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NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS 
 ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 
 
 LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
 MELBOURNE 
 
 THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 
 
 TORONTO 
 
NEW IDEALS IN 
 BUSINESS 
 
 AN ACCOUNT OF THEIR PRACTICE AND 
 THEIR EFFECTS UPON MEN AND PROFITS 
 
 BY 
 
 IDA M. TARBELL 
 
 Author of “The History of the Standard Oil Company,” 
 “The Tariff In Our Times,” “The Business 
 of Being a Woman,” etc, 
 
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 BOSTON COLLEGE SCHOOL 
 BUSINESS AOMIN. 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 1916 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
Copyright, 19U, 1915, 
 
 By THE CROWELL PUBLISHING COMPANY 
 
 Copyright, 1916, 
 
 By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 Set up and electrotyped. Published, November, 1916. 
 
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 Xtt340' 7 
 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 This book had its starting point in two earlier 
 pieces of work, one a study of a typical American 
 trust — the Standard Oil Company, the other a 
 study of the workings of the protective tariff since 
 the Civil War. Both took me far and wide as an 
 observer in the industrial field. Although my ob¬ 
 servations in neither case included the relations be¬ 
 tween management and men in the various plants I 
 visited, I found my attention constantly veering to 
 them, largely because they were often in sharp con¬ 
 trast to those which I had reason to believe were 
 fairly general in this country. 
 
 The wider my observation of our working life 
 extended, the more I was impressed that there were 
 forces at work which, properly developed, were 
 bound to overcome many, if not all, of the industrial 
 evils with which we have become so familiar. 
 
 Some four years ago the then editor of The Amer¬ 
 ican Magazine encouraged me to undertake spe¬ 
 cial and careful observation to corroborate my im¬ 
 pression. In carrying out his idea, I visited scores 
 of industrial centres, sometimes alone, sometimes 
 under guidance. I talked with hundreds of men and 
 women; president and directors of companies; super¬ 
 intendents; foremen; consulting engineers; safety 
 
 ;] 
 
INTRODUCTION' 
 
 and sanitation experts; industrial nurses; men at the 
 furnace, the loom or lathe; girls at the spinning- 
 frame, the canning table, the counter. To see at 
 their work all the men and women in a plant, from 
 those with a shovel or scrubbing-brush to those in 
 the head offices; to look at their conditions, to see 
 them in their homes, to learn from their lips what 
 they thought and felt about it all,— this has been 
 my method. My observations turned my first im¬ 
 pression to conviction and were partially recorded in 
 a series of articles which were published by the 
 American Magazine under the title of “ The Golden 
 Rule in Business.” 
 
 However great the lack of efficiency and justice 
 in American industry, it is undergoing a silent revo¬ 
 lution. This revolution is centred in industrial man¬ 
 agement. Back of it lies a belated realisation that 
 the responsibility for the weaknesses and unrest of 
 our industrial life does not rest with the American 
 workman, but with his employer. 
 
 The stability of this new movement lies in the fact 
 that management is summoning to its aid great 
 forces which it has hitherto believed to have little or 
 no part in its function. It has summoned science, 
 and growing numbers of American business mana¬ 
 gers are holding that there is no task which men per¬ 
 form which should not be studied scientifically. 
 
 The new management employs not only science 
 but humanity, and by humanity I do not mean merely 
 or chiefly sympathy but rather a larger thing, the 
 recognition that all men, regardless of race, origin 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 or experience, have powers for greater things than 
 has been believed. I doubt, indeed, if there has 
 been any economic and social gain in the last fifty 
 years which equals this growing conviction of the 
 Powers of the Common Man. 
 
 Nothing can stifle these new ideals of Industry. 
 Not only are the human heart and human intelli¬ 
 gence with them, but human competition is forc¬ 
 ing them. It is with the actual attempts to rise 
 to them that this book deals. Nothing is intro¬ 
 duced which I have not seen in operation; noth¬ 
 ing which has not seemed to me to be good for the 
 worker, skilled and unskilled; nothing which has not 
 been carried to a point of profit; nothing which an 
 active intelligence and a just spirit cannot realise. 
 
 Ida M. Tarbell. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 I 
 
 II 
 
 III 
 
 IV 
 
 V 
 
 VI 
 
 VII 
 VIII 
 
 IX 
 
 X 
 
 XI 
 
 XII 
 
 Our New Workshops 
 “ A Fine Place to Work ” . 
 
 The Gospel of Safety . 
 
 Health for Everyman . 
 
 “ Sober First ” 
 
 Good Homes Make Good Workers 
 A Man’s Hours ..... 
 
 A Man’s Hire ...... 
 
 Experiments in Justice . 
 Steadying the Job . . . 
 
 The Factory as a School w 
 Our New Industrial Leader 
 
 r.i 
 
 L.J 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I 
 
 . 29 
 
 . 50 
 
 • 77 
 . no 
 
 . 134 
 
 . 163 
 
 • 193 
 . 222 
 . 258 
 . 290 
 w 317 
 
 M [•] 
 
NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 OUR NEW WORKSHOPS 
 
 He who turns out early in the morning sees a 
 wonderful sight. It is the incoming tide of work¬ 
 ers. They have the streets, the cars, and the ferries 
 to themselves. The rest of the world is still within 
 doors. Spend a night near the Stock Yards of 
 Chicago, or in any factory town, and you will be 
 awakened by a sound like that of a rising wind. It 
 gradually resolves itself into a steady tramp, tramp, 
 tramp. For an hour they pour by in the grey light 
 — a silent, grave and steady army of hundreds upon 
 hundreds of men and women, girls and boys. You 
 may follow them to the yards or factories. There 
 the gates close on them. It will be 8 , io, possibly 
 12, hours before they turn back. 
 
 Stand at the Jersey ferries, the New York end of 
 Brooklyn Bridge, at the downtown stations of the 
 elevated or subway in any great city, and from six 
 to nine o’clock the flow of human beings is like the 
 emptying of mighty chutes fed from exhaustless hop¬ 
 pers. In the crowds there is little of the silence 
 and dignity of the stream which flows into the Stock 
 
2 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 Yards or the factories of the small towns and coun¬ 
 trysides. These masses push and scramble and 
 rush. They are not quiet like the others. They 
 chatter and chaff and “ jaw.” 
 
 There are still other waves in this morning tide. 
 There are those who go down into the earth. They 
 come leisurely out of the grey morning light to the 
 head of the shafts. They are checked, searched for 
 matches, given lanterns, then they disappear. It 
 will be dusk when they come out. 
 
 What kind of places are those into which this 
 mighty tide disappears, in which it spends the bulk 
 of its waking hours, and practically all its hours of 
 sunshine? The men and women w r ho do the labour 
 of the world are the most important factor in the 
 thing we call “ prosperity.” It is only from them 
 that we can expect the robust and unfettered vital¬ 
 ity which drives the world to new efforts. It is 
 only they who are equal to the mighty task of dis¬ 
 posing of the fruits of their own toil. Everything 
 which concerns them directly or indirectly is of the 
 greatest economic importance. No one who knows 
 anything of human beings and the forces which in¬ 
 fluence them will deny that to a large degree their 
 health, their content, and their efficiency depend 
 upon their surroundings. Workshops matter. 
 They can pull men and women down or hold them 
 steady, stimulate them — as they are ugly and un¬ 
 healthful, or, bright and fitted to human needs. 
 
 The world has been slow in admitting this, but it 
 has been slow in admitting that the worker mat- 
 
OUR NEW WORKSHOPS 
 
 3 
 
 tered. He has come cheap through all the ages, and 
 men in power have built up theories to keep him 
 cheap. He did not feel hardships, comfort would 
 spoil him. Couple these ideas with the grim no¬ 
 tion that the curse of Cain was on labour and that it 
 was not for a devout man to interfere with the ways 
 of the Lord, and you have a partial explanation of 
 the Old World’s indifference to the conditions of its 
 workshops. 
 
 These ideas have been slowly dying in the New 
 World. Our indifference has come from another 
 source. You cannot settle a new country without 
 suffering, exposure, and danger. Cheerful endur- . 
 ance of hardships and contempt of surroundings be¬ 
 come a virtue in a pioneer. Comfort is a compara¬ 
 tively new thing in the United States. 
 
 Men and women are still living who can remem¬ 
 ber the introduction of the bathroom. We can re¬ 
 member, too, perhaps have shared, the pious fear 
 that the softening of life and the relaxing of con¬ 
 scious endurance of physical discomforts which 
 wealth was bringing to the country were going to 
 weaken our national fibre. It was inevitable that 
 this attitude of the well-to-do property class toward 
 conditions in their own circle should extend to those 
 whom they employed. Thirty years ago there was 
 scarcely any complaint of labour that aroused more 
 righteous indignation from the housewife, mine 
 owner, manufacturer, than this one of conditions. 
 
 To-day it is the employer himself who is insisting 
 that the best possible workshops are none too good. 
 
4 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 Indeed, there is no problem which Industry is at¬ 
 tacking with more interest and intelligence than that 
 of the conditions under which labour of all kinds 
 shall be done. It begins with the basic matter of 
 the building. The new model factory is the most 
 interesting architectural development in the coun¬ 
 try, far more original and exciting than most of our 
 pretentious public and private buildings. 
 
 It is not our architects who are responsible for the 
 revolution in factory architecture. It is the em¬ 
 ployer himself. Some eight years ago when the 
 head of a great and growing company in Rochester, 
 New York, began to think of a new factory, he found 
 that if he was to get what he wanted he must do 
 pioneer work. Taking a mechanical engineer and 
 an architect with him, he visited some 150 different 
 plants, the best of which he could learn. He took 
 full notes on every point which entered into his 
 problem — foundations, flooring, ventilation, light¬ 
 ing, opportunities for expansion, relation of offices 
 and show rooms to factory, lunch rooms, rest rooms, 
 club room, opportunity for exercise both within and 
 without doors, probably the most important collec¬ 
 tion of information on factory building ever gath¬ 
 ered in this country. On this as a basis, he reared 
 a plant in the centre of an eight-acre field, which 
 from every point of view, conveniences, fitness, 
 strength, economy, is a model. One point of par¬ 
 ticular pride with the builder is that there are only 
 two features of his factory which cannot be called 
 necessary. They are the cornice and the handsome 
 
OUR NEW WORKSHOPS 
 
 5 
 
 marquee over the entrance. If not necessary, they 
 give a touch of elegance to the severe fagade which 
 is their justification. 
 
 There are many signs no employer will ever 
 again be obliged to do what this gentleman did. 
 To begin with, his information has been freely put 
 at the disposal of his townsmen who have built since 
 he did. Moreover, his work and that of other like- 
 minded manufacturers has begun to awaken archi¬ 
 tects to the opportunity of real service which 
 lies in this field. One has only to look at such work 
 as has been done in the factories of Detroit by 
 Kahn & Wilby, or at the admirable group of build¬ 
 ings at Nela Park near Cleveland by Wallis & 
 Goodwillie to realise what a sound and admir¬ 
 able beginning our architects have made. The 
 Nela Park group is particularly interesting, since 
 it provides a plant which makes possible a higher de¬ 
 gree of co-operation between the different depart¬ 
 ments of a great modern industry than exists prob¬ 
 ably elsewhere in the United States. It is a re¬ 
 markably successful realisation of a great industrial 
 dream. 
 
 Nela Park is the headquarters of The National 
 Lamp Company. This concern is under the con¬ 
 trol of two men who believe that production can be 
 more profitably carried on in small than in large 
 units. One believes 500 operatives in a factory are 
 the best number — the other 300, so as they build 
 plants, they alternate: There are some 25 factories 
 in the company. Each is as far as its management is 
 
6 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 concerned a self-directing concern. Once a year the 
 heads of each of these 25 concerns meet, and each 
 is obliged to show his record in detail and defend it 
 under the fire of criticism of both the officers of the 
 company and all of the competing heads. Their 
 annual test of records lasts sometimes three months, 
 and I have been told that frequently the officers are 
 obliged to retire to a sanitarium after it is over! A 
 few years ago it was decided to establish a head¬ 
 quarters for the concern outside of Cleveland — a 
 point where all executive departments could be in 
 touch, where all could comfortably foregather for 
 their annual meetings, and where the sales force 
 could meet in summer camp. The idea grew in the 
 minds of the management. Fortunately they se¬ 
 cured an architect in Mr. Wallis who appreciated 
 the opportunity industry offers his profession, and 
 he eagerly set himself to work out something which 
 would show the value to industry of a proper appli¬ 
 cation of form, of colour and of design. To Mr. 
 Wallis, Nela Park ought to be an “ Industrial Uni¬ 
 versity,” and that is what it is — a place of educa¬ 
 tion, and as truly an inspiration to those who belong 
 to it as any university group of buildings in the 
 country is an inspiration. 
 
 Nela Park represents one industry. It focuses 
 the financial, administrative, purchasing, manufac¬ 
 turing, distributing and marketing agencies in such 
 a way that all can see something of the true relation 
 and nature of the present elements in the problem 
 of big business. It is a great and compelling ob- 
 
OUR NEW WORKSHOPS 
 
 7 
 
 ject lesson in the co-operative and interdependent 
 character of the various elements of modern industry, 
 extraordinarily educative and inspiring in its sug¬ 
 gestiveness; but it is applicable only to the highly 
 developed concerns. 
 
 An even more exciting and far reaching develop¬ 
 ment than the “ industrial university ” is the indus¬ 
 trial town centre, the effort to set aside in cities dis¬ 
 tricts where model factories strictly regulated by 
 city ordinances may be erected. They are to be 
 planned with relation to the districts from which 
 labour is drawn, with regard to transportation, to 
 open air space, and to saloons, and they are to be 
 made beautiful as well as convenient and suitable. 
 The Minneapolis Industrial Association is leading 
 the way in this planning. The City Plan Committee 
 of New York has made a start. It is for the archi¬ 
 tects to rally to this movement as they have to 
 the civic centre. It is an even greater opportunity. 
 It will affect more men and women, and affect them 
 where they really live. 
 
 The new Bureau of Printing and Engraving in 
 .Washington gives an excellent opportunity to com¬ 
 pare good, modern factory architecture with the 
 adaptation to factory purposes of classic design. 
 As this bureau belongs in the noble scheme of pub¬ 
 lic buildings it was imperative that its facade should 
 harmonise with the other members of the group. 
 In approaching it, one sees merely another white 
 marble structure of great dignity and beauty, en¬ 
 tirely in keeping with everything from the Congres- 
 
8 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 sional Library to the Potomac, but the last thing 
 that one would think of was that this was a factory. 
 Go to the rear, and immediately you have an entirely 
 different impression. The four wings, each five 
 stories in height, are practically of glass, yet the 
 disposition of cornice and pillar is such as to give 
 both dignity and beauty while preserving fitness. 
 
 Two things attract at once in the modern factory: 
 they are no longer low, they are no longer dark. 
 The first consideration, indeed, in all modern fac¬ 
 tories is light. To do good work men must see, and 
 to see they must have plenty of light. The only 
 light that costs nothing is daylight, hence men build 
 their shops practically of glass. The effect of this 
 on the interior is almost startling to one who has 
 never in his life been in anything but our sepulchral 
 houses, offices, churches and theatres. It is almost 
 like being in the open. 
 
 Go back to the textile factories of 1850, the fac¬ 
 tories which the owners in those days called “ pal¬ 
 aces,” so great an improvement were they upon the 
 garrets and sheds in which spinning and weaving had 
 frequently been carried on, compare them with what 
 we have to-day, and something of the gain is evi¬ 
 dent. The old building was a solid brick or stone 
 structure with many small windows fitted with small 
 panes of glass. As the operative went to work at 
 five o’clock in the morning and did not stop until 
 six or seven, artificial light was necessary for a num¬ 
 ber of hours. Candles and whale oil lamps were 
 used literally by the hundreds. There was prac- 
 
OUR NEW WORKSHOPS 
 
 9 
 
 tically no ventilation, so that the workrooms were 
 filled with smoke and stench. The coming of kero¬ 
 sene made matters a little, not much, better. The 
 shortening of hours helped greatly. Gas and elec¬ 
 tricity still further improved things; nevertheless, 
 there has been, until recently, in this country two 
 hours of the day when our manufacturing was done 
 practically in the dark. 
 
 The economic waste of this has been enormous. 
 As for the effect on the worker — eyestrain, head¬ 
 ache, lack of interest, moodiness, are inevitable re¬ 
 sults of trying to do tasks in dim light. It has been 
 believed by many and so stated that accidents are 
 more frequent in the dark hours of the day and in 
 the dark seasons of the year. The most trustworthy 
 statistics do not bear this out. The safety director 
 of the Youngstown (Ohio) Sheet and Tube Com¬ 
 pany, J. M. Woltz, in a study of a year’s accidents 
 in his plant shows that the high points of the day 
 are from 9 to 9 159 A. M. and from 3 to 3 159 P. M. 
 The high point of the year in his study is August. 
 Mr. Woltz’s chart follows the lines of those of the 
 German Government covering twenty-five years and 
 is close to those of the Department of Labor of the 
 United States published in 1910. 
 
 The International Harvester Company was one 
 of the first concerns to realise the evil of dark shops. 
 The Harvester Company carries on probably twenty 
 different trades. About ten years ago the officials 
 wakened to the fact that they were doing nothing to 
 conserve their most vital asset, their men and 
 
10 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 women. Fortunately for them they had in their 
 employ at that time a man who for several years 
 had been fitting himself for exactly what they 
 needed done. His name was C. W. Price. 
 
 It must have been twenty years ago that Mr. 
 Price, as a young man in business in Iowa, became 
 interested in various forms of philanthropic work in 
 his home town. For a number of years he read 
 books on sociology, with the hope of getting a prac¬ 
 tical basis for action. To get nearer to his problem 
 Mr. Price took a position in the McCormick factory 
 in Chicago. In this factory he had charge of a de¬ 
 partment which brought him into close touch with 
 all the foremen in the shop and gave him an oppor¬ 
 tunity to study at first-hand the conditions under 
 which men are employed in modern industry. Fie 
 spent some five years in practical shopwork before 
 he was given a chance by the officers of the company 
 to take full charge of its welfare work. 
 
 Five years ago an attack was made on the bad 
 lighting general in all the plants. A committee on 
 which there were seven electrical engineers besides 
 Mr. Price was appointed to study the problem. 
 This committee spent some six months investigating 
 what had been done by other companies and in ex¬ 
 perimenting in its own shops. It worked out stand¬ 
 ards covering the type of lamp, the type of reflector, 
 the amount of light per square foot in shops where 
 there was no gas, the amount of light per square 
 foot where there was gas and smoke, spacing be¬ 
 tween the lamps and also the height of the lamp 
 
OUR NEW WORKSHOPS 
 
 11 
 
 from the floor. These standards were at once ap¬ 
 plied in twenty-two different plants. * 
 
 From the Harvester Company, Mr. Price went 
 later to serve as an expert to the Industrial Com¬ 
 mission of Wisconsin. When shop lighting was 
 taken up by the commission, he had his solid expe¬ 
 rience to contribute. The commission and Mr. 
 Price were ambitious, however, to do something 
 still better, and to embody their findings in a bulle¬ 
 tin which everybody in and out of the State could 
 use. 
 
 The working methods of this commission are 
 purely co-operative and democratic. It never at¬ 
 tempts to fix a standard or suggest a law which has 
 not been considered by representatives of all of 
 those concerned in the matter. For instance, when 
 shop lighting came up, a committee was appointed 
 made up of employers, representatives of labour 
 unions, the commission and Mr. Price. 
 
 To aid them they drew upon the investigations 
 and experiences of various local industries, especially 
 those of the Pfister & Vogel Leather Company of 
 Milwaukee. Pfister & Vogel had done the best piece 
 of shop lighting in the State. Their chief electri¬ 
 cian, Fred Schwarze, who was responsible for it, put 
 his experience at the service of the commission. 
 
 Many weeks of joint work were spent over the 
 problem; there was much squabbling, cries of “It 
 can’t be done,” “ It won’t work”; but at the end 
 there was a united judgment that the results were 
 the most scientific and practical that had so far been 
 
12 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 developed. The bulletin in which they are recorded 
 is followed almost without a whimper by Wisconsin 
 manufacturers, for they know that able men in their 
 own businesses have had a part in framing the orders. 
 To aid them still further the commission has 
 published a handbook on shop lighting, prepared at 
 its request in “ barnyard English ” by Mr. Schwarze, 
 which is far and away the most important popular 
 contribution ever made to the subject, an easily un¬ 
 derstandable scientific treatise based on his own 
 highly successful experience.* 
 
 This handling of shop lighting is an example of 
 the way in which the Wisconsin Industrial Commis¬ 
 sion established all of its industrial standards. 
 
 What is true of lighting is true of ventilation. 
 Workshops are rapidly becoming the best ventilated 
 places we have. Where buildings are high, with 
 many easily adjusted windows, ventilation is a much 
 simpler problem than in the low, old-fashioned build¬ 
 ings of few windows. But few factories of any de¬ 
 scription depend now on windows alone for air. 
 Ventilating plants are almost invariably installed in 
 new factories, and thousands upon thousands of old 
 plants of all descriptions have equipped themselves 
 with them. 
 
 I have spent hours in factories of all kinds, includ¬ 
 ing even a redeemed tannery and laundry, and never 
 for a moment had the sense of suffocation and close¬ 
 ness so common in drawing-rooms, theatres, and 
 churches. They were scientifically ventilated and 
 the temperature was rigidly supervised. At the 
 
OUR NEW WORKSHOPS 
 
 13 
 
 Brown & Sharpe Manufacturing Company in Provi¬ 
 dence, Rhode Island, the proper temperature for 
 each room has been set by careful investigators. 
 Placards like the one here reproduced are on the 
 bulletin boards of each room, and a temperature 
 boss sees that there is no variation. What this 
 amounts to is that labour — all kinds of labour — 
 may be carried on in perfectly aired and heated 
 shops, that the old notion that this was Utopian is 
 exploded by the actual experience of hundreds of 
 employers. And they claim that it pays! 
 
 TEMPERATURES 
 
 In order to secure the most comfortable conditions for 
 all, the following standard temperatures will be maintained 
 
 as nearly as possible: 
 
 Offices and Drafting Rooms . 67° to 69° 
 
 Shop Floors and Rooms where workmen are 
 
 mostly seated at work. 67° to 69° 
 
 Shop Floors and Rooms where workmen are 
 
 moderately active and free to move about. 65° to 67° 
 
 Foundry, Smithshop and Carpenter 
 
 Shops .. 55° to 65° 
 
 Storage Rooms where workmen are not reg¬ 
 ularly employed. 40 0 to 50 0 
 
 On account of the daily range of temperature, the rooms 
 may be 2° to 5 0 cooler than the above standards during the 
 early morning hours. 
 
 Brown & Sharpe Mfg. Co. 
 
 The changes in the factory with which the public 
 is most familiar are those which go under the gen- 
 
NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 14 
 
 eral head of welfare work. An enormous contribu¬ 
 tion to human health and comfort is being made 
 through decent toilets, cloak-rooms, lunch- and rest¬ 
 rooms, and first-aid-to-the-injured rooms. The dis¬ 
 regard of the common physical needs of men and 
 women in building factories in the past would be 
 unbelievable if it were not so constantly thrust in 
 our faces. 
 
 Four years ago a plant covering probably fifty 
 acres on the outskirts of one of our greatest cities, 
 an investment of several million dollars, was looked 
 over by a young woman who had been asked to take 
 charge of a department of social service. She 
 found that at that time, although there were on an 
 average, two thousand five hundred men, daily em¬ 
 ployed, there was not a toilet-room on the property, 
 and there was but one drinking fountain. The men 
 were obliged to go to one of the many near-by saloons 
 to take care of their physical necessities. 
 
 I doubt if it will ever be possible in this country 
 again to duplicate the above neglect. Welfare ar¬ 
 rangements of all kinds are becoming as much a 
 concern of architects and builders of industrial es¬ 
 tablishments as foundations and lights. 
 
 One hears welfare work much sneered at. I find 
 a rather widespread notion that it is only introduced 
 as a species of advertisement or as a sop to the em¬ 
 ployee. Even if this were true, it is a better use 
 of money than that which big business once credited 
 under that head. It is not so many years ago that a 
 witness for one of our great corporations was re- 
 
OUR NEW WORKSHOPS 
 
 15 
 
 ported as saying facetiously, he claims, that its con¬ 
 tributions for influencing political, opinion were 
 charged to “ welfare work ” ! A thousand dollars 
 spent in wash basins, even if the wash basins are much 
 bragged about, is a better sort of welfare work. 
 
 My experience with this new factory development 
 has convinced me that those who use these improve¬ 
 ments as advertisements are not one per cent, of the 
 total that make them. In the vast majority of cases 
 they are introduced in the same spirit in which 
 men put bathrooms into old houses or arrange for 
 them as a matter of course in building new ones: 
 because they have come to recognise that they are 
 good things to have. Whatever the attitude of 
 mind toward these decencies and conveniences may 
 once have been, they are now taken for granted as a 
 necessary part of a factory. 
 
 Of course there are still boards of old-school di¬ 
 rectors who stew about the expense and talk about 
 “ spoiling the workingman,” but they are growing 
 fewer. A Chicago board of directors, examining 
 the estimate for a new factory to be put up in Wis¬ 
 consin, balked at the estimates for shower baths and 
 lockers and toilet-rooms. “ Is it a gentleman’s club 
 you are equipping? ” they wrote witheringly on the 
 margin. The superintendent came back: “It is 
 something much more useful to the community; it is 
 a shop for five hundred workingmen.” The esti¬ 
 mate was O.K.’d without further comment. 
 
 There is no feature of the new workshop which 
 gives more satisfaction to the observer than the new 
 
i6 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 ideas of order which prevail in them. Industry has 
 been slow in learning that order is heaven’s first 
 law, and that to break it is to involve yourself in 
 wasteful and exasperating confusion. 
 
 The truth has, somewhat late however, entered 
 the heads of some of the most obstinate shop man¬ 
 agers I ever met. “ We are going to have order in 
 this rolling mill if we never make another bar of 
 iron in the place,” I heard the stern manager of one 
 of the big plants of the Steel Corporation say, and 
 he had it — had it in a factory so big they took you 
 around in a railroad train to see it. There was not 
 a shovel-load of dust in the place, though they were 
 daily using hundreds of tons of ore and lime and coke. 
 There was not a bar of pig iron out of place, though 
 there were three thousand men making them. 
 
 One of the several great services of Taylor’s sys¬ 
 tem of scientific management is the vivid demon¬ 
 stration it makes, whenever applied, of the economic 
 value of order. To appreciate it fully one should 
 see a shop of the old-fashioned type and manage¬ 
 ment in process of transformation. I had such an 
 experience once. The concern was a large and 
 prosperous one which had grown rapidly and had 
 spread in the sprawling fashion forced on the city 
 factory. 
 
 An enormous number of different-sized parts 
 were used in the machines put out by the concern, 
 and as is the practice in the average old-fashioned 
 shop these parts, coming from foundry or machine- 
 
OUR NEW WORKSHOPS 
 
 17 
 
 shop, were dumped at any vacant space, in the ram¬ 
 bling collection of buildings, sheds, and passage¬ 
 ways. A man never knew exactly where to find any 
 of the parts of the machine he was assembling. 
 Moreover, he never was certain of finding at his 
 machine the tools he had left there the night before. 
 
 It was his usual habit to spend the first half hour 
 or more in the morning getting things together and 
 often rowing with his fellows over tools which he 
 believed they had taken from his bench. This is so 
 characteristic a practice that it is no unusual thing 
 for workingmen to hide their tools on leaving the 
 shop at night. 
 
 The expert who was putting this factory on a 
 scientific basis at once attacked the prevalent disor¬ 
 der, installing Taylor’s system of handling stores 
 and tools. This system is a wonderful piece of 
 scientific organisation, a delight to mind and eye. 
 Once installed and properly run, it revolutionises a 
 shop. It did so in this case. “ Hunting ” tools and 
 parts was forever done away with. Everything was 
 in its place, and a responsible person knew the place! 
 Such is the co-operation between shop and office un¬ 
 der this method that there was on the books at night 
 a complete inventory of everything needed for the 
 work. This record was self-correcting, that is, 
 there was no possibility under it of running short or 
 over-supplying. It took out of a shop forever that 
 old, irritating, and expensive operation known as 
 “ taking an inventory.” 
 
i8 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 The promptness and sureness with which a part 
 can be located under this system I once saw illus¬ 
 trated in an interesting way at the Watertown 
 Arsenal. Lieutenant Colonel Wheeler, the com¬ 
 manding officer, told me to select a piece in any one 
 of the gun carriages under construction, and we 
 would take the number of it to the office and ask 
 the clerk to tell us where that particular piece was. 
 In five minutes after we had given him the number 
 he had located the piece. I think it is not an ex¬ 
 aggeration to say that if under the old system such 
 a question had been asked of anybody in the Water- 
 town Arsenal it would have taken days for them to 
 have answered it— if, indeed, they ever could have 
 done so. As there are fifty different kinds and 
 grades of material and four thousand six hundred 
 different pieces used in a disappearing gun carriage, 
 the advantage of being able to put your hand 
 promptly on material and pieces, as well as know¬ 
 ing every night whether you have in stock the quan¬ 
 tities of each necessary to carry on work, does not 
 need arguing. The gain to workingmen and to 
 management obviously is enormous. 
 
 Scientific management places as much stress on 
 cleanliness as on order, and all the new shops have 
 devices for fighting the particular dirt which the 
 operations produce. One of the most distressing 
 features of cotton mills has always been the lint 
 which is thrown off at every step from the opening of 
 the bales to the weaving-room. The difficulty of 
 keeping the spinning frames from becoming clogged 
 
OUR NEW WORKSHOPS 
 
 19 
 
 by this lint has generally been regarded as insur¬ 
 mountable. 
 
 When the first cotton factory — so far as I know 
 — was studied for scientific management the prob¬ 
 lem was at once attacked. The result was a com¬ 
 pressed air device for cleaning. All day long a man 
 goes up and down the spinning-room with a hose, 
 blowing dust from the frames and floors. This 
 practice, together with what the spinner himself is 
 able to do, with his brush, has practically removed 
 all the irritating interference with work which lint 
 causes. 
 
 Quite as important as the increased cleanliness in 
 this factory is the lowered temperature. By an air- 
 conditioning apparatus fresh air, heated in winter, 
 cooled in summer, and properly humidified in both, 
 is furnished to all departments. What this means 
 to the operatives only those familiar with the old 
 conditions can realise. 
 
 A value device for carrying off dirt has been 
 installed in the twine plants of the International 
 Harvester Company. Twine is made from Yuca¬ 
 tan sisal. The opening of the bundles fills the room 
 with the most disagreeable dust. I have been told 
 that when Mr. McCormick, the head of the Har¬ 
 vester Trust, first caught the idea of the model work¬ 
 shop, he told the heads of the twine department 
 that he would give them sixty days to get rid 
 of the dust in the opening-rooms. It was not long, 
 considering that for years everybody connected 
 with such plants had said that it was one of the un- 
 
20 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 avoidable features of the business. But in sixty 
 days the plant was equipped with a machine which 
 carries off the dust so perfectly that I spent half an 
 hour in an opening-room and came out without any 
 perceptible dust on my dark clothing. This is done 
 by opening the bundles over a perforated floor under 
 which fans play. The dirt is carried down and out, 
 never having a chance to rise in the room. 
 
 Disorder and dirt are probably the most waste¬ 
 ful features in industry, but inconveniences are a 
 close second. Scientific management has fully 
 demonstrated this by studying the time it takes a man 
 to perform a task under different conditions. For 
 instance, the old way of putting the parts of a ma¬ 
 chine together was to place everything on the floor. 
 The workman had to crouch down, or actually sit on 
 the floor while he was assembling the parts which 
 came in the lower part of the machine. Now an ad¬ 
 justable table is provided, so that, as the machine 
 grows higher, the table can be lowered and the 
 workman finds himself always in the position which is 
 least cramped. The result is that he does more 
 work and with less fatigue. 
 
 An extensive study of clerical work resulted in ad¬ 
 justable chairs by which a clerk could take seven dif¬ 
 ferent positions. This was done solely to remove 
 the nervous tension and fatigue which comes from 
 keeping one position for a number of hours — to 
 make it easier for people to do their work. 
 
 In the cotton factory mentioned above the spin¬ 
 ning frame has been lifted so that a girl can dress it 
 
OUR NEW WORKSHOPS 
 
 21 
 
 without stooping, and a shelf has been added to carry 
 a cleverly arranged spindle-rack. . The racks are 
 brought to the shelf at regular intervals by a boy. 
 The girl without stooping changes those emptied 
 for those filled, and the rack of empty spindles goes 
 back with the boy. The girl’s back is saved and so 
 is her time. 
 
 If scientific management had done nothing else 
 for industry it would justify itself a thousandfold 
 as a system by the strain and irritation it has taken 
 from workers, in putting things to rights, in insisting 
 on cleanliness, and in inventing devices to make 
 work easier and pleasanter. 
 
 To those people whose ideas of factories are 
 based mainly on the distressing conditions which in¬ 
 vestigators ferret out and publish,— there are plenty 
 of them and the obligation to make them known to 
 the public is imperative,— to these people the use 
 of the word beauty in connection with industry seems 
 a mockery. But this is a judgment of ignorance. 
 As a matter of fact beauty is one of the conscious 
 ambitions of the new shop-makers. I do not know 
 anything more encouraging in all the long list of en¬ 
 couraging exhibits in the country than the efforts 
 which old-fashioned plants are making to put a 
 note of cheer and attractiveness into their ugly and 
 harsh settings. 
 
 The real beauty of a great many of our factories 
 is destroyed by their ugly surroundings. The ap¬ 
 proaches and the yards are so disorderly, the roads 
 so bad, and the vacant places so filled with dirt and 
 
22 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 debris that any value the building may have is lost. 
 Clean up the yards, put the vacant places into grass 
 and immediately you are conscious that the building 
 is good, perhaps beautiful. 
 
 A good illustration of this is in operation at this 
 writing in the famous Homestead Steel Mills. 
 There was a time not long distant when the Home¬ 
 stead Mills seemed to me to be about as good an ex¬ 
 ample of an inferno as the world afforded. The 
 change that has been wrought by paving the hundred 
 or more miles of roads within the yards, by putting 
 in flower beds and grass plots wherever a half dozen 
 square yards could be spared, is amazing. 
 
 As for interest in these operations, I defy any¬ 
 body to find more genuine interest in any branch of a 
 factory’s operations than many superintendents and 
 operatives take in efforts to grow grass, shrubbery, 
 and flowers in and around their factories. I have 
 seen scores of gay little gardens, window boxes, grot¬ 
 tos, which operatives had made in moments of leisure 
 and to which they gave loving care. Sometimes in 
 the big mills they are in corners so remote that they 
 go undiscovered by superintendents for half a 
 season. I remember one such in the big plate mill 
 at Vandergrift, Pennsylvania. 
 
 There are perhaps eleven per cent, of twelve-hour 
 men still left at Vandergrift. They work in shifts 
 of twenty and thirty minutes, intense work which re¬ 
 quires an equal rest period. A group of men had 
 used these rest periods in beautifying a corner for 
 themselves. It was a spot perhaps eighteen feet 
 
OUR NEW WORKSHOPS 
 
 23 
 
 square entirely surrounded by high walls. They 
 had made here a grass plot with a merry little foun¬ 
 tain in the centre. Around it were benches painted 
 a bright green. So unexpected was it, so evident an 
 expression of their need of greenness and gaiety, 
 that one could scarcely see it without a gulp. 
 
 But it would never have been attempted if all 
 about the mills the most careful attention was not 
 given to grass and vines and flowers, and if the men 
 were not encouraged to do anything they wanted to 
 in vacant spots. The superintendent at Vandergrift, 
 in fact, keeps up a small conservatory which supplies 
 everybody about the mills who wants them with 
 seeds and plants. 
 
 What can be done to create a perfect garden of 
 delight is shown best, perhaps, in this country at the 
 works of the National Cash Register, in Dayton, 
 Ohio. Gardening has become a cult among the ten 
 thousand employes of this enterprise, and their 
 continual spur and teacher is the factory itself, 
 where the most scientific and loving attention is 
 given to the grass and flowers and vines and shrubs 
 which surround and embank the twenty or more 
 buildings which make up the plant. 
 
 But what is it worth, this movement toward light, 
 order, and cleanliness and beauty in workshops? 
 What is it worth in dollars and cents? Take the 
 matter of proper shop lighting. How can manu¬ 
 facturers be convinced that they can afford the large 
 initial expense it requires to install a system which is 
 used on an average not over two hours a day? 
 
24 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 Mr. Schwarze declares in his handbook that the 
 results of experiments show that it increases output 
 all the way from two to ten per cent.: 
 
 “ In a certain steel plant, where an efficient light¬ 
 ing system was installed,” he writes, “ the output at 
 night was increased a little over ten per cent. In 
 order to determine whether this was due wholly to 
 the introduction of the better lighting conditions, the 
 lamps were taken out and for a time the work was 
 carried on at night with the old lighting system. It 
 was found that the amount of work dropped off over 
 ten per cent. When, however, the work was re¬ 
 sumed under the improved conditions the men were 
 able again to produce ten per cent, more work.” 
 
 There is the same relation between output and 
 ventilation as between output and lighting. The 
 Hamilton Watch Company recently of its own free 
 will wrote to a ventilator concern that since the in¬ 
 stallation of their ventilators the operatives had 
 been doing practically the same amount of work in 
 nine hours that they formerly did in ten. The 
 drowsy hour along in the middle afternoon of which 
 foremen and managers so often complain seems to 
 have been entirely eliminated simply by giving the 
 workers plenty of fresh air. Various experiments 
 have been made, particularly in schools, showing 
 the effect of better ventilation on the alertness of 
 pupils. Some years ago the Board of Health in De¬ 
 troit, cut off without the knowledge of the teachers, 
 the fans of the ventilating system and observed the 
 results. In twenty minutes the students began to 
 
OUR NEW WORKSHOPS 
 
 25 
 
 complain that the room was cold and it was neces¬ 
 sary to raise the temperature from 68 degrees to 75 
 degrees before this feeling of cold was relieved. In 
 forty minutes a number of the students began to com¬ 
 plain of headache and in an hour the teacher was 
 obliged to send four or five students home. The 
 fans were then started and in fifteen minutes the 
 complaints ceased. 
 
 The Secretary of the State Board of Health for 
 Indiana who has made various experiments with the 
 heating, ventilating and lighting of school rooms de¬ 
 clares that the efficiency of the pupils has been in¬ 
 creased 25 per cent, by the installation of proper de¬ 
 vices. Of course what is true of the schools is true 
 of factories. 
 
 Every efficiency engineer will give you figures to 
 prove that money is saved simply in putting the 
 stock-room into order as described above. Mr. 
 George Babcock of the Franklin Automobile Com¬ 
 pany, where the Taylor System of Scientific Manage¬ 
 ment has been installed in root, stock and branch, 
 says that at the end of 1911 the variation of their 
 physical inventory with their records was 2 >4 per 
 cent, of the value of the charges handled during 
 that year. Two years after he began to install the 
 system this variation had been reduced to 0.03 per 
 cent.; and a year later to 0.01 per cent. 
 
 That such considerations as the colour of walls 
 and ceilings, good architectural features, trees, grass 
 and flowers have a direct stimulating effect on the 
 efficiency and health of the operatives there is abun- 
 
26 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 dant proof. In an investigation by the American 
 Museum of Safety, the question was asked of the 
 factory managers whether they had found that their 
 experiments on these points had increased the ef¬ 
 ficiency of the workers. Seventy-five per cent, of 
 those who replied were emphatic in their declara¬ 
 tions that the effect had been good. Here are ex¬ 
 tracts from some of the letters: 
 
 “ The better the surroundings the better the 
 work.” 
 
 “ We know by experience that it pays.” 
 
 “ We know that it improves health, therefore ef¬ 
 ficiency.” 
 
 “ Lawns, trees, etc., have paid interest on the in¬ 
 vestment many times over.” 
 
 “ Our whole neighbourhood has been improved.” 
 
 “ There is no doubt but that the most efficient 
 men prefer to work where surroundings are most 
 attractive.” 
 
 “ There is a yearly deficit of several thousand dol¬ 
 lars on our lunchroom, but we consider the money 
 well invested.” 
 
 But it is something more than an increase in effi¬ 
 ciency the workers in these new shops get. They are 
 getting education, satisfaction, a sense of their own 
 value in the undertaking. I have seen girls trans¬ 
 figured from slatterns to clean and tidy decency; 
 women whose bitter revolt at work performed in 
 ugly and filthy disorder had been changed to cheerful 
 interest; men who had given up the saloon because 
 they were allowed to attend the flower beds. Light, 
 
OUR NEW WORKSHOPS 
 
 27 
 
 sun, order and beauty are as powerful preventives 
 of evil as darkness, disorder, and ugliness are in¬ 
 centives to evil. 
 
 We complain bitterly at times of the awful home 
 conditions of the new-come immigrants. But if 
 they never see anything better, what can we expect? 
 They tell a story of a Polish miner at Ishpeming, 
 Michigan, who was obliged to spend some weeks in 
 the company’s hospital. His home had been the 
 despair of the company’s nurse, so dirty and crowded 
 it was. But when the man returned from the hos¬ 
 pital the place was immediately transformed. 
 “ Clean and nice all the time, now,” he told the 
 nurse when she exclaimed at the change. “ Clean and 
 nice like the hospital, feel good.” The new work¬ 
 shops teach many men and women what the hospital 
 taught this man. 
 
 They teach the worker much, but it is the illumi¬ 
 nation they are bringing to those who direct them 
 that is most significant and hopeful. It is hardly 
 too much to say that these new industrial ideas are 
 producing an entirely new type of employer; one 
 who is almost as much of an educator as he is a 
 maker of things; almost as much a friend of men 
 as he is a “ boss.” He has discovered that no man 
 or woman can reach and keep the point of efficiency 
 which scientific business requires unless he is healthy, 
 content, and growing. How to keep men and 
 women well and happy is part of his business. 
 
 “ Welfare work is no philanthropy,” says Rich¬ 
 ard Feiss, of the Clothcraft Shop of Cleveland, “ but 
 
28 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 a very essential part of the management. With us 
 it is perhaps our most important part. It is just 
 as much a function as routing (order of operations) 
 or inspection. In fact, it is even more important, 
 as it applies directly to the kind of boy and girl 
 that we need and that we are trying to develop.” 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 “ A FINE PLACE TO WORK ” 
 
 One of the first impressions of an observer who, 
 free of pre-conceived notions, studies a re-organised 
 modern workshop is that the operatives are getting 
 an altogether unprecedented degree of social life. 
 A little analysis shows that this is the outcome of 
 the new shop activities and ambitions. 
 
 Groups of men and women are naturally sociable. 
 Join the crowd that watches a parade and observe 
 the good terms which quickly spread sometimes for 
 miles up and down an avenue. The helter-skelter 
 throng has established relations. They jeer and 
 chatter and accommodate one another. They ex¬ 
 change opinions and experiences. The rudiments 
 of a social and political organisation may easily de¬ 
 velop in the course of an afternoon in the acci¬ 
 dental group crowding the side of a city block. 
 
 Observe how quickly they catch the spirit of the 
 spectacle. They are gaiety itself over a Mardi 
 Gras pageant; but let the demonstration touch the 
 serious and they answer as certainly. It was a New 
 York crowd which gave to the first Woman’s Peace 
 Parade the response which carried it. It was a 
 
 venture of the most doubtful outcome, sure to excite 
 
 29 
 
30 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 the indignation of some, the ridicule of others. Its 
 only strength was its touching impotency. Yet 
 throngs of men and women watched it in silent, 
 sometimes tearful, respect. They knew they looked 
 on a prayer, a hope of that which-is-to-come. t he 
 amazing sympathy and understanding they gave 
 those marching idealists promises as much for the 
 cause of peace as anything this country has seen since 
 the war began. 
 
 The chief promise of groups lies in this natural 
 sociability and understanding. The finest, freest 
 collective work men do develops from it. The fail¬ 
 ure to recognise and encourage it in undertakings is 
 unintelligent as well as unkind; it reacts disastrously, 
 dulling initiative and hindering co-operation. 
 
 In spite of the obviousness of the value of this 
 social spirit, industry has been slow, even stupid, in 
 utilising it. There are thousands of offices, shops 
 and factories in this country where there is no more 
 cohesion between the workers than between the nails 
 in a keg. The force is held together by staves and 
 hoops. Take them off and they scatter. The con¬ 
 ditions under which they labour do not admit of 
 acquaintanceship. The managers discourage it. 
 They do not want visiting, planning, talking in their 
 plants, they tell you. True, little cliques may form, 
 two girls or men become friends, but for the most 
 part the men and women work side by side, often 
 for years, without any form of communication. 
 
 The modern employer is wiser. He recognises 
 that the efficiency he must have to succeed — if he has 
 
“ A FINE PLACE TO WORK ” 
 
 3i 
 
 no privilege to carry him roughshod over competi¬ 
 tion — depends upon the health, interest and co¬ 
 operation of his working force. He learns that all 
 of these forces thrive naturally in a group of people 
 who find satisfaction in working side by side. They 
 do this when they have common social interests. 
 To foster these interests then becomes a business 
 policy. 
 
 It is one which has made enormous strides in the 
 last ten years particularly, though it would be neither 
 fair nor illuminating to treat it as a discovery of 
 this period. If we look for the root of the experi¬ 
 ments to promote sociability among working people 
 we shall probably find them in the one secular social 
 institution that early piety and industry tolerated, 
 that is, the annual picnic. The severest of Protes¬ 
 tant sects have long admitted the human need of fun 
 to the extent of one picnic a year. Rarely was there 
 a factory in the old days that did not limber up suf¬ 
 ficiently to arrange an annual outing for the whole 
 establishment, including wives, babies and friends. 
 
 Reluctant as the factory manager may often have 
 been to give the time and the money for the annual 
 outing, it was a well-established opinion fifty and 
 more years ago that they could not afford to do with¬ 
 out it. In some mysterious way, at which many 
 sneered but which none could deny, those outings 
 oiled the human machine. Work went with less 
 friction and more interest in the weeks of prepara¬ 
 tion and of “ talking it over.” It was, no doubt, a 
 good thing. 
 
3 2 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 There is no knowing just when a few of the more 
 reflective employers began to see that the interest 
 and spirit awakened by the annual outing was some¬ 
 thing to be preserved and given opportunities to 
 grow. Nor is there any way of knowing who first 
 appreciated the relation between a field for out-of- 
 door sports and the health and sociability of the fac¬ 
 tory; he belongs, of course, to the period of the ten- 
 hour day; when men worked twelve and fourteen 
 there was neither the light nor the life to throw a 
 ball. He came with the shorter day and he heads 
 a great and growing succession. 
 
 The factory athletic field is coming to be almost 
 as much a matter of course as the sanitary drinking 
 fountains, and where you find the latter you are al¬ 
 most sure to find the former, or its substitute. Even 
 in many cities where the factory is crowded for land, 
 a corner often is squeezed out for out-of-door 
 sports. I doubt if there is an athletic field in the 
 United States which has as much use to the square 
 inch as the girls at the Clothcraft shop in Cleveland 
 give to a bit of enclosed land at the side of the 
 factory. It is not larger than a city lot, but it teems 
 with excitement during noon hours and after the 
 shop closes at four-thirty. 
 
 Mr. Feiss will tell you, in explanation of the time 
 he and his associates give to encouraging the use of 
 this bit of land, “ I can’t afford to have people work¬ 
 ing in my shop who don’t have fresh air and fun.” 
 It is the reason he gives for his early closing hours. 
 “ I can’t afford to have people working after four- 
 
“ A FINE PLACE TO WORK ” 
 
 33 
 
 thirty in the afternoon. They aren’t sufficiently fit 
 next day.” 
 
 The Steel Corporation is so convinced of the 
 value of the ball field that it encourages its sub¬ 
 sidiaries everywhere to provide them. Probably 
 thousands of dollars are spent annually by the com¬ 
 panies for their upkeep, though the general practice 
 is for the men to meet this by an equal, or at least a 
 substantial, contribution of their own. In all the 
 new plants such as that at Gary the ball field is con¬ 
 sidered as necessary as a first-aid room. 
 
 That the corporation is right in the special en¬ 
 couragement it gives baseball is indisputable — what 
 the game is doing for health and sociability in 
 American industries cannot be estimated. It is a 
 poor management indeed, these days, and a thor¬ 
 oughly soured force which does not support depart¬ 
 mental nines. As proud a man as I ever saw was 
 the usually unapproachable vice-president of a big 
 factory who, playing on the office team at the an¬ 
 nual picnic, had made a “ home run.” It was days 
 before he ceased talking about it, and when the of¬ 
 fice would no longer listen he went to the floor and 
 lived it over with Jimmie B., a weaver who, in spite 
 of this heroic deed, had won the game for the oper¬ 
 atives. 
 
 All over the land you can duplicate the amusing 
 experience of the hero of Philip Curtiss’s story 
 “ The Ladder.” He had applied in a big concern 
 for work. There was no opening until he chanced 
 on an employe who had known him in his baseball 
 
34 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 days. The acquaintance promptly passed his in¬ 
 formation on to the employment agent. That 
 worthy as promptly reconsidered his decision. 
 
 “What did you tell him about me?” the hero 
 asked. 
 
 “ That you were the best second-baseman in the 
 State.” 
 
 There is many a factory where operators and op¬ 
 eratives would consider this a sound reason for em¬ 
 ploying a man, and why not if it is considered a 
 sound reason for admitting a boy to college? 
 
 The rivalry between the teams of different plants 
 and factories is coming to be like that between towns 
 and schools. One of the most exciting series of 
 games — outside of those of the leagues, and the 
 big colleges — of which I know, is that between the 
 forty or more teams of miners in the Frick Coke 
 Company in the Connellsville District of Pennsyl¬ 
 vania. It is doubtful if there are ever more than 
 two or three men on a team who speak the same 
 tongue, but that seems not to interfere either with 
 their efficiency or their enthusiasm. 
 
 In the fall of 1913 I visited the coke towns a few 
 days after the finals had been played. There had 
 been a general holiday. The five thousand spec¬ 
 tators were made up of the miners, their wives and 
 children and the officers of the company from the 
 president down. It had been a great day, and 
 everywhere I went I heard it discussed. The hero 
 of the district was an Italian miner who had won 
 the final victory for his nine. At that particular 
 
“A FINE PLACE TO WORK” 
 
 35 
 
 moment you could not have pried a man out of that 
 company! Moreover, the company could have 
 counted on every man’s co-operation in any reason¬ 
 able proposition. 
 
 While baseball is easily the favourite factory 
 game, as befits its national position, there are many 
 concerns in which the variety of sports equal that of 
 any college or athletic club. I know of one Roch¬ 
 ester factory in which they play baseball, lawn ten¬ 
 nis, bowling on the green, volley ball, croquet, soccer 
 ball and quoits. Last winter the bowling team won 
 the championship of the Industrial League of the 
 city of Rochester against teams from all the princi¬ 
 pal establishments in the town. 
 
 So thoroughly has the industrial athletic field 
 demonstrated its usefulness that no intelligent em¬ 
 ployer of labour familiar with advanced practices 
 thinks to-day of building a new shop or factory in 
 town or country without some provision for an out- 
 of-door field or an indoor equivalent. Take a mod¬ 
 ern factory like the new one of Brown and Bigelow 
 near Saint Paul, Minnesota. In building, the con¬ 
 cern provided for some twenty acres of open space 
 around the light, airy, comfortable factory it put up. 
 In this space all the sports which interest the force 
 are carried on. The director of the service depart¬ 
 ment of the plant tells me that all of these under¬ 
 takings are managed by the employes themselves 
 through a club to which everybody belongs by virtue 
 of his position as a worker. 
 
 Once a year nominations are made for officers of 
 
36 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 the club, and all employes have a chance to ballot 
 for their favourites. Besides the officers, a govern¬ 
 ing board is elected in an advising capacity. Sev¬ 
 eral of the present members of the governing board 
 are workers at bench or machine. 
 
 The officers run all the club affairs, including a 
 benevolent association and a dining-room; they pre¬ 
 pare for the annual picnic; out of their treasury they 
 furnish balls and bats for the baseball teams; they 
 pay for the use of the bowling alleys on which once 
 a week during the winter twelve teams from as many 
 departments compete for a loving cup presented by 
 the firm and for individual prizes offered by the 
 clubs; they pay for the tennis courts and skating 
 rinks. Brown and Bigelow’s co-operation in this 
 consists of furnishing space, light, heat and steam. 
 Every time an employe is tardy, a fine of ten cents is 
 imposed, and this money is turned into the club 
 funds. 
 
 These organisations give wonderful training in 
 collective action. Indeed, they are for thousands of 
 people the only chance they have ever had for free, 
 conscious co-operation. It is actually exciting to 
 watch men and women develop through these organ¬ 
 isations, not only in health and good spirits but in 
 what they have never suspected they possessed — 
 the power of leadership. A man or woman who 
 has always been shy, sulky, uncommunicative, an in¬ 
 different and unambitious worker, will blossom into 
 a leader in sports or in “ getting up things.” There 
 
“ A FINE PLACE TO WORK ” 
 
 37 
 
 is an immediate change in his attitude toward his 
 work. 
 
 An alert manager recognises at once that he has 
 here the making of a foreman. His task is now to 
 watch, give encouragement and instruction, and at 
 the right moment advance his find. Nothing is 
 more valuable to him, more essential, than such dis¬ 
 coveries, if he is trying to manage his business scien¬ 
 tifically. The large force of instructors and func¬ 
 tion bosses required in a shop under scientific man¬ 
 agement can come only out of the factory itself, to 
 get the best results. The strength of the system lies 
 largely in developing workers to do higher-grade 
 work. But where there is no more sociability than 
 in most shops it is a slow and sometimes most dis¬ 
 couraging task to find this material. Factory clubs 
 and amusements constantly bring it out. It is a 
 precious thing for the business, but it is life and fu¬ 
 ture for the worker. 
 
 As a rule the provisions for out-of-door sports are 
 modest enough, though there are a few plants in the 
 country which almost take one’s breath away by 
 their magnificence. The National Cash Register 
 has gone furthest, probably. In addition to base¬ 
 ball diamonds, tennis courts, children’s playgrounds 
 and clubhouses near the factory, Mr. Patterson 
 keeps up for his employes on the outskirts of Day- 
 ton and within easy reach by a five-cent ride on street 
 cars one of the loveliest small parks in the country. 
 It has been handled with rare intelligence and, an un- 
 
38 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 usual thing in our parks, originality. Surprises 
 await you at every turn in “ Hills and Dales,” as it 
 is called — devotion to birds, devotion to flowers, an 
 instinct for views and “ glimpses.” There is a 
 handsome clubhouse run by the employes, a girls’ 
 club and, most attractive of all, several camps fur¬ 
 nished with everything necessary for instant use for 
 whomsoever may apply! 
 
 The United Shoe Machinery Company is an¬ 
 other concern which has arranged lavish out-of- 
 door life for its five thousand or more employes. 
 Close to its Beverly, Massachusetts, plant it has 
 three hundred acres of land, the Charles River run¬ 
 ning through them, w T here every conceivable land 
 and water sport is encouraged. 
 
 Elaborate equipments like these lead those who 
 are unfamiliar with the hundreds of small ventures 
 over the country to believe that the work is merely 
 a “ frill ” of Big Business, one of its advertising 
 schemes for reconciling a hostile public. No doubt 
 some skilful advertising has been done through these 
 ambitious undertakings, but this is certain — unless 
 they are used they make a concern ridiculous. De¬ 
 serted, they prove that something is wrong with the 
 motive in their establishment or the method of their 
 management. When the fields and diamonds and 
 courts and roads are thronged at noon and night, on 
 holidays and Sundays, we may set it down as a real 
 thing, whether elaborate or simple. 
 
 As far as results are concerned it doesn’t much 
 matter whether it is elaborate or simple. The spirit 
 
“A FINE PLACE TO WORK” 
 
 39 
 
 is the life of it, not the machine. Neither the Na¬ 
 tional Cash Register nor the United Shoe Machinery 
 Company could persuade or force their employes to 
 use their courts and grounds and clubhouses as freely 
 as they do if they were merely an advertising scheme. 
 They are used because the primary reason for their 
 existence is the health, efficiency, and social pleas¬ 
 ure of the workers. They “ pay ” the firm, or they 
 would not be supported by two as hard-headed con¬ 
 cerns as these; but they “ pay ” the operatives even 
 more. 
 
 Big Business has no monopoly of this class of 
 work. It can absorb a great deal of money, but it 
 needs almost none. Indeed, it depends for success 
 on that which money cannot buy — sympathy, under¬ 
 standing, sound humanity and sound sense. Nor 
 did Big Business discover the value of the social in¬ 
 terests of its employes to its own stability and its 
 efficiency,— like almost everything else it possesses 
 it took over what it found, and developed it on a 
 large scale. Small business originated the work, 
 and it is small business which gets the finest results, 
 as a rule, both for itself and for its people. 
 
 What are the results? How do you know them? 
 When the army of employes rush back to their ma¬ 
 chines after a noon hour of comfort and play, fresh, 
 zestful, singing, when they come back Monday 
 morning or after a holiday brown, interested, full of 
 talk of matches lost or won, of excursions, picnics, 
 adventures, the wise man knows he is reaping the 
 reward of his investment. When men and women 
 
40 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 tell you with enthusiasm: “ Gee, but this is a fine 
 place to w r ork! ” you know they are reaping the bene¬ 
 fits of his investment. But what they get is by no 
 means bounded by the factory walls or ended with 
 their period of service. They are being educated 
 in two things most essential to themselves and to the 
 community, two things in which most of us are weak. 
 They are learning how to be sociable and how to 
 play and to enjoy people. These are permanent 
 possessions. 
 
 The great body of people in this country do not 
 know the value nor the delight of play. They work 
 hard and cheerfully as a rule through a long day, and 
 depend on sleep and food and what they call “ tak¬ 
 ing comfort ”— that is, sitting around in a more 
 or less somnolent state — to fit them for the next 
 day. They have never learned to take regular ex¬ 
 ercise, to seek a stimulating change of ideas, to go 
 out after the new. They are not curious, eager or 
 adventurous in their off hours, though they may be 
 all that when at work. Life is but a collection of 
 habits. If the habit of seeking recreation and social 
 life has never been acquired, the effort to do so is 
 a burden to the flesh and a worry to the spirit. In¬ 
 dustry is fixing the habit in thousands of men and 
 women. One of the convincing proofs of this is the 
 extent to which in many parts of the country opera¬ 
 tives, either in groups or as individuals, are pro¬ 
 viding simple quarters within easy reach of their 
 work w r hich they can use at will. All those w r ho 
 travel much become familiar with them: gay little 
 
“ A FINE PLACE TO WORK ” 
 
 4i 
 
 shacks grouped in pleasant groves, log cabins 
 perched on mountainsides, tiny houseboats anchored 
 along river banks, bungalows by the sea. They are 
 multiplying amazingly, particularly through the 
 Middle West. It is one of the pleasantest exhibits 
 of our present world, a proof that pleasure and 
 health, as well as the means to get them, are being 
 more and more widely distributed in the land. 
 
 One thing leads to another in groups. If the 
 start is made there is no end to the ramifications. 
 The men of a factory who have come together over 
 baseball in the summer want a bowling alley, a card- 
 room, a reading-room for winter, and they often ask 
 the management for it. This is the sound and sure 
 beginning for the factory clubhouse, an institution 
 which is doing as much for factory social life as the 
 athletic field. There are many such clubhouses, 
 which buzz from morning until night with activities 
 of every kind; but let no one imagine that it was 
 merely the building and machinery which caused 
 spontaneous interest. Most of these have grown 
 from very small beginnings. 
 
 Ten years ago a dinner was given by the new 
 president of the Commonwealth Steel Company of 
 Granite City, Illinois, Mr. Clarence Howard, in the 
 little frame building then used as a factory eating- 
 room. At this gathering a club called the Com¬ 
 monwealth Fellowship was organised. It now has 
 a thousand members. Its quarters have expanded 
 into a handsome and commodious brick building and 
 its activities take in every conceivable interest of the 
 
4 2 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 plant and the working force. If one wants proofs 
 that the cultivation of good fellowship on the high¬ 
 est Christian lines is practical in a factory, he ought 
 to study the co-operation the Commonwealth Steel 
 Company gets in its undertakings. 
 
 Here is an example of a character so unusual that 
 it called forth the hearty commendations of the /w- 
 ternational Moulders’ Journal, though the plant is 
 an open shop. It was desired to make certain 
 changes in the foundry in the interests of efficiency 
 and economy, and the company offered to share 
 half of the time saved with the moulders. In 
 the early winter the men were informed that the 
 change had saved several hundred dollars and that 
 their half was ready for them. How should it be 
 distributed? Times had been dull in the plant and 
 a number of men had been idle. The moulders 
 knew that the company had set aside a fund to aid 
 these men. Accordingly they asked that the money 
 coming to them be applied to this fund. The com¬ 
 pany answered by turning over the entire sum. 
 
 The clubhouse or club-room has generally as its 
 first and possibly most important service the furnish¬ 
 ing of a place in which to lunch. The lunch-room 
 serves an industry in much the same way that an 
 athletic field does. The day will come, I believe, 
 when the failure to furnish proper lunching places 
 for a working force will be looked on as one of the 
 most uneconomical practices of the innumerable 
 number with which industry burdens itself. Peo¬ 
 ple who eat cold meals from the corner of their desks 
 
" A FINE PLACE TO WORK ” 
 
 43 
 
 or machines do it at the expense of their afternoon 
 efficiency. I never see this untidy, cheerless prac¬ 
 tice in operation that I do not feel like suggesting to 
 the officers and directors of the concern tolerating it 
 that they lunch for a week in the same place and 
 from the same cold food, and then test their after¬ 
 noon efficiency. 
 
 Moreover, it is a waste of an excellent social op¬ 
 portunity. There is no way in which men and 
 women more quickly come together than over com¬ 
 mon meals. “ You can’t fuss with the fellow you 
 eat with,” said a man at the Commonwealth. If 
 they run their own lunching place, electing officers 
 and deciding on expenditures, as many do, so much 
 the better. If the officers and superintendents share 
 the lunch-room even occasionally, the effect is ex¬ 
 cellent. At the Commonwealth Steel plant the 
 lunch-room is even doing something to unsettle one 
 of the most fixed of American — not European — 
 prejudices. There are several coloured men in the 
 factory. The locality, the Egypt of Illinois, has 
 always held the extreme Southern view of the social 
 place of the negro. In arranging the lunch-room 
 separate tables were provided for white and col¬ 
 oured; but I was told it was not infrequent for a 
 white man deliberately to take a coloured man’s table 
 or invite him to his. A little thing, perhaps, but it 
 shows the quality of the fellowship which pervades 
 the place. 
 
 It is usual to turn the lunch-room into an amuse¬ 
 ment hall after the meal is over. I once lunched 
 
44 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 with the president of a big Rochester manufactur¬ 
 ing concern in a room probably one hundred and 
 fifty feet in length by fifty feet in width filled with 
 small tables and served in cafeteria fashion. The 
 sides of this room were practically of glass. From 
 the great windows one looked out on eight acres of 
 ground equally divided by this wing. Great trees, 
 beautiful shrubs and a most perfect sward, tennis 
 courts, bowling greens, flowers and vines made it 
 as lovely a place as one could ask. These opera¬ 
 tives lunch in a place as beautiful as any resident of 
 this beautiful city. 
 
 There were probably three hundred men and 
 women using the room the day that I lunched there; 
 the excellent and abundant food was given them at 
 cost; my lunch cost fifteen cents. It was no better 
 or cheaper than that I have eaten in scores of lunch¬ 
 rooms between the Mississippi and the Atlantic, the 
 rooms varying in size from big halls like this, some¬ 
 times handsomely decorated, to little rooms in a 
 mansard roof of a city building. The lunch over, 
 the groups naturally turn to amusements. In this 
 particular place some fell to playing cards or chess, 
 others to talking, a few to reading, many to dancing, 
 or listening to the music. On a pleasant day the 
 whole company would have gone outside to games 
 or to walk in the grounds. 
 
 The effect of all these varied free activities on 
 men and women who are employed on machines, as 
 such vast throngs are in these days, is blessed. It 
 
“ A FINE PLACE TO WORK ” 
 
 45 
 
 breaks the intolerable monotony. The monotony is 
 one of the most dangerous and cruel features of 
 modern manufacturing. It is probably the chief 
 cause of the unstable pay roll. The worker is so 
 limited in his interests that his mind turns on his 
 own condition and situation. The machine becomes 
 his enemy. He cannot endure it. He breaks away, 
 to repeat the experience in different factories. He 
 becomes a floater. It is either that or settling into 
 dull endurance. But give the operative something 
 to think of, something related to his work, and the 
 monotony and fatigue are relieved. 
 
 The wise woman who directs the social activities 
 of the Pilgrim Laundry of Brooklyn said to me once 
 that no girl could do two thousand collars a day if 
 she didn’t have something interesting to think of, 
 something which concerned herself. She sees to it 
 that there is always something pleasant planned for 
 the girls to do. It is the thought of a play they are 
 to give, a dance, an excursion that keeps their minds 
 alive and happy while their fingers carry on the 
 rapid work demanded of them. 
 
 “ You don’t know how changed life has been for 
 
 me since Miss A- came here and showed us 
 
 how to organize clubs and things,” a fine sober girl 
 said to me in a white goods factory once. She had 
 been pointed out as the editor of the factory paper, 
 a lively little monthly full of the activities of the 
 place, and had stopped her machine to answer my 
 questions. “ You see, now I can think of the paper 
 
46 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 and what I shall put into it w T hile I do my work. 
 Before, I had nothing to think of and I did get so 
 tired every day.” 
 
 “ Do you do as much work? ” I asked. 
 
 “ More,” she said, and pulled out the little ac¬ 
 count book to prove it. “ It goes easier; all the 
 girls say so, too.” 
 
 The activities which grow up in these industrial 
 groups are by no means limited to amusements and 
 sports. They are frequently devoted to self-im¬ 
 provement. Sewing, domestic science, stenography, 
 arithmetic, literature, technical branches related to 
 the industry, spring up naturally as the force be¬ 
 comes acquainted. The benefit of this to the worker 
 is no more bounded by his term in the factory than 
 is the benefit that comes to him from out-of-door 
 sports. Here again he has learned something about 
 himself. He has found ways of enriching and en¬ 
 livening his life, and the knowledge cannot be left 
 behind if he leaves the factory. He is a better, 
 happier, and more efficient citizen for his term of 
 service there. 
 
 The factory profits from this improvement while 
 he stays by it. He profits throughout his life. 
 
 There are of course multitudes of people to argue 
 that all this is none of the employers’ business, that 
 people find what they want, that there are enough 
 opportunities everywhere for pleasure and improve¬ 
 ment if men and women have the energy to look for 
 them. 
 
 Why establish playgrounds, ball grounds, parks, 
 
“ A FINE PLACE TO WORK 55 
 
 47 
 
 they ask, when every city does something of the kind 
 and they are never fully used? 
 
 Generous and thoughtful as a city may be in scat¬ 
 tering open spaces it cannot meet this particular 
 need. The worker requires a space at hand where 
 he can put in his short noon and evening leisure at 
 play in factory uniform. No city can provide an 
 open space for each factory. Grand Rapids, Mich¬ 
 igan, comes as near to doing this as any town I have 
 seen. It aims to give a playground within a half- 
 mile of every child, and it certainly has an open 
 space within the same distance of almost every fac¬ 
 tory; but this is far from meeting the demand I am 
 talking of. Rochester, New York, has a large and 
 well-distributed system of parks, but there are sev¬ 
 eral factories within the city limits which have pro¬ 
 vided athletic grounds. The Eastman Company 
 has in its Kodak Park on the outskirts of the town 
 a beautiful setting of turf and shrubs and vines for 
 its great factories, and scattered throughout the 
 space are tennis courts and ball fields. 
 
 The top floor of the factory lunch-room has been 
 turned into an assembly hall which will accommodate 
 many hundred people. I once attended a party 
 there, given by a group of factory girls. There 
 were literally hundreds of couples on the floor, 
 among them many of the officers and directors of 
 the plant. Their wives were with them. Mr. 
 Eastman was present with a group of friends. This 
 is the custom of the place. It was as merry and 
 democratic a party as any one could wish. 
 
4 8 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 Many contend that factory amusements are a 
 wasteful overlapping of the social activities of 
 churches, settlements, municipalities. My own ob¬ 
 servation is that there is always more demand for 
 healthful amusements than supply. There is a fac¬ 
 tory district in New York City of not over twenty 
 blocks where there are ten thousand girls and 
 women at work. Outside of the cheap dance halls, 
 movies, and theatres there is not in this area pro¬ 
 vision for evening sports for over one thousand, if 
 that. 
 
 Neither church, family, nor state is deprived of 
 any opportunity or support by the social activities 1 
 of the factory. They are all improved and stim¬ 
 ulated by them. As for the established social 
 centres, they will lose only when they are less in¬ 
 viting, less stimulating. If they are undemocratic 
 — that is, absorbed by sets, as often happens — 
 they will lose. If their activities smack of con¬ 
 descension, they will lose. If they are philanthro¬ 
 pies, not encouraging pleasure for pleasure’s sake 
 but that they may teach something indirectly, they 
 will lose. Otherwise, they will gain. 
 
 Leadership, kind, wise, inspired by the convic¬ 
 tion that factory and shop under modern conditions 
 furnish one of the finest opportunities in the world 
 to develop people both as individuals and groups, 
 is essential for the work. Such leadership has 
 brought to more than one factory such a spirit of 
 happiness that men and women again are singing at 
 their work. There is no reason they should not. 
 
“ A FINE PLACE TO WORK ” 
 
 49 
 
 The machine is an almost sentient thing. Its roar 
 and clash and whir to him who has learned to know 
 it has its own strange rhythm and song. The 
 worker who has come to it in health and courage 
 has no quarrel with his machine. Indeed, he often 
 sings to it and with it. 
 
 One of the happiest things that I have seen in 
 factories on which an intelligent scientific manage¬ 
 ment had laid its always kind (if always firm) hand 
 has been the singing of girls over their machines. 
 But they cannot do it on the long day, on poor pay, 
 or on hearts to which joy is a stranger. They will 
 do it only when they have come to feel and to say, 
 “ My, but this is a fine place to work! ” 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF SAFETY 
 
 The new workshop is a safe shop. The killing 
 of men and women has always been accepted by the 
 world as very much a matter of course. “ The sea 
 is hungry, we must bear many sons,” the wives of the 
 Breton fishermen say; and so say the women of the 
 cotton mills and iron furnaces, the match factories 
 and railroads. 
 
 Sacredness of human life! The world has never 
 believed it! It has been with life that we settled 
 our quarrels, won wives, gold and land, defended 
 ideas, imposed religions. We have held that a 
 death toll was a necessary part of every human 
 achievement, whether sport, war, or industry. A 
 moment’s rage over the horror of it, and we have 
 sunk into indifference. 
 
 There is a new industrial philosophy abroad 
 which breaks with this idea: Nothing is so valu¬ 
 able economically as the man. To injure or to kill 
 him is to destroy the one essential element in the 
 scheme of world-wide civilisation and prosperity. 
 He who can produce at the top of his bent can con¬ 
 sume equally. The stronger, the longer lived, the 
 happier, the more ambitious he is, the better for 
 mankind. Injury and death are the fruits of igno- 
 
 50 
 
THE GOSPEL OF SAFETY 
 
 5i 
 
 ranee, recklessness, and greed. A death toll is no 
 part of a properly managed industry.- It is waste¬ 
 ful, wantonly wasteful. The saving of life thus be¬ 
 comes an industrial issue. In more than one Ameri¬ 
 can industry it has become a gospel — a gospel 
 which, defended as a sound economic policy, is prac¬ 
 tised with the whole-heartedness and zeal of a re¬ 
 ligion. 
 
 Under the impulse of this new notion museums of 
 safety have been established; organisations nation¬ 
 wide and including representatives of every species 
 of industrial undertaking have been formed; con¬ 
 gresses have been held; a literature is being rapidly 
 evolved; educational campaigns are on foot. It is 
 a new movement upon us, one devoted to the en¬ 
 nobling and thrilling task of saving life. 
 
 How did it start? To answer that question 
 rightly would take us too far afield. For our pur¬ 
 poses the origin of its motto, “ Safety the First 
 Consideration,” is sufficient. I stumbled on that 
 three years ago at the mouth of a Pennsylvania coal 
 mine. I had spent a couple of days in and about the 
 shafts, the engine and pump rooms, the stables and 
 galleries of the mines, and in visiting the miners’ 
 homes. 
 
 It was a type of mine and of miners’ village that 
 I had been fairly familiar with twenty years ago. 
 The contrast was so great that I was filled with 
 joyful amazement. I had seen galleries lighted 
 with electricity, where I had once known only blaz¬ 
 ing torches. I had found men equipped with the 
 
52 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 very latest German electric mining lanterns, where 
 before I had been familiar with smoking oil lamps 
 stuck in the cap. I had seen comfortable stables be¬ 
 low ground filled with fat mules and horses, and 
 talked with a stable boss who gave a bonus to the 
 man who was kindest to animals. I had found 
 trained rescue squads in every mine, and had heard 
 the president of the company explode violently at 
 the idea of superintendents depending upon them: 
 
 “ To-with rescue work. Prevent accidents! ” 
 
 This, in contrast to a time when, if there was a 
 rescue, it was made by ignorant volunteers, and to 
 a president who piously opined that death and muti¬ 
 lation were the will of the Lord. 
 
 After these observations I was not surprised to 
 find at the head of a code of rules posted about the 
 mines, and printed not only in English but in several 
 other languages: 
 
 “SAFETY MUST BE THE FIRST CONSIDERATION ” 
 
 It was not a new order. It is at least twenty years 
 since Thomas Lynch, then president of the H. 
 C. Frick Coke Company, had made this rule. 
 Not the least of the values the Steel Corporation 
 received when in 1900 it absorbed Mr. Lynch’s con¬ 
 cern was the slogan “ Safety the First Considera¬ 
 tion ”; though if anybody at that time had sug¬ 
 gested to the makers of that aggregation that the 
 little phrase had a value they would probably have 
 met with derision. 
 
 Certainly, if the directors of the Steel Corpora- 
 
THE GOSPEL OF SAFETY 
 
 53 
 
 tion had been told ten years ago that they would 
 soon be spending three-quarters of a million of dol¬ 
 lars annually in accident prevention, would be giving 
 of their own time and that of hundreds of em¬ 
 ployes, that they would be running hospitals and a 
 museum, publishing books and pamphlets on safety 
 and sanitation, they would have resented the allega¬ 
 tion as a reflection on their business sense. Mr. 
 Gary had difficulty enough in 1900 in committing 
 his directors to a policy of publicity. If he had sug¬ 
 gested the present policy of safety his unfitness for 
 the position would have been conclusively demon¬ 
 strated! “ If I had asked five years ago for money 
 to do what I am urged to do to-day by the direc¬ 
 tors of this concern,” the superintendent of a big 
 rolling mill once said to me, “ I would have been dis¬ 
 charged on the spot.” 
 
 But the idea had long been knocking at men’s 
 minds. It had shown itself in state legislation, 
 amateurish and general laws to be sure, amounting 
 to little more than orders to guard machines, but 
 forcing on those industries at which they were aimed 
 the necessity of studying the causes of their accidents 
 and, as far as possible, devising safeguards. 
 
 Nearly all of the first safety legislation concerned 
 itself with iron and steel and its manufacture. It 
 was time! This iron and steel industry has a ter¬ 
 rible death roll charged to it. What more frightful 
 record of the havoc it has wrought than the present 
 boast of the Steel Corporation that “ each year there 
 now escape serious or fatal injuries over 2,300 em- 
 
54 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 ployes who would have been injured under conditions 
 existing in 1906.” This, on a pay roll of 200,000! 
 This means what? Why, that before 1906 — ten 
 years ago only — over one per cent, of its workers 
 were killed or seriously injured; that since 1906 they 
 have saved thousands of men from death or mutila¬ 
 tion. 
 
 Fatal Industrial Accidents 
 
 Estimate for the United States for 1913 
 
 No. of Fatal Industrial 
 Employees Accidents 
 
 MALES 
 
 Pertly Pertly Rat* per 
 
 Esrimatrd Ettim&ted 100O Etnp)oy«wb 100 5V> 300 
 
 Metal Mining 
 
 170.000 
 
 680 
 
 Coal Mining 
 
 750.000 
 
 2.625 
 
 Fisheries 
 
 150.000 
 
 450 
 
 Navigation 
 
 150.000 
 
 450 
 
 Railroad Employee* 
 
 1.750.000 
 
 4.200 
 
 Electricians (Light and Power) 
 
 68,000 
 
 153 
 
 Navy and Marine Corps 
 
 62.000 
 
 115 
 
 Quarrying 
 
 150,000 
 
 255 
 
 Lumber Industry 
 
 531.000 
 
 797 
 
 Soldiers. U. S. Army 
 
 73.000 
 
 109 
 
 Building and Construction 
 
 1.500.000 
 
 1.875 
 
 Draymen. Teamsters. Etc. 
 
 686.000 
 
 686 
 
 Street Railway Employees 
 
 320.000 
 
 320 
 
 Watchmen. Policemen. Firemen 
 
 200.000 
 
 150 
 
 Telephone. Telegraph (Inc. Linemen) 
 
 245,000 
 
 123 
 
 Agricultural Pursuits 
 
 12 000.000 
 
 4.200 
 
 Manufacturing (General) 
 
 7.277 000 
 
 I.8I5( 
 
 All Other Occupied Males 
 
 4.768.000 
 
 3.508 
 
 MALES 
 
 
 
 All Occupied Males 
 
 30.760.000 
 
 22.515 
 
 FEMALES 
 
 
 
 All Occupied Females 
 
 7.200.000 
 
 540 
 
 400 
 
 Note*—'Approximately there are 25.000 Fatal Industrial Accidents per Annum in the United State* 
 
 and 300.000 Senous Injuries 
 
 The railroads have a record even more startling. 
 In the year ending June, 1913, there were 10,964 
 persons killed on them and 200,308 injured. Yet 
 neither iron and steel, nor the railroads, have the 
 highest death toll. The table above — the work of 
 that careful statistician of the Prudential Insurance 
 Co., Dr. F. L. Hoffman — shows that metal mining, 
 coal mining, the fisheries, navigation, all kill a larger 
 number of men per thousand employed. 
 
THE GOSPEL OF SAFETY 
 
 55 
 
 However, it was at manufacturing that the first 
 safety laws were aimed. If machinery could be 
 made danger proof there would be no accidents, and 
 so there began an examination of wheels, gears and 
 belts and hammers, of every point, in fact, where a 
 man might possibly be trapped. Each shop worked 
 out its own devices; the conviction of each that it 
 has devised something more practical than any 
 competitor is general. I have listened to the hot¬ 
 test arguments on the merits of saw protectors, belt 
 and wheel guards. 
 
 One of the finest points about the work is the fact 
 that almost nobody devising protective devices has 
 consented to have them patented. Not long ago 
 I went through a big manufacturing plant in Wis¬ 
 consin. There were a number of ingenious safety 
 devices in use, all new to me, the inventions of the 
 safety expert of the plant. “ Why do you not have 
 these patented? ” I asked. It was the same answer 
 that I had received again and again: “I couldn’t 
 do it. It’s to save life. If anybody can get any 
 help from them he is welcome to it.” 
 
 The Steel Corporation opens its Museum of 
 Safety in New York to everybody. It freely gives 
 to all inquirers drawings of the various apparatus 
 it has devised. It also distributes on request copies 
 of its “ Standard Requirements of Safety,” a vol¬ 
 ume embodying the experience of its subsidiaries in 
 preventing injuries. “ This isn’t the kind of thing 
 to make money from! ” they’ll tell you. 
 
 This private work is proving rich material for 
 
56 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 legislators. It is giving them definite information 
 as to what they should require, something impossible 
 otherwise for them to know. In Wisconsin in the 
 last four years the Industrial Commission has pub¬ 
 lished a series of bulletins on various phases of 
 safety, in the making of which the experience of 
 many concerns, big and little, both within and with¬ 
 out the State, has been utilised. 
 
 The method of procedure in preparing these bul¬ 
 letins is the same as that employed in fixing the regu¬ 
 lations for shop lighting. Take, for instance, their 
 bulletin on elevators. All the experience on the 
 subject available in the country was gathered by the 
 commission and laid before a committee made up of 
 manufacturers, of labour representatives, and of 
 Mr. Price, the commission expert. They moiled 
 and toiled for six months; but when they had fin¬ 
 ished their work they had a standard elevator which 
 the heaviest member of the committee, a manufac¬ 
 turer weighing over two hundred pounds, believed 
 could not drop far enough to injure him. It was 
 the first time that a really safe standard had been 
 set. 
 
 Since the Wisconsin orders were issued it has 
 been the general practice of manufacturers in this 
 State to specify in the contract with the elevator 
 companies that the elevator must conform to the 
 standards of the commission and must pass inspec¬ 
 tion before it is paid for. 
 
 That manufacturers are going to require those 
 from whom they buy machinery to conform to safety 
 
THE GOSPEL OF SAFETY 
 
 57 
 
 standards has been certain from the beginning of 
 the safety device movement. Over four years ago 
 Mr. Luther D. Burlingame, the chief draftsman of 
 the Brown & Sharpe Manufacturing Company of 
 Providence, a shop where safety has long been a 
 matter of real concern, said in an article on Factory 
 Safeguards: “ I believe we shall soon see the time 
 when one of the elements entering into the question 
 of which of rival makes of machines will be pur¬ 
 chased, will be: Which is best guarded? ” 
 
 That time is rapidly coming. Since 1909 the 
 Steel Corporation has had a man in every drafting- 
 room checking all blue prints for safety. Min¬ 
 nesota has a law that every machine coming into 
 the State shall be properly guarded. In the last two 
 years I have walked through miles of store-rooms 
 where every machine had guards as a matter of 
 course. At the last safety exhibit in New York 
 City, scores of safety devices were exhibited by pri¬ 
 vate concerns. In fact, a new branch of industry 
 is fast developing out of the safety crusade. 
 
 That lives are saved and injuries prevented daily 
 by these devices is true. Not many months ago I 
 stood watching a saw at work in a big Western plant, 
 when suddenly the heavy vertical belt broke with a 
 vicious snap. It was protected, else the man at the 
 saw would certainly have been killed or seriously 
 injured. Rarely have I been through a factory that 
 I have not had similar demonstration of the value of 
 the guards. 
 
 But when industry had really set its mind on the 
 
58 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 question of accidents, and begun to analyse causes, 
 it saw that, while unguarded, improperly built, and 
 improperly placed machines did work havoc, they 
 were by no means responsible for the majority of 
 accidents. The great majority came from trivial 
 causes: slipping hand tools, falls, stumbling, the fail¬ 
 ure to get out of the way of moving things like cars 
 and cranes. In a careful investigation of 100,708 
 accidents the Steel Corporation found that 44.93 per 
 cent, occurred in hand labour where no safety device 
 was possible. It was surprising what a large per¬ 
 centage was due to improper clothing of workmen: 
 long-sleeved jumpers, loose neckties, and loose hair. 
 In all the shops there began a crusade against these 
 things. At present no factory issues a book of 
 safety rules and regulations without including some 
 particular orders about the kind of clothes a man 
 should wear. 
 
 An industry which has always had a heavy per¬ 
 centage of accidents is the foundry. Out of 5,421 
 accidents in Wisconsin in a recent year, distributed 
 over 26 industries, 16.66 per cent, were in foundries 
 and metal works. The only industry outstripping 
 it was lumber and its manufacturing. The bulk of 
 these foundry accidents were burns caused by the 
 spilling, the overflowing, or the exploding of molten 
 metal. At least 70 per cent, of these burns were on 
 the feet and legs, and in a majority of these cases 
 it was found that they would have been prevented if 
 the workman had worn congress gaiters and hard 
 cloth jean trousers. Brown & Sharpe of Provi- 
 
THE GOSPEL OF SAFETY 
 
 59 
 
 dence, Rhode Island, have for several years sold 
 their men the proper foundry shoe at cost and ad¬ 
 vised the correct trousers. All of the foundries 
 which are taking up safety work are following this 
 practice. One foundry of which I know claims that 
 its accidents were reduced eighty-five per cent, by 
 compelling the men to wear congress gaiters. 
 
 The foundries of the Commonwealth Steel Com¬ 
 pany at Granite City, Illinois, have been paved 
 throughout in the interest both of efficiency and 
 safety. The difference between going about in a 
 foot or more of soft dirt, such as usually overlies a 
 foundry floor, and on this pavement, is that of 
 travelling on good or on bad roads. A peculiar 
 danger in the foundries of this company arises from 
 the quantities of wire in short lengths used in rein¬ 
 forcing their great steel castings. Fragments are 
 scattered everywhere. To remove these a great 
 magnet is run at regular intervals over the pits and 
 pavement, in a fashion at once thorough and magi¬ 
 cal. The unseen force picks up these thousands of 
 pieces, though often buried out of sight. 
 
 Of course the risks, both from machines and cloth¬ 
 ing, are entirely different in different industries. In 
 the foundry it is the molten metal that the feet must 
 be guarded against. In the tannery it is tacks! At 
 one stage of the work the skins are fastened to 
 frames by tacks at least a half-inch in length. When 
 these skins are jerked off, the tacks inevitably are 
 scattered over the floor and men frequently run 
 them into their feet, with the danger of infection. 
 
6o 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 To meet this, Pfister & Vogel of Milwaukee em¬ 
 ploy a cobbler, whose business it is to see that the 
 soles of the shoes used in that department are tack 
 proof! 
 
 In a cotton mill I visited not long ago I found the 
 industrial nurse carrying on an educational campaign 
 among the hundreds of girls and women on the sub¬ 
 ject of tight-fitting dust caps and short-sleeved work 
 aprons. She was depending for her ammunition 
 not only on the danger from loose hair and loose 
 clothing but upon the protection from dust and oil 
 which such a uniform gave. In the sewing classes 
 for the girls which she had introduced, the cap and 
 apron were made regularly. The innovation was 
 winning its way slowly; but the fact that perhaps 
 fifty girls had adopted cap or apron, or both, in a 
 year seemed to the nurse, wise in the ways of human 
 beings, an encouraging result. It was. 
 
 The crux of the safety movement is not in inani¬ 
 mate things. It lies with the men and women con¬ 
 cerned. The conclusion of all those who have been 
 active in the work is that of the Wisconsin Com¬ 
 mission : 
 
 One-third of the accident reduction may be made by safe¬ 
 guards. 
 
 Two-thirds must be made by inspection, education and 
 organisation — that is, by the care of men. 
 
 Take the experience of the head of the Steel Cor¬ 
 poration Bureau of Safety and Sanitation, Mr. C. 
 L. Close — it is typical of that of scores of men in 
 
THE GOSPEL OF SAFETY 
 
 61 
 
 various industries. About eight years ago Mr. 
 Close was sent out by the National Tube Works to 
 see if he could reduce the accidents in their thirteen 
 plants. 
 
 Almost at once he saw that the machine guards 
 were but a small part of his problem. He saw it 
 demonstrated again and again that the best devices 
 in the world might be installed, and yet terrible ac¬ 
 cidents happen from reckless or ignorant handling. 
 In spite of the unusual danger of working with 
 molten metals and in shaping red-hot iron and steel 
 into bars and plates, he found men who seemed to 
 prefer taking chances to taking care. In number¬ 
 less ways men repeatedly expressed their contempt 
 for caution. One of the most frequent signs of 
 their disapproval was battering the illuminated or 
 coloured safety mottoes and directions which were 
 scattered through the plants. I have several times 
 seen these signs printed in four or five languages 
 badly mutilated — the work of defiant and contempt¬ 
 uous labourers. This may have expressed their 
 attitude toward caution, or it may have been an ex¬ 
 pression of dissatisfaction with a boss, or the com¬ 
 pany, or life in general. 
 
 At all events, it was very soon evident to Mr. 
 Close, as it was to other casualty agents of the cor¬ 
 poration, that a campaign of education among the 
 men must be carried on. They must be taught to 
 respect safety and to obey the rules laid down to 
 insure it. It is at this point that well-intentioned 
 employers have often dropped their efforts to make 
 
62 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 life safer and more tolerable in their factories. 
 Why provide shields for buzz saws if the workman 
 is going to take them off as soon as his foreman’s 
 back is turned? Again and again I have heard this 
 buzz saw quoted. It is almost as familiar as the 
 reason for not putting bathtubs in the labourer’s 
 cottage — somebody once found a bathtub filled 
 with coal! We are all slow in learning that men 
 must be taught. 
 
 The very indifference and hostility of the men 
 seem to have put the safety agents of the Steel 
 Corporation on their mettle. They made up their 
 minds that caution must be taught. Probably the 
 most powerful factor in their educational campaign 
 wa$ the growing respect the men saw given to the 
 matter of safety by their foremen and superintend¬ 
 ents. These hard-worked individuals may be for¬ 
 given, if at the start they looked on the undertaking 
 as “ a sop to the public.” Their first business had 
 been to produce tonnage, their great ambition was 
 to produce more tonnage than anybody else was do¬ 
 ing. If they maimed or killed a man they accepted 
 it as a part of the day’s work, as we, the public, 
 accept the daily slaughter by our automobiles, our 
 theatre fires, and our bursting dams. 
 
 What they soon discovered, however, was that 
 safety was business. A multitude of things in the 
 plants of the corporation impressed this upon them. 
 They saw the company spending tens of thousands 
 of dollars in mechanical safety devices. They and 
 their crews were offered rewards for suggestions, 
 
THE GOSPEL OF SAFETY 
 
 63 
 
 and frequently large sums were paid for ideas which 
 the “ safety men ” considered practical. They 
 heard of safety conferences at the steel company’s 
 headquarters in New York and finally of a Corpora¬ 
 tion Committee which was to act as a clearing house 
 for all that they and the other plants discovered. 
 
 From time to time members of this committee 
 appeared, and they heard discussions over the most 
 practical netting for guards; possible prevention of 
 explosions — scores of matters which, it is prob¬ 
 able, they never before had heard spoken of by a 
 superior. And if they had an accident, investiga¬ 
 tors appeared, the cause was found, means to pre¬ 
 vent a repetition were devised. Safety was an is¬ 
 sue. Something they must take hold of hard if 
 they were to keep their rank in the plants. The 
 further the work was carried the more sensible Mr. 
 Close and his colleagues became that safety was up 
 to the men; that they were the best inspectors and 
 guardians. To organise them, to instruct them and 
 to inspire them with safety enthusiasm, they con¬ 
 cluded to be their chief function. The outcome of 
 this undertaking is one of the most remarkable pieces 
 of co-operative work which we have seen in industry 
 in this country. The entire Steel Corporation, 
 from the New York end to the remotest mines of the 
 West, is in this organisation. Each department in 
 each plant has its safety committee, and always 
 these committees have on them one or more men 
 from the ranks. During 1913 there were 7,300 
 employes who made inspection or served upon com- 
 
6 4 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 mittees. These employes are changed frequently, 
 so that in course of time each man in the plant will 
 have served. The same practice prevails on the 
 Northwestern Railroad. 
 
 Their success in this organisation has been re¬ 
 markable, and this has been very largely due to their 
 own enthusiasm. This enthusiasm has been a grad¬ 
 ual growth. Take Mr. Close’s own case. I doubt 
 very much if when he was first sent to the National 
 Tube Company’s Works as a safety inspector he 
 relished the idea. It possibly did not seem to him 
 a man’s job. Moreover, he was in the line of pro¬ 
 motion, and such are the chances in iron- and steel¬ 
 making for those who have reached the point where 
 he was that he might fairly have hoped to hold a 
 position of large responsibility. At the moment, 
 too, he probably shared the fatalistic opinion that ac¬ 
 cidents are inevitable, and that you must take yours 
 like a man when it comes. Whatever doubt lurked 
 in his mind at the start, whatever callousness toward 
 accidents he may have harboured, they have long 
 since been submerged in one of the most absolute 
 faiths in a work I ever encountered, coupled with 
 an enthusiasm as contagious as it is genuine. Safety 
 in steel-making has put all ideas of ever making steel 
 again out of Mr. Close’s mind — all he wants in 
 life, apparently, is the opportunity to spread his 
 gospel. And he is but a type of many men in the 
 safety work of the country’s industries. 
 
 It took time and patient work to educate fore¬ 
 men and superintendents to this belief in and en- 
 
THE GOSPEL OF SAFETY 
 
 65 
 
 thusiasm for safety. It took time to educate any 
 considerable force of the men. Every human ap¬ 
 peal has been made in the campaign. Good results 
 have come from arousing a spirit of rivalry between 
 different departments. Score-cards are kept, and 
 “How’s your batting average?” is almost as ac¬ 
 ceptable a question in the Illinois Steel Works ap¬ 
 plied to safety as it is to baseball. At one of the 
 mines of the Frick Coke Company I saw a superin¬ 
 tendent almost in tears because his rescue squad, 
 which two years before had taken a first-prize in 
 an international contest held in Washington, had 
 lost its place in a local contest by one eighth of one 
 per cent.! 
 
 The safety bulletins published and circulated in 
 these plants give these records, of course, and the 
 men watch them eagerly. They print, too, descrip¬ 
 tions of accidents and near accidents which, simply 
 as problems, interest the workmen and of course 
 quicken and instruct their wits. Here are a few 
 samples drawn from the admirably edited bulletins 
 of Mr. Robert J. Young, the head of the safety 
 wwk in the Illinois Steel Company: 
 
 Description: The injured man and fellow workmen 
 were on a lean-to, repairing a stack. The yard crane runs 
 close to the lean-to, and the three men were standing and 
 leaning their arms on the crane runway. The crane came 
 along, two of them got out of the way, but the third man 
 allowed his arm to remain on the track, and owing to the 
 guard on the crane wheel having been broken the day be¬ 
 fore this man’s arm was caught, fracturing the arm so badly 
 
66 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 that it was necessary to amputate between the shoulder and 
 elbow. 
 
 Suggestion: Investigation shows that the breaking and 
 dropping off of the crane guard had not been reported. In¬ 
 vestigation further disclosed that had this guard been in 
 place this accident would not have happened, and I desire 
 to bring this to your attention for the purpose of showing 
 the importance of having our crane wheels guarded, and the 
 prompt report by the craneman on blanks provided, when 
 safety devices are out of order. 
 
 The department of “ near accidents ” is conducted 
 in the same fashion. Every issue contains a list of 
 “ known cases where safety devices have prevented 
 accidents.” 
 
 Here are samples: 
 
 When Blast Furnace No. io, South Works, was blown 
 out, it was the last furnace in a battery of six to shut down, 
 and because of the danger of a serious explosion under these 
 circumstances the dust catchers and furnace were railed off. 
 
 There was a very serious explosion, wrecking the central 
 dust catcher of No. 9 and 10 furnaces. Because of the 
 precaution taken by the Blast Furnace management, no one 
 was injured. 
 
 Mr. Murray, superintendent of the spike and bolt fac¬ 
 tory at the Joliet Works, reports that last month an emery 
 wheel 22 inches in diameter, 3 inches face, ij^-inch hole, 
 safety shaped, cracked through the centre while running 
 1,100 r. p. m., but that the pieces were held in place securely 
 by the safety collars and no one was hurt. 
 
THE GOSPEL OF SAFETY 
 
 67 
 
 Frequently it has been wise to carry on a special 
 campaign for or against some practice hard to cor¬ 
 rect or break up. Take the wearing of goggles: 
 It is as difficult to persuade men to wear them as it 
 is to keep the guards on circular saws, yet a number 
 of necessary tasks, such as grinding metals on emery 
 wheels, chipping metals by hand, pouring babbitt, 
 handling molten metal, are constantly injuring eyes. 
 Good graphic work to show the extent of these in¬ 
 juries and the ease with which they might have been 
 avoided has been done by Mr. Young in the bulletin. 
 He has published a page of ninety-one pairs of gog¬ 
 gles shattered or injured by flying steel chips in the 
 plants of American steel foundries in a period of 
 three months. Often a gruesome sense of what 
 might have happened to a pair of eyes is driven in 
 by picturing a single pair of goggles battered by an 
 accident. 
 
 Often when a man cannot be interested in safety 
 as a game, cannot be frightened or wheedled into 
 precaution, he will yield to the appeal, “ Look out 
 for the other man; you might hurt him. If you 
 have no wife or child to protect, another man may 
 have! ” 
 
 The results of this education and organisation in 
 the Steel Corporation have been amazing. Fully 
 sixty per cent, of their accident reduction is charged 
 to it. It is a most complete demonstration that you 
 cannot plan and build safety; you cannot legislate 
 safety; you must work together for it. Perhaps, 
 after all, the greatest contribution which the Steel 
 
68 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 Corporation will make to American industry will be 
 the demonstration of the advantages of collective 
 action. Certainly, its safety organisation is the 
 greatest of the many contributions it has made to 
 the safety movement. Many industries are adapt¬ 
 ing it to their particular cases. 
 
 It is doubtful if any one of the new industrial 
 ideas has proved so conclusively that it is good 
 economy to conserve human life, even that life 
 which in our ignorance we have dared to call mean, 
 as this gospel of safety. Accidents have always 
 been a frightful drain on business. In 1912 the 
 railroads paid out over $30,000,000 on account of 
 personal injuries. In the three years of 1911, 1912, 
 and 1913 the casualty expense of the Steel Corpora¬ 
 tion was nearly seven and three-quarters millions of 
 dollars. This is an enormous sum, but if the con¬ 
 ditions which prevailed in the industry in 1906 had 
 continued, that is, if the Steel Corporation had not 
 been spending around three-quarters of a million a 
 year for safety work, the casualty expense would 
 have been more than tw r elve and a quarter millions. 
 What it amounts to is that in three years they 
 made a total net saving, through safety work, of 
 $2,697,115.19. 
 
 The reduction in the number of accidents has 
 everywhere been spectacular. The superintendent 
 of the Harvester Company says that, comparing the 
 year 1913 with 1911 and 1912, the number of ac¬ 
 cidents in their group of plants in Illinois showed a 
 reduction of about 16 per cent. In the waggon plant 
 
THE GOSPEL OF SAFETY 
 
 69 
 
 there was a reduction of over 30 per cent, and in 
 the twine plant of about 21 per cent. This reduc¬ 
 tion was in spite of the fact that there was a large 
 increase in the number of employes in this period. 
 New employes are always an increased hazard. 
 The Fairbanks Manufacturing Company of Beloit, 
 Wisconsin, claims that in 1912 the time lost through 
 accidents was 76 per cent, less than in 1907 — a 
 saving attributed solely to their safety campaign. 
 
 Mr. John W. Maple, of the Pfister & Vogel 
 Leather Company, reported to the Wisconsin In¬ 
 dustrial Commission that in 1912, when their present 
 system of accident preventions was in full sway, they 
 reduced machinery accidents 50 per cent., compared 
 with 1908 and 1909, when the shops were running 
 under about the same conditions, but without the 
 present precautions. 
 
 The showing of the railroads in the short time 
 since they began to follow the example set them by 
 Mr. Ralph Richards on the Northwestern has been 
 amazing. In 1912 the Delaware and Lackawanna, 
 the first of the Eastern roads to organise its force 
 and to publish bulletins, reduced the number killed, 
 as compared with 1911, by 35 per cent., the number 
 injured by 25 per cent., the number of amputations 
 by 50 per cent., and this notwithstanding the traffic 
 in 1913 was heavier than ever before in the history 
 of the road. One could go on with scores of such 
 examples. 1 
 
 1 At the congress held in October, 1914, in Chicago, by the Na¬ 
 tional Council for Industrial Safety, there was a bulletin among 
 
70 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 This reduction of suffering has an excellent effect 
 on the labouring body. It naturally increases the ef¬ 
 ficiency and contentment of the shop. The men in 
 the ranks recognise that they have a big part in 
 producing results, and they become proud of the 
 work. It is a wonderful lesson in the value of co¬ 
 operative effort, both for employer and employes. 
 Moreover, it shows how efforts may be made co¬ 
 operative, something which both labour and capital 
 have poorly understood. 
 
 the exhibits giving the percentages of reduction through efficient 
 safety work in the following group of manufacturing and transpor¬ 
 tation concerns. They show more effectively than much writing the 
 suffering that has been taken from the world by this movement: 
 
 INDUSTRIES: Bucyrus Company, 46 per cent.; Cadillac Motor 
 Company, 22 per cent.; Commonwealth Edison Company, 40 per 
 cent.; Eastman Kodak Company, 73 per cent.; Fairbanks Morse 
 Company, 72 per cent.; Harrison Bros. & Company, Inc., 68 per 
 cent.; Illinois Steel Company, 70 per cent.; Inland Steel Company, 
 55 per cent.; International Harvester Company (Wisconsin Steel 
 Company plant), 68 per cent.; Jones & Laughlin Steel Company, 
 71 per cent.; A. J. Lindemann & Hoverson Company, 62 per cent.; 
 Milwaukee Coke & Gas Company, 28 per cent.; Packard Motor 
 Car Company, 67 per cent.; Pullman Company, 70 per cent.; Rari¬ 
 tan Copper Works, 22 per cent.; Rochester Railway & Light Com¬ 
 pany, 45 per cent.; Swift & Company, 48 per cent.; U. S. Steel 
 Corporation, 11,074 men saved from serious injury or death since 
 1908. 
 
 TRANSPORTATION: Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway, 
 36 per cent.; Chicago, Burlington & Quincy R. R. Company, 31 per 
 cent.; Chicago & Northwestern Railway, 25 per cent.; Chicago, St. 
 Paul, Minneapolis & Omaha Railway, 34 per cent.; Chicago Sur¬ 
 face Lines (reduction in accidents to school children), 75 per cent.; 
 Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railway, 38 per cent.; El Paso 
 & Southwestern System, 42 per cent.; New York Central Lines, 30 
 per cent.; Northern Pacific Railway, 35 per cent.; Oregon Short 
 Lines, 39 per cent.; Pennsylvania Railroad, 30 per cent.; St. Louis 
 & San Francisco Railroad, 38 per cent.; Southern Pacific Railway, 
 52 per cent.; Missouri Pacific, 45 per cent. 
 
THE GOSPEL OF SAFETY 
 
 71 
 
 There is no point of the safety work which makes 
 a deeper impression on the labourer .and does more 
 to prevent suffering than the provisions which are 
 made generally now to give first aid to the injured. 
 They run from a simple first-aid-to-the-injured kit to 
 a fully equipped hospital with nurses and doctors 
 always in attendance. Under the new order 
 wounds, if mere scratches, are immediately dressed; 
 and for those seriously hurt there is from the in¬ 
 stant the most scientific care. 
 
 The effect of all this equipment is excellent; some¬ 
 body cares. Under the old system nobody cared, or 
 so it seemed. 
 
 But will the safety movement prove more than a 
 flash in the pan — one of those quick enthusiasms 
 which seize a body, and then quickly subside under 
 the strain and stress of the daily burdens? There 
 are the best of reasons for believing it is a per¬ 
 manent thing. In the first place, the most essential 
 side of safety is education, and as a whole the prac¬ 
 tical men in the movement are trying to extend the 
 education beyond the shops and factories; to commit 
 the world at large to the ideas. Possibly the most 
 effective thing they are attempting is to interest boys 
 and girls. In many steel towns this is done by hold¬ 
 ing occasional safety meetings where moving pic¬ 
 tures are shown, illustrating how accidents happen 
 and how they may be avoided. The Delaware and 
 Lackawanna, seizing on the idea, is offering pre¬ 
 miums to railroad boys and girls for the best safety 
 poem. Some of the results have appeared in the 
 
72 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 lively bulletin of the road. They may not be very 
 strong as verse, but you cannot read the effort of a 
 boy who has lost his leg by an accident, or a girl 
 who has lost a father, without a gulp in the throat. 
 
 The New York Central Railroad has been par¬ 
 ticularly energetic in its education of the public. It 
 keeps constantly on the road a moving picture car; 
 not only the men and their families are invited to the 
 exhibitions, but frequently the public. Marcus A. 
 Dow, the head of the Safety Bureau, has worked 
 out two or three typical movie melodramas, show¬ 
 ing how accidents happen, and the misery that they 
 cause. This railroad is also carrying on an ad¬ 
 mirable campaign against trespassing. When we 
 blame the railroad for the number of people 
 that it kills and injures, we do not usually take into 
 consideration that anybody but the railroad is to 
 blame, yet the Interstate Commerce Commission in 
 1912 declared more than 5,000 persons are killed in 
 this country each year while trespassing on railroad 
 tracks. The Safety Department of the New York 
 Central is specialising on this abuse. During 1914, 
 as compared with the year 1913, they decreased the 
 deaths of trespassers by 19 per cent. They are 
 working for laws against trespassers. It is a curi¬ 
 ous fact that there are 35 States in the Union which 
 do not prohibit persons walking on railroads and 
 rights of way. In various other ways they are try¬ 
 ing to put an end to carelessness in the place where it 
 most frequently exists, that is the general public. 
 
 What the “ safety boosters,” as they call them- 
 
THE GOSPEL OF SAFETY 
 
 73 
 
 selves, aim at is the safety habit, both within and 
 without industry. If they can train- us to it — we 
 who write articles on their carelessness and pass 
 laws to restrain them, while we kill ourselves and 
 others by reckless handling of automobiles and reck¬ 
 less insistence on speed and luxuries, they will have 
 rendered the world a great service. 
 
 One of the strongest guarantees that safety has 
 come to stay lies in the fact that employers are bind¬ 
 ing themselves voluntarily, or are being forced to 
 bind themselves, by laws to full liability for all in¬ 
 juries. 
 
 According to the American Labour Legislation 
 Review there are workmen’s compensation laws in 
 33 States and territories, that is, the Review says: 
 
 It is simpler now to enumerate the States which are still 
 without such legislation. They are Alabama, Arkansas, 
 Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Kentucky, Mississippi, 
 Missouri, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, 
 South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah and Vir¬ 
 ginia. Nearly all of these are Southern States and only 
 one of them, Missouri, is a State having one of the great 
 centres of population. 
 
 The laws vary naturally with the kinds of in¬ 
 dustries to which they apply. They vary in gen¬ 
 erosity and in compelling force; but that they will 
 all eventually come up to the most highly developed 
 form is certain. In many cases they will come there 
 by not only the consent, but the influence and advice 
 of employers. 
 
74 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 But devices and organisations forced by law on 
 a man arouse no great enthusiasm in him; you won’t 
 find his eyes glowing or his tongue eloquent over the 
 fact that he is forced to prevent accidents in order 
 to save expense. That is not the way men are made. 
 But in this safety work we do find enthusiasm, the 
 most genuine, the most sustained. It comes from 
 the realisation that at least half of the terrible scenes 
 which have become a commonplace to them, the suf¬ 
 fering which they have steeled themselves to see 
 without emotion, is preventable, that the other half 
 can be in many cases softened and mitigated. 
 
 “ I cannot tell you what it means to me to see this 
 place made safe,” the expert in a big manufacturing 
 concern told me once. “ I have seen scores of legs 
 and arms cut off in my time, and once a man cut in 
 two by a saw. I had hardened myself to the neces¬ 
 sity of it; but to have it put up to me to stop it, 
 to have safety a first consideration, that is one of the 
 greatest experiences of my life.” 
 
 Converted superintendents and manufacturers 
 make wonderful advocates. They can tell you of 
 what they have seen, what they are saving men from. 
 Perhaps as substantial evidence as we have had of 
 the whole-heartedness which they often put into 
 safety and related work comes from Wisconsin, 
 where, so Commissioner Beck writes, a band of 
 thirty manufacturers recently went out boosting 
 safety and sanitation. What a contrast to a day 
 when the manufacturer went about decrying as “ in¬ 
 terference with personal liberty ” every effort, pri- 
 
THE GOSPEL OF SAFETY 
 
 75 
 
 vate or public, at industrial safety and sanita¬ 
 tion ! 
 
 Any one familiar with old conditions and the new 
 understands what experts mean when they tell you 
 that safety meetings are frequently like prayer meet¬ 
 ings. My own first glimpse of the work taught me 
 that. I was making a casual visit to the National 
 Tube Works at McKeesport, Pennsylvania. I had 
 gone to the plant with a vivid picture in my mind of 
 the plants in and around Pittsburgh and Youngstown 
 in other days — dark, disorderly, crowded places 
 where one dodged danger at every step, and where 
 even ordinary precautions were scouted by men and 
 bosses as “ nonsense.” 
 
 I had some terrible memories to take with me, for 
 I had been close at hand once when a smelting fur¬ 
 nace burst and the flood of molten iron had caught 
 a dozen labourers at work on the pig-bed. I had 
 seen the victims of an overturned ladle carried to 
 their homes. All my old impressions were de¬ 
 stroyed at a glance, for I was confronted with an 
 order in yard and plant that I had supposed impos¬ 
 sible in steel- and iron-making. There was all the 
 cleanliness compatible with anything in the vicinity 
 of Pittsburgh, and as for safety — it was an 
 armoured shop as far as gears and wheels and 
 screws were concerned. I saw what was done for 
 the fellow who was injured — the hospital in the 
 yard with nurse and doctor. I heard of the vol¬ 
 untary compensation scheme which was in operation, 
 and as I saw these things I compared them with my 
 
76 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 old impressions. Well! It was like a prayer meet¬ 
 ing. 
 
 But there is another side to this safety movement 
 which may, after all, be the best guarantee of its 
 permanency. It is what it has done for the em¬ 
 ployer: it has given him a new notion of his own 
 work. It lifts it from the realm of mere profit 
 and production and places it among the great 
 undertakings which serve men. He sees himself as 
 something more than a maker of things. He is a 
 saver of life and suffering. His industry has be¬ 
 come an important link in the chain of human in¬ 
 stitutions which minister to men. It is consciousness 
 of this which adds to the tremendous enthusiasm for 
 safety, and makes of it a Gospel. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 HEALTH FOR EVERYMAN 
 
 Very like the safety movement in genesis, meth¬ 
 ods and enthusiasm is the less developed industrial 
 health movement. Its slogan is Health for Every¬ 
 man. Like the safety movement it wars on evils 
 which the average employer has long contended 
 were none of his business, but which having finally 
 accepted, he is attacking with hard common sense 
 and professional thoroughness. 
 
 Two classes of disease trouble industry. The 
 first are those incident to the occupation, trade 
 diseases. 
 
 There is no class, trade, profession or activity of 
 men and women which does not have a possible 
 physical evil accompanying it. A book has been 
 written on the “ Disorders of People of Fashion 
 one might equally well be written on the “Disor¬ 
 ders of Bankers and Brokers.” Writers have their 
 cramp and artists their colic. If classes with the 
 means to control their conditions and to secure the 
 best advice on avoiding the evils incident to their 
 work still are so afflicted that they are the support 
 of hundreds of Cures as well as of tens of thousands 
 of physicians and nurses, masseurs and pharmacists, 
 what can we expect of the millions in industries 
 
 77 
 
78 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 where they have no control over surroundings and 
 no instruction as to the dangers of their occupations. 
 These diseases which have made frightful havoc 
 with national health come from dozens of different 
 causes. They are the results of poisonous metals 
 and gases, of inflaming dusts and germs, of air pres¬ 
 sure and of strain. The potter is in danger of 
 lead poisoning, the match-maker of “ phossy 
 jaw”; textile-workers fear tuberculosis, washer¬ 
 women eczema. The stonemasons, sugar-refiners, 
 candy-makers all have skin diseases peculiar to 
 their trades. Gardeners are in danger of poison¬ 
 ing from the seventy or more irritant plants they 
 handle. Anthrax threatens those who work with 
 animals or animal products,— whether they be sort¬ 
 ers, butchers, shepherds or cattle salesmen. There 
 is a big range of tremors and palsies, of spasms and 
 neuroses traceable to shop and factory conditions. 
 Eye strains from improper lighting and from too 
 fixed and too continuous attention as well as injuries 
 from dust and gases are very general in many occu¬ 
 pations. Our growing knowledge of the causes of 
 many ailments which we have accepted as inevitable 
 and the realisation of the enormous influence these 
 things have on unhappiness and on inefficiency have 
 been a sharp spur to the efforts of all those who are 
 interested in industry in any way. The intelligent 
 employer is coming to a point in regard to occupa¬ 
 tional disease very like that he has towards safety. 
 “ Show me the disease and I will find a way to pre¬ 
 vent its ravages.” But just as safety is one-third 
 
HEALTH FOR EVERYMAN 
 
 79 
 
 prevention and two-thirds education and organisa¬ 
 tion, so in occupational diseases education and or¬ 
 ganisation are the biggest factors. 
 
 Take the matter of lead poisoning of which we 
 hear so much. After every mechanical precaution 
 has been taken — the care of the operative still is the 
 most important factor. His education and strict 
 supervision are essential, and this is now being un¬ 
 dertaken in many different industries. 
 
 The American Museum of Safety is recommend¬ 
 ing in its excellent bulletin “ Safety ” the following 
 set of rules adopted over two years ago by the Edi¬ 
 son Illuminating Company. It is a little fuller but 
 no better than several other sets of rules which I 
 have examined: 
 
 1. Do not work on an empty stomach; this is especially 
 important, as the stomach when empty readily absorbs lead. 
 
 2. Do not put the fingers in the mouth or take food while 
 at w r ork. 
 
 3. Keep the finger nails cut short and clean. 
 
 4. Do not chew tobacco while at work. In handling 
 tobacco, the lead oxides are carried from the hands to the 
 mouth. Chewing tobacco does not prevent the user from 
 swallowing the lead, as often believed. 
 
 5. When leaving work and before eating, wash the face, 
 hands and arms with soap, and thoroughly cleanse the mouth, 
 nose and finger nails. 
 
 6. Do not eat lunch in the same room in which there is 
 lead dust. 
 
 7. Drink plenty of good milk; it is a valuable preventa¬ 
 tive of lead poisoning. 
 
8 o 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 8. Whenever in the least constipated, take a dose of Ep¬ 
 som salts. It will do no harm to do this regularly. It is 
 exceedingly important that the bowels be kept in good con¬ 
 dition. 
 
 9. Take a bath frequently; cleanliness is the best preven¬ 
 tion of lead poisoning. 
 
 10. Working clothes should be left at the place of work. 
 
 11. It is better not to wear a moustache or beard, as they 
 collect dust. If worn, they should be cut short and kept 
 clean. A cap should be w T orn to cover the hair. 
 
 12. When sweeping, always dampen the floor to prevent 
 raising dust. 
 
 13. When working where there is lead dust, wear a 
 respirator. A good respirator can be made of several thick¬ 
 nesses of gauze or cheese cloth and should be washed every 
 day. 
 
 14. Do not drink alcoholic liquors while at work, or 
 better, avoid their use entirely. Whiskey does not cut the 
 lead in the system, as some believe. Alcohol always weakens 
 the system and makes it more susceptible to lead poisoning. 
 
 15. In work where lead comes in contact with the hands, 
 wear gloves as much as possible and wash and dry each day 
 when used. 
 
 16. The wearing of goggles will prevent the splashing of 
 wet sediment or acid in the eyes when repairing cells. 
 
 17. When melting lead with a hydrogen flame, as when 
 burning plates to bus bars or repairing tank linings, the fumes 
 given off may be blown away from the man operating the 
 flame by a suitably directed stream of air. (The air supply 
 for the flame may be tapped for this purpose.) 
 
 It is obvious that such rules call for a genuine 
 co-operation from the employer who adopts them. 
 
HEALTH FOR EVERYMAN 
 
 81 
 
 A workman cannot keep clean without plentiful sup¬ 
 plies of hot and cold water, of soap and towels as 
 well as of basins. If the lunch is to be eaten out¬ 
 side of the work room there must be a lunch room. 
 If work clothes are to be left at the factory there 
 must be lockers. If gloves and goggles and respira¬ 
 tors and milk are required there must be provisions 
 for them. The employer who is intelligent enough 
 to set these rules will be intelligent enough to make it 
 possible for the workman to obey them. 
 
 It is not always easy to secure co-operation from 
 the labour force even when the best equipment has 
 been provided and the most careful instruction 
 given. The difficulties of persuading men and 
 women to wear respirators where there is irritating 
 or toxic dust is even greater than that of persuad¬ 
 ing those who use emery wheels to wear goggles or 
 those who run saws to keep on the guards. An eye 
 out, a finger off is the terrible lesson which enforces 
 the use of goggles and guards but dust gives no such 
 spectacular demonstration. Its victims grow pale 
 and drop out. Their companions accept death as 
 one of the mysteries of life inevitable and unescap- 
 able, or as the “ will of God.” To teach them the 
 connection between the death and the dust is a slow 
 process but it is the obvious duty of those who em¬ 
 ploy them. 
 
 The attempt to control occupational disease be¬ 
 gins in the employment bureau of the modern fac¬ 
 tory by a thorough physical examination. Indeed in 
 hiring now-a-days it is a man’s body which receives 
 
82 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 the first attention. “ We are not hunting perfect 
 physical specimens,” Dr. Farnum the medical super¬ 
 visor of the Avery Company of Peoria, Illinois, says. 
 “ What we are trying to do is to ascertain whether 
 the individual man’s physical condition is compatible 
 with the work he is going to do.” Is the man in 
 condition to resist the peculiar danger in the occupa¬ 
 tion? A physical examination ought to show this. 
 Is the man strong enough to do the work? That 
 is a matter not difficult to decide and its decision pre¬ 
 vents many a poor fellow straining himself to in¬ 
 jury in too heavy tasks. 
 
 The modern employment bureaus know enough 
 not to send a girl whose eyes are poor to a machine 
 where the operation requires the strongest and 
 steadiest sight. It does not put a man with a wooden 
 leg to working a treadle which requires the leg mus¬ 
 cles of a first baseman. It sends the girl to an 
 oculist and often tells her to apply again when her 
 trouble is corrected and not infrequently it finds 
 something the man with a wooden leg can do. 
 
 While the preliminary examination prevents men 
 from taking work where all the physical odds are 
 against them it often for the time demonstrates to a 
 man a handicap which he has never suspected. If 
 it does not give him the work he wants it gives him 
 valuable knowledge about his body which he prob¬ 
 ably would not have had until too late. He is 
 obliged to face his handicap. The weak point is 
 that he probably does not know how to seek a cure 
 or if he does he has not the means. It can hardly 
 
HEALTH FOR EVERYMAN 
 
 83 
 
 be expected of employers that they take care of ap¬ 
 plicants, though there are cases where it is done. 
 The obligations here would seem to rest on outside 
 social agencies; 
 
 There is no question but that the best interests of 
 the labour force is served by a refusal to accept those 
 who are unfit for a particular task. The relation of 
 the health of the whole to that of the work is ob¬ 
 vious. There is a close connection too between dis¬ 
 ease and accidents. 
 
 “ We think it would be reprehensible,” the man¬ 
 agement of the Commonwealth Steel Company says, 
 “ if we did not know that a man had only one eye 
 and would therefore put him where he might be in 
 danger of having his good eye knocked out. We 
 should for his own good and that of his fellow 
 workmen know he is not subject to ‘ fits ’ or con¬ 
 ditions that might let him fall into things or off of 
 places. We feel we should know that men who 
 operate our twenty big overhead cranes are in phys¬ 
 ical and mental condition to properly handle big 
 loads over other men’s heads, etc., etc., etc. We 
 feel, too, that we have the right and that we owe it 
 to their fellow workmen to reject men who have 
 certain objectional diseases.” 
 
 The man who is accepted as a good risk in a 
 modern scientific shop — will find there, as has al¬ 
 ready been said, all mechanical precautions that are 
 known to minimise the trade danger. He will find 
 the most important of all safeguards whatever the 
 disease — good air — regular temperature, and 
 
8 4 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 proper sanitation. If in addition he receives an 
 education in the precautions he ought to take, he will 
 have as fair a chance to escape the menace of his 
 trade as industry knows how to give. 
 
 The most important feature of his education will 
 be the annual physical examination which is offered 
 all employes in a thoroughly modern organisation. 
 Some idea of what is covered may be obtained by a 
 look at the card here printed used by Dr. A. M. 
 Harvey of the Crane Company of Chicago. Dr. 
 Harvey is one of the pioneers in factory health 
 work. His system is thorough and his supervision 
 constant and intelligent. 
 
 In all factories where the physical examination is 
 put into force a few old employes are almost in¬ 
 variably found to be suffering from serious troubles 
 which neglected would soon incapacitate them. 
 These troubles may be, too, of such a nature that 
 the men are a menace to their fellows. There is an 
 impression abroad that such discoveries lead to im¬ 
 mediate discharge; that is, that the annual physical 
 examination is really an annual weeding-out proc¬ 
 ess — intended simply to keep a vigorous force to¬ 
 gether. Undoubtedly the aim is a vigorous force. 
 It should be, but I have never personally found an 
 employer dismissing a diseased workman without 
 giving him a chance for a cure or a change. Again 
 and again I have known of cases where a serious 
 condition, quite unsuspected by the victim has been 
 discovered and by promptly dealing with it the 
 health has been entirely restored. 
 
HEALTH FOR EVERYMAN 85 
 
 PHYSICAL EXAMINATION OF APPLICANT 
 
 FOR WORK 
 
 FILE NUMBER 
 
 Name .Check No. 
 
 Address.Street.Flat.Front or Rear 
 
 Date of Birth .Weight.Height_Ft... In. 
 
 General Appearance, development and condition of nutrition. 
 
 Chest Measuresments; Forced inspiration .In. 
 
 Forced expiration.In. Girth .In. 
 
 Is there any peculiarity in the shape, capacity or movements of 
 chest ? . 
 
 Lungs; Respiration per minute .Percussion . 
 
 Auscultation. 
 
 Heart; Pulse rate.Character of pulse. 
 
 Auscultation.. 
 
 Inspection of; Mouth .Throat . 
 
 12345678 
 2345678 
 
 /20 
 
 Missing Teeth / T U PP er 87654321 
 L Lower 87654321 
 
 Vision (by Snelling Chart) —Right Eye 
 
 /20 
 
 Left Eye . 
 
 Hearing; (Note if able to hear ordinary conversation ... 
 
 Eyes and eyelids ....Spine and Joints 
 
 Head, face and neck.Groin . 
 
 Hands and Arms .Skin . 
 
 Feet and legs.Blood Vessels .. 
 
 Note 
 any 
 gross 
 defects; 
 
 f Specific gravity .Albumen 
 
 Urme ^ React ; on .Sugar . 
 
 Remarks; . 
 
 Date and place of examination 
 
 M.D. 
 
86 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 The Pfister and Vogel Leather Company of Mil¬ 
 waukee, which has been conducting annual physical 
 examinations for some three years says they have 
 been obliged to discharge very few men who were 
 in their employ before the installation of the sys¬ 
 tem. 
 
 The physician is never allowed in this company 
 to lay off a man who has been long on the rolls on ac¬ 
 count of physical defects. He must make his re¬ 
 port to the superintendent. When they find a man 
 can not be restored to health, they keep him at work 
 through the winter months or until such a time as he is 
 able to secure other employment, giving him a notice 
 of some two months so that he can make his arrange¬ 
 ments. Frequently they have been able to remedy 
 a condition by an operation. In the first two years 
 after starting their medical work, they operated on 
 eighty-four men, all of whom are now in the fac¬ 
 tory at their old wages. They insist, as do all the 
 best companies where I have examined the medical 
 department, that what they are after is sound bodies, 
 and that they consider it part of their business to 
 help the men to a good physical condition and show 
 them how to keep so. The Crane Company support 
 a sanatorium for their “ run-down ” or convalescing 
 employes. At a beautiful and historic spot on the 
 Illinios River eighty miles from Chicago, Buffalo 
 Rock, an institution has been fitted up for the care 
 and treatment of those who need it. They believe 
 it one of their wisest ventures. 
 
 Particular care and kindness is exercised where 
 
HEALTH FOR EVERYMAN 
 
 87 
 
 tuberculosis is discovered. All over the country 
 employers are sending tubercular employes to tent 
 colonies or hospitals where they can have the best 
 of care. Often the victim has had no idea of his 
 condition and fights an exile. A man who has been 
 thirty years with the Avery Company of Peoria, Illi¬ 
 nois, was found on the first examination they held to 
 have tuberculosis of the lungs. He was immediately 
 sent to the Ottance Tent Colony and is now back at 
 work. 
 
 The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company has 
 made especially elaborate arrangements for caring 
 for those among its 15,000 employes who are tuber¬ 
 cular. The sanatorium — built on the southern 
 slope of Mount McGregor, New York, a stone 
 throw from the cottage where General Grant died 
 — is one of the noblest of the company’s many con¬ 
 tributions to the cause of national health. It has 
 aimed to make a modern sanatorium, one which 
 should not only serve its employes but should set 
 the highest standards for such an institution and 
 which should as time went on serve as a great labora¬ 
 tory for developing better methods for fighting the 
 plague. There has been a question raised as to the 
 legal right of the company to devote money to such 
 a purpose. It is a question often raised over this 
 kind of work by corporations and stock companies. 
 Before undertaking the work a judgment was asked 
 from the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court 
 of New York. The court returned as a principle 
 the following: 
 
88 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 The duties of the employer to the employe have been 
 enlarged in recent years, and are not merely that of the 
 purchaser of the employe’s time and service for money. The 
 enlightened spirit of the age, based upon the experience of 
 the past, has thrown upon the employer other duties, which 
 involve a proper regard for the comfort, health, safety and 
 well-being of the employe. ... It is well within the cor¬ 
 porate power to assume, as it has done, the care and treat¬ 
 ment of such of its employes as are afflicted with tuberculosis. 
 And unless it is shown to be wasteful of the company’s money 
 and unproductive of beneficial results, the practice may stand 
 as well within the scope of its business. The reasonable 
 care of its employes, according to the enlightened sentiment 
 of the age and community, is a duty resting upon it, and the 
 proper discharge of that duty is merely transacting the busi¬ 
 ness of the corporation. 
 
 I doubt if more care and truer sympathy have 
 ever gone into an undertaking than into this sana¬ 
 torium — and it is the more impressive because the 
 company insists that they regard it simply as sound 
 business. It is another evidence of the spread of 
 the discovery that the highest humanity is the sound¬ 
 est business. One achievement at Mount McGregor 
 has been making the patients happy. I never saw a 
 group of afflicted people so full of surprised content¬ 
 ment and hopefulness as the girls I talked with 
 there. They were not all to recover. Some were 
 too far gone when they were received but they knew 
 they w r ere having the best chance science and devotion 
 could give. They looked out from their chairs on a 
 
HEALTH FOR EVERYMAN 89 
 
 beautiful world and however hard it had been in the 
 past they had found at last its kindness. 
 
 One of the results of the three years operation 
 which the company values most is the fact that no 
 man or woman who is now sent to Mount McGregor 
 fears the sentence. Those who have come back re¬ 
 stored bring a story of such happiness that he goes 
 gladly and hopefully. 
 
 It is a satisfaction to have one’s unofficial im¬ 
 pressions of a practice as promising as this of phys¬ 
 ical examinations of employes confirmed by an of¬ 
 ficial investigation. One has been made by the 
 versatile, enlightened and energetic Industrial Com¬ 
 mission of the State of Ohio. According to its find¬ 
 ings, there were only four establishments in the State 
 conducting these examinations before 1914; that is, 
 four outside of the railroad companies and street 
 railways, where, as it is well known, physical exami¬ 
 nations and tests have been in practice for a good 
 many years, in the interest of the public, however, 
 rather than in the interest of the man. The insur¬ 
 ance companies of course have always carried on 
 such examinations, but this was not, as the com¬ 
 mission points out, to assist an unfit person becoming 
 fit, but to safeguard the insuring concern. 
 
 The commission found that at the time of this 
 investigation, (the report was published in the fall 
 of 1915), there were some forty-two (42) estab¬ 
 lishments in Ohio examining applicants for employ¬ 
 ment. Full reports of the results of the examina- 
 
90 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 tion were not to be had, but in the case of 23,118 ap¬ 
 plicants of which reports existed, it was found 1040 
 had been rejected. The reasons for these rejec¬ 
 tions are interesting. At the head of the list stands 
 impaired vision; hernia comes next; then organic 
 diseases of the heart; tuberculosis and the social 
 diseases did not prove to be nearly as general as 
 popularly supposed. 
 
 Possibly the most interesting observation of the 
 investigators was that these rejections for disease 
 or poor physical condition were not final in several 
 of the establishments. Men or women found unfit 
 were frequently referred to a physician. In some 
 cases a course of treatment was prescribed or an op¬ 
 eration recommended. It was found that often if 
 the applicant came back in good shape he was em¬ 
 ployed. 
 
 The report states that it found the following 
 reasons given by employers for the examinations. 
 They tally very well with my own observations: 
 
 To enable the employer to select a force physically fit for 
 the work. 
 
 To determine the physical condition of workmen upon 
 entering employment so that unjust claims for injuries may 
 be avoided. 
 
 To adjust the employe to the work for which he is 
 physically best suited. 
 
 To maintain the health of employes by preventing the 
 introduction of communicable diseases, by detecting physical 
 diseases and defects in their incipiency, by advising and edu¬ 
 cating the industrial workers to care for their physical well- 
 
HEALTH FOR EVERYMAN 
 
 9i 
 
 being, and to reduce the hazard to the individual employe 
 and his fellow employes arising from physical defects. 
 
 The point of danger which the Ohio Commission 
 finds in the physical examination' ‘>i£ that without 
 proper supervision many establishments, mgy put too 
 high a standard on the physical fitness of applicants, 
 
 eliminating would-be workers.unfairly. u Jt suggests 
 that the State exercise a supervision Pver ^the exami- 
 
 -J ■> <* I 9 c ) J > ) 
 
 nations. The chief bar to this abuse in normal times 
 is that there is a greater demand in well established 
 industries than there is supply. 
 
 It is not the occupational disease nor is it tuber¬ 
 culosis or typhoid or troubles calling for operations, 
 which are the most serious problems in industrial 
 life. It is the minor degenerative diseases — the 
 impaired digestion, the thin blood, the poorly func¬ 
 tioning kidney, the nervous run-down condition — 
 ills which the victim does not realise but which 
 if not checked will sap his strength, weaken his re¬ 
 sistance to occupational disease and to epidemics and 
 often hurry on some tendency of which he knows 
 nothing. How widespread impaired condition is 
 has been brought out graphically by the recent in¬ 
 vestigation of our great life insurance companies and 
 that unique and promising young organisation the 
 Life Extension Institute. 
 
 Below is a diagram presented before the Ameri¬ 
 can Society for the Development of Science by Dr. 
 Louis I. Dublin. It shows that degenerate diseases 
 have increased from something like 21 per cent, in 
 
3».r 
 
 1880 1890 ' 1900 1910 
 
 Increase of Degenerative Disease in United States in 
 
 30 Years. 
 
 24.9 
 
 1890 1900 ‘(912 
 
 Decrease of Typhoid Fever 
 in 22 Years. 
 
 92 
 
 Decrease of Tuberculosis of 
 Luncs in 22 Years. 
 
HEALTH FOR EVERYMAN 
 
 93 
 
 1880 to over 38 per cent, in 1910. At the same 
 time it shows that in twenty-two years we have re¬ 
 duced typhoid fever from 4.6 per cent, to 1.6 per 
 cent., and tuberculosis from 24.5 per cent, to 12.5 
 per cent. 
 
 In its investigation of industrial and commercial 
 workers the Life Extension Institute has found only 
 .46 of the former and .81 per cent, of the latter 
 really sound. It declares that nearly 97 per cent, 
 of those examined need advice about how to live. 
 Nearly this full number were not aware that they 
 were in any way impaired, and yet such was the 
 impairment that over 67 per cent, of the former 
 and nearly 72 per cent, of the latter needed treat¬ 
 ment of some kind. There were many ailments 
 which the Institution classified as “ minor to mod¬ 
 erate,” but the character of them was such that they 
 must inevitably become worse. 
 
 The institution found numbers of those examined 
 afflicted with some kind of physical defect which 
 could be corrected often without the help of a phy¬ 
 sician, but neglected because unrealised. 
 
 It is these degenerative diseases which are mainly 
 responsible for the huge sick list in American in¬ 
 dustry. In 1915 the Metropolitan Life Insurance 
 Company, co-operated with the Federal Bureau of 
 Labour in a study of unemployment. A million 
 wage earners were covered. It was found that 1.2 
 per cent, of these people were unemployed because 
 of illness. 
 
 .In Rochester, New York, a special investigation 
 
94 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 was made by the Metropolitan in September, 1915. 
 It covered 14 per cent, of the population. On the 
 basis of this survey about 2^4 per cent, of the work¬ 
 ing people of the town are continually unemployed 
 because of illness. 
 
 Dr. Frankel and Dr. Dublin, w r ho made this re¬ 
 port, and who certainly are as well qualified to 
 speak as any one in the country, estimate that the 
 working men of Rochester lose something over one 
 and a quarter million dollars in money a year through 
 illness. 
 
 Apply the percentage of sickness found in the first 
 investigation referred to above, 1.2 per cent., to the 
 working world of the United States as numbered 
 by the census of 1910. In all occupations there were 
 then engaged 38,167,336 persons, 8,075,772 of 
 them being women. If 1.2 per cent, of these are 
 continuously ill we have an annual loss of 137,- 
 402,400 days (counting 300 days to a year). Sup¬ 
 pose the average wage of the working world is but 
 $1.50 and we have a money loss of over two hun¬ 
 dred million dollars — and a loss falling in the main 
 upon those least able to bear it. But this money loss 
 is small beside the loss which comes from discourage¬ 
 ment, from debt and from the general disorganisa¬ 
 tion that illness causes, particularly in families who 
 depend upon a daily wage for support. 
 
 The chief cause of all this misery is neglect of 
 personal hygiene and the chief reason of the neglect 
 is ignorance. The annual physical examination is 
 
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 A Typical Record from Health Files of the Clothcraft Shop of 
 
 Cleveland, Ohio. 
 
 95 
 
96 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 the best possible method of discovering and dispell¬ 
 ing the ignorance. 
 
 The blank record from the Crane Company pub¬ 
 lished on page 85, gives an idea of the ground that 
 physical examinations usually cover. The record 
 on page 95 from the files of the Clothcraft Shop of 
 Cleveland shows how practically a good medical de¬ 
 partment follows up an examination. The card not 
 only presents the state of things in the case of Jane 
 Doe when she was first examined, but it shows what 
 has been done for her. We see that she had at the 
 start no organic disease, but that her tonsils were en¬ 
 larged and five teeth needed attention. She suf¬ 
 fered from headaches and sore throat, and the card 
 shows that the cause of each was sought. In one 
 case she had not been getting enough sleep. At an¬ 
 other time it was anaemia that was behind her ail¬ 
 ments and she was given a tonic and the nurse was 
 directed to follow her up constantly about fresh air 
 and the need of more sleep. She was persuaded to 
 have an operation for her tonsils, which is reported 
 successful. This seems to be doing a good deal for 
 Jane, but it is only the beginning. So long as she 
 is with the Clothcraft Shop, every time she com¬ 
 plains, every time her work begins to fall off in 
 quantity or quality, every time she doesn’t appear at 
 her machine, the reason will be sought and the 
 remedy applied. 
 
 In this particular shop, the Medical Department 
 is maintained as an arm of the Employment and 
 
HEALTH FOR EVERYMAN 
 
 97 
 
 Service Department. There is a graduate nurse in 
 charge of the work, there is a dispensary, waiting 
 room and rest-room, and a consultation room for 
 the factory physicians. And there is a Medical 
 staff, consisting of a physician, an oculist and a den¬ 
 tist. All of this is paid for by the company. Out¬ 
 side service from the factory physician is furnished 
 to employes and their families at special rate. 
 
 There is no phase of the Clothcraft management 
 from which it is believed a more direct return in dol¬ 
 lars and cents comes than from this medical service. 
 
 It will be noticed in the above record that Jane 
 consented in August of 1914 when it was found that 
 she was anaemic to “ go to summer camp.” The 
 Clothcraft shop is one of many in the country where 
 the value of the annual vacation in keeping up effi¬ 
 ciency has been amply demonstrated. Employers 
 have come to the practice slowly. Men and women 
 who work with their hands have never been gener¬ 
 ally considered fit subjects for leisure. Too often 
 their only vacation is forced upon them by unemploy¬ 
 ment. Instead of being a time of pleasure, it is one 
 of deprivation and anxiety. This is one of the in¬ 
 equalities of the working world which distressed 
 good Sam Jones of Toledo —“ Golden Rule ” Jones 
 — most sorely. 
 
 “ It really seems a long way ahead,” he wrote de¬ 
 spondently once, “ to the time when carpenters, 
 blacksmiths, sewerdiggers, street-pavers, brick¬ 
 layers, plasterers, streetcar men, drivers, railway men 
 of all sorts, from the trackmen down to the superin- 
 
98 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 tendent, lumbermen, stone-men, farmers, kitchen- 
 girls, laundry-workers, factory girls, shop-girls, 
 clerks, and indeed all sorts of workers will have 
 work and due wages with a vacation or rest time as 
 certain for all as it now is for the teachers, the 
 preachers and the majority of the professional 
 classes. 
 
 “ I am inclined to the opinion that to-day vaca¬ 
 tions, trips to Europe and the mountains and the sea¬ 
 shore are more generally the privileges of those who 
 do not work at all, than of the workers of any 
 sort.” 
 
 Sam Jones never neglected an opportunity to hit 
 at the social injustices in his own little world. In 
 1899 he inaugurated in the Acme Sucker Rod Com¬ 
 pany an annual week’s vacation on full pay for all 
 those who had been six months with the concern. 
 His political enemies sneered at his vacations. A 
 hostile newspaper declared that there were few large 
 concerns in the country that did not give employes 
 a week’s vacation with pay. The editor would have 
 been hard put to it to name a dozen where the men 
 outside of the office received even a day with pay. 
 Vacations come in many large concerns in the nat¬ 
 ural order of business. They are an incident of the 
 annual shut-down for repairs and painting but the 
 men as a rule pay for them. Sam Jones was ahead 
 of his world in this practice as well as in some others. 
 He might have retaliated with incidents of men 
 dropped entirely because they merely asked for va¬ 
 cations! There are still too many old-fashioned 
 
HEALTH FOR EVERYMAN 
 
 99 
 
 employers who don’t want a man around who thinks 
 that a week or two off in the summer is a good thing! 
 
 One of the most successful and sound develop¬ 
 ments in the vacation idea of which I know is that 
 in the Pilgrim Steam Laundry of Brooklyn, New 
 York. It was fifteen years ago that the first experi¬ 
 ment in vacations was made by the firm. At that 
 time, even more than to-day, people were insistent 
 upon having their soiled linen collected on Monday 
 and delivered not later than Saturday noon, which 
 gave a very short week. Fewer people left their 
 city homes for the summer months too, making the 
 work heavier in proportion in the summer. The 
 giving of vacations, at the proper vacation periods, 
 was consequently a very difficult matter. 
 
 However, the feeling that it would be impossible 
 to build up a stable and permanent organisation 
 without such a period for rest, relaxation and pleas¬ 
 ure, caused the management to attempt a vacation 
 programme. For three years the plan was to col¬ 
 lect the names of those who wished to take a week 
 off at their own expense, and to supply help for 
 those weeks. 
 
 Twelve years ago the- plan developed a little far¬ 
 ther and one week’s vacation was allowed with pay 
 to those who had been in the employ of the com¬ 
 pany for two years or more. Those who had been 
 in the plant for one year and less than two were still 
 allowed one week’s leave of absence without pay in 
 every case where arrangements could be made. 
 
 From these beginnings the vacation programme 
 
100 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 was gradually extended as the growth and develop¬ 
 ment of the business justified it, until at its present 
 proportion: — 
 
 Superintendents receive four weeks’ vacation with 
 four weeks’ pay. 
 
 Heads of departments receive tw T o weeks’ vacation 
 with two weeks’ pay. 
 
 Employes of one year receive one week vacation 
 with one week’s pay. 
 
 Employes of from two or five years have their 
 choice of one week's vacation with 1J/2 weeks’ pay, 
 or two weeks’ vacation with one week’s pay. 
 
 Employes of five or more years have their choice 
 of one week’s vacation with i y 2 week’s pay or 2 
 weeks’ vacation with weeks’ pay. 
 
 Generous as this programme is the firm is not con¬ 
 tent. They believe that in the interest of efficiency 
 they should enlarge it and this undoubtedly will be 
 done as the business justifies it. 
 
 Let no one think that an employer’s work is done 
 when he arranges for vacation for his force. Fre¬ 
 quently it is only begun. It is a pathetic fact that 
 to large numbers of people particularly girls and 
 women the idea of a vacation is bewildering rather 
 than exciting. Take girls of foreign parentage, 
 even those born in this country, and it is not an in¬ 
 frequent thing for them to say when a vacation away 
 from home is suggested, “ I never heard of such a 
 thing,” or “ What can I do,” “ I never have been out 
 of New York,” “or Rochester,” or whatever it may 
 be, “ in my life that is the idea of a vacation falls 
 
HEALTH FOR EVERYMAN 
 
 101 
 
 on the stoniest of ground. There is neither interest 
 nor anticipation awakened. It is.a gift of which 
 they do not know the use. They do not want it be¬ 
 cause they never have learned the meaning of it. 
 An employer who really knows his people and has 
 come to this idea of vacation by the only sound proc¬ 
 ess, that is the recognition that change and recrea¬ 
 tion are absolutely essential to a stable interest in 
 work, knows that he has on his hands a delicate 
 educational task, one the more complicated because 
 he generally does not know where to advise them to 
 
 g°- 
 
 It was a sympathetic sense of the difficulty great 
 numbers of girls in New York City must have in 
 placing themselves for their summer holiday and a 
 fear that this difficulty might retard the growth of 
 the vacation idea that four years ago led the women 
 in the Metropolitan section of the National Civic 
 Federation to form a committee to collect and dis¬ 
 tribute information. 
 
 An investigation committee was sent out to look 
 over boarding-houses and summer hotels within a 
 reasonable radius of the town. All information col¬ 
 lected was passed on to the girls in shops and fac¬ 
 tories. But immediately a second need was dis¬ 
 covered. Girls who seized the information eagerly 
 and planned to use it often found themselves, when 
 it came to vacation time without enough money to 
 leave town — try saving twenty-five dollars a year 
 on an income of ten dollars a week in New York 
 City and see for yourself if it is easy — and so a 
 
102 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 second undertaking grew up: that was a Vacation 
 Savings Bank, an arrangement by w T hich the girls in 
 the shops and factories might deposit any sum from 
 five cents up that they could spare from their weekly 
 pay envelopes. This fund which was started in 
 November, 1911, with forty-three girls has enrolled 
 in four years some 21,000 and had deposits of about 
 $200,000. Fully half of these depositors have used 
 their savings for vacations. 
 
 The co-operation of employes has been essential 
 in carrying out the work. Scores of firms in New 
 York City allow girls in their employ to act as agents 
 for the Vacation Committee in their shops or fac¬ 
 tories on company time and there is a general con¬ 
 sent that the enterprise has worked for health and 
 stability. 
 
 The pre-eminent service of the factory medical de¬ 
 partment is the education it gives in the care of the 
 health. It is not a simple undertaking. In many 
 bodies of labour, especially where it is organised, 
 there is suspicion to be overcome. They have been 
 told that it is in the interest of the counting room 
 rather than in their interest and many of them have 
 yet to understand that the two are inseparable. 
 Nevertheless I have never known of a factory where 
 the work had been undertaken intelligently, that the 
 people were not its staunch defenders. They come, 
 sooner or later, to look upon it as one of their rights 
 and to demand its full service. In one factory where 
 the employes have had the examination for some 
 four years, the only complaint has come to be that 
 
HEALTH FOR EVERYMAN 
 
 103 
 
 some examiners are not as thorough as others! In 
 this particular case, the examination is voluntary. 
 Perhaps 15 per cent, refused to take it the first year; 
 everybody takes it now, and as I said, insists upon 
 it being thorough. 
 
 As for appreciation and co-operation when confi¬ 
 dence in the service is established it is hearty and 
 fine. One company tells of a skilled workman who 
 had left their plant for higher wages returning in a 
 few weeks. “ My wife and I think,” he explained, 
 “ that the care and attention I get here is worth 
 more than the difference in wages, so I am back 
 to the old job.” Another workman in this factory 
 who had been badly injured and carefully nursed 
 was given his compensation check. “ What kind 
 of a fellow do you think I am, anyway? ” he said 
 indignantly. “ Haven’t you been looking after me 
 for over a year when anything was the matter with 
 me? Not me! ” 
 
 The real difficulty is that common to all health 
 work. Men and women are indifferent to hygiene, 
 to personal habits until too late. “ It never bothers 
 me,” “ I feel all right,” is the opposition in the 
 factory medical department as it is everywhere, to 
 attempts to persuade a man with certain diseases 
 that he is in a dangerous condition. The Kodak 
 Company tells of examining an employe with a blood 
 pressure of 250, who when warned, declared he 
 had never felt better in his life. In three months 
 he was dead. 
 
 As for arousing employes to the need of fresh 
 
104 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 air, of regular meals, of correct posture — it can 
 only be done by patient, line-upon-line training. As 
 fine a campaign of education as I ever saw waged 
 was that of the physician of a Cincinnati shop of 
 some 6,000 men — almost none of whom drank 
 water freely and most of whom suffered the usual re¬ 
 sults. By exhortation, explanation and entreaty 
 given in public and private he was gradually edu¬ 
 cating them to drink water freely. Six thousand 
 men converted to the flushing system is a real contri¬ 
 bution to national health. 
 
 The health bulletins and pamphlets are a prac¬ 
 tical feature of education in many plants. The 
 Worcester, Massachusetts, Corset Company has for 
 years issued booklets of information and advice 
 suited particularly to the class and the habits of the 
 hundreds of girls it employs. The care of the body, 
 the importance of a healthy digestion, scores of 
 topics are treated in so clear and personal a fashion 
 that in the end they arrest the attention of the most 
 careless. Health has become one of the ambitions 
 of the girls in this factory through the continued ef¬ 
 forts of the management. 
 
 Often the pay envelope is made the carrier for 
 health teaching. Each week there is printed on its 
 face some bit of advice so put as to interest and 
 stick. The Beech Nut factory at Canajoharie, New 
 York, has been particularly happy in the maxims it 
 devises for its pay envelopes. 
 
HEALTH FOR EVERYMAN 
 
 105 
 
 TO LIVE WELL AND 
 
 DIE WITHOUT FEAR 
 
 Breathe deeply. 
 
 Eat temperately. 
 
 Drink (water) copiously. 
 
 Bathe frequently. 
 Chew thoroughly. 
 Clean teeth carefully. 
 
 HEALTH 
 
 Laugh heartily. 
 Work planfully. 
 Serve willingly. 
 Play some. 
 
 Speak kindly. 
 Read much. 
 Think more. 
 
 Exercise daily. 
 
 Sleep regularly. 
 
 DARE TO BE YOURSELF — 
 Cheerful, Conscientious, Brave. 
 
 DISEASE IS ALWAYS AT YOUR 
 DOOR AWAITING AN INVITATION 
 
 “CLEAN UP” 
 
 YOUR SURROUNDINGS 
 Special for 1 week, April 26-May 1 
 
 It may be YOUR DESK. 
 
 It may be IN YOUR HOME. 
 It may be YOUR BACK YARD. 
 
 Whatever it may be 
 “CLEAN UP” 
 
io6 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 Invariably such lively phrases are repeated and 
 quoted and more or less heeded. 
 
 Good as many of the health bulletins are, none of 
 them that I have seen equal the series prepared by 
 the Life Extension Institute. This original organ¬ 
 isation aims to be a self-supporting philanthropy. 
 It fights degenerative diseases and although it is but 
 three years old it has already increased our knowl¬ 
 edge of the serious inroads that they are making in 
 the country’s health and has aroused thousands of 
 patients to the need of better habits. The Life Ex¬ 
 tension Institute offers its services to individuals cr 
 groups. It gives one of the most thorough physical 
 examinations that I personally have experienced. A 
 full report is then made and followed by a personal 
 interview with a diagnostician. If a difficulty calling 
 for a physician’s care or for special treatment or 
 operation is discovered, the patient is so informed. 
 For diseases which are the result of improper liv¬ 
 ing, a proper regime is prescribed. This prelim¬ 
 inary work is followed by a series of monthly keep¬ 
 well leaflets, of the most practical and scientific char¬ 
 acter. They aim not only to advise but to inform 
 of whatever is new in the care of the health that 
 the Institute deems wise to pass along. The titles 
 of these leaflets show their range and relevancy — 
 “ Posture,” “ The Hygiene of Middle Life,” “ Un¬ 
 derweight,” “Overweight” (the real meaning of 
 each and its relation to active life) “ Setting-up Ex¬ 
 ercises,” “ Hygiene of the Mouth ” etc., really 
 stimulating and informing tracts. 
 
HEALTH FOR EVERYMAN 
 
 107 
 
 A factory which has not established a medical 
 department could do no better than ask in the Life 
 Extension Institute to make a health survey of its 
 employes. Ford’s has already done this although 
 they have a large medical organisation. Even if it 
 were desired to install a medical department in order 
 to have doctor and nurse in daily contact with the 
 force which is of course, the ideal arrangement, the 
 standards and methods of the Life Extension Insti¬ 
 tute are such that it would be possible to start right 
 at the beginning — which is difficult. The factory 
 medical department being a pioneer movement has 
 had to work out its methods as it went along. The 
 Life Extension Institute could put such a department 
 firmly on its feet at the start. 
 
 The true aim of the industrial medical depart¬ 
 ment of a factory or shop is to put employes into con¬ 
 dition and keep them there: Restoration and Pre¬ 
 vention. The most serious abuse, indeed the only 
 serious abuse, of the system which I have ever known 
 was using the department merely for temporary re¬ 
 lief. This happens oftenest where large groups of 
 girls are employed. The usefulness of the nurse 
 and the first-aid room are measured not by the pre¬ 
 vention of headaches, nausea and fainting spells but 
 by the promptness with which an indisposed girl is 
 restored to her task. The means employed is more 
 often than not a stimulant or opiate — something 
 that acts quickly. This is a grave abuse of the sys¬ 
 tem. It not only defeats the object of scientific 
 management which is to bring about a condition of 
 
io8 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 sustained well-being among the workers but it en¬ 
 courages one of the most pernicious habits of work¬ 
 ing women — dependence on drugs. Thousands of 
 them take these so-called medicines as regularly as 
 men take drinks. One has only to examine the col¬ 
 umns of the newspapers, particularly those in for¬ 
 eign tongues, to see the extent of the appeal. In 
 many of these journals I have found fully half of 
 the advertising space devoted to cure-alls. Only the 
 phonograph disputes with them for attention. The 
 mere look of the pills and nostrums they send is 
 enough to condemn them. If their use is continued 
 they are as certain as liquor to injure the stomach 
 and nerves. 
 
 One of the real services of the medical depart¬ 
 ment of a factory should be fighting these remedies 
 just as it should be fighting alcohol. When instead 
 of rendering this service it actually encourages, even 
 teaches their use, as it certainly does when its aim is 
 returning the employe at once to his task, it is a 
 menace instead of a help to health. It is, of course, 
 proof that the employer has not caught the idea be¬ 
 hind the factory health movement, that he is still 
 concerned only with the day — not at all with the 
 future. 
 
 The returns of all this work to the employer are 
 not speculative. They can be measured in days 
 saved, in product increased; and many factories 
 have made such estimates. Take the work of the 
 Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company in and 
 around Birmingham. 
 
HEALTH FOR EVERYMAN 
 
 109 
 
 The Tennessee company employs some 18,000 
 men, who with their families represent a population 
 of about 50,000. About 53 per cent, of the em¬ 
 ployes are negroes. Although the mines and plants 
 of the company are distributed over a wide terri¬ 
 tory, by far the greater number are comprehended 
 within an area having a 15-mile radius from Bir¬ 
 mingham. 
 
 The industrial betterment work as now organised 
 was started some three years ago by Dr. Lloyd No¬ 
 land, who had had several years’ experience in similar 
 work on the Panama Canal. At the outset it was 
 believed that general sanitation and preventive 
 medical care not only constituted a moral responsi¬ 
 bility, but gave results that paid; that is, it was 
 cheaper to prevent disease than to cure it. The 
 soundness of this viewpoint has already been demon¬ 
 strated. The average earnings of the employes 
 have increased in a higher percentage than their 
 rates of wages. The average number of working 
 days per month has increased from 16 to 22. 
 
 This is but one of many similar records. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 
 
 “ SOBER FIRST ” 
 
 Two formidable campaigns against drink are go¬ 
 ing on in this country: one vociferous and political; 
 the other quiet and industrial. One aims to legis¬ 
 late both the man that makes the drink and the man 
 that sells it out of business. The other concerns it¬ 
 self with the man that does the drinking. It aims 
 to bring him to temperance by any method that will 
 work. The slogan of the first is “ down with the 
 saloon of the second “ sober first.” 
 
 This second campaign is in the hands of those 
 men who are attempting to re-organise that portion 
 of the working world which they control so that 
 every man in it will have the chance to develop all 
 there is in him. This effort — which is the very es¬ 
 sence of the new scientific spirit in industrial life — 
 is hindered at every point by habits. One of the 
 deepest rooted on labour’s side is drink. It is as 
 inimical to a complete realisation of the new aspira¬ 
 tions as the fixed idea of the stiff-necked employer 
 that what he has never done nor seen done can’t be 
 done. It is as inimical and even more difficult to 
 conquer, for the employer eventually must yield his 
 w'ill or his place. The economic advantages of his 
 
 competitor who accepts the new ideas will take care 
 
 no 
 
“ SOBER FIRST ” 
 
 111 
 
 of that. But the economic advantages of sobriety 
 have never been doubtful. Nobody knows them so 
 well as the workingman and his family. If he is 
 to break with drink other appeals must be made. 
 
 It is for the employer to find these appeals. He 
 must do it. Drink interferes with every item in the 
 programme on which he has set his heart. A drink¬ 
 ing man makes stability out of the question. He is 
 a barrier to efficiency. He is an enemy to safety. 
 Drink must go. 
 
 It is the Safety First movement which has done 
 most to fix the attention of the industrial world on 
 the relations of drink to its new aspirations. Two 
 years ago I attended the annual congress of the Na¬ 
 tional Safety Council. There were some 300 Safety 
 experts and managers present representing our 
 leading mining, manufacturing and transportation 
 concerns. There was scarcely a session held in the 
 three days the council sat that the relation of liquor 
 to safety did not come up. Again and again there 
 was vigorous warning from experienced experts that 
 safety was out of the question as long as men used 
 liquor. It was not because they had as a rule, I 
 judged, any objection to liquor per se — many of 
 them frankly said they liked their beer or wine — 
 but when it came to liquor drinking by workingmen 
 they attacked it as violently as they did uncovered 
 wheels and gears and belts. 
 
 “ Alcoholism as an abstract proposition does not 
 interest me,” the secretary of the New York Work¬ 
 men’s Compensation Bureau told the congress, 
 
112 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 “ but it has been my painful duty to investigate 
 many accidents where I have had positive proof that 
 the mishaps would never have occurred had it not 
 been for the liquor curse. I don’t believe we shall 
 get worth-while results (in safety) unless we place 
 our mark of disapproval on the liquor question im¬ 
 mediately.” 
 
 The really significant and helpful feature of the 
 discussion was the multitude of indications it brought 
 out that managers w r ere beginning to apply to this 
 problem the same methods they use in safety work. 
 When an accident happens now-a-days in a properly 
 organised factory or mill nobody lays it to the Lord. 
 Nobody repeats that “ accidents will happen.” 
 Everybody seeks the cause and there is no rest until 
 it is found and removed. The new attack in drink 
 follows this principle. It asks why do men drink? 
 
 The old answer of the moralist, the thrifty and 
 the hard-headed was likely to be either because he is 
 an unregenerate sinner and needs conversion or be¬ 
 cause the liquor is where he can see it. The old at¬ 
 tack on liquor followed these ideas. Men were 
 exhorted to let it alone — stirred to their depths un¬ 
 til they “ signed the pledge ” or the saloon and the 
 beer wagon were cast out of the community. 
 
 Neither exhortation or prohibition satisfy the 
 modern scientific manager. Men must be sober for 
 other reasons than emotional stir or the difficulty of 
 getting liquor, if temperance is finally to prevail in 
 industry. IVhy do they drink? In this search for 
 causes the inquirer is using a great deal of common 
 
“ SOBER FIRST ” 
 
 113 
 
 sense and practical home-made physiology and psy¬ 
 chology— knowledge of the body-and the heart, 
 that he has acquired in his own struggle for 
 decency and control. It is remarkable how many 
 shrewd, quiet men you find who tell you that they are 
 almost persuaded that if all was right with the body 
 and mind the man would not want drink in possibly 
 a majority of cases. He wants it because something 
 is wrong. It may be because his body is so depleted 
 at the end of the day that it runs for its grog that 
 it may get a few brief moments of glow and strength 
 and well-being. 
 
 This is the workingman’s own plea: “ I take it 
 
 because I am all in.” It is understandable. The 
 first experience in exhaustion, in failing nerve and 
 hopelessness is terrifying to one who has had strength 
 and health. He grasps at anything that will 
 give him back even for an hour his sense of well¬ 
 being and confidence. Collapsed energy is as real 
 an ill as a broken leg and more to be feared because 
 less understood. Industry is trying to understand 
 why it comes so early to so many, and many men are 
 frankly admitting that often it is because of long 
 hours, poor air, bad water and cold lunches taken 
 under conditions that would make even good food 
 which they rarely have, indigestible. The men are 
 so done up at the end of the day that they take 
 liquor as a means of quick if brief recuperation. 
 
 There is no little proof of the soundness of this 
 view to be drawn from the experiments of factories 
 who have corrected these evils. The Clothcraft 
 
H4 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 Shop in Cleveland is a brilliant example of the effect 
 that the best of shop conditions has on the saloon. 
 Mr. Feiss tells me that as soon as they had their 
 lunch room and recreation grounds in working order 
 there was an immediate reduction in the number of 
 men patronizing the neighbouring grog shops. 
 “ With the aid of moral suasion,” Mr. Feiss writes, 
 “ this effect grew so that two out of three saloons 
 in our immediate proximity disappeared. We 
 finally went to our men and asked them to remain 
 on our premises during the noon hour, issuing passes 
 only to those who went home for lunch. The effect 
 was to drive away the remaining saloon, and no one 
 has since attempted to establish one in our neighbour¬ 
 hood.” 
 
 How much has good food to do with this result 
 — which is one that I have known in other cases? 
 This much is certain, with plenty of wholesome, 
 well-cooked food, men work more easily and con¬ 
 tinuously than they do when they mix alcohol with 
 food. Those who have read Forbes Mitchell on the 
 Great Mutiny will remember his repeated testimony 
 that what men need on exhausting marches and be¬ 
 fore and after battles is “ grub,” not “ grog.” 
 “ My experience is,” he writes, “ that the soldiers 
 who could best look after their stomachs were also 
 those who could make the best use of the bayonet, 
 and who were the least likely to fall behind in a 
 forced march. If I had the command of an army 
 in the field my rule would be: ‘ Cut the grog, and 
 give double grub when hard work has to be done! ’ ” 
 
“ SOBER FIRST ” 
 
 115 
 
 Some of our modern employers are revising this 
 formula to read “ cut the grog and give milk.” So 
 formidable a competitor of beer has milk become in 
 some quarters that I have seen advertisements ad¬ 
 vising workingmen to remember that beer is the 
 most healthy drink in the world after milk. Dr. 
 Harvey of the Crane Company in Chicago, a con¬ 
 cern where for years the most careful and intelligent 
 study has been given to every phase of the workers’ 
 life, believes that milk may take away the desire for 
 beer. “ For many years,” Dr. Harvey writes, “ our 
 company has encouraged the consumption of milk by 
 employes. The company permits a milk dealer, 
 whose milk is approved by the City Health Depart¬ 
 ment, to go through the shops with bottled milk and 
 sell direct to the men at their work. Employes, in 
 the habit of taking a lunch in the middle of the fore¬ 
 noon, thus get a nourishing lunch of milk, instead of 
 indigestible bologna, sausage, pickles, etc. The 
 milk men also time their visits and have their wagons 
 at the front doors of the different shops, so that 
 workmen may provide themselves with milk for the 
 lunch hour. This practice of encouraging the use 
 of milk is believed to have reduced the amount of 
 beer formerly consumed.” 
 
 An even more potent cause of drunkenness than 
 poor food lies in the fact that outside of his home 
 a workingman often has no club, no bank, even no 
 toilet room but the saloon. His hours have been 
 such that they made it impossible for him to deposit 
 or cash a check in a bank. Often he never sees the 
 
NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 116 
 
 inside of a shop of any kind unless on Saturday 
 night. The extent to which a workingman is cut off 
 from the ordinary conveniences and meeting and 
 trading places of men by his hours, the location of 
 his working place, the condition in which labour 
 leaves his clothes and his body at the close of the 
 day, have rarely been taken into count in studying 
 the attractions of the saloon. He was forced to use 
 it, and as long as he had money to buy a drink he 
 found the saloon cordial and democratic. u Cash 
 your check? Sure.”—“Wash up? Sure.” “Sit 
 and read? Sure.” 
 
 When the nickles and dimes cease to flow across 
 the counter this welcome is quickly chilled. Nobody 
 without money or credit can use the saloon. This 
 the deluded workingman finds when he loses his 
 job. 
 
 Saloons in the neighbourhood of factories feel 
 the effect of every convenience and comfort installed. 
 “ We have closed one place near us,” I heard a 
 business manager say once, “ simply by cashing the 
 men’s checks. We wakened up to the fact that they 
 were forced practically to buy a glass of something 
 to get their money.” 
 
 There is no body of men so wedded to grog that 
 it will not be influenced by good food, amusements, 
 opportunities for improvement and the personal in¬ 
 terest of their superiors. A striking demonstration 
 of this is reported by the Lake Carriers’ Association. 
 The men on the Great Lakes in the past have 
 worked under about as bad conditions as could be 
 
“ SOBER FIRST ” 
 
 117 
 
 conceived, with the result that usually the chief thing 
 they provided for a trip was a jug of whiskey. Six 
 years ago the Association set heartily to work to 
 make things over for the men on their particular 
 boats. They have provided the best of sanitation 
 and ventilation, the food and water are carefully 
 supervised. Quarters are comfortable. Assembly 
 rooms are provided at the various ports frequently 
 with night schools. Since this campaign of improve¬ 
 ments began accidents due to intoxication have been 
 automatically cut down 75 per cent. The improve¬ 
 ment has been so great that recently the captains and 
 engineers of the boats sent to the Board of Direc¬ 
 tors of the Association the following recommenda¬ 
 tion, begging that it be adopted: 
 
 That all masters and chief engineers of the Lake Car¬ 
 riers’ Association be instructed that temperance shall be 
 encouraged as much as possible among the crews and be 
 made a consideration for promotion as between men of 
 otherwise equal merit. Further, that notice to the effect 
 that drinking is prohibited aboard the boat and that no 
 person be allowed to carry liquor aboard the vessel be posted 
 in the rooms of the deckhands and firemen. Further, that 
 the Lake Carriers’ Association provide temperance pledges 
 and buttons in their assembly rooms and aboard the vessels 
 for free distribution among the men. 
 
 Let those who scorn “ welfare work ” ponder 
 these things. 
 
 Quite as potent a cause of drunkenness as bad 
 conditions is the lack of pleasures, of “ things to do.” 
 
118 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 Almost anything which arouses the interest is an 
 enemy to liquor. I have known the trade of saloons 
 seriously cut into by school gardens in the neighbour¬ 
 hood. The men became so much interested in what 
 their youngsters were doing that they helped in the 
 gardens after work instead of going to the saloon. 
 That is what has happened in the coke villages of 
 Western Pennsylvania, whose gardens are described 
 in Chapter VI. There are no saloons allowed in 
 these company towns, but a beer wagon makes the 
 rounds once or twice a week leaving a keg or crate 
 of bottles at almost every house. When the garden¬ 
 ing season opens it will sometimes lose a customer 
 for weeks. “ Tam gartens,” one of the drivers was 
 heard to say—“ eatin’ up my pizness!” 
 
 There is no doubt that one reason Vandergrift, 
 Pennsylvania, has been so successful as a “ dry ” 
 town is that the workingmen run it. When Vander¬ 
 grift was founded there was but one restriction put 
 upon the property. For 99 years no liquor was to 
 be sold within its boundaries. The working people 
 with whom this contract was made were admirably 
 adapted to respect and support it. They were as 
 a rule American born, most of them from farms in 
 the neighbouring counties. By training and tradi¬ 
 tion they were temperate. They believed Vander- 
 grift’s future would depend in a very large degree 
 upon its no-liquor policy, and this has proved true. 
 
 It is now a town of about 4,500 inhabitants. 
 Ninety per cent, of it is owned by men who work for 
 wages. These men carry in the Savings Bank over 
 
“ SOBER FIRST ” 
 
 119 
 
 a million dollars, and own something like 125 auto¬ 
 mobiles. That is, they and not saloon keepers are 
 getting rich. It is peaceful as well as prosperous. 
 Two policemen on twelve-hour shifts look after law 
 and order, and they say in the town that the one on 
 duty can generally be found asleep on the steps of 
 the Casino. This Casino, most effectively placed on 
 the town’s largest plaza, has two wings; one houses 
 the library, and the other the town council and jail. 
 I have heard the librarian argue that the jail is used 
 so little she ought to have it for books. It is some¬ 
 times needed, however. In the first three months of 
 1914 five different persons spent a night there, two 
 of them tramps glad of free lodging. It was a 
 fairly typical record. 
 
 A clergyman who came to Vandergrift after hav¬ 
 ing spent years in other industrial towns of Pennsyl¬ 
 vania, told me that never in any community where 
 he had been stationed had he known of a working¬ 
 man on the official board or carrying the plate on 
 Sunday. Here there were no others to perform 
 these duties. Workingmen make up the Town 
 Council, the Board of Education. The men have 
 places to go, things to do after working hours. 
 They are responsible citizens, carrying a town on 
 their shoulders, and both the dignity and the serious¬ 
 ness of the task keeps them steady. 
 
 If Vandergrift like the average “ dry ” town had 
 been run by politicians, merchants, and the profes¬ 
 sional class, the man with the dinner pail being prac¬ 
 tically excluded from office and the urgent feel of re- 
 
120 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 sponsibility, it is doubtful if prohibition ever could 
 have been the complete success it has been. 
 
 If the public and the workingmen as a body would 
 back up the employer if he refused to hire a man 
 that drank, the problem would be simplified, but 
 there is only one industry in which, so far, this is 
 done, and that is railroading. Among the general 
 rules in the standard code of The American Rail¬ 
 way Association is the following: 
 
 The use of intoxicants by employes while on duty is pro¬ 
 hibited. Their use, or the frequenting of places where they 
 are sold, is sufficient cause for dismissal. 
 
 The rules contained in the Standard Code have been 
 adopted by a great many of the railroads of this 
 country. It is probable that the public would sup¬ 
 port the railroad in enforcing the rules to the letter. 
 Whether the courts and unions would is uncertain, 
 though they have already put themselves on record 
 as supporting dismissal for intoxication. In 1913 a 
 passenger conductor was dismissed for intoxication 
 while on duty by the St. Louis Southwestern Rail¬ 
 way. The Order to which this man belonged took 
 up his case and secured a strike vote. Before the 
 strike was enforced, however, such conclusive evi¬ 
 dence that the man had been drunk was put before 
 certain members of the unions interested that a com¬ 
 mittee of them challenged the vote, and obtained a 
 Court injunction. The case finally went before the 
 Federal Board of Mediation, and was settled by the 
 unions withdrawing their demand that the dismissed 
 
“ SOBER FIRST ” 
 
 121 
 
 conductor be re-installed. The point of interest 
 here is that as the judge who granted the injunction 
 said, “ It is conceded on both sides that if the con¬ 
 ductor was intoxicated as charged, he was properly 
 discharged.” 
 
 As things now are the employer or manager who 
 has set out to make “sober first” the rule of his 
 shop will have no such backing as the railroads find. 
 His first attack and his most fundamental one 
 should be on conditions. But he knows well enough 
 that it will be a long day before good conditions 
 alone will control or even make a very sweeping 
 change in the drinking habits of many groups of 
 workingmen. They have the habit as a class. The 
 extent to which this is true both statistics and ob¬ 
 servation show. The ten States in the country hav¬ 
 ing the largest number of men in manufacturing pur¬ 
 suits in 1910 were the ten States (with two excep¬ 
 tions) having the largest number of saloons. That 
 is, the curve of the saloon in the United States is 
 approximately, not exactly, the curve of the work¬ 
 ingman. 1 
 
 1 The ten States having the largest number of wage earners in 
 manufacturing pursuits according to the last census are, New York, 
 Pennsylvania, Illinois, Massachusetts, Ohio, New Jersey, Michigan, 
 Wisconsin, Idiana, Missouri. 
 
 The ten States having the largest number of saloons in the same 
 year —1910 — were, New York, 36,915; Illinois, 24,253; Pennsyl¬ 
 vania, 22,849; California, 17,500; Ohio, 13,282; Wisconsin, 12,710; 
 New Jersey, 11,871; Missouri, 8,961; Michigan, 8,782. 
 
 There is one striking omission from each list. California, the 
 fourth State in number of saloons, does not appear among the ten 
 which rank first in number of wage earners. Massachusetts, which 
 is fourth in the list of workers, does not figure in the saloon list. 
 
122 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 Observation in and near manufacturing districts 
 corroborate this curve. Stand at the close of the 
 working day near the exits of factories in open 
 towns, and watch the men fill to crowding the 
 saloons. Go to the mining towns where saloons are 
 forbidden, in every yard, in the alleys, often in the 
 little hallways, you will find conspicuous in the litter 
 which makes them horrible to see, piles of empty 
 beer bottles, kegs and crates. They are left-overs 
 of the weekly spree at home. 
 
 A still more vivid exhibit of the support the 
 workingman gives whisky and beer is the fringe of 
 saloons and “ joints ” on the outskirts of “ dry ” or 
 regulated industrial towns. One of the scandals of 
 Gary, Indiana, that marvellous new made city, has 
 been the “ Patch,” a wedge of land running into 
 Gary, but not owned by the town, and so not subject 
 to its liquor restrictions. The Patch became a street 
 of such lawlessness and hateful disorder as possibly 
 did not for a time exist east of the Mississippi, 
 though to-day its worst period is in a fair way of 
 being outdone in the hasty powder and munition set¬ 
 tlements which war and greed are throwing together 
 in or near so many great industrial centres. With 
 war go all the vices. 
 
 What is to be done for and with these tens of 
 thousands who drink because they have always done 
 so, and upon whom no change of conditions make an 
 
 Missouri drinks more than she works, so to put it, her comparative 
 place in the two lists being 8 and io. So does Wisconsin, her 
 rank being 6 and 8. 
 
“ SOBER FIRST ” 
 
 123 
 
 impression? Our modern employer is a tireless ex¬ 
 perimenter. He thrives on problems human as well 
 as mechanical. He is ready to try anything. He is 
 becoming one of the best patrons of drunk cures that 
 there is in the country, and though he by no means 
 is always rewarded, the percentage of success justi¬ 
 fies trying it in many cases. Procter and Gamble 
 of Cincinnati have for years sent men on whom no 
 persuasion had had effect to a cure and with encour¬ 
 aging results. One man was sent three times before 
 the appetite finally yielded. He has been sober so 
 long now they consider him cured. There are not 
 many employers in the country who would show the 
 same patience, but Procter and Gamble have always 
 had a high sense of their responsibility. 
 
 The man who has set out to make “ sober first ” 
 the rule of his shop uses the drink cure, and he by 
 no means despises Billy Sunday. He knows that 
 men often have so lost self-control and self-respect 
 that nothing will avail but a rough jar, a liberal 
 pounding of head and heart such as Sunday gives. 
 The result of his work, particularly in the steel and 
 iron towns of Western Pennsylvania and Eastern 
 Ohio, corroborate his judgment. 
 
 Sunday’s famous sermon on “ booze ” has again 
 and again brought audiences of thousands of men 
 to their feet in an almost unanimous judgment that 
 they and the world would be happier on a water 
 basis. “ Come up here, kids,” Sunday cries out. 
 “ Come on, let them see you.” A dozen or more 
 .boys walk out sheepish and awkward to the front 
 
124 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 of the stage. “ Men, you see before you the raw 
 material of the saloon. There isn’t a drunkard in 
 the world, or one who has gone to his grave in 
 hell through liquor, who one day was not exactly 
 like these boys. Look at them, innocent, clean 
 pure, with every prospect in life! They are what 
 whiskey preys upon! ” 
 
 Who could be so hardened that he would resist 
 this plea? Sunday has swept the saloons of hun¬ 
 dreds upon hundreds of patrons in his campaigns. 
 How permanent have the results been? I put this 
 question to an officer of one of the greatest plants 
 near Pittsburgh, one truly desirous of seeing liquor 
 put under. 
 
 As far as lessening the number of saloons in either Pitts¬ 
 burgh or Allegheny County [he answered], I do not believe 
 it has made a particle of difference. I do believe, however, 
 that in individual cases there has been a great deal of lasting 
 good done; for instance I know of two puddlers who work 
 for our company who were drunk nearly every night of 
 their lives, and, after coming under the influence of Mr. 
 Sunday, neither of them have had a drink since. I believe 
 there has been considerable good done in this way. Sunday 
 was in our town six weeks about three or four years ago, 
 and I believe the good effects of his work are still felt in 
 that community. 
 
 This answer averages well with a score I have 
 received from fair-minded men in positions to know 
 the aftermath of Billy Sunday’s exertions. It is a 
 method which will never be abandoned as long as 
 
" SOBER FIRST ” 
 
 125 
 
 men get down where so many of them are when 
 Sunday attacks them. 
 
 Quite as direct as Sunday’s method, though less 
 pungent and emotional, are the appeals of the safety 
 bulletins and factory organs which many corpora¬ 
 tions and firms now support. The liveliest amateur 
 editing I know is done in these little periodicals. 
 The fixing of drink as a large factor in accidents has 
 turned all the safety sheets into temperance ad¬ 
 vocates. Satire and ridicule are the chief weapons. 
 There are few men who can get away from a para¬ 
 graph like this which is now going the rounds of 
 the bulletins. 
 
 For the Married Man Who Cannot Get Along 
 Without Drinks, the Following Is Sug¬ 
 gested as a Means of Freedom from 
 Bondage to the Saloon: 
 
 Start a saloon in your own house. Be the only customer. 
 You’ll have no license to pay. Go to your wife and give 
 her two dollars to buy a gallon of whiskey, and remember 
 there are sixty-nine drinks in a gallon of whiskey. Buy your 
 drinks from no one but your wife, and by the time the first 
 gallon is gone she will have eight dollars to put into the 
 bank, and two dollars to start business again. Should you 
 live ten years and continue to buy booze from her, and then 
 die with snakes in your boots, she will have enough money 
 to bury you decently, educate your children, buy a house 
 and lot, marry a decent man, and quit thinking about you 
 entirely. 
 
 You can count, too, on these factory bulletins 
 making excellent use of every item of news that 
 
126 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 makes a temperance argument. Such paragraphs 
 as the following go the rounds of the greatest fac¬ 
 tories in the country. 
 
 A recent dispatch from Kansas City states that Kansas 
 has purchased, in the past year, $37,000,000 worth of motor 
 cars, and that some bankers are apprehensive as to whether 
 this continued drain on the resources of the State may not, 
 eventually, be very much felt. A Wichita president is 
 not troubled, however. “ If you will compare our bank 
 deposits for each year,” he says, “ you will note a steady 
 increase in them, so we are not loaning money to buy auto¬ 
 mobiles, neither is there any decided decrease in the banks 
 of the State, either national or state. We are buying our 
 automobiles and paying for them, and I do not believe any¬ 
 body need have grave apprehensions as to the result upon 
 our general finances. 
 
 “ There is another side to this problem that I am won¬ 
 dering if the general public has figured on. Reliable sta¬ 
 tistics show that a sister State spends $24 per capita for 
 liquor per year, and that Kansas spends $1.50 per capita 
 for liquor of 1,700,000. If I figure it correctly, this gives 
 Kansas something over $38,000,000 to spend each year, 
 which the sister State does not have. 
 
 “ The money spent for liquor fills orphans’ homes, puts 
 widows over the washtubs, keeps insane asylums running 
 overtime and does a fair job of filling up the pauper end 
 of the cemeteries. The Kansas man who buys an automo¬ 
 bile, loads his family into the car, takes them out into open 
 air, prolongs his own life and gives his wife and children 
 something of what is theirs by right. 
 
 “ I think our financiers need not worry about our auto¬ 
 mobiles until they have solved the problem of the awful 
 waste of the liquor traffic.” 
 
“ SOBER FIRST ” 
 
 127 
 
 None of these efforts cover the entire field. 
 There are always good workingmen that conditions 
 do not touch. There are men who will not take a 
 cure, and can hear Billy Sunday unmoved. Their 
 cases go deeper and to reach them some of the 
 finest kind of individual work is done. Not done 
 simply in small shops of a few hundred employes, 
 but in big ones of several thousands. There are 
 no rules for treating Tom, Dick and Harry. The 
 head of the service bureau of one big concern, a 
 man who meets problems with fine intelligence and 
 sympathy, declares that it is as difficult to say how 
 he would handle an incorrigible case as it would 
 be for a doctor to diagnose a case without seeing the 
 patient. He studies his man, finds the point at 
 which he thinks he can be touched and then pre¬ 
 pares for his attack. He tells of one man whom 
 he was unable to reach until he discovered he was 
 extremely sensitive to ridicule. On two succeeding 
 sprees he told an impossible story as to the cause of 
 his absence, and by spreading the story among the 
 other foremen and his fellow workmen, they made 
 life miserable for him with unmerciful kidding. 
 This was ten or twelve years ago, and he has never 
 been drunk since. 
 
 At the Ford plant in Detroit where at this writ¬ 
 ing some 20,000 men are employed there is an un¬ 
 tiring effort to secure sobriety. There is no at¬ 
 tempt to bring men to signing the pledge so far as 
 I know, no interference with the regular glass of 
 -beer. It’s “ getting drunk,” which prevents the 
 
128 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 “ big envelope ” (the $5.00 a day) going to a man, 
 or takes it away. There are numberless cases of 
 men picked out of the gutter, put through a “ cure ” 
 and now on the straight road. They will go to 
 any length in their war on the liquor habit. Mr. 
 Lee, the former head of the sociological department 
 says emphatically, “ We'll do anything.” He tells 
 of one case where a man, who had boldly made him¬ 
 self drunk in the presence of an investigator, was 
 carried bodily to a cure. To-day, so far as one can 
 tell, he is forever done with liquor. “ Eating out 
 of his wife’s hand,” he w r as described to me! The 
 loyalty of that wife to Ford's is eternal. 
 
 The man once cured, has, too, nothing but grati¬ 
 tude. One of the most wonderful temperance lec¬ 
 tures I ever heard was from a man of thirty who 
 had been brought into line through the determined 
 efforts of a Ford investigator. He was a clean, 
 fresh boy, still solemn with the wonder of his re¬ 
 demption. “ Lady,” he said, “ if, when I was a 
 boy, somebody had talked to me as these people 
 have, if there had been anybody to be interested in 
 me like they are, I'd have money enough laid up 
 to live without working. I’m a good workman, 
 always was when I was sober, but generally I was 
 in the gutter. I wasn't happy! No drinking man 
 is. When I went home nothing looked right to me. 
 I didn’t like the way my supper tasted, and I didn’t 
 like my wife’s looks. I was breaking down too. I 
 hadn’t a friend. Talk about the saloon keeper be¬ 
 ing a man’s friend. He is when you have money 
 
“ SOBER FIRST ” 
 
 129 
 
 to spend, can’t do enough for you. Pats you on 
 the back, cashes your orders, lets you sit and read, 
 do anything so long as you drink, but when you 
 stop, he stops. I met a saloon keeper to-day that 
 I’ve paid a lot of money to, and he didn’t even 
 speak to me. Nothing to it. I’m happy now and 
 so’s my wife. I like my home, and I eat good; 
 why I’ve gained twenty-five pounds since I stopped,” 
 and so on, an earnest convinced testimony to the 
 benefits of sobriety. 
 
 Of course there are those that fall. But that 
 does not mean they are given up. The truth is the 
 Sociological Department at Ford’s seems to hate to 
 give up a man as much as the Sales Department 
 hates to give up an order. They’re “ making 
 men,” and they won’t accept defeat. That they’re 
 held to this by Henry Ford is certain. “ Tell the 
 committee they’ll have to guess again,” he sent word 
 in reply to a report that said a man was hopeless, 
 and better be discharged. “ Do you mean to tell 
 me that a great big concern like this with all the 
 time and money it needs must give up a poor weak 
 wretch that probably never had a chance. Make a 
 man of him. Find a way.” 
 
 Where a factory has a Medical Department, 
 breaking up drinking habits is much simpler. The 
 physician is able to demonstrate to the workman 
 the physical degeneracy that drink causes. He can 
 show the connection between hardened arteries, 
 diseased kidneys and liver, and he can follow a 
 hard case up as was impossible before the days of 
 
130 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 factory dispensary and examinations. Again and 
 again men are literally frightened into sobriety. 
 One doctor tells of finding in 1912 in his routine 
 examination an old employe with an enlarged heart, 
 irregular in its action and a high blood pressure; a 
 thin, trembling man, who was a chronic drinker. 
 “ He and I discussed his condition in plain terms,” 
 the doctor says, “ and since his work was not hard, 
 he was allowed to go back to it. In 1913 his con¬ 
 dition was distinctly worse, so much worse that for 
 safety’s sake his work had to be changed to some¬ 
 thing easier. Again I told him how his habits were 
 destroying him, and urged him to drop them. But 
 he didn’t, though I saw him often. In 1914 I 
 found him a wreck. Try as hard as we would we 
 could not think of a job in the entire plant that he 
 could do safely. A man only 54 years old, yet 
 tottering and trembling, with a rickety heart and a 
 dangerous blood pressure, a premature human 
 wreck. I think I never pleaded and begged and 
 argued and laboured and berated any man as I did 
 him. I told him that the scrap heap was waiting 
 for him, and he was ready for it, and the work had 
 been produced solely by himself and John Barley¬ 
 corn. 
 
 “ Finally, since he was an old employe of the 
 company, a job was made for him, and we let him 
 think he was working, for he and his must live. I 
 was heartsick and thoroughly discouraged. Soon 
 after that he left the employ of the company, and I 
 lost track of him. 
 
“ SOBER FIRST ” 
 
 131 
 
 “ One year and four days later, he came back. 
 I scarcely knew him. He was clean, his skin was 
 clear, his hand was steady, he had gained eighteen 
 pounds. His heart was regular and he looked like 
 a man. When I shook hands with him, there was 
 a lump in my throat. Finally I said, ‘ Well, Nick, 
 tell me all about it.’ He replied, 4 Well, Doc, there 
 ain’t much to say, except I ain’t took a drink since 
 the day you and me talked things over, a year ago.’ 
 
 “ To-day he is doing the work he did several years 
 ago, and is doing it better.” 
 
 “ Find a way ” is becoming in scores of the great¬ 
 est and richest manufacturing concerns in the coun¬ 
 try the rule in regard to drink as it is in regard to 
 safety. I doubt indeed if there is any agency to-day 
 making anything like as persistent, spirited, ingen¬ 
 ious attack on the use of liquor as that of our mod¬ 
 ern industrial management. The attack is only 
 just begun. It is bound to go on as is that on long 
 hours, unfair distribution of profits, inefficiency, 
 autocracy of management, blind alleys — every evil 
 that hampers the full development of industrial life. 
 Progress will be the more rapid because it is becom¬ 
 ing clear to so many that here as at other points 
 that which was looked on as a purely moral ques¬ 
 tion is also an economic question. It is another one 
 6f accumulating proofs that only good morals are 
 good business. This realisation brings a profes¬ 
 sional and scientific spirit to the handling of the 
 liquor problem which it has almost always lacked. 
 
 . It takes it out of the amateur class. 
 
132 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 Certainly it cannot be forgotten that there have 
 always been in our factories and shop employers 
 who concerned themselves sincerely in the question. 
 They were men with a large sense of personal re¬ 
 sponsibility. They could not get away from the 
 Biblical hint that we are our brothers’ keeper; but 
 usually they looked on their efforts as a social or 
 religious duty, not as a natural part of their business 
 management. 
 
 On this type of employer, their hard-headed col¬ 
 leagues have always made a sharp attack. They 
 were engaged in a struggle to establish the principle 
 that humanity had nothing to do with business. 
 The man who practised it was a traitor to his class. 
 Business had but one end, and that was profits. 
 The relations of those in it consequently were im¬ 
 personal and mechanical. Such a conception of any 
 human undertaking is bound to fail. It is contrary 
 to the nature of men. Hard and brutal and greedy 
 as they may exhibit themselves, there is in them all 
 wells of sentiment, of good feeling, of love of justice. 
 These springs can be capped until they dry up, but 
 it takes years to do it. 
 
 The realisation by progressive industry that the 
 hard conception that greed and narrowness have 
 tried to fasten on it was a fatal economic error, 
 has come to thousands of younger men as a revela¬ 
 tion. It has loosened powers and impulses and en¬ 
 thusiasms which they had never suspected in them¬ 
 selves. They are finding in business possibilities 
 for service, for citizenship, for the development of 
 
“ SOBER FIRST ” 
 
 133 
 
 both themselves and those under their direction, 
 which give to work a new meaning; to moral issues 
 a fresh reason. It is this loosening of their powers 
 which is giving new life to many an old hope of 
 this tormented world and among them that of a day 
 when no man will put an enemy into his mouth to 
 steal away his brains. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 GOOD HOMES MAKE GOOD WORKERS 
 
 Bad habits are no more inimical to improving 
 industrial groups than bad homes. One of our 
 greatest safety experts says that safety is impossible 
 if a man is poorly housed and fed. An experiment¬ 
 ing and successful manufacturer employing hundreds 
 of girls declares that unhappy homes make unstable 
 payrolls. Competition itself is forcing employers 
 to consider the outside life of their employes. The 
 first and most important thing they must consider 
 is the house the man lives in. 
 
 A good working man wants a home, wants it 
 more, on the whole, than any other thing. He 
 wants, if possible, to own his home. Wherever 
 you find stable industries in this country you find 
 the wage earner buying a bit of land and building 
 a house. It is he who pushes the cities out in long 
 lines of tiny cottages. It is he who opens “ addi¬ 
 tions ” and suburbs. It is he who supports the ex¬ 
 tensions of car lines, water, gas and electric mains. 
 Take the street car in various directions from a 
 growing place like Kansas City and note the miles 
 and miles of gay bungalows and trim houses. It 
 is the man on wages who made the building of them 
 necessary. 
 
 134 
 
GOOD HOMES MAKE GOOD WORKERS 135 
 
 In Grand Rapids, Michigan, an industrial town 
 of some 112,000 inhabitants, there were, in 1914, 
 when these figures were obtained 24,407 residences. 
 The greatest number of these were workingmen’s 
 houses, street upon street of them. Building and 
 loan associations and the banks which made a 
 specialty of loaning money on workingmen’s homes 
 say that 90 per cent, of the married labourers in the 
 town, skilled and unskilled, own houses. The 
 average cost of these is about $2,000. They are, 
 as a rule, paid for in ten years. As the average 
 wage is only a little over two dollars a day it de¬ 
 mands thrift to own these homes. It means plain 
 food and clothing, inexpensive amusements. But 
 happily in Grand Rapids it does not mean the sac¬ 
 rifice of education, books, or pleasant out-of-door 
 life, as these are all provided by the city. 
 
 Nine years ago a superintendent in the Fairbanks 
 Manufacturing Company of Beloit, Wisconsin, 
 found on his hands a piece of condemned land in a 
 new quarter of the town, but convenient to the fac¬ 
 tory. He decided to try building houses there for 
 the married men in the plant. In seven years he 
 built one hundred and thirty, all of which were 
 quickly taken and on no one of which has he ever 
 lost a cent. The terms were easy. The first pay¬ 
 ment was frequently as low as $25. I went through 
 an attractive, well-built house with a good furnace, 
 gas, water, electricity, and land enough for a gar¬ 
 den, which the occupant was buying for $20 a month. 
 The rent of such a place was about $14 in Beloit. 
 
136 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 There were plenty of men, even on $2 a day, who 
 were willing to take the burden of such a place on 
 their shoulders. What did they get? What do 
 any of us get from a place “of our own”? A 
 sense of security and privacy and independence — 
 a place to tinker and play with. We get, too, the 
 sense of property. The house earned has been in 
 many a family’s life the beginning of its independ¬ 
 ence. 
 
 Happy is the employer who can shift to the 
 shoulders of landlords, of building associations, of 
 banks and of speculators the responsibility for the 
 kind of a home his employe lives in. He can only 
 do this when he operates within or near a town. 
 Let him go into remote and unsettled districts and 
 immediately town building is forced upon him. If 
 he does it stingily, half-heartedly, he is sure to reap 
 as much trouble as he does from defective ma¬ 
 chinery, if he does not ruin utterly his chance of 
 success. It is in the case of enterprises which are 
 of uncertain or temporary duration that the diffi¬ 
 culties are greatest. 
 
 If a company opens a mine in the mountains, 
 scores of miles from a town, it must build a village, 
 and it must own it, for the simple reason that mines 
 are not necessarily durable properties. They “ run 
 out,” and when they run out the town is abandoned, 
 its houses are as useless as the shafts and the gal¬ 
 leries. LTder these circumstances no miner can be 
 expected, or would he desire, to own his home; no 
 more would outside builders venture investment. 
 
GOOD HOMES MAKE GOOD WORKERS 137 
 
 The company is compelled to be its own landlord. 
 It is frequently compelled to be its own town council, 
 schoolmaster, policeman, justice of the peace. As 
 the body of the working people will be non-Eng- 
 lish-speaking and of many nationalities, few of them 
 will understand American standards of living, even 
 less will they understand our social and political 
 customs. The management will not understand the 
 miners. Nine times out of ten it will tell you — 
 and believe — that they prefer to live like swine, 
 and that there is no sense in attempting to provide 
 anything convenient, attractive or orderly for them. 
 But is it true? If this foreign miner and his family 
 had a chance to live decently would they do it? 
 Yes! Nineteen times out of twenty they would. If 
 any one doubts it, let him look at the results of the ef¬ 
 forts which have been making for several years to 
 redeem the towns of the Frick Cole Company in the 
 famous Connellsville district of Western Pennsyl¬ 
 vania. 
 
 There are probably no mining towns in this coun¬ 
 try which are such ghastly living places as the coke 
 towns. The ovens — I am speaking here of the 
 old beehive oven which belches its smoke and gas 
 into the air, not of the modern by-product oven, 
 which largely consumes them — the ovens are built 
 in long rows, twenty, thirty or fifty of them side by 
 side, and convenient to the mouth of a mine. As 
 the coal is lifted from the shaft it is carried to the 
 oven. Night and day the semi-combustion goes on. 
 
 When the coke is taken from the oven it is 
 
138 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 screened or sifted. Rapidly there grow up around 
 the ovens and the mines range upon range of these 
 coke screenings, black, desolate, and indescribably 
 arid and dirty. What greenness and fertility the 
 screenings do not bury, the smoke and gas kill. I 
 have seen hillsides, against which the prevailing 
 wind turned the coke oven gases, more lifeless and 
 hideous than any desert on earth. To add to the 
 horror of it, the clear streams are turned to a yel¬ 
 lowish-red by the torrents of water pumped inces¬ 
 santly from the mines. In some places for every 
 ton of coal ten tons of water are lifted. 
 
 This is what the coke industry does to its imme¬ 
 diate neighbourhood. No place for man to live, 
 one would say, and yet hugging close to the desola¬ 
 tion are the “ company houses.” The houses may 
 have been fairly good at the start, many of them 
 are very good, and in almost all cases, especially in 
 this particular company, they have generous space 
 around. Moreover, the rents are reasonable. 
 Houses with four good-sized rooms with at least 
 an eighth of an acre of yard rent at $5 a month. 
 The largest are not over $10. Fuel is free in nearly 
 all of the coke settlements if you will cart it. The 
 wages are fair, $3.75 a day on an average, with 
 $2.15 for nine hours to the unskilled inside man. 
 
 T his sounds well, and when the mine is opened 
 and the houses new is not bad. But almost imme¬ 
 diately the operations of the industry ruin the settle¬ 
 ment. Smoke and gas discolour and destroy all 
 freshness. Screenings pile up until sometimes the 
 
GOOD HOMES MAKE GOOD WORKERS 139 
 
 houses are standing in canyons. There are no 
 sewers, no pavements, no fences. Refuse and filth 
 collect. Rains cut out gullies and pile up banks, 
 and over it all wander at will pigs, geese and chil¬ 
 dren. 
 
 I doubt if the villages of the Frick Coke Com¬ 
 pany were ever quite as desolate and unsanitary as 
 many that are still to be seen near Pittsburgh, but 
 they certainly were unfit for men and women to live 
 in, and a few years ago the company decided that 
 they must be redeemed. The leader in this under¬ 
 taking was the president of the company, the late 
 Thomas Lynch, the man who twenty years ago in¬ 
 troduced the “ Safety First ” crusade into his mines. 
 The order that came to the mine superintendents 
 was, briefly: Clean up the towns; grade the streets 
 and put in cement curbs and walks; fence the yards 
 and cover them with sufficient soil to enable the 
 residents to raise flowers and vegetables; provide 
 new and approved vaults; put water in the kitchens; 
 add porches; paint the houses; keep the alleys as 
 clean as the streets, and teach and encourage the 
 people both to keep their places clean and to make 
 gardens. This order applied to twenty settlements, 
 four thousand double houses in all. 
 
 Some of the superintendents had an idea that 
 the management had gone crazy. “ It couldn’t be 
 done.” “ People wouldn’t appreciate it.” 
 
 It is certain that at the start the people were luke¬ 
 warm. In one case where the houses had been so 
 deeply engulfed that there was no helping things 
 
140 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 the order came to rebuild them on open ground. 
 When this was attempted the tenants made an up¬ 
 roar. Men even w T ent to the company's headquar¬ 
 ters to see Mr. Lynch. They had lived for twenty 
 or more years in those houses. They were their 
 homes. If they were torn down they would leave 
 the mines. “ They’re going to be torn down,” Mr. 
 Lynch told them. The superintendent followed 
 them. “ If we tear down these houses we'll have 
 to close the mine. The men won’t stand for it.” 
 “ Close the mine,” was Mr. Lynch’s reply. 
 
 That was five years ago. In the fall of 1913 I 
 spent three days driving from settlement to settle¬ 
 ment to see how nearly the order had been carried 
 out and what response the people had made. I 
 have never had a more conclusive demonstration 
 that no living conditions can be so bad that 
 they cannot be redeemed, and that no fallacy is more 
 complete than the oft-quoted one that foreigners 
 prefer to live like swine. 
 
 In those three days I visited at least a dozen of 
 settlements, and in all of them the programme had 
 been applied to conditions fully as bad as those I 
 have described. The general decency of things in 
 contrast to the former awful indecency first struck 
 one — the decency, the order, and the cleanliness. 
 I doubt if there is an established town in the United 
 States that can show as clean alleys as dozens 
 through w r hich I drove. 
 
 One of the changes going on at the moment in 
 several places, in which tenants, superintendents, and 
 
GOOD HOMES MAKE GOOD WORKERS 141 
 
 particularly Mr. Lynch, were taking the liveliest in¬ 
 terest, was putting water into the kitchens. 
 
 “ When I was a boy,” Mr. Lynch said, “ I had 
 to carry water half a mile for my mother, and dip 
 it up at that. When I built these houses twenty 
 years ago I put a hydrant into each street, and I 
 thought I was doing a fine thing. To have water 
 just outside the yard by simply turning on a spigot 
 seemed to me all the human heart could wish. Of 
 course I ought to have carried it into the houses, but 
 it never occurred to me.” 
 
 The impression of these towns last to die in my 
 mind will be the miles and miles of trim white fences 
 and outhouses. It was interesting to see how con¬ 
 tagious the painting was. The company paints 
 everything once a year, but I found several ambi¬ 
 tious women and one or two men who were putting 
 fresh coats on the front porch and on the fence, 
 something to make them a little finer than their 
 neighbours. 
 
 When the company began its work I doubt if in 
 all the eight thousand dooryards there was a bushel 
 of soil in which a seed could sprout. Thousands 
 upon thousands of loads of dirt, manure, and lime 
 were carted, and the results awaited. There were 
 those who sneered at the idea that these men and 
 women who, some of them for twenty years, had 
 lived on barren ash piles, would make gardens. 
 But they didn’t know their world. They fell to 
 gardening as if it had been their yearly habit. In 
 1912 out of some seven thousand families in the 
 
142 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 different settlements 5,149 had gardens of some 
 kind; in 1913, 6,293; in 1914, 6,923. 
 
 And they were serious gardens. 
 
 To encourage them, the company offers in each 
 settlement a first, second and third prize. The 
 judges are chosen from neighbouring farmers. In 
 1913 at one settlement there were nine plots so 
 good that the judges could not decide between them. 
 They spent three days over the work and were com¬ 
 ing a fourth when Mr. Lynch heard of it. It was 
 an imposition, he said, to allow them to give so much 
 time; he would give nine prizes. And he did. It 
 was October when I visited the settlement, and they 
 were still discussing the contest. I was taken from 
 yard to yard to see what was left of the glory, and 
 in the “ best room ” of the cottages was shown, 
 often gorgeously framed, the certificates each prize¬ 
 winner had received. 
 
 There is much more than glory comes from the 
 gardens. In 1913 I saw many cellars packed with 
 enough potatoes, beets, onions, carrots and other 
 vegetables, to carry the family through the winter, 
 and at one place I saw twenty-five hundred heads of 
 cabbage sold by a miner to the company store. It 
 is estimated that in 1914 the vegetable gardens 
 yielded crops worth nearly $143,000. It was a ver¬ 
 itable godsend in the dull times. 
 
 The redeeming of the towns has cost money. 
 L'pward of a million dollars has been spent: more 
 will be spent, for the plans are steadily enlarging. 
 At one settlement a commodious clubhouse with out- 
 
GOOD HOMES MAKE GOOD WORKERS 143 
 
 side swimming pool and play-grounds for the chil¬ 
 dren has been provided. Others are to be built. 
 The company has put many thousands of dollars 
 into ball grounds. The housekeeping centre has 
 been introduced at one place. 
 
 Why is this done? Why have the duties of 
 mine superintendents been stretched to include town 
 sanitation, gardening and amusements? Why is the 
 trained nurse becoming a regular member of the 
 superintendent’s official force? It is not charity. 
 It is not law. It is not public opinion. It is not 
 advertising. You may argue that all these forces 
 have influenced the policy. No doubt they have; 
 they influence all human actions more or less directly. 
 But they do not explain the redemption of the Frick 
 Coke Towns. This redemption is as much a part 
 of the company’s business management as the 
 method of taking out coal or making coke. They 
 believe that the success of their business depends 
 more upon their labouring force than upon any one 
 other element. To have efficient, trustworthy, and 
 steady men you must have healthy and contented 
 men. Men are neither healthy nor contented in 
 wretched homes. 
 
 Moreover, workers naturally gravitate where the 
 conditions are best and the opportunity largest. In 
 the great mining district of Western Pennsylvania 
 this concern can keep its shifts full when every other 
 mine is short of help. It has its choice of steady, 
 able, ambitious miners. It has run unmolested for 
 - months when all about neighbouring mines were shut 
 
H 4 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 down because of strikes brought on by refusals to 
 grant that which this concern provides as a matter 
 of course, as a feature of good management. If 
 these things pay, then the redemption of the coke 
 towns pays. 
 
 The power of the company in these towns dis¬ 
 turbs many. They have in mind the abuses which 
 are so familiar, and they are as prone to believe 
 them inevitable as the companies are prone to be¬ 
 lieve the miners incorrigible in their disorder and 
 filth. There is the company store. It is as diffi¬ 
 cult to convince a critic of the present order that a 
 company can run an honest store as that it can be a 
 considerate landlord. The same circumstances that 
 force it to be one, force it to be the other. The 
 only question is whether it serves or exploits. The 
 company stores in these coke towns are far better 
 than the independent stores in the adjacent towns. 
 The goods are fresh and admirably cared for. 
 The prices are reasonable. There is no compul¬ 
 sion to buy other than that of circumstances. Carts 
 from outside are free to peddle. The vegetables 
 sold are often the products of the settlement gar¬ 
 dens. 
 
 As for the government of the settlement being 
 in the hands of the company, it is: but actually it 
 rarely disturbs the course of things. Save in time 
 of trouble the settlements run themselves. And 
 there is very little danger of trouble when there is 
 no exploitation, no harshness, no interference with 
 personal freedom. 
 
GOOD HOMES MAKE GOOD WORKERS 145 
 
 Even if the people in the coke settlements could 
 own their houses they probably could not do better 
 than to let the towns run themselves. Indeed, 
 it is a question if all our small towns would 
 not be better off if they had no more governmental 
 machinery than these coke towns. Leclaire, Indiana, 
 the headquarters of the Nelson profit-sharing 
 scheme, has no town government. 
 
 It just runs itself, so far as policing is concerned [Mr. 
 Nelson says]. So far as public utilities and the up-keeping 
 of the streets, the lighting, water, the ball grounds, the lake, 
 the hall and the kindergarten rooms, it is done by the em¬ 
 ployes of the company, and the company is, so far as Leclaire 
 is concerned, the people who live there. 
 
 The residents could at any time incorporate a town gov¬ 
 ernment. Between a quarter and a third of the residents 
 are not our employes; but I have never heard from any 
 source a suggestion of wanting to incorporate. There have 
 never been any rules of any kind to govern anybody’s con¬ 
 duct, nor any occasion for arresting or even reprimanding 
 any one. We have never in any manner discriminated 
 about who should be admitted, either as employe or as resi¬ 
 dent. If there is work for a competent applicant he gets 
 the work. If an employe — and sometimes other people — 
 wants a house built, we build it, and on such monthly pay¬ 
 ments as he and we think he can afford, having due regard 
 for his pay and the size of his family. 
 
 This complete freedom resting solely on voluntary eco¬ 
 nomic and social action is, I think, the key to Leclaire suc¬ 
 cess. I do not think there is any other town in which there 
 is as much loyalty to the place and affection for their homes 
 . and social relations as in Leclaire. 
 
146 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 Again and again in this country, when a man of 
 affairs has found himself committed to founding a 
 stable industry in a district so remote that he must 
 provide a town for workingmen, his mind has been 
 captured by the dream of building something, where 
 health, beauty, freedom and prosperity should reign. 
 
 The means to realise the vision has been given to 
 few. Possibly the most ambitious attempt was a 
 pitiful failure from the founder’s point of view. 
 This was Pullman, Illinois, which failed from over¬ 
 paternalism. Men want to putter about their 
 homes; Mr. Pullman insisted on doing the puttering 
 himself. Women like to hang their clothes in the 
 yard, Mr. Pullman provided an enclosure. But 
 Mr. Pullman gave this country a standard for build¬ 
 ing and landscape gardening which was a revelation 
 to many of us, and he gave, also, a valuable lesson 
 in what not to do. 
 
 His failure had something to do with what is 
 probably the most successful workingman’s town in 
 the country, at least one of the five or six most suc¬ 
 cessful. This is the town of Vandergrift, forty 
 miles northeast of Pittsburgh on the Kiskiminetas 
 River. 
 
 This town — and the mills which made it neces¬ 
 sary— was founded to meet the compelling needs 
 of a healthy business. The business was that of 
 making galvanised iron. It had been started some¬ 
 time in the 70’s and had limped along for several 
 years; then in the 8o’s new interests took hold of 
 
GOOD HOMES MAKE GOOD WORKERS 147 
 
 it. The man at the head was the late George G. 
 McMurtry. In a surprisingly short time he brought 
 the works from a negligible factor in the business to 
 one where it was turning out more galvanised iron 
 of a better quality than any other plant of its size 
 in the world. It soon had burst its jacket, too, that 
 is, it had covered all the available land for its pur¬ 
 pose in its vicinity. Mr. McMurtry decided to 
 move, and in 1892, twenty-four years ago he bought 
 a farm of six hundred and forty acres on which he 
 proposed to create a model industrial settlement. 
 This property was only two and a half miles from 
 the town where the original mills were located. 
 
 Before Mr. McMurtry made a plan for either 
 mill or town he studied the best of both in this 
 country and Europe. The towns he studied in¬ 
 cluded Essen in Germany, Creusot in France, the 
 co-operative villages of Belgium, the various Eng¬ 
 lish experiments, the communities of Russia. He 
 came to his undertaking with positive, matured con¬ 
 victions as to what should and what should not be 
 done, and to carry out these convictions he engaged 
 the best-equipped specialists in the country: as an 
 example, when it came to laying out the town, he 
 chose Frederick Law Olmsted, probably the best 
 landscape artist of his day. 
 
 It was fully three years after the property was 
 bought before Mr. McMurtry announced his plan 
 to the men in the works. It was done in an engag¬ 
 ing little pamphlet called “ The New Town.” 
 
148 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 The usual way of building a city [he wrote] is to build 
 cheap, tear down and build again. No grading at first; no 
 pavements; no sewers; no water; no light; no health or 
 comfort. By and by, when the city has been built over 
 once or tw r ice, begin again by sections, grade, build sewers 
 and other improvements; and then it is fit to live in — for 
 those who have money enough. It costs an enormous amount 
 of money to build a city in that way. That is why it costs 
 so much to live in a city. And the city is not very whole¬ 
 some or comfortable. Indeed, it is never finished. 
 
 Such of these things as belong to starting our town can 
 be done for a small fraction of what they cost in a city. We 
 shall do them beforehand, and put the cost of doing them 
 into the price of the property. What we do will never have 
 to be done again, because we shall do it right. 
 
 The things Mr. McMurtry proposed to start with 
 were; 
 
 A site of natural health and wealth and beauty; drained; 
 graded; flat but convenient; good roads and walks, not in 
 squares but according to the lay of the land; such water as 
 flows from mountain springs brought into houses; sewers; 
 expanse of grass; trees; outlook; modern above and below 
 ground; electric lights, telegraph, telephone. Every man to 
 choose his part with the means at hand of supporting that 
 part; the people to own their houses and control their pur¬ 
 suits. The means of health and enjoyment of life within 
 reach of all inhabitants. Liquor not to be sold there. 
 
 IVe intend to make a better town than there is in the 
 world for physical health and comfort . 
 
 It was in June, 1896, that Mr. McMurtry, 
 through the land company which had been formed 
 
GOOD HOMES MAKE GOOD WORKERS 149 
 
 to take over the new town (Vandergrift it was called 
 in honour of the leading stockholder in the mills), 
 announced that lots were for sale. “ We are ready 
 to sell lots. Have waited until the place is entirely 
 ready. Now you can judge its value and buy in¬ 
 telligently.” 
 
 There were 814 lots in the place, of which 200 
 were saved for business purposes. The first week 
 276 were taken by mill men, indeed none but mill 
 men were given a chance to buy at the opening. 
 Speculators came, but there was nothing for them 
 and they went away jeering. They have never been 
 back. There has never been anything for them to 
 play with. 
 
 Building began immediately, a building and loan 
 company serving the men. To-day Vandergrift has 
 a population of about forty-five hundred people, 
 most of them living in their own homes. These 
 homes cost, lot and house, from $1,800 to $7,500 
 each, though the latter figure is exceptional. I 
 should say that the average present value of the 
 five to six hundred homes was about $2,500. The 
 building company will tell you that it has never 
 been forced to foreclose on a piece of property in 
 the town and that never but in one case has it lost 
 money. 
 
 Now, of course, this means high pay. The 
 wages of the skilled men who own the homes in 
 Vandergrift are as high as ten dollars a day. There 
 are rollers who make twelve dollars and fifteen dol¬ 
 lars a day. That is, the town is not for the hun- 
 
150 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 dreds of unskilled labourers without whom the plant 
 could not operate. These unskilled labourers are 
 and always have been foreigners, many of them 
 speaking no English and poorly understanding 
 American ideas. Poorly provided for in the origi¬ 
 nal borough they early began to form settlements on 
 its outskirts. One of these, East Vandergrift, is 
 now a town of fifteen hundred people. 
 
 The land company met this need for cheaper 
 houses by opening a new tract, beautifully situated 
 and adjoining the original town, Vandergrift 
 Heights. Here lots 25 x 200 feet are sold for $150. 
 Five dollars down and five dollars a month are the 
 terms. The response to this opportunity was im¬ 
 mediate. There are five hundred houses in Van¬ 
 dergrift Heights to-day, all but eight of which were 
 built by labouring men — a majority of whom were 
 foreign-born — and 95 per cent, of which are now 
 owned by them. The Heights was until recently a 
 separate borough with schools and churches of its 
 own. Its great ambition was to have everything 
 that Vandergrift had. It paved several streets and 
 was planning for more when united with the mother 
 town. 
 
 Vandergrift serves as an object lesson to all its 
 neighbours. Old towns up and down the river that 
 fifteen years ago wrnuld have no more considered lay¬ 
 ing pavements than building an opera house are now 
 taxing and straining to make their streets like those 
 of Vandergrift. 
 
 The remarkable health record of the original 
 
GOOD HOMES MAKE GOOD WORKERS 151 
 
 borough has had a wholesome influence. Typhoid 
 fever has been a terrible scourge 'in these river 
 towns. There has never been a case in Vander- 
 grift which was not brought in from outside. In 
 five years — 1909 to 1913 — the deaths in Vander¬ 
 grift, with a population of 4,500 were 181. In 
 the same period East Vandergrift, with a population 
 of 1,500 had 138, more than twice as many 
 proportionally. Gradually the most ignorant and 
 unbelieving come to recognise that good water, 
 sewers, care of garbage, are closely related to the 
 health and happiness of themselves and families, 
 and they struggle for them. 
 
 It would be difficult in the United States to-day 
 to find a prettier town, greener, trimmer, cleaner, 
 and more influential than this town of Vandergrift, 
 owned outright by men who daily carry a dinner 
 pail. It is owned by mill men. and governed by mill 
 men. Organised as a borough with a burgess and 
 council, the majority of the town government are 
 labourers in the mill. The present burgess is a 
 roller, three of the council out of seven are rollers 
 and one is a twelve-hour man. In fact, except for 
 an occasional shop-keeper, the men who work with 
 their hands at the hardest of hard labour, making 
 sheets of iron and plates of steel fill all the elective 
 positions of trust and authority. They are in a 
 majority on the council, the school board, the health 
 board. They form largely the official boards of 
 the churches. They carry the collection plates on 
 Sunday. They make the society. I never have 
 
152 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 found a community in which the kind of work a 
 man does has apparently so little to say about the 
 position he holds in the eyes of his fellows. 
 
 I do not mean to intimate that there are no social 
 distinctions. There is a domestic service line drawn. 
 There is a race line drawn, but there are many cases 
 where character and ambition have broken both. 
 Nor do I mean to intimate that the town life is 
 particularly different from town life everywhere. 
 The inhabitants, on the whole, seem to me to accept 
 the exceptional physical advantages they enjoy with 
 a normal amount of dissatisfaction, and to be busy 
 with the problems of improvement that live towns 
 the country over are agitating. I found the town 
 council two years ago divided on the purchase of a 
 motor fire truck. The school board was jeal¬ 
 ously discussing the Gary schools, and if they could 
 or ought to imitate them. The librarian and her 
 counsellors were debating the relative number of 
 works of fiction and non-fiction to buy with a small 
 income. The women were sitting in judgment on 
 the town fathers, criticising their street-cleaning, 
 their slow development of playgrounds, their tolera¬ 
 tion of pool-rooms. 
 
 The churches are most aggressive in their attacks 
 on evil-doing, and I certainly know of no other town 
 in the country where they have such backing. There 
 are nine churches in Vandergrift and its suburbs, a 
 population of twelve thousand. On a Sunday in 
 April, 1914, when I looked over this church-going 
 crowd I found by an official count that fifty-five 
 
GOOD HOMES MAKE GOOD WORKERS 153 
 
 hundred out of the twelve thousand were at the 
 morning services. 
 
 There are the same keen political differences as 
 everywhere. Naturally Republican, it became 
 Progressive in 1912 and the pendulum has not yet 
 swung entirely back. There are a few Socialists. 
 
 The “cost of living” is a perennial subject of 
 discussion, as everywhere. My own conclusion 
 from considerable close questioning was that of an 
 intelligent housewife, who declared that Vandergrift 
 was about five per cent, dearer than the neighbour¬ 
 ing towns and six per cent, cheaper than Pittsburgh. 
 That is, Vandergrift is quite as human in all its 
 wants and experiences as if it were not a “ model 
 town,” a thing created, not allowed to spring up. 
 
 I have heard people argue that Vandergrift was 
 impractical for anything but Big Business. (There 
 seems to be an impression that, since the plant now 
 belongs in the American Sheet and Tin Plate Com¬ 
 pany, and that, since that company is a subsidiary 
 of the Steel Corporation, the town was built by the 
 corporation.) Vandergrift is a product of small 
 business. Its creator looked upon the health, pros¬ 
 perity and content of his employes as a part of his 
 stock in trade. In building the new plant which 
 was necessary to accommodate his growing business, 
 he arranged for a town with the same care he ar¬ 
 ranged for the best machinery. “ Don’t imagine 
 we’re going to make it a hobby,” he wrote in one 
 of his announcements. “ This town belongs with 
 'the rest of our business management. We shall 
 
154 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 » 
 
 build it in the same spirit and with the same re¬ 
 sult.” 
 
 Mr. McMurtry believed that men, given an op¬ 
 portunity to live in a clean, healthy, beautiful town 
 which gradually they could own and govern, would 
 become a permanent group of citizens working to¬ 
 gether like other citizen bodies. And this has hap¬ 
 pened. He believed this body of labouring citizens 
 would furnish a steady supply of boys for the work 
 — not manual labourers, but boys who, because of 
 their association, naturally would turn to shop man¬ 
 agement, the offices, the laboratories, the sales de¬ 
 partment. 
 
 And this is what is happening. It looks very 
 much like a self-perpetuating working force, as all 
 forces are in part, at least, if they have real vitality 
 in them and are working on sound principles. It 
 is quite possible that the future general superintend¬ 
 ent of the works is some lad in the Vandergrift 
 schools who now is counting the days when he can 
 “ go to work.” Plate-making is in his blood. 
 
 It is for such lads as this the company watches, 
 knowing well enough that its future depends upon 
 the opening and encouragement it can give to those 
 who naturally turn to any one of its operations. 
 Vandergrift is proud and jealous of its boys and 
 girls. Their school records are watched as specu¬ 
 lators watch the markets. Those who go to college 
 are looked upon to honour the town, and some of 
 them do it. 
 
 When Vandergrift was taken over by Big Busi- 
 
GOOD HOMES MAKE GOOD WORKERS 155 
 
 ness, there was a fear in many a heart that its 
 days of independence were ovef. u It was like a 
 funeral,” a man who had been in the place from 
 the start told me. “ We didn’t know what would 
 happen to us.” 
 
 What they really feared they perhaps could not 
 have told. It was the word “ monopoly.” As 
 time has gone on and they have seen that the Steel 
 Corporation was not only preserving Mr. Mc- 
 Murtry’s work and ideals but introducing some good 
 ideas of its own, the confidence they gave him has 
 gradually been transferred to it. 
 
 It is not humanly possible that a community 
 should go through the experience that Vandergrift 
 has in the last twenty years — the enthusiasm of 
 its founding and its success, the disappointment and 
 dread of amalgamation, the struggle over unionism 
 — without scars. The important thing is that it 
 has preserved its integrity and that it believes in 
 its own future. 
 
 While Vandergrift seems to me the most im¬ 
 portant industrial town in America because of the 
 sound principles on which it was originally planned 
 and because of the labour struggles it has weath¬ 
 ered, there are various other successful towns of 
 experience. The National Housing Association 
 has in its files full reports of these ventures, and it 
 is working patiently and intelligently to spread its 
 knowledge and its opinions in the places where they 
 are most needed. 
 
 . Of recent undertakings there is no doubt but that 
 
156 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 Indian Hill, founded by the Norton Company of 
 Worcester, Massachusetts, is the most suggestive and 
 promising. It is planned for utility, economy and 
 beauty. It will be the most attractive town of its 
 kind in the United States if it is carried out as begun. 
 One feature which is particularly valuable is the 
 arrangement for taking care of boarders, houses in 
 which a family has its own private quarters but 
 which can serve men in a dining-room of their own 
 and furnish rooms entirely cut off from the family. 
 In the interests of privacy, decency and dignity this 
 kind of building should be encouraged in every in¬ 
 dustrial centre. 
 
 The Norton Company has an original plan of 
 financing Indian Hill. It requires from the pur¬ 
 chaser an initial payment of ten per cent, of the 
 purchase price. For the balance he gives two notes, 
 one for $1000 payable in twelve years at 5 per 
 cent., and another for the balance payable on de¬ 
 mand with interest at 5 per cent., both notes being 
 secured by a purchase money mortgage to the com¬ 
 pany. 
 
 The purchaser gives also a supplementary agree¬ 
 ment to the effect that he will purchase five shares 
 in the co-operative bank conducted by the company 
 for some years, and will continue payments thereon 
 until his deposits shall have matured in the sum 
 of $1000, which in local banks, at the prevailing 
 rate of interest, takes place in about eleven years 
 and ten months. This insures the payment of the 
 twelve-year note according to its terms. The 
 
GOOD HOMES MAKE GOOD WORKERS 157 
 
 theory of this arrangement is that it gives the pur¬ 
 chaser a feeling of independence, inasmuch as he 
 does not make periodical payments on the prin¬ 
 cipal, and forces him to become acquainted with co¬ 
 operative bank methods, with the possibility that 
 he may become more thrifty and use the bank even 
 when not required to do so. 
 
 In consideration of this agreement, the company 
 agree not to make demand upon the demand note so 
 long as the purchaser shall continue to make monthly 
 payments of interest and monthly payments to the 
 co-operative bank. They further agree that if the 
 purchaser shall die or become incapacitated within 
 twelve years — provided that at the time he shall 
 not be over sixty years of age — they will accept 
 the surrender value of his co-operative bank shares 
 in full payment of the time note. The result of 
 this agreement is that the purchaser may be assured 
 that at the end of twelve years, or upon his prior 
 death, a sufficient proportion of the purchase price 
 will have been paid so that he or his estate will then 
 own the property free of all incumbrances except a 
 first mortgage for not over sixty per cent, of the 
 value of the property, so that at his option or their 
 own he may resort to a bank for a mortgage and be 
 entirely independent of the company. 
 
 In the case of a few of the higher priced houses 
 the carrying out of this arrangement does not re¬ 
 duce the purchase price to a point where a bank 
 mortgage could be secured to take care of the bal¬ 
 ance, but such houses are sold to men of higher earn- 
 
NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 158 
 
 ing power who may be expected to make payments 
 on the purchase price in excess of their obligations, 
 which will enable them to be independent of the com¬ 
 pany at the end of twelve years. 
 
 Here is a form given by the company to a pur¬ 
 chaser showing the actual operation of the plan: 
 
 Your total purchase price is.$3,851.50 
 
 You have made a first payment of 10%. 385.15 
 
 You are borrowing on mortgage the balance. 3,466.35 
 
 The amount due in 12 years, secured by time note, 
 
 is . 1,000.00 
 
 The balance secured by demand note is. 2,466.35 
 
 Your monthly interest during first 12 years will be 14.45 
 Your monthly payment to co-operative bank will be 5.00 
 
 Your total monthly payments during first 12 years 19.45 
 Your monthly interest payment after 12 years will 
 
 be. 10.30 
 
 Total loan.. .$3,466.35 Demand loan.$2,466.35 
 
 5 % . 173.32 5% . 123.32 
 
 Vi2 . 14-45 Yi 2 10-30 
 
 The purchase price represents the actual cost of 
 the house and land without profit. The original 
 purchase price of the entire area was divided by the 
 number of feet in the tract to determine the base 
 price per foot. To this was added a pro-rata pro¬ 
 portion of the cost of improvements such as 
 sewers, highways, sidewalks, engineering expense 
 and architect’s fees. 
 
 In the case illustrated the cost of the land was 
 $685 for a lot containing 6850 square feet. To 
 this figure was added the actual price of the house, 
 
GOOD HOMES MAKE GOOD WORKERS 159 
 
 without profit. This included the expense of the 
 building, heating, lighting, plumbing, piping, hard¬ 
 ware, fixtures, papering, window shades, screens, 
 concrete cellar floor, granolithic walks, rough grad¬ 
 ing, finish grading, planting and clothes reel. 
 
 The difficulty with such towns as Vandergrift and 
 Indian Hill, and indeed most of our industrial cen¬ 
 tres, is that they meet the needs of only the highly 
 paid workmen. Gary, Indiana, for instance, much 
 as it has done, has flatly failed to provide for the 
 unskilled labourers, of which it has great numbers. 
 The result there has been the deplorable “ Patch.” 
 What Gary and all of these towns need is houses 
 that will rent for from $12 to $15 a month, that is, 
 be within the reach of the $2 a day man. 
 
 The difficulty in providing such houses is that we 
 have not yet standardised building materials and 
 building plans. Practically everything else that 
 men and women need has been so standardised that 
 a solid, good-looking article is available, at a stand¬ 
 ard price. The workman is not obliged to have his 
 shoes, his coat, his shirts or his automobile made to 
 order. When it comes to building a house for him, 
 or when he comes to build a house, he has the ex¬ 
 pense of the custom-made thing. 
 
 One of the gravest problems of those interested 
 in housing has long been how to overcome this ex¬ 
 travagance, to secure standard materials which could 
 be used in making standard houses; not that the 
 houses should all look alike, but the core and es¬ 
 sentials would be the same, differing only in details. 
 
i6o 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 This important problem has been practically solved, 
 by one of the younger architects of New York, 
 Mr. Grosvenor Atterbury to whom we owe the in¬ 
 telligent planning of Indian Hill. For at least ten 
 years Mr. Atterbury has been experimenting in 
 economic concrete construction, his aim being to 
 work out building sections of such form and size that 
 a house could be assembled like a machine. That 
 this is possible Mr. Atterbury has proved beyond 
 question in his experiments conducted at Forest 
 Hills, Long Island, for the Russell Sage Founda¬ 
 tion. The big, perfectly-fitted blocks he makes are 
 put into place as simply and easily as a child builds 
 a house with blocks; and when they are together, 
 they are there to stay. It is an absolutely dry, fire¬ 
 proof permanent structure. The houses, as so far 
 planned, show not only ingenuity in arrangement, but 
 admirable taste in treatment. Mr. Atterbury has 
 worked out a variety of treatment of surfaces and 
 many interesting and appropriate details by which 
 the houses can be made individual and attractive. 
 The results of his long, devoted, even loving experi¬ 
 ments do more toward solving what we call the 
 housing problem than anything else of which I know. 
 What Mr. Atterbury has done is best told in a letter 
 from which I am allowed to quote: 
 
 As a result of a good many years’ study of the housing 
 problem from various points of view, I am fully convinced 
 that the crux of the problem is not in a sub-division of the 
 land or in the field of economic administration and taxa- 
 
GOOD HOMES MAKE GOOD WORKERS 161 
 
 tion, but in the cost of construction; and that to-day the 
 poorer the man, the greater is the proportion of his income 
 that goes into the construction cost, and the less is the real 
 economy with which it is spent. It is a curious fact that 
 scientific and co-operative principles have been practically 
 applied to the production of almost every other item in the 
 poor man’s living account, but the second largest single 
 one — that of his housing. His bread, his clothing and his 
 watch are factory products, largely guaranteed — sometimes 
 by government. His house is usually “ custom-made,” and 
 bought at the mercy of a speculative builder, subject to his 
 guarantee. 
 
 We have been working for the past six or eight years on 
 the idea of standardised dwellings. What we are trying 
 to produce is not only obvious economy in material struc¬ 
 ture, but also in skilled expert service — such as is avail¬ 
 able now only to the rich man in the building of his home. 
 The scheme, of course, is to do for the labouring man’s 
 house what Ford has done for the automobile, with certain 
 additional conceptions relative to educational, hygienic and 
 esthetic purposes. We set out without any prejudice in 
 favour of any system or material, but with a programme 
 based on the theory of standardisation, replication, shop 
 manufacture, elimination and combination of processes, the 
 substitution of power and machinery for hand labour, and, 
 by no means least, the mutual co-ordination of design and 
 construction. While in one sense we have only scratched 
 the surface of the problem, in another sense we have passed 
 the experimental stage and I think are ready for commer¬ 
 cial development. On the other hand, the opportunity 
 would be largely neglected if such development were car¬ 
 ried on for merely commercial reasons and purposes. While 
 to be successful it must be commercial, and while I believe 
 
162 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 it can be made to pay — not only as a benefit to the labour¬ 
 ing man, but equally to the employers of labour who must 
 from now on take serious consideration of the housing prob¬ 
 lem, it ought, for obvious reasons, to be conducted by some 
 agency or group that would continue the study and develop¬ 
 ment of its possibilities on a large scale and with the most 
 skilled advice and expert services. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 A man’s HOURS 
 
 One note-worthy and heartening by-product of 
 these various efforts to improve industrial conditions 
 has been the backing they have given to the old 
 struggle for a shorter day. Instead of taking at¬ 
 tention from it, they have emphasised its importance. 
 When safety, health and sobriety become the aim 
 of management, everything which affects them is 
 studied. The relation of the hours a man works 
 to his efficiency and stability is receiving more and 
 more attention from the new industrial manage¬ 
 ment. 
 
 One may well ask as he watches the tide of men 
 and women pour out at night if it is possible to do 
 the work of the world and keep the workers healthy, 
 and as contented as it is in men to be? Dropping 
 out of account those who are not happy because they 
 resent labour and want idleness — and there are 
 such — what is the matter that men do not thrive 
 under labour? Is there something needfully evil 
 and killing in it? Is labour a curse? Those who 
 think so know not the worker. There is no task of 
 earth some do not find good. Those who talk of 
 the mine, the mill, the factory as if they were inher¬ 
 ently inhuman and horrible are those who never have 
 
 163 
 
164 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 known the miner, the weaver, or the steel or iron 
 worker. 
 
 In the first-aid room of a cotton factory a tale was 
 once told me of an operative who had died after 
 working in the place for thirty years or more. At 
 the time she had gone to work for the firm the fac¬ 
 tory stood on the West Side of New York. The 
 town had closed in on it, and in the 90’s it was moved 
 to New Jersey. With it went scores of the oper¬ 
 atives and their families. But this one woman 
 would not leave the city. Nor would she give up 
 the factory. It was her factory! For twelve years 
 she commuted. She was always on time, always the 
 last to leave. 
 
 She wore out at last. The company tried to per¬ 
 suade her to move to a nearby hospital where she 
 could be better cared for, but the hold of her little 
 home was upon her. All that she would consent to 
 was a weekly visit from the factory nurse, and that 
 was because she wanted the daily news of her old 
 associates. This woman loved her work, loved her 
 loom, the whir of it, the smell and feel of things. 
 
 In a great manufacturing plant in the West a lit¬ 
 tle old man was pointed out to me. “ He is rich,” 
 they said. “ A year ago he inherited two hundred 
 thousand dollars; but he has rarely missed a day at 
 his lathe since. Perhaps he is a little more cocky 
 than he used to be, talks a little more, but we could 
 not drive him from the shop. He loves his lathe, 
 loves the place. He will stay here as long as he 
 lives.” 
 
A MAN’S HOURS 
 
 165 
 
 There are men who love the mines, and who go 
 down into the bowels of the earth with something of 
 the spirit that men go into battle.' There is no 
 labour so dangerous, so full of hardships, so marked 
 by brutal conditions as that of the sailor; but who 
 can detach a sailor from his ship? No matter what 
 the labour, there are always those who go back to it 
 from sheer homesickness —“ Trade nostalgia.” 
 
 An outsider can understand this only by famil¬ 
 iarising himself with labour and labourers. When 
 one walks long enough through great shops where 
 black machines rise on every hand, huge cranes move 
 up and down, smoke, flame and showers of sparks fill 
 the air, where the walls resound with clanging, hiss¬ 
 ing and hammering; when he watches the men mov¬ 
 ing steadily and naturally in this world of strange 
 operations and mighty forces, he comes sooner or 
 later to a sense of the dignity of the thing, its mean¬ 
 ing and power. 
 
 He sees that this is an army, moving in orderly, 
 ordered ways, where every man is dependent on 
 every other man, and where the perfection of 
 the final results is the care of all. And they know 
 it. The spirit of the whole animates them. You 
 get a sense of your own relative insignificance, their 
 sheer usefulness. They make things men must 
 have. It is like the worthiness one feels in farm- 
 ing. 
 
 This is as it should be, and what it is for many. 
 Why, then is it not so for all of those who come to it 
 with courageous minds and who accept reverently 
 
i66 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 the law that men must earn bread for themselves 
 and for those who are dependent upon them? It is 
 not the painful efforts, the dangers, or even the evil 
 conditions which do most to make labour unendur¬ 
 able for those who are in normal condition. The 
 one thing above all others that takes the heart out 
 of it and leaves the worker without appetite or zest 
 for its excitements and its meaning is the long day. 
 
 Men and women come in the morning to their 
 tasks with a spring of fresh energy within them. 
 Little by little during the hours of labour they 
 empty that spring. When it is dry they must draw 
 from forces which should be untouched. By some 
 strange chemistry which no one understands too well, 
 these intrusions on the physical forces which should 
 be inviolate produce in the human system a true toxic 
 condition — fatigue poison, auto-poison the scien¬ 
 tists call it. 
 
 If this fatigue poison passes a point where the 
 period of rest following is not equal to the task of 
 throwing it off and filling afresh the spring of en¬ 
 ergy, the man goes back to his toil a little unfit; the 
 longer he goes on the more unfit he becomes. 
 Slowly the poison invades his system. The repair¬ 
 ing forces — food, relaxation, pleasure and sleep — 
 becomes less and less equal to the task. The man 
 becomes more and more open to the attack of dis¬ 
 ease; less and less able to do his work; unfit to im¬ 
 prove upon it; unable to grow. He is an unsafe 
 man, too, one not to be trusted among machines or 
 in dangerous places. The man has been poisoned 
 
A MAN’S HOURS 167 
 
 into unfitness by the slow accumulation of fatigue 
 poison which he could not throw off. 
 
 It was not work which did this. It was too much 
 work. He needed the work to keep him fit. With¬ 
 out it or its equivalent, a regular physical exercise, 
 his spring of energy would have as surely deterior¬ 
 ated as it did from overwork. The spring of energy 
 standing idle would have soured within him. 
 
 It has taken years of observation and experiment 
 to establish with anything like scientific accuracy the 
 baneful effects on the labourer and his product of the 
 too long day. This has been done finally with a 
 completeness which even the courts are recognising. 
 Moreover, in establishing these facts there have been 
 discoveries made of the effects of the shorter day 
 which have been as heartening as they have been sur¬ 
 prising. They are discoveries which upset all the 
 old theories about hours. 
 
 Briefly put they amount to this: An eight-hour 
 day in a properly managed shop yields as large a 
 quantity of work as a ten-hour day, and cuts out al¬ 
 most entirely certain irritations and interruptions 
 which always have characterised the longer work 
 period. As for labour, it has become an axiom in 
 its circle that “ shortening the day increases the pay.” 
 There is many a manufacturer that will tell you that 
 shortening the day increases the profits. 
 
 Many are the influences which have led to the ex¬ 
 periments with the shorter days. Most frequently 
 it has undoubtedly been the plea and pressure of 
 labour, organised and unorganised. Take the ex- 
 
i68 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 perience of the granite cutters of the United States: 
 since 1820 they have been steadily at the problem of 
 securing shorter hours for their trade, and always 
 their claim has been that they could do as much and 
 better work in shorter hours. 
 
 Experience has proved they were right. The first 
 cut was from twelve to ten, and the output was not 
 reduced. In 1890 the ten hours were reduced to 
 nine, and again the output w T as not reduced. In 
 1900 the granite cutters secured an eight-hour day 
 for the entire trade. James Duncan, the president 
 of the association, claims, with every show of being 
 right, that the members of the association are doing 
 excellent work and as much of it as when they were 
 working nine and ten hours. “ They are working 
 steadier,” he says, u and Blue Monday is now un¬ 
 known in our trade. They are more attentive, more 
 in earnest.” 
 
 The effect on the lives of the men, Mr. Duncan 
 claims has been almost everywhere marked: 
 
 They seek new entertainment, they are in evidence in 
 drawing and modelling schools in the evenings of the winter 
 season, and conspicuous in athletics in summer. Some of 
 our members have developed into great baseball stars in the 
 major leagues. Boating, swimming, long rural walks, bi¬ 
 cycle riding, and occasionally a week of vacation are in evi¬ 
 dence. Homes are happier and our members and those de¬ 
 pendent upon them and associated with them are better fed, 
 and better clad than at any time in our trade history. 
 
 Mr. Duncan claims that the granite cutters give a 
 full eight hours, that is, they do not arrive at 8, and 
 
A MAN’S HOURS 
 
 169 
 
 take the first half hour to get into their working 
 clothes and gather up their tools, nor do they stop at 
 a quarter or half an hour before closing time to get 
 ready to leave. “ Our constitutional regulations 
 and the terms of our agreement,” he writes, “ pro¬ 
 vide and require that our members work eight hours 
 five days of the week and four hours on Saturday. 
 Employers invariably require our members to work 
 ‘ from whistle to whistle ! ’ There are no complaints 
 or contentions upon that subject, as our members 
 recognise the necessity of being at their work 
 promptly at the time the whistle blows, and they 
 equally remain at work until the same whistle an¬ 
 nounces the quitting hour. 
 
 “ I am of the opinion that where there is slackness 
 in respecting the starting and quitting hour it is 
 because that shortcoming has been worked into 
 the practice through carelessness both on the part 
 of the worker and the employer, and if nipped in 
 the bud, as the saying goes, would not have oc¬ 
 curred.” 
 
 As for the employers, I know of one who has been 
 long in the granite business who has been so im¬ 
 pressed with the benefits of an eight-hour day that he 
 has been experimenting with seven hours ! This em¬ 
 ployer, William J. Cranford of Buffalo, New York, 
 put his theory and experience with hours Into a letter 
 voluntarily written to Mr. Duncan in 1912 and pub¬ 
 lished later in The Granite Cutters’ Journal. In 
 this letter he says: 
 
170 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 There are few firms in the country who have kept a com¬ 
 prehensive cost system extending over a period of more than 
 thirty years. Just thirty-two years ago in January, 1880, we 
 commenced to keep this record of the value of each man 
 and the exact cost of each piece of work, and we have kept 
 this ever since. In the part of this work which will in¬ 
 terest you we have a page for each granite cutter, and fol¬ 
 lowing each entry of the piece of work he takes up is the 
 day and hour commenced, the day and hour finished, the 
 entire time consumed, the wages we have paid, the quarry 
 bill, and a column for loss and a column for gain. In this 
 way we are able to raise a man’s wages from time to time 
 as he proves his worth. We do this without request from 
 the men, and in this way we obtain the highest efficiency, 
 and we cannot remember when a man asked us to raise his 
 wages. 
 
 This cost system extends back to the time when the day 
 was ten hours, and it shows that the same man under iden¬ 
 tically the same conditions, accomplished more, of exactly 
 the same kind of work when he was working nine hours, 
 than he did when he was working ten hours, and again 
 when the hours were reduced to eight hours this same man 
 accomplished still more in an eight hour day than he did 
 in a nine hour day, or a considerable amount more than he 
 did when the day was ten hours long. 
 
 My observation of the conditions, and I am with our men 
 from 8 A. M. until 5 P. M., is this, that as men work to-day 
 at the granite cutting trade, an eight hour day is too long, 
 and I believe that any good granite cutter (and I mean by 
 this a man who uses his brains as well as his muscles every 
 minute) could do just as much work in seven or even six 
 hours as he does in eight. This may sound radical, but 
 from close study I find that sixteen hours for “ rest and 
 
A MAN’S HOURS 
 
 171 
 
 refreshment ” to a granite cutter is not sufficient to make 
 him approach his work in the morning in a perfectly rested 
 condition. 
 
 We are glad to watch the efforts of a Matthewson, John¬ 
 son, Joe Wood or any of the other star pitchers, and we 
 would think McGraw, Griffith or Stahl beside themselves to 
 put any one of these men in the box for two consecutive 
 days, of about two hours each day. Now what granite 
 cutter does not put as much of his brains and muscles 
 into his work every day as these stars exercise? The 
 shrewd manager knows he can get the best results from 
 a man whose brain and body are not fatigued. We em¬ 
 ployers of granite cutters can learn a lesson from them. 
 Once in a while there is an Edison who can work long 
 hours profitably; but they are conspicuous by their rarity. 
 The short life of the granite cutters is due not to 
 the dust alone, but to the hard work incident to the 
 trade. 
 
 Again, what are the hours of the men whose salaries soar 
 into the five figure mark? Few, if any, are at their office 
 more than four hours each day. 
 
 Let the union and the employers get together on this 
 question. I am going to try this experiment on one man 
 in the near future. I am going to tell him that I have his 
 record for the past year, we will say, at eight hours, and I 
 am going to pay him the same wages for a month or six 
 weeks, and wish him to commence at 8:30 instead of 8:00, 
 and quit at 4:30 instead of 5 :oo, and I do not wish him to 
 exert himself one whit more than before, and I will give 
 you the record of the result. 
 
 Six months later Mr. Crawford wrote Mr. Dun¬ 
 
 can: 
 
172 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 I must write to tell you about the result of the experiment 
 of the seven-hour day. 
 
 The man who worked for six weeks, seven hours a day, 
 for eight hours’ pay, accomplished more than he had ever 
 done before. An increase of from three to twelve per cent., 
 according to the kind of work he was cutting. This he says 
 he did without expending any more effort than when work¬ 
 ing eight hours, so this proves, to my satisfaction, at least, 
 the contention I made in my letter of December last, namely, 
 that any good granite cutter could do more in seven than in 
 eight hours. 
 
 It should be said for those who claim that the pub¬ 
 lic pays for the shorter day in increased cost of 
 product, that it has not proved so in the case of 
 granite cutting. That is, the finished product has 
 not increased in price to the consumer. Improved 
 tools and methods have had something to do with 
 this, to be sure. That is, it has not always been due 
 to increased labour efficiency. 
 
 The experiments with shorter hours have by no 
 means always been made under the pressure of the 
 trade unions. Frequently they have been initiated 
 by employers who suspected that long hours meant 
 higher labour cost. 
 
 It w r as this theory that as long ago as 1890 led to 
 an experiment in hours in the plant which later be¬ 
 came the centre of the interesting industrial town of 
 Vandergrift. George G. McMurtry, the president 
 and head of the concern, was running the plant on a 
 ten-hour day, and watching his men. He became 
 convinced finally that, as he puts it, they “ pumped 
 
A MAN’S HOURS 
 
 •173 
 
 themselves out in eight hours.” Any labour done 
 beyond that time he believed was done at the risk of 
 accident and of spoiled product. Moreover, men 
 working ten hours a day could not use the machinery 
 at its full capacity. He therefore introduced the 
 eight-hour shift in a large percentage of his opera¬ 
 tions. The result was entirely satisfactory. He 
 saved his men. They had time to recuperate and 
 came back able to keep their machines up to their 
 work, that is, in eight hours they actually made the 
 machines do what they could not make them do in 
 ten! They worked to the tune of “‘Yankee 
 Doodle,’ Mr. McMurtry says, “ not to that of ‘ Old 
 Hundred.’ ” 
 
 At the same time, and entirely for economic 
 reasons, Mr. McMurtry put an end to Sunday work 
 in his plant. It didn’t pay. “ Sunday work is the 
 most expensive work there is, for entirely human 
 reasons. The men do what you and I would do. 
 They ‘ nurse soft jobs ’ for Sunday. Moreover, as 
 superintendents and foremen go to church on Sun¬ 
 day as a rule or at least are ‘ off,’ there is much less 
 supervision. Work is not in the air. The men stay 
 and are paid, but they never work as on other days.” 
 It was this sensible observation which put an end to 
 the Sunday labour in Mr. McMurtry’s plant. 
 
 A class of steel and iron workers, which even en¬ 
 lightened and experimenting employers like Mr. 
 McMurtry have generally contended could not, with¬ 
 out too great loss, be subjected to an eight-hour rule, 
 is that of the furnace men in steel and iron foundries 
 
174 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 and mills. This argument is based on the irregular 
 character of their labour — twenty to thirty min¬ 
 utes of intense, exhausting effort alternating with 
 equal rest periods. That they do not work over six 
 hours out of a twelve-hours shift is probably true. 
 “ Hence,” argue the employers, “ we cannot afford 
 a shorter shift.” It is this contention which is pre¬ 
 serving twelve-hour work to-day in the Steel Cor¬ 
 poration. 
 
 There is at least one independent steel plant in the 
 country which has proved that the eight-hour shift 
 for furnace and boiler men actually pays. This is 
 the Commonwealth Steel Plant of Granite City, Illi¬ 
 nois, the plant whose president, Mr. Clarence How¬ 
 ard, openly declares that the Golden Rule is the only 
 infallible business guide we possess. 
 
 Several years ago the Commonwealth Steel Com¬ 
 pany decided that the twelve-hour day was not ac¬ 
 cording to the Golden Rule. They were convinced, 
 too, that the changes could be so made that the busi¬ 
 ness would not suffer — that it might even gain. 
 The snag on which the eight-hour shift has gener¬ 
 ally hung has been the earnings of the men. They 
 could not, it was believed, earn in eight hours what 
 they had in twelve. Consequently they objected to 
 the shorter shift. This has been one difficulty with 
 abolishing Sunday work in the steel industry. 
 When the Steel Corporation cut out Sunday work, 
 several thousand men left, seeking places where they 
 would have employment seven days in the week. 
 They wanted the money more than the leisure. 
 
A MAN’S HOURS 
 
 175 
 
 The Commonwealth, then, made a careful read¬ 
 justment of wages, even the door boy being included. 
 The increase ran from 16 per cent, to 22 per cent, 
 an hour. No hint of what was planning was given 
 the crews until the scheme had been matured. It 
 came to them as a gift of the gods. Mr. R. A. Bull 
 of the company, who in 1912 gave a full account of 
 the experiment to the American Foundrymen’s Asso¬ 
 ciation, said that there was no talk of increased effi¬ 
 ciency, no string to the change. Automatically, effi¬ 
 ciency did increase. An accurate and scientific rec¬ 
 ord of the output in the last months before and the 
 first months after the twelve-hour shift was turned 
 to one of eight hours, was presented to the associa¬ 
 tion by Mr. Bull. The difference in every impor¬ 
 tant feature was in favour of the shorter shift. It 
 was more economical, in spite of the increased wage, 
 and the quality of the output was improved. 
 
 There is no one in the Commonwealth Steel Com¬ 
 pany to-day that will listen a moment to the argu¬ 
 ment that the “ long day,” the “ tired hour ” pays. 
 “ It can’t pay,” they’ll tell you. It is contrary to the 
 Golden Rule! 
 
 It has not always been the relation between the 
 “ tired hour ” and the product that has brought an 
 employer to a shorter day. Here is a case in an in¬ 
 land factory employing some five hundred or six 
 hundred girls making small cotton articles; it sug¬ 
 gests influences which are constantly at work modi¬ 
 fying relations and conditions in factories: the 
 owner, who was the manager, and all his “ fore- 
 
176 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 ladies ” and foremen, as well as scores of the 
 “ girls,” had been working together for possibly 
 twenty years. There was a great degree of inti¬ 
 macy among them. All of the old-timers called the 
 owner “ Pete,” and discussed shop matters with him 
 on terms of entire equality and mutual interest. 
 
 For years Pete’s day was that of the operatives, 
 from 7 A. M. to 6 P. M., ten hours and no Saturday 
 half-holiday. Then he became interested in base¬ 
 ball, and bought an automobile. But when you 
 work from 7 A. M. to 6 P. M. there is scant time for 
 either games or driving. Pete tried to bring him¬ 
 self boldly to going oh Saturday afternoons, and to 
 leaving early when the notion took him. He 
 couldn't do it and be easy in his mind! Moreover, 
 if he did it, he heard of it. “ Fine to be the boss, 
 ain’t it? ” some operative who had begun at the be¬ 
 ginning and shared ups and downs with steadfast 
 pluck and sympathy would call when she next saw 
 him! 
 
 Finally Pete announced there was to be a Sat¬ 
 urday half-holiday. They were to make up for it in 
 part. By coming at 6:30 they could get in three 
 hours, and he thought the business could stand a cut 
 of two hours. So they started that scale; but the 
 girls didn't like the earlier hours. They were very 
 often late. Pete didn’t complain, he did not like 
 6:30 himself; and in six months’ time, without any 
 discussion of the matter, everybody was coming in 
 at 7 A. M., and everybody had his Saturday half- 
 
A MAN’S HOURS 
 
 177 
 
 holiday, which they will continue to have, as the law 
 has recently sanctioned 55 hours in that State. 
 
 I asked the forewoman who told me the tale, a 
 loyal and humorous person, “ How about the out¬ 
 put? Did it fall off? ” “ That’s the queer thing,” 
 
 she said; “ there are girls on piece work who make 
 more, and the shop does more.” 
 
 The greatest triumphs in handling hours have not 
 come in trades where, as in cutting granite, making 
 plates and weaving cotton, the demand is fairly 
 steady. It has come in seasonal trades — those ex¬ 
 asperating and difficult situations created by having 
 to handle in six weeks two months, four months, all 
 the work there is in that particular occupation, or a 
 load ten or twenty or more times as great as during 
 the major part ’of the year. These triumphs are al¬ 
 most entirely triumphs of management, the applica¬ 
 tion of trained brains and determined wills to prob¬ 
 lems which industry has usually declared insoluble. 
 
 Take the canning of fruit and vegetables: we have 
 been hearing for several years of the heathenish 
 hours and conditions under which it is done, but we 
 have heard very little about how it was to be im¬ 
 proved. Out in Wisconsin, the industrial commis¬ 
 sion decided in 1912 to do something more practical 
 than order the canneries to reform; they decided to 
 help them work out a plan which even they would 
 consider practical. 
 
 It is peas which are chiefly canned in the State; and 
 the pea crop refuses to ripen regularly, much to the 
 
178 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 disappointment of the good people who make laws 
 for canneries in defiance of the facts of nature and 
 men ! The crops in Wisconsin are put in, usually, in 
 four plantings, two weeks apart. If they ripened in 
 the same ratio, labour for the canning could be ar¬ 
 ranged for with something like exactness, that is, 
 the crop could be handled with little extra daily 
 work. But ripening depends on the weather, and 
 who can tell what the weather is to be? In 1912 
 the four plantings in the State ripened within ten 
 days. In 1913 it extended over six weeks. More¬ 
 over, the crop acts differently in the northern part of 
 the State, where the soil is sandy and warm, from 
 what it does in the south, where the soil is clay; 
 again, in the northern part of the State labour is 
 scarce, as the population is sparse; in the south it is 
 abundant, as the population is dense. 
 
 Here is a nice little problem which heretofore had 
 been met by a non-workable law that no canner 
 should use his help over fifty-five hours a week and 
 nine hours a day. Neither labourers or canners 
 knew how to meet this order — and did not try. 
 
 At the suggestion of the commission a committee, 
 consisting of the pea canners and representatives of 
 the public and the labour employed, came together 
 before the season of 1913 and agreed that during 
 the six weeks’ canning season employes could work 
 women 12 hours a day for 15 days of the six 
 weeks; but in no week could they work them over 55 
 hours. For every hour beyond 10 in any day they 
 were to receive double pay. 
 
A MAN’S HOURS 
 
 179 
 
 Out of 75 canners in the State all but 15 lived up 
 to the programme. The 15 violators were prose¬ 
 cuted by the commission and fined. They were bit¬ 
 terly aggrieved at first, but in December, when the 
 annual state canners’ meeting was held in Mil¬ 
 waukee, they found their 60 colleagues who had 
 obeyed the law had no sympathy for them. They 
 contended that a workable law had been devised, 
 and that any failure to obey it deserved punishment. 
 
 What has been done then, in Wisconsin, is to find 
 a way to handle in a fairly orderly and efficient 
 fashion a piece of seasonal labour of a particularly 
 uncertain kind. 
 
 Almost as difficult a problem in hours as that of 
 canning is the subscription season in the publishing 
 world, those months of the late fall and early winter 
 when periodicals are receiving orders for the year. 
 Beginning in November and continuing into January 
 and February a firm will receive thousands of orders 
 a day. A peak load of possibly 7,000 a week in 
 July becomes 75,000 a week in November. In most 
 publishing offices this season of renewal has always 
 been one of rush, confusion and long hours of over¬ 
 time. New girls, to open, sort, and enter the or¬ 
 ders, are brought in daily as the mail piles up. 
 They receive their training as they work, with 
 resulting annoyance to subscribers from mistakes in 
 addresses and delayed magazines, and with terrible 
 wear and tear on the office and with aggravating ex¬ 
 tra expense. 
 
 Two years ago an attempt was made by the Cro- 
 
i8o 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 well Publishing Company to apply scientific manage¬ 
 ment to this period of misery. By such a forecast 
 as is possible from intelligent study of any business 
 the probable orders for each week in the year were 
 compiled; as the season approached and conditions 
 were more apparent a daily forecast was made. 
 Those in charge of the department knew in advance, 
 with an accuracy which surprised everybody, as it 
 turned out, what load they must carry. 
 
 They did not wait, as before, until their desks 
 were buried with a day’s orders, to pick up any un¬ 
 trained girl they could lay hands on. They engaged 
 girls in advance and thus were able to choose and 
 train. There were other things done; that most 
 important and so often overlooked matter, the 
 proper routing of work, was fixed, a more scientific 
 adjustment of wages was made. 
 
 The results surprised every one connected with 
 the establishment. There is now practically no 
 night work, though unde-r the old system the day 
 was regularly from 7130 A. M. to 9 P. M. from 
 November to February. Earnings have increased 
 from 25 to 33 per cent, in all clerical departments. 
 The working conditions have been greatly improved. 
 Complaints were reduced 30 per cent, in the first 
 season. The cost of handling subscriptions has been 
 reduced 30 per cent., -though that is considered less 
 important than the good will which a prompt service 
 earns from subscribers. 
 
 That is, here is an experiment which proves that 
 one of the most wearing and painful periods of over- 
 
A MAN’S HOURS 
 
 181 
 
 work with which the country is familiar, and one 
 which has been tolerated as unavoidable, can be over¬ 
 come by the application of the principles of scien¬ 
 tific management —- not only are its troubles ironed 
 out, but the workers earn more money and the con¬ 
 cern saves! 
 
 One of the completest victories over irregular and 
 long hours of which I know is that of the Pilgrim 
 Laundry of Brooklyn, New York. It is a triumph 
 of sound progressive management combined with 
 an unusual understanding of and respect for the part 
 the human equation plays in industrial undertakings. 
 
 The first thing that piqued my curiosity about this 
 plant was its hours of 46^ a week, and, what was 
 as important to my mind, they were regular. In all 
 the recent upheavals over laundries the cruelly long 
 hours crowded into a few days of the week have 
 been the most disturbing feature— 11, 13, even 17, 
 were reported. 
 
 Just before the close of Congress in February, 
 1912, the House Committee on Labour gave a series 
 of hearings on limiting the hours of labour of women 
 in the District of Columbia to eight a day. The 
 committee was snowed under by protests. Even a 
 worker brought in as a witness told the puzzled 
 congressmen that “ while that eight-hour system is 
 very nice, I don’t see where laundry work can be 
 accomplished and gotten out in that time, to save my 
 life.” The public was to blame. It would not 
 change its linen until Sunday. The collection of 
 bundles could not be started until Monday morning, 
 
182 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 and they must all be returned by Saturday night. 
 Thus there were only four days in the week for 
 work. This explanation has generally floored the 
 best-intentioned. Even a radical law-maker hesi¬ 
 tates to legislate about the time the public shall 
 change its shirt. 
 
 The founders of the Pilgrim Laundry have never 
 accepted the idea that because hard and exasperat¬ 
 ing conditions prevail in their industry they were 
 inevitable. Ever since they began, twenty years 
 ago, they have worked steadily to overcome those 
 features of the business which have made it diffi¬ 
 cult to build up a stable and contented force. Al¬ 
 though their first establishment was crowded they 
 determined to have no eating of lunches on the iron¬ 
 ing boards. 
 
 By providing folding tables and chairs to be kept 
 under the tables in the working hours, and by mark¬ 
 ing on the floor the spot where each was to be set, 
 the girls ate their lunch in a decent fashion — and 
 this, remember, was twenty years ago. About this 
 time they started a rest period at nine o’clock with 
 coffee and crackers. These were simply indications 
 of the way they tried to make the shop work less dis¬ 
 agreeable. 
 
 From the beginning they attacked the hours. 
 Calling together the girls on the floor they would 
 seek their co-operation in putting through new 
 schemes devised for handling the clothes in shorter 
 time. 
 
 Several years ago they succeeded in greatly reduc- 
 
A MAN’S HOURS 
 
 183 
 
 ing the overtime prevalent in the business, and for 
 several years have closed regularly at 5 130. And 
 what were these efforts worth? Their plant grew 
 steadily until they were employing one hundred and 
 fifty men and women. But they did not realise what 
 they had achieved until suddenly everything was 
 burned to ashes. Then it was that those who had 
 watched their efforts rallied to them with money 
 and credit, and, better still, then it was that those 
 who had worked with them came to them and said, 
 “We will do anything we can to help save the Pil¬ 
 grim.” 
 
 And they worked nights for seven weeks in other 
 plants and with the co-operation of the salesmen 
 held the business together. Out of the force of 
 one hundred and twenty-five girls working in the Pil¬ 
 grim laundry when it wa.s burned in 1906, only five 
 did not report for work when two months later the 
 management was ready to reopen their temporary 
 plant. 
 
 Five years later, taking nearly a square on what 
 was then the outskirts of Brooklyn, they put up a 
 building which is an admirable example of the adap¬ 
 tation of a thing to its purpose. From without, it 
 seems a structure largely of glass set in a frame of 
 red brick and pale green ironwork. Within, it is a 
 thing of glass and white paint. Strength, sanita¬ 
 tion, air, light, proof against fire — these seem to 
 have been the main ideas in designing the building. 
 The result is a structure which in certain fundamen¬ 
 tals to good health goes as far as any public build- 
 
184 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 ing — theatre, church, office, shop — that I person¬ 
 ally have seen. 
 
 When the plant was finished it was equipped wfith 
 all that complicated machinery which has been substi¬ 
 tuted in all large laundries in the last twenty years 
 for the primitive utensils of tub, washboard, boiler 
 and flatiron. 
 
 The new building when finished and equipped was 
 an inspiration alike to firm and employes. 
 
 “ We must do something worthy of all this,” they 
 all felt. “ We must live up to this building, not 
 only in the quality of the work we put out, but, 
 what is more important, in the kind of relations that 
 we develop with the people who, if this plant is to 
 be successful, must make it so.” 
 
 The results of their efforts, applied as they have 
 been to already efficient methods and to a group ac¬ 
 customed to try experiments, have been a reve¬ 
 lation in what can be done if men are willing to 
 try. 
 
 The hard problem of hours has been solved. 
 Take the public’s reluctance to giving out laundry 
 on any day but Monday. The Pilgrim Laundry has 
 overcome that by educating its public to have a por¬ 
 tion of its linen ready for collection on Thursday, 
 Friday and Saturday. The result is that work can 
 begin in the laundry bright and early Monday morn¬ 
 ing. 
 
 By what persuasive arguments and long patience 
 they succeeded in educating four thousand customers 
 to this revolutionary practice, I do not know. That 
 
A MAN’S HOURS 
 
 185 
 
 they sent out such notices as that here printed 1 is 
 certain; that their salesmen, with all the enthusiasm 
 
 1 Pilgrim Steam Laundry Co. 
 
 633 Seventeenth St. 
 
 Borough of Brooklyn, N. Y. 
 
 IMPORTANT! 
 
 CHANGE OF CALLING DAY 
 
 The irregular working hours of laundry help are caused, mainly, 
 by two conditions: first, by reason of the present method of collec¬ 
 tion and delivery of work, and, second, on account of the large fluc¬ 
 tuation between the amount of laundry received from regular cus¬ 
 tomers during different weeks and seasons. 
 
 By commencing collecting soiled linen on Monday and finishing 
 delivery on Saturday, there are intervals at the beginning and end 
 of each week when the workers in the laundry have nothing to do, 
 and without working overtime — a fair number of hours’ work per 
 week cannot be accomplished. 
 
 A plan has been tried in several cities whereby part of the work, 
 now collected the first three days of the week, is taken the last three 
 days, and delivered the first three days of the next week. 
 
 This plan enables the management to operate their works a definite 
 number of hours per day, thus doing away with the worst abuse in 
 the industry, i. e., irregular hours. 
 
 To you it insures your work being done under uniform conditions, 
 as the hurry and push at certain seasons make for an inferior product. 
 
 It also insures a more uniform time of delivery. 
 
 We therefore ask you to give us your work on 
 
 , February , and the same day of the week 
 
 thereafter. 
 
 As the longer wait than usual may inconvenience you the first 
 week, we will gladly accept half your work on the usual call day 
 and the other half on the new call day. 
 
 At first thought this plan may not meet with your approval; we 
 urge you, however, to give it a fair trial, believing you will find it 
 no more troublesome than the present plan. We also urge you in 
 behalf of our entire working force to accept it, as years of study to 
 better conditions have not made possible such an ideal as will be 
 attained by putting in effect this change. 
 
 If there are any details on which you wish further information, 
 
 please send us the enclosed card. 
 
 Yours respectfully, 
 
 The Pilgrim Steam Laundry Co. 
 
i86 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 of youth, harangued their customers that they had 
 a duty in this matter, and that it was altogether in¬ 
 consistent for them to denounce at their clubs the 
 wickedness of laundrymen if they were not willing to 
 take the extra trouble of changing their day for de¬ 
 livering their clothes, is certain. 
 
 The point is that they educated the women, and 
 that to-day the Pilgrim Laundry gathers and de¬ 
 livers its w r ork every day of the week. Each cus¬ 
 tomer knows not only the day, but the exact hour 
 at which the waggon will call for her clothes. She 
 has been made to understand the importance in a 
 big co-operative undertaking of being exact. She 
 has been made to see that if she is late, she makes 
 the boy late on his rounds, and that she puts back the 
 machinery of two hundred and fifty or more working 
 people. That is, the Pilgrim Laundry has educated 
 a slice of the Brooklyn populace to what co-opera¬ 
 tive effort really means. 
 
 But something more is needed than getting in the 
 clothes regularly. The lack of all method in han¬ 
 dling the clothes in the old-fashioned laundry has al¬ 
 ways been a particularly depressing feature to an 
 intelligent person. It was all very well to say that 
 the work ought to be handled in so many hours and 
 the girls allowed to go home promptly at 5 130 or 6, 
 or whatever the time might be; but what are you to 
 do if the customers’ work is unfinished, due to an 
 excessively heavy week, or a holiday? 
 
 If deliveries are not promptly made, there are no 
 more customers; and if there are no more customers, 
 
A MAN’S HOURS 
 
 187 
 
 there is no work; if there is no work, there is no 
 bread and, hard and wretched as it all is, it was not 
 enough to say this must not be. The important 
 thing was to show how it could be avoided. No 
 commissioner or investigator could show that, for 
 the very simple reason that he did not know anything 
 about the business. All he could do was to check up 
 hours and say this or that operation was killing. 
 
 System, co-operation, continual experimenting had 
 done much to regulate the work of the Pilgrim 
 Laundry; but its managers were not satisfied that 
 more could not be done. 
 
 Carefully and tentatively, principle after principle 
 of scientific management was tried out. The work 
 was planned and routed. Each separate operation 
 was studied until the best and easiest and quickest 
 method was found. Girls were instructed in — not 
 left to pick up — the proper use of machines. The 
 kind of work each particular girl could do best was 
 discovered. The wage scale was revolutionised. 
 Divided into classes as the force was, according to 
 the kind of linen each handled, each class had its 
 representative on the factory committee, which met 
 regularly with the overseers’ committee to discuss 
 the problem of the work, that is, the floor was kept 
 in touch with the management through representa¬ 
 tives of its own members, and through talks by the 
 management once every week. 
 
 The result of all this has been brilliant. One of 
 them is the splendid triumph of reducing the hours 
 to 4 Gy 2 a week. With this reduction and regula- 
 
i88 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 tion of hours has come a wage scale unheard of in 
 laundries. Mangle work, which a few years ago was 
 paid but three or four dollars a week and which had 
 been advanced in this plant by April, 1912, to an av¬ 
 erage of $6.97 a week, is now paid an average of 
 $8.90 a week, and mangle work is the cheapest in the 
 factory. 
 
 In the four months from August 1 to December 
 1, 1914, the average wage per capita was 6% P er 
 cent, higher than for the corresponding months of 
 1913, regardless of the fact that the laundry business 
 felt in a measure the same depression as other busi¬ 
 nesses during those four months. 
 
 At the same time the rest periods of five minutes 
 every hour and a half, distributed through the day, 
 have reduced to eight hours and ten minutes per day 
 the actual working hours of the girls. 
 
 The rest periods have not lessened the quantity 
 of work produced per day. The departments where 
 these rest periods have been established for several 
 months show a gain in physical condition which re¬ 
 sults in fewer absences and, consequently, greater ef¬ 
 ficiency. The pleasant lunch-room, the recreations 
 planned by the fine woman who handles the so-called 
 service work of the place, the constant care of health, 
 have improved the girls so that the time lost from 
 illness has been reduced to a degree which the man¬ 
 agement had not even dared to hope. 
 
 One of the most conclusive proofs that labour ap¬ 
 preciates and approves a management is the reduc¬ 
 tion of the number of those who leave or are dis- 
 
A MAN’S HOURS 
 
 189 
 
 charged. In 1911, 379 left the Pilgrim Laundry, 
 78 were discharged, 3 were married, out of a regu¬ 
 lar force of 175 employes. In 1912, 161 left, 109 
 were discharged, and 7 married. In 1913, 121 left, 
 51 were discharged, and 10 were married, out of 
 260 employes. In the period since scientific man¬ 
 agement was undertaken there has been an increase 
 of 20 per cent, in business with an inappreciable in¬ 
 crease of help. In the period of business depression 
 of 1914 there was a falling off of business in laun¬ 
 dries in nearly if not all our cities of from 10 to 25 
 per cent. Yet in this period the Pilgrim Laundry 
 gained 6 1-3 per cent. 
 
 It is but another proof that where brains, deter¬ 
 mination, patience and a sense of human relations 
 are applied to business management the problem of 
 long hours can be solved. The short day is part of 
 good management. The highest efficiency is as in¬ 
 compatible with a long day as it is with bad ventila¬ 
 tion, poor sanitation, low wages, or the failure to 
 co-operate. This judgment is not based merely on 
 the few cases quoted here. They are but illustra¬ 
 tions drawn from a great body of similar expe¬ 
 riences. 
 
 Wherever a careful application of scientific man¬ 
 agement has been made in shop or factory, the tend¬ 
 ency is to reduce hours. Organised labour denies 
 this. Among the trade union objections to the sys¬ 
 tem which have been presented to Congress is the 
 statement that it tends to lengthen the hours of 
 labour. This statement has even gone in with the 
 
igo 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 approval of the American Federation of Labour. 
 There is no factory of which I know where this is 
 true. Sanford E. Thompson, who is certainly one 
 of the most experienced men in the Taylor group, 
 declares that he has seen frequent reduction of hours 
 in the plants with which he is familiar, and he be¬ 
 lieved it inevitable in all shops which are on a long 
 day. Practically every engineer that I have known 
 interested in scientific management gives as one of 
 his arguments for it that it tends to shorter hours of 
 labour. At the hearings on the subject held before 
 the Congressional Committee of Labour in April, 
 1916, several employers and managers testified that 
 their experience has been that the short day followed 
 the introduction of the system. Mr. Noyes, the 
 General Superintendent of the German-American 
 Button Company of Rochester, New York, told the 
 committee that before the introduction of scientific 
 management into his factory the hours were 59 to 
 60 per week, that the actual work hours now are 
 
 51 1 ‘ 3 * 
 
 At the same hearings Mr. Feiss of the Clothcraft 
 Shop of Cleveland said that the average working 
 time for the great majority of the people of his fac¬ 
 tory was 45 hours a week, that is about 7F2 hours a 
 day. Mr. Feiss told the committee that he believed 
 that the working hours in every industry should be 
 limited to those hours, whatever they happen to be, 
 beyond which human energy will flag and tire. 
 
 Mr. C. J. Morrison, a New York consulting en¬ 
 gineer, of the firm of Meyer, Morrison & Company, 
 
A MAN’S HOURS 
 
 191 
 
 has had a large experience in putting factories on 
 three shifts of eight hours each, and always with 
 the result that the shorter shift was more profitable 
 than the longer had been. He points out carefully 
 that simply changing a plant from ten hours to 
 eight and operating under rule-of-thumb methods 
 will only increase costs; but if on the other hand, the 
 work is properly planned and despatched, so that 
 each worker has a job and the necessary tools for 
 performing it, costs will go down. In one printing 
 plant which was handling a kind of work in which 
 the competition is especially keen, Mr. Morrison 
 spent a good many months stopping leaks, solving 
 problems of power, light, heat, humidity, handling 
 materials, etc. Finally he believed that the eight- 
 hour day could be made profitable. It was accord¬ 
 ingly established and immediately the result that 
 he had anticipated was realised, that is, the costs 
 w T ere materially reduced and profits increased. 
 
 Mr. Morrison is a firm believer in three eight- 
 hour shifts and offers very interesting figures to 
 show how large a decrease in operating expenses 
 and increase in profits comes from using a plant 
 twenty-four hours out of the day instead of ten, 
 twelve or sixteen. In one of his pieces of work he 
 found that the burden of cost for the eight-hour 
 shift was $162,200, for the two shifts $214,200 
 and for the three shifts $250,400. As a result of 
 this change from one to three shifts the burden per 
 pound was changed from about 5 V2 cents to about 
 2%. 
 
192 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 What has happened in this fight against the long 
 day is most significant — a hint of what we may ex¬ 
 pect from every effort to make the conditions of men 
 and women more just and more tolerable. It was 
 attacked because of its inhumanity. It drained the 
 forces of men and women beyond repair. It made 
 them old before their time. It visited its curse on 
 their children. It turned the blessing of labour to 
 an unendurable burden, and streaked human prog¬ 
 ress with lines of such woe and injustice that 
 men and women came to question civilisation itself. 
 
 And yet men clung to it. In no other way, they 
 declared, could we get the world’s work done. It 
 was not only the mill hand, the shop girl, the domes¬ 
 tic, the miner who kept a long day. The editor, the 
 banker, and the teacher, accepted the theory that it 
 was only by long hours that they were to succeed. 
 It has been the habit of the country to make a virtue 
 of sitting at its desk — whether its mind was there 
 or not. “ From sun to sun,” was the worker’s day 
 — fewer hours proved him an idler, soil for the 
 Devil! The surprise of the fight on the long day, 
 of the experiments with the shorter one, has been not 
 only that the business could stand it, but that the 
 business thrived under it as surely as the man did. 
 It is but another of the proofs which are heaping up 
 in American industry to-day that whatever is good 
 for men and women — contributes to their health, 
 happiness, development — is good for business. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 A man’s HIRE 
 
 When the day comes, as it must, that men shall 
 have worked out tables fixing the relative value of 
 the service each renders the world, present day in¬ 
 come, wage and salary records will look as pre¬ 
 posterous as French pre-revolutionary tax lists look 
 to-day. The great mass of men and women give 
 so much and get so little! “Unrequited toil” is 
 piling up now as it has been through all the past, and 
 one day it must be wiped out. 
 
 Those who suppose that only dealers in words 
 and ideas think these things do not know our time. 
 The producing world is hard after a fresh readjust¬ 
 ment of values for services rendered. Scores of 
 experiments are making in scores of different indus¬ 
 tries, weighings and computings of what miners and 
 bankers, engineers and promoters, speech-makers 
 and child-bearers, grass-growers and shop-keepers 
 are worth. 
 
 In a report made four years ago to a national as¬ 
 sociation of employers in one of our greatest and 
 richest industries and signed by names standing in 
 their different communities for ability and power is a 
 paragraph headed “ The Value of Labour.” It 
 opens: “ Are our employes, individually or col- 
 
 193 
 
194 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 lectively, receiving all the results of their labour to 
 which they may be properly entitled? ” and then fol¬ 
 lows a searching analysis of conditions and relations 
 in the great industry the signers represent. Wages, 
 the signers of this document consider only the start¬ 
 ing point in the earnings of an industrious and faith¬ 
 ful worker. They declare that they should be fully 
 equal to those paid by other employers engaged in 
 similar work, and that nothing in the suggestions 
 they make for adding other returns should ever be 
 made a pretext for lowering or tampering with them. 
 
 This is a big step, but in no way does it help us in 
 settling whether or no the amount “ paid by other 
 employers engaged in similar work ” is what it 
 should be. This “ basic wage ” which is all that the 
 labourers of the world have to live on as a rule has 
 always been the resultant of many dire and ignorant 
 forces operating on the law of supply and demand. 
 If the industrial world was perfectly organised, if 
 the road through it was open to all kinds of talent 
 and we had an unfailing system for helping each to 
 develop his best, if there was as great a passion in 
 the world for efficiency and justice as for the u soft 
 job ” and “ the lion’s share,” the law of supply and 
 demand would undoubtedly work out a fairly just 
 wage. As things now are that law is twisted and 
 deformed by continually changing conditions which 
 drive men to take what they can get, anything rather 
 than starvation; by demand, imperious, changeful, 
 unrestricted by contracts or principles, obsessed with 
 the notion that cheap labour is profitable. Is it 
 
A MAN’S HIRE 
 
 19 * 
 
 strange that the fixing of wages has become practi¬ 
 cally a tug-of-war between those who direct indus¬ 
 tries and the labouring mass, whose only power lies 
 in its ability to refuse to work — often at the price 
 of semi-starvation? The senselessness, waste and 
 injustice of fixing by such primitive methods the re¬ 
 turn which a man shall receive for real service has 
 for years now troubled an increasing number of em¬ 
 ployers and led to various efforts to formulate theo¬ 
 ries both sound and practical for its control. “ Co¬ 
 operative bargaining,” “ the living wage,” “ the 
 minimum wage,” “ compulsory arbitration,” “ the 
 sliding scale,” are theories which are influencing the 
 opinion and practice of employers, and leading to 
 observation and experiments more or less scientific. 
 One if not the most important conclusion that large 
 bodies of managers have drawn from the mass of 
 experience with wages in the last twenty-five years 
 is the unsoundness of the old dogma that a low wage 
 is a profitable wage. So long as men believed that 
 all increase in pay must come out of profits, that is, 
 that the increase brought no increase in efficiency, 
 they were bound to fight all changes. Labour has 
 been brought up on the theory that its gains came out 
 of the amount capital would otherwise receive. It 
 was thus put into the position of an enemy of capital. 
 Under this theory it had no alternative but war if it 
 was to better its wage. 
 
 Scores of recent experiments have demonstrated 
 the unsoundness of this view. The high wage under 
 proper management, like the short day under proper 
 
196 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 management, means increased output. Take as an 
 illustration the work on the problem that was begun 
 a quarter of a century ago by a certain Brooklyn 
 drop-forging company. Thirty years ago this house 
 was one of the smallest of its kind in the United 
 States. The two men who owned it made up, with 
 the men at the hammers, practically its entire force. 
 They managed it; kept its books; sold its output. 
 One of their subjects of friendly chaffing in those 
 early days was that the junior partner worked at a 
 desk which cost seven dollars while that of the senior 
 partner cost but six dollars. 
 
 This senior partner at the six-dollar desk, James 
 H. Williams by name, held as a principle of success 
 a doctrine so in contradiction to that then held by 
 most American manufacturers that even to have 
 stated it would have brought down ridicule upon him. 
 He put hope of success not alone, or chiefly, in him¬ 
 self or his partner, in his bank or his market, in tariff 
 or rebates: it was the men who made a business suc¬ 
 cessful he said. And they would do it if relations 
 of mutual advantage, good will, justice and respect 
 prevailed. 
 
 This being his belief, Mr. Williams set himself 
 to carrying it out. He decided, in spite of the fact* 
 that he was running the smallest business of the kind 
 in the country, to pay high wages. One of his chief 
 concerns as the business grew was to see that the 
 men were getting all that they earned. Again 
 and again a man was called in and told that some¬ 
 thing had been added to his wages because he was 
 
A MAN’S HIRE 
 
 197 
 
 earning it. But the reverse was never true, that is, 
 the pay was never cut below what was considered a 
 day’s wage. 
 
 But Mr. Williams was not satisfied with the opera¬ 
 tion of the fixed daily wages. He believed that it 
 did not give the men a sufficient chance or the maxi¬ 
 mum incentive. Accordingly fifteen years ago he 
 introduced wherever he could a system of piece work. 
 It was at a time when this system was highly, and 
 justly, unpopular; but Mr. Williams in introducing 
 it made it an ironclad rule that the two practices 
 which had made its bad repute should never be 
 allowed in his shop. In the first place, the regular 
 day’s wage was guaranteed, whatever the man’s out¬ 
 put. In the second place, his piece work rate was 
 never to be cut, whatever the conditions; if it was 
 ten cents a piece, ten cents it should remain. “ You 
 may earn all you can and the more it is the better 
 we shall like it.” 
 
 The experiment was immediately successful. 
 Earnings of workmen rose in some cases to six dol¬ 
 lars or more a day, and at one period in two years 
 the shop’s output was doubled. There were certain 
 other phases of this wage policy which Mr. Wil¬ 
 liams insisted on: for instance, if dull times came, 
 as they always do come, the work went on, stock 
 being made up in order to keep the men together. 
 If this lasted longer than the resources of the firm 
 could stand, half time was tried, and men were em¬ 
 ployed alternately so as to give each a fair chance. 
 
 Consider the heresy! It upset the dogma upon 
 
198 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 which our whole wage system has been based, the 
 dogma of the economy of cheap labour. You must 
 pay labour as little as possible, since this is the only 
 way to produce cheaply and it is to the interest of the 
 people that things be cheap. There is also a moral 
 reason for low wages. High wages give men more 
 money to spend in drink and “ idle amusement,” and 
 hence are a kind of social evil! in other words, spoil 
 labour. 
 
 Mr. Williams’s experiment with his creed proved 
 that it did not spoil labour. To-day the little drop- 
 forge works of two hammers in 1882, and the small¬ 
 est of the eight in the United States at that time, 
 has eighty-seven, and is the largest of some twenty- 
 eight or more in the country. 
 
 The average service period of the seven hundred 
 men it employs is ten years. Fathers and their sons 
 are in the shop and grandsons are expected. 
 The present president of the company once worked 
 at a forge. Moreover, it is a shop from which has 
 been taken all fear of “ soldiering.” Every man is 
 intent on keeping the shop’s place at the head of the 
 list. He gains by it. This practice solved for Mr. 
 Williams one of the chief problems under which 
 nearly all of his competitors laboured — that of the 
 strike. In thirty years the firm has had but one 
 strike, and that a revolt against an unpopular fore¬ 
 man; it was of but three days’ duration. 
 
 Now these were discoveries, profitable discover¬ 
 ies, trade advantages. Mr. Williams spent his life 
 in establishing them as beyond question in the minds 
 
A MAN’S HIRE 
 
 199 
 
 of his associates and men. That was his life work, 
 and some eight years ago he died, - leaving behind 
 him, a factory which had grown from the smallest 
 of its kind in the United States to the largest, and 
 with a market which, once scarcely extending beyond 
 Greater New York, literally embraces the world. 
 
 An honest achievement is always a fertile thing. 
 It casts its seeds to the wind and one never knows 
 where they will fall and sprout. Mr. Williams had 
 a partner, he who sat at the seven-dollar desk. His 
 name was William C. Redfield. Because of what 
 he learned by watching his senior partner working 
 out his industrial creed — because of his faith in 
 it and his preaching of it Mr. Redfield is now United 
 States Secretary of Commerce! 
 
 Mr. Redfield did not take the Williams creed as 
 a matter of course. He could not, for his work in 
 the firm was such as constantly to impress on his 
 mind the wide difference between his factory and 
 others. The goods made there, and which he spent 
 much of his time putting on the market, were used 
 by manufacturers. To sell them, visits to other fac¬ 
 tories were necessary. Not only did Mr. Redfield 
 become familiar with factories in the United States, 
 but he visited those of many countries. Trained to 
 believe that the foundations of a business is its men, 
 and that the relations with them — their conditions, 
 wages, spirit—are all-important, those were the 
 things he noted and compared. His observations 
 and experiences in selling only strengthened his be¬ 
 lief in Mr. Williams’s wisdom. He came to feel 
 
200 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 that principles had been established, which if ac¬ 
 cepted, would revolutionise American industry. 
 
 One of the first conclusions he came to as he 
 travelled about the world on his business was that 
 many, if not all, American manufacturers were mak¬ 
 ing a terrible and costly mistake in believing that 
 they were hampered in the world’s markets by the 
 cost of their labour. This came from a series of 
 personal experiences in selling his own wares and 
 in observing what other American firms were selling. 
 
 He found that he could make and deliver goods 
 to competing English manufacturers at a price which 
 would enable the Englishman to make a ten per cent, 
 profit. He found that in Belgium, where wages 
 were the lowest in Europe, he could fill orders satis¬ 
 factorily to the buyers, in price and quality. He 
 found that in Paris, where at one time he had had 
 an office, the work of the French carpenter at $1.90 
 a day was dearer than that of a Yankee at $4.50. 
 
 He found that in Japan we could underbid native 
 manufacturers of locomotives, although the Ameri¬ 
 can worker received wages three and a half times 
 greater. He found standard American goods of a 
 great variety sold in the markets of Europe and 
 Asia in competition with goods produced by labour 
 which was paid far less per day, at prices lower than 
 they are here. He found American lead pencils in 
 Central Java and shaving soap made in New Jersey 
 in Hongkong. 
 
 How was this possible, if the theory that high 
 wages are dear wages is true? It is not true — that 
 
A MAN’S HIRE 
 
 201 
 
 was Mr. Redfield’s conclusion. He watched labour 
 at work wherever he went, and everywhere it was 
 forced upon him that the low wages of Europe and 
 the East are costly and wasteful; that the man or 
 woman who works for a sum which will barely 
 feed and clothe and shelter him, who works 
 without a certainty that as his efficiency increases his 
 pay will increase in a just and definite ratio, who 
 works without a consciousness of the sympathetic 
 interest and co-operation of all those over him, that 
 man or woman’s output is the most costly in the 
 labour world. 
 
 These were the conclusions that Mr. Redfield 
 formed from experience. A few years ago he left 
 the firm and entered public life for the purpose of 
 preaching the gospel of what he calls the “ New 
 Industrial Day.” His preaching led him to Con¬ 
 gress, where for one term he fought for a reduction 
 of the tariff. His contribution to the discussion of 
 the “ cost of production ” in the Sixty-second Con¬ 
 gress gave advocates of a high tariff one of the rudest 
 jolts they have had in fifty years. Incidentally, too, 
 they administered a tonic to the debates which was 
 as effective as unexpected. 
 
 From Congress, Mr. Redfield went into Mr. Wil¬ 
 son’s cabinet, where he is working on the stimulating 
 theory that the essential element in industry, the ele¬ 
 ment upon which progress chiefly depends, is the man. 
 To neglect the man, in his judgment, is to starve the 
 industry — take from it vitality, freshness and in¬ 
 itiative. Unless men are considered first, he con- 
 
202 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 tinually preaches, you cannot cut your cost of pro¬ 
 duction. Consider them first, and there is practically 
 no end to your progress. 
 
 Mr. Williams’s success with high wages was not 
 merely a triumph of theory. It was mainly a tri¬ 
 umph of management. Inspired by a sound idea of 
 the relation of men to the enterprise he directed, he 
 gave close and personal attention to the conditions 
 under which their work was done; he studied their 
 needs as they laboured and he sought in every way 
 to improve both the factory and the methods. Vol¬ 
 untarily he cut his hours to nine twenty-five years 
 ago when practically the entire labour world was on 
 a ten-hour day. He was one of the first employers 
 in the country to provide baths for men and later to 
 arrange that shop clothes should be washed on the 
 premises. When enlarging his plant some fifteen 
 years ago he left space for club rooms to be used 
 when the men should ask for them, as later they did. 
 Medals awarded for superior product were hung in 
 the club rooms. “ The men earned them,” was Mr. 
 Williams’s reason for not exhibiting them in the 
 offices. 
 
 Efficiency, in Mr. Williams’ opinion, was the re¬ 
 sult of friendly co-operation in the effort to keep a 
 business in the front rank. He was one of several 
 legitimate forerunners of the new science of indus¬ 
 trial management. This science which is doing 
 much to revolutionise both the practices and the atti¬ 
 tude of mind of employers who give it a patient and 
 intelligent test, has effected no more radical changes 
 
A MAN’S HIRE 
 
 203 
 
 than those in wages. There is a popular notion 
 that the increase is due merely to cunning devices in 
 speeding up workers. The old superstition that the 
 amount of work a man can do depends upon the 
 hours you can keep him at his task and the strength 
 of the lash with which you drive him has still so 
 strong a hold on both labourers and employers that 
 the first explanation for the increase of output under 
 scientific management has been “ a new form of 
 drive.” 
 
 This notion can only be overcome by carefully 
 following an installation of the system by a compe¬ 
 tent engineer. As its name indicates, the new sci¬ 
 ence concerns itself primarily with management. 
 Its attack is on management, not merely manage¬ 
 ment of labour but management of every element in 
 the process of production. As a fact labour is not 
 often touched until many months after the reform of 
 management is begun. 
 
 I have already referred in Chapter I to the im¬ 
 provements in shop conveniences which is always one 
 of the preliminary steps in bringing a shop under the 
 system. Almost the first attack is on the tools, 
 chairs, benches, and machines a worker uses. Are 
 they fitted to him? Is a five-foot man using a shovel 
 suitable only for a six-footer? Is a short girl sitting 
 on a chair comfortable only for a tall one? Are 
 heavy irons lifted when they might be shoved? The 
 aim is to fit the worker’s equipment to him as shoe or 
 coat is, so that he can use it with the least possible 
 friction and waste of energy. 
 
204 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 What the worker is saved in wear and tear by 
 these changes goes unconsciously into the quantity 
 of his product. He does more because he works 
 more freely and easily. Of course the worker him¬ 
 self has had nothing to do with this freeing of his 
 power. It was one of his handicaps for which man¬ 
 agement alone was responsible and which manage¬ 
 ment, grown wise, has removed. 
 
 Again, the systematic, orderly and time-saving 
 handling of tools and supplies to which reference is 
 made in Chapter I frees the worker from both an¬ 
 noyance and waste time. He can go ahead at once 
 with work. He is not obliged to hunt for tools or 
 wait for supplies. Here again his product suffered 
 from the incompetency of management. He does 
 more under the new system because the management 
 is doing something which obviously was part of its 
 business, but to which it had never given careful 
 thought and direction. 
 
 Extraordinary gains for the worker come through 
 scientific methods of planning and routing orders. 
 Not only does an order flow through the shop ac¬ 
 cording to a carefully arranged plan, but each step 
 in the operation fits into the one preceding and the 
 one following. A comparison of what happens to 
 a job under the old hap-hazard system of dumping 
 it into a shop and allowing it to work its way through, 
 more or less by chance, with what happens under the 
 new method of planning and routing reveals one 
 great reason why an operative’s output is increased. 
 
A MAN’S HIRE 205 
 
 The management is using its brains, and labour is 
 reaping the advantage. 
 
 When these changes have been thoroughly worked 
 out, that is, when equipment and supplies have been 
 standardised and correct increases for planning and 
 routing work installed, it is possible to turn attention 
 to the worker. It is for attempting to set tasks for 
 him before these things have been done that many of 
 the worst failures in the system have come. The 
 conditions under which he is working are changed. 
 What was a fair day’s work is no longer so, but what 
 is a day’s work? What ought an average man to 
 do under the new system and new conditions ? This 
 is a legitimate question. But the new manager goes 
 farther. He asks whether it is not possible to im¬ 
 prove the worker’s methods as well as his tools and 
 his conditions. Is he doing his task in the easiest 
 and quickest and most efficient way? He can only 
 answer this as he answered the question as to whether 
 or not the machinery of the shop was the best pos¬ 
 sible for the work it had to do — by study. As a 
 rule this study of each particular task in a shop is 
 carried on in the laboratory or experimental room, 
 not on the factory floor. Where the machines are 
 very large, as in the case of printing presses or paper 
 machines, this practice is not possible, but the excep¬ 
 tions are few. A workman is selected for the ex¬ 
 periments, and is told that if he will co-operate in 
 their making, he will be given a bonus. 
 
 This study of a particular task is highly interest- 
 
206 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 ing. It begins by separating the performance into 
 the various motions of which it is composed, and by 
 observing each of these motions to find whether or 
 not it is necessary, and whether or no, if necessary, 
 it is the simplest and therefore quickest motion pos¬ 
 sible. Almost invariably by this analysis it is found 
 practical to eliminate motions, thus saving energy 
 and time. Frequently it is discovered that much 
 simpler motions than those used are equally effective. 
 The only sure way of fixing which of several possible 
 motions is simplest is by measuring the time each 
 takes. This is done, of course, by means of a stop¬ 
 watch. 
 
 When unnecessary motions are cut from the task, 
 and the simplest way of performing those which are 
 necessary found, the times fixed for each of these are 
 added. A liberal allowance is then made for me¬ 
 chanical and temperamental delays and interference, 
 and the result, called a “ time-study,” is set as the 
 proper period in which the average worker should 
 be able to do this particular piece of work. He is 
 not expected to accomplish this without instruction. 
 The time study itself is printed on an instruction 
 card which is given the worker. He is taught its 
 meaning and aided in carrying out its direction by 
 an instructor who is one of the regular staff under the 
 new system. The instructor’s only function is teach¬ 
 ing employes how to work properly, and in seeing 
 that they understand and are following the time- 
 studies. Frequently the instruction card directs the 
 operative in case he finds that he is unable to make 
 
A MAN’S HIRE 
 
 207 
 
 the task in the time fixed to appeal at once for help, 
 that is, it is not true, as sometimes claimed by those 
 who do not understand the meaning of time studies 
 and instruction cards, that the worker has no voice in 
 the matter. He has, must have, or the system would 
 fall to pieces. 
 
 Having fixed the time for each task, it is of course 
 easy to fix how much work can be asked in a day, 
 that is, it is not difficult to calculate what a day’s 
 work should be in amount. It is obvious, however, 
 that there would be little hope of persuading a group 
 of operatives to follow a method requiring so much 
 more attention and precision in order to turn out the 
 day’s work, if they had no other incentive than learn¬ 
 ing to do a thing in a new and better way. Giving 
 them an incentive in the form of an increased wage 
 is and always has been an integral part of scientific 
 management. This wage is paid in various ways. 
 Mr. Taylor’s plan, known as “ task and bonus,” is 
 to pay a bonus if the task is reached, otherwise to 
 pay the day’s wage commonest for the kind of work 
 in the vicinity. This plan naturally will not give 
 satisfaction unless the task is fixed so that the aver¬ 
 age worker who really tries can make it without over 
 fatigue. The success depends absolutely on his 
 earning his premium. When he fails to do so, he 
 naturally believes the task is set too high. The man¬ 
 agement which is as much interested as he in his earn¬ 
 ing the bonus is thus compelled to look into the time- 
 study as well as into the worker’s methods and to 
 find the error, if there is one. Sanford C. Thomp- 
 
208 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 son, who has had an experience of some twenty years 
 with scientific management, declares that the system 
 once installed works almost automatically, and that 
 a very small proportion of operatives fail to make 
 their bonus. 
 
 The bonus is usually fixed at about one-third of 
 the day’s wage or, in case of piece work, at about 
 one-third of the piece rate. Organised labour 
 charges that a systematic cutting of rates goes on 
 under the system. This is entirely contrary to the 
 spirit of the system and to the practice where I have 
 observed it. Indeed it would be fatal in the long 
 run. 
 
 At the hearings before the Industrial Commission 
 in 1914, the late Mr. James Mapes Dodge, manager 
 of the Link Belt Company of Philadelphia, a shop 
 which has had a ten-years’ experience with scientific 
 management, introduced certain diaries kept by one 
 of the workingmen. One of the commissioners ex¬ 
 amining the books called attention to an entry which 
 read: 
 
 “ I made bushels of money under this rate. 
 Brown said I did not do it honestly, but I agreed to 
 pay him twelve to five that I could still go ahead of 
 that, but he got ‘ cold feet.’ ” 
 
 “ When you found that he made bushels of 
 money,” the commissioner asked Mr. Dodge, “ did 
 you cut the rate? ” 
 
 “ No,” said Mr. Dodge, “ we would not dare to 
 cut the rate. Scientific management would evaporate 
 
A MAN’S HIRE 
 
 209 
 
 like snow in sunshine if we did not keep our word with 
 the men.” 
 
 Henry B. Towne, the head of the Yale and Towne 
 Manufacturing Company of Connecticut, said at the 
 hearings before the Committee on Labour in the 
 spring of 1916 that he had many new employes, both 
 men and women, who would be expected under pres¬ 
 ent conditions to earn $2.25 to< $2.50 a.day, who were 
 earning under scientific management $4 to $5 or 
 even as high as $8 a day. These people were on 
 piece work. The committee obviously suspected that 
 these high wages would mean a cutting of the piece 
 rate, a suspicion born of their entire misconception 
 of the system. Mr. Towne said in answer to the 
 question, “ The rate per unit stands. They stand 
 with one exception. If the rates are complained 
 about, then we investigate most carefully. We see 
 what other workers on the same job have to say about 
 it; we review our experiments and tests and figures 
 and if there is any error, it is corrected. Excepting 
 that, the rates stand until there is some change in 
 the job. If we introduce new machines or methods 
 or change the article or product, then the rates must 
 be reviewed.” 
 
 Wherever the system has been properly installed, 
 that is, where the principles and not merely the 
 mechanism are followed, wages have promptly risen. 
 In certain industries where the wages of women par¬ 
 ticularly have been notoriously low, the results have 
 been most hopeful. 
 
210 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 I confess that the first thing that has ever shed a 
 ray of light into my mind on the cotton mill — 
 aside from legislation which, after all, is only a war 
 engine compelling men to do this or not to do that — 
 has been scientific management. 
 
 At the very best, spinning and weaving are wear¬ 
 ing processes. The difficulty of making them more 
 tolerable has seemed to make employers the more 
 obstinate about changes; they have often had fairly 
 to be bludgeoned into proper ventilation, sanitation 
 and hours, and as for wages, they have generally been 
 below a decent standard of living for women and for 
 men with families. I have referred to certain ease¬ 
 ments in the operations which scientific management 
 has brought about in the one cotton mill which I have 
 seen under the system. 
 
 Compare the “ look ” of the girls and women 
 there, their manners, morals and health, with that of 
 many, not all, of the Rhode Island or Massachusetts 
 factories in which I have seen them, and the improve¬ 
 ment is unbelievable. The better wages have some¬ 
 thing to do with this, of course; but the cheerful 
 lunch-room, the sympathetic and intelligent nurse, 
 the rest- and first-aid room, amusements and clubs, 
 all aid. 
 
 A comparative study of the average wages and 
 hours in cotton mills in different States with those in 
 this mill is interesting. The hours are those legal 
 in the State (55)—only one State has fewer, 
 Massachusetts, where they are 54. The average 
 hours for the country are 57. 
 
A MAN’S HIRE 
 
 211 
 
 One of the first differences the table shows, and 
 an important one, is that the wages of men and 
 women doing the same work are equal. It must be, 
 if a standard has been set. The wage follows this 
 standard and sex has nothing to do with the case. 
 
 Equal pay is possible when you know you are get¬ 
 ting equal results, not guessing at it. Outside of 
 these mills, according to this table, women receive 
 12 3-10 cents an hour as spinners, men 14 8-10 cents. 
 In the mills both receive 16 8-10 cents — and look 
 after three instead of four frames. The average 
 wage for weavers in the country is 16 4-10 (a half 
 cent less for women). At these mills it is 25 cents 
 for both for four looms, and 17^3 for two narrow 
 looms. 
 
 It is interesting, in connection with the charge that 
 the wage scale is the result of speeding both opera¬ 
 tives and machines, to learn that in several cases 
 speeds were reduced in order to get the best results. 
 For instance, spinners formerly cared for 800 
 spindles and 8 sides. It was found they could turn 
 out more and better work with 600 spindles and 6 
 sides. The revolutions per minute of the spinning 
 spindles were reduced from 8,800 to 7,600, simply 
 because it was a more efficient speed. 
 
 Too strong emphasis cannot be placed on the fact 
 that the increase in wages under a true scientific man¬ 
 agement is not the result of “ Drive.” The speed 
 at which the product is turned out is fixed always 
 after careful observation. Common sense should 
 tell one that employers do not take from three to 
 
212 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 five years to install a system in their business, spend 
 possibly tens of thousands of dollars, educate hun¬ 
 dreds of people, and then ruin the whole thing at 
 once by killing off the men and women on whom they 
 depend. Nothing could be more unscientific than 
 that. 
 
 The worker cannot be speeded under this system. 
 He must follow a steady, unhurried gait. He must 
 have an intelligent control of his mind; he cannot be 
 in an unnerved or excited condition. That at once 
 makes him unfit for his task. An intelligent fore¬ 
 man under this system, if he sees that a worker is 
 showing signs of nervous agitation or strain, insists 
 that he rest. In many shops where an operation 
 must be put through on schedule time workmen are 
 practically compelled to take ten or fifteen minutes 
 off now and then out of their chairs, to break the 
 tension that working on a set schedule causes. 
 
 The men and women making the highest wage 
 under this system usually work in a leisurely way. 
 At the cotton mills I watched a nervous young Italian 
 girl at a spinning frame. She ran up and down the 
 frame, flew from spindle to spindle, and filled the air 
 with useless motions. She was not content to watch 
 her own frame, but seeing something wrong with that 
 of another girl darted at that. She gave the impres¬ 
 sion of terrific speeding. On the opposite side a 
 girl of calmer temperament worked leisurely at the 
 same number of spindles. These two girls were 
 earning the same wage. 
 
 Usually, however, where a girl works in this ex- 
 
A MAN’S HIRE 
 
 213 
 
 cited fashion she earns less. For instance, in the 
 Clothcraft Shop of Cleveland I took pains to com¬ 
 pare the daily pay-cards of girls that I saw work¬ 
 ing w 7 ith unusual ease and those who seemed to be 
 speeding. Without exception I found that the 
 former were earning more than their straining sis¬ 
 ters. I spoke of this to the manager and certain 
 of the teachers, and they assured me that the girl 
 who drove herself was an undesirable operative. 
 
 In a wire-making room of one of the factories of 
 the National Lamp Company, I once examined the 
 posted reports of the daily output of a large num¬ 
 ber of girls. Day after day one little Hungarian 
 stood at the head. I watched her for some time. 
 She gave the impression of actually loafing over her 
 machine. 
 
 Colonel Wheeler tells me that after scientific man¬ 
 agement was installed at the Watertown Arsenal 
 they were obliged to change their estimate of the 
 working capacity of many men. Not having for¬ 
 merly any adequate measure of work, the foreman 
 often took it for granted that a man who seemed to 
 be doing nothing was doing nothing, and tried to 
 drive him. The result was that men fell into the 
 habit of appearing busy when watched. 
 
 If the superintendent or inspectors appeared a 
 whistle went around the shop and every man began 
 to perform unnecessary motions in order to look 
 busy! Whether a man appears busy or not has 
 nothing to do with the case under this system. It is 
 the work he turns out which tells, and there is an ab- 
 
214 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 solute measure of that. The difference with which 
 the worker regards the visits of the management is 
 one of the first changes in shop temper which a vis¬ 
 itor familiar with factory and shop forces notices. 
 
 The experience of the Clothcraft Shop of Cleve¬ 
 land with wages under scientific management has been 
 remarkable. It is an old concern, the oldest in the 
 country. The present manager, Richard Feiss, 
 brought to the shop an unusual equipment. He was 
 graduated a few years ago from the Harvard Law 
 School, and after a short turn at the law he con¬ 
 cluded he would prefer to go into business, and re¬ 
 turned to Cleveland. 
 
 He seemed never to have regretted his law course, 
 however. I have heard him say that he learned 
 more about making clothes in the Harvard Law 
 School than he ever did anywhere else. His theory 
 was, on entering the business, to learn to do every¬ 
 thing that was done in the factory. And this he 
 literally did. He spent three months on the various 
 processes. At the end of the time he is reported 
 to have appeared before certain dignified members 
 of his family with a suit of clothes on his arm. 
 “What do you think of them?” he said. They 
 were looked over and pronounced fairly good. 
 “ Why? ” they asked. “ Well,” he said, “ I made 
 ’em!” 
 
 Mr. Feiss handles a difficult labour group. Of 
 the 828 persons in the shop in the summer of 1914 
 over half were foreign born. They come as a rule 
 without experience, often speaking no English. 
 
215 
 
 Recent Effect on Wages: Production Costs and Hours of Scientific Management in the Cloth- 
 
 craft Shop of Cleveland, Ohio. 
 
2 l6 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 They have all to learn. The theory of the shop is 
 that they are worth teaching; and, moreover, that 
 the more they know, the healthier and happier they 
 are, the better “pants” they will make; also, the 
 better “ pants ” they make the better citizens they 
 will be! 
 
 Mr. Feiss’s theory of what a proper workshop 
 does for a force and his reduction of hours have al¬ 
 ready been referred to. On page 215 is a table show¬ 
 ing the effect his system has had on wages. Starting 
 with the basic wage in Cleveland in the industry, 
 this table shows that in 6 years — June, 1910, to 
 June, 1916, the hourly wages in the shop have in¬ 
 creased 69 per cent., the weekly 49 per cent. This 
 is a greater increase than is usually found under scien¬ 
 tific management. It is due to the greater emphasis 
 Mr. Feiss places upon the human relation, the more 
 attention he gives to health and happiness. 
 
 An interesting feature of this table is the relative 
 gain of employers and employes it shows. It is quite 
 generally charged that the system gives the lion’s 
 share of the increase in profits to the owners. In 
 this case the two have kept fairly close together, 
 labour being ahead up to 1913. Since that time the 
 decrease in cost is giving Mr. Feiss a slight advan¬ 
 tage. 
 
 In the cottom mills referred to above the practice 
 is to divide the increase with labour. For instance, 
 if a department which had been turning out 1,000 
 pounds daily under the old system raised it to 1,200 
 under the new, 20 per cent, was added to wages. 
 
A MAN’S HIRE 
 
 217 
 
 Mr. Dodge, of the Link Belt Company, told the 
 Industrial Commission that, while fully 70 per cent, 
 had been added to wages, the dividends had been in¬ 
 creased only about two per cent. But there were 
 other gains to the management which Mr. Dodge 
 considered tremendous — a better quality of output, 
 a lower price to the consumer, increased facility in 
 handling orders. “ We get 86 per cent, of our work 
 on time now; formerly we were behind with 86 per 
 cent.” 
 
 At the government arsenal at Watertown, Massa¬ 
 chusetts, where the Taylor system has been on trial 
 since 1911, there has been an increase of fully 25 
 per cent, in wages wherever it has been possible to 
 adopt the system. At the same time there has been 
 a substantial reduction in the cost of production. 
 General Crozier, Chief of Ordnance, declares that 
 this has been done without overexertion, and both 
 the look of the men in the plant and the records of 
 time lost because of illness bear him out. Neverthe¬ 
 less, there is a determined attempt making to drive 
 the system from all government factories. 
 
 In the spring of 1915 Congress passed a rider to 
 the Army bill forbidding that any part of the ap¬ 
 propriation in the bill be used to pay premiums or 
 bonuses to employes in government plants. As 
 soon as this bill was passed by the Senate, but before 
 it had become a law, General Crozier suspended 
 premium payments at the Frankford Arsenal, Phila¬ 
 delphia. A protest signed by several hundred em¬ 
 ployes was sent at once to General Crozier. It not 
 
2 l8 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 only showed what these employes thought of the 
 system, but what they were making under it. 
 
 1. The premium system of payment was established in 
 the manufacture of small-arms ammunition about five years 
 ago, and that there was a complete understanding between 
 ourselves and the management of the arsenal that there 
 would be no reduction of the premium rates while the manu¬ 
 facturing processes remain the same. This agreement has 
 been lived up to by the management and by ourselves and 
 to the mutual satisfaction of all concerned. 
 
 2. We believe that this system has been eminently suc¬ 
 cessful, because, according to published reports, the manu¬ 
 facture of small-arms ammunition at Frankford Arsenal 
 presents a decided economy when compared with costs of 
 the same ammunition procured from private manufacturers. 
 
 3. The premium earned by all the employes engaged in 
 the manufacture of small-arms ammunition during the 
 month of December, 1914, has amounted to $3,747.72, or 
 to approximately $45,000 for the year, and therefore the 
 abolishing of the premium system means an annual loss to 
 us of approximately $45,000. 
 
 At the present writing there is a bill before Con¬ 
 gress forbidding the use of the stop watch and the 
 payment of premiums in government plants under 
 penalty of fine or imprisonment. The bill shows 
 complete ignorance of how and why the stop-watch 
 is used. It states that it is held over a man “ while 
 at work ” to find out the largest amount the “ most 
 capable man ” can do in a given time, and it de¬ 
 clares that by premiums and severe discipline this 
 standard time is enforced, and that if the workman 
 
A MAN’S HIRE 
 
 219 
 
 fails to reach it, he loses his employment. This bill 
 is wrong in every essential point. The stop-watch 
 is used in the laboratory, not held over a man while 
 he is doing a piece of work. Its part in the task is 
 over then. It comes in at the preparatory stage, 
 when the task is being studied and the proper time in 
 which to do it fixed. 
 
 I have spent many, many hours watching men and 
 women working under this system, and I have never 
 but twice seen a stop-watch used in shop or factory. 
 In one case the instructor was studying a new piece 
 of work in order to find in what time each of its vari¬ 
 ous parts should be done. He and the workman 
 were in friendly consultation; that is, they stopped 
 more than once to debate a point. The stop-watch 
 attracted no more attention than the tools the man 
 handled. 
 
 In another case, so the foreman told me, a girl 
 thought her instruction card was wrong; that is, she 
 thought the time which had been set as a fair aver¬ 
 age in which to do a certain part of her task was too 
 short. She had questioned it, and the instructor, 
 stop-watch in hand, was examining into the cause of 
 her dissatisfaction. 
 
 Again, the time of a task is far from being the 
 fastest of the most capable man. After the good 
 average workman has been timed and his standard 
 found, a very liberal allowance, often as much as 
 two-thirds, is allowed in order to make the period 
 fixed reasonable for the average man. As for disci¬ 
 pline in case of failure, I never heard of any save 
 
220 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 the loss of the premium, and the management re¬ 
 gards that failure as its own, as explained above. 
 
 It is probable that most of the opposition to the 
 system comes from ignorance, and that the ignorance 
 comes from a failure of the management to explain 
 frankly to employes at the start the meaning and 
 bearing of the experiments they are about to make. 
 When the New England Butt Company was put 
 under the Taylor system, the management and ex¬ 
 perts held weekly open meetings, to which everybody 
 in the shop was invited. There, every attempt was 
 made to explain to the men the principles and ma¬ 
 chinery of the undertaking. There was no mystery, 
 no evasion. Every man who wanted to ask ques¬ 
 tions, to make a speech, to criticise, had his opening. 
 Such a procedure, at once democratic and educational, 
 disarmed suspicion and prejudice and interested the 
 workers. 
 
 At the Plimpton Press at Norwood, Massachu¬ 
 setts, the time studies are kept posted near the ma¬ 
 chines on which the particular operations are to be 
 carried out. The workers become familiar with 
 them, discuss them, and if there is a particular factor 
 in the analysis which they consider wrong they have 
 the right to challenge its reasonableness. 
 
 Every experiment which promises to throw light 
 on the hard problem of fitting rewards to services 
 should be welcomed by all honest men and tested 
 with good will and fairness. No man who looks 
 over the productive world to-day and compares the 
 returns the various factors receive can escape the 
 
A MAN’S HIRE 
 
 221 
 
 feeling that we are working in a bewildering fog, 
 where small things often loom like giants and great 
 ones turn to pigmies. We have great fortunes which 
 all the world recognises as the result of cunning, of 
 unfair privileges, of daring gambling, of brazen mis¬ 
 representation, and by their side are tens of thou¬ 
 sands of men who have worked faithfully from boy¬ 
 hood to old age on a daily wage which barely gave 
 them food and shelter, and left them at the end at 
 the mercy of the world. The quality of service ren¬ 
 dered by those two groups cannot be compared, so 
 far superior is that of the labourer. We may call 
 these the accidents, not the rule, yet they are famil¬ 
 iar enough to seem to many the rule. In any case, 
 they are grotesque injustices which it is the business 
 of an intelligent society to correct and prevent. 
 
 Scientific management, while it does not touch 
 the basic wage, simply regards it as a starting-point, 
 does recognise the most important of all principles 
 in this matter of measuring the daily service, and 
 that is the relation of the amount and quality of a 
 man’s work to what he gets. It is the greatest con¬ 
 tribution to the wage question since the day it was 
 settled, for this country at least, that every man has 
 a right to the fruit of his labours, however ridicu¬ 
 lously inadequate that fruit may be. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 EXPERIMENTS IN JUSTICE 
 
 Among the many experiments in human relations 
 which the new American man of business is making, 
 there is none more difficult and none more noble than 
 that of finding a just measure for the value of the 
 service each worker renders in an undertaking. It 
 is the greatest voluntary experiment in justice that 
 the present world offers. 
 
 Certain attempts to break up the purely arbitrary 
 wage scale were touched on in the last chapter. The 
 contention there was that a uniform wage, though it 
 be the highest current, is not just, because it is not 
 fitted to bring out the varying abilities of men. 
 There must be a method of paying adjusted to the 
 possible quality and quantity of a man’s output — 
 something which will stimulate him and satisfy his 
 sense of justice. 
 
 But even when we have reached a satisfactory 
 method of fixing the basic wage and have added to 
 that the wisest way of measuring the extra daily 
 service a man may give, there still remains some¬ 
 thing for which a workman who stays by a business 
 for a period of time is not paid, something which 
 the great majority of employers of all kinds, public 
 and private, never have taken into consideration. It 
 
EXPERIMENTS IN JUSTICE 
 
 223 
 
 is an intangible service, but essential and undeniable; 
 it is what he contributes to building up the good will 
 of the business. 
 
 “ Good will ” is a curious thing compounded of 
 friendliness, experience, character of workmanship, 
 established relations. A self-respecting workman 
 who over a long period has talked proudly of “ our 
 shop,” “ our old man,” “ our goods,” has helped 
 drive that business into a community. In an under¬ 
 taking like a department store, the satisfaction and 
 pride of the women and girls in the place is recog¬ 
 nised as one of its real assets. The importance of a 
 stable pay roll can hardly be over-emphasised. It 
 does not matter how humble the task, if it is a task 
 essential to turning out the product it costs some¬ 
 thing to educate the doer. Every change is an in¬ 
 terruption; every change starts friction which runs 
 through the whole body. 
 
 How is a stable force to be secured? There is 
 only one way, and that is to overcome the motives 
 for change, replace them by motives for staying. 
 The same reasons that make men and women restless 
 in professions, in society, in schools and churches, 
 make them restless in factories and mills and shops. 
 
 Why do you not stay in your law firm, your col¬ 
 lege, your bank? It may be because you are asked 
 to work in rooms so badly ventilated that you know 
 your health is suffering. It may be because the pay 
 is the lowest and the hours the longest that the man¬ 
 agement dares impose; because there is no advance¬ 
 ment before you, because you know if you do stay on 
 
224 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 the day will come when you will be cast into the dump 
 heap of the worn-out — with not so much as a 
 month’s pay to help you in readjusting yourself. 
 
 It may be that the spirit of the place is sullen, 
 harsh, suspicious, with no friendly looks at the end 
 of the hard days, no sympathy in times of trouble, 
 no respect for independence and ambition. 
 
 These are sound reasons for restlessness in men 
 and women. Remove them, and the men readily 
 respond, whether they be labourers in the yards, 
 clerks in the counting-room, or preachers in the pul¬ 
 pit. 
 
 Five years ago the Clothcraft Shop of Cleveland, 
 already one of the best working places in the town, 
 was hiring 1,570 workers a year to keep up a force 
 of 1,060. Then its present manager, Richard Feiss, 
 undertook to organise it on a scientific basis. The 
 shops were made as bright and as comfortable as he 
 knew how to make them; the tasks were taught the 
 newcomers by instructors hired for that purpose, op¬ 
 portunities for earning more and for steady advance¬ 
 ment offered, and everybody was shown how to take 
 advantage of them; hours were shortened. Life in 
 the factory was organised for health and happiness 
 — with what result? More work is being done 
 to-day by 20 per cent, fewer people and the “ labour 
 turn-over ” has fallen 66 2-3 per cent. 
 
 At the Ford Motor Works, in December, 1912, 
 3,594 of the 5,678 men hired turned out to be “ float¬ 
 ers,” “ five-day men,” as those who come only to 
 go are called. A month after the profit sharing 
 
EXPERIMENTS IN JUSTICE 
 
 225 
 
 scheme was announced, the new practices in fitting 
 men to their tasks installed, these floaters fell to 
 322! 
 
 There never was a more foundationless tradition 
 than that working men and women do not respond 
 to efforts to make the conditions under which they 
 labour more wholesome, decent, and just. They re¬ 
 spond as quickly as other groups of human beings. 
 
 The failure of business to recognise long terms 
 of service suitably causes peculiar bitterness among 
 working people, because the results are usually so 
 tragic. Can there be an experience more calculated 
 to make a young man of education and efficiency ques¬ 
 tion the industrial organisation of the country than, 
 — after giving his first fresh years of enthusiasm to 
 an undertaking,— to find himself summarily laid off 
 with no recognition of the extra service he knows he 
 has been contributing to the business? Yet how 
 much better he is off than the workingman suddenly 
 dismissed, without even the word of explanation the 
 former will have received. 
 
 And if this is hard for young men, how much worse 
 it is for those of sixty and seventy. Rarely do I go 
 into an industrial community that I do not meet old 
 men who after thirty or forty years of service have 
 been dropped—“ Too old,” “ Worn out,” “ He has 
 had good wages but saved nothing. His own fault.” 
 
 These are the explanations. They do not explain. 
 They are no more adequate than to say of the man 
 hopelessly crippled in a factory: “It was a bad 
 accident, but we were not negligent.” The one 
 
226 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 man’s life has been wrought into the factory, as the 
 other man’s limb has been sacrificed to it, and the 
 factory has an obligation to each. It cannot use all 
 that is profitable in a human being and then cast him 
 adrift — part of the price it must pay is finding him 
 a safe mooring. 
 
 It is generally supposed that what is called profit 
 sharing meets or at least ought to meet, the obliga¬ 
 tion incurred by long service. It all depends upon 
 the form and motive of the scheme. Most profit 
 sharing has no other purpose than to increase profits. 
 That is, it is designed to stimulate workers to use 
 more fully their capacity. It has the same object 
 as piece rates and bonuses and premiums. 
 
 Mr. George A. Chace, the administrator of one of 
 the oldest and most successful of these undertakings, 
 that of the Bourne Mills, at Fall River, Massachu¬ 
 setts, used to speak of the profit he paid out as “ in¬ 
 terest on interest.” “ It seems no more than right,” 
 he once wrote to the employes, “ that it should be 
 made clear to every one expecting a share in the 
 profits that there is no intention on our part to make 
 free gifts of money for nothing, but rather that every 
 payment is the carrying out of a distinct agreement, 
 or contract, under which both parties to it are hop¬ 
 ing for mutual benefit.” 
 
 And again he wrote: “ You can best express your 
 
 appreciation of profit sharing by earning more pay. 
 This does not mean that you will have to work 
 harder — hard work brings poor wages — but, 
 rather by attention and skill, take the ‘ stitch in time 
 
EXPERIMENTS IN JUSTICE 
 
 227 
 
 that saves nine.’ If by a little more care and watch¬ 
 fulness you can earn 40 or 50 cents more a week, it 
 equals 5 per cent, advance in wages. Thus you get 
 the extra pay, and we get the extra production. 
 That is the secret of profit sharing.” 
 
 This scheme for paying “ interest ” succeeded at 
 the Bourne Mills. But it was not the extra money 
 alone to which the success was due. A few years ago 
 I spent some days in Fall River at a time of serious 
 industrial depression. Practically every plant was 
 closed, among others the Bourne Mills. 
 
 I talked to many operatives about conditions, and 
 I was struck by the number who quoted this factory. 
 “They try to do right over there;” “They take 
 you in;” “They share their profits;” “They ex¬ 
 plain things.” These were some of the evidences 
 I found of a more friendly feeling for the concern 
 than for others. 
 
 I wondered that the small extra sum that each re¬ 
 ceived in profits and the efforts I know the mill had 
 made to keep its wheels running could win quite as 
 genuine a friendliness as I thought I detected. It 
 was only recently, when there came into my hands the 
 series of letters from which I have just quoted, 
 written semi-annually to the employes by the late 
 treasurer, George A. Chace, that I understood. 
 
 Here was proof that the operatives were, as they 
 said, considered as part of the enterprise, that satis¬ 
 fying one obligation did not mean that the company 
 thought no more of their claims and needs. On the 
 contrary, the letters show that Mr. Chace and the 
 
228 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 Board continually studied and tried to solve the prob¬ 
 lems which profit sharing disclosed. 
 
 There are other plants in the country where the 
 same form of profit sharing has been tried for as 
 long and is regarded as a success. But for every ten 
 places it has succeeded there have been ninety, prob¬ 
 ably, w r here it has failed. 
 
 There have been many reasons for these failures. 
 Mr. Frederick Taylor once gave the best in a public 
 address on profit sharing: “ The average working¬ 
 man cannot look forward more than a month to 
 profits.” “ Hope deferred maketh the heart sick.” 
 
 If you are working over a loom eight hours a day, 
 you will hardly remind yourself hourly that the extra 
 wage you will get six months or a year from now is 
 going to depend on the extra efforts you make at the 
 moment. But if you have a pay card at your side 
 on which your hourly wage is shown, you will prob¬ 
 ably make the effort to earn your premium — par¬ 
 ticularly if you know it will be put into your envelope 
 on Saturday night. Profits paid in money at the end 
 of the year can never be as real and constant a stimu¬ 
 lus to workers as piece work or premium. 
 
 Nor is this form of profit sharing often useful in 
 providing for the evil days which old age brings to so 
 many of those who live by the wage system. This 
 has been a sore disappointment to many an employer 
 w r ho, in adopting it, has had a notion that by so 
 doing he was meeting all his obligations to his em¬ 
 ploye — besides doing a generous deed ! He argues 
 that the profits will be set aside as a nest egg, and 
 
EXPERIMENTS IN JUSTICE 
 
 229 
 
 that by the time the worker is superannuated he will 
 have a tidy sum to carry him through his old age, 
 and bury him. 
 
 If it worked out that way, he might have reason 
 for feeling the business was supporting the faith¬ 
 ful servant to the end. But the first shock to the en¬ 
 thusiastic employer is that the worker does not take 
 this view of it. He does not see any more reason 
 for saving this increment than saving a share of his 
 daily wages. It is wages, pay for extra daily serv¬ 
 ice. It has no relation to what he earns by staying 
 with the business for a term of years. He spends his 
 money as soon as he receives it — and often be¬ 
 fore. 
 
 At the big Crane works in Chicago the ten thou¬ 
 sand or more employes have been receiving at Christ¬ 
 mas time for fifteen years a dividend of ten per cent, 
 in wages; everybody in the place at the time receives 
 it. It is regarded by the management as part of its 
 “ policy.” They believe it contributes to efficiency 
 and peace. But the opinion of those in the plant 
 best fitted to know is that this dividend is spent before 
 received; that it is rarely regarded by the working¬ 
 men as a nest egg. 
 
 Fels and Company of Philadelphia, widely known 
 as open-minded employers, always willing to try an 
 experiment, have had a form of profit sharing for 
 some twelve years. They regard it as “ a great thing 
 in handling people.” But they do not consider it 
 entirely satisfactory, largely because those receiving 
 it count on it from year to year, and make use of it 
 
230 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 in advance, instead of saving it. That is, it has been 
 good for the management but not so good for the 
 employes! 
 
 With the realisation that the extra wage was not 
 being used providently, and that something further 
 must be done if old age was to be cared for, many 
 employers have abandoned the scheme. There has 
 been a vast amount of hopeful experimenting 
 dropped in our industries because employes acted 
 like average human beings and not like superior be¬ 
 ings, as the employers expected them to do. 
 
 Why workingmen, whose bare necessities so gen¬ 
 erally outstrip their means and whose legitimate 
 wants rarely be satisfied, should exercise a foresight 
 that we do not get in more easily-placed groups has 
 never been satisfactorily demonstrated. They do 
 not do it for the same reason the more comfortable 
 do not do it, because they are ordinary human beings, 
 by whom thrift is as far from being generally prac¬ 
 tised as it is from being generally appreciated as an 
 interesting game. 
 
 The form of profit sharing which may fairly lay a 
 certain claim to meet the obligation that a business 
 incurs from long-term service is that which is paid 
 in stock. It is a device which in a degree brings the 
 employes into the enterprise, giving them an invest¬ 
 ment as permanent as the business is, and whatever 
 power in the undertaking stockholding gives — a 
 power which in time, it is easy to see, might become 
 great, if not controlling. 
 
 There are to-day a number of these stock owner- 
 
EXPERIMENTS IN JUSTICE 
 
 231 
 
 ship plans, operating to the satisfaction of both sides 
 to the bargain. The one which has stood the longest 
 test of time, and which has recognised most fully that 
 a man’s needs are not necessarily met because he has 
 a regular wage and a share in profits into the bargain, 
 is that of the Nelson Manufacturing Company, of 
 Edwardsville, Illinois. It is an experiment in jus¬ 
 tice, born of a face-to-face experience with the work¬ 
 ings of injustice. 
 
 The founder of the concern was manufacturing in 
 St. Louis in the seventies when the great railroad 
 strikes tied up the country. He weathered them, but 
 determined that, as far as his business was concerned, 
 the conditions which made war in industry inevitable 
 for thinking workingmen must be avoided. He went 
 at the question thoroughly, adopting plans which, 
 on the whole, are the most comprehensive which have 
 been tried in this country for as long a period as 
 twenty-five years. 
 
 Mr. Nelson began by moving his plant some fifty 
 miles from St. Louis to the outskirts of Edwards¬ 
 ville, Illinois, and there, in 1890, started a village, 
 called Leclaire in honour of the pioneer French profit 
 sharer. He pledged his employes at the start that, 
 after paying them the current wage, giving capital a 
 six per cent, dividend, and taking care of sinking fund 
 and other obligations, he would divide among them 
 the profits in proportion to their wages. 
 
 In the twenty-five years since the plan was an¬ 
 nounced the dividend has never fallen below 10 per 
 cent, and has risen as high as 30 per cent. This is 
 
232 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 not paid in money, but in stock. To-day the em¬ 
 ployes of the Nelson Manufacturing Company own 
 over one-fourth of the concern. In 1905 customers 
 were admitted to a share of profits, and to-day the 
 two interests own about one-half of the business. 
 The one plant has become three — one in Indiana, 
 one in Alabama, and there, also profit sharing and 
 other features of Leclaire are followed. 
 
 This profit sharing plan, or, as it is gradually com¬ 
 ing to be, partnership in the business, with other co¬ 
 operative features has tied the force at Edwardsville 
 together in a most unusual way. There are many 
 men still active on the force (in a body of about three 
 hundred) who saw the building of the attractive 
 plant and of the first house in Leclaire. 
 
 In 1911, Mr. Nelson celebrated the coming of 
 age of the town (he and the officers live there, side 
 by side with the men) by inviting to his house all of 
 the employes, with their families, who had been ten 
 years in the plant. The list was so big that the house 
 wouldn't hold them, and he w T as obliged to raise the 
 age limit! In a talk at the “ coming of age ” party, 
 Mr. Nelson gave the real secret of its achievement: 
 
 We have not been ambitious to become great or rich; but 
 we have sought to make business a means to independence 
 and social life. 
 
 He gave in a few words the reason why, in his 
 judgment, so many of the scores of profit sharing 
 schemes all over the country have been followed by 
 no better success: 
 
EXPERIMENTS IN JUSTICE 
 
 233 
 
 The plans are usually arbitrary and coupled with restric¬ 
 tions. Immediate results are expected, and not realised, and 
 the motive is better business, not more equal division. 
 
 The success at Leclaire is a success of justice, not 
 of calculation. 
 
 A man who stays with the Nelson Manufacturing 
 Company to the end of his working life, taking full 
 advantage of its opportunities, is able to provide 
 fairly well for his old age. Suppose that for forty 
 consecutive years he earns an average of $600, and 
 that the average dividend on wages is 15 per cent. 
 Suppose that he keeps his stock, and as he goes along 
 buys from his wages one of the tidy Leclaire houses: 
 many men have done this already. At the end of his 
 forty years he will own stock worth $3,600. The 
 interest on this will be $216. It is a fair provision 
 for a man of sixty-five, but it means, of course, that 
 he will be obliged to cut into his capital if he lives 
 until he is eighty, particularly if he has one or two 
 persons dependent upon him. He will leave little 
 behind him, unless he is able to piece out with “ odd 
 jobs,” as a man of this type in fair health undoubt¬ 
 edly would do. 
 
 At all events, here is a plan which gives a man of 
 energy and thrift a chance of becoming and remain¬ 
 ing measurably independent to the end of his days. 
 
 Few of our recent profit sharing experiments work 
 out quite so generously. Take that most interesting 
 venture in co-operation by the Boston Consolidated 
 Gas Company — a species of partnership between 
 
2 34 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 a private concern under State regulation, the public, 
 and labour. The public gets its dividends by reduc¬ 
 tions in the price of gas. (The company claims that 
 this is a larger dividend than it receives itself.) Em¬ 
 ployes get theirs from a premium on their annual 
 wage or salary, paid in stock, as in the Nelson con¬ 
 cern. 
 
 Not everybody is admitted, however. In the ap¬ 
 portionment made in June, 1916, 698 out of 1,039 
 were on the “ Honour Roll ” as the list of profit 
 sharers is called. They hold 3,910 shares which 
 have a value at this writing of $342,530. In the ten 
 years this plan has been in operation, a man in the 
 company, receiving the average annual wage of about 
 $963, if on this honour roll, would have accumulated 
 about $759 worth of stock. If he works for the 
 company for forty years, like the supposed man at 
 Leclaire, and keeps his investment, he will have in 
 1947, at this rate, something over $3,000 worth of 
 stock. If he can get 6 per cent, interest on this he 
 will have an income of $180. 
 
 It will depend on many things whether at sixty- 
 five he can live comfortably and independently on 
 this sum. But he will have been a partner in a great 
 and promising experiment. One of his fellow work¬ 
 ingmen will have represented him on the Board of 
 Directors, and the chances are that by 1947 any fail¬ 
 ure of the present plan to fulfil the just demand, that 
 long and efficient service should mean a decent inde¬ 
 pendent support for a man by the time he is sixty- 
 five, will have been met. 
 
EXPERIMENTS IN JUSTICE 
 
 235 
 
 Since 1902 the United States Steel Corporation 
 has each year, 1915 excepted, offered a limited 
 amount of stock on special terms to officers and em¬ 
 ployes. The amount depended on the wage and 
 salary. Up to 1915 if he earned a thousand dollars 
 it was two shares of preferred or three of common. 
 If $10,000, ten of the one or eighteen of the other. 
 If $20,000, fifteen of the one and eighteen of the 
 other. The price fixed was 105 for preferred, 57 
 for common. On account of the disturbed condition 
 of the steel industry at the close of 1914 the privilege 
 of subscribing for stock was not renewed at the end 
 of the year, but by the end of 1915 things had so 
 changed that it was possible to again make the offer. 
 There was some slight changes in the plan. No 
 preferred stock was offered. The price of common 
 was raised from 57 to 85. The amount offered was 
 limited to 35,000 shares. The stock is paid for in 
 monthly installments to be deducted from salary or 
 wages of the subscriber; the minimum instalment 
 allowed was $2.50 for preferred and $1.50 for com¬ 
 mon under the former terms (it is now $2.00 for 
 common), the maximum 25 per cent, of salary or 
 wages. Three years are allowed in which to pay 
 for stock. 
 
 There are arrangements for cancellation which 
 are entirely fair, if intelligently administered. If 
 the stock is held five years it receives an annual 
 bonus, $5.00 on preferred, $3.50 on common, and 
 there is an extra bonus under certain conditions. 
 
 -At the end of 1913 there were over 35,000 em- 
 
236 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 ployes out of about 200,000 holding stock in the en¬ 
 tire Steel Corporation. The value of these holdings 
 was nearly $15,000,000. In the spring of 1914 
 something over half of the 6,000 workmen in the 
 rolling mill at Vandergrift, Pennsylvania, had been 
 subscribers in the 12 years since the plan was started. 
 At that time I talked with an employe who had been 
 buying all the stock he was allowed since 1903. He 
 gave me the exact results in his case. The first year 
 he took four shares which he still has. In 1908 
 these four shares began to draw the bonuses promised 
 if held five years. In all they have amounted ro 
 $260.16. In the years between 1902 and 1909 he 
 bought in all twenty-five shares. All of this stock 
 had earned the extra rewards for holding. What it 
 amounts to is this: The twenty-five shares cost him 
 $2,106 which was paid in monthly instalments 
 taken from his salary and from interest accrued. 
 At the end of five years he received in bonus on the 
 stock $1,315, which deducted from the amount 
 he had paid made the stock cost just $31.64 per 
 share. 
 
 That this plan is advantageous for people earn¬ 
 ing $2,000 or more is clear. It would seem to mean 
 little to the man on less; and the great bulk of the 
 Steel Company employes receive less. Nevertheless 
 in January of 1914, 15,295 men earning less than 
 $800 a year took stock. In 1916, 7,231 men re¬ 
 ceiving less than $800, 16,152 receiving from $800 
 to $2,500, and 1,556 of those receiving over $2,500 
 a year, 24,939 i n a ^> took stock to the amount of 
 
EXPERIMENTS IN JUSTICE 
 
 237 
 
 49,741 shares. The present annual cost to the cor¬ 
 poration of the plan is about $1,135,000. 
 
 There is something more than the amount in the 
 ownership. There is the sense of having a share, 
 however small, in the undertaking with which you 
 are connected, the sense of dignity that comes from 
 the consciousness that you are accumulating. They 
 see too that bulked this stock becomes a power. A 
 remarkable incident at the 1914 stockholders’ meet¬ 
 ing of the Steel Corporation shows this. There ap¬ 
 peared at that meeting employes of several of the 
 corporation’s subsidiary companies. They had been 
 elected by their fellows, and their expenses paid to 
 go to this meeting and to vote their combined stock. 
 After the regular proceedings the meeting was open 
 for discussion. Judge Gary finally called upon one 
 after another of these workingmen to speak. Their 
 remarks may have been slightly moderated by the 
 unaccustomed company in which they found them¬ 
 selves, but not sufficiently to spoil their flavour of 
 sincerity and of thoughtfulness. They talked of 
 many things. They made some suggestions which 
 the Corporation ought to consider. They all ap¬ 
 proved the stock-holding plan. 
 
 “ Show me,” said a sheet iron heater, who now 
 holds 33 shares, “ where I could have been helped 
 to an investment of say two dollars a month, where 
 could I invest that for twelve per cent. The Steel 
 Corporation did not have to give that to me, gen¬ 
 tlemen; they did not have to provide that investment 
 for me. And I contend that it is decidedly unfair 
 
238 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 for those who seem to criticise or want to criticise to 
 say to the world that we would be ungrateful and 
 that we did not appreciate the things that are being 
 done.” 
 
 Another of the representatives, a roller from 
 Wheeling, West Virginia, said in reference to criti¬ 
 cisms of the scheme: 
 
 “ I am not compelled to buy it: we take it as we 
 want it. I am still buying every year, and I have 
 every share that I have bought. I find it is a good 
 investment; in fact, you cannot get an investment 
 anywhere where you can pay two or three dollars 
 a month on a share of stock and have the interest 
 coming in to you right along from the moment you 
 start.” 
 
 No successful stock-ownership plan in the country 
 is based on a longer experience or a firmer deter¬ 
 mination to find something practical than that of 
 Procter & Gamble of Cincinnati. The scheme as 
 first worked out was put before the employes of the 
 concern — then between 450 and 500 persons, early 
 in 1887. It was presented frankly as a business 
 proposition. The firm believed it possible to in¬ 
 crease profits if they could increase the “ diligence, 
 carefulness and thoughtful co-operation ” of their 
 employes. They hoped to do this by sharing profits. 
 The share was fixed in the following way. The 
 amount of money divided bore the same relation to 
 the total profit as the amount of wages including 
 the partners’ salaries bore to the total cost of doing 
 business. That is — if the latter was $8,000 a year 
 
EXPERIMENTS IN JUSTICE 
 
 239 
 
 and the total wages $1,000 — then one-eighth of the 
 profit was considered the employes share or divi¬ 
 dend. Not everybody was to be included. Boys 
 and girls who were earning the beginner’s wage or 
 any one who had been less than three months with 
 the firm did not participate. This rule cut the num¬ 
 ber of participants down to 193 of the 450 employes. 
 
 The business was gaining steadily and the profits 
 were handsome. They were distributed semi-annu¬ 
 ally at Dividend Meetings which from that day to 
 this have been regularly observed as holidays and as 
 celebrations. Last August, 1916, the 58th of these 
 Dividend Meetings was celebrated. 
 
 At the sixth of the dividend meetings in May 3, 
 1890, it was announced that in the three years the 
 plan had been in operation $60,000 had been dis¬ 
 tributed. On this occasion it amounted to nearly 
 16 per cent, of the wages. But the firm was not sat¬ 
 isfied. Their hope of arousing all the participants 
 to “ diligence, carefulness and thoughtful co-opera¬ 
 tion ” had been disappointed. There were work¬ 
 men who did not respond — though they took the 
 profits. This the firm held was unfair, particularly 
 to those who were trying to serve the business. Ac¬ 
 cordingly a new method of distribution was an¬ 
 nounced. The employes were divided into four 
 classes and the dividends were given out according 
 to merit. 
 
 That which happened in those years in many con¬ 
 cerns where this form of profit-sharing was tried 
 happened in Procter & Gamble’s. The dividend 
 
240 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 was not a continuous spur. For a few weeks after 
 it was paid large numbers were enthusiastic and 
 faithful, then cooled off. As the dividend day ap¬ 
 proached it worked like an approaching Christmas 
 festival on a Sunday school class. There was a gen¬ 
 eral revival of effort. But it could not hold them. 
 One reason for this, no doubt, was that so large a 
 number of the workers were boys and girls with the 
 natural irresponsibility of youth towards efforts 
 which are to be rewarded in the future. 
 
 There are a number of firms in the country who 
 have made the same discovery as Procter & Gam¬ 
 ble did at the end of six years, and who have 
 shrugged their shoulders and said, “ Never mind — 
 go on — it isn’t doing much good, but it probably 
 contributes to good will ”— and they pay the divi¬ 
 dends much as they give turkeys, because it is the 
 custom; and the employes accept it — as they do the 
 turkeys — it is the custom. Procter & Gamble 
 refused to go on with a plan which they considered 
 a failure. In 1893 they cut off all from a share in 
 the profits who were earning more than $1,500 a 
 year. 
 
 But they did not drop the subject as scores of firms 
 in the country who have had a similar experience 
 have done. They had become convinced of the jus¬ 
 tice of the idea. If it was just, it was good business 
 and since this was so it was for them to find a way 
 that would work. It took ten years to do this. 
 They were ten years of extraordinary development 
 in the business. Procter & Gamble had started as 
 
EXPERIMENTS IN JUSTICE 
 
 241 
 
 a partnership in 1837 with a capital of $9,000. 
 They made candles and soap. There was no change 
 in the business organisation until 1890, when the 
 present company was incorporated. To put the 
 capital at $6,500,000 was considered conservative 
 and was, for the net earnings in that year were nearly 
 $600,000 — in the year following nearly $900,000, 
 and in 1900 $1,000,000. 
 
 This expansion had come legitimately enough 
 through the development of new products and the ap¬ 
 plication of new processes and inventions. The 
 prompt sense which had led the early firm to see that 
 candles were to fall before kerosene, and to develop 
 its soap market had never been dulled in the busi¬ 
 ness. It did not rest itself on soap alone. It had 
 added glycerine-making when the process for ex¬ 
 tracting glycerine from what had been a waste of a 
 soap factory was discovered, and now one of their 
 leading products is glycerine. When it was discov¬ 
 ered that cotton seed oil could be used for soap¬ 
 making instead of tallows and greases they began to 
 manufacture the oil from the seed itself. They 
 crush 4,000,000 pounds a day now in the season and 
 operate cotton seed oil mills at at least a dozen dif¬ 
 ferent points. It has developed an enormous busi¬ 
 ness in different lard compounds — a natural out¬ 
 growth of their other products. 
 
 It was then to a business of unusual virility and 
 promise that the new profit sharing scheme was ap¬ 
 plied in 1903. It was a scheme designed for people 
 earning under $1,500 only, and it was arranged to 
 
242 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 apply to any one and every one in the force irre¬ 
 spective of wage or time of service. That is, a boy 
 or girl on six dollars a week could become a profit 
 sharer as soon as he or she began work — if he or 
 she accepted the terms. The little booklet of some 
 3,500 words which explains the new plan shows the 
 pains that had been taken in developing it to what 
 was believed to be a workable point. The title of 
 the booklet gives a clue to the nature, “ Revised 
 Plan for Trust Receipt Dividends for Employes 
 Through Stock Ownership.” 
 
 The point for us here is how does it operate? 
 How does it operate in the case of an employe earn¬ 
 ing $600 a year? According to the contract the firm 
 offers he is entitled to subscribe at once for common 
 stock in the business to the full amount of his yearly 
 wage — in this case $600. As soon as the trustees 
 pass on his application he will be asked to make a 
 payment of $15, or 2p2 per cent, of the worth of 
 his stock. When this payment is made there is is¬ 
 sued to him by the trustees who have the business in 
 charge a little book called a Trust Receipt Pass Book 
 which is his contract with the company and in which 
 all transactions over the stock are recorded. 
 
 This contract binds him to pay each year not less 
 than 4 per cent, on the amount of the stock he has 
 taken, that is, not less than $24 until it is all paid for. 
 It binds Procter & Gamble to pay him annually a 
 dividend on his wages of 20 per cent.— in this case 
 $120. This 20 per cent, is the share of Procter & 
 
EXPERIMENTS IN JUSTICE 
 
 243 
 
 Gamble’s profits which belongs to each employe as 
 soon as he becomes a stockholder in the concern. 
 It is applied to the price of his stock, instead of being 
 paid directly in money. In addition to what he 
 pays from his wages on the stock, and to what the 
 firm applies, there is also applied the regular divi¬ 
 dend which the common stock draws. 
 
 This has varied in different years since the inau¬ 
 guration of the plan from 12 per cent, to 20 per 
 cent., with certain extra stock dividends coming at 
 various times in addition to the regular dividends. 
 
 The present rate of dividend is 20 per cent, in 
 cash, payable quarterly, and 4 per cent, payable an¬ 
 nually in common stock. This is a yearly arrange¬ 
 ment, the Company in 1913 having authorised an in¬ 
 crease in the common capital stock from $12,000,000 
 to $24,000,000, to be issued to common stockholders 
 only, in the shape of an annual 4 per cent, stock divi¬ 
 dend, until the entire amount is issued and outstand¬ 
 ing. 
 
 The employe earning $600 per year, subscribing 
 to stock under this plan, with the present market 
 value of say $800 per share, would have an interest 
 in .75 of a share of common stock, toward the pay¬ 
 ment of which would be applied his profit-sharing 
 dividend amounting to at least $120 per year, the 
 cash dividend upon his stock, which would amount 
 to $15 per year, in addition to which he would re¬ 
 ceive a credit, without cost to him, annually of the 
 4 per cent, stock dividend, compounded each year; 
 
244 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 the 3 per cent, annual interest upon the amount re¬ 
 maining unpaid at the beginning of each year would 
 be charged to his account. 
 
 “ It’s a poor fellow,” one of the workmen re¬ 
 marked to me, “ that can't work out that in four 
 years. He ain’t worthy of the chance.” Suppose 
 he does work it out in four years. When the pass¬ 
 book shows it is paid for, a paid-up trust receipt is 
 turned over to the employe. The stock is now his 
 and he will receive semi-annually on it in cash both 
 his regular stock dividends and his share of profits. 
 That is, he will receive at least $135 in cash on an 
 investment which in four years has taken out of his 
 regular earnings of $600 a year, or $2,400, just 
 $111. The interest does not come out of wages. 
 
 If he has succeeded in earning such an investment 
 in four or five years, it is probable he will be keen to 
 increase it. He will be permitted to do so at the 
 end of five years, but only by an amount equal to 25 
 per cent, of his wages, that is, in his case only $150 
 worth unless indeed, as is probable, he is by this time 
 earning more money; but now instead of getting a 
 20 per cent, dividend or share of profits, he gets one 
 of 25 per cent. At the end of ten years, he will be 
 allowed to subscribe for 150 per cent, of his wages, 
 and his profits now will be increased to 30 per cent, 
 of his wages. Suppose that in this ten years he has 
 doubled his wages, that is, is now earning $1,200. 
 He can increase his subscription to $1,800 worth of 
 stock, paying down 2*^ per cent, of the increase; and 
 in addition 4 per cent, each year until he has paid for 
 
EXPERIMENTS IN JUSTICE 
 
 245 
 
 it. To this will be applied annually .as his share of 
 profits 30 per cent, of his wages, $1,200, or $360 a 
 year, plus the 20 per cent, dividend on his stock 
 which will amount to something over $50 a year. 
 
 This is the gist of the scheme Procter & Gamble 
 put into operation twelve years ago. How has it 
 worked? In 1915 I was permitted to go over the 
 plant at Ivorydale and talk to many men and women 
 about it. At that time 735 out of 1,200 employes at 
 Ivorydale outside of the officers held stock. I failed 
 to find one who had taken advantage of the oppor¬ 
 tunity who was not impressed, some of them to the 
 point of enthusiasm, others to one of bewilderment. 
 I remember a Russian Jew who years ago was em¬ 
 ployed as a day labourer and is now earning $100 a 
 month who had taken all the stock the plan allowed. 
 He had bought a house and put four children 
 through the public schools. “ It’s the greatest thing 
 I ever heard of,” he told me, “ only I can’t get 
 enough.” He was crying for ten shares more and 
 claimed he could pay for them. 
 
 I was introduced to a machinist who had been 
 thirty years with the firm. “ Yes, mar’m, a great 
 thing. My wife will never have to take in washing. 
 I’m worth $12,000, because of that scheme; but that 
 isn’t the best thing here. The best thing is they 
 treat you white. This is the only place I ever 
 worked where they do. See that eye — gone? 
 The biggest piece of steel ever taken out of a human 
 eye came out of that.” (This with great pride.) 
 “T was four months in the hospital with that eye. 
 
246 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 Never cost me a cent, and every week my wife re¬ 
 ceived my pay envelope. This profit-sharing isn’t 
 all we have here. We’ve got an insurance and pen¬ 
 sion plan that’s the greatest thing you ever heard of. 
 Just let me tell you about that. ’ Fain’t that they 
 favour us in work. We work here, work hard; no 
 mollycoddles here, but we get treated white. 
 You’re a man here. Yes, mar’m, I could talk all 
 day about Procter & Gamble, all day.” 
 
 One of the reports which interested me most was 
 that of a prominent union workman to whom I asked 
 an introduction, because of his sturdy radicalism. 
 “ What do you think of it? ” I asked. “ Think of 
 it? It’s the greatest thing ever; you can’t believe 
 it; it’s too good to be true. Look here, let me show 
 you what I’m already getting every year.” It was 
 a nice little sum, $725 in dividends and profits, out¬ 
 side of wages. He figured it out in my note book 
 with satisfaction. It was evident that he often went 
 over the figures trying to convince himself of their 
 reality. “ You can’t believe it,” he said. “ I never 
 heard of such a thing before.” 
 
 One thing that worries the firm is that the girls 
 do not take to the profit sharing as quickly as the 
 men. There are many satisfactory cases, however. 
 One stenographer, who began in 1897 on $45 a 
 month, and who now is getting $100 a month, has 
 accumulated $25,000. 
 
 At the beginning of July, 1916, there were about 
 2,000 persons in the various plants of Procter & 
 Gamble, holding almost 3,700 shares of its common 
 
EXPERIMENTS IN JUSTICE 
 
 247 
 
 stock worth at the present market something over 
 three million dollars. 
 
 When this plan has been in operation for 50 
 years the “ wage earner ” ought to have a respecta¬ 
 ble share of the business. At every semi-annual 
 dividend meeting the number of subscribers in¬ 
 creases. The personal interest and attention that 
 the heads of the business give to these celebrations 
 always does much to hold and make subscribers. 
 Mr. Cooper Procter, the general manager, Mr. An¬ 
 derson, and other members of the firm come to Port 
 Ivory, the Staten Island plant of Procter & Gam¬ 
 ble, to help in the festivities of these occasions. 
 They go to Kansas City and other points. At 
 Ivorydale everybody from top to bottom and all 
 their relations are present. There is a dinner, an 
 entertainment and a dance for gaiety, and there is 
 the report on the scheme. Without the personal 
 attention given to it the plan would probably not 
 succeed as it does, generous as it is. 
 
 It is helped too by the traditional policy of the 
 firm to help those who show themselves willing to 
 help themselves. A young woman in the main of¬ 
 fice of the firm holding a position of trust and im¬ 
 portance told me of her own experience as an illus¬ 
 tration of why in her judgment so many “ got on ” 
 in Procter & Gamble’s. “ They’re so proud of 
 you if you are ambitious,” she said, “ and they give 
 you so much encouragement.” At seventeen this 
 girl was given a place in the factory. She had not 
 only herself to support, but others to help. “ I 
 
248 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 didn’t know much,” she said, “ but I went to night 
 school, and they were proud of me and because of 
 that they did everything they could to encourage me. 
 They pushed me on from position to position, until 
 finally here I am. Everybody is proud of me be¬ 
 cause they say I did it, but, of course, it was they 
 who did it.” 
 
 I doubt very much if their profit sharing could 
 succeed as it is doing if employes did not realise not 
 only that they were being given a chance to acquire 
 an interest in the business, but that the door is al¬ 
 ways open to higher positions. They see this all 
 around them. Everybody has come up from the 
 bottom; even the Procters and Gambles must learn 
 to make soap if they are to stay in the business. 
 I'he present general superintendent of the manufac¬ 
 turing plants began as an office boy. The vice-presi¬ 
 dent will tell you that he once handled a shovel. 
 They all have been through it. They’ve risen as 
 they proved themselves. “ It makes you feel like a 
 man,” a superintendent told me. All of the men 
 who have risen and all who are acquiring stock are 
 emphatic in their conviction that the policy makes 
 for efficiency. “ Do you suppose Em going to let a 
 new man come in and loaf on his job or that I don’t 
 watch the leaks? It’s my profits that I’m looking 
 out for now,” a man told me. 
 
 I would not give the impression that it is a simple 
 matter to acquire stock or reach the top in this busi¬ 
 ness. It is no automatic machine by which men and 
 women are pushed ahead by virtue of so many years 
 
EXPERIMENTS IN JUSTICE 
 
 249 
 
 of service regardless of quality and of special efforts. 
 You earn all you get at Procter & Gamble’s. You 
 earn it by energy, and ability, and in no other way. 
 The aim is development of individuals, not the cre¬ 
 ating of an industrial bureaucracy. What you get 
 is your chance and a persistent urging and encour¬ 
 agement to take it, with advice as how to take it. It 
 is the old and tried American scheme for making a 
 man brought up to date. It is doubtful if on the 
 whole the world has yet developed anything better. 
 There seems to be no reason why any healthy busi¬ 
 ness firm with sufficient brains and understanding of 
 and sympathy for men and women should not do 
 what this firm does. But it does take brains, free¬ 
 dom from isms, humanity and a large firm sense of 
 responsibility. It also requires that a firm find 
 more satisfaction in seeing a large number of wage- 
 earners laying away comfortable little fortunes than 
 a few stockholders, themselves included, becoming 
 millionaires. 
 
 So far as I know, there is no attempt to meet this 
 obligation of a business through stock ownership, 
 that is, partnerships, which is quite as revolutionary 
 — and adequate — as that which has been in prac¬ 
 tice for fifteen years in a plant of about one hundred 
 and fifty men at Evansville, Wisconsin, the Baker 
 Manufacturing Company, turning out windmills and 
 gasoline engines. 
 
 It is an old plant as things go in Wisconsin, 
 started over forty years ago by five men, each of 
 whom put in $1,000. The ups and owns of it can- 
 
250 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 not be followed here. They were considerable; but 
 by the time the business was twenty-six years old 
 (1899) it had paid-up capital of $100,000, and a 
 surplus of over $100,000, and that year paid a spe¬ 
 cial dividend of 10 per cent, in addition to a 6 per 
 cent, dividend which had been paid regularly for six 
 years. 
 
 But the mind and the conscience of the company 
 had been at work a long time on other matters than 
 manufacturing. What about the men who made 
 the things from which they received the profits? 
 Were they getting the square deal? 
 
 All of the vague questioning and the half think¬ 
 ing on the matter by the builders of the business was 
 stirred and focused in the late nineties by the son of 
 one of the founders. This young man was J. S. 
 Baker. He had had two experiences to make him 
 think: one was a period at the University of Wis¬ 
 consin, then, as now, fermenting with social discus¬ 
 sion; another, a year of sitting in the dark, his only 
 hope of saving his eyes. 
 
 “ A man thinks when he faces blindness,” he says 
 quite simply, and he thought of the whole scheme of 
 things as w T e have them in industry to-day — and he 
 did not like it. 
 
 When his eyes permitted him to return to the busi¬ 
 ness, young Mr. Baker had some ideas on co-opera¬ 
 tion. He turned them over to the firm, as he turned 
 in the patent of a windmill, and possibly received 
 more consideration for his social ideas because of 
 
EXPERIMENTS IN JUSTICE 
 
 251 
 
 the success of his mechanical ones! .The result was 
 a committee for a serious study of profit sharing. 
 
 The plan, finally adopted in February, 1899, was 
 radically different from any other, of which I know 
 in this country, in the estimate it puts on the value of 
 a man’s services. In the Nelson concern the profit 
 comes as a dividend on the wages, after the regular 
 dividend on the capital, the sinking fund, and other 
 obligations have been paid. 
 
 But the Baker Company laid down at the start 
 that profits should be divided between labour and 
 capital in proportion to the earnings of each. If a 
 man has $10,000 in preferred stock of the Baker 
 Manufacturing Company its regular earnings are 
 $500 a year — dividends on stock are limited to 5 
 per cent. It is that $500, not the $10,000, which 
 decides his proportion of the profits! I, who work 
 at the bench earning on an average $500 a year, am 
 on a par with the stockholder when it comes to prof¬ 
 its, for my $500, like his, is simply counted as in¬ 
 terest on my value. It shows me to be worth $10,- 
 000, since I earn the same amount as his $10,000! 
 
 I would not be considered as worth this, however, 
 until I had been two years in the company; then I 
 would begin to draw my profit, 15 per cent, of which 
 would be paid in cash and 85 per cent, in common 
 stock. 
 
 Here is what happened in January, 1900, after 
 the plan had been in operation one year: There 
 was paid on the $200,000 preferred capital as an 
 
252 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 extra dividend $904.75 in cash and $5,126.94 in 
 common stock. There were 45 employes qualified 
 to receive the extra wage that year. They drew 
 $2,129.66 in cash and $12,068.12 in stock, or about 
 $47 apiece in money, and $268.18 in a 5 per cent 
 stock. Ten years later, 1910, there were 106 em¬ 
 ployes receiving extra wages. They amounted to 
 nearly $9,150 in cash, and about $51,840 in stock. 
 By this time, 1910, 3,579 shares of the common 
 stock had been issued, which drew a 5 per cent, cash 
 dividend and did not participate further in the bene¬ 
 fits. 
 
 From the start it had been realised that if the 
 scheme was to be permanent there must be some 
 means of preventing the stock scattering, some way 
 of drawing back into the treasury what was sold. 
 In 19 10 an amendment looking to this was an¬ 
 nounced. It is as ingenious as the original plan. 
 
 Suppose that you had worked with the Baker 
 Manufacturing Company for five years, from 1905 
 to 1909, and you had averaged $500 a year. In 
 1907 you would have begun to share extra wages. 
 These would have amounted to 100 per cent, of your 
 wages in 1907, to 78 per cent, in 1908, to 100 per 
 cent, in 1909. In money you would have been paid 
 in these three years $208.50 and in stock $1,181.50. 
 
 The company now comes to you with a “ purchase 
 contract.” Under this you deposit your stock with 
 it, agreeing that if you sell, you sell to the company 
 at the market price. If you leave and go to a com¬ 
 petitor, or work independently, you must sell your 
 
EXPERIMENTS IN JUSTICE 
 
 253 
 
 stock to the company if it wishes to purchase it. 
 But the company has no power to force you to sell 
 if you are put on their retired list. What it does 
 if you retire and wish to sell is gradually to buy back 
 your stock, paying you $5 on each share for 15 years, 
 when it becomes theirs. The aim of this arrange¬ 
 ment is clear. The stock is meant.for those who 
 are active in the company, and for them alone. 
 
 When the purchase contract was announced an ex¬ 
 planation went with it: 
 
 Suppose a man begins to work when he is twenty-eight 
 and gets his first stock when he is thirty years old; if for 
 twenty-five years he receives an average of three shares of 
 stock a year he will when he is fifty-five have $7,500 of stock. 
 If he then retires, his income from the dividends on the 
 stock will be $375 a year, and from the $5 a share endorse¬ 
 ments it will also be $375, or a total of $750 a year. This 
 will continue for fifteen years, or until he is seventy years 
 old, when the endorsements will cease, but the $375 divi¬ 
 dends will continue as long as he lives. 
 
 So far the purchase contract has served to meet 
 the end for Which it was devised: to keep the stock 
 from scattering; to make the business the property 
 of those who are responsible for its product. The 
 Baker Manufacturing Company is not for the idle, 
 not for the dead, not for the rich. It is for the 
 workers who manage and who man it. 
 
 Everybody concerned has not been satisfied with 
 this undertaking. A few years ago an attempt to 
 upset it was made and, as was to be expected, it 
 started from the outside capital. “ Certain stock- 
 
2 54 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 holders ”— so runs the spirited “ official ” account 
 of the affair which was printed in one of the local 
 newspapers,—“ Certain stockholders in our city 
 went to our men asking their proxies, promising them 
 a 20 per cent, increase in wages and salaries and a 
 sufficient increase in common stock dividend to bring 
 common stock to par, their intention being to knock 
 out profit sharing and the present management.” 
 
 The charges w T hich the outside capital brought 
 against the Baker plan were serious. The company, 
 they claimed, paid less wages and earned less on pre¬ 
 ferred stock than other companies in similar busi¬ 
 ness. 
 
 Mr. Baker’s analysis of the charge was thorough 
 and convincing. Taking the latest official figures on 
 the windmill and agricultural implement business, 
 those for 1905, he showed that the average wage in 
 the windmill factories was $503.81. The Baker 
 wage, without profits, was $561.68. The average 
 salaries in other concerns was $1,013.53, in theirs, 
 $970.18. The average product per man in the com¬ 
 pany was $2,485.77; in the Baker Company nearly 
 one thousand more, or $3,400. 
 
 In 1905 the agricultural implement manufacturers 
 of the company earned about 8 per cent. The 
 Baker Company paid preferred stock (extra divi¬ 
 dends included) 9 per cent., and it paid labor 81 
 per cent. “Why is this? ” he asked. “ Is it be¬ 
 cause we are better located? We are not so well 
 located for some trade; we have to pay incoming 
 freight to such an extent that we cannot sell East, 
 
EXPERIMENTS IN JUSTICE 
 
 255 
 
 and are handicapped in shipping out by having only 
 one line of railroad. 
 
 “ Was it because of low taxes? We are assessed 
 in round numbers 70 per cent, of our assessable prop¬ 
 erty; competing manufacturers in this same country 
 are assessed as low as 25 per cent, of their assessable 
 property, and 25 per cent, is more nearly the rule 
 for assessing manufacturers everywhere. The large 
 dividend was possible principally because our output 
 per man was in the neighbourhood of $5,goo, instead 
 of $2,500. 
 
 “ Many will say they would not suppose there 
 would be such a difference in the output per man in 
 different factories. It is a fact that running most 
 any of our machines one speed and one feed slower 
 than they should be run will nearly cut their output 
 in two, and there are great opportunities for our men 
 to invent ways to save time. They run from one to 
 six machines each, while union men refuse to run 
 more than one. 
 
 “ The amounts given through profit sharing are, 
 therefore, not due to lower wages or to small earn¬ 
 ings for the preferred stock, but to the increased 
 earnings of the men, due to the incentive of profit 
 sharing. Destroy profit sharing and you destroy 
 what is given in profit sharing. 
 
 “ It is my opinion that factories are like stores and 
 farms: if you want profits you must run them your¬ 
 selves, and know how to run them. If you lean al¬ 
 together on hired help you will in most cases lose 
 money.” 
 
256 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 The opposition seems to have had no adequate 
 reply to the showing Mr. Baker made, for things 
 still go on as they were. Apparently the factory 
 force believe in the undertaking. In 19°°, 45 
 shared in the profits, 20 of whom are still with the 
 concern. In 1905, 63 shared; 32 are still there. 
 In 1910, 106 shared, and 72 are there. 
 
 What the Baker plan does is to make partners 
 of all those active in the business. It keeps a busi¬ 
 ness permanently in the hands of those who are 
 actively interested in its stability and its develop¬ 
 ment. It prevents its falling into the hands of dead 
 men or of capitalists. It more nearly approaches 
 the dreams of the syndicalists than any other enter¬ 
 prise of which I know. 
 
 There are few businesses which are as yet willing 
 to consider even partial ownership or partnership 
 as a solution of the problem of long service. Those 
 who admit there is a right involved, as a rule fall 
 back upon the easier solution of the pension. Our 
 great corporations are rapidly providing funds for 
 the purpose. The Harvester Company is building 
 up its pension fund by appropriating annually some¬ 
 thing from its earnings. The Bell Telephone Com¬ 
 pany in 1913 set aside about $9,000,000 for pensions 
 and what it calls “ disability and death funds.” Since 
 1910 the U. S. Steel Corporation has administered a 
 fun of $ 12,000,000, of which Mr. Carnegie gave $4,- 
 000,000. At the end of 1915 it had over three thou¬ 
 sand names on the roll. The average amount each 
 received was a little over $219 a year. Scores of 
 
EXPERIMENTS IN JUSTICE 
 
 257 
 
 smaller concerns have provided some form of pension. 
 
 But there is an objection to the word. To many 
 minds it conveys the idea of something given, not 
 earned. No permanent good can come in industry 
 from anything which is actuated by charity or pat¬ 
 ronage. The pension is not a gratuity; it is an obli¬ 
 gation. The public policy committee of the Na¬ 
 tional Electric Light Association in a remarkable re¬ 
 port made in 1911 has a wise and significant word to 
 say on the subject. 
 
 By unanimous vote, the term Pension, as being inade¬ 
 quate or subject to wrong interpretation, has been elim¬ 
 inated. We recommend as a substitute Service Annuity. 
 Our opinion is that the latter is to be paid as a form of 
 compensation for a definite service that cannot be rightly in¬ 
 cluded within ordinary wages. It is compensation for con¬ 
 tinuous service over a period of several years, and is to be 
 paid on carefully prearranged and understood conditions. 
 
 This is a great admission. At present the impor¬ 
 tant matter is not the machinery, it is not the amount 
 received, it is the recognition of the justice of the 
 principle of giving all who are necessary to an enter¬ 
 prise a share of the returns of that enterprise, in 
 proportion not only to daily but to continued service. 
 
 Perhaps, after all, the most important thing about 
 these various undertakings is the proof they give to 
 a cynical world that business is willing to experiment 
 in justice f that it is not all “ stand pat ” in theory 
 and practice; that daily more and more men are say¬ 
 ing: Let us bring in everybody. That way lie hap¬ 
 piness, stability, and fair play. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 STEADYING THE JOB 
 
 It is stimulating and heartening to watch the effect 
 these efforts I have been describing have on various 
 labour problems. They simplify the stiffest of them. 
 They have already brought out at least two causes 
 of unemployment and shown how they may be weak¬ 
 ened if not removed. 
 
 The coming of the Great War in 1914 demon¬ 
 strated tragically how illy we are prepared to cope 
 with disturbances of the labour market. War 
 thrusts a sure lance into a nation’s weak spots, be 
 that nation neutral or combatant. Almost as soon 
 as the present war was declared we were face to face 
 with a vast out-of-work throng — true it might be 
 short-lived, but again it might not. The worst of 
 it was we had no plan for handling the situation. 
 If it had been necessary we could have promptly 
 raised an army of a sort in an orderly, well-thought- 
 out fashion. Individuals, States, the Federal Gov¬ 
 ernment would have known the immediate and log¬ 
 ical steps to take. But when it came to the greatest 
 business of Peace in the time of calamity — keeping 
 men and women at work — nobody knew what to 
 do, unless to contribute to a soup kitchen. 
 
 There were employers without a sense that patri- 
 
 258 
 
STEADYING THE JOB 
 
 259 
 
 otism as well as policy demanded that their wheels 
 should run; there were communities that looked apa¬ 
 thetically on the closing of factories, as if they had 
 no urgent duty in the matter. States, for the most 
 part, were helpless; so was the Federal Government. 
 It was revealed on the instant that there was in this 
 country no organisation for handling labour. It 
 takes care of itself, groping hither and thither as in¬ 
 stinct, rumour, hope, greed may call. 
 
 Many men ridicule the idea that it can be scien¬ 
 tifically handled. They tell us the unemployed have 
 always been with us, and always must be. It is the 
 oldest reason in the world for tolerating injustice and 
 misery. Unemployment is no more necessary than 
 war. It may be as difficult to overcome, but that is 
 another question. It is no more an untouched prob¬ 
 lem than is putting an end to war. Nor is it a prob¬ 
 lem which it takes a war to thrust in our faces. We 
 have it with us more or less all the time, though its 
 exact extent no man can tell. Like many things 
 which the world has agreed must always be with us, 
 it has been thought best to know as little as possible 
 of the unpleasant truths of the unemployed. Fig¬ 
 ures are loose and disputed. During the painful 
 agitation in New York City in the winter 1914-15 
 it was claimed that there were 300,000 men and 
 women walking the streets vainly seeking work — 
 but the New York commissioner of labour declared 
 he did not believe there were that many unemployed 
 in the State. In Massachusetts the labour organisa¬ 
 tions keep the state labour bureau informed of the 
 
26 o 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 percentage of unemployment among their members. 
 At the end of March, 1915, twelve per cent, of the 
 173,000 members reporting were idle. William 
 Leiserson, the secretary of the Wisconsin free em¬ 
 ployment offices, said that in the fall of 1914 in that 
 State there were 250 applicants or every 100 jobs. 
 The Charity Organisation Society of Buffalo, New 
 York, declared that there were 10,000 men idle in 
 that town in the spring of 1915; another agency in 
 touch with the situation doubled the number. In 
 Kansas City at the same time twenty-five per cent, of 
 the union men were reported idle. 
 
 One of the most careful investigations of the num¬ 
 bers out of work was made in Philadelphia by the 
 Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. The con¬ 
 clusion from their findings was that something over 
 10 per cent, of labour was idle and about 20 per 
 cent, on part time. This meant about 79,000 in the 
 first class and about 150,000 in the second. These 
 percentages probably held good in all our large 
 cities. 
 
 But if we use these figures let it be with discrimina¬ 
 tion. If there really were 300,000 idle in New 
 York City in that disastrous winter it does not follow 
 that there were 300,000 fit and willing to work who 
 could not find work. A large percentage always of 
 those who are numbered with the unemployed do not 
 belong, strictly speaking, in the problem. There 
 are always a considerable number who detest work 
 and who will not stick to it for longer than a few 
 days at a time. There are the old, the unfit, the un- 
 
STEADYING THE JOB 
 
 261 
 
 trained. These are serious special.problems not to 
 be considered here. In New York in the winter of 
 1914—15 there was a conspicuous group known popu¬ 
 larly as the “ I Won’t Works.” They were there 
 to advertise, at the top of their lungs and by all the 
 ingenious tricks they could devise, what a poor stick 
 industry as we know it now is, and to offer a substi¬ 
 tute. It was propaganda, and very effective propa¬ 
 ganda, the I. W. W. did for their particular pana¬ 
 cea ; but they could hardly be numbered among the 
 legitimate unemployed. 
 
 Another class of unemployed which should be 
 dropped out of the problem — at least as we are 
 considering it here — are those who have pulled up 
 stakes and are seeking to better themselves. New 
 York always has a large contingent of this kind; the 
 new-come immigrant swells it sometimes to huge 
 proportions. In the year ending June, 1914, over 
 1,218,000 men, women and children migrated to 
 this country. That immigrants to the United States 
 have almost sure chances, history has shown. Our 
 absorption of them is the most amazing phenomenon 
 in the transmigration of peoples. Nevertheless, it 
 invariably requires months, if not years, for each 
 one of these newcomers to find the thing that he best 
 can do. The undigested mass — those who have 
 made their plunge and are still struggling and splut¬ 
 tering on the surface without any idea which way to 
 swim — are not included here in the problem. 
 
 Those who really do come under the head are 
 those who having once had a foothold on the labour 
 
262 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 ladder, find themselves pushed or forced to jump 
 off. When men and women have once been ac¬ 
 cepted as useful in the labour market, why are they 
 not kept busy? This is a question that scores of 
 employers as well as public men and students of so¬ 
 cial conditions have been asking themselves for a 
 long time. Their attempts to answer the question 
 have come to a point where if they do not form a 
 programme at least they form the planks of one. 
 It is the employer who has touched the bottom of 
 this problem. He has discovered two prime causes 
 of unemployment, both of which lie reasonably 
 within his control. The first of these is the floater. 
 It has only been in recent years with the awakening 
 that has come to industrial management that the ex¬ 
 tent of the floater in industry has been realised. 
 Ten years ago even if you asked the average intelli¬ 
 gent employer if he was able to “ hold labour,” he 
 would tell you, “ Why, certainly we hold our people. 
 There’s Billy Jones; he was an errand boy for my 
 father fifty years ago, and he’s never worked any¬ 
 where else. There’s Mary — she came in here 
 thirty years ago when she was ten, and she’s worked 
 every year since. We wouldn’t feel the factory was 
 going if Mary wasn’t here.” 
 
 Tell him you are willing to wager from what you 
 have observed that he hires at least eight hundred a 
 year to keep up his force of one thousand people, 
 and he will call you an uninformed mischief-maker. 
 Challenge him to examine his own employment rec¬ 
 ords, and he will come back crest-fallen and tell you 
 
STEADYING THE JOB 
 
 263 
 
 he wouldn’t have believed it. Persuade him to put 
 an expert investigator on his own problem he will be 
 confronted with a state of affairs which will make 
 him, if he is really intelligent, see ruin and disaster 
 dancing like stars before his eyes. 
 
 A few years ago the Jeffrey Manufacturing Com¬ 
 pany of Columbus, Ohio, discovering that it was an¬ 
 nually hiring more men than its average force num¬ 
 bered, set out to find if there were others in similar 
 businesses having their experience. Forty letters 
 were sent out. Twenty received answers; and these 
 answers showed that these twenty firms to keep up a 
 force of 44,000 men were actually hiring 69,000 a 
 year. 
 
 Four years ago Henry Ford, then employing some 
 12,000 men, was told by an investigator that he had 
 set loose in his plant to find out what, if anything, was 
 wrong, that he was hiring 60,000 a year. He did 
 not believe it. His partners did not believe it. The 
 general superintendent hotly denied it; but their own 
 figures proved it beyond dispute. 
 
 Only a few months ago that conservative body, 
 the National Association of Manufacturers, listened 
 to a paper on floating labour, the result of unusually 
 careful investigation. It showed that in a group of 
 twelve factories perhaps slightly above the average 
 in conditions, it had been necessary to hire 42,571 
 men to keep up a force which at the beginning of the 
 period considered was 37,274 and which had in¬ 
 creased by but 6,697. That is 6 j 4 times as many 
 men were hired as the increase demanded. 
 
264 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 Of course a need of more men is not the only le¬ 
 gitimate reason for hiring. Groups of human be¬ 
 ings are steadily worn down by natural causes as 
 rocks are worn away by wind and weather. Death, 
 long continued illness, temperament, the ups and 
 downs of business cut into them. A constant repair¬ 
 ing must go on. Twenty per cent, is the degree of 
 disintegration which experts estimate to be unavoid¬ 
 able under the best possible labour conditions. Yet 
 in the cases above the losses were nearer 80 per cent. 
 
 It has not needed argument to convince intelli¬ 
 gent employers of the waste in such labour turn¬ 
 overs as these. The money loss that is easily cal¬ 
 culable is itself serious. Hiring a man and fitting 
 him into a labour force is an expensive operation. 
 It is not merely the money that the operation of hir¬ 
 ing and instructing costs. There is an increased 
 wear and tear of tools and machines. There is a 
 reduced output and there is spoiled work and materi¬ 
 als. Those things vary, no doubt, in every trade 
 and every factory. From thirty dollars to two hun¬ 
 dred dollars is given by those w T ho have tried to esti¬ 
 mate the cost in their particular businesses. 
 
 But who shall say what the employer of shifting 
 labour loses through lack of co-operation and that 
 spirit which makes a factory a joy and a pride? 
 
 The employer loses, but the man loses more. 
 Constant change makes “ getting ahead ” impossi¬ 
 ble. It cuts his yearly earnings so that he cannot 
 keep his family. More families are broken up in 
 our industrial centres through irregular work than 
 
STEADYING THE JOB 
 
 265 
 
 from any other cause. Under the continual influ¬ 
 ence of change he loses his desire for a settled place, 
 and he has less and less chance of keeping one be¬ 
 cause whatever skill he possesses at the start rapidly 
 deteriorates. He loses and his trade loses. More¬ 
 over the industrial world as a whole suffers, for this 
 shifting of labour is a serious contributing cause to 
 our chronic unemployed problem. 
 
 What is behind these shifting wandering labour 
 forces? Can they be stabilised? 
 
 In the admirable bulletin on unemployment re¬ 
 cently put out by the city of Philadelphia there is a 
 letter published from a textile worker who says that 
 in his time (about twenty-five years, I judge) he has 
 worked in forty different places. “ I have never 
 been discharged, always changing with a view to bet¬ 
 ter conditions or because of slack business.” 
 
 Here you have the essence of the problem ex¬ 
 tracted from the experience of a man who knew his 
 trade and wanted work, but who had floating labour 
 practically forced upon him. It is “ conditions ” and 
 slack time which breed floaters. Open-minded for¬ 
 ward-looking employers who have tried seriously to 
 build up stable labour have had amazing results by 
 reforming their methods of hiring and handling men. 
 For instance, W. A. Grieves of the Jeffrey Manu¬ 
 facturing Company, who conducted the investigation 
 of floaters referred to above, has with his colleagues 
 worked out a system of handling men which has re¬ 
 duced their labour turn-over by about 60 per cent., 
 'an annual saving in the case of this particular shop 
 
266 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 of probably $50,000. If the twenty firms which 
 Mr. Grieves found hiring 69,000 men to keep an 
 average of 44,000 had applied his methods they 
 would have hired only 27,600 and would have 
 saved $1,760,000. What the 41,400 hired and 
 fired would have been saved no man can compute. 
 
 The German-American Button Company of Roch¬ 
 ester, New York, claims that in the last few years 
 new methods of handling their force, methods care¬ 
 fully planned and thoroughly and cautiously applied, 
 have reduced what they call the “ exchange of em¬ 
 ployes ” 40 per cent, and they expect to reduce it 
 still further. In four years the Joseph Feiss Com¬ 
 pany of Cleveland reduced its labour turn-over by 
 80 per cent. These examples might be multiplied 
 many times. Make your conditions right, establish 
 natural human relations, seek for a fair day and a 
 just wage, cultivate co-operation in profits and in 
 management, and your floater settles down. He is 
 getting his chance. 
 
 The Philadelphia worker quoted above changed 
 to improve his condition, but he changed probably 
 quite as often because the factory closed down. 
 
 There is a general ignorance of the amount of un¬ 
 employment in the country resulting from short time 
 in mills and factories. In investigating its unem¬ 
 ployed in 1915 the city of Philadelphia found that, 
 particularly in the textile and clothing industries of 
 the city, there was an appalling irregularity of work. 
 For instance, the lace weavers have not averaged 
 more than 60 per cent, of time in the last five years. 
 
STEADYING THE JOB 
 
 267 
 
 The carpet mills have lost annually in the last four 
 years something like 20 per cent, of time. The 
 dress goods manufacturers consider 75 per cent, of 
 the year normal. When it came to other industries, 
 the report mentions a large railroad equipment plant 
 that has not averaged more than 50 per cent, of its 
 capacity in the last five years; the dock hands of the 
 city work only about two days a week; and every 
 winter thousands of Italians come back to town from 
 the truck farms in South Jersey. What is true of 
 Philadelphia is true of the country. American tex¬ 
 tile mills are closed on an average 25 per cent, of the 
 year, book, printing and binding plants 20 to 30 per 
 cent., boot and shoe factories from six to twelve 
 weeks. 
 
 The first operation of the old-fashioned employer, 
 face to face with business disturbances and disaster, 
 is to take to cover by shutting down. Just as low 
 wages and long hours have been accepted as the 
 surest way of producing at a low cost, so stopping 
 business entirely in dull or disastrous times has been 
 considered the best economy. The old-fashioned em¬ 
 ployer not only stopped, but he stopped practically 
 without a warning. All over this country in the fall 
 of 1914 thousands of men and women, living on a 
 moderate weekly wage, learned on Saturday night 
 that they would not be needed for work on Monday 
 morning. 
 
 To a modern scientific manager this closing down 
 of a plant is not only brutal from a human stand¬ 
 point: it is wasteful and disorganising from the eco- 
 
268 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 nomic standpoint — the poorest sort of business. 
 A stirring and just arraignment of the policy ad¬ 
 dressed in 1915 to the receiver of the Wheeling and 
 Lake Erie Railroad Company by Judge John H. 
 Clarke, now of the Supreme Bench, deserves the 
 attention of all employers who think that they can 
 gain by stopping work. This receiver, following 
 the customary policy, had practically closed down 
 nearly all the repair and equipment shops of the 
 company, throwing hundreds of men out of work 
 and practically putting an end to the business activi¬ 
 ties of two towns. Judge Clarke who had appointed 
 the receiver, in making an inspection of the line, dis¬ 
 covered the closed shops. To him this condition 
 was not only bad for the men and the town; it was 
 bad economy for the road. 
 
 The result of this policy [he wrote the receiver] 
 is that you have now between 18 per cent, and 20 
 per cent, of the freight cars of the company so out 
 of repair that they cannot be used, as against a 
 normal percentage in that condition of 2 per cent, 
 to 4 per cent., and about 30 per cent, of the engines 
 are not in condition for use. 
 
 You advise me that this policy is adopted to the 
 end that by this rigid economy you may be able to 
 make from the earnings of the lines certain interest 
 payments which fall due in February and March 
 next. 
 
 Of course, such practice serves only to postpone 
 the expenditures of money for repairs of cars and 
 engines. It will be necessary to make these repairs 
 
STEADYING THE JOB 
 
 269 
 
 at latest next spring, even if business continues as 
 it now is, and if business should revive to any con¬ 
 siderable extent with the cars and engines in the 
 condition which will result, you will not be able to 
 perform the public function which it is the duty of 
 the lines to serve. 
 
 In addition to this, such policy must result not 
 only in inconvenience and perhaps suffering to many 
 employes, but it will result also in a disorganisation 
 of your force of machinists, which might prove very 
 serious when business revival comes. The best 
 workmen are most likely to get other employment. 
 
 Upon full consideration I have arrived at the con¬ 
 clusion that this policy of extreme economy is neither 
 a wise one economically considered, nor a just one 
 from a social point of view, having regard to the 
 welfare of the men employed, and I therefore write 
 to advise you that you are authorised and directed 
 by this court to employ such repair forces as may 
 be necessary to prevent further accumulation of cars 
 not in condition fit for use, and to reduce the number 
 now out of repair as rapidly as the expense of doing 
 so can be paid from the earnings of the lines. 
 
 If business revives at an early date, there will be 
 no difficulty in meeting the fixed charges due in Feb¬ 
 ruary and March, and if it does not revive, other 
 provisions will have to be made for the making of 
 these payments. 
 
 This is a fair statement of the point of view of all 
 scientific managers. A way must be found to keep 
 open. This is of course very difficult in the large 
 
270 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 group of industries known as seasonal, but it is in 
 these industries that scientific managers are doing 
 some of their finest and most revolutionary work. 
 Take for instance the problem and the attempts to 
 meet it that are making by the manager of the Plimp¬ 
 ton Press at Norwood, Massachusetts, Mr. Henry 
 P. Kendall. 
 
 The Plimpton Press publishes school books 
 chiefly. “ School book publishers,” says Mr. Ken¬ 
 dall, “ place the bulk of their orders in June, July, 
 and August, with more or less rush work in Septem¬ 
 ber. This is due very largely to the fact that school 
 boards make their adoptions for both state, county, 
 and town, in June, for the succeeding school year. 
 The publishers for this reason are unable to antici¬ 
 pate with much accuracy what their requirements will 
 be until they have received word of the adoptions. 
 Furthermore, there is so much red tape connected 
 with state, county, city, and town accounting that the 
 publishers do not receive their money very promptly: 
 and it ties up a very considerable amount of capital 
 to manufacture books and carry them in stock during 
 the dull period, which is December, January, and 
 February, and hold these books for delivery in the 
 summer, to be sold and paid for very late in the fol¬ 
 lowing fall.” 
 
 Here, then, is a condition quite outside of the in¬ 
 dustry itself making mischief for hundreds of men 
 and women. The Plimpton Press believes this can 
 and should be corrected by those responsible, and is 
 using every effort, financial and otherwise, to get the 
 
STEADYING THE JOB 
 
 271 
 
 publishers dealing with them to anticipate their or¬ 
 ders and to make it of financial advantage to them to 
 manufacture as much as possible during the winter 
 or dull months. 
 
 Almost every industry has some similar outside 
 condition holding it up in one season, driving it in an¬ 
 other to the consequent demoralisation of its force. 
 The Clothcraft Shop of Cleveland, Ohio, for in¬ 
 stance, finds that an outside condition which hampers 
 it in its efforts to give regular employment is the 
 practice of many mills of holding up the delivery of 
 orders for cloth for two and three months. This 
 works two evils to the maker of clothes: it prevents 
 proper inspection of the cloth, the manufacturer be¬ 
 ing forced, if he is to catch the market, to make up 
 what he would otherwise reject, and it forces him 
 to close or work on half time in one month, on 
 overtime others. Mr. Richard Feiss, the manager 
 of the Clothcraft Shop, believes that such a situation 
 could be corrected by the clothiers’ trade associa¬ 
 tions. Their great business, he contends, is to stand¬ 
 ardise trade conditions. To enable enterprising 
 manufacturers to anticipate a season’s demand he 
 would have them establish a standard scale of sizes. 
 Mr. Feiss himself has overcome largely the fluctua¬ 
 tion in the trade by pushing a line of staple goods. 
 The factory is kept busy on these many days between 
 seasons, when otherwise it would be idle. This, of 
 course, requires close and intelligent study of the 
 market and complete co-operation between the pur¬ 
 chasing, the sales, and the manufacturing depart- 
 
272 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 ments, but this is exactly what one gets in a thorough 
 application of the principle of scientific management 
 such as has been made in the Clothcraft Shop. 
 
 At the Plimpton Press Mr. Kendall has proved 
 that regular work is much more possibe if the worker 
 can do more than one thing: which stands to reason. 
 In the dull months he trains every employe, as far as 
 possible, to do at least one, and, if practical, two 
 other kinds of work of equal grade and in depart¬ 
 ments which are least likely to be congested at the 
 same time. “ This will mean,” he says, “ if there 
 is a congestion of pasting, we can muster girls from 
 gold-laying, sewing or other kinds of work to the 
 pasting department, so that in this department those 
 w r ho might be short of work at that time will get 
 more steady employment and will have a greater 
 variety to their work.” 
 
 There are two by-products of this effort which are 
 most valuable: one is showing how the monotony of 
 labour can be broken, and how good and inspiriting 
 it is to break it — something the average labourer 
 must learn by experience; the other is the demo- 
 cratisation of labour in the shop. There is no place 
 in the world — outside of diplomatic circles and pro¬ 
 vincial towns — where caste lines are more severely 
 drawn than among the girls in factories and shops. 
 Treat each task as a skilled operation, train the girl 
 to different tasks and the common contempt for cer¬ 
 tain forms of work will largely disappear. Mr. 
 Kendall tells me there are girls in the clerical de¬ 
 partment of the Plimpton Press that gladly take a 
 
STEADYING THE JOB 
 
 273 
 
 machine in dull times. Sometimes-he has girls give 
 up their tasks to take machines. Nobody despises 
 any task there for the reason that scientific manage¬ 
 ment has made each respectable. 
 
 This variety in labour for which Mr. Kendall 
 strives is a variation of what Henry Ford in¬ 
 cluded in his exciting schemes for improving and 
 regulating the conditions of workingmen in his auto¬ 
 mobile shop. It will be remembered that Mr. Ford 
 proposed, in case of dull times, to find places o.n 
 farms for the men laid off. Organised co-operation 
 between manufacturers, farmers, and gardeners is a 
 practical measure capable of absorbing an enormous 
 mass of unemployed. I have seen it practised by 
 individual workers with success. I have in mind a 
 skilled fur worker who for four to five months of 
 the year earns from four to six dollars a day and 
 nothing the rest of the year. He has a large fam¬ 
 ily. Eight years ago he bought an abandoned farm 
 in Connecticut. All year round that farm gives a 
 comfortable, roomy house to his family, fuel, fresh 
 eggs, milk, vegetables, a horse. The children are 
 growing up strong and decent. In dull seasons the 
 fur worker himself is slowly restoring his land and 
 always keeping himself fit. 
 
 Manufacturers are usually sceptical about the pos¬ 
 sibility of distributing through the year the produc¬ 
 tion of an article for which the demand is seasonal 
 and of which competition and fashion force an in¬ 
 cessant change of models. This is the production 
 problem of the automobile makers. It has been per- 
 
274 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 fectly solved in at least one factory by a thorough 
 application of the principles of scientific manage¬ 
 ment. This factory is that of the Franklin Manu¬ 
 facturing Co. of Syracuse, New York. 
 
 Mr. George D. Babcock, the production manager 
 of the company, faced this problem, to state it 
 formally:—“To manufacture large costly units in 
 limited quantity, the rule of demand for which is 
 affected by the seasons and the design subject to fre¬ 
 quent changes.” 
 
 Four years ago the firm was employing for a part 
 of the year a large number of men drawn from what¬ 
 ever labour market had them to spare. They might 
 or might not be trained for the task. As soon as 
 the peak began to flatten, the workmen were dis¬ 
 missed. The company did not like it. It was bad 
 for the men, for them, and for the community. 
 Could the peak be cut off permanently and a uniform 
 load of employment be established or, to put it in 
 another way, could they control their output, or 
 should it continue to control them? 
 
 They began a scientific analysis of their work, 
 learning what its operations and elements were; and 
 gradually building up from what they had learned 
 they were able to do the thing they had set out to 
 do — eliminate the peak — use practically the same 
 number of men throughout the year. Since the first 
 of July, 1912, Mr. Babcock claims the men employed 
 have been relatively constant, although the cars 
 produced have varied considerably. 
 
 Such an achievement is a genuine contribution to 
 
STEADYING THE JOB 275 
 
 the unemployment problem. What has been done 
 can be done. 
 
 One of Mr. Babcock’s results is particularly grati¬ 
 fying to those who believe that a more scientific man¬ 
 agement of the average factory would solve many 
 of the labour difficulties. It has been freely charged 
 by critics of the system that it eliminated the man of 
 fifty or more, that he could not endure its speed and 
 strain. As one of the objects of the system is to fix 
 a reasonable speed and to remove strains, it would 
 seem as if it ought to be the friend of the man of 
 fifty. Mr. Babcock contends that it is. 
 
 “ I think,” he says, “ that I am reasonably fair in 
 saying that we have the most completely developed 
 plan of scientific management under the Taylor prin¬ 
 ciples. This has been put into effect with almost no 
 disturbance, either in the product or the relations be¬ 
 tween our workmen or supervisors. The mere fact 
 that twenty per cent, of a thousand men are over 
 fifty years of age would give some indication of our 
 ability to use all men if they are particularly fitted 
 into plans which have been developed for them. In 
 fact, if we were to take the day’s work of a sturdy 
 man in full strength, I am sure we would find fully 
 fifty per cent, of his time spent in doing things that 
 a man sixty-five years of age could as well accom¬ 
 plish. If it be heavy shovelling, it is true that he 
 forces his shovel into the earth, lifts it, but from that 
 point, if it could be functionalised, the older man 
 could easily dump and return it for its next load. A 
 careful study of a large industry will indicate the 
 
276 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 possibilities of using men of all ages usefully, and 
 this is especially true where new fresh minds are 
 planning for their tasks.” 
 
 This experience alone is a signal contribution to 
 the unemployment problem. No one of its dis¬ 
 tressing features has been more hopeless than that 
 of the old ftian out of work. Scientific management 
 finds work for the old man. 
 
 There are many minor devices practised by en¬ 
 lightened employers to stabilise work. Where the 
 vacation is recognised as an employe’s due, it is ad¬ 
 justed so as to help regularise employment. Piling 
 up standard stocks and putting a plant in order may 
 help a little, but they can do but little. A factory 
 frequently must come to short time. There are 
 many experiments making in handling short time to 
 the best advantage. The ideal way is by thorough 
 co-operation of men and managers. If the condi¬ 
 tions that make short time necessary are put frankly 
 to a force there is little danger that they will not come 
 up generously and bravely to the need. It is the 
 stupid practice of keeping the force utterly in the 
 dark about the shop, its aims, its successes and fail¬ 
 ures, that prevents co-operation. Short time is often 
 handled admirably by the labourers. Thus, in the 
 bituminous coal fields it frequently happens that when 
 a mine is closed down the men in the neighbouring 
 mine voluntarily divide their work. 
 
 It can be laid down, I think, as a fact, that no 
 employer operating under the new code lays off an 
 employe without proper notice. When legislatures 
 
STEADYING THE JOB 
 
 277 
 
 get around to the point of making this illegal they 
 will find plenty of successful employers to back them 
 up. Mr. Kendall goes further. He thinks it part 
 of his business to aid those whom he has to send away 
 to find other positions. He does this by making 
 it known to competitors and others in the trade that 
 he is glad to supply employes when he can spare them. 
 The Employment Department of the Press also has 
 tried to work out some kind of a reciprocal plan with 
 Filene’s Department Store in Boston, by which girls 
 could be taken on as shop girls during the holiday 
 rushes, which as a rule are the dull times of the 
 Plimpton Press. 
 
 The Employment Department also arranges that 
 girls who live at home, and are not wholly dependent 
 on what they earn for support, are laid off in pref¬ 
 erence to girls who are wholly dependent on their 
 own efforts for support, or have others in their fam¬ 
 ily dependent on them. This applies to the men as 
 well. That is, single men are laid off in preference 
 to married men. 
 
 Efforts like these of Mr. Kendall may be developed 
 to handle satisfactorily a force of a few hundred; 
 but when it comes to handling the thousands which 
 are thrown into the labour market by the closing of 
 the lumber or the harvesting or ice-cutting seasons, 
 by the failure of great mills, or even by the sudden 
 bottling up of commerce, as happened in 1914, they 
 are utterly inadequate. 
 
 Is the employer, then, free of responsibility? He 
 certainly is not under the new code. He now be- 
 
278 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 comes a partner in public efforts, which should begin 
 at home. What are these working people? They 
 are the mass of a town’s consumers. Turn them out, 
 and houses empty, shops decline or close — the whole 
 machinery of the place begins to rust. It is to the 
 advantage of a town to co-operate in e\ery way with 
 employers to take care of those laid off. Can’t be 
 done? It is done; not by “ making work,” that is, 
 faking tasks, but by considering what necessary public 
 work the town can afford and by making a contract 
 with the idle to undertake it. 
 
 Listen to what the town of Duluth did in 1914. 
 Soon after Christmas it found itself with more than 
 a usually large number of unemployed men on hand. 
 They have a commission form of government in 
 Duluth, and the commissioners, being free to do 
 promptly the thing that needed to be done, concluded 
 to test the matter of constructing sewers in the winter 
 instead of in spring and summer, as had always been 
 the practice. The men who were able to do digging 
 were put to work the first of February. Employ¬ 
 ment was given to all who applied, who were able 
 to do what was considered a day’s work. The com¬ 
 missioners were very square with the town, refusing 
 absolutely to take men who were just out of the hos¬ 
 pital or those that they found on trial were ineffi¬ 
 cient. That, they argued, would be charity, and 
 they had no right to assess taxpayers for charity. 
 By the first of June a mile of sewer had been con¬ 
 structed. The work was so satisfactory that it has 
 been decided to continue the sewer construction the 
 
STEADYING THE JOB 
 
 279 
 
 coming winter. And how much Duluth has gained! 
 She has kept a body of consumers, kept her houses 
 full, kept her shops going, kept faith with her own 
 sense of responsibility. 
 
 It is idle ever to say there is no work to be done. 
 To such as plead this let me call attention to the 
 case of Pauly of Seattle. The story was told by 
 Pauly himself at the Federal Industrial Commission 
 hearing at Seattle in August, 1914. 
 
 Pauly was an unskilled itinerant labourer. When 
 unemployment was at its worst in Seattle, in 1914- 
 15, Pauly organised the unemployed into “The 
 Itinerants’ Labour Union ” or “ The Hoboes’ Union 
 of America.” He secured an old hospital building, 
 for which the Central Labour Council agreed to pay 
 the rent, and opened it up as a lodging house for the 
 unemployed. The scheme was ridiculed and the 
 building facetiously dubbed “ The Hotel de Gink.” 
 Pauly was determined, however, in spite of opposi¬ 
 tion, that he would find a way of tiding these men 
 over. He advertised for work. He sent squads of 
 men to clean up vacant lots. For others he got 
 work at the commission houses, where they sorted 
 potatoes and took in payments “ seconds,” which 
 the men carried back to their lodgings. He sent out 
 also squads of men to clean up the butcher shops and 
 markets, whenever he found opportunity, and took 
 the second cuts of meat in payment. 
 
 In the same way he got the bakeries to supply him 
 with stale bread. Where an old building was being 
 torn down, he got an opportunity to cart off the lum- 
 
28 o 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 ber that was not usable; in this way he supplied the 
 house with fuel during the winter. As soon as it was 
 possible he began to get contracts for clearing stump 
 land. People said that the unemployed did not want 
 work. Pauly sent a gang of men out to clear some 
 land who worked more than a month in the rainy 
 season absolutely without shelter. Pauly would not 
 admit to the place any man who was unwilling to 
 work, and yet in Seattle he cared for more than two 
 thousand men during the winter. There were hold¬ 
 ups around Seattle, and it was supposed that Pauly’s 
 men were implicated, whereupon Pauly showed that 
 his men must be in the house at 10:30, and his books 
 always showed whether they were or not. To make 
 doubly sure, he called in the police without warning, 
 and had them “ frisk ” every lodger in the building. 
 Not as much as a penknife was found that did not 
 belong there. Pauly had visions of getting his men 
 permanently onto the land. He hoped to get a con¬ 
 tract for clearing land, where plots of land might be 
 taken in payment. “ That’s the thing that will settle 
 this employment question and settle it for all time,” 
 he was accustomed to say, but with the coming of 
 better times Pauly’s constituents scattered. His ex¬ 
 perience is valuable as an example of what can be 
 done in times of slack work. 
 
 A quick turn in handling unemployment was made 
 in New York City in the fall of 1914 by the women 
 at the head of what is known as the Vacation Com¬ 
 mittee, an organisation which endeavours to meet 
 various needs of working women. It illustrates ad- 
 
STEADYING THE JOB 
 
 281 
 
 mirably what organisations of all sorts might do to 
 take care of a sudden influx of unemployed. The 
 war threw many women, particularly stenographers, 
 clerks, saleswomen, out of positions. As soon as the 
 Vacation Committee saw the situation it decided to 
 open a free employment bureau. It did not stop to 
 consider how to organise; it simply opened an office; 
 sent letters broadcast among the employers stating 
 that the Committee was going to do what it could to 
 place the women who came to it, and asked co¬ 
 operation. In the first week it placed 50 out of 150 
 applicants. 
 
 But the sight of so many applicants whom they 
 could not place was too much for the Committee. 
 “ Let us give them work,” somebody said. “ Why 
 not set them to making garments for the wounded 
 soldiers, paying them 50 cents a day until we can find 
 places for them? ” This was done almost as quickly 
 as thought of. The girls belonging to the Associa¬ 
 tion who were at work, rallied valiantly to the enter¬ 
 prise, and in their first meeting, after the idea was 
 launched, subscribed thirty-six dollars toward the new 
 undertaking. 
 
 But the problem of unemployment, particularly as 
 it stands now, is frequently too great to be handled 
 by the most enlightened employers co-operating with 
 the most willing town. The only agency to which 
 the employers can turn, with any confidence that those 
 he is discharging will be rapidly placed, is the new 
 Free Public Employment Bureau, which is coming 
 into existence. There are too few of them, and in 
 
282 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 those which exist the management is often so stupid 
 that they are practicaJly useless. However, Wiscon¬ 
 sin furnishes a model. The free bureaus in the Wis¬ 
 consin States date back several years, but they never 
 amounted to much until Milwaukee employers and 
 authorities took hold of the situation some four years 
 ago, inaugurating a movement in which city, county, 
 employers and employes w r ere represented equally. 
 The upshot of this co-operative movement was that 
 the State joined, in the person of the Industrial Com¬ 
 mission. 
 
 I spent a half day in the office of the Milwaukee 
 bureau in 1914. It is a big roomy place, a circular 
 desk occupying its centre. Within are the force 
 — men chosen carefully for ability and experience 
 in the work and promoted solely on their record. 
 Without are the unemployed. There were probably 
 two hundred, young and old, waiting that morning. 
 Their faces — eager, hopeful, careless, sullen or 
 resolute, hangdog, stupid, intelligent — banked 
 about the desk were a thrilling sight. As their 
 names were given there was a quick search in the 
 big cabinets which told the history of the bureau’s 
 dealings with each applicant, to see whether he had 
 been there before, to find w T hy he was back. 
 
 Here is a new man, Olaf Ericsson. The card 
 that the interpreter fills out reads: Twenty-eight 
 years old — speaks no English — strong — clear¬ 
 eyed — firm-lipped — used to simple living, to the 
 woods, to ice-cutting, to farming, just the man for 
 forest work in Wisconsin. What is there for him? 
 
STEADYING THE JOB 
 
 283 
 
 At a desk within the big circle is the man who is in 
 touch with the employers of the town and the State. 
 Just as these men pour in every morning looking for 
 work, so every morning the employers who use the 
 bureau pour in their requests. There’s one in there 
 this morning for sixty men to go to the North Woods. 
 The wages are $1.65 a day; board is $4 per week; 
 railroad fare is paid one way. The bureau knows 
 this employer. He keeps his engagement. Will 
 Olaf go? He will. Quickly the clerk fills out the 
 necessary forms for the office record, and as quickly 
 gives Olaf his directions. He also drops into the 
 mail box a post card directed to the lumberman, in 
 which the enclosed form is filled out. 
 
 INDUSTRIAL COMMISSION OF WISCONSIN 
 
 Free Employment Office 
 
 Superior,.. 19.. 
 
 To. 
 
 In reply to your request for . 
 
 I am sending you the bearer, M. If 
 
 you hire bearer please sign below and return this card by 
 mail. 
 
 .Supt. 
 
 Applicant has been hired. 
 
 Signature . 
 
 (Reverse) 
 
 FREE EMPLOYMENT OFFICE 
 
 813 Tower Avenue, 
 
 Superior, Wis. 
 
284 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 If Olaf reported, and I have no doubt he did, hav¬ 
 ing looked into hk eyes, two or three days later the 
 card came back with his new employer’s name signed 
 to it. 
 
 If the “ job ” had been in town this last formality 
 would have been conducted by telephone. That is, 
 
 the employer would have been informed that A- 
 
 B-was en route, and requested that if he did not 
 
 appear to inform the office at the end of a short fixed 
 time. 
 
 Next: An elderly machinist — experienced, good 
 references, ten years in a Milwaukee concern recently 
 closed down as a result of an overdose of expansion. 
 The failure thrust into the State at least one hundred 
 excellent machinists of different ages. Already the 
 bureau had placed twenty-five in the State. But this 
 man owned his home in Milwaukee. He must wait. 
 “ He’s been coming daily for a week now,” they 
 tell me. kk But we are sure to place him here, he 
 is a good man. We’ve sent him to various shops 
 in the town. It is not his kind who are our prob¬ 
 lem.” 
 
 However, here is a problem: one of those who 
 turn up regularly every season, a tramp Jack-of-all- 
 trades. They show me his record, a bunch of cards. 
 It is not an employment bureau that will keep this 
 man out of the labour market. He belongs to quite 
 a different set. There are plenty of these, more 
 than there are of the legitimate unemployed. Mr. 
 Leiserson, the former secretary of the Milwaukee 
 office and the representative there of the Industrial 
 
STEADYING THE JOB 
 
 285 
 
 Commission, says that if there are a hundred jobs 
 for 250 applicants the office does not worry. Why? 
 Because so large is the number of the untrained, the 
 unfit, the lazy, the roving: other agencies must handle 
 these. 
 
 The State of Wisconsin now has in operation four 
 free employment offices, including the one at Mil¬ 
 waukee. In the year ending June, 1915, these of¬ 
 fices received 52,568 applications for work and 31,- 
 °95 requests for help from employers. They se¬ 
 cured something over 22,000 positions. In the year 
 ending June, 1916, the applications for work were 
 a little less than 50,000, the requests for help some¬ 
 thing over 50,000, the positions secured 33,234. 
 
 There seems to be no reason why every State 
 should not do something of this kind, and at the same 
 time develop such a co-operation between cities, and 
 between cities and country, that the labour market 
 would be under entire control. And if cities and 
 localities within a State can so co-operate, why could 
 not these different States co-operate with a Federal 
 agency acting as a clearing house? 
 
 Such an organisation would do away with many 
 of the hardships which come from following rumours 
 of work, as, for instance, at the time of the Panama 
 Exposition, when thousands of men went to San 
 Francisco, on the mere hearsay that the Exposition 
 offered work for all. An official bureau in San 
 Francisco would send broadcast the exact wants of 
 the Exposition, and the national headquarters of 
 labour would spread the facts. This is no dream: 
 
286 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 it is but the,natural expansion of what Mr. Kendall 
 does when he tries to place labour in Boston; what 
 Duluth does rather than lose its workingmen; w r hat 
 Wisconsin does for the State. 
 
 For over twenty years Germany has been handling 
 her labouring men and women in this intelligent and 
 humane fashion. Each state in the empire has fifty 
 or more labour exchanges. Each capital city has an 
 exchange which acts as a clearing house for the pro¬ 
 vincial exchanges. Between these labour clearing 
 houses in the capital cities there is a steady flow of 
 communication. If a man cannot be placed in his 
 own city he may be in another; if not in his state, 
 then in another. Work is found for him. A mil¬ 
 lion or more men and women are placed every year 
 by this organisation. 
 
 An excellent beginning has been made by the 
 Federal Government which eventually will work 
 into something like the German system. In 1907 
 there was established in connection with the Bureau 
 of Immigration in the Department of Labour what 
 was called a Division of Information. This bureau 
 was intended to aid in distributing aliens through 
 the country. At the end of the first two years, June 
 30, 1909 it had been able to direct about 5000 
 workers to places of employment. At the end of 
 the next year, 1910, it actually secured employment 
 for 4300, and gave information to over 18,000. 
 Up to 1914 information had been given to over 
 108,000 people, but it had no means of knowing 
 how many were really placed. T his activity of the 
 
STEADYING THE JOB 
 
 287 
 
 Bureau of Immigration was, by the law, confined 
 to aliens. The farther the work was carried, how¬ 
 ever, the more deeply the department felt that its 
 aid ought to be extended to all workless and money¬ 
 less men. In January, 1915 this power was given 
 to the Department of Labour. “ The purpose of 
 the Department of Labour,” the new act reads 
 “ shall be to foster, promote and develop the wel¬ 
 fare of wage earners of the United States, to im¬ 
 prove their working conditions, and to advance their 
 opportunities for profitable employment.” Under 
 this new power what looks like a very practical or¬ 
 ganisation is operating. The entire United States 
 has been divided into eighteen distribution zones. 
 Each zone has its headquarters with sub-branches. 
 The last report, made in June 1915, gives 79 dis¬ 
 tribution offices. The work of these offices is of 
 course to find out what opportunities there are for 
 employment in their territory, to notify headquar¬ 
 ters, and to assist in distributing any labour that 
 may be sent to the division. In the first year under 
 the extended power given to the bureau over 90,000 
 persons applied for information, and nearly 12,000 
 were directed to employment. It is obvious that 
 with such a beginning as this, and the interest and 
 the intelligence with which the Labour Department 
 is pushing the work, we are coming every day nearer 
 to something like a satisfactory handling of the un¬ 
 employed. 
 
 - But let all this be done, and any employer will tell 
 you that still there will be slips. What then is to be 
 
288 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 done? 'That fine and energetic body, the American 
 Association of Labour Legislation, is strong for un¬ 
 employment insurance. The day is coming when it 
 will be as universal as compensation is rapidly becom¬ 
 ing. In scores of industries it has long existed in 
 some form. My own first experience with unem¬ 
 ployment insurance was years ago in a mining village 
 of Ohio. I was visiting friends, who were, as so 
 often happened in those days, both farmers and coal 
 operators. A rich vein had been opened under their 
 land. They were mining it, but were loath to give 
 up the life they loved. Every fall the family slaugh¬ 
 tered and put down twenty-five or more fat hogs. 
 “ What for? ” I asked. “ To be ready for the shut¬ 
 down. It always comes. The coal can’t be moved. 
 The miners never have anything ahead, or so little it 
 is insufficient. We give them their houses and sup¬ 
 ply pork, potatoes and apples! ” It was not charity 
 in their eyes. It was a form of insurance. 
 
 There are many efforts made to prepare employes 
 for the possible rainy day — the dull season — by 
 saving-funds and factory banks. They have a 
 double end: the teaching of thrift and the prepara¬ 
 tion for trouble. Out of all these experiments there 
 is bound to come some form of unemployment insur¬ 
 ance which will be truly co-operative, both in its man¬ 
 agement, its risks, and its rewards. But, after all, 
 insurance is only a sail to windward — something to 
 w'hich you turn when everything else has failed. It 
 is like the rescue squad in the mine. Use it when you 
 must, but — I heard this from the lips of Thomas 
 
STEADYING THE JOB 
 
 289 
 
 Lynch, leader in safety work in mines, “ To - 
 
 with rescue work. Prevent accidents.” 
 
 Keep the wheels moving! That is the great re¬ 
 sponsibility of those who presume to employ. It is 
 not less a responsibility than for the banker to keep 
 his doors open. To co-operate with the employer 
 in this work is the duty of the community, of the 
 State, of the Federal Government. 
 
 We must organise men and women for labour as 
 for war. Watch the perfection of the training and 
 the movement of the masses that at this moment are 
 meeting in unspeakable, infernal slaughter in Europe. 
 See how the humblest is fitted to his task. With 
 what ease great bodies wheel, turn, advance, retreat. 
 Consider how, after standing men in line that they 
 may be knocked to pieces, they promptly and scien¬ 
 tifically collect such as have escaped, both friend and 
 foe, and (oh, amazing and heart-breaking human 
 logic!) under the safe sign of the cross, tenderly 
 nurse them back to health. 
 
 If this can be done for War, should we do less for 
 Peace? 
 
» 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE FACTORY AS A SCHOOL 
 
 The last word on which an observer of the under¬ 
 takings I have been reporting falls back, if he is 
 candid and free of theory, is pretty sure to be educa¬ 
 tion. This is teaching. This shop is a school and 
 a mighty practical one. It takes the man or woman 
 where he is and gives him what he needs, whether 
 that be training in keeping clean, in taking care of 
 wounds even as slight as needle pricks, in the joy of 
 games, in the wisdom of thrift, or in the possibility 
 of improving in his trade. It is a system which is 
 particularly valuable to two great classes of labour 
 untouched by any existing agencies, the crowds of 
 young people who come into the factory undisci¬ 
 plined and untrained, and the masses of adult labour¬ 
 ers to whom from a variety of causes life and labour 
 have become dull and joyless. 
 
 Both the safety and health movements illustrate 
 the kind of education men get from these undertak¬ 
 ings. It was pointed out in the chapter on Safety- 
 how large a percentage of its success depends upon 
 training. The manager is after safety, but in order 
 to get this he must stimulate a faculty which our pres¬ 
 ent educational system often leaves undeveloped, and 
 that is attention. Improbable as it may seem, it is a 
 
 290 
 
THE FACTORY AS A SCHOOL 
 
 291 
 
 fact which every analysis of factory accidents sup¬ 
 ports, that the average workman gives almost no 
 heed to the condition of the tools, the machinery and 
 the material he handles. The first undertaking of 
 an intelligent safety programme is to arouse men’s 
 attention, and once this is done, the intellectual effect 
 is striking. The man who comes to see dangers al¬ 
 most invariably comes to exercise his mind over pre¬ 
 vention. All up and down the shop one will find 
 men studying how something which has impressed 
 them as unsafe can be remedied. Minds which were 
 practically torpid throughout the day’s work spring 
 into activity. In many big mills it is the custom to 
 ask analyses of accidents which have happened and 
 suggestions for preventing a repetition. Answers 
 are freely turned in, some of them most ingenious. 
 A mind which has once begun to act on any particular 
 kind of problem does not stop there. It goes on 
 exercising itself on other problems. 
 
 In more than one industrial community the social 
 value of the safety work in the factory has been 
 demonstrated. The man who has formed the habit 
 of noticing possible causes of accidents and inventing 
 ways of removing them becomes a kind of safety 
 policeman in the streets, on the cars and in his home. 
 I have noticed again and again in the vicinity of big 
 mills where safety had been thoroughly installed the 
 care of the men about the street cars, their rough but 
 kindly warnings and instructions to women and chil- 
 jdren. The whole community was safer because of 
 what they had learned. They had come to under- 
 
292 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 stand that recklessness and indifference to dangers, 
 big and little, are a cheap and foolish business. 
 They had been taught to see that it was not they 
 alone who might be injured by carelessness: it was 
 the other fellow. A man thus awakened is not only 
 a better workman, but he is a better citizen. In 
 thousands of cases it is improbable that any of the 
 forces at present working on the man could have so 
 educated him to a feeling of individual responsibil¬ 
 ity about others both in and out of the factory as this 
 safety work has done. 
 
 The effect on the city, on the home and on the 
 community of the factory health movement is obvi¬ 
 ous wherever it has been developed. Cleanliness as 
 a desirable habit of life is fixed in hundreds and 
 hundreds of minds that never before had considered 
 it either as desirable or possible. A few months ago 
 I waited for a train in a steel town near Pittsburgh 
 at the closing hour when hundreds upon hundreds of 
 men were pouring out of a mill across the tracks from 
 the station. In other years I had often watched the 
 same exodus and had found it hard to believe that 
 the black, greasy, tired and slouchy individuals could 
 after all be quite like men in other walks of life. 
 The change in the look of the workmen that I 
 watched last summer was almost unbelievable. This 
 particular factory was one in which both proper bath¬ 
 ing facilities and lockers had been installed, as they 
 have in so many of the new workshops. At least a 
 thousand men passed under my eye that night and I 
 saw only one who was not clean in flesh and clothes. 
 
THE FACTORY AS A SCHOOL 
 
 293 
 
 Not only the difference in their looks, but the differ¬ 
 ence in their attitude toward other people, towards 
 life in general was surprising. They were not 
 ashamed to sit down beside anybody. The skilled 
 working man who comes dirty and greasy into a 
 street car feels a little out of temper with himself and 
 the world, because of the contrast into which he is 
 thrown by his condition, something which it was im¬ 
 possible in the old shops to prevent. Not one of 
 these men that I watched coming out of the mill 
 need to have been or was ashamed to sit beside any 
 man or woman of any class. They were as fine, 
 stalwart and intelligent a looking body as one would 
 often see. Their cleanliness helped their own self- 
 respect and it prevented the man and woman whose 
 occupation requires or at least does not prevent im¬ 
 maculateness from drawing aside. 
 
 This cleanliness naturally spreads into the home. 
 There is no factory service worker or physician, no 
 observer of the change that is coming over industry 
 who does not know what effect the gospel of clean¬ 
 liness is having on home conditions. It is of course 
 no easy task to bring a big body of working people 
 to whom cleanliness and order have never been 
 taught to an entire reconstruction of their habits. 
 The difficulty with bodies of untrained girls is often 
 very great. Their untidy habits, not only in the 
 factory, but in the toilet room and yards of the fac¬ 
 tory are well known to those who work among them. 
 It takes patience and tact to reform them. It is even 
 
294 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 difficult to persuade them to wear cheerfully the cap 
 and apron in employments where there is dust. I 
 have known girls to leave because they were ordered 
 to wear caps, although it was plainly to their inter¬ 
 est. One of the cleverest solutions of the subject 
 that I have run across was in the admirably managed 
 Scott paper factory near Philadelphia. In this fac¬ 
 tory the fore-woman offered a prize for the most be¬ 
 coming pattern of cap and apron. 7 he moment that 
 the question of looks was introduced the girls were 
 interested. 7 "hey have worked out a most effective 
 combination in form and colour. 7 'hey are pro¬ 
 tected in their work and as a group of workers 
 are thoroughly attractive. Perhaps nothing so takes 
 away from the beauty of a group of women as the 
 lack of any kind of harmony or plan in their dress. 
 One is never more conscious of this than when he 
 sees a group in a becoming uniform. The girls 
 sense this and make the most of their regalia. From 
 attention to cleanliness in person there has come 
 in the Scott factory to be a real rivalry in 
 the prevention of litter in and about machines. At 
 the same time the girls are taking pride in their lunch 
 and rest room. It had been a bare place, furnished 
 only with necessaries, but with flowers and with an 
 abundance of attractive paper which the concern 
 makes, they have turned it into a gay and convenient 
 sitting room. They have had an education in the 
 value of order, harmony and appropriateness which 
 cannot but follow them into the street and home. 
 
THE FACTORY AS A SCHOOL 295 
 
 They are more highly developed young women be¬ 
 cause of their factory training. 
 
 A touching change comes over the lives of many 
 men and women, particularly those that are young, 
 from the training for social life and healthy amuse¬ 
 ments which the factory often gives. They are liter¬ 
 ally taught how to play, to use a vacation, to be so¬ 
 ciable. For one reason or another thousands of 
 workers live joyless and lonely lives. They have not 
 the education, time, self-direction, money and 
 strength to seek opportunities for social life. If 
 they are to have this salt to their daily labour they 
 must be taught to desire it and shown where to find it. 
 Now this is a delicate and slow task. Many em¬ 
 ployers cannot realise that the use of athletic fields, 
 lunch rooms, clubhouses, means a radical change in 
 the habits of their employes. If it has been the 
 practice to eat lunch off the corner of one’s machine 
 it will be a wrench to eat from a table in a spick and 
 span restaurant. 
 
 I remember one big New England factory which 
 several years ago built a fine clubhouse with ample 
 accommodations for every man and woman in it. 
 The majority had come to use it after several years, 
 but always there were men scattered through the fac¬ 
 tory eating from a corner of a machine on stormy 
 days, on steps or lawn outside on a sunny one. 
 There were others who patronised the lunch wagon 
 which daily drove into the premises at noon. These 
 were the non-clubable fellows, who wanted to be let 
 
296 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 alone, or those who hated cleaning up, or those who 
 were shy. The management had had the good sense 
 to leave each man to his own way. The steady, if 
 slow, increase in the numbers who used the lunch¬ 
 room was their reward. 
 
 It cannot be too often repeated that all of these 
 undertakings must be allowed to grow, that they are 
 to succeed only through education. Their failure 
 usually comes from an attempt to impose them full 
 size, not plant them, and wait. Men of fine inten¬ 
 tion and impatient zeal visit a great industrial estate 
 like that of the Cadburys’ in England. They find 
 athletic clubs for both men and women, self-directed 
 and largely self-supporting, working enthusiastically 
 and regularly. They see the dinner hour and Satur¬ 
 day half-holiday utilised to the full for sports of 
 every possible nature. They find club-rooms occu¬ 
 pied, the library books in wide circulation, indoor 
 games popular, the summer holidays fully antici¬ 
 pated. 
 
 They look over the equipment, athletic field, club¬ 
 house, tennis grounds, study the rules and regula¬ 
 tions, and go home confident that by another summer 
 they will have in their smaller group a fair reproduc¬ 
 tion of the Cadbury social and recreation life. They 
 put up the machinery and their people regard it with 
 apathy or contempt. What they do not sense is that 
 it has taken the Cadburys fifty or more years to do 
 what they have done at Bournesville. They have 
 built it as they have built their markets, slowly and 
 thoroughly. It has been an evolution, as social life 
 
THE FACTORY AS A SCHOOL 
 
 297 
 
 must always be, and that our eager and hasty Ameri¬ 
 can can neither understand nor abide. His motto 
 is “ Do it.” That is sufficient for a machine — but 
 not for a man. Teach it is the only way for him. 
 
 The most solid, definite and far-reaching training 
 which the worker gets to-day in industry seems to me 
 to come through scientific management. From the 
 standpoint of society this education is probably the 
 greatest of the system’s many contributions. It 
 reaches the two classes which need it most — the un¬ 
 skilled worker, man and woman and the skilled 
 worker, grown automatic if not torpid. It reaches 
 them where they live. It is education while they 
 work. 
 
 Of all the evil features of industry to-day, one of 
 the most evil is unskilled work, the necessary tasks 
 which are really despised. Hundreds of thousands 
 of men and women do things essential to our very 
 existence, and we and they consider them menial; 
 moreover, we cannot conceive that they can be digni¬ 
 fied. What scientific management proposes is to 
 make all tasks skilled in a sense, that is, set a stand¬ 
 ard of performance and teach it to men. 
 
 It has done this already for a variety of operations 
 
 which it has been the habit to leave to the untrained 
 
 « 
 
 individual. Mr. Taylor in developing his “ Law of 
 Heavy Labour ” has shown how what is akin to a 
 trade may be made of loading iron rails and shovel¬ 
 ling heavy substances. Carrying and laying bricks, 
 loading and wheeling barrows and many other simi¬ 
 lar tasks have been so developed that men can be 
 
298 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 trained to do them properly. One has only to com¬ 
 pare a gang of men shovelling snow in a city street, 
 most of them unfitted for the work, their tools un¬ 
 fitted to them, no standard of production required, 
 with a gang of shovellers trained and equipped for 
 the job, to realise how wretched and inhuman and 
 unskilled work can be, and realising this one cannot 
 be too strong an advocate of a system which makes 
 it possible to take the curse out of all heavy work. 
 True there are those who oppose the idea. Stand¬ 
 ardise unskilled tasks and teach them to men, they 
 say, and what is to become of the unskilled labourer? 
 The questioner does not see that the elimination of 
 unskilled work means the elimination of the unskilled 
 worker, nor does the mind which sees no world dif¬ 
 ference from this as possible admit such a result, and 
 yet this is what scientific management in its ideal 
 application means. It proposes to develop all men 
 so that they may do something well; to rid the world 
 of menial tasks; to make all work worth doing. 
 
 It is good indeed to see what scientific manage¬ 
 ment does for the untrained girl who seeks work in 
 factory or shop. How does she learn her task in 
 the old-fashioned shop? The probability is that 
 she has never before been within factory walls, never 
 before has seen the machine she is to feed or run. 
 A driven foreman may give her five minutes at the 
 start — more likely he will tell her to watch her 
 neighbour. That is, she is to pick up the work as 
 best she can. Often the neighbour is unfriendly. 
 She resents the watching. She refuses to answer the 
 
THE FACTORY AS A SCHOOL 
 
 299 
 
 newcomer’s questions. Again and again she is mali¬ 
 cious, hindering, jeering. 
 
 The new girl who “ spoils work ” drives a needle 
 through her finger, goes away crying, never to return, 
 is the girl who swells the flood of “ floaters,” which 
 are so discouraging a feature to those who conduct 
 big enterprises requiring large numbers of girls. 
 She is practically eliminated by the new methods. 
 In a shop run according to scientific principles, a new 
 girl is put under the care of the instructor at the start, 
 and the instructor spends at least the first day at her 
 side. She is taught her machine, shown how to fol¬ 
 low her instruction card. She is made to understand 
 that the instructor is there to teach and help her. 
 The stimulus of this no one can doubt. Not only the 
 advantage to both girl and shop, but the superior 
 humanity over the old brutal way of throwing her in 
 and letting her swim out cannot be questioned. 
 
 This training makes her realise that her employer 
 thinks what she is doing is worth teaching and worth 
 watching. She is doing something important. The 
 old method was calculated before all else to make a 
 worker despise her task, to discourage interest in it. 
 Why should she study it if nobody thought enough 
 of it to teach her? That was her unconscious argu¬ 
 ment. We complain because the unskilled girl has 
 no interest in her work. Why should she have, 
 when apparently nobody else has? 
 
 Moreover, the thing she does often has no mean¬ 
 ing for her. She twists a foolish little wire, folds 
 a bit of pasteboard, stitches endless seams, clips 
 
3 00 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 ravellings. She does not see her operation in its 
 relations to the dozens of other equally trivial opera¬ 
 tions that, fitted together, make a useful whole. I 
 have often talked with girls who had not the least 
 idea where and how the things they made day after 
 day was used. How can a worker be interested 
 under these circumstances? Introduce them prop¬ 
 erly to the factory, explain it to them as a whole, and 
 their attitude of mind is at once changed. There is 
 a Westinghouse factory in Milwaukee where the 
 manager arranges that each girl before she goes to 
 work be conducted over the entire plant and be shown 
 all of the various operations in their proper sequence. 
 When she finally is put at a machine she ought to 
 know exactly the relation of her task to the finished 
 product. She is making something worth while, a 
 part of a great national article. She is a servant of 
 society. There may be girls too dull to feel this, 
 but not many. 
 
 I shall never forget the pride with which two girls 
 in the cotton factory referred to in Chapter VIII, a 
 factory in which quality and pride in quality are care¬ 
 fully cultivated, told me that the cloth they were 
 weaving was for the sails of a cup defender! They 
 saw themselves as related to a great national event, 
 in which everybody was interested, and if the boat 
 carrying the sail they had woven should win! The 
 builder himself w r ould scarcely have been prouder. 
 
 A plant in which this pride in product reaches 
 down to even the humblest worker is that of the 
 Commonwealth Steel Company at Granite City, 
 
THE FACTORY AS A SCHOOL 
 
 3 01 
 
 Illinois. The concern makes a steel frame used to 
 protect the ends of passenger cars. It has been 
 proved again and again, in case of collision, that 
 these frames prevent the cars crumpling. Battered 
 examples that have been through terrible accidents 
 are shown in the yards, and the pride of everybody 
 in the works in the service that this product of their 
 hands has given is real and beautiful. The errand 
 boy in the office, the president of the concern, the 
 waiter in the shop restaurant, the foundryman, all tell 
 you with equal exultation, “ This is what we make 
 here, something that serves men and women, saves 
 lives, and prevents sorrow.” 
 
 This pride in product is skilfully and constantly 
 fostered in this extraordinary plant. Through the 
 Commonwealther f an unusually lively little factory 
 paper, everybody learns just how the things they are 
 making are serving the world. It is impossible that 
 the most disgruntled labourer should not be more 
 or less heartened by having it put to him persistently 
 that he is concerned in making something which is 
 good for men and women. 
 
 A factory bulletin like the Commonwealther can, 
 if it will, do substantial work in educating a force in 
 their particular craft. This is being done well by 
 the organ of the American Rolling Mills Company 
 at Middletown, Ohio, the Armco Bulletin f as it is 
 called, a handsome little periodical, surprisingly 
 well edited. Armco publishes every now and then 
 articles on the processes and the history of iron and 
 steel. The men learn through it more than most of 
 
3 02 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 them ever dreamed there was to know about the in¬ 
 dustry with which they are connected. Again in the 
 chief plant of this concern at Middletown the men 
 in entering pass daily in front of a finely equipped 
 laboratory. They know the people that are experi¬ 
 menting there. They learn more or less about the 
 new developments. The whole effect of this is to 
 open to them a side of the industry which is a sealed 
 book to most workers. 
 
 The Armco Bulletin does not by any means con¬ 
 fine itself to concerns directly relating to the trade. 
 It does a great deal to encourage the outside interests 
 of the workers. In the last year they have been run¬ 
 ning a series of amateur photographs, some of them 
 unusually beautiful, made by men in various depart¬ 
 ments. The fostering of rivalry in a taste of this 
 sort is altogether good. Many of the Bulletin’s 
 articles are contributed by people in the force. Of 
 course all of this is the best kind of education. It 
 enlivens minds which are always in danger of becom¬ 
 ing dulled by hard labour in which there is little 
 variety. 
 
 One of the most stimulating features of scientific 
 management has always been the encouragement of 
 suggestions. The management says to workers, “If 
 you can tell us how to improve anything about this 
 plant, we will listen to you, and if what you have to 
 say turns out to be practical, you shall have pay for 
 your idea. These ideas are not by any means con¬ 
 fined to suggestions for improvements in machines, 
 they include better methods of doing anything and 
 
THE FACTORY AS A SCHOOL 
 
 303 
 
 everything in the carrying on of the work. In many 
 shops I have seen suggestion boxes into which the 
 worker could drop his suggestion. It is soon discov¬ 
 ered by managers who cultivate this feature that un¬ 
 trained workers make a large percentage of imprac¬ 
 tical and foolish suggestions, that is, they do not 
 know how to suggest. I have not found any plant 
 in which this work, so important for the worker, was 
 carried on more intelligently than in the German- 
 American Button Company of Rochester, New 
 York. The point to which they have carried their 
 work is clearly set out in an issue of their factory 
 paper, Art in Buttons, devoted to the suggestion 
 system. The following article makes very plain the 
 educational value of the plan. 
 
 The company’s action in installing the suggestion system 
 was prompted by two motives, the obvious one of course 
 being to obtain greater efficiency throughout the plant, by 
 getting the ideas of all thoughtful employes. 
 
 The other motive, however, is of equal importance, al¬ 
 though it is very frequently overlooked by the average sug¬ 
 gested and that is, the opportunity which the suggestion 
 system gives every worker to prove to his head or foreman 
 that he is worthy of promotion. This is perhaps the chief 
 value of the entire plan, since in this way it has become pos¬ 
 sible to place in positions of responsibility those men who are 
 best equipped to fill them. 
 
 Whenever a suggestion describes in detail conditions which 
 need improvement, and then sketches a carefully thought out 
 remedy, it is always regarded as proof that the signer deserves 
 consideration for advancement, so that every ambitious em- 
 
304 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 ploye has a chance to make his ability count. A good sug¬ 
 gestion singles out the wide-awake man from his fellow- 
 workmen who take no interest in suggestions and who give 
 little thought to the problems of their department; so get 
 busy and use your head if you want to win out. 
 
 No matter whether you already have the suggestion habit, 
 or whether you are just going to get it, remember this sec¬ 
 ond object of the suggestion system — the expression of 
 individual ability. With this in mind, you are sure to sub¬ 
 mit suggestions which will be a real credit to you, instead 
 of trifling matters which should be brought to the attention 
 of your foreman. 
 
 The ideal suggestion should present a carefully worked 
 out and logical attempt to solve some really serious problem 
 which confronts the company, be it large or small. This 
 does not mean that suggestions about more trivial matters 
 are undesirable, but those of the first class are the natural 
 product of a mind capable of carrying responsibility. Re¬ 
 member also that every thoughtful suggestion counts in your 
 favour, and try for quality rather than quantity. 
 
 Occasionally suggestions are submitted bearing the signa¬ 
 tures of two employes, who thus show that they have lost 
 sight of the chief purpose of the suggestion system — the 
 recognition of individual ability. By submitting a plan to¬ 
 gether, they have practically eliminated the personal value 
 which their suggestion should have had, and each signature 
 neutralises the value which might have been obtained by the 
 one signer. This result is manifestly unfair to both sug¬ 
 gested, for several reasons: 
 
 (1) Each idea must have originated in the mind of 
 a single employe and should be submitted by that person 
 alone. 
 
 (2) The practice of having two employes sign the same 
 
THE FACTORY AS A SCHOOL 
 
 305 
 
 suggestion does not do justice to the originality of the one in 
 whose mind the idea was first conceived. 
 
 (3) Moreover, there is danger of giving the impression 
 that one or the other didn’t know how to put the idea across 
 alone, or else that he is the type of man who is unable to 
 carry a thing through by himself and who could not make 
 good in a more important position. 
 
 (4) This does not promote independence of thought, which 
 is a fundamental requirement for any person who expects 
 eventually to obtain a position of responsibility. 
 
 For your own interest it is therefore very important that 
 you work out each suggestion alone, so that it will represent 
 your own efforts, and show independent thought. When 
 you have a good idea, work it out for yourself and submit 
 it with just one name at the bottom, and thus “ Look Out for 
 No. 1.” 
 
 While the educational value of such a system as 
 this article outlines is obvious, the financial value is 
 probably the thing which has the most effect upon 
 the worker, for it is the policy of scientific manage¬ 
 ment to accept no suggestions without giving some 
 kind of award. 
 
 It is difficult of course to fix this award justly. I 
 once heard a safety expert of a great plant tell of 
 giving $75 to a worker for a suggestion which he 
 said was saving the firm $2,000 a year. The man 
 said very frankly, “ The man himself, a foreigner 
 who could speak very little English, was highly 
 gratified; but I felt as if I were robbing him”; 
 and his feeling was just. So far as I know the most 
 ‘nearly just solution of this difficult problem of 
 
3°6 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 awards for suggestions has been reached by Mr. 
 Babcock of the Franklin Manufacturing Company of 
 Syracuse. 
 
 It is quite wonderful to see a shop group coming 
 to life under the stimulus of these various undertak¬ 
 ings. Awaken a man to the possibility of better 
 health, arouse him to a sense of his part in safety 
 work, persuade him to try his head on suggestions, 
 and the chances are that you drive him out of the 
 blind alley where he has been trapped and start him 
 on an open and upward road. He feels his untouched 
 power and often unconsciously uses it. The problem 
 of finding material fit and willing for the various 
 places of responsibility w T hich even the old-fashioned 
 management demands has grown more and more 
 difficult in these later years. The head of the great 
 Warner Corset Company of Bridgeport, Connecticut, 
 an employer of some seven or eight thousand people, 
 says that while ten years ago they filled all of their 
 advanced shop positions and frequently those of the 
 office from the floor, it is now almost always neces¬ 
 sary to go outside for executive and clerical help, that 
 is the rank and file remain rank and file. The river 
 of democracy has ceased to flow freely in many an 
 industry. Men and women settle in the brakish 
 waters of caste. The lack of free communication 
 between management and floor, the suspicion and dis¬ 
 like that inevitably comes between human beings 
 when they must w T ork at a common enterprise without 
 means of free and democratic intercourse, have been 
 largely responsible for the rise of our industrial caste 
 
THE FACTORY AS A SCHOOL 
 
 307 
 
 system. Out of very loyalty to their fellows many 
 men and women unorganised as well as organised 
 will not try to rise to positions where they will be 
 “ over ” those whom they have been “ with.” It is 
 a deplorable attitude in any group and where it exists 
 the thing we call Democracy is impossible. Democ¬ 
 racy demands the freest intercourse and the coming 
 to the top of the fittest. 
 
 An undertaking which arouses a general interest 
 and sets people to acting together unconsciously is a 
 first step towards breaking up the caste system and 
 releasing aptitudes and talents. Factory games and 
 clubs not infrequently bring out organising and execu¬ 
 tive ability which an alert manager will seize upon. 
 The ability to lead and direct has been largely culti¬ 
 vated on the railroads and in the Steel Corporation 
 by the safety organisation. If a man is successful as 
 a member of a small safety committee he may be 
 successful in a shop position. In three years 13,757 
 different men in the Steel Corporation have served on 
 committees. No one can tell what effect the experi¬ 
 ence may have on these men It would be strange in¬ 
 deed if a per cent, of them did not seek channels 
 where they could further exercise their newly discov¬ 
 ered powers. That is the way Talent in men 
 operates. 
 
 The tendency of all these undertakings is to open 
 and to encourage workers to batter down the blind 
 alleys which trap so many. This is particularly true 
 under scientific management. Indeed one of its ob¬ 
 jects is to push men ahead. It must do that if it is 
 
3°8 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 to fill the new positions the system creates. There 
 must be men to do the planning and routing of work, 
 something formerly left largely to chance. There 
 must be others to take care of and distribute 
 tools and supplies. There must be a force to 
 study the tasks and instruct operatives. There 
 must be foremen and assistants for each of the 
 new departments created. This managing force 
 gives the time to find out how work can be best 
 done and seeing that it is so done. Before the 
 introduction of scientific management in the Cloth- 
 craft Shop of Cleveland there were 13 persons in the 
 management. There are 107 now. With four or 
 five exceptions these 107 people have been taken from 
 hand work or machine work positions in the factory. 
 In the case of the four or five it was necessary to go 
 outside in order to get some special equipment. Gen¬ 
 erally speaking they believe at this shop that hand 
 and machine work are the best kind of preliminary 
 training for people who have the capacity to fill execu¬ 
 tive positions. A man holds three positions under 
 this system, I have heard experts say: the one he 
 left and on which he is keeping an eye to see that his 
 successor is working properly, the one he fills, the 
 one to which he hopes to be promoted. There are 
 fewer people at manual labour because there are 
 more at mental labour. C. Bertrand Thompson, an 
 expert who has had much experience in factory re¬ 
 organisation, says that he has found that “ Labour¬ 
 ers may easily become truckmen. Truckmen may at 
 a pinch attend the simpler automatic machines. Ma- 
 
THE FACTORY AS A SCHOOL 
 
 309 
 
 chine tenders are easily made into helpers, and help¬ 
 ers into skilled artisans. The class of foremen and 
 clerks is almost invariably recruited in scientific man¬ 
 agement plants from the better men in the lower 
 grades of labour.” 
 
 The amount of new work created by the system 
 does not by any means rest here. The improved 
 man requires an improved tool, an improved chair. 
 From every side the incentive to develop new things 
 comes. When Mr. Taylor proved that it paid to 
 give each shoveller in his gang a shovel fitted in 
 weight and length of handle to the man’s reach and 
 strength, he gave an enormous stimulus to the shovel 
 business, that is, set more men at work making 
 shovels. There has never been a shop put under 
 the system that streams of new and unexpected de¬ 
 mands did not flow from it. 
 
 There are those who claim that all the advantages 
 that scientific management of an industry may bring 
 to workers it is in the long run an injury because they 
 turn out so much more, they are bound to exhaust the 
 demand and put themselves out of work. This is 
 one of labour’s chief objections to the system. It is 
 the fear of abundance; a fear that labour has caught 
 from capital, and which has set them both at the 
 most pernicious economic practise men ever devised 
 — that of keeping things scarce that their price might 
 be high. Labour has learned from capital to fear 
 what it calls “ too much.” 
 
 To capital abundance means cheapness and com¬ 
 monness; to the workman, a shut-down; so the capi- 
 
310 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 talistic fruit grower dumps his apples into the river 
 if he sees the market so stocked that plenty of apples 
 may be within the reach of the thousands. The 
 commission merchant puts his eggs into cold storage 
 for higher prices — and the tenements go without 
 eggs. The oil trust, the beef trust — all our 
 monopolistic friends hate and fear abundance. 
 They agree with the high tariff senator of a Western 
 State who once told the United States Senate that 
 he hoped to see the day when the wheat crop would 
 always be a little shorter than the demand, that the 
 farmer might always get a high price — and the poor 
 man a small loaf, he should have been told. 
 
 The w 7 orkingman has held the same notion. He 
 keeps his daily output down insisting on an average 
 wage for all, and in doing this he honestly believes 
 he serves himself and his fellows. 
 
 What he is learning from scientific management is 
 that work breeds work, that the more that is done the 
 more there is to do, that is, these new methods of 
 managing plants are educating the workingman as 
 well as the employers in sounder economic notions. 
 They are seeing more and more clearly that in cur¬ 
 tailing work they are curtailing the power of con¬ 
 sumption. The more work men do, the more they 
 have to spend; and the more they have to spend, the 
 greater is the demand for the things all men make. 
 
 The training in co-operation which these new fac¬ 
 tory methods gives must I think be counted as one 
 of their finest educational contributions. Genuine 
 co-operation has always been difficult for men and 
 
THE FACTORY AS A SCHOOL 311 
 
 women. Their ignorance, stubbornness, pride, 
 greed, suspicion, hamper it. Everything in which a 
 group succeeds in acting collectively strengthens the 
 desire for and points the way to co-operation. The 
 safety crusade is a big co-operative enterprise, so is 
 the national handling of the unemployed, so is the 
 fight for national health. They are allies of the 
 higher peaceful unionism of which every intelligent 
 workman with any vision of the future dreams. 
 Nevertheless, none of these undertakings get very 
 hearty support from organised labour. They seem 
 to feel that betterment which come from free co¬ 
 operation of employer with employes are less per¬ 
 manent and less just than those which come from col¬ 
 lective' bargaining through the unions. Also they 
 fear that they are as genuine as they often are, mainly 
 because the employer thinks he can in this way keep 
 unionism out of his shop. If he gives all and more 
 of the benefits which the union exists to secure, the 
 worker feeling no need will not seek the union pro¬ 
 tection. My own observation has been that it is 
 efficiency and stability chiefly if not entirely that the 
 employer seeks when he undertakes to put his shop 
 on a modern basis. He often gives shorter hours 
 than the union demands because he finds by experi¬ 
 ment that they are better for the health and therefore 
 for the productivity of the worker. He works out 
 a wage scale which is higher than that of the union 
 because by so doing he stimulates the worker. He 
 goes to great pains to improve conditions because 
 he has found that healthy happy growing men and 
 
3 12 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 women are better workers. He interests these men 
 and women in the industry and often he helps them to 
 become stock-holders, because he has discovered it 
 is better for the business that he should do so. He 
 constantly stimulates their ambition teaching them 
 how to increase their skill, and so their earnings, 
 opening new positions to them and helping them to 
 fit themselves to fill them; and to do these things he 
 must secure the fullest co-operation of the employe. 
 
 There is an important point involved here which 
 union men should not shirk. Any system or practice 
 which depends upon a high degree of co-operation 
 for success is the ally of intelligent unionism — not, 
 perhaps, of that unionism which is concerned with 
 politics, which is opportunism in spirit and military 
 in method, but with the unionism of the great mass 
 of workers who believe in sound practices, peaceful 
 progress and, if possible, friendly relations with all 
 those concerned in their industry. The head of the 
 American Federation of Labour, Mr. Samuel Gom- 
 pers, made a wise comment recently on the or¬ 
 ganisation of labour that has been worked out in the 
 Colorado Fuel and Iron Company. That organisa¬ 
 tion was formed unquestionably to head off unionism, 
 though it is proposed by its aid to improve conditions 
 in the company, and to right some old and terrible 
 wrongs. Mr. Gompers could not be expected to be 
 friendly to such an undertaking, yet he is wise enough 
 to see and just enough to say that in the long run this 
 organisation must help rather than hinder union¬ 
 
 ism. 
 
THE FACTORY AS A SCHOOL 
 
 3!3 
 
 “ The miners employed by the Colorado Fuel and 
 Iron Company,” says Mr. Gompers, “ have been 
 whipped by means of atrocious brutality and hunger 
 into submission, back to the mines. And these min¬ 
 ers have been formed into a union by Mr. Rocke¬ 
 feller’s benevolent altruism. But he has organised 
 them, and for that at any rate labour is truly grate¬ 
 ful, for when men come together to discuss, even in 
 the most cursory way, their rights and their interests 
 and welfare, there is afforded a splendid field for 
 development and opportunity.” 
 
 Nothing can be truer. The day must come it 
 seems to me, when organised labour will look on sci¬ 
 entific management as one of its strongest allies, be¬ 
 cause it is a system which depends first and last upon 
 co-operative action. The first time I visited a shop 
 under the system I was bewildered by an impression 
 which I could only describe as free circulation. The 
 workers, from the head man in the head office to the 
 last man in the yard, seemed to be moving in the same 
 current, striking on the same key. I saw what I 
 never had seen before, workingmen in blue overalls 
 and smutty faces boldly walking into the offices to 
 consult with the men who had made their blue prints, 
 worked out their instructions and set their task and 
 bonus. I saw men in smart business suits going 
 about in the shop, and no more attention given them 
 than if they wore the shop regalia. Every one 
 seemed in consultation. As I learned more of the 
 system I discovered that this was literally true. The 
 plan takes in everybody. It depends on taking in 
 
3H 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 everybody. It will not work properly if any one 
 holds back. 
 
 To educate a force of 500, 800, 1,000 men and 
 women to this idea and to its realisation, is slow and 
 sometimes painful. It can be done only by repeated 
 experiment and explanation. As fine an educational 
 enterprise as now exists for workingmen is the weekly 
 open-shop meeting that many efficiency engineers 
 carry on when they are converting a shop. I have 
 rarely been more interested than in one of these 
 meetings I attended in Providence, Rhode Island. 
 There were men from the foundry, the machine shop, 
 and the office present. The engineer was there, and 
 so was the president of the company. For two hours 
 they discussed the new system in the most independent 
 way. The day following I asked a man in the shop 
 whom I had seen there what he thought of it all. “ I 
 don't understand it very well,— none of the boys 
 do, and we think we ought to watch it and we are,— 
 but I think it’s the real thing.” 
 
 “Why?” I asked. 
 
 “ Well,” he said, “ these are the only shop meet¬ 
 ings I ever heard of where the man at the bench and 
 the president of the company have the same kind of 
 chair to sit on and the same kind of cigar to smoke.” 
 
 Those who believe that scientific management 
 holds benefits particularly for the working class are 
 those upon whom the burden of proof is thrown. 
 They are the educated, the leaders, the superior by 
 training and opportunity. They cannot be too pa- 
 
THE FACTORY AS A SCHOOL 
 
 VS 
 
 tient, too reasonable, too willing to dis'cuss even those 
 things they know are facts and as little to be in¬ 
 fluenced by discussion as the multiplication table. If 
 we had never heard of the multiplication table until 
 now we certainly would have to spend much time 
 in proving it. The leaders in this movement are 
 seeing this, and many of them are devoting time and 
 strength to explanation which must seem like ex¬ 
 plaining the rules of arithmetic. 
 
 One of the most sportsmanlike exhibits the coun¬ 
 try ever saw was Mr. Taylor’s willingness to sub¬ 
 ject himself to the heckling and the badgering of 
 labour leaders, congressmen, and investigators of all 
 degrees of misunderstanding, suspicion and ill will. 
 To a man of his temperament and highly trained in¬ 
 tellect, who had given a quarter of a century of the 
 hardest kind of toil to develop useful truths, the kind 
 of questioning to which he was sometimes subjected 
 must have been maddening. But although he often 
 used strong language he never gave up, and he con¬ 
 tinually learned. 
 
 There are not a few of his younger followers 
 who on this point of the relations of unionism to 
 scientific management are sensible and liberal. They 
 see the difficulty, but they believe that by experiment 
 and good will it can be adjusted. 
 
 But to adjust requires, as do all of these under¬ 
 takings, an entirely new attitude of mind toward 
 labour and its problems. All over the country this 
 attitude of mind is forming and expanding. We 
 
3!6 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 have a new kind of leadership in industry, a new 
 executive whose point of view, method and ambition 
 are diametrically opposed to those of our old execu¬ 
 tive, and it is upon him the immediate future of in¬ 
 dustry in this country depends. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 OUR NEW INDUSTRIAL LEADER 
 
 The code, the theory and the attitude of mind of 
 the employer who brings any one or all of these un¬ 
 dertakings to the paying point; that is, makes them 
 work so well that he considers them indispensable, in 
 managing his business, is in sharpest contrast to the 
 code, the theory and the attitude of mind of the old- 
 school employer. 
 
 We know fairly well what this type preaches and 
 practises. His concern is with the machinery of 
 business, not with the human beings who operate 
 that machinery. They must look out for them¬ 
 selves. If they contract occupational diseases, it is 
 their lookout. If they are hurt, it is also their look¬ 
 out. If the hours are long and the wages low they 
 are free to leave. If they put in suggestions which 
 help the business but not them that is their bad luck. 
 Briefly his creed is “ Humanity has nothing to do 
 with business.” 
 
 The employer of the new school disputes every 
 point of the old creed. Wherever you find this 
 new executive you find him enormously interested 
 in the human material. He believes it is all 
 capable of some use and that is his responsibility 
 to use it. He does not even despise the sub- 
 
 317 
 
3i8 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 normal, indeed there is nothing which better em¬ 
 phasises the attitude of mind of the new execu¬ 
 tive than the trouble he is willing to take with this 
 class. He has proved again and again under scien¬ 
 tific management that those who are “ not all there ” 
 can do certain kinds of work more efficiently than it 
 is done by the “ bright.” They will not go ahead, 
 but they will be happy and useful in the operation 
 which fits them. Whatever the quality of the hu¬ 
 man material he deals with he endeavours to dis¬ 
 cover what it can do best. In this delicate task he no 
 more despises anything which promises to help him 
 than he despises any possible drink-cure. 
 
 What he asks is, “ Are there other ways of find¬ 
 ing out what a man is fitted for than the old way of 
 setting him at a task and seeing what happens? Are 
 there other ways of spotting an engineer, an execu¬ 
 tive, an artist, than trying the man at trade or art? 
 He has his own ways of judging men — born of ex¬ 
 perience, observation and reflection. Are there tests 
 which will automatically settle the matter and re¬ 
 lieve him of his errors or even reduce the percentage 
 of his errors? He has opened his mind to proof, 
 and the phrenologist and psychologists are busily 
 trying to convince him. I have seen labour forces 
 replenished solely on the height and depth of the 
 forehead, the colour of the eye, the shape of the 
 nose, the curve of the chin; and I have never heard 
 more enthusiastic and confident claims than from the 
 advocates of the system. What is there in it? 
 
 We have an authoritative answer from one of the 
 
OUR NEW INDUSTRIAL LEADER 
 
 3 1 9 
 
 most trustworthy sources in the country — Dean 
 Schneider of the College of Engineering of the Uni¬ 
 versity of Cincinnati. Co-operation between college 
 and shops in the education of young men has been 
 carried on in Cincinnati for several years under Dean 
 Schneider’s direction. It has been, of course, a nice 
 problem to select men for different kinds of work. 
 Was any help to be obtained from those who claim 
 that aptitude and ability are shown in physical char¬ 
 acteristics? These claims were put to the test by the 
 faculty interested. For instance, it is declared that 
 a certain shaped head means a directive money-mak¬ 
 ing executive. I once knew an employer to haul 
 from a group of entirely uneducated applicants a 
 man with this particular shaped head and make a 
 place in his counting room for him. A great execu¬ 
 tive should not be lost to his business, he said. 
 
 Mr. Schneider picked out at random a number of 
 well-known money-making executives, and had their 
 physical characteristics charted. He found they did 
 not conform to any law. After full tests of the 
 methods and principles of this school, he says: 
 
 “ We were forced to the conclusion that this sys¬ 
 tem was not reliable.” 
 
 Are the claims of the psychologists any more re¬ 
 liable? Can they, as a few have claimed, decide in 
 a laboratory what a man is and is not good for ? Do 
 their tests prove your normality, your ability, your 
 character? Dean Schneider and his colleagues have 
 been testing those claims. Selecting men from two 
 classes of graduates — men who had been with them 
 
3 20 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 five years, and whose work since leaving college they 
 had followed so that they felt they knew something 
 of their abilities. They had them tested in the psy¬ 
 chological laboratory. In no case did the psycholo¬ 
 gists find the young men to have the abilities which 
 they had proved themselves to have. I do not un¬ 
 derstand Dean Schneider to conclude from these 
 tests that psychology can give no aid at all in deter¬ 
 mining characteristics, only that the proposition has 
 not yet been proved. 
 
 In opposition to this experience is one of the Cloth- 
 craft Shop of Cleveland where it was found that the 
 estimates from applying the tests to a group of its 
 executives and skilled employes were almost exactly 
 those that had been formed in the shop after long 
 experience. 
 
 Probably the wisest conclusion in regard to psy¬ 
 chological tests is that while they may be suggestive, 
 they are not final, and that either to reject or accept 
 a man on their showing is almost as foolish as reject¬ 
 ing or accepting him on the shape of his head. 
 They may show with fair accuracy what a man can¬ 
 not do, but they do not give a clue to much that he 
 might learn to do. The human being is too wonder¬ 
 ful a creation, he has too many possibilities hidden 
 from himself and all men to reveal his powers at one 
 or many sittings to the cleverest devices of any psy¬ 
 chological wizard. 
 
 Our new leader not only tries to digest the sub¬ 
 normal, he often makes a brave and patient attempt 
 to assimilate the criminal. Out in Kansas they have 
 
OUR NEW INDUSTRIAL LEADER 
 
 3 21 
 
 founded an association called the Humanitarians, 
 which proposes to back up the discharged prisoner 
 in all his efforts to be self-supporting and decent. 
 They are seeking the co-operation of employers. 
 They find that it is not only Henry Ford who believes 
 in the power of a human being to “ come back ” and 
 is willing to give him a hand. One of the officials of 
 the Humanitarians writes me that while they have 
 found many employers of labour sceptical in the ex¬ 
 treme concerning the business policy of opening the 
 doors of their factories to prison graduates, their ob¬ 
 jections are founded on sound principles and not be¬ 
 cause of inherent distrust of the men. 
 
 Some contend that the man with prison training is 
 unfitted for efficient work; that he has acquired 
 the tendency to slight his task while in prison, and 
 that he will continue to do the least possible amount 
 of labour when released. In a way they are right, 
 and that fact is a discredit to the prison systems now 
 in vogue. 
 
 Others take a broader view of the matter. The 
 Humanitarians have placed men with the Sante Fe 
 Railway Company, the Chalmers Motor Company, 
 the Peet Brothers Soap Company, The “ ioi ” 
 Ranch Corporation, and dozens of smaller concerns. 
 Those men have made good and are making good. 
 
 In connection with the work they are attempting 
 to further the educational advantages of the prison 
 body. Several technical schools have been ap¬ 
 proached. Some have offered assistance, others 
 have agreed to take the matter up with the faculty, 
 
3 22 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 and only one, the I. T. U. School has refused co¬ 
 operation. That particular school is under the man¬ 
 agement of the International Typographical Union 
 and at their recent convention they refused to con¬ 
 sider the request favourably. It is not surprising 
 that this refusal should have disturbed the Humani¬ 
 tarians. Every man they have in the print-shop of 
 the Lansing Prison, the headquarters of the Associa¬ 
 tion, happens to have been a member of that union 
 at one time or another. 
 
 The same interest and faith in human material 
 which is back of this willingness to use it even if it is 
 of low calibre or warped by crime is back of the 
 determination that one finds in all employers of the 
 new school to break down the suspicion and ill will 
 w r ith which the average American workman and em¬ 
 ployer regard one another. This distrust is so 
 strong at times that the observer feels as if actually 
 handling it. Nothing that the employer tries in the 
 way of betterment is kindly received. No undertak¬ 
 ing of the men is treated frankly and naturally by 
 the employer. They are unfriendly classes, intent 
 on wresting from one another all they can, because 
 they no longer see themselves as anything but ene¬ 
 mies. The breaking down of this ugly and undemo¬ 
 cratic class spirit in American industry and the re¬ 
 placing it by one of friendly and democratic co¬ 
 operation is possibly the hardest of all the many 
 objects of the new school. It requires time, it re¬ 
 quires much experiment. It cannot be accomplished 
 
OUR NEW INDUSTRIAL LEADER 323 
 
 in the same way in any two places for the sufficient 
 reason that in no two places are the conditions, the 
 needs and the desires identical. Each factory is a 
 separate problem. 
 
 The first need of the employer is to awaken inter¬ 
 est and faith in his particular effort. He will never 
 do this unless he himself believes that the thing is 
 just and at the same time a part of sound manage¬ 
 ment. It is idle for an employer to think that he can 
 win labour by welfare machinery, by high wages, by 
 profit sharing; unless his reasons for attempting these 
 things are something more than selfish interest, they 
 won’t work. No one is quicker to detect the intent 
 and spirit behind a new practice than a body of work¬ 
 ers. They know the scent of reality. A good thing 
 undertaken for a mean purpose or undertaken half¬ 
 heartedly and because some competitor succeeds with 
 it is almost surely sterile. True, in doing the thing, 
 a man may come to appreciate the meaning of his 
 undertaking, may himself be converted, but unless 
 this happens, his plan will fail. 
 
 I have seen a makeshift of a lunch-room set up in 
 the middle of a factory floor, a recreation-room for 
 which space was stolen by piling goods higher, a first- 
 aid room, made by partitioning the end of a hall, all 
 used joyfully and to their full capacity by girls who 
 said and meant it: “ Gee, but this is a fine place to 
 work! ” And I’ve seen the most aproved form of 
 cafeteria, an attractively furnished club-room and a 
 modern hospital go practically unused. 
 
324 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 “ Raise our wages, cut down the hours, and carry 
 off the dust. That’s what we want,” the workers 
 tell you — and they are right. 
 
 The new employer must base his undertakings on 
 faith in the power of men of different grades of abil¬ 
 ity and of education to work together happily and 
 justly. He must believe that good will is as possible 
 in such a group as ill-will, that trust is as practical as 
 suspicion, that whether you have the one or the other 
 depends on management. That is, the new em¬ 
 ployer is candidly and gamely taking on his own 
 shoulders the responsibility for the deplorable class 
 spirit which exists to-day in our industrial life. The 
 tendency of all the activities described in the previous 
 chapter is to confidence and equality, for the reason 
 repeatedly pointed out that each of them requires the 
 co-operation of the whole force. This co-operation 
 is sometimes quickened by shop organisations de¬ 
 voted to that particular end. For a number of years 
 now the Pilgrim Laundry has conducted floor meet¬ 
 ings at which the management has explained changes 
 in methods, put questions as to policy, listened to 
 criticisms, and often taken votes. The admirable 
 German-American Button Company of Rochester, 
 New York, is so organised that anything and every¬ 
 thing concerning the operation and the management 
 of the factory can be fully discussed with heads of 
 departments and officers. Department meetings are 
 frequent and the Progress Club, a factory organisa¬ 
 tion in which all employes as well as the management 
 are represented, takes up problems as they present 
 
OUR NEW INDUSTRIAL LEADER 325 
 
 themselves. For example, this factory has been 
 working towards a more satisfactory classification of 
 operations, grading them according to their diffi¬ 
 culty. Wages are fitted as nearly as possible to the 
 grade of work. When these changes in wages are 
 made they are fully discussed at department meet¬ 
 ings. The operative learns the theory on which his 
 wages are being adjusted, and has an opportunity to 
 express his opinion. The factory has been steadily 
 decreasing its hours, as it developed a more scien¬ 
 tific management. These changes, the rest periods 
 fixed, the relation of pay and hours are all matters 
 which the departments and the Progress Club thresh 
 over. It is out of the question for a factory force 
 so organised to harbour ill-will and suspicion. It 
 has a free vent for its discontent and its ambitions. 
 It is taken in. It knows that there is a steady effort 
 to improve not merely the profits of owners, but 
 its profits and opportunity. The organisation works 
 towards a real, not a fictitious, democracy. It is the 
 enemy of hostility. 
 
 An organisation modelled after the Progress Club 
 of the German-American Button Company is the 
 Quality Club of the Hickey-Freeman Company of 
 Rochester. This Quality Club is made up of the of¬ 
 ficers and directors of the firm, the heads of depart¬ 
 ments and an elected representative of every fifty 
 employes. This membership elects officers and ap¬ 
 points committees. A list of the committees will 
 giv-e a fair idea of the range of the club’s interest — 
 the kind of look-in on the business which it gives. 
 
326 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 There are committees on “ Quality of Merchandise,” 
 “ Service to Customers,” “ Efficiency,” “ Quality,” 
 “Traffic,” “Safety,” and “Activities.” I once at¬ 
 tended a meeting of the Quality Club at which all of 
 these various committees reported. It was one of 
 the most informing and stimulating shop gatherings 
 that I have ever seen. The reports were frank, as 
 was the discussion. I learned at the gathering more 
 about the clothing business than I had gathered in 
 repeated visits to other factories. There was no 
 glossing over of inefficiency. The sharpness of ob¬ 
 servation, the evidence that the floor through its rep¬ 
 resentatives was taking note of its surroundings and 
 demanding what it thought it ought to have was 
 abundant; for instance, the Safety Committee re¬ 
 ported 17 different sensible recommendations as hav¬ 
 ing been put into effect since the last meeting, and 15 
 different sensible suggestions were made in the dis¬ 
 cussion of the report of the committee, things that 
 obviously needed attention in the factory, and of 
 which the management would probably not have 
 known if it had not been for the co-operation in its 
 safety work that it was getting from the rank and 
 file. 
 
 There was the liveliest interest taken in the activi¬ 
 ties which the committee was planning for the 
 health and pleasure of the employes. One came 
 away from the meeting of the Club with an impres¬ 
 sion that there w r as a body that was intelligently 
 striving to get itself onto a basis of friendly under¬ 
 standing. 
 
OUR NEW INDUSTRIAL LEADER 
 
 327 
 
 Where such clubs as the two mentioned above are 
 conducted for any length of time, I cannot but be¬ 
 lieve that a spirit and attitude of mind will be es¬ 
 tablished in the group which will make it possible for 
 every employer and employe to take up together 
 even the questions that gather about Unionism, its 
 aims and pretensions, questions that now are ig¬ 
 nored pretty generally. Unionism as one of the la¬ 
 bourer’s rights will be freely considered, just as the 
 association of the manufacturers in a particular line 
 and the relation of that association to the employe 
 might very properly be discussed. 
 
 What it all amounts to is that a way is being found 
 by which all of the workers concerned in a factory 
 shall be able to meet and to- consider anything and 
 everything which even remotely affects them. Of 
 course nothing less than this should be the aim of 
 every industrial group if we are to have anything 
 like an industrial democracy in the country. 
 
 There is no more striking contrast between the old 
 and the new schools- of management than the way 
 each looks at his task of management. The one 
 sneers at the idea that management can be reduced 
 to anything like a science. It cultivates rule-of- 
 thumb methods, resents criticism, denies that it has 
 any responsibility towards employes other than that 
 of paying the wages agreed upon. It is suspicious 
 of its competitors, looks on government regulation 
 as an interference with its personal rights, denies that 
 a private business can have obligations to the public; 
 that is, generally speaking, this old school manage- 
 
328 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 ment is narrow, suspicious and obstinate. The new 
 school is none of these things. It believes that man¬ 
 agement can be developed to a science, and it gives 
 itself whole-heartedly to this development. It is an 
 eager learner, a tireless experimenter. It invites 
 criticism. Instead of suspecting its opponents, it in¬ 
 vites exchange of ideas and views with them. Trade 
 secrets it regards as bugaboos, and declares that busi¬ 
 ness succeeds by freely tapping all sources of infor¬ 
 mation. It is absolutely opposed to monopoly of 
 ideas. 
 
 This attitude towards management has resulted in 
 several interesting organisations for furthering the 
 discussion and the exchange of experiences. The 
 first of these societies was formed in 1912 in New 
 York, and is known as the “Efficiency Society.” 
 Quite unexpectedly to its founders, demands for 
 membership came from all over the country. They 
 came from all sorts of people directly and indirectly 
 interested in business. The Efficiency Society has 
 been followed in various parts of the country by simi¬ 
 lar organisations. Its most important national suc¬ 
 cessor has been the Society for the Promotion of the 
 Science of Management formed by the Taylor group. 
 
 The most significant and promising recent develop¬ 
 ment of the idea is local, The Executives Club, of De¬ 
 troit, Michigan. This organisation, now a little over 
 two years old, is made up of Detroit plants. The 
 managers of these plants meet regularly to discuss 
 all sorts of shop problems and to exchange their ex¬ 
 periences. It is a kind of industrial clearing house 
 
OUR NEW INDUSTRIAL LEADER 
 
 329 
 
 for comparing and studying whatever the various 
 Detroit managers are doing. They spend much 
 time on the theory and the practice of scientific man¬ 
 agement. They discuss the use of the stop-watch, 
 the type of operator on whom it is best to make time 
 studies, the question of fatigue and how it is to be 
 met, the standardisation of all kinds of operations, 
 the various systems of wage payments, cost systems, 
 all of the problems involved in changing their plants 
 from the old time military rule to the new function¬ 
 alised rule. 
 
 The Club has an admirable paid secretary, Mr. 
 Boyd Fisher, and under his direction it gathers in¬ 
 formation on industrial problems. One of the com- 
 pletest recent studies of Profit Sharing has been made 
 by Mr. Fisher for the Executives Club. When 
 complicated labour situations arise, in different 
 parts of the county the Club tries to get down 
 to the causes and to learn from the experiences 
 that others are having how to avoid irritation and 
 suspicion. Its meetings fairly boil with interest 
 and suggestiveness. The Club has never made 
 any report on the practical results of its dis¬ 
 cussions and interchange of ideas and experiences, 
 but it does claim that these have been considerable. 
 They must have been, for nothing else would have 
 kept together a group of men on whom the business 
 pressure is as perpetual and as strong as upon these 
 Detroit executives. Things do leak out, however, 
 to show the effect of the organisations. Ten plants 
 are said to have established employment departments 
 
330 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 since they came into the club, 22 to have appointed 
 welfare managers. There have been all sorts of 
 changes in the organisations, all of them towards a 
 higher degree of standardisation. Considerable 
 savings have been reported through ideas picked up 
 at the meetings. The interest and belief in profit 
 sharing has spread, and at least two plants are adopt¬ 
 ing systems. Probably the great work of this Ex¬ 
 ecutive Club is its constant demonstration of the 
 value of full and free co-operation and exchange. 
 
 An interesting proof of the spread of the convic¬ 
 tion that co-operation between plants is a healthy and 
 profitable thing lies in the interest which managers 
 in many other parts of the country have shown in the 
 Detroit undertaking. Wide-awake managers of the 
 new school have hastened to Detroit to study the 
 club, hoping to adopt it in their own communities. 
 Several local efficiency societies have reorganised on 
 the lines of the Executives Club. It all goes to show 
 how wide-spread these ideas are, and how many men 
 there are glad and ready to put them into practice 
 when the way is pointed out. 
 
 It is a conclusive proof that we have in the country 
 a new type of management, taking upon its shoulders 
 the burden of industrial unrest, injustice and ineffi¬ 
 ciency; that this school believes that it sees the road 
 out, and that it is willing to give the best of itself in 
 opening the road. 
 
 That very thoughtful and experienced engineer, 
 H. L. Gantt, considering certain industrial weak¬ 
 nesses that have been developed by our attempt to 
 
OUR NEW INDUSTRIAL LEADER 
 
 33i 
 
 fill quickly large war orders, puts the responsibility 
 squarely on management. “ The right to exercise 
 power without the ability to exercise it properly ” is 
 in Mr. Gantt’s opinion the cause both of the ineffi¬ 
 ciency that develops in our manufacturing as it is of 
 the unrest in our industrial life. “ Too many of our 
 industrial plants,” he says, “ are still founded on 
 what has been done, rather than on what can be done. 
 The real industrial leader must be guided by future 
 possibilities, rather than past performances. 
 
 “ Many of those who control our industries hold 
 their positions, not through their ability to accom¬ 
 plish results, but for some other reason. In other 
 words, industrial control is too often based on fa¬ 
 vouritism or privilege, rather than on ability. This 
 hampers the healthy, normal development of indus¬ 
 trialism, which can only reach its highest develop¬ 
 ment when equal opportunity is secured to all, and 
 when all reward is equitably proportioned to service 
 rendered. In other words, when industry becomes 
 democratic.” 
 
 The frank acceptance of this point of view and the 
 intelligent attempt to meet it by such undertakings as 
 have been described in the preceding chapters make 
 one hope that we may finally really democratise our 
 industrial life. It is not too much to say, I believe, 
 that these undertakings are making a new man of the 
 employer. He is discovering not only that his busi¬ 
 ness may be handled in a scientific way, which 
 hitherto he has denied, but that business so handled 
 is far more interesting, as it is far more profitable. 
 
332 
 
 NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS 
 
 He is seeing a significance and a possibility in human¬ 
 ising his relations that he formerly did not dream. 
 He is developing the inspiring consciousness that it 
 is possible for him to be not a mere manufacturer of 
 things for personal profit, but as well a maker of men 
 and women for society’s profit. 
 
INDEX 
 
 A 
 
 Accidents, believed to be due to 
 darkness, 9; study of, and re¬ 
 sulting conclusions, 9; crusade 
 to prevent, 50 ff.; records of 
 industrial, 54; investigation of 
 causes of, 58; in foundries 
 and metal works, 58-59; in 
 tanneries, 59; in cotton mills, 
 60. See Safety movement. 
 
 American Association of Labour 
 Legislation, unemployment in¬ 
 surance favoured by, 288. 
 
 American Railway Association, 
 use of intoxicants prohibited 
 by, 120. 
 
 Architecture of modern facto¬ 
 ries, 4-8. 
 
 Armco Bulletin, factory paper, 
 301-302. 
 
 Art in Buttons, factory paper, 
 
 303*. 
 
 Athletics for factory workers, 
 32-39; effect of, on lives of 
 employes, 295. 
 
 Atterbury, Grosvenor, building 
 of houses for workingmen by, 
 160-162. 
 
 B 
 
 Babcock, George D., contribu¬ 
 tion to unemployment prob¬ 
 lem by, 274-276; solution of 
 problem of awards for sug¬ 
 gestions reached by, 306. 
 
 Baker Manufacturing Company, 
 ‘profit-sharing plan at, 249- 
 256. 
 
 Ball-playing for factory work¬ 
 ers, 33-35- 
 
 Beech Nut Factory, Canajoharie, 
 health maxims of, 104-105. 
 
 Bell Telephone Company, pen¬ 
 sions and disability and death 
 funds of, 256. 
 
 Beloit, workingmen’s houses in, 
 135 - 136 . 
 
 Boston Consolidated Gas Com¬ 
 pany, profit-sharing experi¬ 
 ment of, 233-234. 
 
 Brown and Bigelow factory, 
 athletic sports at, 35-36. 
 
 Brown and Sharpe Manufactur¬ 
 ing Company, temperatures at, 
 13; “Safety First” at, 57. 
 
 Bull, R. A., on effect of the 
 eight-hour day, 175. 
 
 Bulletins, safety, 65-67; of Life 
 Extension Institute, 105-106; 
 aimed against drink, 125-126. 
 
 Bureau of Printing and Engrav¬ 
 ing, as an example of factory 
 architecture, 7-8. 
 
 Burlingame, Luther D., on fac¬ 
 tory safeguards, 57. 
 
 C 
 
 Canneries, hours of work in, 
 
 I77-I79- 
 
 Chace, George A., quoted on 
 profit-sharing, 226-227. 
 
 Clarke, Judge John H., on pol¬ 
 icy of shutting down shops, 
 268-269. 
 
 Cleanliness, new ideas of, re¬ 
 sulting from factory health 
 movement, 292-293. 
 
 333 
 
334 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Close, C. L., study of accidents 
 and their prevention by, 60- 
 64. 
 
 Clothcraft Shop, girls’ play¬ 
 ground at, 32; health work of, 
 95-97; effect of shop condi¬ 
 tions on drink question shown 
 by, 114; hours of work at, 
 190; effect on wages, produc¬ 
 tion costs and hours, of sci¬ 
 entific management at, 214- 
 216. 
 
 Commonwealth Steel Company, 
 Fellowship club at, 41-42; 
 status of coloured men at, 43; 
 measures taken to prevent ac¬ 
 cidents at, 59; eight-hour day 
 at, 174—175; pride of workers 
 in product at, 300-301. 
 
 Commonwealther, factory paper, 
 301. 
 
 Co-operation, training in, given 
 by new factory methods, 310- 
 3 X 5* 
 
 Cotton mills, scientific manage¬ 
 ment in, 18-19; measures 
 taken to prevent accidents in, 
 60; effect of scientific man¬ 
 agement in, 210-212. 
 
 Crane Company, care of sick 
 employes by, 86; use of milk 
 by, to discourage beer drink¬ 
 ing, 115. 
 
 Crawford, William J., on a 
 shorter workday for granite 
 cutters, 169-172. 
 
 Criminals, attempted assimila¬ 
 tion of, by new industrial or¬ 
 der, 320-322. 
 
 Crowell Publishing Company, 
 scientific management applied 
 to rush season by, 179-180. 
 
 D 
 
 Delaware and Lackawanna Rail¬ 
 road, safety work on, 71-72. 
 
 Diseases, occupational, 77-79; 
 attempts to control, 81 ff.; 
 
 problems presented by minor 
 degenerative, 91-96. 
 
 Distrust of workmen for em¬ 
 ployers, breaking down of, 
 322. 
 
 Dodge, J. M., quoted on scien¬ 
 tific management, 208-209. 
 
 Dow, Marcus A., safety work 
 by, 72. 
 
 Drink, the industrial campaign 
 against, no-133. 
 
 Drugs, use of, as medicines by 
 women workers, 107-108. 
 
 Dublin, Louis I., diagram of dis¬ 
 eases by, 91-93. 
 
 Duluth, solution of problem of 
 unemployment at, 278. 
 
 Duncan, James, on effect of 
 shorter hours, 168-169. 
 
 E 
 
 Eastman Company plant, ath¬ 
 letic and social activities at, 
 47- 
 
 Edison Illuminating Company, 
 health rules of, 79-80. 
 
 Education secured from modern 
 factory undertakings, 290-316. 
 
 Efficiency Society, New York 
 City, organisation of, 328. 
 
 Eight-hour day, the, 167-192. 
 
 Employment bureaus, public, 
 281-287. 
 
 Executives’ Club, Detroit, 328- 
 330. 
 
 F 
 
 Factory banks for employes, 288. 
 
 Fairbanks Manufacturing Co., 
 reduction in accidents at, 69. 
 
 Fatigue poisons due to too long 
 hours, 166-167. 
 
 Feiss, Richard, work of, with 
 scientific management at 
 Clothcraft Shop, 214-216; on 
 standardizing of trade condi¬ 
 tions, 271. 
 
 First aid work, 71. 
 
INDEX 
 
 335 
 
 Fisher, Boyd, studies of indus¬ 
 trial problems by, 329. 
 
 Floating labour, investigation of 
 question of, 263 ff. 
 
 Food vs. alcohol, 114-115. 
 
 Ford Motor Works, fight against 
 drink at, 127-129; effect of 
 profit sharing on steadying of 
 labour at, 224-225. 
 
 Foundries, accidents in, 58-59; 
 hours of labour in, 173-175. 
 
 Free public employment bureaus, 
 281-287. 
 
 Frick Coke Company, homes and 
 housing conditions of em¬ 
 ployes of, 13 7-144. 
 
 G 
 
 Games, advantages of, for fac¬ 
 tory workers, 32-35. 
 
 Gantt, H. L., on the responsibil¬ 
 ity of poor management for 
 industrial weaknesses, 320- 
 321. 
 
 Gardens, about factories, 22; as 
 a factor in anti-saloon cru¬ 
 sade, 118; in Frick Coke Com¬ 
 pany villages, 141-142. 
 
 Gary, failure to provide homes 
 for unskilled labourers at, 159. 
 
 German-American Button Com¬ 
 pany, method of handling la¬ 
 bour force by, 266; suggestion 
 system at, 303-305; co-opera¬ 
 tion of management and em¬ 
 ployes at, 324-325. 
 
 Germany, labour exchanges in, 
 286. 
 
 Goggles, wearing of, to prevent 
 accidents, 67. 
 
 Grand Rapids, workingmen’s 
 houses in, 135. 
 
 Granite cutters, results of shorter 
 workday for, 168-172. 
 
 Grieves, W. A., investigation of 
 •floating labourers by, 265-266. 
 
 “ Grub ” better than “ grog,” 
 114. 
 
 * H 
 
 Hamilton Watch Company, ef¬ 
 fect of ventilation at, 24. 
 
 Harvey, A. M., factory health 
 work by, 84-85. 
 
 Health maxims on pay envel¬ 
 opes, 104-105. 
 
 Health movement, the industrial, 
 77-109; as a means of educa¬ 
 tion, 292-295. 
 
 Hoffman, F. L., statistics by, 54. 
 
 Homestead Steel Mills, beauty 
 introduced into, 22. 
 
 Hours of working day, 163-192. 
 
 Housing of workmen, 134-162. 
 
 Humanitarians, aid given to dis¬ 
 charged prisoners by associa¬ 
 tion called, 321. 
 
 I 
 
 Illinois Steel Company, safety 
 work by, 65-68. 
 
 Indian Hill, industrial town of, 
 156-159. 
 
 Industrial universities, 6. 
 
 Information, establishment of 
 Division of, by Federal Gov¬ 
 ernment, 286-287. 
 
 International Harvester Com¬ 
 pany, lighting of plants of, 9- 
 11; device for carrying off 
 dirt at, 19-20; reduction of 
 accidents at, 68-69 > pension 
 fund for employes at, 256. 
 
 International Typographical Un¬ 
 ion, co-operation in work for 
 discharged prisoners refused 
 by, 322. 
 
 I. W. W., the, 261. 
 
 J 
 
 Jones, Sam (“Golden Rule”), 
 quoted on working conditions, 
 97-98; vacations to employes 
 inaugurated by, 98. 
 
336 
 
 INDEX 
 
 K 
 
 Kahn Sc Wilby, architects of De¬ 
 troit factories, 5. 
 
 Kansas, automobiles and drink 
 in, 126. 
 
 Kansas City, workers’ homes in, 
 134 . 
 
 Kendall, H. P., on standardiz¬ 
 ing of conditions in printing 
 and publishing lines, 270; va¬ 
 riety in labour advocated by, 
 272. 
 
 L 
 
 Labour exchanges, 281-287. 
 
 Lake Carriers’ Association, tem¬ 
 perance work of, 116-117. 
 
 Leclaire, Indiana, town manage¬ 
 ment at, 145; stock ownership 
 plan at, 231-233. 
 
 Life Extension Institute, investi¬ 
 gations by, 91, 93; health bul¬ 
 letins and work of, 105-107. 
 
 Lighting of factories, 8-12; re¬ 
 lation between output and, 23- 
 24. 
 
 Lunching places for workers, 42- 
 44. 
 
 Lynch, Thomas, leader in re¬ 
 demption of Frick Coke Com¬ 
 pany villages, 139. 
 
 M 
 
 McMurtry, George G., founder 
 of town of Vandergrift, 147- 
 155; on the eight-hour day, 
 172-173. 
 
 Manufacturing, development of 
 safety appliances in, 55-69; 
 leading states engaged in, 
 121 n. 
 
 Medical inspection in factories, 
 102-103. 
 
 Metropolitan Life Insurance 
 Company, care of tubercular 
 employes by, 87-89. 
 
 Milk a better drink than beer, 
 115 - 
 
 Miners, conditions in homes of, 
 137 - 142 - 
 
 Mines, “Safety First” principle 
 in, 51-52* 
 
 Minneapolis Industrial Associa¬ 
 tion, industrial town centre 
 planned by, 7. 
 
 Minnesota, safety law in, 57. 
 
 Monotony of work, relieving 
 the, 44-46. 
 
 Morrison, C. J., cited on the 
 eight-hour day, 191. 
 
 Mount McGregor, sanatorium 
 of Metropolitan Life Insur¬ 
 ance Company on, 87. 
 
 Moving pictures, an aid in ac¬ 
 cident prevention, 72. 
 
 Museums of safety, 51. 
 
 N 
 
 National Cash Register works, 
 gardening at, 23; outdoor 
 sports at, 37-38. 
 
 National Civic Federation, work 
 of, for women workers, 101. 
 
 National Lamp Company, fac¬ 
 tory buildings of, 5-7. 
 
 National Tube Works, improved 
 working conditions illustrated 
 at, 75. 
 
 Nela Park factory buildings, 
 5 - 7 - 
 
 Nelson Manufacturing Company, 
 stock ownership plan of, 231- 
 233. 
 
 New England Butt Company, 
 scientific management at, 220. 
 
 New York Central Railroad, 
 safety crusade on, 72. 
 
 New York City, safety exhibit 
 in, 57. 
 
 Nolland, Lloyd, industrial bet¬ 
 terment work of, 109. 
 
 O 
 
 Occupational diseases, 77-79; at¬ 
 tempts to control, 81 ff. 
 
INDEX 
 
 337 
 
 Ohio Industrial Commission, on 
 physical examination of em¬ 
 ployes, 89. 
 
 Order, ideas of, in modern fac¬ 
 tories, 16-21; relation between 
 output and, 25. 
 
 Outings of employes, 31-32. 
 
 P 
 
 Pauly of Seattle, story of, 279- 
 280. 
 
 Pensions for employes, 256-257. 
 
 Pfister & Vogel Leather Com¬ 
 pany, shop lighting by, 11- 
 12; physical examinations of 
 employes by, 85-86. 
 
 Phrenology and psychology, test 
 of use of, in selecting em¬ 
 ployes, 318-320. 
 
 Physical examinations of em¬ 
 ployes, 81-85; of employes, 
 state supervision of, 91. 
 
 Pilgrim Laundry, Brooklyn, 
 benefits of social activities at, 
 45; vacation idea developed 
 at, 99-100; solution of ques¬ 
 tion of working hours by, 181- 
 189; building of, 183-184; 
 meetings of management and 
 employes at, 324. 
 
 Plimpton Press, scientific man¬ 
 agement at, 220. 
 
 Price, C. W., welfare work of, 
 10-11. 
 
 Procter & Gamble, temperance 
 measures taken by, 123; stock 
 ownership plan of, 238-249. 
 
 Profit sharing, results of plans 
 of, 224, 226-227; reasons for 
 failures of some plans for, 
 228-230; stock ownership and 
 partnerships as forms of, 230- 
 256. 
 
 Progress Club at German-Amer- 
 
 . ican Button Company, 324-325. 
 
 Psychological tests for choosing 
 employes, question of value of, 
 318-320. 
 
 Pullman, Illinois, failure of, due 
 to over-fraternalism, 146. 
 
 Q 
 
 Quack remedies, use of, by 
 women workers, 108. 
 
 Quality Club of Hickey-Freeman 
 Company, Rochester, 325-326. 
 
 R 
 
 Railroads, records of accidents 
 on, 54; cost of accidents on, 
 68; safety crusades on, 69, 71- 
 
 7 2 * 
 
 Redfield, William C., industrial 
 creed of, 199-202. 
 
 S 
 
 Safety movement in workshops, 
 50-76; effect of, on drink 
 question, in; as a means of 
 education, 290-292; ability to 
 lead and direct cultivated by, 
 307; training in co-operation 
 given by, 311. 
 
 Saloons, fighting the, 110-133. 
 
 Savings funds for employes, 288. 
 
 Schwarze, Mr., handbook on 
 shop lighting by, 12; quoted, 
 24. 
 
 Schneider, Dean, use of phrenol¬ 
 ogy and psychology in choos¬ 
 ing employes tested by, 318- 
 320. 
 
 Scientific management, results 
 of, 16-21; effect of, on pro¬ 
 duction, 25-27; at Pilgrim 
 Laundry, 187-188; tendency to 
 reduction of hours one result 
 of, 189-190; and the wage 
 question, 193; applied to 
 planning and routing orders, 
 204-205; value as a contribu¬ 
 tion to the wage system, 221; 
 problem of unequal distribu¬ 
 tion of labour solved by, 274; 
 solid, definite and far-reach- 
 
33§ 
 
 INDEX 
 
 ing training which results to 
 workers from, 297; makes all 
 tasks skilled labour, 297-298; 
 encouragement of suggestions 
 under, 302-306. 
 
 Scott paper factory, uniform de¬ 
 vised for women employes at, 
 294. 
 
 Seasonal trades, working hours 
 in, 177-181. 
 
 Short time, unemployment due 
 to, 266 ff.; handling of, to best 
 advantage, 276-279. 
 
 Sickness, money losses due to, 
 94 - ■ 
 
 Stabilisation of labour, 258-289. 
 
 State supervision of physical ex¬ 
 amination of employes, 91. 
 
 Stock-ownership plans as a form 
 of profit sharing, 230-256. 
 
 Suggestions by employes, en¬ 
 couragement of, 302-306. 
 
 Sunday, Billy, fight on “ booze ” 
 by, 123-124. 
 
 T 
 
 Tanneries, accidents in, 59. 
 
 “Task and bonus” plan, 207. 
 
 Taylor, Frederick, on reasons 
 for failure of many profit- 
 sharing plans, 228. 
 
 Temperature in factories, 12-13. 
 
 Tennessee Coal, Iron and Rail¬ 
 road Company, results of 
 health work of, 108-109. 
 
 Thompson, C. Bertrand, quoted 
 on factory reorganisation, 308- 
 309. 
 
 Thompson, Sanford E., on re¬ 
 duction of hours in scien¬ 
 tifically managed shops, 190; 
 on the task and bonus plan, 
 207-208. 
 
 Towne, Henry B., on scientific 
 management, 209. 
 
 Trade unions, ill-founded objec¬ 
 tion of, to scientific manage¬ 
 ment, 208, 309-310. 
 
 Trespassing on railroads, efforts 
 to stop, 72. 
 
 Tubercular employes, care of, 
 86-87. 
 
 U 
 
 Unemployment, problem of, 259- 
 289. 
 
 Unemployment insurance, 288. 
 
 United Shoe Machinery Com¬ 
 pany, outdoor life for em¬ 
 ployes encouraged by, 38. 
 
 United States government, la¬ 
 bour exchange established by, 
 286-287. 
 
 United States Steel Corporation, 
 “Safety First” principle pro¬ 
 moted by, 52; Museum of 
 Safety of, 55; stock-ownership 
 plan of, for employes, 235- 
 239; pension fund of, 256. 
 
 V 
 
 Vacation Committee, New York, 
 handling of unemployment 
 question by, 280-281. 
 
 Vacation Savings Bank, inaug¬ 
 uration of, 102. 
 
 Vacations for employes, 98-102. 
 
 Vandergrift, Pa., example of 
 beautifying of factory sur¬ 
 roundings at, 22-23; results of 
 no-liquor policy at, 118-119; 
 account of, as a successful 
 workingman’s town, 146-155; 
 the eight-hour day at, 172-173. 
 
 Ventilation of factories, 9, 12- 
 13; relation between output 
 and, 24-25. 
 
 W 
 
 Wages question, 193-221. 
 
 Wallis & Goodwillie, architects 
 of Nela Park buildings, 5. 
 
 Watertown Arsenal, results of 
 scientific management at, 18, 
 213, 217. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Welfare work in factories, 14- 
 15; results of, 26-28. 
 
 Williams, James H., wage pol¬ 
 icy of, 196-199; working con¬ 
 ditions at factory of, 202. 
 
 Wisconsin Industrial Commis¬ 
 sion, industrial standards es¬ 
 tablished by, 11, 12; safety 
 bulletins published by, 56; 
 plan for hours of work in can¬ 
 neries devised by, 177-179. 
 
 339 
 
 Worcester Corset Company, 
 health work of, 104. 
 
 Workmen’s compensation laws, 
 73 - 
 
 Y 
 
 Young, Robert J., safety bulle¬ 
 tins by, 65-67. 
 
 Youngstown Sheet and Tube 
 Company, study of accidents 
 at, 9. 
 
 Printed in the United States of America. 
 
■yHE following pages contain advertisements 
 of Macmillan books by the same author 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 The Ways of Women 
 
 By IDA M. TARBELL 
 
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 What are the activities and responsibilities of the 
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 The History of the 
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 It is perhaps one of the most accurate descriptions of Napoleon 
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 so well maintained that it is most entertaining reading. 
 
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3 9031 
 
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 Tarbell, Ida M. 
 
 l'-ew ideals in business 
 
 1831*07 
 
 ( 1916 ) 
 
 
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