Part 6 (2/2)
Even the plausible contention that it will result in the maximum efficiency and give the maximum product breaks down. For no matter how much the condition of the laborers is improved, or what political rights they are allowed to exercise, if they are deprived of all initiative and power in their employments, and of the equal opportunity to develop their capacities to fill other social positions for which they may prove to be more fit than the present occupants, then the human resources of the community are not only left underdeveloped, but are prevented from development.
In the following chapters I shall deal successively with the plans of the ”State Socialists” to develop the productive powers of the laboring people and their children--_as laborers_, together with the accompanying tendencies towards compulsory labor, and formation of a cla.s.s society.
”Our Home policy,” says a manifesto of the Fabian Society (edited by Bernard Shaw), ”must include a labor policy, _whether the laborer wants it or not_, directed to securing _for him, what, for the nation's sake even the poorest_ of its subjects should have.” (Italics mine.)[46]
Here is the basis of the att.i.tude of the ”State Socialist” towards labor. Labor is to be given more and more attention and consideration.
But the governing is to be done by other cla.s.ses, and the foundation of the new policy is to be the welfare of society as these other cla.s.ses conceive it,--and not the welfare of the ma.s.ses of the people as conceived by the ma.s.ses themselves.
Indeed, a government official has recently pleaded with capital in the name of labor that the time has come when it pays to treat labor as well as valuable horses and cattle. George H. Webb, Commissioner of Labor of Rhode Island, begins his report on Welfare Work by a.s.suring the manufacturers that it is profitable. He says: ”Mankind, at least that portion of it that has to do with horseflesh, discovered ages ago that a horse does the best service when it is well fed, well stabled, and well groomed. The same principle applies to the other brands of farm stock.
They one and all yield the best results when their health and comforts are best looked after. It is strange, though these truths have been a matter of general knowledge for centuries, that it is only quite recently that it has been discovered that the same rule is applicable to the human race. We are just beginning to learn that the employer who gives steady employment, pays fair wages, and pays close attention to the physical health and comfort of his employees gets the best results from their labor.”[47]
Mr. George W. Perkins, recently retired from the firm of J. P. Morgan and Company, who has managed the introduction of pensions, profit sharing, and other investments in labor for the International Harvester Company, has also expressed the view that these measures were profitable ”from a pecuniary standpoint.” A good ill.u.s.tration is the calculation of the Dayton Cash Register Company, which has led in this ”welfare work,”
that ”the luncheons given each girl costs three cents, and that the woman does five cents more of work each day.” Some such calculation will apply to the whole colossal system of governmental labor reforms now favored so widely by far-sighted employers.[48]
In order that the private policy of the more enlightened of the large corporations should become the policy of governments, which employers as a cla.s.s know they can control, only two conditions need to be filled.
Since all employers must to some degree share the burdens of the new taxes needed for such governmental investments in the improvement of labor, there must be some a.s.surance, first, that all capitalists shall share in the opportunity to employ this more efficient and more profitable labor; and second, that the supply of cheap labor, which has cost almost nothing to produce, is either exhausted or, on account of its inefficiency, is less adapted to the new industry than it was to the old. The impending reorganization of governments to protect the smaller capitalists from the large (through better control over the banks, railroads, trusts, tariffs, and natural resources) will furnish the first condition, the natural exhaustion or artificial restriction of immigration now imminent together with the introduction of ”scientific management,” the second. From a purely business standpoint the greatest a.s.set of the capitalists' government, its chief natural resource, the most fruitful field for conservation, and the most profitable place for the investment of capital will then undoubtedly be in the labor supply.
In presenting the British Budget of 1910 to Parliament, Mr. Lloyd George argued that the higher incomes and fortunes ought to bear a greater than proportionate share of the taxes, because present governmental expenditures were largely on their behalf, and because the new labor reforms were equally to their benefit.
”What is it,” he said, ”that enabled the fortunate possessors of these incomes and these fortunes to ama.s.s the wealth they enjoy or bequeath? The security insured for property by the agency of the State, the guaranteed immunity from the risks and destruction of war, insured by our natural advantages and our defensive forces.
This is an essential element even now in the credit of the country; and, in the past, it means that we were acc.u.mulating great wealth in this land, when the industrial enterprises of less fortunately situated countries were not merely at a standstill, but their resources were being ravaged and destroyed by the havoc of war.
”What, further, is accountable for this growth of wealth? The spread of intelligence amongst the ma.s.ses of the people, the improvements in sanitation and in the general condition of the people. These have all contributed towards the efficiency of the people, _even as wealth-producing machines_. Take, for instance, such legislation as the Educational Acts and the Public Health Acts; they have cost much money, but they have made infinitely more. That is true of all legislation which improves the conditions of life for the people. An educated, well-fed, well-clothed, well-housed people _invariably leads to the growth of a numerous well-to-do cla.s.s_. If _property_ were to grudge a substantial contribution towards proposals which insure the security which is one of the essential conditions of its existence or toward keeping from poverty and privation the old people whose lives of industry and toil have either created that wealth or made it productive, then _property_ would be not only shabby, but shortsighted.”
(Italics mine.)[49]
The property interests should be far-sighted enough to support the present economic and labor reforms, not because there is any fear in Great Britain either from a revolutionary Socialist movement or from an organized political or labor union upheaval, for Mr. Lloyd George ridicules both these bogeys, but because such reforms _contribute towards the efficiency of the people, even as wealth-producing machines_--and increase the incomes of the wealthy and the well-to-do.
Mr. Lloyd George continued:--
”We have, more especially during the last 60 years, in this country acc.u.mulated wealth to an extent which is almost unparalleled in the history of the world, but we have done it at _an appalling waste of human material_. We have drawn upon the robust vitality of the rural areas of Great Britain, and especially Ireland, and spent its energies recklessly in the devitalizing atmosphere of urban factories and workshops as if the supply were inexhaustible. We are now beginning to realize that we have been spending _our capital_, at a disastrous rate, and it is time we should take a real, concerted, national effort to replenish it. I put forward this proposal, not a very extravagant one, _as a beginning_.” (My italics.)[50]
In order to do away with the economic waste of profitable ”human material” and the still more serious exhaustion of the supply, the propertyless wage earner or salaried man for the first time obtains a definite status in the official political economy; he becomes the property of the nation viewed ”as a business firm,” a part of ”our”
capital. His position was much like a peasant or a laborer during the formation of the feudal system. To obtain any status at all, to become half free he had to become somebody's ”man.” Now he is the ”man,” the industrial a.s.set, of the government. This paternal att.i.tude towards the individual, however, is not at all similar to the paternalist att.i.tude towards capital. While the individual capitalist often does not object to having his capital reckoned as a part of the resources of a government which capitalists as a cla.s.s control,--roughly speaking in proportion to their wealth,--we can picture his protests if either _his_ personal activity or ability or _his_ private income were similarly viewed as dependent for their free use and development on the benevolent patronage of the State. However, for the _workers_ to become an a.s.set of the State, even while the latter is still viewed primarily as a commercial inst.i.tution and remains in the hands of the business cla.s.s, is undoubtedly a revolutionary advance.
Mr. Winston Churchill also gives, as the basis for the whole program, the need of putting an end to that ”waste of earning power” and of ”the stamina, the virtue, safety, and honor of the British race,” that is due to existing poverty and economic maladjustment.[51] Mr. John A. Hobson, a prominent economist and radical, shows that the purpose of the ”New Liberalism” is the full development of ”the productive resources of our land and labor,”[52] and denies that this broad purpose has anything to do with Socialist collectivism.
Professor Simon Patten of the University of Pennsylvania writes very truly about the proposed labor reforms, that ”they can cause poverty to disappear and can give a secure income to every family,” without requiring any sacrifice on the part of the possessing cla.s.ses. No one has shown more clearly or in fewer words how intimately connected are the advance of the worker and the further increase of profits. ”Social improvement,” Professor Patten says, ”takes him [the workman] from places where poverty and diseases oppress, and introduce him to the full advantage of a better position.... It gives to the city workman the air, light, and water that the country workman has, but without his inefficiency and isolation. It gives more working years and more working days in each year, with more zeal and vitality in each working day; health makes work pleasant, and pleasant work becomes efficiency when the environment stimulates men's powers to the full.... The unskilled workman must be transformed into an efficient citizen; children must be kept from work, and women must have shorter hours and better conditions.”[53]
Professor Patten has even drawn up a complete scientific program of social reforms which lead _necessarily_ to the economic advantage of _all_ elements in a community without any decrease of the existing inequalities of wealth. ”The incomes and personal efforts of those favorably situated,” says Professor Patten, ”can reduce the evils of poverty without the destruction of that _upon which their wealth and the progress of society depend_.” (Italics mine.)
The reform program begins with childhood and extends over every period of the worker's life. Ex-President Eliot of Harvard and President Hadley of Yale and other leading educators propose that its principles be applied to the nation's children. Dr. Eliot insists that greater emphasis should be laid on vocational and physical training and the teaching of hygiene and the preservation of the health, which will secure the approval of every ”State Socialist.” Anything that can be done to elevate the health of the nation, and to increase its industrial efficiency by the teaching of trades, will pay the nation, considered as a going concern, a business undertaking of all its capitalists. It might not improve the opportunity of the wage earners to rise to better-paid positions, because it would augment compet.i.tion among skilled laborers; while it would probably improve wages somewhat, it might not advance them proportionately to the general increase of wealth; it might leave the unequal distribution of wealth, political power, and opportunity even more unequal than they are to-day, but as long as the nation as a whole is richer and the ma.s.ses of the people better off, ”State Socialists” will apparently be satisfied.
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