<h2>CHAPTER 22</h2>
<h3>CONDITIONS FOR EFFICIENT LABOR</h3>
<h4>§ I. OBJECTIVE PHYSICAL CONDITIONS</h4>
<div class="sidenote">Subjective and objective factors of efficiency</div>
<p>1. <i>The efficiency of labor, in its broadest sense, is its ability to
render services or produce things that minister to welfare.</i> The
efficiency of labor is a resultant of many influences. In part it
depends on the physical and mental powers of men; in part on things
outside of the worker that either stimulate and strengthen him, or give
him more favorable conditions in which to work. These are respectively
the subjective and the objective factors of efficiency. In its broader
sense, therefore, the phrase "efficiency of labor" implies any and every
influence that makes for a larger and better supply of goods.</p>
<div class="sidenote">Bounty and goodness of productive agents affect the output of
labor</div>
<p>2. <i>The efficiency of labor is limited objectively by the abundance and
quality of material resources.</i> Material resources include both those
called natural (as the field and its fertile qualities), and those
called artificial (as improvements and machinery). According as these
resources are more or less developed, as labor is employed in a fertile
or a barren field, with a sharp tool or a dull one, with a highly
developed machine or a poor one, the product is more or less. If
resources were much more abundant than at present, many goods now scarce
would become almost, or quite, free. In the last chapter it was shown
that an increase of the labor in a limited area or with a limited supply
of indirect agents results in a decline in the relative bounty of the
environment. A certain part of the result is thought of as<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</SPAN></span> due to
material agents, a certain part to labor. "Efficiency of labor" is
thought of in the narrower sense as the part of the product that is
logically attributable to labor,—the laborer's contribution to the
value of the product,—as apart from rent, the part attributable to
material resources.</p>
<div class="sidenote">Causal relation of wages and efficiency; food</div>
<p>3. <i>The laborer's efficiency is greatly affected by the quality of his
food, clothing, and shelter.</i> Usually workmen that are getting good
wages enjoy abundant food and creature comforts; poorly paid workers go
scantily fed. The question arises: which is cause, which effect? Some
maintain that all that is needed to make workmen more efficient is to
feed them well. In some cases this is probably true. The Porto Ricans
enlisted in the American regular army are reported to have increased at
once in strength, weight, and vigor; the Filipino recruits, thanks to
the American army rations, soon outgrew their uniforms. Some employers
in Europe pay their workmen an extra sum on condition that it is spent
for meat. But if wages increase, it is by no means certain that more or
better food will be bought or if it is that the workmen's powers will be
increased. There is a limit to the benefits of increasing food. There is
some reason to believe that in America great numbers of our people,
perhaps even many manual laborers, would be better off if they bought
simpler and less costly food. The maximum of health and vigor may be
attained with moderate outlay, and beyond that point richer food
doubtless does more harm than good. Poor judgment in the selection of
food is shown in many workers' families, and there is no appreciation of
its influence on health.</p>
<div class="sidenote">An experiment in feeding</div>
<p>A few years ago an experiment in the feeding of pigs was tried on the
Cornell farm. Four groups of six pigs each were put in four different
pens and fed four different rations. Though alike in breed and age; the
groups began at once to differ in character. One group squealed more;
another scratched more; another waxed fat faster. Every week they were
weighed, and finally were butchered, hung<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</SPAN></span> up, and photographed. At that
same time, at the Elmira Reformatory Mr. Brockway was experimenting on
some criminals of the lower class. They were given daily baths, special
physical exercises, and were fed on a specially bountiful diet.
Scientific philanthropy stopped there, but photographs "before and
after," reproduced in the printed reports, show the great physical
improvement that resulted, and a marked change occurred likewise in
disposition and intelligence. Many laboratory experiments have been made
of late to test the chemical nature and the physiological effects of
foods. It is becoming more fully recognized that the quality and
quantity of food, and the cooking of it, have a great influence on the
economic quality of the worker.</p>
<div class="sidenote">Clothing</div>
<p>The effect of the quality and amount of clothing, while of course
varying with the climate, is in general of less practical importance.
Loss of heat and energy, dulling the powers, stiffening the muscles,
causing illness with many trains of evils, make ill-clad workmen
inefficient. The cost of clothing enough for comfort is, however,
comparatively small, the amount spent for ornament is comparatively
high. Even more important in its effects on efficiency is housing. The
conditions in the factory and in the home make for health or for
disease.</p>
<div class="sidenote">Physical conditions surrounding labor grow worse or better</div>
<p>4. <i>The growth of society is, for the average man, making some of the
conditions of efficiency more difficult, others more easy, to secure.</i>
In agricultural and sparse populations fresh air, sunshine, good water,
and unbounded natural playgrounds for children, where they can grow into
strong and efficient manhood, are free goods. As population grows more
dense, these things become more difficult to secure; men are brought
into unnatural conditions, the evils of slum and factory life develop,
and the housing problem appears.</p>
<p>The character of the housing and working places could well be left to
individuals in early times. If the individual chose to live and work in
unsuitable places and under unsanitary conditions, it was usually his
own fault and he bore<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</SPAN></span> the consequences. When the unsanitary conditions
about each family are visited upon its neighbors, society must deal with
them. Engineering, sanitary science, and medicine must be directed
against the evils; factory and tenement-house legislation must seek to
make possible a decent life in the cities, the factories, and the homes.
Indeed, in many places the development in these and other directions has
enabled the mass of the workers to enjoy blessings impossible to the
most favored in the past.</p>
<h4>§ II. SOCIAL CONDITIONS FAVORING EFFICIENCY</h4>
<div class="sidenote">Government to insure the reward to labor</div>
<p>1. <i>The first social condition for the workers' efficiency is political
security.</i> For the same reason that this condition is favorable to the
growth of capital, it is essential if men are to labor in the present
and for the future. As the framers of the Constitution expressed it, the
function of government is to insure domestic tranquillity, provide for
the common defense, and insure the blessings of liberty to the citizen.
Directness and certainty of reward are more essential than mere size of
reward in insuring action and effort. There must be a close relation
between work and the fruits of work. Political insecurity weakens this
relation and makes the reward dependent on chance.</p>
<div class="sidenote">Common honesty as a condition to efficient labor</div>
<p>2. <i>The prevalence of standards of honesty in private and public
business is a condition to high efficiency.</i> Corruption in government
has the same effect as political insecurity; in fact, it is but another
form of it. We are accustomed to the thought that in an Asiatic
despotism a worker beginning a task is uncertain whether he will reap
the reward, as public officials may at any moment seize upon the fruits
of his labor. But in our own country similar evils are not entirely
lacking. Assessments often are unfair, and justice sometimes is bought.
Men in high executive positions are able to make or mar the fortunes of
their followers. Sometimes a legislator from a country town goes<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</SPAN></span> to the
state capital poor and returns rich. Such things becoming generally
known tend to break down the motives to industry. They breed the notion
that wealth is more dependent on chance or jobbery than on efficient
service. Dishonesty in private business means the use of energy not to
produce wealth, not to add to the sum for all to enjoy, but to get it
from some one else. Public corruption and commercial dishonesty alike
entail on the industrious not only the immediate loss, but the far
greater cost of weakened character, relaxed energy, and decreased
efficiency of labor.</p>
<div class="sidenote">Effect of caste on efficiency of lower and upper classes</div>
<p>3. <i>Custom and social ideals that raise or depress hope and ambition,
affect efficiency.</i> The institution called caste, which fixes the place
of the worker and makes it impossible to rise out of the social position
in which he is born, and disgraceful to do any work reserved to other
castes, is deadening to energy. It exists in some form throughout the
world, and where it is not called by that name, the same caste spirit is
at work. The European peasants in the Middle Ages lived under the shadow
of it. Where slavery exists the master class at times feels its
hardships. "It is not so hard to live," says the hungry Creole daughter
in "The Grandissimes," "but it is hard to be ladies.... We are compelled
not to make a living. Look at me: I can cook, but I must not cook; I am
skilful with the needle, but I must not take in sewing; I could keep
accounts; I could nurse the sick; but I must not." Nowhere in the world
is there less caste than in America, but it is here. The negro's low
measure of industrial virtues is partly the cause of the prejudice
against him, but in turn doubtless inherited class feeling is in some
measure the cause of his inefficiency. To close to a worker all but the
menial occupations is to take from him the most powerful motives for
effort. The thought is paralyzing. The race problem in America is in
part one of caste sentiment, whatever can or cannot be done about it.</p>
<div class="sidenote">American democracy and the efficiency of labor</div>
<p>Democracy makes for the efficiency of American industry<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</SPAN></span> not less than
do the great natural resources. If America is to surpass the world in
all the great industrial lines, it will be largely because of her ideas
and institutions. They lead to greater energy and to a faster working
pace in all grades of labor than is found anywhere else in the world.
There is danger that as the West is closed to settlement something of
the spirit of enterprise will be lost. To Western eyes already the young
men in the older East seem to be trammeled by social conventions. In an
older community there is less of hopeful ambition; one's position
depends more on what his fathers achieved; in the new community, more on
what he does himself. If it is true, as wise students declare, that the
frontier has been the nursery of our democratic ideas, we may well ask
what effect the closing of the frontier will have on our national
sentiment and on our material prosperity.</p>
<div class="sidenote">The balance of advantage between work and leisure</div>
<p>4. <i>Custom and national temperament affect the efficiency of labor by
determining the normal period of labor time.</i> After the bare necessities
of life are provided for, the worker has a wide or narrow margin of
productive energy to use as he pleases. If four hours' work a day would
enable him to live, will he work longer or will he stop? The answer is
determined by the balance of utility and disutility. Will additional
hours of labor yield more gratification than idleness yields? Does the
pain of toil repel more than its fruits attract? The use made of spare
time differs according to climate, race, and temperament. In the tropics
the margin is converted usually into loafing, in the temperate zones
largely into objective forms of enjoyment. Individual differences are
plainly seen when each man labors on his own field. The prudent man, in
the old maxims, makes hay while the sun shines and ploughs deep while
sluggards sleep. In the modern larger organization of industry, working
hours are much the same for all workers in the establishment. Individual
preferences are still expressed, however, in irregularity of employment.
In the South some manufacturers<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</SPAN></span> have found that on an average the
negroes will work in a factory not more than five or six hours a day,
working ten hours for four days and lying off two days a week. Such a
standard of working hours is the mark of the primitive stage of wants
and industrial qualities, although a shortening of the hours of manual
labor, as incomes increase above bare subsistence, is in accord with a
rational valuation of leisure. A moderate change in that direction
cannot but increase rather than diminish the efficiency of labor.</p>
<h4>§ III. DIVISION OF LABOR</h4>
<div class="sidenote">Division and exchange of labor</div>
<p>1. <i>Division of labor is a term expressing that complex arrangement of
industrial society whereby individual workers are enabled to apply
themselves to the production of certain kinds of goods, securing others
by exchange.</i> The term "division of labor" is simple, but the thought is
a complex one. Its full discussion would cover the whole field of
political economy, but only its most essential aspects can here be
touched upon. Division of labor and exchange are counterparts and
mutually determine each other. Division of labor depends on the extent
of the market, and in turn widens its limits. The number of articles
that any one would care to produce at one time and place depends upon
the opportunity to exchange them. These two aspects of industry thus are
inseparable in thought and practice. The worker finds division of labor
existing as a social institution and, according as he adapts himself to
it wisely or foolishly, it increases more or less his efficiency.</p>
<div class="sidenote">Division of labor between trades and territories</div>
<p>2. <i>Division of labor is primarily between individuals, but appears
between trades, territories, and nations.</i> In division of labor between
trades, each worker applies himself to the production of some product or
group of products and secures other goods by exchange. A special form of
this is territorial division of labor, arising out of differences in
soil, climate, and natural products, when each community<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</SPAN></span> develops in a
high degree some one class of products to exchange in distant or foreign
trade. Division of labor beginning because of such natural differences,
becomes fixed by habit and training, by the advantage of a larger and
regular labor supply, by the economy of nearness to related and
tributary industries, and by the use of waste products where industry is
conducted on a large scaled. The natural advantages in another district
must be large to enable it to start successfully against these acquired
economies, and territorial division of labor thus tends to continue for
long periods when once established.</p>
<div class="sidenote">Advantages of division of labor</div>
<p>3. <i>Division of labor increases efficiency by: (a) increasing skill; (b)
saving time; (c) saving tools and materials; (d) improving quality; (e)
increasing knowledge; (f) stimulating invention; (g) encouraging
enterprise; (h) economizing talent.</i> There is a tradition that an
ingenious lecturer in one of our universities was accustomed to give to
his class eighty reasons why division of labor was of advantage. It is
none too many, as every reason for the modern, as contrasted with the
primitive, organization of industry should be included. The phrase
division of labor is but a synonym for specialization, a word that
expresses all that is most characteristic of our complex industrial
society. The headings just given may serve, however, to suggest the
leading phases of the subject. Repetition of the same task trains the
muscles, forms a mental habit, and gives the swiftness and deftness of
touch called <i>skill</i>. Specialization <i>saves time</i> by making unnecessary
the physical change of place for the worker, the frequent shifting of
tools, and the mental readjustment required for the undertaking of a new
task. Specialization <i>saves tools</i> for, either each kind of work must be
most ineffectively done, or there must be provided for each worker a
complete set of tools which thus will be used rarely and will rust out
rather than wear out. If a few tools are thoroughly used, they yield a
larger income on the investment, and require less care and repairs in
proportion<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</SPAN></span> to their uses. In fact this fuller economic use of machinery
and plant where a large product is turned out at one place, is a prime
factor in the advantages of large production, a subject to be treated
elsewhere much more fully than is here possible. By specialization is
made possible a <i>quality</i> of goods never to be secured by the less
skilled efforts of the Jack-of-all trades. The specialist steadily grows
in <i>knowledge</i> of his materials and of the best processes, and he gains
a power of delicate observation and facility in meeting new difficulties
that are impossible when attention is divided among a number of tasks.
By dividing and simplifying processes, specialization <i>stimulates
invention</i>. The most complex machines have been developed gradually by
combinations and adaptations of simple tools, and the more a process is
subdivided, the greater is the chance of hitting upon a device to repeat
mechanically the few simple movements. Division of labor increases the
motives of emulation and <i>enterprise</i>, by making possible the more exact
comparison of results. It <i>economizes talent</i> by giving to each the
highest task of which he is capable, while fitting the less efficient
workers into the minor places made possible by subdivision. In an
American wagon-factory, a one-armed man operating a machine is turning
out as large a product and earning as high wages as any other employee.
The same advantages of specialization are found with modifying
conditions in educational and professional lines. The marvelous progress
of science in recent years has been made possible by each worker's doing
a few things and doing them well.</p>
<div class="sidenote">Best adjustment of talent and occupation</div>
<div class="sidenote">Choice of a life career</div>
<p>4. <i>The individual worker, to attain his highest economic efficiency,
must select from the occupations made possible by division of labor the
one for which his talents are best fitted.</i> It seems unnecessary to
state this almost axiomatic truth, yet the slight reflection given to
the choice of an occupation by most young people gives to this statement
a very practical bearing. The world is filled with industrial misfits,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</SPAN></span>
"round men in square holes," good carpenters spoiled to make poor
doctors. It so often happens that the natural aptitude of the youth is
the thing last or, in any event, least considered. Unreasoning
imitation, family traditions, parental wishes, class pride, social
prejudice, childish whim, are often decisive of the life career. Happily
in some cases, before too late, the man "finds himself," but too often
the poverty of the family and the obstacles to education preclude the
exercise of intelligent choice. It is of importance to society as well
as to the individual that talent should be discovered in time, that
tasks should be fitted to aptitudes, that each member of society should
attain to his highest efficiency. The approach to this ideal, made
possible by popular education, the decline of caste, the spread of
genuine democracy, the progress of social justice, will increase not
only the workers' efficiency, but society's abiding welfare.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</SPAN></span></p>
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