalism, 21 Democracy, political, dependent on industrial, 128 ; does not aim at efficiency, but achieves it, 279 Dickens, Charles, on Crusoe, 24; 31; his Christmas Carol, 159- 160 Dooley, Mr., on "The Open Shop," 86 Duties, the theory of, as an economic law, 268-269; the 297 298 INDEX formula of the future, 271 ; "A Bill of Duties," 272-273 Economic determinism, 108 Emerson on Crusoe, 14; 40; his poem Each and All, 61 ; his solution of the labor problem, 146 Engineering Boards, see Social Engineering Boards Factory Girl's Last Day, The, 81 Federation of American Engi- neering Societies, Resolution by, 234 Force, the futility of, 178 Fortune-tellers, the damage done by, 47 Frank, Glenn, on the balance- of-power theory, 273 Franklin, Benjamin, on Projects, 29 Freetrader in Friendship, 186 Gantt, H. L., quoted, 286 Golden Rule, The, misunder- stood, 147; Henry George on, 147 Goldsmith, Oliver, his Deserted Village, quoted, 72 Government, as a police power, 177 Gratitude, meaning of, 44 Gray, Albert, his dying mes- sage, 145 Grayson, David, quoted, 164-165 Great War, The, its relation to the Labor Problem, no Half is more than the whole, 12 Hargreaves, James, his inven- tion of the Spinning-jenny, 62 ; 70 Harrison, Frederic, on Crusoe, 2; 53 Hawaiian Sugar Plantation, the causes of its trouble and how to remove them, 250-254 Heine, on God as a satirist, 278 Hell, William Allen White's idea of, 107 ; full of news- value, 246; a "social hell," 281 Henley, poem by, 48 Hobson, J. A., his method of revolution by consent, 210 Holmes, Oliver Wendell, on Sportsmanship, 280 Huxley, Prof., quoted, 92 Industry, and foreign markets, 170 Industry, a community concern, 161 ; why it can do more than Government, 209 Industry, how to make it a liberal profession, 222 Industrial Courts, their failure, 178; why they fail, 179; a substitute for, 182 Industrial Reconstruction, how it happens, 212-218; how Robinson Crusoe helps it, 215 Industrial Revolution, 59; changed man's status, 60; what caused it, 62; 64; its advantages, 65 ; increased poverty, 66 Iron Man, The, 163 Jefferson, Thomas, on controlled Newspapers, 130; controversy with Hamilton, 133 John, the Apostle, on selling souls, 95 Johnson, Dr., on Crusoe, 12 Joke on British Nation, 18-19 Jones, Ludlow, his Progress of the Working Classes, quoted, 97 Jordon, David Starr, on the test of a nation, 109 Justice, its relation to charity, 139 Kant, Immanuel, his dictum, 221 Kay, John, his invention of the shuttle, 62; 69 INDEX 299 Kenyon, Ex-Senator, on Indus- trial Courts, 180; 203 Korzybski, Count Alfred, his Manhood of Humanity, 149 Kropotkin, Prince, a recollection of his childhood, 105 Labor, as a commodity, 92-93 ; Not a commodity, 136; what it is, 137 Labor Commissions, why they should not be composed of "Capital," "Labor," and the Public, 184 Labor Unions, why they were started, 84; not an end in themselves, 85; not a funda- mental issue, 235; how to abolish them, 237 Lincoln, Abraham, quoted, 58; 187; balance between his head and heart, 197; on labor and capital, 262; on learning through mistakes, 284; his memorial and its meaning for the labor problem, 291-292 Longfellow, his Village Black- smith, 166 Love, as an economic principle, 143-144 Lowell, James Russell, on how to love one's country, 116; his Parable, quoted, 126 ; his ground of hope, 277 Machinery, opposition to, 70; protest against in India, 71 ; was it made for man or man for it, 104; 112; automatic, 162 Man as a "time-binder," 149- 150 Manhood principle, the, why it needs no demonstration, 241 ; an organic law, 242 ; applied to a sugar plantation of Hawaii, 247-250; a social engineer's recommendation for its operation on the Planta- tion, 251-252 Mann, Horace, his contribution to America, 194-195 Mark Twain, quoted, 57; 185; 269 Mazzini, on what constitutes a nation, 115; quoted, 271 Mill, John Stuart, quoted, 66 Mitten, Thomas E., how he dis- covered the manhood principle in industry and operated it, 243-245 Modern business, its inspiring achievements, 91 ; its chief blunder, 92 Money, Crusoe's soliloquy, 41 ; why no poem is written on, 42; a community enterprise, 171 Montessori, Marie, on the spirit of servitude, 168-169 Napoleon, on use of force, 198; his discovery, 278 Nation, The, is to be distin- guished from the State, 175- 176 New Industrial America, 258 ; how to achieve it, 262 ; basis of hope for, 281 October 15, 1914, its signifi- cance, 135 Open mind, an, Confucious on, Socrates on, Jesus on, 117-118 Open Shop, the, Mr. Dooley on, 86; New Jersey Chamber of Commerce on, 236 Pig-killing institutions, 98 Pig-trough philosophy, 106-107; 13? Phillips, Wendell, quoted, 52 Pitkin, Walter B., on relation of industrial to national wars, 274-275 Poetry, and history, 87; power of, 1 86 Pound, Arthur, quoted, 163 Principle of Uncertainty, 37-38; 40 300 INDEX Problem, the social, the same in Politics, Religion and Eco- nomics, 123-124 Production for use, 229 Profit-sharing, 229 Psychology applied to industry, 141-142 Public, the, not "the party of the third part," 183; Hegel's description of, 197 Public Schools, 197 Put yourself in his place, by Reade, 114; 116; Key to social intelligence, 117 Quick, Herbert, his Broken Lance, quoted, 100 Rauschenbusch, Walter, his drama on the Discovery of America, 258-261 Reforms, why they come from outside, 208 Religion and Politics, 125 Revolution, America's Industrial in 1860, 288 Revolution by consent, how to make it effective, 211 Rights, the doctrine of, 266 ; the fallacy in, 267-268 Robinson Crusoe, original sub- title of, 4; three parts of, 9; a philosophical book, 113; not intended to be a boy's book, 14; how the idea of it origin- ated in a goal, 23 ; criticisms of it, 24; the first English novel, 28; no love story in it, 31; secret of its popularity, 37; why new editions are printed, 50; its challenge to modern industry, 54; its philosophy of life, 282 Rogers, Thorold, quoted, 68 Roosevelt, Theodore, represent- ing the public in a coal strike, 130 Rousseau, on educational value of Robinson Crusoe, 167 Rowntree, B. Seebohm, his visit to America, 257-258 Ruskin, John, on the division of labor, 94; his parable A May- Day Party, 155-158; on the professions, 222 Ruth's Sickle, 55 Selkirk, Alexander, 25 Shelley, his poem, What is freedom, 88 Shortest way to deal with Dis- senters, 1 8 Smith, Adam, his Wealth of Nations, 73 ; his teaching per- verted, 74; his description of pin-making, 93 Social engineer, the, as an in- troducer, 198-199; a new pro- fession, 218; 232; a typical speech by, 219-225 Social engineering, how it dif- fers from efficiency engineer- ing, 233-234 Social engineering boards, 182; their nature and function, 188 ; How they promote good-will, 189; how they promote intelli- gence, 190; their service to the Science of Society, 193- 194; their tasks, 196; a Dec- laration of Principles for their use, 200-202; suggested code of working rules for, 205-207 Social Intelligence, lack of, 135; need of, 185 Socrates, quoted, 142; his dia- logue on "What is a man," 152; on how to get to Mt. Olympus, 247 Speranza, Gino, quoted, no Stetson, Charlotte Perkins, her poem, The Conservative, quoted, 118 Stoddard, Lothrop, quoted, 59 Surveys, Industrial, why they are omitted from this book, 240-241 INDEX 301 Taft, Chief Justice, on Indus- trial Courts, 180 Taylor, Whately Cooke, quoted, 65 Tennyson, quoted, 275 Tocqueville, Alexis de, his un- heeded warning, 283-284 Tolstoi, quoted, 144 Tools, social significance of, 42- 43 Town-meeting, The, 195 True-born Englishman, The, 16 United States of America, The, its formative principle, 256 Unrest, Social, its cause, 221 ; a sign of hope, 221 Van Dyke, Henry, quoted, 38 Voltaire, on freedom of speech, 191 Wages and Capital in the same class, 228 War, the Industrial, long con- tinued, 91 ; a moral issue, 263 ; its cause, 265 ; its cure, 291 Waste in Industry, 115 Watts, George Frederic, quoted, 189 Watt, James, invents the double acting steam engine, 63 ; his freedom to work protected by Adam Smith, 74 Wealth, distribution of, 66; 128- 129 Wealthy, moral awakening of the, 286-287 "We, the people," 161-162 Wells, H. G., on need of trust- worthy money, 171-172 White, William Allen, his idea of Hell, 107 Whitman, Walt, quoted, 145 ; his definition of democracy, 285 Wilkie Collins 7 Moonstone, quoted, 5 Wilson, President, establishes Federal Labor Board, 204 Wolf, Robert B., his statement of the manhood principle in industry, 257 Workingmen, their legal status, 132; reduced to "hands," 93; 136; what to do with them, a challenging question, 142- 143 ; are also citizens, 161 ; their demand for a new status in industry, 173 ; as allies of owners, 230 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY BERKELEY Return to desk from which borrowed. This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. RiC NOV 281947 *-x w DEC 26 1960 gjan'631 Rfc.0 D LD EC 1 7 1962 r; I30'64-4PM '65 -1PM LD 21-100m-9,'47(A5702sl6)476 1C 06994 U.C.BERKELEY LIBRARIES UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY