CHAPTER IX

PRODUCTION: LABOR AND CAPITAL

§ 76. The chief factor in production is man, the active Man as director of all enterprises. His contribution depends partly Producer. upon his capacity as an individual and partly upon the way in which his efforts are applied, that is, whether to direct or to capitalistic processes of production, or whether independently or in coöperation with the organized efforts of others. Each one of these circumstances merits separate consideration.

The principal qualities which determine an individual's Qualities capacity as a producer are the following: (1) health, (2) phys- Influencing ical strength and endurance, (3) intelligence, (4) judgment, Efficiency.

(5) ambition, (6) energy, (7) perseverance, (8) imagination, (9) mechanical ingenuity and (10) technical knowledge. The importance of health and physical strength, especially to those doing manual work, is obvious. Intelligence and judgment are important adjuncts to the man with pick and shovel; they are indispensable to men in the higher grades of industry. Ambition, energy and perseverance are qualities that characterize all the world's greatest men, and without which other qualities are of little value. Imagination is important because to it are traceable all great inventions and discoveries. Mechanical ingenuity, though less important to the mass of men than formerly, when fewer tasks were performed by automatic machinery, is still a valuable quality. Technical knowledge, on the other hand, gains each year in importance as the ways of doing things that are found to be most efficient increase in complexity. It is evident that the importance of these different qualities depends upon the kind of work to be done and that industrial progress tends to lessen the importance of some while it increases that of others.

877. The above qualities, like other human characteristics, are either inherited or acquired. Whatever their origin in

His

Conditions Favorable to Health

and Strength.

special cases the same general conditions, acting either on successive generations or on living men, account for their presence. A few words will serve to suggest what these conditions are.

The circumstances influencing health and strength are well understood. Fresh air and exercise, good food, adequate protection from dampness and sudden changes in temperature and the avoidance of all kinds of excesses, are the principal requisites. Of these good food is perhaps the most important. The human body resembles a machine, and the amount of work it can do depends very largely on the quality and quantity of the fuel, that is, the food, with which it is supplied. Up to the time of the industrial revolution Germanic peoples enjoyed many of the above conditions and the physique of the race was consequently well developed. The introduction of machinery has served to concentrate the populations of advanced countries to an ever-increasing extent in cities and to substitute for open-air work, work indoors in shops and factories. There has been reason to fear that this might permanently impair the health and vigor of those very peoples which have led in the race for industrial ascendency, not only because of its direct effect, but also because the monotony of such labor fosters dissipation. To counteract these evil tendencies vigorous measures have been resorted to, notably in England and Germany, where sanitation and factory acts have been passed by the government and where coffee-houses, workingmen's clubs, etc., as substitutes for the saloon, have been created through the efforts of private individuals. A great deal of attention is being given, especially in those countries which maintain large standing armies, to the question of determining what diets are best for people doing different kinds of work, and model kitchens are being organized in the poorer quarters of cities to teach people to appreciate nutritious and properly prepared foods. Efforts to improve the tenement houses in which the populations of the larger cities live are also being put forth and with some success. Mention should also be made of the public baths, the playgrounds for children and the open-air gymnasiums which are being erected in those cities in Europe and America which are most progres

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137

sive in caring for their inhabitants. Finally, it would be difficult to exaggerate the importance of the efforts that are just now being made to stamp out that most devastating disease from which the human race has suffered, consumption. As is shown by mortality statistics, these efforts are beginning to bear fruit in the improved health of present-day city populations, but much yet remains to be done for both city and country people. There is no form of philanthropic activity which is more certain to benefit mankind than that designed to improve the conditions under which the mass of men live and work. Restored health and vigor are blessings in themselves, but equally important is the fact that they make for more efficient production and enable their possessors not only to hold what they have gained, but to add steadily to their advantages through their increased earning power. Every improvement that can be made in home and factory surroundings without undermining the independence and self-respect of the population is thus a certain means of " helping people to help themselves."

The development of intelligence and judgment depends Intelligence largely upon education, and here too undoubted progress has and been made. In place of the formal and traditional methods Judgment. that have prevailed in the schools, methods having direct reference to the organic development of children are beginning to be introduced. Moreover, the proportion of children who go to school is on the increase, and the expenditures that modern states make for public education are growing. Nevertheless there is still much to criticise in current educational practices and in the short-sightedness of democratic states in not contributing even more liberally to the support of education. In it lies the hope of the future, since through its agency the standards of each generation of children are elevated. These higher standards may be passed on to the next generation of children to be raised still further in the schools, and so the process may be repeated with steady progress as its necessary consequence. If improving educational advantages are added to steadily improving home surroundings, the advance of the race cannot fail to be rapid.

Ambition, energy and perseverance depend partly upon a

Persever

ance.

Ambition, people's range of wants in comparison with the means to their Energy and gratification, and partly on the probability which the situation presents that effort and enterprise will be crowned with success. These qualities are conspicuously lacking among a people which has developed few wants and whose means of livelihood are so limited by natural and social conditions that even the greatest efforts cannot result in a large command over economic goods. They are as conspicuously present among a people with numerous and varied wants to which are open a great variety of promising ways of acquiring wealth. This contrast is well illustrated by the differences between the peasantry of Europe and the plain people of America. Poverty of resources and the restrictions of a class organization of society tend to stifle the ambitions of the former as markedly as wealth of resources and absence of rigid class barriers tend to stimulate those of the latter. The most desirable situation for the fostering of these qualities is evidently one in which different scales of living prevail side by side and in which at the same time equality of opportunity is preserved. The danger in a country like the United States is that an aristocracy of wealth may grow up to monopolize the easiest means of acquiring further wealth and to hold the mass of the people down to working for mere wages. Under such circumstances different scales of living would foster not ambition but merely a sense of injustice and oppression in the minds of those who have little prospect of improving their condition. This danger must be kept in view in connection with the question of limitations that it may be desirable to impose upon monopolies and the rights of property.

Imagination,

The conditions favorable to the growth of imagination, mechanical ingenuity and technical knowledge call for no Mechanical extended discussion. Imagination is still little understood. Ingenuity It seems to be fostered by variety of surroundings and exTechnical periences, and by attention to unsolved problems which conKnowledge. tain an element of mystery. Perhaps the most that is to

and

be hoped for from present educational methods is that they will permit some part of the imagination which seems to be natural to childhood and youth to be carried on into manhood. Manual training, to which more and more atten

TENDENCY OF EVOLUTION

139

tion is being given in the United States and abroad, is, of course, directly productive of mechanical ingenuity. The greatest progress made in connection with any of the enumerated qualities is to be found in the field of technical knowledge. Technical schools, technical courses in colleges and universities, technical correspondence and evening classes and technical journals unite to bring the knowledge necessary to efficient production within the reach of all. In addition to these admirable facilities for disseminating knowledge already acquired, more and more attention is being devoted to the acquisition of new knowledge. Every state in the United States has at least one privately or publicly endowed university intended to encourage scientific research. To supplement these are the national institutions dedicated exclusively to research work, the Smithsonian and the recently founded Carnegie Institution. Moreover, many individuals are devoting their lives and their fortunes to experiments directed toward discovering improved methods of gratifying human wants. Taking all of these things into account we may predict with confidence continued progress in the technique of production.

Coöperating with the conditions favorable to the develop- Tendency of ment of individual capacity that have been enumerated are Evolution. the silent forces of evolution. Although interfered with by the growth of benevolent instincts and agencies which intervene to preserve many of the unfit from destruction, these forces aid powerfully in the process by which each people surrounded by a favorable environment becomes fitted to make fullest use of that environment. Weak and incapable lines of heredity are cut off in each generation and the field is left to the stronger and more capable. In prosperous communities the weeding-out process affects not merely the underdeveloped and underfed, but the overdeveloped and overfed. Dissipation is as common a cause of premature death and failure to continue the line of heredity as starvation. Evolution thus operates not only to enable each succeeding generation to get a larger return for its efforts, but to educate it to a wiser use of its material advantages. The surviving type of successful man is less and less self-indulgent and more and more philanthropic in his instincts and habits as generation follows