The Principles of Economics Part 19

CONDITIONS FOR EFFICIENT LABOR

-- I. OBJECTIVE PHYSICAL CONDITIONS

[Sidenote: Subjective and objective factors of efficiency]

1. _The efficiency of labor, in its broadest sense, is its ability to render services or produce things that minister to welfare._ 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.

[Sidenote: Bounty and goodness of productive agents affect the output of labor]

2. _The efficiency of labor is limited objectively by the abundance and quality of material resources._ 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 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.

[Sidenote: Causal relation of wages and efficiency; food]

3. _The laborer's efficiency is greatly affected by the quality of his food, clothing, and shelter._ 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.

[Sidenote: An experiment in feeding]

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 up, and photographed. At that same time, at the Elmira Reformatory Mr. Brockway was experimenting on some criminals of the lower cla.s.s. 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 quant.i.ty of food, and the cooking of it, have a great influence on the economic quality of the worker.

[Sidenote: Clothing]

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.

[Sidenote: Physical conditions surrounding labor grow worse or better]

4. _The growth of society is, for the average man, making some of the conditions of efficiency more difficult, others more easy, to secure._ In agricultural and spa.r.s.e populations fresh air, suns.h.i.+ne, 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.

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 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 ma.s.s of the workers to enjoy blessings impossible to the most favored in the past.

-- II. SOCIAL CONDITIONS FAVORING EFFICIENCY

[Sidenote: Government to insure the reward to labor]

1. _The first social condition for the workers' efficiency is political security._ 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 Const.i.tution 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.

[Sidenote: Common honesty as a condition to efficient labor]

2. _The prevalence of standards of honesty in private and public business is a condition to high efficiency._ 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. a.s.sessments 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 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.

[Sidenote: Effect of caste on efficiency of lower and upper cla.s.ses]

3. _Custom and social ideals that raise or depress hope and ambition, affect efficiency._ The inst.i.tution 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 cla.s.s at times feels its hards.h.i.+ps. "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 cla.s.s 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.

[Sidenote: American democracy and the efficiency of labor]

Democracy makes for the efficiency of American industry not less than do the great natural resources. If America is to surpa.s.s the world in all the great industrial lines, it will be largely because of her ideas and inst.i.tutions. 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.

[Sidenote: The balance of advantage between work and leisure]

4. _Custom and national temperament affect the efficiency of labor by determining the normal period of labor time._ 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 s.h.i.+nes 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 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.

-- III. DIVISION OF LABOR

[Sidenote: Division and exchange of labor]

1. _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._ 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 inst.i.tution and, according as he adapts himself to it wisely or foolishly, it increases more or less his efficiency.

[Sidenote: Division of labor between trades and territories]

2. _Division of labor is primarily between individuals, but appears between trades, territories, and nations._ 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 develops in a high degree some one cla.s.s 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.

[Sidenote: Advantages of division of labor]

3. _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._ There is a tradition that an ingenious lecturer in one of our universities was accustomed to give to his cla.s.s 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. Repet.i.tion of the same task trains the muscles, forms a mental habit, and gives the swiftness and deftness of touch called _skill_. Specialization _saves time_ by making unnecessary the physical change of place for the worker, the frequent s.h.i.+fting of tools, and the mental readjustment required for the undertaking of a new task. Specialization _saves tools_ 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 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 _quality_ of goods never to be secured by the less skilled efforts of the Jack-of-all trades. The specialist steadily grows in _knowledge_ 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 _stimulates invention_. 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 _enterprise_, by making possible the more exact comparison of results. It _economizes talent_ 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.

[Sidenote: Best adjustment of talent and occupation]

[Sidenote: Choice of a life career]

4. _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._ 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, "round men in square holes," good carpenters spoiled to make poor doctors. It so often happens that the natural apt.i.tude of the youth is the thing last or, in any event, least considered. Unreasoning imitation, family traditions, parental wishes, cla.s.s 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 apt.i.tudes, 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.

CHAPTER 23

THE LAW OF WAGES

-- I. NATURE OF WAGES AND THE WAGES PROBLEM

[Sidenote: Wages and rent compared and contrasted]

1. _Wage in the broad sense is the income due to labor, in distinction from that due to the control of material agents._ The uses of material agents, studied under the subject of rent, are sometimes called "material services." The adjective refers to the source or bearer of the use, and does not imply that the service is to be thought of as a material thing. In its last a.n.a.lysis a service is never a material thing, but a psychic effect on men and their wants. Material services and human services are merely specific kinds of the genus services (or utilities), and it would doubtless be a better usage to speak of labor's services and wealth's uses. Wages bear the same relation to man's services that rent does to the material uses of wealth. Wages are more like rent than like interest in that neither wages nor rent are expressed as a percentage. While rent is the value of the uses of things, wages is the value of the services of men. In discussing interest, wealth is capitalized; but, in discussing wages, men are thought of as affording utilities for a time, as is wealth under the renting contract. The resemblance thus is very close between rent and wages, but not so close between wages and interest.

Despite this interesting a.n.a.logy, it is not well to speak, as some do, of "the rent of labor"--as well might one speak of the wages of wealth.

Such a usage only beclouds the distinction between two concepts, suggesting ident.i.ty where there are important differences. The aim of scientific cla.s.sification is missed when contrasts are thus concealed under a single term.