The Principles of Economics Part 17

Effort Objective result sought Name of action

1. Pleasurable Not useful Play 2. Pleasurable Useful Labor 3. Painful Useful Labor 4. Painful Not useful No special name

The fourth combination is not found in rational life, for no motive exists to do a painful act for a useless result. Let us consider the other three.

[Sidenote: Play]

The first group comprises most of the sports, games, and pastimes found in every land and time. In the mere putting forth of the powers of mind and muscle there is a joy felt by children and men of all races, and this is heightened by companions.h.i.+p, emulation, and even by a spice of danger. Play is not dependent on a useful objective result later to be enjoyed, but, like beauty, is its own excuse for being. The tired student goes out-of-doors to bat the tennis-ball, making no change in the material world, except to wear out his shoes and to lose the ball, but finding that hour rich in the joy of life. If properly chosen, play strengthens and vivifies both soul and body, leaving an afterglow of health and happiness. The choice of sports and temperance in their pursuit are among the surest tests of wisdom in men and in societies. A love of vigorous play no less than the power of sustained work, marks the dominant and progressive peoples of the earth.

[Sidenote: Labor as pleasure]

Acts in the second group give pleasure and at the same time leave an objective result. The hunter gets more pleasure if he returns with well-filled bags of game, but the distinction between the sportsman and the "pot-hunter" is not hard to find. The one has his joy in the sport, the other in the material results of the sport. This kind of action presents some puzzling cases, but in general must be cla.s.sed as labor, since labor is to be judged by the objective economic results rather than by the pleasure of the act itself.

[Sidenote: Labor as sacrifice]

In a third cla.s.s are the acts that are painful in themselves, that are done unwillingly, but that leave a pleasurable result. Unfortunately a large part of the actions of men are of this cla.s.s, which to most minds is the typical labor.

[Sidenote: Joy in work is the ideal]

There is thus labor that is pleasurable in itself and labor that is painful though it leads to a desirable result. The social ideal clearly is that all human labor should be made pleasurable. Social dreamers love to picture a day when all shall find for effort a full reward in the mere doing,--the reward of the artist, of the scholar, of the saint, in addition to the objective result in economic wealth. Probably we are slowly nearing this ideal. Not only in the professions and in the esthetic arts, but in commerce, in mechanics, and in the humblest walks of life are found men free from envy, rejoicing in their daily tasks.

Such is the normal feeling of the healthy optimist. And yet in every serious occupation there are numberless moments and occasions when the spirit flags and only hard necessity holds men to their tasks. The dilettante does not go far or long or steadily; the real tasks of the world are done by men that labor, now with joy, now wearily.

[Sidenote: The distinction between men and things]

2. _The agents of production compose two great species, material goods and human services._ Our discussion of consumption goods, rent, and interest has been an a.n.a.lysis of the nature and uses of material goods.

We now come to the other great species, human services, which comprise those acts of men (one's own or other's) that minister to the gratification of wants. There are also misdirected efforts, and evil deeds which are "disutilities" to all but the doer.

The distinction between men and things is fundamental in modern economic discussion where each man is looked upon as free. It is not so clear where slavery exists and the master looks in the same way upon the services of his cattle, of his chattel slaves, and of his land. Even in the freest society, man's services are compared purely as to their utility, with the uses of other parts of the material world. It is said that the price of mules at the Pennsylvania mines has been affected by immigration, because a man and a mule sometimes represent interchangeable services. But in the study of political economy the distinction between men and other material things must never be lost sight of; they are the two fundamental cla.s.ses of economic agents, the one being solely a means to an end, the other being an end in itself.

[Sidenote: Rent and wages mutually affect each other]

3. _Labor and material wealth are complementary and indispensable to each other in most of their uses._ The discussion of material wealth and its value apart from the subject of labor, of the problem of rent and interest apart from that of wages, does not imply that this material wealth would have the same value in real life if labor were absent. As one field affects the value of another field, and one good, by subst.i.tution, the value of another good, so does labor affect material wealth. Some material wealth can be used apart from labor, but most of it must be used in combination with some labor. Rent, therefore, is not determined in concrete cases apart from men and their services. It is allowable, however, in abstract a.n.a.lysis, to simplify the question by leaving out a difficult complication, and thus to set forth more clearly the logical bearing and effect of a certain factor.

[Sidenote: Certain shares of the product are logically attributed to each]

Each of two kinds of agents used together affects the utility of the other, and the value of the product. If neither can be credited with the whole value, how is any distribution to be made between them? It is not possible to measure their technical services in the product, but it usually is possible to gage their marginal utility under particular conditions. Flour, water, and labor are needed to make biscuits; but water being a free agent, does not enter into the combination with any marginal utility. A match also is almost indispensable to start the fire (and who has not seen the time when he would give far more for a match than for a bucket of coal), but as things usually are, the match is credited with a value of a very small fraction of a cent. Again, how is to be measured the economic service of the tree and of the labor needed for gathering its fruits? There is here suggested the superficial aspect of what is known as the problem of complementary values. Where two or more things are indispensable to a product, how much shall be credited to each?

[Sidenote: Labor gratifies directly and indirectly]

4. _Human service has the same general relation to wants that material goods have, affording gratification either directly or indirectly._ It is axiomatic that to be "economic goods" human efforts like material goods must afford utilities whose importance is felt. Many services give pleasure directly and are immediately consumed. A tropical potentate has an attendant to fan him, and another to carry an umbrella; a humble citizen is shaved, doctored, sung to, and played for. The gratification in such cases is directly produced in personal comfort, in the consciousness of heightened beauty, in the feeling of self-esteem. Value is thus created and consumed immediately, taking no material form apart from the consumer.

[Sidenote: Labor embodied for a time in material form]

But the results of most human services may be seen to rest, at least temporarily, in some material form. Effort is put upon a material thing to be used later. The work of the waiter in spreading and arranging the table is not an immediate service, for it is embodied in material form an hour or two before the meal. The service of cook no less than that of gardener and butcher, is put into material form before it comes to the consumer. The woodman fells, cuts up and splits a tree, and piles it at the door, putting his labor into a utility to be consumed months afterward. The old economists used to cla.s.s labor as productive and unproductive according as it was or was not embodied in material form.

The cla.s.sing of the services of cook, waiter, valet, etc., as unproductive seems, even from the old point of view, to have been inconsistent, and the attempt to distinguish services by any such test is now wholly given up. Whether the service rests in material form for a week, a month, a year, or as often happens, for a much longer period, is not essential. The test of the productiveness of services is not their embodiment in material form, but their appearance as psychic income, their ministry to wants. The most varied kinds of human activity may be unified by this thought in the concept of economic labor.

-- II. VARIETIES OF TALENTS AND OF ABILITIES IN MEN

[Sidenote: Grades of labor are a.n.a.logous to grades of wealth]

1. _As material things differ in their fitness to gratify wants, so do men differ in their powers of labor._ The fields, hammers, plows, tools, and machinery of different kinds and qualities have been seen to grade off from the best to the poorest. The poorest, discarded or just about to be discarded, are no-rent agents. The utility felt and recognized in the better qualities is expressed in the rents they yield. Recognizing the variety and inequality of human talent, some economists of late speak of the "rent" of ability, meaning that, like land rent, the greater utility (and corresponding reward) of some labor as compared with others, reflects the difference in the quality of agents. But this expression, though often met in contemporary economic writings, is one to be avoided because it tends to blur the essential distinction between human and other agents. Pursuing the same a.n.a.logy some economists have talked of capitalizing the worker,--expressing in a lump sum the value of the man as the present worth of the series of incomes which he may be expected to earn in his working life. This, also, is to be avoided, for while possibly it is suggestive in studying some problems, it is on the whole a misleading a.n.a.logy, dimming the distinction between free-workers and owned and exchangeable wealth.

[Sidenote: Physical differences among men]

2. _The physical strength of workers differs according to age, individual, race, and s.e.x._ Differences due to age are the most obvious.

The child, at first weak, grows toward his maximum of physical strength, which he attains before his fullest intellectual capacity. The period of maximum physical working power lasts fifteen to twenty-five years according to the individual, and then gradually declines as the old worker approaches again the inefficiency of the child. Mental efficiency develops more slowly and longer, the highest qualities of judgment and wisdom being the fruits only of a life rich in experiences. Families and strains of stock differ notably in physical and mental powers; one excels in stature, another in development of muscle. The differences within families are inexplicable, sometimes one brother excelling in one thing, the other in another. The physically perfect man is a rare product. Among three thousand students are but two score endowed with the remarkable combination of lungs, heart, muscle, nerve, and character, that makes possible the finest athletes. The national and racial differences in working power, even in the simplest tasks, are marked but difficult to explain, as so many influences of customs, habits of life, and varieties of diet modify the result. We cannot tell how much of the Englishman's great superiority over the East Indiaman is due to individual, native differences of mind and body, how much to the social environment in which they have lived. Certainly, though, the difference is not mainly one in size; in the Chinese War the little brown men of j.a.pan outmarched all the others. Certainly fiber counts for more than bulk, and character for more than muscle.

[Sidenote: Comparative strength of men and women]

A difference in the physical strength of the s.e.xes is found in some degree throughout the world, but it would appear to be far more marked in civilized than in savage communities. Compare the records at the Va.s.sar field-games with that of the men in any leading college: in the hundred-yard dash, fifteen seconds as against ten and a fraction; in the high jump, forty-eight inches as against six feet and over. The muscular force of American college women as tested in the Yale and the Oberlin gymnasiums is but one third that of men, that is, taking all the students, the weaklings and the little men along with the athletes, and the women large and small. As to strength of back the average for men is 154 kilograms, for women 54 kilograms; legs, average for men 186, average for women 76.5; right forearm, average for men 56, average for women 21.4. This is an abnormal difference. The natural and possible strength is more nearly attained by men than by women under our social conditions. Women escape the physical toil which strengthens, but not the mental strain which kills. Men carry more of the wood, but the women not less of the worries. A fairer test is applied among peasants in field-work in France and Germany, where the strength of women is found to be about two thirds that of men. American women should do and will do more to attain their natural strength when we attain sounder ideas of education and saner modes of living.

[Sidenote: Talent and training as factors of efficiency]

3. _Differences in intelligence are a resultant of native talent and acquired ability._ It is difficult to distinguish these two factors sharply. Two men sitting side by side in an examination, get the same grade; one of them has had excellent preparation from childhood, and all the opportunities that money, travel, and cultured a.s.sociates can give; the other, under great difficulties, has prepared in a country district school with a little coaching now and then, and struggling against great odds, has at last entered college. The same grade does not mean that their natural ability or even their efficiency in this particular cla.s.s, is equal. Yet the grade is the best expression to be had of their efficiency in the particular work. Native intelligence shortens the time needed for preparation in any calling; hastens new methods; decreases the cost of supervision; saves materials, tools, and time; diminishes loss from breakage; makes possible the use of finer machinery and better appliances, and imparts those subtler qualities that distinguish the best from the mediocre products. Education and native talent are in a degree interchangeable; one supplements the other. Education increases adaptability; the trained mind will outstrip the untrained mind of greater power. It makes direction easier, fits for higher tasks, and decreases the difficulty of cooperation. Any ability may be helped by education in the broad and true sense, though a fool cannot be made wise by training, and though many a potential genius doubtless has been dwarfed in dusty school-rooms by stupid teachers.

[Sidenote: The moral qualities required in industry]

4. _The moral qualities of the worker are increasingly important as society grows more complex._ The need of a particular moral quality is relative to the special task in hand. Honesty is needed in the bank teller, but he need not spoil a good story. The champion broncho-buster of Arizona is not a Sunday-school superintendent. So, discipline, obedience, self-control, regularity, and punctuality are needed, for more and more in these days business is run by the watch; confidence, patience, good temper, in fact all the virtues in the calendar are necessary at some time and place, and most of them are needed all the time in business. Places may be found in our developed society for those who are deficient in these qualities (it is fortunate that it is so), but these are the poorer places. Many men fail to examine the qualities necessary for success, and do not understand the causes of their own failure. Blind to their own faults, they are dropped down one notch after another in the scale of industry, and, equally blind to the virtues of their successful rivals, they rail against the unjust fates.

[Sidenote: The union of many qualities needed]

5. _Skill and capacity in industrial tasks is a resultant of many qualities._ The simplest task calls for a combination of force and judgment,--even the digging of a ditch, the raising of a window, or the fitting of a stovepipe. For most industrial tasks rarer combinations of qualities are required. The retail clerk must be neat, punctual, polite, and long suffering. A confidential clerk must have discretion, judgment, and other moral qualities in an unusual combination. The subst.i.tution of qualities is possible within limits; a rare quality may make amends for the lack of a commoner one, and a man may, because of peculiar fitness in some regards, continue to hold a position for which in other ways he is little fitted. The rarest and most valued worker is one uniting many good qualities and fitted to deal with emergencies. The economic efficiency of the worker often is no stronger than its weakest link. A strong motive for training is offered by the fact that supplying some one lacking quality may raise the total efficiency in a remarkable degree.

[Sidenote: Inequality of talents shown by biologic studies]

6. _Biologic studies have of late made clearer the existence and continuation of the inequality of talents._ The political philosophy of the eighteenth century was based on the idea of natural rights and natural equality. Adam Smith, accepting the prevailing view, discussed wages on the a.s.sumption that all men had equal natural ability. It is still a favorite a.s.sumption of radical social reformers that the natural ability of all men is equal, and that all the differences in success result from political injustice. The study of biology of late has made patent the unending differences that prevail throughout the animate world. No two members of the same family or species are just alike; no two pigeons have wings of just the same length. Nature by numberless devices is experimenting constantly with variations on either side of the established mean. The accepted fact of biologic evolution rests on the foundation of inequality in structure and powers, making possible selection and adaptation. Men in all their qualities of mind and body display this kaleidescopic variety. In all life there is inequality, and the whole drama of human history as well as that of biologic evolution must be meaningless or illusory to the man who does not see this truth.

Accustomed now to this point of view, we as inevitably think of the natural inequalities in men as did Adam Smith of their equality.

This fact does not force to the conclusion that industrial inequality as it exists to-day, the great disparity of incomes, correctly or justly reflects the degree of difference in men's qualities, either native or acquired. It does not follow that a thousand-dollar income represents ten times the ability of a hundred dollar one--far from it. But to those who ignore the inequality of men, the whole problem of industrial remuneration must remain a mystery. A crude socialism is possible only to those who are blind to the enormous differences in human capacity.

[Sidenote: Scarcity of labor is essential to wages]

[Sidenote: Unlimited demand for labor]

7. _The scarcity of human services, relative to wants, is the fundamental fact in the problem of wages._ It is clearly seen that some qualities of service are scarce. Most women will confess that they cannot warble as Patti could, most men will admit that they have not the mercantile ability of John Wanamaker. The man of mediocre capacity recognizes even through the fog of his self-esteem that there is a reason for the high value of certain rare services. But it must also be recognized that the commonest services have value only because they are scarce. There are many things to be done if there were labor enough to do them. There is no need to "make work," in the popular sense; it is here, but labor is lacking to do it. It is true there may be a temporary superfluity of human labor at a time of an industrial crisis. There is at all times a superfluity of "useless" human agents whose qualities are such that they have no net utility. The ignorant, insane, feeble-minded, vicious, drunken, and debauched, can give to the world only negative utilities. But services that are in any degree useful are nearly always in demand, and the higher services are so rare that they are in great demand. The proverb, "There's always room at the top," is seen to be true when conditions are thus a.n.a.lyzed. There is a large, though limited, supply of the commoner kinds of services at the bottom of the scale, but in every branch of human effort there is a never-ending lack of that higher qualification and training required for the best results.

CHAPTER 21

THE SUPPLY OF LABOR

-- I. WHAT IS A DOCTRINE OF POPULATION?

[Sidenote: The employer's and the social view of supply of labor]