Foundations of Industrial Welfare

By Miss E. T. KELLY and MISS M. L. HASKINS,

Ratan Tata Department.

FEW more difficult tasks have been set for men than the one which is now confronting the practical business man and employer on the one side and the vast army of workers who are employed on the other. The task involves an answer to the question: What is wrong with industry? And in the efforts which have been made to find a solution to the problem emphasis has been laid, sometimes on the need of change or modification in the structure and sometimes on the need of a change in the spirit.

These efforts have come from every grade of those connected with industry, and are concerned with different standpoints-all of them containing elements of value, and in the contribution of which the Trade Unions, the Employers, and the Government have all played their part. The vast system of bargaining established through persistent and bitter struggle by the Trade Unions, the factory legislation of the past hundred years, the introduction of Trade Boards by the Government, of Whitley Councils and of copartnership schemes by employers, have all been attempts to counteract some of the evil results of the mal-adjustment which was bound up with the development of large-scale production. In recent years a new note has been heard in connection with efforts which have been made-a note showing a deeper understanding of the vital issues concerned, which reveals a growing perception, not only for the need to right specific wrongs, but for a keener sense of the place of human life in industry and for a deeper fundamental justice.

The classic definition of the factors of production as land, capital, and labour was illustrated by the simile of three balls in a basin, mutually interdependent for their position and stability. This illustration was true as long as industry was organized on a small scale, and one man controlled the capital and provided some at least of the labour in his own person. But its reliability becomes less and less as the complexity of industrial organization increases, and we approach the huge concern of modern times where the owner of the capital involved is not one man, but a company of men who are often entirely ignorant of even the method of production and whose interest is limited to a study of the annual balance sheet, while the control of the processes and conditions of production is apt to be entirely in the hands of the salaried management. The organizers of modern large-scale production have gradually drifted

so far out of touch with the men and women who are their partners in production that it is true of many businesses to-day that employers and employed are working with entirely different objects in view, and that neither side would understand the position were the other to approach it with suggestions for real co-operation. Examples could be given of large firms where the head of the firm is unknown even by sight to men who have worked in the firm for fifteen or twenty years. "Labour" is too often regarded as a purchasable commodity rather than as the contribution made by a free partner to the common effort. This attitude is not by any means universal among employers, but has been sufficiently common to have produced a very general acquiescence among the public, and even to a large extent among the workers themselves.

The position has been further complicated by the fact that simultaneously with this degradation of the workman as a producer has come his enfranchisement as a citizen, so that while industrially he has been deprived of all initiative, he has become a responsible member of the body politic. On the one hand he has been regarded as a "source of power "—and this applies to routine brain workers equally with the manual workers-while on the other he is accepted

as a man.

This economic degradation is not due entirely to the wage system, but is to some extent a result of large-scale production which entails large groups of people working on more or less routine processes under direction. The mere substitution of a different method of payment and of direction by elected representatives rather than by the managerial class as at present, would not entirely obviate the need, which seems to be inherent in the more complex stages of organization, for some mechanism to secure the constant sense of unity between the hands and the head which is automatic where, as in the elementary stages, only one personality is involved.

Some employers have already recognized the necessity for some kind of specialized machinery which shall give as careful attention to the relationships between man and man in the works as is normally given to the adjustment and working of machinery or to the organization of processes and methods of work. The necessity for some distinctive department at the present moment is made imperative in a large works

1. By the limited time of a manager of works and the many calls made upon his energy and attention.

2. By the increasing importance which is admittedly attached to the selection of the worker and his subsequent place in the factory.

3. By the fact that in the growing complexity and size of modern industry that close touch of the management with the men which is essential to mutual understanding is inevitably lost unless it is the primary concern of some department within the industry itself to guard and promote it.

It may be well to outline in brief detail the reasons which urge this necessity in reference to the above points.

1. The fact that there are limits both to the time and energy of a manager of works is one not always given its due weight by those who have criticized some omissions in the past; but this point of view has to be carefully considered both by the critics and by the manager himself. For the successful working of even a moderately sized business, problem after problem has to be dealt with during the day in connection with every department under his care. As regards questions of detailed organization, methods of work, and problems of output, managers and their foremen must take the burden of responsibility, but none of these have usually the leisure to specialize concerning the life of the worker.

Furthermore, as the organization of industry becomes more and more complex so do the legal enactments and regulations, necessary to safeguard the well-being of all concerned, increase. For the carrying out of the various provisions of the factory, shops, trade boards, compensation, insurance, and now even of the education Acts, some machinery is necessary other than the ordinary works manager's office provides.

2. The question of the selection of the worker alone is one which is increasingly recognized as demanding much more time and personal attention than it has received in the past. Much of the tragedy in the life of the worker has been connected with the casual way of entering the factory which has been in vogue, and the careless apportioning of the work when once engaged. For these individual tragedies the large number of which is only too well known to those who come intimately in contact with the lives of the workers -no one particularly has been to blame. They have been largely the result of a gap in an organization whose foundations were laid in an age when the value of human life was held all too lightly. It has not hitherto been recognized that although the foreman is a specialist as far as the work is concerned, the one who selects the worker in the first instance must be a specialist where the worker is concerned, and that it is by the co-operation of such specialists that the happiest result is to be obtained.

3. This selection, however, is of course only the beginning of that personal contact on the part of the management with the workers, which has been lost in modern large-scale production and which it is so essential to regain. Some employers have already done much towards the development of a department which makes the establishment of personal and harmonious relationships-and all the practical issues which that involves one of its chief concerns. al How much that will eventually involve is a thing which cannot be whoreseen. If and when there is a real intention to get beyond the while-ms of fellowship and goodwill into the more fundamental realities apt to understanding and sympathy, such efforts may lead to very organizeal modifications in the structure of industry itself.

Here, then, are functions which need for their fulfilment an agency which is part of the industrial scheme, and yet not directly concerned with production. It is these functions which, after many experiments, Welfare Work claims as its own. It should be mentioned here that the term Welfare Work is used for convenience, that being the most common word in use to express the activities we are about to describe. We freely recognize that many examples of welfare work carried on under other names, and even disclaiming the title, are to be found.

Welfare Work had its origin in the minds of a few philanthropic employers. It is in some quarters suspect on that account, but it does not for that reason follow that it should be condemned. Rather it should be recognized that it is these same employers who have set the pace and have largely, by their experiments, made possible the general improvement in hours and conditions which legislation now makes compulsory for all. Like other movements, which have at length become more or less permanent institutions of society, it has developed in a piecemeal fashion, beginning in these tentative efforts on the part of individual employers and working its way toward a larger ideal. These early attempts on the part of men who were feeling after a different conception of the function of industry were the basis of a greater industrial change than they knew; they were the pioneers of a cause whose significance was not generally recognized by industry as a whole, and whose value had yet to be proved. It must be realized that welfare work to-day is a very different thing from that of twenty years ago. It has grown and altered out of all recognition. The first experiments were largely directed towards the improvement of the worker and had in them a big element of paternalism and benevolence. They had, indeed, much in common with the still earlier efforts of Robert Owen, who was really the original and isolated pioneer amongst employers in considering definitely the well-being of the worker in connection with his work. The early twentieth century employers fulfilled not merely the bare letter of the law enforced by factory legislation and the pressure of Trade Unions, but initiated changes in conditions which had most evidently not been adapted to the needs of human nature. But the significant change in the work itself may be summarized thus: In the old days the welfare worker tried to help the employer to make conditions good for the workers; now, the welfare worker merely smooths the path so that both employer and workers may together improve conditions for both.

This is not merely a verbal difference but a difference in principle which is fundamental. All honour to the pioneer employers who looked away from the bad old tradition and came to realize that the payment of the market price for labour did not discharge the whole of the debt owed by industry to this other factor in production. But

this feeling of responsibility led, in some cases, to the development of schemes of industrial betterment, which, often excellent in themselves, were of a very paternal nature, even approaching to a despotism strongly resented by its beneficiaries. On the other hand, the apparent similarity in activities led another type of employer to adopt the ideals of American enthusiasts for efficiency. In both cases the independent human personalities behind the "labour " in question were almost entirely ignored.

Many and varied experiments, conducted often with a very hazy conception of the end in view, were made during the first years of this century in many different industries, but always-or almost always-in firms of a family type where one or at most two men had a predominating influence on the Board of Directors and were, consequently, able to carry on such experiments often much in advance of general public opinion. These experiments were most valuable in exploring the possible improvements in the material surroundings of workpeople of many types and grades engaged in mass production. There was comparatively little interchange of experiences, and the literature describing the various experiments shows that the motives animating the employers concerned were mainly philanthropic or else had their origin in pride of business. There is very little trace at first of any consciousness of the desirability of allowing the workers to work out their own salvation, while the machinery available for the worker who wished to take an intelligent and constructive interest in his daily work was limited to more or less elaborate "suggestion" schemes.

It gradually became evident, however, that welfare work, to be effective and permanent, must be based not upon benevolent and philanthropic ideas on the part of the employer-although these may necessarily, in some cases, form the starting point. It must be based, rather, upon the co-operative effort of all concerned. If they were to pull their full weight in the industrial team it must be as men and women, not as machines. A ready-made scheme of welfare must not be introduced by the management and imposed upon the workers according to preconceived ideas of what was good for them -it must be a natural growth arising out of a sense of the inherent sense of the unity of interests which lies or should lie at the heart of all production, and which logically implies co-operation. With the emergence of this idea there came a marked change in welfare work. Progress was, perhaps, slower at first, but the scope was enlarged, and instead of being restricted largely to women and young persons, has come insensibly to embrace the whole of the industrial unit concerned. To estimate fairly its growth and rate of progress, it must be remembered that these ideas were contrary to the whole history of the capitalistic system as such. The employers and welfare workers who sought to put them into practice were working through an order of industry in which an autocratic government had been the rule for many decades, tempered only by