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LIFE AND SERVICE SERIES 
 
 STUDIES IN THE PARABLES OF JESUS 
 HALFORD EB. LUCCOCK 
 
 HEART MESSAGES FROM THE PSALMS 
 RALPH WELLES KEELER 
 
 AMOS, PROPHET OF A NEW ORDER 
 LINDSAY B. LONGACRE 
 
 ELEMENTS OF PERSONAL CHRISTIANITY 
 WILLIAM 8S. MITCHELL 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN IN SOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS 
 DORR FRANK DIEFENDORF 
 
 DEUTERONOMY, A PROPHETIC LAWBOOK 
 LINDSAY B. LONGACRE 
 
 CHRISTIAN IDEALS IN INDUSTRY 
 F. BRNEST JOHNSON AND ARTHUR E, HOLT 
 
LIFE AND SERVICE SERIES 
 SE 
 Edited by HENRY H. MEYER 
 
 Christian Ideals 
 in Industry 
 
 F. ERNEST JOHNSON 
 and 
 
 ARTHUR E. HOLT 
 Approved by the Committee on Curriculum 
 
 of the Board of Sunday Schools of the 
 Methodist Episcopal Church 
 
 THE METHODIST BOOK CONCERN 
 NEW YORK CINCINNATI 
 
Copyright, 1924, by 
 .F. ERNEST JOHNSON 
 
 All rights reserved, including that of translation into 
 foreign languages, including the Scandinavian 
 
 Printed in the United States of America 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 II. Wuat Inpustry DoEs To THE EMPLOYER.... 
 Ill. How Inpustry AFFECTS THE WORKER....... 
 IV. INDUSTRY AND THE COMMUNITY............. 
 
 V. CoMPETITION FOR WAGES AND PROFITS—THE 
 
 PEER EA BAB MLD GAUNE har tag Ow AM ak ok a 
 
 ‘VIL. Curistian FELLowsHie in INDUSTRY—THE 
 Ee gr cak Cae OE J Re DLOORIRAD yah Geuaa pum vu este MAMEVE RS OM Rh 
 
 VIII. New Morives For Onp-—ras GOAL OF THE 
 
 X. STANDARDS oF Livinc—-EVERYBODY’S GAME. . 
 XI. CyristTians AS INVESTORS—THE RISKS OF 
 
 XIU. Burpine THE FELLowsnHre In INDUSTRY—THE 
 CS OMAT ADURN TURBOS eae Wigaa bos 
 
N 
 it 
 
 ] 
 7a aye 
 
 a Gt ea 
 Waa tie 8b 
 4 dal ) f 31, 
 
 iw 
 Dot Alle 
 
 i a Loe pe 
 
 Gee ie 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 Tu1s book has been written for the use of young peo- 
 ple’s and adult classes in our church schools. It is hoped 
 that it may likewise be serviceable to the individual reader. 
 No effort has been made to lay down formal principles or 
 to prescribe rules for modern industry. Rather, the 
 authors have taken it for granted that Christian people 
 are fairly clear in their own minds as to the essential prin- 
 ciples of Christianity and have therefore sought only to 
 aid in determining what these principles require in terms 
 of industrial life. The questions that occur so freely in 
 the text, and especially those at the conclusion of each 
 chapter, are quite as important as anything else in the 
 book. We are more interested in stating and analyzing 
 the problems than in any specific solutions that may be 
 suggested in the text. 
 
 Doubtless there is no one set of correct answers to the 
 questions we have raised. The working life of the world 
 is so complex that it cannot be dealt with arbitrarily or 
 treated dogmatically. The Christian ideal for industry 
 cannot be once for all prescribed; it must be worked 
 out. It is our hope that what we have written will aid 
 serious-minded Christians who have a spirit of inquiry 
 and who desire to study the moral problems of industry 
 to push a little farther along the Christian way of life. 
 
 Tue AvUTHORS, 
 
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 rh 
 
 Vos die 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 THE INDUSTRIAL PROBLEM AND HOW IT CAME 
 ABOUT 
 
 Genesis 1. 26-30; 13. 7-9; Isaiah 1. 18-20 
 
 Wuy is it that we habitually speak of labor and indus- 
 try as “problems”? Are they moral problems, which con- 
 cern the ordinary citizen, or are they mainly technical 
 questions of business and engineering, with which most of 
 us have little to do? Is there any clear distinction be- 
 tween technical questions and moral questions? Have we 
 as Christian citizens any responsibility for the industrial 
 situation? How did the industrial struggle originate, and 
 must it remain with us always? 
 
 Tae INDUSTRIAL PRopLEM—WuHOoSsE ProsLEM Is Ir? 
 
 To be sure, it does not seem to be everybody’s problem. 
 Plenty of people are not interested in it. Perhaps not 
 everyone who has decided to buy this book is really con- 
 vinced that the industrial problem is anything he should 
 worry about. Probably most of us, unless we are actually 
 engaged somewhere in the process of manufacturing goods 
 or of selling them, think of industry as something far 
 removed from us. 
 
 Nevertheless, all have a very close relation to the work- 
 ing world. Industry is so elemental that it “gets” us all. 
 Take, for example, the great strikes of 1922, on the rail- 
 roads and in the bituminous coal mines. Every business 
 man, every worker, every citizen, had something at stake 
 in the settlement of those great conflicts. The relation- 
 ship is just as close, even if not so conscious, in time of 
 industrial peace. If we do not actually gain our living 
 through a pay envelope, we are customers of those who sell 
 the products of industry, and we have a first-hand inter- 
 
 9 
 
10 CHRISTIAN IDEALS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 est in the quality and price of what we buy. If we, or 
 those who earn the money that we live on, are engaged in 
 professional or commercial pursuits, the prosperity of the 
 community is a matter of first importance to us, and that, 
 in turn, depends chiefly on the community’s industries. 
 That is to say, a town or city prospers only as its workers 
 are employed at good wages so that they can buy what 
 they need and thus the merchants may have customers, 
 the banks may have borrowers, the doctors’ patients may 
 have money to pay them, the lawyers may have a practice 
 which only active business can give, and so on all along 
 the line. Even the churches reflect very quickly any 
 change in the general prosperity of the community. In 
 fact, all our activities are closely related to industry. 
 
 Tue War Tuat Has No Armistice 
 
 It is a commonplace that industry to-day is character- 
 ized by strife and discontent. Grievances are encountered 
 everywhere. There are hostile groups of employers and 
 workers which every now and then involve the whole com- 
 munity in controversy, sometimes in serious privation and 
 loss. Many cities and country communities aré in an 
 almost continuous state of stress and strain because of 
 industrial unrest and controversy. Some of us have lived 
 in or visited cities where strikes were in progress. It is 
 nothing less than war on a small scale—and sometimes 
 on a fairly big scale. ‘There are communities where a 
 deep resentment and hostility smolder all the time in the 
 hearts of working people and of their employers. The 
 fact is, industrial controversy is so much in the air to-day 
 that one may be drawn into it even against his will 
 whether he is in a Pullman car or a barber shop. 
 
 This aspect of struggle which the industrial world pre- 
 sents affects different people in different ways. Some are 
 attracted by it. It offers adventure, a thrilling game with 
 great stakes in money, prestige, and power. Some are em- 
 bittered by it because of thwarted ambitions and hopes. 
 Some look upon it dull-eyed and listless because they 
 have already been broken and submerged by it. Some are 
 moved to moral indignation because of injustices that re- 
 
THE INDUSTRIAL PROBLEM 11 
 
 sult from it. They find in the industrial situation a denial 
 of the Christian ideal. What shall we find in it? 
 
 PLAYING THE GAME 
 
 Perhaps the most striking thing about modern industry 
 is that in spite of all the fighting and the bitterness, and 
 in spite of the distress at the lower end of the economic 
 scale and the anxiety often suffered at the upper end, the 
 work of the world still goes on with a great deal of en- 
 thusiasm. ‘To be sure, most of the enthusiasm is among 
 those who are “getting on.” There are multitudes to 
 whom their daily work is a drab routine. But almost 
 everyone who isn’t “getting on” seems to hope later to 
 hit his stride. The whole performance is very much of a 
 game. For some the stakes are great; for some they are 
 relatively small, But for most healthy human beings 
 there is in their work, as in their play, an element of 
 gamble—a hazard and a hope. Next to bread, men seem 
 to demand adventure. In greater or less measure their 
 work gives it to them. 
 
 Is it not instructive, when one thinks of it, that we use 
 the word “game” so much in describing our serious activi- 
 ties? “What business are you in?” a man is asked. “Oh, 
 I’m in the chain-store game” is a typical form of reply. 
 Young people are counseled as they approach maturity 
 and the responsibilities of adult life to 
 
 “Play up, play up, and play the game!” 
 
 The essence of the Rooseveltian morals which have become 
 almost a part of American tradition was in “playing the 
 game according to the rule.” In his thirty-third year 
 Andrew Carnegie cast up accounts and wrote a memo- 
 randum which was discovered after his death. In it 
 he said, “Whatever I engage in I must push inordinately ; 
 therefore, I should be careful to choose that life which will 
 be the most elevating in its character.” Here we have it 
 again—“push inordinately” ; it is the urge of the game. 
 
 In this respect all people are very much alike, no matter 
 to what group they belong. They are playing the same 
 game and they seek the same rewards. And because the 
 
12 CHRISTIAN IDEALS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 stakes of the game are limited—because it is a game, and 
 somebody stands to win and somebody stands to lose—the 
 contest is sharp and often bitter. ‘There must be some 
 accounting for the way in which selfishness and bitterness 
 and greed have entered into the world of business and 
 industry. Are we to take literally the Old Testament 
 story of the coming of manual toil as the fruit of “man’s 
 first disobedience,” or can work be redeemed and indus- 
 trial relations be made happy and wholesome? 
 
 Tue Roap Wr Have TrRAvELED—THE INDUSTRIAL 
 REVOLUTION 
 
 We shall have a close-up of this whole situation later 
 on. For the present let us inquire how the industrial 
 tangle came about, in order that we may play our part 
 in whatever needs to be done. For we cannot escape some 
 responsibility, even if it is limited to voting on industrial 
 questions when they have become political issues. Such 
 issues often play a big part in national and State politics. 
 The pity of our democracy is that while too few people 
 are both intelligent and conscientious about the problems 
 to be solved, the worthless opinion—if there is any quite 
 worthless—registers as well as any other. Can we not at 
 least assume “the moral obligation to be intelligent’? ? 
 
 The industrial situation, to be understood, has to be 
 seen against its historical background. The Industrial 
 Revolution, which took place in the late eighteenth and 
 early nineteenth centuries, worked a profound change in 
 the lives of men and women both in England and America. 
 It brought about the regime of power-driven machinery, 
 whereby the work of many skilled hands could be done 
 much more quickly, more accurately, and more cheaply by 
 elaborate mechanisms driven by steam. A few inventions, 
 accompanied by the rapid development of coal mining, 
 made it possible to manufacture enormous quantities of 
 goods and thus potentially to improve the standards of 
 living. 
 
 Waat tae Macurye Dip ro THe INprvipvAL 
 The new factory system brought about great changes 
 
THE INDUSTRIAL PROBLEM 13 
 
 not only in the organization of industry but in the lives 
 of the working people as well. It centered interest in the 
 establishment—in equipment, in capital. The individual 
 workman became a mere accessory. Hitherto he had been 
 central in industry. His status in the community was 
 more nearly comparable to that of a professional man than 
 to that of a modern factory worker. A trade meant some- 
 thing distinctive and gave both economic security and 
 social status. What is still more important, the crafts- 
 man’s interest prior to the Industrial Revolution was in 
 no definite way opposed to that of his employer. He 
 passed normally through the three stages—apprentice, 
 journeyman, and master craftsman, or employer. Under 
 such conditions no labor movement worthy the name could 
 arise. But with the beginning of modern industrial 
 organization based upon a capitalist system of ownership, 
 the cleavage between owner and worker appeared and it 
 has steadily deepened. Out of the factory system of manu- 
 facture has come a new industrial world. 
 
 CROWDING THE PROPLE Orr THE LAND 
 
 These industrial changes, which were going on in Eng- 
 land from, let us say, 1760 on, were accompanied by far- 
 reaching agricultural changes. New methods of farm- 
 ing were developed with elaborate schemes of draining, 
 fertilizing, and rotation of crops; the raising of new crops 
 was begun, and new breeds of stock appeared. All 
 this caused the millions of tracts of uninclosed common 
 land to be looked upon enviously by capitalists who were 
 coming forward with greatly increased offerings of money 
 to finance large scale production. Thus there was brought 
 about the “inclosure” of common lands in such whole- 
 sale fashion that the poor who had supplemented their 
 incomes by means of these lands suffered new hardship. 
 A bit of doggerel of the period tells the story: 
 
 “The law looks up the man or woman 
 
 Who steals the goose from off the common; 
 But leaves the greater villain loose 
 
 Who steals the common from the goose.” 
 
14 CHRISTIAN IDEALS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 Laissez Fatrrre—“Lirss GOVERNMENT IN Bustnzss” 
 
 The small landholders, like the domestic manufacturers, 
 were engulfed by the new regime. An old civilization 
 was passing away. The political status of the worker 
 changed. His living had been in some measure safe- 
 guarded by the state. At least it was assumed that such 
 was the duty of the state. Not so any longer. A new 
 doctrine of “individualism” arose, expressed by the French 
 term laissez faire—“let alone.” According to this theory 
 it was contrary to natural law to attempt to control 
 economic forces. They must be allowed to work them- 
 selves out. This process was held to be altogether con- 
 sistent with religion and humanitarianism, It was by no 
 means consciously immoral. On the contrary, it was care- 
 fully worked out that the best way to provide for all 
 individuals was to let each individual have his own way 
 (within the limits of the penal law) and to seek his own 
 ends. The idea was that more people would be well 
 served if everyone were free to serve himself. Thus “en- 
 lightened self-interest”? came into prominence in moral 
 philosophy. | 
 
 Why should this system of industrial organization and 
 of ethics be called “individualism” ? The record we are 
 examining indicates that it worked more havoe among 
 individuals than any other philosophy or scheme in his- 
 tory. Yet it is not inaptly named, since it vested control 
 in the individual—any individual who could exercise it. 
 Tt put the mass of individuals at the mercy of the few. 
 It said to the state: “Let people alone. Let those who can, 
 do.” It was not unlike the slogan we hear nowadays, “Less 
 government in business!” Here was the enthronement of 
 
 ws Je the good: old rule, 
 
 - + . the simple plan, 
 
 That they should take who have the power 
 And they should keep who can.” 
 
 RELIGION AND PRIVILEGE 
 
 This could result in only one thing—concentration of 
 power and privilege in a few hands. And along with this 
 
THE INDUSTRIAL PROBLEM 15 
 
 change came an interesting religious development. Men 
 of vast possessions began to conceive of themselves as 
 especially ordained of God to hold the wealth of the world 
 in their hands. The magnitude of these changes is ac- 
 centuated if we remember that only about two centuries 
 before, England was deciding whether it should be law- 
 ful for a man to accept interest on his money. Usury, 
 now limited in its significance to unlawful interest, 
 originally meant interest in any amount. The objection 
 to interest, and hence to the very central principle of 
 capitalism, was made on scriptural grounds, and it was so 
 strong that the first time the English Parliament legalized 
 interest it was obliged to rescind its action. Apparently 
 the moral and religious sentiment on the subject was over- 
 whelmed by the tide of economic development. 
 
 “Orp Worups ror New” 
 
 So gigantic were the changes which preceded and ac- 
 companied the Industrial Revolution. An English writer, 
 Arthur J. Penty, brought out a book a few years ago 
 under the caption Old Worlds for New—turning about 
 the title made famous by H. G. Wells.. In it he advocated 
 a return to the simple organization of industrial society 
 —less machinery, less speed, which would mean less 
 luxury goods. He proposed that we should return to the 
 state of affairs that existed before the factory system broke 
 out in the industrial world. Such a return to the “simple 
 life” would certainly have a startling effect on our indus- 
 trial order. But is there any likelihood that mankind will 
 ever persuade itself that the way forward is to be found 
 in limiting the inventive, creative, labor-saving, speed- 
 producing activities of modern science? On the contrary, 
 even the most idealistic of reformers seem to look for the 
 attainment of the ideal not in putting limits upon scien- 
 tific progress but in the social control of what we make. 
 At the same time, from the Christian point of view, one 
 is inclined to ask whether Mr. Penty and those who hold 
 with him have not made out a challenging case. Even 
 though we assume, as probably most of us do, that modern 
 economic and industrial evolution has been inevitable, is 
 
16 CHRISTIAN IDEALS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 it not sobering and salutary to consider the price that 
 has been paid for industrialism ? 
 
 Tuer AMERICAN TRADITION 
 
 The laissez-faire idea was given classic expression in a 
 book, the Wealth of Nations, by Adam Smith, which ap- 
 peared in the very year our Declaration of Independence 
 was signed. Thus, while we were declaring political inde- 
 pendence of England we were taking over the new eco- 
 nomic individualism that was becoming regnant there. 
 American industry grew up under the traditions that 
 were created at that time. Economic individualism, trans- 
 planted to America, throve like a weed in a freshly dug 
 garden. Here was unlimited opportunity. Every enter- 
 praae person, whatever kind of natural resources he set 
 
 imself to exploit and conserve, had at his disposal the 
 lavish provisions of nature. The New World required 
 little for its conquest and cultivation save adventurous, 
 ambitious spirits who sought to carve themselves fortunes 
 out of the wilderness. In this atmosphere of freedom, 
 independence, and adventure the ideals of America were 
 forged. Those ideals are expressed in such terms as 
 independence, private rights, individual initiative, eco- 
 nomic freedom—all, of course, within limits laid down by 
 the rules of the game. And the rules of the game are 
 such as to guarantee to every person a maximum of free- 
 dom for the exercise of property rights. 
 
 This process has borne fruit in religion as well as in 
 business and industry. ‘The tremendous number of reli- 
 gious sects is a reflection of the ideal of free expression 
 for the individual. Differentiation rather than conformity, 
 freedom rather than discipline, rights rather than duties 
 —these have been the emphases. 
 
 Tuer Passine oF THE FRONTIER 
 
 All this worked well in America from the point of view 
 of visible, material results, so long as we had a frontier. 
 The restless spirit who would not conform or submit to 
 discipline had only to push out into the wilderness and 
 become a hero and grow rich. America has been explored, 
 
THE INDUSTRIAL PROBLEM 1% 
 
 conquered, and subdued by people who had a certain con- 
 tempt for the restraint of law and convention. Corpora- 
 tions obtained concessions of fabulous worth; mineral 
 lands were preempted and held against a day of the com- 
 munity’s future need; the sites for future cities were 
 bought for a song, and their purchasers made millionaires 
 in return for nothing but waiting. And while this process 
 of concentration was going on, the stratification of eco- 
 nomic society was becoming more and more marked. 
 Keeping pace with the exploitation of resources were the 
 spread of power machinery and the growth and concentra- 
 tion of industrial populations. And presently—a decade 
 or so before the end of the nineteenth century—the frontier 
 became exhausted; there were no more fields to conquer. 
 Our great individualistic economic order began to fall 
 back upon itself. Prospectors who had found it easy to 
 avoid conflict with their neighbors over rival claims, and 
 corporate interests that had found it simpler to obtain 
 new concessions than to engage in competitive strife now 
 had to contend with one another—competition began to 
 grow keen. From that time on economic individualism in 
 America meant that most individuals were to be pressed 
 very close to the ground in order that the few might be 
 unrestrained in their pursuit of gain. It would go with- 
 out saying, perhaps, that the present industrial situation 
 is not the product of anyone’s design—it “just growed.” 
 
 Tue PLIGHT OF THE FARMER 
 
 As in England, our industrial changes have been ac- 
 companied by agricultural changes. With the virtual 
 exhaustion of public lands, farming has become a pre- 
 carious and burdensome occupation save for those with 
 abundant skill and resources. Land holdings have tended 
 to become concentrated, and tenant farming has become 
 more widespread and less profitable. The small farmer 
 has found himself in competition with the big manu- 
 facturer for labor and for capital as well. 
 
 Thus the farmer’s relation to the industrial situation is 
 paradoxical. He is more and more hostile to big combina- 
 tions of capital because of the great difficulty he has had 
 
18 CHRISTIAN IDEALS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 in financing his operations. He deeply resents the way 
 in which transportation privileges have been monopolized. 
 At the same time he has a tendency to be unsympathetic 
 with industrial labor because of its demands for higher 
 cash wages and shorter working hours. 
 
 Tuer Ciass STRUGGLE 
 
 Thus there has gradually appeared a phase of what 
 the socialists call the class struggle. There is, to be sure, 
 no unified working-class movement parallel to what is 
 found in several European countries, but those who work 
 for wages have come little by little to consciousness of a 
 common interest and of what they consider a common 
 foe. On the other hand, the propertied class and all whose 
 interests are identified with theirs tend also to become 
 class conscious. ‘The cleavage has deepened since the 
 Great War ended. There was a certain recklessness about 
 the way labor questions were handled during the war. 
 The employer could better afford to settle a dispute on 
 almost any terms than to suffer a stoppage. The end of 
 the war was the signal for a reckoning, and since the 
 Armistice a bitter fight has been waged in American in- 
 dustry. 
 
 We are now in an unstable equilibrium of balanced 
 hostile powers; yet the return of business prosperity is 
 giving some respite. We seem to be on an upward curve 
 of the business cycle. Shall prosperity be used for the 
 betterment of industrial relations or will the next de- 
 pression find us with our lesson unlearned ? 
 
 For tHe Discussion Group 
 
 Do you agree that one of the strongest incentives in 
 business and industry is the impulse to “play the game”? 
 Do men play a clean game as eagerly as a crooked game? 
 
 Are there aspects of the industrial game that are ob- 
 viously unchristian? What are they? Is the difficulty 
 with the game itself or with the way in which it is played ? 
 
 Would it be possible to go back to a simpler economic 
 order with less luxury, less machinery, and a smaller 
 
THE INDUSTRIAL PROBLEM 19 
 
 variety of goods? Would it be desirable? Is there any 
 likelihood that we shall ever try it? 
 
 Is the element of struggle that we find in the indus- 
 trial world a wholesome factor in human life? Is it 
 necessary in order to develop character? Is it inevitable? 
 
 If individualism has done harm in the industrial world, 
 was it incidental to industrial development, or is the indi- 
 vidualistic ideal itself incompatible with Christianity ? 
 
 Is the average worker better off because of the Indus- 
 trial Revolution or worse off? Are you thinking in terms 
 of income or of personality? 
 
 Some people say that the great game being played in 
 business and industry is crude and materialistic, but that 
 it is in accord with human nature and that there is no 
 alternative. Others say that nothing is wrong except 
 that the rules of the game are not always fair; they would 
 regulate the competitive struggle. Still others maintain 
 that the competitive struggle over the goods of life is in 
 itself wrong and needless; they would change the stakes 
 of the game from material to spiritual rewards. What 
 do you say? 
 
CHAPTER II 
 WHAT INDUSTRY DOES TO THE EMPLOYER 
 Matthew 20. 1-14; 25-28 
 
 Onz of two men who were recently discussing the indus- 
 trial situation remarked, “I wish we could have a calm 
 consideration of the question, Who is being hurt in in- 
 dustry to-day?” He meant that the whole situation is so 
 marked by conflict and partisanship and admits of so 
 many contrary yet plausible contentions that the only 
 way to proceed with any assurance is to consider dis- 
 passionately everybody’s grievance—or, to put it slangily, 
 to listen to everybody’s “squeal.” Would not this be a 
 good way to approach our task, asking the question suc- 
 cessively for the employer, the worker, and the consumer 
 —meaning by that term, of course, the whole community ? 
 First, then, how is the employer hurt in industry to-day ? 
 Not merely in a physical or financial sense, but morally, 
 spiritually? Is the industrial game unfair to ‘him? 
 Would the average employer change places with one of 
 his employees ? 
 
 Frttow SUFFERERS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 An enterprising newspaper writer a few years ago intro- 
 duced a friend of his who was a member of the I. W. W. 
 to another friend who was a millionaire business man. 
 They met in the latter’s library, and he took possession 
 of the interview from the start. The one-sided conversa- 
 tion was something like this: “You fellows think you are 
 badly used. As a matter of fact, you don’t know what 
 trouble and hardship are. You have no properties to 
 defend, no investment to worry over, no trusts to be re- 
 sponsible for. You don’t know what it is to lie awake 
 at night with a business man’s load of care on your mind.” 
 Before he could go further, his new acquaintance stretched 
 out his hand and said, “Brother, this damned social order 
 
 20 
 
INDUSTRY AND THE EMPLOYER 21 
 
 ain’t no good for either of us, is it?” Perhaps no inci- 
 dent could have shown more dramatically the heritage of 
 trouble that is visited upon both sides of the present in- 
 dustrial world. 
 
 Another very illuminating incident is one that has been 
 related in the press about the West Virginia coal mine 
 that is owned by the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers. 
 This is an extraordinary example of a labor group turn- 
 ing employer and experiencing the ills that employing 
 flesh is heir to. A strike was called by the mine workers’ 
 union against the union owners of the mine. Such a 
 quarrel always has at least two sides, but on its face it 
 indicates that if two groups of union men, when one of 
 them begins to play the réle of employer, encounter seri- 
 ous difficulties, a lifelong employer who has less oppor- 
 tunity to know the workers’ point of view ought to be 
 listened to with respectful attention, whether in any par- 
 ticular case he is right or wrong. 
 
 Tur Hazarps or BUSINESS 
 
 The employer is at a tremendous advantage over the 
 industrial worker in that he owns the works and his im- 
 mediate hazards are fewer. A month of sickness will 
 not pauperize him. A quarrel with a foreman will not 
 cost him his job. But he has a multitude of hazards of 
 which the workman knows nothing. One month he may 
 be highly prosperous with all the contracts he can fill, and 
 in another month, owing to a sudden change in the 
 market for either his raw materials or his finished goods, 
 his profits may be wiped out. A financial stringency may 
 cost him his customary credit at the bank; a change in 
 competitive conditions may shift him from the foremost 
 ranks to the rear of the industrial procession; a physical 
 disaster may wipe out his property beyond all possibility 
 of adequate reimbursement by insurance; laws may be 
 passed that make hitherto perfectly legitimate practices 
 illegal; a strike, due to conditions over which he has no 
 control, for demands with which he may even sympathize, 
 may virtually ruin his business. Aside from all these 
 catastrophic happenings, the employer may habitually 
 
22 CHRISTIAN IDEALS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 suffer from a noncooperative spirit on the part of the 
 workmen which he is at a loss to understand. They may 
 use obstructive tactics—sabotage; they may limit output 
 for reasons which appear to them wholly justifiable; yet 
 the result may be that the employers’ prosperity is turned 
 into a serious reverse. 
 
 THe “Harp-Hreapep Business Man” 
 
 We speak commonly of “hard-headed” business men— 
 sometimes latterly the term used is “hard-boiled.” Per- 
 haps it is not too much to say that the type those words 
 describe is the natural product of a business regime 
 that abounds in risks, in unpredictable events, in hard 
 competitive struggles, in personal disillusionments, and 
 in at least as many disastrous failures as successes. When 
 it is remembered that a very large proportion of indus- 
 trial enterprises fail, it hardly seems inaccurate to say 
 that an industrial employer’s career is less the pursuit 
 of success than the attempt to escape failure. Such is 
 the effect of our highly competitive order. If we are seek- 
 ing a Christian ideal for industry, it must be one that 
 can successfully take account of the situation we have 
 been picturing. | 
 
 It happens not infrequently that an employer, through 
 getting a “rotten deal,” loses his sympathy for labor. One 
 of the present writers has an employer friend of fine char- 
 acter, whose conscience is as sensitive to inequities in in- 
 dustrial relationships as to a failure in personal integrity. 
 He urged his employees to join a union. After they had 
 done so, a new kind of leadership appeared, a disastrous 
 strike followed, he suffered attacks upon his property 
 (which injured his feelings more than his buildings), and 
 now he says, “Never again!” Yet in a tone of troubled 
 seriousness, he added to the narrative of his experience: 
 “If the men are not organized, they will be exploited. 
 What can I do?’ But when the fight broke he fought 
 like the others—fire with fire. 
 
 Then, too, many employers are unfeignedly fearful of 
 radicalism. How much ground there is for this fear is 
 not in question here; only the fact of the employers’ atti- 
 
INDUSTRY AND THE EMPLOYER 23 
 
 tude matters. And just as the tendency prevails in gov- 
 ernment and in education, especially since the Great 
 War, to foster “correct thinking” by repressing what is 
 considered to be wrong, so the employer tends to oppose 
 radicalism by belligerent and repressive measures. He 
 may confuse very harmless undertakings and very proper 
 aspirations with “red” propaganda because he does not 
 understand them. And the vague fear that he harbors 
 makes him nervous, irritable, and hard to get on with. It 
 is quite common for employers to classify all labor repre- 
 sentatives and organizers as “agitators” and to treat them 
 as enemies. And so long as industrial relations rest on a 
 competitive struggle over wages and work conditions, only 
 the employer with much sympathy and discernment is 
 likely to feel otherwise. 
 
 Tuer Mora Hazarps or EMPLOYERS 
 
 The intellectual perplexities and moral hazards of the 
 employer in the present industrial situation are beyond 
 computation. One is sometimes amazed to find how warm 
 a heart beats beneath an exterior of resentment and sus- 
 picion. An employer, recently, in conversation with a 
 minister, maintained an attitude of reserve until he found 
 that the other man had some understanding of his diffi- 
 culties; then he opened up and confessed his own yearn- 
 ing for an ethical and spiritual adjustment of the contra- 
 dictory elements in his experience. 
 
 From an ethical point of view the employer is perhaps 
 harder hit in industry than the worker. That is to say, 
 he has to face most contradictory situations. Take, for 
 example, the employer who professes allegiance to Chris- 
 tian standards of conduct, who believes in the Golden 
 Rule and the ideal of service and “stewardship.” How 
 can he live up to all these ideals and still build up his 
 business on a margin so small that his employees have to 
 live on less than even a conservatively estimated living 
 wage? 
 
 THe Emproyer’s Cop or Etutics 
 A recent analysis of this problem, given by a well- 
 
24 CHRISTIAN IDEALS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 known employer, is very illuminating in that it shows 
 the ethical predicament in which a man with professed 
 high ideals may find himself. Surely we shall make little 
 headway in quest of the Christian ideal save as we take 
 account of such actual situations and practical necessities 
 as are here disclosed. This employer asked the question, 
 “What is my duty as an employer of labor?” And he an- 
 swered it in brief thus: “I must employ my men under 
 good, wholesome conditions of work, and I must pay them 
 just wages—but no more.” Then he asked the question, 
 “What is my duty to my employees as a man?” And in 
 
 - answer to it he reasoned thus: “If a workman has received 
 
 just wages, has had everything from me that my duty as 
 an employer dictates, and is still in need and comes to 
 me as a man for assistance, then as a brother I must be 
 generous with him. The two relationships are entirely 
 separate and must not be confused.” Now, the interesting 
 thing about this analysis is that it is inevitable unless one 
 questions the moral quality of the existing system of rela- 
 tionships. If “just” wages are determined by a law that 
 has no reference to brotherhood, if corporate relations 
 are one thing and personal relations another, then one 
 need not be concerned about the Christian ideal for indus- 
 try. On that supposition one learns from economics how 
 to be a good employer, and from ethics and religion how 
 to be a good man. Whatever may be said for this dual- 
 ism, no justification for it can be found in the New Testa- 
 ment. 
 
 CAUGHT IN THE MACHINE 
 
 The point is that the employer is primarily a business 
 man seeking to make money. He is driven relentlessly by 
 the logic of his position to the acceptance without ques- 
 tion of the existing commercial regime in industrial so- 
 ciety. Thus he becomes less and less concerned about an 
 inclusive Christian ideal.. His conscience is satisfied if he 
 obeys the rules of the game. 
 
 Not the least disadvantage, morally, of an employer is 
 the hardening effect of being forced to be always on the 
 defensive. With an active “progressive” movement in 
 
INDUSTRY AND THE EMPLOYER 25 
 
 politics, and an aggressive labor movement, the employer 
 is tempted to disregard all moralizing, to take a cynical 
 attitude toward his critics, and to go complacently on his 
 own way. He finds escape from an intolerable situation 
 by assuming a certain hardness and indifference. There 
 could scarcely be a better illustration of this attitude than 
 the report that emanated from the American Iron and 
 Steel Institute in the spring of 1923 on the proposal to 
 eliminate the twelve-hour day. It was an extraordinary 
 document defending the long working day and setting at 
 naught the contrary findings of scientific investigators and 
 the protests of citizens and churchmen. Many of the 
 men who voted to adopt the report are themselves church- 
 men whose earnestness could not be questioned. But the 
 business of being a manufacturer and an employer in a 
 time of bitter controversy breeds cynicism and renders a 
 man less susceptible to elemental human considerations. 
 All this suggests the well-known tendency of business 
 men to keep matters of personal friendship separate from 
 business matters lest the former be destroyed by the latter. 
 A Congressional committee which was considering, a year 
 or so after the Armistice, the sending to Europe of fifty 
 million bushels of wheat out of the profits of the United 
 States Grain Corporation, for the relief of suffering there, 
 met the appeals of representative churchmen and citizens 
 with a remarkable coolness, declining to be moved by 
 “sentiment.” It was a typical “hard-headed” business 
 reaction, and had no visible relation to the private char- 
 acters of the men. They were not, at least in the capacity 
 in which they were there assembled, employers or busi- 
 ness men, but they had been molded to a business psy- 
 chology. 
 
 A Business Man at His Worst 
 
 Furthermore, a man who is a very humane employer 
 and who gets on well with his men may be hard and 
 unfeeling when he acts as spokesman for employing inter- 
 ests. ‘The more representative he becomes, the more 
 belligerent he is likely to be. A certain railroad president 
 is thought well of by his men and the unions with which 
 
26 CHRISTIAN IDEALS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 he deals; but when he speaks for the railroad executives 
 of the country he acquires the attitude of a generalissimo, 
 whose business it is to put up a stiff fight and give no 
 quarter. 
 
 The activities of many employers’ associations are 
 _ belligerent in the extreme, and their publicity efforts irri- 
 tating, mischievous, and positively misleading, although 
 the individual members are men of fine character and not 
 at all harsh or crude in their personal attitudes. These 
 very men will criticize labor leaders, and often justly, on 
 the ground that they misrepresent their membership, 
 while they themselves employ publicity men and associa- 
 tion organizers whose main qualification is their capacity 
 to fight with cruel and dishonorable weapons. It may 
 well be argued that the “open-shop” war of the past three 
 years would never have aroused such bitterness if em- 
 ployers had fought their battle themselves instead of 
 allowing hirelings to do it for them—men who had no 
 first-hand interest in industry nor any adequate knowl- 
 edge of labor and who considered that they must smash 
 Jabor organizations in order to earn their salaries. 
 
 THE CONSCIENCE OF A CoRPORATION 
 
 It would be quite unfair to employers as individuals not 
 to take account of the peculiar responsibilities of corpora- 
 tions. Directorship in an industrial corporation carries 
 with it a responsibility not only for employees but for 
 investors. Because wages are assumed to be regulated by 
 the “labor market,” the director keeps his mind on earn- 
 ings and risks and other questions pertaining to finance. 
 The investors are often for the most part people of moder- 
 ate income. They are as likely to complain as the workers 
 are if they do not get a “living dividend.” Like banks, 
 industrial corporations usually try to play safe; they will 
 risk anything rather than the loss of their capital. Then, 
 too, they act at several removals from the people whom 
 their acts affect. The classic expression of Professor 
 Ross, “sinning by syndicate,” is always in point. The 
 human consequences of the decisions reached in directors’ 
 meetings are often but dimly seen. 
 
INDUSTRY AND THE EMPLOYER 27 
 
 A Goop EMPLOYER AND A Bap MANAGER 
 
 Moreover, few people realize what the employer of an 
 idealistic turn of mind is up against when he tries to 
 change things in his own plants. Industrial managers 
 are hard to get. Those who are successful were trained 
 in the days when “hiring and firing’ was a simple and 
 crude process. They change the ideas and habits of a 
 lifetime with great difficulty. There is a common fiction 
 that a wealthy man who owns fifty-one per cent of the 
 stock of a corporation can have his own way in a matter 
 of policy by the mere act of voting. As a matter of fact, 
 many an owner finds himself in a position of humiliating 
 helplessness because of his inability to impart his own 
 views and desires to his organization. An expert plant 
 manager or mine superintendent will sometimes bring 
 his fist down on the table before his theoretical superior 
 who wants to change the labor policy and say: “I have 
 other matters to think of besides labor conditions. I. am 
 delivering to you on twenty things. Don’t rock the boat 
 by interfering in one of them.” It is not a question of 
 discharging a hard-boiled manager; he must be converted 
 and trained over again. 
 
 A socially minded employer will, of course, not claim 
 an alibi because he cannot control things all the 
 way down the line. The situation is a result of a long his- 
 tory of irresponsibility. The recent troubles in bitumi- 
 nous coal fields have shown that the most inexcusable prac- 
 tices can go on without the knowledge of officers of the 
 company in question. A veritable conspiracy may exist on 
 the part of superintendents and foremen against what 
 they consider the impracticable ideas of men “back in New 
 York,” who do not know conditions on the field. The 
 case is very similar to that of Lincoln’s interference for 
 humanitarian reasons with discipline at the battle front. 
 There is a tradition in industry that the officers of a com- 
 pany should never interfere in matters of labor policy any 
 more than in the matter of placing machinery or routing 
 materials through the plant. 
 
 Great advance is being made by some concerns through 
 
28 CHRISTIAN IDEALS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 an entirely new discipline of personnel management. 
 Little by little, employers and great corporations are be- 
 coming conscientious on this subject, are making re- 
 searches on their own account, and are seriously asking 
 not merely what is expedient but what is right in indus- 
 trial relations. 
 
 For tHE Discussion GRouUP 
 
 If you were a workman would you be willing to accept 
 the employer’s burdens if you could have his advantages? 
 
 Under present conditions can an employer live up to 
 Christian standards and still maintain himself in a com- 
 petitive market? 
 
 What do you say of the employer’s analysis, given in the 
 text, of his duty as an employer and his duty as a man? 
 Does Christianity require anything more than justice? 
 Does it require that a man be generous at the risk of going 
 bankrupt? 
 
 Does the term “hard-headed business man” describe a 
 real type? If so, is it a matter of individual tempera- 
 ment or is that type the natural product of a commercial 
 and competitive regime? Do business men in general 
 like the term? : 
 
 Is “sinning by syndicate” any more excusable than sin- 
 ning alone? Is it any more understandable? 
 
 What responsibility, if any, has a corporation director 
 for unethical acts of the corporation, of which he does not 
 approve? , What course is open to him? Would resign- 
 ing simplify the matter? 
 
 If an owner in New York or Chicago finds that he can- 
 not have his way in labor policy in his plants at Louis- 
 ville or Omaha, is he thereby relieved of responsibility ? 
 What can he do? 
 
CHAPTER III 
 HOW INDUSTRY AFFECTS THE WORKER 
 Exodus 1. 8-14; Isaiah 10. 1, 2 
 
 How is the worker being “hurt” in industry to-day? 
 Has he a just ground for complaint, or are his grievances 
 exaggerated? Does he get enough wages? Some people 
 think labor is too highly paid. What is the personal status 
 of the workers as to security, initiative, self-expression ? 
 What of the labor unions—are they good for the workers? 
 Are they good for the rest of us? Should they be curbed 
 or encouraged ? 
 
 Tar Workers Heritage From THE INDUSTRIAL 
 REVOLUTION 
 
 The Industrial Revolution, which we sketched in the 
 preceding discussion, has had a pronounced effect on the 
 lot of the individual worker. He plays a very different part 
 in modern industrial life from that played by his gilds- 
 man ancestor. What relation has this change to the Chris- 
 tian ideal? It goes without saying that a primary pur- 
 pose of industry is to produce goods. But would not 
 Jesus’ way of looking at the matter be something like 
 this?—-We must have goods—bread, cloth, wood, metal, 
 leather, and so on, but to what end? Does commerce exist 
 for man, or man for commerce? If the making of goods 
 for man as consumer works a great injury to man as 
 producer, is not the end of industry frustrated? We must: 
 learn how to make the goods of life in a way that will en- ” 
 rich the lives of those who work. If that is a Christian 
 ideal, it is to be feared we are pretty far from its realiza- 
 tion. 
 
 What effect does the thing called division of labor have 
 upon the thing called personality? Every person wants 
 to count in some definite way and to fulfill some definite 
 
 29 
 
30 CHRISTIAN IDEALS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 purpose. Is it not much easier to play a definite part in 
 the world of work if a person makes and sells a com- 
 modity for which he acquires a reputation than if his work 
 is confined to a few blows of a hammer or a few turns of 
 a lathe, whose effect only a skilled artisan can appreciate 
 and which the user of the finished product is hardly aware 
 of? 
 
 Consider the very honorable though insufficiently recog- 
 nized trade of cooking, and suppose that it should be com- 
 pletely factoryized so that a score of people instead of one 
 participated in the making of a pie. Without regard to 
 the effect on the product, which might, of course, be 
 thoroughly beneficial, would not the psychology of the 
 whole business be seriously changed? When a person 
 cannot be more or less identified with his work in the 
 finished product, whether it is making violins or digging 
 post holes, he profits in his personality but little from the 
 operation. | 
 
 Wuat It Means to Own Noruinae 
 
 The loss of ownership of one’s tools has the same gen- 
 eral effect. Just as a musician acquires proficiency with 
 a specific instrument and a fondness for it, just as a ball- 
 player becomes devoted to a certain bat or glove, or a 
 golf player to his pet driver, so a mechanic becomes 
 attached to a particular set of tools. If he owns them, 
 he is by that fact so much more an artisan. Mr. Whiting 
 Williams gives a pathetic picture of a worker’s relation 
 to a tool which he has come to regard as an indispensable 
 possession.t He tells of a “hunkie” laborer who fought 
 like a tiger for the possession of a shovel. “My shovel! 
 I use it t?ree mont’s. My shovel—he take it2? The owner- 
 ship of one’s tools, like the ownership of one’s house, is an 
 expression of personality. In this case, of course, the 
 ownership was fancied. : 
 
 It may be said that the worker in this respect is no 
 worse off than the average “white-collar? worker who 
 does not even own the pen and ink with which he writes, 
 
 1 What's on the Worker’s Mind, p. 36. 
 
INDUSTRY AND THE WORKER 31 
 
 to say nothing of the stenographer whose pencils belong 
 to the “house.” It is perhaps a sufficient answer that the 
 status of such workers is, indeed, often quite comparable 
 to that of the factory worker, but that in the life of the 
 office worker there are frequently intellectual and social 
 compensations. 
 
 Tue Dreap oF Lostmne A JOB 
 
 The loss of ownership of one’s tools which has come 
 about with the modern factory system robs the worker 
 of independence and security. This change has gone hand 
 in hand with the loss of ownership of his home. He has 
 now become a tenant in his home and a tenant in the shop. 
 He is there by favor, not by right, and even if the sharp- 
 ness of this dependence is taken away by the most con- 
 siderate treatment, his status is none the less fortuitous. 
 This fact contributes much to the discontent in industry 
 to-day. Mr. Williams has given a classic account of the 
 effect of unemployment, not merely in actuality, but in 
 menace. “Last night for an hour I stood at the gate with 
 twenty-five others, Negroes and foreigners, peering 
 steadily into that plant while the two policemen looked 
 at us from above their blue-coated stomachs as though we 
 were so many hogs threatening to rush in and eat up the 
 place. Men don’t seem to chat or make friends then, be- 
 cause each feels the other his competitor; so we all stood 
 shivering, silent, and intent. Whenever we saw anyone 
 we thought might be the boss, we all hunched up our 
 shoulders so as to look husky and tried to catch his eye.”+ 
 
 This great defect in our industrial system can perhaps 
 be best seen against the background of efforts to do away 
 with it. The Columbia Conserve Company in Indianapolis 
 has undertaken to put its workers on a salary basis, so 
 that they draw their pay even though temporarily unem- 
 ployed. Unemployment insurance is being carried out in 
 some plants. The Dutchess Bleachery at Wappingers 
 Falls, New York, sets aside a sinking fund to pay a part 
 of the workers’ wages during enforced unemployment. 
 
 1 What's on the Worker’s Mind, p. 6. 
 
3R CHRISTIAN IDEALS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 The president of the National Association of Manufac- 
 turers, who is in the blanket business, relates how he ran 
 his plant for five months without a profit merely because 
 he considered it right to keep his organization intact and 
 to avoid unemployment. But here, again, merely to cite 
 examples of this sort is to emphasize the fact that they 
 are not typical. 
 
 THe “Company Town” 
 
 An extreme illustration of the plight of the modern 
 industrial worker is found in the “company towns,” espe- 
 cially in mining districts, where the worker has a home 
 only so long as he works for the company, and where 
 everything that he touches belongs to the company. He is 
 even deprived of the experience of participating in reli- 
 gious or civic activities in his own right and under con- 
 ditions within his own power to determine. 
 
 Much has been written in the last three years or so — 
 about conditions of this sort in Pennsylvania and West 
 Virginia. Perhaps the mistake has been made of simply 
 reciting grievances and delinquencies without explaining 
 their origin or indicating any of the difficulties in the 
 way of overcoming them. In most cases the explanation 
 is probably to be found in that tradition of individualism 
 in American industrial life which we briefly traced. New 
 territory has been opened up by industrial enterprises, 
 particularly in mining and lumbering districts, much 
 faster than civic and political organizations have de- 
 veloped, and the company which has opened a mine in a 
 mountain district has had to bear responsibility for sani- 
 tation, policing, recreation, education, and even for reli- 
 gious service. The result is a paternalism that is shock- 
 ing to those who believe in democracy. The employers 
 are not bad men; indeed, they are likely to be more 
 actively interested in social betterment than employers 
 elsewhere. We call them “paternalistic.” Yet in many 
 cases if they did not “paternalize,” the most elemental 
 social necessities would be entirely neglected. The trouble 
 is that they have made provision for men’s bodies more 
 than for their personalities. They have been face to face 
 
INDUSTRY AND THE WORKER 33 
 
 with a situation that they did not understand. In such 
 regions labor has fallen into a state of virtual vassalage. 
 
 Wuen Men Become SAVAGES 
 
 The reaction of labor to such conditions has been sharp, 
 resentful, sometimes violent. Anyone who wishes to know 
 the American industrial situation at its worst—that is, at 
 its farthest from a basis of good will and cooperation— 
 need only study what happened at Blair Mountain in West 
 Virginia in 1921 and in Herrin, Llinois, in 1922. The 
 “armed march” of mine workers through West Virginia 
 and the brutal killing of “scab” miners in Illinois, with 
 the approval of a whole community, by men ordinarily 
 mild-mannered and law-abiding, gives food for serious 
 thought. The superficial view of these happenings is that 
 men suddenly became criminals and committed outrages, 
 and that a recurrence can be prevented only by severe 
 punishment. But drastic action seems to be as little a 
 deterrent of violence in industrial disputes as it is in any 
 other sphere of activity; the remedy must be found in a 
 larger measure of liberty under law and a greater degree 
 of cooperative action based on conference and under- 
 standing between the parties in controversy. The fight- 
 ing animal in our inheritance is never far from the sur- 
 face. We can insure ourselves against a periodic resort 
 to savagery only by organizing our life on the basis of 
 good will. Which, after all, is more important—that we 
 should have all the coal we want, when we want it, or that 
 while we are mining coal, we should also build men and 
 promote fellowship ? 
 
 All this is recounted not merely by way of indictment, 
 but by way of description, in order that we may see what 
 the attainment of the Christian ideal involves and what 
 are the obstacles that must be overcome. Strangely 
 enough, outbreaks of violence are usually seized upon 
 merely as evidences of inordinate brutality on one side 
 or the other rather than as evidence that our present war- 
 like regime in industry sometimes puts a strain upon hu- 
 man nature that neither employers nor workers are able 
 to bear. 
 
34 CHRISTIAN IDEALS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 Wuen Macutnes Run Men 
 
 The division of processes of machine labor makes no- 
 toriously ill-proportioned demands upon the powers of 
 the worker, overfatiguing some and letting others lie 
 idle. In most machine work there is nothing to create 
 interest and joy, to arouse curiosity, or to create the 
 desire to overcome a difficulty. This want of stimulation 
 of the natural and instinctive tendencies of mental life 
 not only produces a painful result, but is responsible for 
 nervous derangements without number. Excesses that are 
 severely condemned on moral grounds may be traced to 
 the lack of free play for normal tendencies. The stream 
 dams up and overflows. These baneful effects are ac- 
 centuated by the similar consequences of housing conges- 
 tion and the spiritual inbreeding of tenement life. 
 
 A few years ago when the labor difficulties following 
 the war reached alarming proportions, a writer in a cer- 
 tain conservative journal, commenting on the cause of 
 unrest, said: “But the new era has put personality in a 
 steel niche, and it must stay put, else large-scale produc- 
 tion is impossible. The strikers on our streets to-day are 
 ‘Imen entering a blind protest against a system that has 
 taken the fun and romance out of their work. : : 
 Some plan must be found whereby men may become inter- 
 ested in their day’s work—this is fundamental. It is a 
 twentieth-century problem, and history gives us no clue 
 to the solution.” Such considerations do not invalidate 
 the division of labor, but they do suggest that the culture 
 of personality, if it is to take place at all in industry, 
 must be transferred from industrial processes to other 
 processes. What these processes may be, we must consider. 
 
 Tur Hazarps or AN Inpusrriut AGE 
 
 The accidents that occur in modern manufacturing and 
 mining are a matter of common remark. Several mine 
 disasters in the last two or three years have given tragic 
 emphasis to the fact that an industrial worker contracts 
 not only his labor but in a very true sense his personal 
 security and the happiness of his family as well. To be 
 
INDUSTRY AND THE WORKER 35 
 
 sure, the complexity of modern life, the high speed of 
 traffic, and the appropriation of the sky and the sub- 
 terranean regions, to supplement the space offered by the 
 meager surface of the earth—all these peculiar marks of 
 our civilization take their inevitable toll of life and limb 
 quite apart from industry; but the fact remains that many 
 of what we consider essential occupations could never be 
 carried on but for the quiet acceptance by thousands of 
 workers of conditions which to the craftsmen of the Mid- 
 dle Ages would have seemed hazardous in the extreme. 
 
 Tue Doxnrs oF THE Dirty WorK 
 
 The specialization of industrial labor also condemns 
 many persons to permanent performance of tasks that are 
 considered menial and that are distasteful to any person 
 who has been touched by culture. The dirty work of the 
 world is done by those who come to be regarded as the 
 dirty people of the world. The fact that many of them 
 accept their lot without serious protest’ only emphasizes 
 the degradation that they suffer in the minds of their 
 fellows. One cannot examine carefully an industrial com- 
 munity without being impressed with the tendency to- 
 ward caste which increases with the growth of our indus- 
 trial system and the increase of our industrial popula- 
 tion. Perhaps the most serious aspect of industry from 
 the Christian point of view is the gulf that is built up 
 between groups of human beings, all of whom are doing 
 tasks that are essential to society as a whole, yet many 
 of whom do their work without honor. 
 
 This problem strikes most of us right where we live. 
 How is it that we can very largely overcome the tendency 
 to caste in our college communities, where a young man 
 may tend furnaces or a girl may wash dishes to pay board 
 and not forfeit personal standing by it, while in organ- 
 ized adult community life a “menial” task sets definite 
 limits to social relationships? 'This observation has refer- 
 ence more especially to city life, where specialization is 
 greater, but, after all, every community has its aristocracy 
 and its plebeians. What is wrong? 
 
36 CHRISTIAN IDEALS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 A GREAT GuLF FIXED 
 
 The depersonalizing of the employer-employee rela- 
 tionship is another effect of the present industrial regime. 
 Employers come to think of workers as a mass of “hands,” 
 whose wills and desires express themselves seldom save 
 through agitators, and who constitute an inert mass that 
 resists all efforts at improved efficiency and better produc- 
 tion. Few employers who maintain large plants really 
 know the men who work in them. Rather, they know their 
 “labor” in the mass and they impute in a vague way to 
 the whole labor force the ideas and purposes that are con- 
 veyed to them by belligerent spirits. Thus “labor” as the 
 employer thinks of it is often an abstraction, not a reality. 
 The complementary fact is quite as striking and as seri- 
 ous. Large employers’? names become to working men 
 synonymous with the aggressiveness of the capitalist 
 system at its worst. This condition is accentuated when 
 organization among the workers is lacking. The oppor- 
 tunity for conference and for the presentation of griev- 
 ances is a tremendous offset to the inferiority of status 
 that labor suffers. It makes all the difference in the world 
 whether employers and labor leaders get their informa- 
 tion about each other through direct contact or through 
 underground channels. 
 
 The spy system in industry as carried on by multitudes 
 of employers is another factor in widening the breach. It 
 would be impossible to overestimate the harm done and the 
 bitterness engendered by it. It is a kind of fire that is in- 
 variably fought with fire. It leads to grave misappre- 
 hensions on both sides. Three years ago the church forces 
 in Denver, Colorado, assisted by national church bodies, 
 investigated a serious industrial conflict between the 
 street-car company and its employees, a conflict that had 
 cost the lives of several innocent people. This is what 
 their report said about the spy system that still prevails 
 very widely in industrial America: “It is contended that 
 this is an unavoidable practice. But a sensitive con- 
 science can only look with stern disapproval upon a prac- 
 tice which substitutes suspicion for confidence and 
 
INDUSTRY AND THE WORKER 37 
 
 treachery for honest dealing. The spy system defeats it- 
 self. It deceives no one, and it invites counterespionage. 
 Its agents tend to provoke the evils which they are sup- 
 posed to check. It is admittedly a war measure. Must 
 we admit that industry is normally war? The whole 
 system is undoubtedly one of the most disruptive influ- 
 ences in our industrial order.” 
 
 TrapE Unions—Goop or Bap? 
 
 From one point of view it might almost be said that 
 the consequences of the present industrial regime are 
 equally serious for labor whether it is organized or not. 
 Physically, materially, there is no question as to the 
 gains of the workers through trade unionism. ‘The in- 
 justice of preventing such organization is now very widely 
 asserted. Yet even the best-disciplined and best-led unions 
 are belligerent in their tactics, and the prejudice against 
 labor leaders and “agitators” is not hard to understand. 
 The best labor leader, from the point of view of his own 
 constituency, is the best bargainer and the best fighter. 
 As a result of many conflicts, labor has come to think in 
 terms of hostility and combat. Strike threats are too 
 easily resorted to and often too irresponsibly carried 
 out. If this is a misfortune to the community and to the 
 employers, it is more serious in its spiritual consequences 
 to the laborers themselves. 
 
 What is the remedy? Seebohm Rowntree, the 
 British Quaker cocoa manufacturer, says that labor leaders 
 in England were of the same belligerent, noncooperative 
 type that is complained of here until the employers stopped 
 fighting the unions. Then the unions stopped electing 
 see as leaders and chose men of more statesmanly 
 mold. . 
 
 THE QUESTION OF BREAD 
 
 Underlying all other problems in industry is the fact 
 of insufficient income, with its train of evil consequences 
 in bad housing, poor health, meager education, and bitter 
 feeling. It is overlooked by most of us because we see 
 the bricklayer’s twelve dollars a day so large that it ob- 
 
38 CHRISTIAN IDEALS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 scures the low pay of the unskilled. No matter whose 
 estimate of a living wage is taken, there are multitudes 
 of workers living below the most conservative standard. 
 But “the living wage” is a vague term, and employers 
 are ceasing to take it seriously. The Railroad Labor 
 Board calls it a “bit of mellifluous phraseology.” But we 
 shall recur to this subject later. 
 
 For THE Discussion GROUP 
 
 Must the limitations of the factory system be accepted 
 by labor as unavoidable? Is the worker better off under 
 the highly specialized factory regime, where he makes but 
 a few motions and learns no trade so long as he can make 
 more money? Is the development of personality to be 
 wholly left to leisure time occupations ? 
 
 A workman, asked about the nature of his job, is said 
 to have replied, “My job is to put on nut number eighty- 
 four.” What would be the net spiritual result of that 
 occupation ? 
 
 Is the industrial worker underpaid or overpaid? Which 
 occupations are you thinking of? 
 
 Is the workingman entitled to the same security that 
 the professional worker has? Would it cripple his effi- 
 ciency to take away his fear of losing his job? 
 
 Is “paternalism” good or bad? Is it better for workers 
 to have things done for them or to do things for them- 
 selves, even if they cannot do them so well? 
 
 Do outbreaks of violence, in mining communities, for 
 example, indicate a low order of intelligence and morality, 
 or te we all act about the same way in time of crisis or 
 trial : 
 
 Does the habitual performance of so-called menial tasks 
 affect a person’s character? In what direction? Should 
 any person be perpetually required to do such work? What 
 alternative is there? 
 
 Granting that labor unions create many problems for 
 the employer and for the community, is the effort to sup- 
 press them warranted? Is their total influence good or 
 bad? Is Mr. Rowntree’s suggestion applicable to 
 America? 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 INDUSTRY AND THE COMMUNITY 
 Nehemiah 4. 21 to 5. 7 
 
 “Tr interest of the public is paramount.” Granted 
 the truth of this principle, how much does it mean? How 
 far should the community attempt to control industry 
 and industrial relations? Does the public in general get 
 what is coming to it from industry? How intelligent is 
 the public about industrial issues which it has to take a 
 hand in deciding? How far is the deplorable condition of 
 municipal politics and government in America the result 
 of industrial conditions which the community neglects? 
 
 Tor Pusuic’s SHARE IN INDUSTRIAL CoNTROL 
 
 A textile mill in New York State in which a scheme of 
 joint management has been worked out has not only 
 employees’ representatives on the board of directors but a 
 representative of the community as well, for the purpose 
 of safeguarding the public interest. The proposal is a 
 novel one, but it seems so obviously reasonable and proper 
 that it is strange it has not more often been adopted. The 
 primary interest of the whole community in industry may 
 be taken for granted. Is the community well served by 
 industry at the present time? A fair-minded or optimis- 
 tically inclined person is obliged to admit that with all 
 its faults the industrial system gives the public more goods, 
 more promptly delivered, and at lower cost than would 
 have been conceivable before the era of machine produc- 
 tion. No judgments that we may pass upon the “game” 
 as it is now being played can blind us to the positive 
 achievements of the modern industrial regime. But as in 
 every other phase of human endeavor the ultimate judg- 
 ment is based not merely upon what is, but upon what 
 might be. It is no permanent justification of a monopoly 
 that it has in the past lowered the cost of a commodity. 
 The question is, Could it serve the community better 
 
 39 
 
40 CHRISTIAN IDEALS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 now than it does? So with the whole industrial system. 
 Moreover, an industrial organization that can show such 
 an astonishing record of material achievement must be 
 held accountable for its spiritual consequences. 
 
 INDUSTRY AND THE “GENERAL PuBLic” 
 
 The community, using the term in the sense of society 
 generally, has more than one relation to industry. It is 
 consumer, investor, lawmaker, and, so to say, moral 
 arbiter. In one sense, of course, a community in an indus- 
 trial city is virtually identical with labor. It is often 
 assumed on that account that an industrial community’s 
 interests, as such, are identical with those of the working 
 class. If one looks closely at the matter, however, it is 
 seen that the community never reacts that way. The work- 
 ing people as a whole never feel that they have a first- 
 hand interest in a particular industrial question or con- 
 troversy. Suppose, for example, that the clothing workers 
 are having a conflict with their employers. It does not 
 follow that the boot and shoe workers will sympathize with 
 them; much less, actively support them. The clothing 
 workers’ difficulty is of interest to the boot and shoe 
 workers chiefly as it affects the price they pay for clothes. 
 In other words, they are related to the question as con- 
 sumers on precisely the same basis as the professional 
 classes in the community. 
 
 This fact is well known by labor leaders themselves. 
 It is the thing that stands in the way of working-class 
 solidarity. It is illustrated in the failure of the union- 
 label movement to win support from the workers as a 
 whole. A strenuous effort has been made to induce mem- 
 bers of labor unions to observe the labels of other unions 
 and buy, so far as possible, only union made goods. But 
 it is very hard to get them to interest themselves as buyers 
 in the label of another union than their own. Although 
 many influences are at work tending to overcome this lack 
 of solidarity among working people, the tendency of vari- 
 ous groups to stand apart by themselves seems to be very 
 firmly established in America. In other words, the greater 
 solidarity of the workers as consumers and citizens than 
 
INDUSTRY AND THE COMMUNITY 41 
 
 as labor unionists is a prominent characteristic of Ameri- 
 can industrial life. It is as consumer that the community 
 sustains the most conscious and the most elemental rela- 
 tion to industry. And it is to be feared that the attitude 
 growing out of this relationship is often far from con- 
 Baran and far from what we could call a Christian 
 ideal. 
 
 Ts THern EnovaH to Go ArounpD? 
 
 The first observation to be made concerning the way 
 in which the community suffers on account of industrial 
 situations is one that could not have been made until re- 
 cently, namely, that industry is positively failing to pro- 
 duce the goods needed for the life of the community as a 
 whole. For a long time it was assumed that there is 
 enough wealth produced every year, if it were only prop- 
 erly distributed, to provide for the needs of all our peo- 
 ple. Now, however, through the labors of the National 
 Bureau of Economic Research, we may state with a good 
 deal of confidence that there is no surplus, but that we run 
 habitually with an economic deficit. This organization, 
 which is a nonpartisan research body, about two years 
 ago made a study of the national income which indicated 
 that in the year 1919 it was approximately $66,000,000,- 
 000. The report showed the distribution of income for 
 the year 1918. It is estimated that in that year there were 
 something over 29,000,000 persons who had incomes under 
 $1,700 a year. Now, this is almost the exact figure ar- 
 rived at by the National Industrial Conference Board—an 
 employer’s research organization—as a living standard 
 for a workingman’s family in the city of Detroit in 
 September, 1921. On the face of the National Bureau’s 
 income report, it would require $20,000,000 a year to 
 bring all incomes under $1,700 up to that minimum. 
 Even if all the incomes in the country over $2,500 were 
 confiscated for this purpose, they would not be sufficient. 
 
 The national income must not only maintain our peo- 
 ple but must pay the expenses of government, support a 
 multitude of philanthropies, and provide all the capital 
 for the expansion of our industrial equipment and the 
 
42 CHRISTIAN IDEALS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 development of natural resources. It would appear that 
 in 1919 there was not sufficient to provide our 21,000,000 
 or more families with an annual income of $2,000 a year 
 each and meet all the necessary additional demands of 
 the nation. The United States Chamber of Commerce esti- 
 mates that the national income for 1922 was only $50,000,- 
 000,000. These surprising figures do not mean that the 
 distribution of wealth is not an important problem, but 
 the question of distribution derives its importance more 
 from moral considerations than from the direct material 
 effect that a redistribution of income would have upon 
 the economic status of masses of the people. On this 
 showing it seems clear that the basic problem of industry 
 from the community’s point of view is to produce more 
 oods. 
 
 ; At the same time it must not be overlooked that the 
 distribution of income is an important factor in supply- 
 ing incentives to greater production. Income statistics 
 indicate that wages do not keep pace with increasing 
 productivity. This fact in itself is sufficient to account 
 for lagging production. 
 
 DiIsTRIBUTING THE BLAME 
 
 Who is to blame for this failure of our industrial 
 establishment? ‘The employers blame the workers. They 
 point to limitation of output and to demands for high 
 wages which make production unprofitable to the em- 
 ployer. Everyone has heard the story of the successive 
 reductions of a bricklayer’s daily work in spite of the rela- 
 tively high wages that he receives. The workers, on the 
 other hand, have an elaborate defense. Their work time 
 is often interrupted. There are many days when they can- 
 not work. They lose time in shifting from job to job. 
 Their annual income is by no means equal to the amount 
 arrived at by multiplying their daily wages by the num- 
 ber of working days in the year. The problem of under- 
 employment was brought to the public’s attention very 
 forcibly during the great coal strike of 1922, when men 
 whose wages were $7.50 a day had so little employment 
 that they were in actual distress. 
 
INDUSTRY AND THE COMMUNITY 43 
 
 The employer likewise comes in for criticism. The 
 Federated Engineering Societies’? report on “Waste in 
 Industry” puts forward the view that the larger measure 
 of responsibility for eliminating the very extensive waste 
 in industrial processes must be borne by management. 
 And now comes William R. Bassett, the engineer, saying 
 that if manufacturers would equip and organize their 
 planis on a thoroughly efficient basis, even the unskilled 
 een might have an income equivalent to $10,000 a 
 year ! 
 
 A Task FoR THE WHOLE ComMmuUNtItTy 
 
 The conclusion seems clear enough that neither the em- 
 ployer nor the worker is exerting himself to the limit to 
 produce goods. Limitation of output is practiced on both 
 sides. The workers have had in the past a disillusioning 
 experience with piece-work rates, which have tended +o 
 come down as their production went up. During the war 
 they obeyed the injunction to increase production, and 
 then they found their jobs gone or rendered uncertain 
 because the market was glutted with goods which they had 
 produced but which the employer could not sell. The em- 
 ployer, on the other hand, is playing the only game that 
 he knows. He makes goods with his eye on the market. 
 If he cannot make a profit, he ceases to produce. We are 
 all in the grip of a force which is commonly referred to 
 as the business cycle, which experts of all kinds are 
 struggling to master, and in accord with which we alter- 
 nate between prosperity and depression. At this moment 
 no one has the answer. But this much seems clear: the 
 problem of production will never be solved so long as 
 employers and workers confine their attention to their 
 own immediate group interest in the production process. 
 To be sure, the problem must be worked out by people 
 of experience and scientific training, but the moral re- 
 quirements of the situation must be determined by us 
 all. 
 
 But even where production is quite adequate we often 
 fail to connect demand with supply, so that goods which 
 many people would gladly consume are left to perish at 
 
44 CHRISTIAN IDEALS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 the place where they are produced. So much of the price 
 of goods represents nonproductive processes, so many 
 middlemen have to be paid, with the consumer footing all 
 the bills, that it is little wonder the public manifests 
 extreme irritation with both parties in industry. 
 
 Tur Crepitr PROBLEM 
 
 Perhaps equally disturbing from the community’s point 
 of view is the working of the modern system of finance 
 and credit. Credit has become more and more vital to 
 industrial enterprise, yet it continues to be a rival 
 enterprise in the sense that the financing of socially use- 
 ful and necessary undertakings is controlled by a system 
 which is itself a profit-making business. The financial 
 organization of the country has become highly centralized 
 and has in the main identified itself with the most con- 
 servative industrial interests. To the labor mind “Wall 
 Street” is synonymous with all that is oppressive. This 
 attitude is a fact of first importance, no matter what one 
 may think of its justification or falsity. The question is 
 being asked to-day if it is not possible to organize finance 
 on a basis of public service rather than a basis of profit. 
 But this is really a subject for a separate study. 
 
 Tuer Pusuic’s IGNORANCE 
 
 One of the worst features of the community’s relation 
 to this whole matter is the inconclusive character of public 
 criticism. Now the employer, now the worker, falls under 
 the ban of public disapproval. But the public mind sel- 
 dom gets far enough into the problem to suggest a way 
 out. In the case of strikes and lockouts, for example, 
 public sympathy for one side or the other is often mani- 
 fest, but the placing of that sympathy seems to have little 
 relation to the moral issues of the contest. In the great 
 coal strike of 1922, there was widespread sympathy (if 
 one may judge from the public press) with the workers, 
 while in the railway shopmen’s strike which followed, the 
 sympathy was almost entirely on the other side. There 
 was, to be sure, on the face of the facts a difference in the 
 moral status of the two groups, yet hardly enough to ac- 
 
 a ale — 
 
INDUSTRY AND THE COMMUNITY 45 
 
 count for the great difference in the public attitude. The 
 explanation seems more probable that while there was a 
 big coal surplus which lessened the public’s grievance in 
 the coal strike, the public had an immediate stake of most 
 vital importance in the railroad strike. 
 
 It is surely among the worst of the injuries suffered by 
 the community due to the industrial situation that it is 
 woefully uninformed concerning the facts. This applies 
 as much to the country as a whole as to single localities. 
 Is it not strange that we should have had to wait until 
 two years ago for dependable figures concerning our na- 
 _ tional income? How is it that a question of such funda- 
 mental importance as the valuation of our railways should 
 require years of expert study at public expense? Partisan 
 publicity plays a large part in determining economic and 
 industrial issues. Even the effects of a government re- 
 port, prepared with manifest care and impartiality, may 
 be shattered in the public mind by the guns of well-paid 
 and expertly handled publicity. 
 
 WHERE THE Press Fats 
 
 The press helps the situation all too little. Newspapers 
 make a show of running their news columns independently 
 of their editorial opinions, but during local industrial 
 controversies most of the news matter seems to go through 
 the editorial mill before it finds its way to the printed 
 page. And it is well known that the accounts of indus- 
 trial happenings and the interpretation given them are 
 commonly colored from the employers’ point of view. This 
 is usually not because newspapers are in a conspiracy with 
 the employers to defeat labor, although this is certainly 
 sometimes true. It seems more to the point to recognize 
 that newspapers themselves are business enterprises con- 
 trolled by business men, who have a business point of 
 view, are members of a business community, and are gov- 
 erned by business traditions. The newspaper owner is 
 sympathetic with the employer in a labor strike usually 
 for the same reason that any other business man in the 
 community takes the same attitude. But how grave the 
 situation is when the public, whose opinion should de- 
 
46 CHRISTIAN IDEALS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 termine and, in the long run, frequently does determine 
 industrial controversies, is compelled to make up its mind 
 as to the issues presented on the basis of partisan state- 
 ments! The fact that some of our greatest newspapers 
 have gone far toward remedying this defect does not 
 lessen the validity of the general criticism. 
 
 The growth of the labor press is a protest against the 
 situation we have been considering; but, so far as the 
 public in general is concerned, the labor press has only 
 complicated the situation. For if the public press, com- 
 monly referred to in the labor papers as the “capitalist 
 press,” is partisan on one side, the labor press is certainly 
 partisan to the same or to a greater extent on the other. 
 The labor press, generally speaking, has a constituency 
 of its own, which pays for a certain interpretation of 
 industrial events and gets what it pays for. It should not 
 be overlooked, however, that there are notable exceptions. 
 As for the trade papers, which represent manufacturing 
 interests, it is difficult to see how they could be more 
 partisan than they are. 
 
 INDUSTRIAL CONDITIONS AND PontiticaAL DEMocRACY 
 
 Quite apart from all consideration of industrial struggle 
 or of the price which the consumer pays for the goods he 
 buys, the community has a large stake in industry from a 
 social point of view. Who are the workers in our Ameri- 
 can factories, mines, and quarries? The ranks of the un- 
 skilled are filled largely with foreign-speaking immigrant 
 labor—the “hunkies” of the steel mills and the “wops” 
 of. the textile mills. They come to us in hordes and we 
 settle them in hordes. We allow them to colonize in con- 
 gested quarters of our cities in an environment as differ- 
 ent as possible from that to which they were accustomed in 
 their original peasant home in Europe. Thus we have our 
 little Italys and little Bohemias and little Russias, and 
 they remain alien to our life and often alien to our thought. 
 When a community undertakes in commendable fashion 
 to “Americanize” its foreign populations—that is to say, 
 when it undertakes to socialize itself and to end the isola- 
 tion of these little communities of workers—it encounters 
 
INDUSTRY AND THE COMMUNITY 47 
 
 almost insuperable difficulties. The difference in ideals 
 is grounded in different standards which are definitely 
 registered in the pay envelope. The economic levels in 
 the American working community are basic to our indus- 
 trial organization. How can we isolate groups of our 
 workers economically and then break down that isolation 
 socially? How can we segregate groups of workers eco- 
 nomically and assimilate them morally and religiously ? 
 
 The community’s problems of government, education, 
 sanitation, and recreation are immeasurably increased and 
 complicated by the presence of these isolated communi- 
 ties of workers whose existence is fundamental to our pres- 
 ent industrial organization. Our municipal politics in 
 America, notorious the world over, continually remind us 
 of the fact that the masses of our city populations serve as 
 material for political exploitation. Civic consciousness 
 and civic virtue cannot rise far beyond the cultural level 
 of these masses. 
 
 Leanine Upon THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 The problem of American immigration, in the last 
 analysis, is a problem of industry. Industry determines, 
 probably more than any other influence, how many for- 
 eigners shall come to our shores. When the controversy 
 over the twelve-hour day in the steel industry became 
 acute in the summer of 1923, we were told that the long 
 shift must continue unless more immigrant labor should 
 be imported into the country, and it might have been 
 added, labor that will work under arduous conditions that 
 native-born Americans are inclined to refuse. Industry 
 determines finally the level of life of all these foreign 
 populations. In large measure industry determines also 
 the public policies and the civic activities upon which the 
 improvement of these populations depends. 
 
 INDUSTRY AND THE STATE 
 
 The state, which is the whole community in its political 
 capacity, to-day carries the industrial problem as a heavy 
 burden and a perplexing responsibility. How far should 
 it intervene in settling industrial disputes and in determin- 
 
48 CHRISTIAN IDEALS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 ing wages, prices, and profits? Is the highest ideal to be 
 attained through legislative action and court control, or 
 through voluntary cooperation within industry? <A con- 
 test is waged each year in a number of States over mini- 
 mum-wage and maximum-hour laws for women workers. 
 These laws have been championed by labor, by social 
 workers, and by eminent employing concerns, but they 
 have made little headway. Proposals for unemployment 
 or health insurance under State auspices are even less 
 well received by the business community. Yet these meas- 
 ures have very much to recommend them, and from the 
 Christian point of view the burden of proof should rest on 
 the opposition. It seems not unlikely that these measures 
 will come into existence through State action, as work- 
 ingmen’s compensation for accidents has come, unless 
 industry shortly meets the situation on its own initiative. 
 But all such measures win their way slowly. American 
 opinion in general is against governmental interference 
 in the affairs of corporations. 
 
 But there is a tendency to deal differently with the prob- 
 
 lem of industrial conflict. It rests on this simple reason- — 
 
 ing: “Industry is a part of the community. The welfare 
 of the general public is paramount, and must take pre- 
 cedence over the desires and purposes of a minority. 
 Therefore, the state must assert itself when the parties to 
 industry cannot agree and must maintain production or 
 service uninterrupted.” But it is becoming increasingly 
 evident that when the whole public asserts itself in an 
 emergency it does so on the basis of expediency and its 
 own convenience more often than on the basis of justice. 
 Furthermore, it is coming to be felt that decisions that 
 are enforced and plans that are imposed upon groups of 
 human beings are less effective and less salutary than 
 those reached by cooperative effort and in good will. What 
 hope there is of attaining a Christian ideal by such means 
 we must inquire further. 
 
 For tHe Discussion Group 
 
 With reference to any particular industrial dispute 
 how would the members of this group line up—with the 
 
 Se 
 
INDUSTRY AND THE COMMUNITY 49 
 
 employers, with the workers, or with the general public? 
 What is the ground of our sympathies in such cases? 
 
 Is the common statement, “The interest of the public 
 is paramount,” fair to industry itself? Does the public 
 always recognize its own ultimate interest? Is the public 
 attitude usually just? On what basis did we make up our 
 minds about the issues of the last coal strike? 
 
 A certain clothing manufacturer puts the moral respon- 
 sibilities of industrial management in this order: first, 
 to the consumer ; secondly, to the worker; thirdly, to the 
 investor. Is that the right order? 
 
 Whose is the primary responsibility for increased pro- 
 duction? Would a fairer distribution of wealth indirectly 
 increase production by giving labor a new incentive? 
 
 Would it increase production to insure labor against 
 the privations of unemployment? Should the community 
 bear part of the employer’s risk of loss? How could 
 this be done ? 
 
 If the newspapers were always scrupulously accurate 
 and fair in reporting industrial disputes, would the aver- 
 age person take the trouble to inform himself? Could a 
 newspaper devoted primarily to supplying correct informa- 
 tion about such issues pay expenses ? 
 
 What can be done for foreign workers who live in con- 
 gested quarters? Does the location of industries in cities 
 compel the workers to live in congested neighborhoods, or 
 are the industries compelled to locate where the workers 
 insist on living? 
 
 Who gets closest to the industrial worker—the min- 
 ister or the crooked politician? Why? 
 
 Do we discriminate, in buying goods, between those 
 made under good working conditions and those not so 
 produced? Are we willing to pay the price of good wages 
 and sanitary working conditions? 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 COMPETITION FOR WAGES AND PROFITS— 
 THE OLD GAME 
 
 Luke 12. 13-23 
 
 Is competition between labor and capital inevitable or 
 is there a possibility of actual partnership? Are business 
 and industry governed by mechanical principles—the law 
 of supply and demand, for example—and if so, how much 
 place is allowed to ethics in the business world? Do 
 natural forces determine with efficiency and fairness what 
 station a man should occupy and what portion of goods 
 he should have? Has Christianity played any important 
 part in building up our industrial regime or has it been 
 steadily pushed aside by the encroachments of material 
 forces ? 
 
 THE “PARTNERSHIP” oF CAPITAL AND LABOR 
 
 One of the writers of this series of lessons published 
 an article on the aims of the labor movement in which he 
 described it against a background of industrial struggle. 
 The secretary of an employers’ association remonstrated 
 with him for emphasizing the element of conflict. “This 
 is the idea,” he said, “that we are especially anxious to 
 avoid. We want the workers to understand that their 
 interests and those of their employers are identical.” This 
 is a note which is very commonly struck in industrial 
 literature of the present day. ‘“Partnership”—that is the 
 word which is most commonly taken to indicate the ideal 
 industrial relationship. To what extent is this a correct 
 account of the relation between employer and employee? 
 
 The brief survey that we have been making certainly 
 does not indicate on the face of it that the interests of 
 employers and workers are identical or even harmonious. 
 More than that, the interests of employers and workers, as 
 
 50 
 
COMPETITION—THE OLD GAME 51 
 
 such, often seem to be quite out of harmony with those of 
 the community. With strikes going on continually, with 
 the air filled with propaganda and counterpropaganda 
 seeking to convince the public that each of the great 
 parties to industry is right in its contentions and ought to 
 have public support as against the other, is it not idle 
 to say that the interests of employers and workers are 
 identical? Indeed, might one not say that their interests 
 are identical only in the ironical sense that they are both 
 striving to get the same thing? 
 
 This view of the matter is, of course, not to be confused 
 with the slogan of the I. W. W.: “The working class and 
 the employing class have nothing in common.” That 
 slogan means that in the very nature of the case the two 
 groups must continue to be antagonistic. One does not 
 subscribe to such pessimism merely by recognizing the 
 present facts. Perhaps one might say that a Christian 
 faith with respect to industry is the confidence that em- 
 ployers and workers may become partners, although they 
 are clearly not partners now. 
 
 Workina Crass “PsycHoioay” 
 
 Royal Meeker, head of the Pennsylvania State De- 
 partment of Labor, once said that the common talk about 
 working-class psychology was quite misleading. The fact 
 is, he said, that the psychology of the workers and of the 
 employers is precisely the same, and that is-what makes 
 all the difficulty! In other words, the most conspicuous 
 thing about industry to-day is the fact that a struggle is 
 going on over a division of the product. It is perfectly 
 patent, when one stops to think of it, that through co- 
 operation the product of industry might be greatly in- 
 creased and then the share of each group would be en- 
 larged. But there are too much uncertainty and fear in 
 the situation to permit such cooperation at the present 
 time. The workers want some assurance that they are 
 going to share in what they consider an equitable way 
 in the division of the product before they exert themselves 
 to increase it. The employer wants some assurance that 
 too much of the increased product is not going to be taken 
 
d2 CHRISTIAN IDEALS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 away from him. And both want to be assured that they 
 are not going to be victims of a caprice of the market 
 which every now and then brings about an industrial 
 collapse. 
 
 How tHE Propuct or Inpustry Is Dtvipep 
 
 Now, in an ordinary business the division of the product 
 may be easily analyzed. Strictly speaking, the product of 
 any business enterprise is divided into four parts: wages 
 of labor, interest on capital, rent on land, and profits— 
 that is, all that is left. In other words, the employer in 
 the original sense of that term goes into the money market 
 and gets his capital and pays for it the going rate of 
 interest—let us say, five per cent on common stock and 
 seven per cent on preferred stock. He goes into the so- 
 called “Jabor market” and hires his labor for a stated 
 wage. He pays a stated rent for his land, unless he buys 
 it with the capital of the business. Then all that he makes 
 over and above those fixed charges is his own share and is 
 termed “profits.” Ordinarily we do not distinguish be- 
 tween that part of a dividend which is strictly interest on 
 capital invested and that part which is over and above the 
 going rate of interest and which represents clear “velvet.” 
 There is no provision in the rules of the game as it is being 
 played to-day for the settlement of fine moral questions 
 like this. It is when such questions are raised that we 
 hear the common slogan “Business is business.” We are 
 still under the spell of the economics formulated by Adam 
 Smith, which put so much stress upon the workings of 
 natural law. The division of the product of industry pro- 
 ceeds in accord with what are considered inexorable 
 processes. | 
 
 Tur Eruics or Business 
 
 Business and industry are, of course, not without their 
 ethical code; there are practices that are taboo, and there 
 are others that are “questionable” which all high-class 
 concerns avoid. But the most fundamental issues in in- 
 dustry are settled by formulas that have little relation to 
 ethics. For example, let us suppose that the price of an 
 
COMPETITION—THE OLD GAME 53 
 
 important commodity suddenly goes up. There may be a 
 good deal of talk about profiteering, but the business com- 
 munity in general asks only if the rise is proportional 
 to the increase of demand over supply. The question of 
 amount of profit is wholly secondary. Or suppose that 
 wages have dropped to an abnormally low figure. The 
 matter is dismissed as the natural result of a demand for 
 labor that is low relatively to the supply. To ask less than 
 the market price, or to pay more than the going wage, is 
 considered a weird sort of philanthropy. 
 
 This whole arrangement which we accept as a matter of 
 course seems a bit strange to one who has never acquired a 
 business mind. A little girl of eight sat with her father 
 in an “automat” lunch and, as she ate her sandwich, mar- 
 veled at the number of nickels that poured through the 
 slots of the machines. “I suppose,” she said between 
 bites, with a nod of her head toward the white figures 
 pushing trays of dishes through the crowd, “I suppose 
 they make a hundred dollars every day.” She was as- 
 sured that the nickels did not go to the employees, but 
 that they only got their wages. The owner got the 
 nickels. “Where is he?” she demanded and, on being told 
 that he did not come to the place himself, she asked in 
 amazement: “You mean that these people do the work 
 and he stays home and counts his money? Why, daddy, 
 that isn’t right!” Her father did not follow her alto- 
 gether in her primitive economics, but he coveted the 
 ability of her unsophisticated little mind to arrive quickly 
 at a moral judgment. “Out of the mouths of babes!” 
 
 Tne Law or Suppty AND DEMAND 
 
 An odd situation exists in industry to-day. Although 
 the competitive struggle goes on over the division of the 
 product, the orthodox view among employers is that such 
 competition is essentially impossible. The prevailing 
 economic doctrine on this point is that wages and prices 
 are fixed by the “law of supply and demand” and that any 
 arbitrary increase in wages is automatically passed on to 
 the consumer. An actual reapportioning of the shares of 
 capital and labor is not considered because the proportion 
 
54 CHRISTIAN IDEALS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 is assumed to be fixed by market conditions. The em- 
 ployer who distinguished his duty as a man from his duty 
 as an employer was working on the prevailing theory that 
 the division of the product of industry proceeds in accord 
 with a mechanical principle. An English writer, 
 R. H. Tawney, who is a churchman as well as an economist, 
 has discussed this problem in a book suggestively called 
 The Sickness of an Acquisitive Society.1 He says of this 
 conception of industry, “It produces industrial war, be- 
 cause its teaching is that each individual or group has a 
 right to what they can get, and denies that there is any 
 principle other than the mechanism of the market, which 
 determines what they ought to get.” That is it—“mechan- 
 ism of the market.” Business men and industrial leaders 
 to-day are economic determinists in that they defer ulti- 
 mately to mechanical laws instead of to spiritual princi- 
 ples. Now, of course, if they could prove that the mechani- 
 cal laws actually do operate to the exclusion of spiritual 
 principles, they would be right. That is to-say, we should 
 then have to agree that it is not a spiritual world we are 
 living in but a mechanistic world. But the mechanical 
 principles which are so stoutly defended keep the indus- 
 trial world virtually an armed camp. The reason for this 
 lies in the fact that they do not account adequately for 
 all the elements of human nature. 
 
 Kerepinc Prope In Tuerr Piacs 
 
 Of course, if all parties to industry would accept this 
 mechanical interpretation of the matter, the industrial 
 struggle might come to an end. But would that make 
 things any better? One way to settle the slavery issue 
 would have been to convince everyone that the slave had 
 found his proper place, that he was a hewer of wood and 
 a drawer of water because he was meant to be such. This 
 doctrine was freely preached before the Civil War, and 
 one frequently hears similar talk now. A woman who 
 takes herself very seriously said to a companion in a 
 fashionable New York club: “I think this universal edu- 
 
 1Page 40. The American title is An Acguisitive Society. 
 
COMPETITION—THE OLD GAME 55 
 
 cation for the common people is a great mistake. It gets 
 them quite dissatisfied with their state in life and unfits 
 them for their proper work.” Undoubtedly there are many 
 people who still believe that the division of society into 
 economic classes is ordained of God and that these very 
 mechanical principles of which we have been speaking are 
 the divinely appointed means of keeping things as they 
 are. The orthodox Calvinist who had no difficulty in ac- 
 cepting the principle of predestination that required him 
 to be “willimg to be damned for the glory of God” certainly 
 could have no difficulty as a capitalist and employer with 
 the operation of a similar principle which determines 
 every one’s status and keeps him there. But would this 
 be a Christian solution? 
 
 How THE Law or SUPPLY AND DEMAND Works 
 
 But even if one has no moral difficulty with this situa- 
 tion, the practical trouble with it is that this much re- 
 vered law of supply and demand seems to break down. 
 A few hundred years ago the workers made up their 
 minds that they would not accept the rule of the market, 
 that they would not accept for themselves the status of a 
 ~ commodity, that they would increase by their own organ- 
 ized efforts the earnings which the law of supply and 
 demand had assigned them. It is one of the common com- 
 plaints of employers against labor unions that they inter- 
 fere with the normal working of the labor market. Never- 
 theless, the labor unions have gone on and increased in 
 strength. If they are here to stay—and there seems to 
 be no doubt about it—we must accept this interference 
 with the working of the law of supply and demand in 
 the matter of wages as a continuing factor in the indus- 
 trial situation until a spiritual solution of the industrial 
 problem is found. In other words, trade unionism has 
 put the workers into definite competition with employers 
 and capitalists. When they ask for more wages, if the 
 amount demanded can be added to the selling price, the 
 employer is not concerned. But if the increase in wages 
 must in some measure be taken out of profits or out of 
 surplus, then the increased prosperity of labor can come 
 
 \ 
 
56 CHRISTIAN IDEALS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 about only at the expense of the prosperity of the employer 
 and the investors in the industry. Such demands are 
 opposed by the employer with every force at his command. 
 He considers them not only hostile to his interests but 
 subversive of the fundamentals of economics. 
 
 Laxsor’s “Cost or Propuctrron” 
 
 The basic difficulty here seems to be that an economic 
 fact has been overlooked. All economists recognize that 
 there are limits to the working of the law of supply and 
 demand with reference to the prices of material goods. 
 For instance, if the price of a commodity goes so low that 
 it does not meet the “cost of production,” the production 
 stops. It is by changes in the volume of production that 
 price changes are controlled—except where a monopoly 
 exists. Now, if we think of labor as a commodity, and of 
 wages as the price of it, what is the “cost of production” 
 below which the “price” cannot go? Business men who 
 have cost-accounting systems commonly leave out of the 
 reckoning the true cost of labor. What they mean by labor 
 cost is what they have to pay labor. What they overlook 
 is that true labor cost is what it takes to keep labor healthy, 
 efficient, and of wholesome mind. The law of supply and 
 demand breaks down when used to justify low wages, 
 just as it would with steel ingots, should one seek to apply 
 
 it below the level of the cost of production. If labor | 
 
 is to be considered a commodity, then labor insists on 
 having a price that will cover its cost. One is reminded 
 of the argument over the possibility of curving a base- 
 ball. No matter how clearly mathematicians “proved” 
 that a ball cannot be pitched on a curved line, the pitchers 
 actually did it. They had hold of a physical principle 
 that the scholars had forgotten. So in industry. No 
 matter how much competition between wages and divi- 
 dends is denied and pronounced fictitious, it goes on. 
 Employers may assert that “artificial” interference with 
 wage levels is contrary to economic laws, but the unions 
 have continued to interfere and have obviously sueceeded 
 in influencing the ratio of wages to profits, 
 
COMPETITION—THE OLD GAME 5? 
 
 Wuo WINS IN THE CoMPETITIVE GAME? 
 
 So the competitive struggle in our industrial establish- 
 ment continues. It is a very old game and a costly one. 
 It goes on continually like the conflict between hostile 
 nations, There may be protracted armed truces, but the 
 war persists. The disturbing thing about all this is that 
 the game we are playing, in its very nature, makes an 
 escape from this situation impossible. It is a game thai 
 is never won and cannot be won by either side. Its goals 
 are perpetually being shoved farther along. The ascend- 
 ancy now of one side and now of the other is but a signal 
 for the renewal of the struggle, an intensification of the 
 competition, and a deepening of bitterness. To be sure, 
 the opening stanza of Berton Braley’s poem “Business Is 
 Business”! depicts something cruder than we commonly 
 find in the business world: 
 
 “Business is Business,” the Little Man said, 
 “A battle where ‘everything goes,’ 
 Where the only gospel is ‘get ahead,’ 
 And never spare friends or foes. 
 Slay or be slain’ is the slogan cold; 
 You must struggle and slash and tear, 
 For Business is Business, a fight for gold, 
 Where all that you do is fair!” 
 
 The process has been softened a good deal under the influ- 
 ence of Christian ideals. Yet this stanza much more 
 closely approximates a description of modern business 
 than the one that follows it: 
 
 “Business is Business,’ the Big Man said, 
 “A battle to make of earth 
 
 A place to yield us more wine and bread, 
 More pleasure and joy and mirth; 
 
 There are still some bandits and buccaneers 
 Who are jungle-bred beasts of trade, 
 
 But their number dwindles with passing years, 
 And dead is the code they made!”’ 
 
 The code they made seems to be far from dead. So long 
 as attention is centered in both camps on the material 
 rewards of industrial effort, so long as both employers and 
 1Used by permission of The Nation’s Business. 
 + 
 
58 CHRISTIAN IDEALS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 workers are actuated by fear of each other and of the un- 
 predictable workings of the market, there is no escape 
 from the crudities of the struggle. We may dignify work 
 all we like and idealize industry as much as we please, but 
 human beings who live in the hunger zone or just beyond 
 the edge of it are not likely to climb much above the 
 plane of animal self-defense. Yet if Christian faith has 
 any sure foundation, the time is coming when it may be 
 said truly of this competitive regime, “Dead is the code 
 they made.” | 
 
 Men anp THINGS 
 
 Here, then, is the stern fact. Employers and business 
 men are committed for the most part to reliance upon 
 the workings of the law of supply and demand. To a 
 very considerable degree that law actually operates in 
 industry. But it operates to produce discontent and re- 
 bellion. It is a mechanical principle evolved with refer- 
 ence to things. It will never work, undisputed, with 
 reference to men. Labor has discovered that by use of 
 its own economic power it can interfere with the operation 
 of the law of supply and demand. By organizing, labor 
 ean defy the dictates of the “labor market” precisely as 
 employers by combining can force their prices away be- 
 yond the normal level fixed by the operation of this law. 
 It is a commonplace of economics that the law of supply 
 and demand does not work for monopolies. Employers 
 have learned how to, limit its operation in their own inter- 
 est and workers have learned likewise. The mechanical 
 principles have been challenged on both sides when the 
 interest of either group has called for it. Hereafter 
 neither group can invoke them with impunity merely to 
 gain an advantage over the other. The actual visible 
 rewards of industry are at present limited and the con- 
 test is over their distribution. The old competitive game 
 is a harsh one, but is there any other game to play? 
 Christianity holds that there is. 
 
 For tHE Discusston Group 
 Do you agree with the statement that the difficulty in 
 
COMPETITION—THE OLD GAME 59 
 
 industrial relations is less a matter of misunderstanding 
 than of a very clear understanding of conflicting interests ? 
 
 What are the interests of capital and labor which so 
 oiten pit them against each other? Do increased wages 
 necessarily mean less profits, or higher prices to the con- 
 sumer? Can the interests of all three parties be advanced 
 at the same time? How? 
 
 Do the employers whom you know generally accept 
 “supply and demand” as the principle of wage determina- 
 tion? How far would the average employer go in cutting 
 wages when the “labor market” is strongly favorable to 
 him ? 
 
 What do the words “right” and “just”? mean when ap- 
 plied to wages? Are they ethical or only mathematical 
 terms ? 
 
 Are there fixed levels of intelligence which qualify peo- 
 ple for stated kinds of work? If so, who or what is to 
 determine where people “belong” ? 
 
 Is industry as much interested in the “upkeep” of its 
 labor as in that of its plant and equipment? If an em- 
 ployer can figure his material “costs,” why is there no 
 agreement about what it costs to maintain labor in physical 
 and mental efficiency ? : 
 
 Are disputes over wages and hours usually settled or 
 only patched up? Some people insist that they cannot 
 be settled on a continuing competitive basis. What do 
 you think? 
 
 Is there something wrong with the competitive game 
 itself, or only with the way it is played? 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 STRIKES AND LOCKOUTS—INTERRUPTIONS 
 OF THE GAME 
 
 1 Corinthians 12. 14-27 
 
 Are strikes and lockouts ever justifiable? Whether 
 justifiable or not, are they inevitable? What right has a 
 man to his job? Is the remedy for strikes to be found 
 in compulsory arbitration or in some less drastic means? 
 Must there always be an ultimate appeal to force in the 
 preservation of human rights and institutions? If so, 
 what becomes of the Christian ideal? 
 
 Tur DIAGNOSIS 
 
 Many of the bodily pains and annoyances that human 
 beings suffer are of interest to the doctors chiefly for 
 the light they throw on conditions of greater importance. 
 Most of us are blissfully unaware of our disorders until 
 some purely superficial sign develops.. Then, but for the 
 counsel of a wise physician, we should probably become 
 preoccupied with the symptom and neglect the real 
 trouble. Is there any significance in this for the present- 
 day industrial situation? Certainly we are caught un- 
 prepared for most of the conflicts that break out. Take 
 the great coal strike of 1922 for example. The roots of 
 that trouble were deep and it had been growing for years. 
 It was the whole industry that was out of gear, not just 
 the mechanism of bargaining. Yet it took months of 
 educational work and publicity to convince the public 
 that the trouble was not just a matter to be adjusted 
 by arbitration over wages. This time the public became 
 sufficiently aroused to warrant Congress in setting up 
 new machinery at considerable expense to find the facts 
 and devise remedies for what was wrong. As a general 
 rule, however, it is hardly too much to say that se long 
 
 60 
 
STRIKES AND LOCKOUTS 61 
 
 as the wheels keep turning, the public is indifferent to 
 industrial questions. Apparently the work of the Coal 
 Commission was all but forgotten by the country at large 
 when the anthracite crisis of 1923 brought the matter 
 once again into the foreground. The public is preoccupied 
 with its own affairs—that is, with what it recognizes as 
 its own affairs—and it requires a very considerable dis- 
 turbance to direct its attention to the problems of any one 
 group of people. 
 
 SyMPTOMS AND CAUSES 
 
 It is precisely because of our neglect of industrial affairs 
 that the outbreaks of trouble and violence are of so great 
 importance. Like the symptoms of approaching bodily 
 disaster which the doctors value, strikes and lockouts 
 are like big signal boards on the industrial highway. The 
 quack doctor attempts only to treat the symptoms and 
 Jets the causes take care of themselves. There is a story 
 of a new fireman in a powder factory who was told to 
 keep his eye on the thermometer because if it went beyond 
 a certain point he would “hear a noise around here.” His 
 foreman came just in time to see him dousing the thermo- 
 meter with cold water. Is it possible that the often heard 
 proposal to prohibit strikes by law would be merely ap- 
 plying cold water to the industrial thermometer ? 
 
 But since, on the one hand, labor makes much of the 
 “right to strike,” and, on the other hand, the strike itself 
 is considered by many people to be one of the chief evils 
 of the present situation, it ought to be carefully examined. 
 And in no other way can one get a better understanding 
 of the problems of industrial relations. On the face of 
 it the strike is a drastic weapon and quite contrary to the 
 Christian ideal. Yet the matter cannot be disposed of so 
 easily. 
 
 “SENIORITY” 
 
 At the height of the railroad shopmen’s strike in 1922 
 one of the present writers undertook to interpret the 
 seniority issue in a statement which came to the attention 
 of many persons of very decided views on the labor ques- 
 
62 CHRISTIAN IDEALS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 tion. Seniority means the preference in lay-off and re- 
 hiring, pensions and other privileges, that is accorded on 
 the basis of length of service. The statement pointed out 
 that this set of privileges is so important a factor in th> 
 worker’s status that if 1t were surrendered by the striking 
 shopmen, not only would their strike be lost but their 
 union would be virtually destroyed. In other words, if 
 men could not strike without losing all claim to their 
 jobs and having to go back as individuals—if an employee 
 of twenty years’ service had to accept a status inferior 
 to that of a strike breaker who two months before was not 
 even in the craft—then all that the union means in the 
 shape of economic protection would be taken away. 
 
 Tuer TITLE To A JOB 
 
 This statement drew criticism. One university pro- 
 fessor said that it was unsound from a moral point of 
 view—it suggested that a man might quit his job and 
 still lay claim to it, that he might retain his right to a 
 job although refusing to work at it. On what ethical 
 ground could such a position be maintained? At first 
 sight the argument seems conclusive. We are all in- 
 clined to apply to such a situation the moral of the “dog- 
 in-the-manger” story. And besides, the suggestion that 
 a@ man’s job can be anything other than a matter of con- 
 tractual relationship between him as an individual and 
 his employer cuts across a very strong legal tradition. 
 The earlier history of the labor movement abounds in 
 examples of court decisions holding illegal any collec- 
 tive attempt to interfere with that relationship. But this 
 is precisely the point at issue with reference to the strike. 
 The labor union is a modern social phenomenon, and the 
 strike likewise. However we may be disposed to regard it, 
 is it not plain that in the collective refusal of workmen to 
 work save under certain conditions we have a new kind of 
 situation, one not contemplated in our older legal canons 
 and not quite accounted for in our accepted moral codes? 
 
 At its best, leaving out cases of violation of law or con- 
 tract, the strike is precisely the thing that the professor 
 pronounced morally impossible—quitting a job and still 
 
STRIKES AND LOCKOUTS 63 
 
 laying claim to it. It is the insistence that the workman 
 has a moral claim to his job, just as the employer has to 
 his factory, and that he has the same right to refuse tem- 
 porarily to work because of conditions which he believes 
 to be wrong that the employer has to lock his factory 
 temporarily if unwilling to accept the workers’ terms. 
 The workers consider their jobs as their property and they 
 have no difficulty in justifying the use of ageressive tactics 
 in defending them. 
 
 RESORTING TO VIOLENCE 
 
 It must be admitted that the violent acts of strikers 
 make a cumulative indictment whose seriousness the re- 
 sponsible leaders of labor fully recognize. Probably the 
 most bitter attacks of employers, and even of those paid 
 publicity representatives of employers’ associations who 
 sometimes have too little conscience about the tales which 
 they disseminate, have a rather definite basis in fact, how- 
 ever exaggerated they may be when considered quantita- 
 tively. Yet all such deeds are strictly comparable to what 
 the average man does when his back is against the wall in 
 the defense of the thing most precious to him. Probably 
 a conviction could seldom be had in the case of a man who 
 used violence upon another who entered in hostile fashion 
 his place of business, regardless of what a truly Christian 
 judgment of his act might be. What is the counterpart of 
 this property right in the life of the workman? There 
 is but one answer—his job. And the worker displays to- 
 ward that job, which he considers his property, the same 
 fierce jealousy that characterizes the property-owner’s atti- 
 tude toward his possessions. Who touches a man’s job: 
 touches his life. 
 
 Horrible and unjustifiable as was the Herrin massacre,. 
 its explanation is doubtless to be found in this funda- 
 mental attitude of workingmen. They go mad and act 
 like brutes over the right to a job. A union town imparts 
 to its children a bitterness toward the nonunion worker 
 —the “scab,” the Philistine—that is comparable to the 
 hereditary bitterness toward Germany that Alsatians im- 
 bibed with their mothers’ milk. It is reported that in a 
 
64 QOHRISTIAN IDEALS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 West Virginia town the school children recently refused 
 to attend the school because the school building was being 
 heated with coal from a mine that was worked by non- 
 union men. The pupils went on strike. 
 
 WHAT THE LIBERAL EMPLOYER THINKS 
 
 It would be quite untrue to say that employers in gen- 
 eral deny the claim of the workers to a “vested interest” 
 in their jobs. They probably would for the most part 
 reject i® stated in this way, but nevertheless many em- 
 ployers are coming to feel that service rendered to the 
 industry is something like capital invested in it and consti- 
 tutes a definite claim on the part of the worker. The 
 president of one of the great roads involved in the strike 
 to which we have just referred took the men’s view of 
 this matter and refused to join his fellow executives in 
 insisting that the men give up their seniority rights. But 
 even employers who are inclined to take a liberal view of 
 the matter are usually very easily convinced that the 
 worker’s claim has been invalidated by disloyal conduct. 
 
 Tre IDEALISM OF A STRIKE 
 
 Perhaps it involves some stretch of the imagination on 
 the part of a person who looks at labor troubles from a 
 distance to find anything idealistic in a strike. But a care- 
 ful observer will find in a great labor struggle a loyalty 
 and sacrifice that are akin to patriotism or even to reli- 
 gious devotion. Again and again men have sacrificed 
 their jobs, have’ suffered eviction from their homes and 
 ostracism from their associates, because of a conviction 
 that a moral principle was involved in their strike. Women 
 and children have joined in the struggle as they would 
 participate in a religious crusade. And in the fires thus 
 kindled the leaders of labor are forged. If they are 
 belligerent and noncooperative, probably this background 
 of struggle is responsible. Even though the evil of a 
 strike may be admitted, labor regards the effort to suppress 
 it by law as a forcible disarming of one combatant while 
 the other is left in possession of his weapons. No one 
 can deal with the labor strike who does not see in it a 
 
STRIKES AND LOCKOUTS 65 
 
 large measure of idealism and righteous purpose, how- 
 ever he may appraise it in a particular situation. 
 
 ComPpuLsory ARBITRATION 
 
 The proposal that strikes be prohibited by law and arbi- 
 tration made compulsory is rigidly opposed by labor. 
 Without the strike as a potential resort labor feels that 
 it would be utterly inferior in bargaining power to the 
 employing and financial interests which have undisputed 
 physical control of the plant. It interprets compulsory 
 arbitration to mean compulsory labor. An attempt has 
 been made in Kansas to outlaw strikes, with a degree of 
 success which remains a matter of dispute. But it has 
 served to bring out sharply the opposition to the principle 
 of arbitrary control. Industrial war is closely analogous 
 to international war. The establishment of courts of both 
 industrial and international justice having compulsory 
 jurisdiction may probably be regarded as an ultimate cer- 
 tainty, but such tribunals presuppose an impartial code 
 of law such as does not exist to-day. Of course the parallel ~ 
 between a labor strike and armed conflict between nations 
 is far from complete. Quantitatively the evils are not to 
 be compared. Yet there are inherent in the strike all 
 the terrors of a hunger blockade. At the same time labor 
 prefers to accept the responsibility for using reason and 
 moderation in the exercise of this grave alternative rather 
 than to submit to the decision of a public which in a crisis 
 usually thinks first of its own convenience and last of the 
 justice of labor’s claims. If the strike is a hard thing for 
 the public to understand, the public’s attitude toward a 
 strike is an equally hard thing for labor to understand. 
 Labor is told continually that the public’s interest is pri- 
 mary and that the public’s will must be done. But labor 
 feels that the public interest is sometimes best served by 
 temporarily disturbing the public’s convenience. 
 
 LABOR AND THE CouRTS 
 
 One of the most regrettable facts in the industrial 
 situation is labor’s distrustful attitude toward the courts. 
 Were that attitude different, the “right to strike” would 
 
66 CHRISTIAN IDEALS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 doubtless be less tightly grasped. Often it is based on a 
 prejudice that one might call blind were it not so char- 
 acteristically human. But there is a considerable ground 
 for it which cannot be ignored. Take, for example, the 
 decision handed down in the spring of 1923 by the United 
 States Supreme Court on the Minimum Wage Commis- 
 sion Law in the District of Columbia. One need only 
 turn to Mr. Chief Justice Taft’s vigorous dissenting opin- 
 ion to understand labor’s grievance against the courts. 
 Mr. Taft said, in effect, that the court departed from its 
 proper function by arguing economics instead of confining 
 itself to the law and the Constitution. But for his judi- 
 cial temperament and capacity he might have said much 
 more. 
 
 . The basic necessity in Christianizing industrial rela- 
 tions would seem to be the establishment of mutual con- 
 fidence and respect, and dependence upon justice rather 
 than force. Jesus made much of this principle. But 
 how can either side be sure that the legislative or judicial 
 body to which final appeal must be made is going to be 
 governed by a disinterested desire to do justly? Injunc- 
 tions have been issued again and again when the deciding 
 factor has not been the law or the constitution but popular 
 clamor, or even the play of some strong special interest. 
 
 Force AS THE Last REsortT 
 
 Labor’s attitude commonly takes its temper from the 
 economic force in, the background, and hence, from the 
 idealistic point of view, there is a fundamental fallacy 
 in the prevailing labor philosophy. One of the writers 
 once remarked to a labor leader that from the churches’ 
 point of view the ultimate question is always one of right. 
 He replied with a smile, “From my point of view, it is a 
 question of munitions”—that is to say, economic resources 
 for a struggle. There is much of this force psychology 
 in the labor movement. And one need only follow the 
 history of a conflict like the great steel strike of 1919 to 
 know that the employers likewise depend chiefly on force 
 to bring them victory in such a contest—force not always 
 limited to economic compulsion, but sometimes extending 
 
STRIKES AND LOCKOUTS 67 
 
 to physical violence, in order to overpower the leaders of 
 a strike. They very generally employ secret service and 
 private police, and they seek in a variety of ways to secure 
 control of the civic power. One of the chief uses of a 
 financial surplus is the financing of recurring fights with 
 labor. The difference between labor and employers in a 
 hotly contested battle is a question of the resources avail- 
 able at the moment. What is perhaps most to the point is 
 that scarcely any person or group is to-day free from this 
 force psychology. Force is still the main dependence of 
 nations. Governments that do not count in terms of gun- 
 boats and battalions get relatively small consideration from 
 powerful nations. Some trust in chariots and some in 
 horses; few remember the name of the Lord. 
 
 This is the background against which we are attempt- 
 ing to construct a Christian ideal. It would have been 
 simpler to prescribe counsels of perfection from the Ser- 
 mon on the Mount. That we have not done so here is no 
 indication of a lack of faith in the complete sufficiency and 
 ultimate triumph of those principles. Rather it is because 
 the industrial world seems at this moment to need plans 
 and specifications more than absolute ethical precepts. 
 From the Christian point of view it has an architect: it 
 needs a builder. 
 
 For THE Discussion GROUP 
 
 Who is mainly responsible for the hundreds of strikes 
 that occur yearly—the workers themselves, their leaders, 
 or the employers? Or is the responsibility evenly divided ? 
 
 Ts a man’s right to his job on the same plane as an 
 owner’s right to his property? Is your answer based on 
 law, on ethics, or on both? 
 
 Is a strike always an evil? Is it sometimes the lesser 
 of two evils? 
 
 Is a strike on a public utility—a railroad, for example 
 —ever justified? If so, under what circumstances? What 
 about a strike of policemen or firemen? What is the 
 governing principle? 
 
 If one holds that all strikes are unjustifiable acts on the 
 part of labor, is he thereby required, logically, to hold 
 
68 CHRISTIAN IDEALS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 that the use of force in general is wrong? Must an indus- 
 trial pacifist be a political pacifist? What is the effect on 
 the industrial situation of our continued reliance on force 
 in international relations? Are the two cases parallel ? 
 
 Is compulsory arbitration of industrial disputes a right 
 policy on the part of the community? Which side has 
 most to lose by it? Are employers more friendly to this 
 method than workers? 
 
 If the community limits the “right to strike’ on the 
 part of workers employed on public utilities, is it under 
 obligation to make some special provision for the safe- 
 guarding of their interests? If so, what sort of safeguard 
 would you suggest ? 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 CHRISTIAN FELLOWSHIP IN INDUSTRY—THE 
 NEW GAME 
 
 Matthew 7. 24-27; Romans 12. 4-8 
 
 Is the desire for fellowship as fundamental in human 
 nature as the pursuit of private gain or advantage? Can 
 the business of producing and distributing the goods of 
 the world be made a fellowship of service? That is to 
 say, can industry be made as fundamentally Christian as 
 a missionary enterprise? Or can we only hope to lop 
 off here and there the crudities of our competitive regime ? 
 What does Christianity mean for the industrial world it- 
 self—for its aims, its ideals, its processes? 
 
 THE QUEST OF THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL 
 
 We have reached the middle of our course and have not 
 yet attempted to define a Christian ideal for industry. 
 This has been quite intentional on the writers’ part for 
 the reason that this course is not an attempt to superim- 
 pose a set of principles or ideals upon the industrial world. 
 It is rather an attempt to work out a problem in the light 
 of Christian ideals. Much has been written on the social 
 ideals of Christianity that has been helpful as an interpre- 
 tation of the mind of Christ and of the Christian com- 
 munity, but for the most part neither employers nor 
 workers have been inclined to take idealistic writing 
 seriously. To be sure, an increasing number of employers 
 are making an attempt at applying what they consider 
 Christian principle—and sometimes specifically in terms 
 of the Golden Rule—to their business and industrial re- 
 lationships, but the problem still remains of determining 
 what, specifically, the Golden Rule means. Ethical prog- 
 ress cannot be made by securing formal assent to prin- 
 
 69 
 
70 CHRISTIAN IDEALS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 ciples save as these principles are made increasingly opera- 
 tive in concrete situations. 
 
 Wuart Is CuRIstTIANITy ? 
 
 In the chapters that have preceded we have been try- 
 ing to find ourselves in the struggle of the industrial 
 world; to understand the problems of every group con- 
 cerned in industry so that out of the struggle itself we 
 may find our way to some ethical judgments. Are we 
 ready now to state somewhat definitely what Christianity 
 means as applied to industrial relations? The obvious 
 and often-heard answer is that the only thing necessary 
 in industry is that all employers and workers should be 
 converted to Christianity. That is, of course, from our 
 point of view, strictly true, but what are we going to say 
 concerning the employers and labor leaders who are among 
 the most active professors of Christianity, and in no 
 hypocritical sense, but who nevertheless are among the 
 most active sources of industrial discontent? Employers 
 and business men who are pious in their professions and 
 devout in their practices and whose interest in religion 
 is beyond question are nevertheless sometimes found in 
 the front ranks of disturbers of the industrial peace. 
 
 REDEMPTION OF THE WorLD Versus Escare From It 
 
 Is not all this due to the fact that Christianity has been 
 misconceived as to its essentials? Its application to busi- 
 ness and industry is considered to be incidental and 
 secondary. The heart of Christianity is taken to be prep- 
 aration for another kind of world than that in which we 
 live rather than the transformation of the world we live 
 in, so that it will be the kind of world that Christian nur- 
 ture prepares one for. Perhaps the drama of The Pil- 
 grim’s Progress has influenced our minds so much that we 
 have difficulty in thinking of Christianity as a program 
 of redemption. We tend, rather, to think of it as a means 
 of release from life in an essentially evil world. In the 
 early days of Christianity the church was thought of in 
 the figure of an ark of salvation, and the suggestion 
 
CHRISTIAN FELLOWSHIP IN INDUSTRY 71 
 
 always carried by that figure is one of escape from a 
 world which is so bad that it is only fit for destruction. 
 But those who talk of social salvation and a gospel for 
 industry read the New Testament otherwise. They find 
 in it a promise of redemption for the world itself. They 
 believe that if human nature is individually redeemable, 
 then human institutions and relationships must also be 
 redeemable. 
 
 It is our view that the chief purpose which Jesus came 
 to further was the building of a spiritual brotherhood in- 
 clusive of all mankind, and that the central thing, there- 
 fore, in Christianity is the ideal and the practice of fellow- 
 ship. Our task is to erect this spiritual structure against 
 the background of struggle and bitterness upon which 
 we have been looking. Perhaps we might state it in this 
 way: that we are seeking a world, not of warring groups 
 but of cooperating groups; that the aim of life is to secure 
 from every person and every group the greatest contribu- 
 tion in service of which he is capable; that everybody has 
 a stake in what everybody else does. It is a new kind of 
 game in which the goal is not to overcome other human 
 beings but to conquer nature and to master life in the 
 interest of all men. 
 
 THe Uses or Conruict 
 
 History seems to show that groups of human beings 
 attain harmony of action through struggle. Conflict is 
 itself a part of the process of socialization. Why should it 
 be considered necessarily bad in itself? Its evil consists 
 in a failure to issue in something higher. In a given 
 stage of political life it may be said that war is inevitable, 
 and the same may be said about strife in industry. But 
 the purpose of conflict is served only as it renders future 
 conflict less inevitable. No careful observer of the labor 
 movement can fail to be impressed with the spiritual 
 quality of labor’s struggle and sacrifice for a higher status 
 and greater freedom. The encounter with employers and 
 with owners has often had an unquestionable spiritual 
 value. There are moral tasks to be done in the world 
 that cannot be done with gloves. Is not the test of conflict 
 
02 CHRISTIAN IDEALS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 on the ethical side the degree to which it removes barriers 
 to future fellowship among men? 
 
 All this is said in full recognition that labor’s struggles 
 are often as crass as those of predatory interests. The 
 difference is in the result. By and large, must we not 
 admit that labor’s struggles have issued in a broader basis 
 for fellowship, and a more universal concept of citizen- 
 ship? The employers likewise have had their costly ex- 
 perience of conflict—among themselves as well as against 
 the labor movement. Even where they have not had 
 justice on their side they have perhaps paid the inevitable 
 price of a broader vision and a greater service. 
 
 FELLow VICTIMS 
 
 Might it not be said that the parties now struggling 
 with each other in industry are not so much mutual 
 antagonists as fellow victims of a regime of force and 
 struggle? It was frequently remarked during the Great 
 War that its tragedy was enhanced by the fact that men 
 fought each other like tigers who had no personal griev- 
 ance; who, left to themselves, and freed from the gigantic 
 mechanism of destruction, would fraternize and become 
 friends. Likewise it is often observed that representatives 
 of employing and labor interests meet on the same plat- 
 form and exchange warm personal greetings, although in 
 their official capacities they fight bitterly. There is a 
 fellowship even in hostile combat; the combatants may be 
 together paying the price of future freedom. 
 
 Tur HicHEerR ConrFruicr 
 
 Scholarly writers have been objecting in recent years 
 to the many programs of betterment that have been 
 brought forward by social idealists because they say that 
 humanity would not be satisfied in a world where there 
 was nothing or nobody left to fight. But is this not like 
 leaving a youth surrounded by whisky fumes and typhoid 
 germs and licentious literature so that he may have some- 
 thing wherewith to develop manly resistance? To remove 
 the necessity of struggle on the low levels of life frees 
 one’s mental and moral energies for struggle on the higher 
 
CHRISTIAN FELLOWSHIP IN INDUSTRY 73 
 
 levels. We have the whole intellectual and moral world 
 to conguer; why spend our energies in conflict with one 
 another? Theodore Roosevelt once said to a crowd of 
 ministers of different faiths: “You have a big target to 
 shoot at. I hope you will not waste your ammunition 
 shooting at each other.” 
 
 Let us ask, if the Christian ideal of fellowship were 
 actually regnant in the world, how industrial activities 
 and relationships would be modified. 
 
 A Jos For EveryBopy 
 
 Are we not safe in saying at the outset that if there is 
 anything in the ideal of human fellowship or brother- 
 hood with reference to industry, such an ideal would mean 
 in the first place that everybody should work? This 
 means, of course, everybody in good health between the 
 age limits of productive labor. Incidentally it would 
 also imply employment so far as possible for the handi- 
 capped, in order that they might not be denied the satis- 
 faction of work, which human beings seem normally to 
 require. The provision for productive industrial employ- 
 ment of men who are maimed by the loss of a limb or the 
 loss of sight, for example, makes possible the retention of 
 what might be called free industrial citizenship for many 
 who would otherwise be dependent and suffer the de- 
 moralizing consequences of pauperdom. Henry Ford’s 
 plants appear to have accomplished almost unbelievable 
 results in this direction by finding jobs for the maimed 
 that they can do just as well as those not handicapped at 
 all. Our industrial rehabilitation law and the machinery 
 of its operation have unmeasured spiritual value. But 
 we are chiefly concerned with the able-bodied men and 
 women who make up our communities. During the war 
 we applied a “work or fight” principle, which was given 
 the force of law, if not by statute, at least by public 
 opinion. One nation, Bulgaria, has undertaken to make 
 a certain amount of work compulsory in time of peace. 
 
 Hozsors—Botu Kinps 
 It is easy enough to enforce such a regulation at the 
 
74 CHRISTIAN IDEALS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 lower end of the industrial ladder, but what about the 
 vagrants in automobiles and on horseback? Should not 
 a rule that works for a ragged hobo work likewise for a 
 well-dressed one? And what about the young woman 
 whose occupation appears on a legal report blank as “at 
 home”? Are there women vagrants of the indoor variety? 
 If the young woman is “at home” because she has a job 
 there, of course the case is different. But it is hard to 
 reconcile with the Christian ideal living on income that 
 one does nothing to earn. 
 
 JUDGING A JOB 
 
 But surely this ideal is concerned with what one works 
 at. For there are many things commonly done that we 
 cannot imagine Jesus doing—or even Martin Luther or 
 John Wesley. Certain of them we should all agree on, 
 probably, at the mere mention of them—running a low- 
 class amusement house, for example, or a pawnshop; 
 likewise, gambling, whether big or little. But then there 
 comes a long list of things about which there may be a 
 great difference of opinion. A man was heard to say 
 recently that he could not engage in the jewelry busi- 
 ness because he thought it was not productive, and hence 
 not socially justifiable. He is in the business of making 
 farm implements. Certainly, the latter is much more 
 essential, closer to the actual needs of humanity than the 
 former. Yet many would feel that jewelry may be in a 
 very real sense “goods,” and that this adverse judgment 
 was too sweeping. Well, then, what about chewing gum 
 or tobacco? Clearly, we could never agree on all the 
 specific instances that we might name, but could we 
 perhaps agree on a general principle? That principle 
 might be stated thus: that the purpose of all work is to 
 render a service, to enrich the lives of human beings—both 
 those who do the work and those who consume the product 
 —and that no consideration of profit or reward justifies 
 a business that cannot meet this test. 
 
 Tue Doom oF THE USELESS 
 Such a proposition cuts across at once the often ex- 
 
CHRISTIAN FELLOWSHIP IN INDUSTRY 75 
 
 pressed idea that whatever gives employment to labor is a 
 justifiable enterprise provided it is not positively harmful. 
 For example, here is a cosmetics establishment. No one 
 ‘argues that cosmetics rank high as economic goods, and 
 probably most of us would list them, in our most serious 
 and honest moments, among the dispensable things for 
 which there is nevertheless a very pronounced demand. 
 But, barring compounds that are injurious, many people 
 would say that so long as such goods can be sold and 
 their manufacture employs thousands of laborers, no 
 further question need be asked. Nevertheless, our econo- 
 mists are telling us to-day that another very important 
 question needs to be asked—namely, what good does the 
 article in question do? Now, many will be found to assure 
 us that this particular class of goods plays a very im- 
 portant part in life. Perhaps so; but the point here is 
 that évery industry or business should be able to defend 
 itself not merely from the charge of harmfulness but 
 from the charge of uselessness. Is not this a Christian 
 principle? Every branch that bears no fruit must be cut 
 down. The men and women employed in a nonproductive 
 industry might be employed in a productive one. Money 
 paid for that which is not bread might as well have been 
 thrown into the sea. Perhaps one of the most fruitful 
 things that Christians, particularly Christian young peo- 
 ple, could do is to consider and compare all sorts of occupa- 
 tions as to their relative usefulness, not only with refer- 
 ence to entering them but with reference to encourag- 
 ing them with their investments. 
 
 Wuat Is Wrone in InvbustRY? 
 
 But assuming that we have everybody at work doing 
 something recognized as useful, the fact remains that the 
 industries in which most of the trouble occurs are those 
 of unquestioned usefulness and importance—coal mining, 
 steel making, garment making, railroads, building, for ex- 
 ample. Why is it that such essential processes do not 
 go on in harmony and peace? The Christian diagnosis is 
 that there is no fellowship in them. 
 
 Now, this word “fellowship,” like the word “love,” is 
 
76 CHRISTIAN IDEALS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 likely to be interpreted to mean something very conven- 
 tional and, it is to be feared, very impractical and unreal. 
 But consider a moment. Is it not the very thing that em- 
 ployers are constantly talking about when they tell their 
 workingmen that industry is a partnership, and that capi- 
 tal and labor cannot be in conflict because their interests 
 are identical? Is not the thing that Christianity offers the 
 very thing that industrial leaders want and imagine they 
 can secure by simply getting workers to accept a formula? 
 And all the time the workers are convinced that there is 
 no partnership but, rather, essential conflict, because, 
 as matters stand, the interests of the two groups are not 
 identical but in sharp contrast. 
 
 Unpber-Cover IDEALISM 
 
 Is it not very illuminating that the words which are 
 central to our Christian religion—love, fellowship, good 
 will, service—should be considered a bit out of place in 
 the business world? ‘The war brought us some rare ex- 
 amples of these virtues, but the vocabulary was different. 
 Brotherhood was summed up in the term “buddy.” The 
 supreme sacrifice was “going west.” Idealism there was 
 aplenty, but men scorned its conventional names. So in 
 industry, even if a man does a fine thing for his em- 
 ployees, he wants it known as “straight business.” 
 
 This suppression of idealistic motives is in accord with 
 what seems to be a general agreement that when “senti- 
 ment” gets into business, either someone is a hypocrite or 
 someone is going broke. Christianity cuts straight across 
 this theory. It aims to put social motives at the center, 
 not at the periphery of life; to build upon the foundation 
 of consciousness of kind and identity of interest that is 
 being laid by means of a struggle and conflict in the 
 industrial world, until its travail shall issue in a new 
 brotherhood from which no individual or group shall be 
 excluded. 
 
 For tHe Discussion Group 
 
 Are we interested in Christianity primarily because of 
 what it offers in private spiritual satisfactions and future 
 
CHRISTIAN FELLOWSHIP IN INDUSTRY 77 
 
 hopes, or because it promises a redeemed world? Does 
 it promise a redeemed world, or only escape from the 
 world ? 
 
 It is related of Wendell Phillips that when asked if he 
 considered that Christianity had failed he replied, “I 
 don’t know; it has never been tried.” Do you agree with 
 him? 
 
 Think of the most generous and public-minded em- 
 ployers and business men in the community ; now run over 
 in your mind the most religious men, the most devoted 
 to the church and its activities; are they the same peo- 
 ple in each case? If not, why not? If the majority of 
 industrial leaders are Christians, why is industry not yet 
 Christianized ? 
 
 Is fellowship a major or a minor fact in life? Which 
 does the average person care more for—his private posses- 
 sions and interests or the approval of his fellows and the 
 enjoyment of their society? 
 
 Assuming that it is generally agreed that every able- 
 bodied person ought to work, should the state tax idle- 
 ness, or should the matter be left to moral suasion ? 
 
 What is the relative merit, from the Christian point of 
 view, of the tobacco industry? the diamond industry? 
 munitions? books? victrolas? locomotives? flowers? 
 
 Is it unchristian to engage in producing something that 
 it would be unchristian to use? 
 
 In the world as it is to-day can any idealistic young 
 person find a lifework that squares fully with his ideals? 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 NEW MOTIVES FOR OLD—THE GOAL OF THE 
 GAME 
 
 Luke 2. 49; 1 Corinthians 3. 9-15 
 
 Wuar is the strongest incentive to physical and mental 
 effort? Must it be assumed that even a Christian man is 
 dominated by enlightened self-interest in the sphere of 
 his trade, business, or profession? Is the Golden Rule a 
 counsel of perfection, having reality only in a super- 
 natural world, or is it to be taken seriously with reference 
 to life as it is? Is human nature essentially selfish; and 
 if so, can it be changed? 
 
 CHRISTIANITY IN Bustness—AssetT oR HANDICAP? 
 
 A few years ago a group of prominent persons in 
 an Eastern city were discussing in a prayer meeting the 
 old question, Can a man be a Christian and succeed in 
 business? One very thoughtful man, an employer of 
 labor, said that he was sure the answer was Yes; but he 
 was inclined to think that a Christian could not make as 
 much money in business as a man who made no Christian 
 profession. In other words, being a Christian was, as a 
 New York politician once said of being a Presbyterian in 
 Tammany Hall, “something of a handicap.” This was 
 quite to the point, whether or not one agrees with the 
 sentiment expressed. But the most interesting comment 
 came from a lawyer who said, “Of course one can be 
 a Christian and succeed in business; if not, then there 
 must be something wrong with Christianity.” I¢ did not 
 occur to him that there might be something wrong with 
 business. It is to be feared that most of us when we find 
 principles out of line with practice make a strenuous 
 effort first to warp the principles. 
 
 But is there not a sense in which the lawyer was right? 
 
 78 
 
NEW MOTIVES FOR OLD 79 
 
 That is to say, whatever we may think of this or that 
 phase ef the modern world of business or industry or 
 politics, no system of morals that will not meet the re- 
 quirements of a crowded world of human beings can long 
 sustain itself. If it is not possible to produce goods and 
 consume them, to marry and be given in marriage, and to 
 do all the other elemental things that are necessary to our 
 common life in a way that is fully reconcilable with our 
 ethical ideals, are we not really under the necessity of 
 frankly confessing that our ideals are impossible of realiza- 
 tion in this world and of finding a new set of ideals that 
 are in accord with life as it has to be lived? For instance, 
 we have discarded the monastic ideal of life because it 
 doesn’t work. If it should be discovered that a Christian 
 ideal for industry would not produce the goods we need to 
 live on, doubtless we should all agree that our ideal needed 
 adjustment to reality. 
 
 Tuer Test of THE GoLDEN RULE 
 
 Sooner or later we have to face this problem. Every- 
 body agrees that if there is a Christian ideal for industrial 
 relations it is built up around the idea of service, of co- 
 operation. But a large part of the working world seems 
 to be quite convinced that no such ideal will work. “It is 
 all very well,” we hear men say, “for personal and private 
 relations, but you can’t conduct a business on that basis.” 
 An official in an industrial concern who was also an active 
 churchman recently said, “It probably ought to be the 
 kind of world in which business and industry can be con- 
 ducted according to the Golden Rule, but it isn’t.” Thus 
 we come to have two systems of ethics, one for personal 
 and private relations and another for our corporate rela- 
 tions and responsibilities. And we do not seem to have 
 any difficulty in squaring both codes with a Christian 
 profession. Does not this remind one unpleasantly of the 
 German professor’s remark that the commandment to 
 love your neighbor is without doubt binding in individual 
 relationships, but that “for a German to love a French- 
 man as himself is the political sin. against the Holy 
 Ghost!” It is hard to see why such a doctrine is any 
 
80 CHRISTIAN IDEALS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 worse when applied to international than when applied to 
 industrial relations. 
 
 The difficulty here seems to be that most of us assume 
 that human affairs are commonly carried on for reasons 
 that cannot be justified from the Christian point of view; 
 that the world is not only unsanctified but unsanctifiable. 
 It may be worth while to inquire whether the world of 
 practical affairs is as bad as all that, whether human 
 nature is so dismally unregenerate that it takes a war or 
 other great catastrophe to release noble motives. What, 
 after all, is it that induces people to play their part in 
 the game of life? 
 
 Wuy WorkK? 
 
 After all, why do we work? Why does anybody work? 
 It is true that we work just because it is a way to get 
 food, clothing, and shelter? Samuel Johnson is reputed 
 to have said that if he hadn’t been hungry, he never 
 would have written a book. But certainly there are multi- 
 tudes of people who are not obliged, economically, to 
 work who nevertheless prefer to be constantly employed. 
 The sons. of wealthy men are often among the hardest 
 workers. In the last few years we have heard much about 
 “instincts in industry” and the “instinct of workmanship.” 
 It is a fair question whether people of normal health and 
 intelligence do not work because it is in them to work, 
 because they would be “lost without it.” <A certain 
 metropolitan suburb has a large plot of ground devoted to 
 “community gardens,” where plots are assigned to any. 
 residents of the community who want them. Many peo- 
 ple who work all day in the city take two and three garden 
 plots and put in some of the hardest work of the summer 
 on them with only an incidental money reward. . Physi- 
 cians tell us that among women who are not habitually 
 gainfully employed the most serious kinds of nervous dis- 
 orders develop just because of the lack of wholesome em- 
 ployment. We seem to require something to throw our- 
 selves into, to identify ourselves with. Commonly money 
 reward is taken as the measure of success in business, 
 industry, or profession. But is that equivalent to saying 
 
NEW MOTIVES FOR OLD 81 
 
 that men work primarily for material gain? Men who 
 have acquired all the money they need tend to think in 
 other terms—building up a business to leave behind them, 
 or making a record in volume or skill of achievement, dis- 
 covery, or invention. 
 
 Here is something interesting to speculate upon: Sup- 
 pose everyone were provided with all the natural necessi- 
 ties of life, what would people do? Would they go on 
 working just the same or would most people take a 
 grand lay-off? If they would take the lay-off, if human 
 nature is like that, then it would seem rather hopeless to 
 pursue the quest of a Christian ideal for industry. For 
 it is-rather hard to imagine a Christian attitude toward 
 work on the part of creatures who are so made that they 
 would not work if they did not have to. 
 
 SALVATION IN WorK 
 
 Dr. Richard Cabot in a well-known book answers the 
 question “what men live by” with a fourfold prescription : 
 work, play, love, and worship. According to this philos- 
 ophy, work is an end in itself. That is to say, apart from 
 the social end that industry serves, it is to the men and 
 women who participate in it a fulfillment of their own 
 natures. And if this is true, the ideal held by many peo- 
 ple, that the goal of all work is to reach a position where 
 they will not have to work, is quite erroneous. The no- 
 tion sometimes advanced by labor leaders that the indus- 
 trial emancipation of the world is to be found in fewer 
 hours of work and correspondingly more leisure would 
 likewise, from this point of view, be far from correct. 
 For, according to the view of work we have been con- 
 sidering, we should look for the salvation of the world in 
 its work, not in escape from it. 
 
 ALTRUISM 
 
 But a person may be very industrious without being 
 very useful. He may spend many valuable hours per- 
 fecting his private radio with no conspicuous benefit re- 
 sulting to the community. One needs only to look into 
 the Gospels to make up his mind that whatever the Chris- 
 
82 CHRISTIAN IDEALS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 tian ideal may be in detail, it demands that the motive of 
 all work shall be that of service to one’s fellows. To be 
 sure, altruism sometimes becomes a sort of negative affair. 
 A small boy in a philosophical mood once asked his 
 mother, “What are we here for?” to which she replied 
 in conventional phrase “To help others, my son.” He 
 contracted his brows over this reply and presently came 
 back with “And what are the others here for?” We have 
 to find a motive that includes ourselves and others too. 
 There is nothing ascetic about the social ideal of living. 
 We do not have to be immolating ourselves perpetually 
 after we have found ourselves in fellowship. 
 
 “Not In Business For Our HEALTH” 
 
 Admittedly this service ideal is far from regnant in 
 the world to-day. The majority of people probably would 
 say that they are working for the money they can make 
 and that no one can be expected to work hard without a 
 proportionate money reward. “We are not in business 
 for our health.” It is generally assumed that people will 
 not work unless driven to it by need; that no one will 
 invest his money in an enterprise unless he is reasonably 
 certain that it is the best-paying safe proposition that he 
 can find. Yet there are few people who actually live down 
 to the level of that crude statement. In fact, many a per- 
 son deliberately chooses an employment that is not as 
 lucrative as others because of what it means in terms of 
 service. And money is often invested in an enterprise that 
 yields small financial returns but large rewards of a non- 
 material sort. Many a corporation deliberately limits its 
 earnings in order to pay better wages or in order to play 
 fair with its customers. A bank has been known to resist 
 the most tempting rates of interest when a moral prin- 
 ciple was at stake. An employer often makes concessions 
 to his workers to his own financial loss. But to cite such 
 examples is to emphasize their comparative rareness. The 
 principle of industry for service is not established in the 
 world; in fact, it is very definitely opposed. There are 
 men of good character, judged by all the common stand- 
 
NEW MOTIVES FOR OLD 83 
 
 ards, who resist the notion that industry can be conducted 
 on an idealistic basis. 
 
 Wuar Is Inpustry For? 
 
 A minister once wrote a criticism of the Interchurch 
 report on the steel strike in which he insisted that the 
 purpose of the steel industry is to produce steel, and hence 
 he scoffed at many human issues that were raised in the 
 Interchurch report. But suppose we analyze that a bit. 
 Obviously the reason why our industrial plants have come 
 into being is the necessity for material goods. Assuming 
 that the goods in question are real goods that actually 
 enrich life, then surely it is reasonable to insist that any 
 idealistic proposal for industrial reorganization must de- 
 liver the goods. And it is not sufficient that individuals 
 may be found here and there who are willing to run their 
 factories without profit during a period of depression, 
 inspiring as that sight may be. The ultimate test is a 
 practical one. Can business men everywhere be induced 
 to run their enterprises for service all the time, and can 
 they make a success on that basis? Of course a man may 
 be so unselfish that he will run his business at a loss. It 
 may well be argued that unless a man actually prefers to 
 run his business at a loss rather than to violate the Chris- 
 tian ideal he is unworthy of the great Christian adventure 
 of life. But let us face the facts. If the Christian ideal 
 means to run business at a loss, the Christian ideal will 
 run into the ground. We are brought right back to where 
 our lawyer friend left us, although the question as he 
 put it revealed, perhaps, a rather questionable motive. Is 
 it not true that in industry as elsewhere Christianity must 
 be judged by its fruits? 
 
 THE QuEST oF INCENTIVES 
 
 Many people seriously believe that the old game of 
 competitive strife will produce more and better goods in 
 the long run than the method of cooperation and the 
 motive of service; they feel, though they would not say 
 
84 CHRISTIAN IDEALS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 so, that Christianity is a religion for the cloister rather 
 than for practical life. But most people who take this 
 view will not follow it to the logical conclusion. They 
 take the easy course and give lip service to the higher ideal 
 and during six days of the week frankly follow the lower. 
 And it must be admitted that the practicability of the 
 Christian ideal has never been fully demonstrated. Yet 
 it is susceptible of proof. The great question facing the 
 Christian community to-day is a scientific question: Is 
 the Christian ideal practicable as a way of life? If not, 
 then Bunyan’s pilgrim was right from his point of view. 
 He wanted to live in a good world and he decided to 
 run for it. But if Christianity can be made a science of 
 practical living, then what we want is Christian engineers 
 and employers and labor leaders who will build a new 
 industrial order wherein will dwell righteousness. 
 
 “TuMAN Nature Cannot Br CHANGED” 
 
 Those who take the pessimistic view of this problem 
 commonly base their objections on the ground that to 
 displace self-interest as the controlling factor in life 
 means to “change human nature”—and that can’t be done! 
 Is it not a bit strange to hear Christian men and women 
 talking that way? They take the regeneration of the 
 individual life for granted, but they do not see the possi- 
 bility of a regeneration of human relationships. Man is 
 made in the image of God, but the world he lives in is a 
 bad world and the Almighty himself cannot redeem it! 
 Is that not a bit preposterous? 
 
 It is related of Dr. Josiah Strong, one of the earliest of 
 the present generation of apostles of a Christian social 
 order, that after he had on a certain occasion addressed 
 a group of ministers, one of them rose and flung at him 
 the old pessimistic objection. “Don’t you realize,” he 
 said, “that the idealistic program you have been present- 
 ing would require a complete change of human nature ?” 
 Doctor Strong was on his feet in a second. “Precisely so,” 
 he replied, “and it was to men like you that Jesus said, 
 “Ye must be born again’ ” 
 
NEW MOTIVES FOR OLD 85 
 
 Tue Dawn oF MoRALITY 
 
 There is nothing unscientific in the belief that mutual 
 service rather than self-interest will prove to be the most 
 powerful motive in the life of the world. How did the 
 moral sense of mankind develop in the first place? We 
 are all familiar with the principle of the struggle for 
 existence which biologists hold to be responsible for the 
 evolution of life along definite lines. We can easily ac- 
 count for muscular strength, keenness of sight, and fleet- 
 ness of foot on the basis of struggle between individuals 
 because these traits aided the individual in the competi- 
 tion for survival. But how did morality come to have a 
 “survival value”? ‘Tennyson refers to the struggle for 
 existence in his memorable lines: 
 
 “Though nature, red in tooth and claw, . 
 With ravine, shrieked against his creed.” 
 
 Where do altruism, service, sacrifice fit into such a process ? 
 
 There is no other visible explanation of the develop- 
 ment of morality in the world than that it came about 
 through the association of human beings in groups for 
 mutual aid. Morality came to have a survival value when 
 the ability to live harmoniously with one’s fellows became 
 a condition of safe existence. Thus the individual had 
 the protection of his group instead of standing, like 
 Ishmael, alone against the world. Is it not reasonable 
 to suppose that in the struggle, not with other human 
 beings, but with the forces of nature which man under- 
 takes to bend to his will, it will yet be found that coopera- 
 tion in fellowship and good will is a vastly greater crea- 
 tive force than the brute struggle “Every man for him- 
 self, and the devil take the hindmost”? Thus may Chris- 
 tianity come to be understood as the only truly scientific 
 way of life. 
 
 For tHE Discuss1on GROUP 
 
 Do you agree with the employer who thought that he 
 could make more money if he were not a Christian? What 
 about the lawyer who thought that if business and Chris- 
 
86 CHRISTIAN IDEALS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 tianity were not compatible, something must be wrong 
 with Christianity ? 
 
 A young college student said recently: “I’m for Chris- 
 tianity because I believe it will work in the world to-day. 
 If it won’t work, I’m off it.” Is that a fair statement ? 
 
 Is the assumption warranted that men work mainly be- 
 cause they have to or for hope of gain? How would the 
 average person like one month of work and eleven months’ 
 vacation? Instinctively, are we workers or hoboes? 
 
 What incentives are strongest in your own experience ? 
 Do the people who seem to be best satisfied with life ap- 
 pear to be seeking material rewards or something differ- 
 ent? 
 
 Is there such a thing as competition in service? How 
 does it compare ethically with competition for wages oT 
 profits? Can you imagine Jesus competing for anything ? 
 
 Is human nature essentially selfish or is the apparent 
 selfishness only an adjustment to a competitive order? Is 
 the familiar statement “Human nature cannot be 
 changed” true? Do we know what human nature is 
 capable of in the way of social effort until we try? 
 
 If it is admitted that “the business of the steel indus- 
 try is to produce steel,” may it still be said that that 
 establishment will produce most steel which most con- 
 sistently developsapersonality and builds fellowship? In 
 other words, can competition compete with cooperation? 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 THE RULES OF THE GAME 
 Micah 6. 6-8; 2 Timothy 2. 1-6 
 
 How can industry be made a fellowship of productive 
 service—efficient not only in the production of goods but 
 in the making of men? Can there be orderly government 
 without compulsion and force, without one man being the 
 master of many? Can workers and employers go beyond 
 
 the “bargaining” stage and make industry a self-govern- 
 ing whole? 
 
 Tue New GAME AND THE OLD 
 
 We have again and again referred to industry as a 
 game. We have clung to that figure because there seems 
 to be an instinctive element of risk and adventure in life 
 that is fundamental to work as well as to play. It is highly 
 significant that whenever we find ourselves free we start 
 up @ game or something or other, and that the work men 
 do most intensely is the thing that has most of the gaming 
 element in it. How large a part this gaming element 
 plays in life is a matter for psychologists to determine. 
 But it requires only a little observation and reflection to 
 discover that it plays an important part. The instinctive 
 fondness for adventure it is hard to get rid of, perhaps 
 impossible. Why should we try? It is not the fact of 
 playing a game that matters, but the kind of game we 
 play and the way we play it. 
 
 Now, what is the difference between the old game and 
 the new game that we have proposed? There is much 
 to be said for the present order of things in industry. As 
 Seebohm Rowntree says, speaking of Great Britain, 
 “It gets forty million people up and at work every morn- 
 ing.” That’s something. And there are many industrial 
 establishments where the crudities of competition are 
 
 87 
 
88 CHRISTIAN IDEALS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 softened in a remarkable degree by considerateness on 
 the part of management and by sober, wise leadership on 
 the part of the workers. But, according to the view we 
 are presenting here, the old game has two things wrong 
 with it: first, the chances of the game are not) equal; 
 secondly, the stakes of the game are not wholesome. And 
 because the stakes are wrong the chances never can be 
 equal. ‘This is the heart of the matter. The old game is 
 comparable to a contest for a set of prizes whose number 
 is limited. Victory for one means loss for others. The 
 rewards are material and the physical and mental ability 
 to contend for them successfully are unevenly distributed 
 through the world. What can be done with that kind 
 of a game? Obviously only what reformers are con- 
 stantly trying to do—patch up the rules here and there 
 by giving the weaker group a handicap. The old game 
 is one that men play against each other. The new game 
 is comparable rather to the game that the pioneer plays 
 with nature or with himself. He is out to conquer the 
 elements, to set new records of achievement, to beat his 
 own previous records. From this point of view competi- 
 tion with others becomes irrelevant. The new game is 
 one that men play with each other. Its stakes are personal 
 as well as material, and when they are material they are 
 sought not for private but for social ends. | 
 
 “BARGAINING” 
 
 The old game in industry assumes that two groups are 
 contending against each other, and that what is necessary 
 is to even up the chances. A fair field and may the best 
 man win! Thus we have come to think of a fair deal in > 
 industry as expressed in terms of collective bargaining. 
 To be sure, it may well be asked, Why bargain if there is 
 a fundamental identity of interest? Paul’s great figure 
 of the human body, with all its interdependent paris, is a 
 tremendous one when one stops to take it in. Not merely 
 is the hand unable to say to the eye, “I have no need of 
 thee,” but the idea of competition as between the hand and 
 eye is unthinkable. “So we, being many, are one body.” 
 It is a revolutionary thought. Ultimately we may rise to 
 
THE RULES OF THE GAME 89 
 
 a plane of cooperative living where bargaining will be 
 meaningless. 
 
 The kind of bargaining we are here discussing is not 
 the mere exchange of goods or the sale of goods in which 
 both seller and buyer are fully satisfied. The mechanism 
 of exchange by which a fixed price is charged for com- 
 modities relieves the bargaining process of much of its 
 crudity. The business game as it is played to-day is a 
 great improvement over the haggling and “beating down” 
 and crafty efforts to gain advantage that would every- 
 where be apparent in commerce if there were no market 
 regulations and adjustments. Anyone who wants an 
 illustration of the difference needs only to compare the way 
 he feels on entering a standard-meter taxicab with his 
 sensations when he commits himself to the mercies of a 
 driver whose fares are determined by his own snap esti- 
 mate of what the “traffic will bear.” Not only so, but 
 the right, involved in the idea of bargaining, to enter or 
 leave any employment at will has a moral value that must 
 not be overlooked. Yet the fact remains that the bargain- 
 ing of which we speak in industrial relations is at best a 
 crude method of determining the “price” of labor. It 
 _ proceeds on the basis, rejected theoretically by labor itself, 
 of the “commodity theory” of labor. Little thought is 
 given to what is the most equitable division of the prod- 
 uct; the aim is, rather, to gain the greatest possible ad- 
 vantage. The defects of any such process from the spir- 
 itual point of view are apparent. 
 
 Yet collective bargaining is an indispensable instru- 
 ment in bringing about harmony between two contending 
 groups. The value of the bargaining process is not prin- 
 cipally in evening up chances nor yet in keeping the peace. 
 If it is a bad peace, it ought not to be kept. Of what use 
 would a successful bargain be to a spiritually minded 
 employer if it were won at the cost of the employees’ 
 happiness and good will? The value of bargaining is 
 found, rather, in working out a basis of joint action in 
 the common interest. It is a recognition of social inter- 
 dependence, and as such is the first step in the creation 
 of fellowship in industry. The new experiments in joint 
 
90 CHRISTIAN IDEALS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 industrial government are of spiritual consequence be- 
 cause they are resulting in making the rules and determin- 
 ing the stakes of the new game. 
 
 THE WORKER'S STRUGGLE FOR STATUS 
 
 The stakes of the great conflict going on in industry 
 to-day are not merely wages and hours. The primary 
 question is one of status and of power. This is what the 
 demand for recognition on the part of organized labor 
 means. Gains in wages and working conditions are of 
 no permanent value if they cannot be held secure against 
 aggression and against untoward developments in the 
 “labor market.” As the employers capitalize their posses- 
 sions, so the workers are capitalizing their jobs. A labor 
 union is something like a corporation in that by means 
 of it the workers pool the titles to their jobs and act 
 jointly in matters that affect them. 
 
 THe Dras Routine 
 
 But labor’s demand for a share in the control of indus- 
 try would continue quite without reference to the question 
 of the distribution of the product. Recall for a moment 
 the remark which we quoted earlier from a conservative 
 journal that “the new era has put personality in a steel 
 niche, and it must stay put, else large-scale production 
 is impossible.” Continuing, the writer said that “some 
 plan must be found whereby men may become interested 
 in their day’s work—this is fundamental. It is a 
 twentieth-century problem, and history gives no clue to 
 the solution.” If machine production has taken away the 
 instinctive satisfactions in industrial labor, some other 
 satisfaction must be found. Increased financial reward 
 furnishes a considerable incentive, but the practical limits 
 to such an increase are soon reached, and, besides that, 
 there is a limit to the capacity to consume and the power 
 to enjoy consumption. Money satisfies only a fraction of 
 men’s elemental demands. Some other satisfaction must 
 be discovered if industry is to be redeemed from the dull 
 drab from which it is suffering. 
 
THE RULES OF THE GAME ot 
 
 Tur Emppoyen’s DISADVANTAGE 
 
 Much agitation has been felt over the suggestion that 
 the workers should “own the works.” An American 
 traveler was standing on the deck of a steamship in Eng- 
 lish waters looking at the British fleet lying at anchor in 
 the distance. He noted a Scotchman standing near him 
 and made some remark about the fine appearance of the 
 men-of-war. “Yes,” said the Scotchman, elevating his 
 chest, “and I am one of the concern that own ’em.” It 
 would hardly occur to anyone that the Scot had unwar- 
 ranted designs on his Majesty’s ships! It is perhaps some 
 such feeling as this that labor covets with respect to 
 industry. 
 
 The employer gets a large measure of satisfaction out 
 of owning the plant and out of the material rewards which 
 increased energy produces. Towering above the satisfac- 
 tions of wealth are the satisfactions of power which wealth 
 brings. A man who builds a great industry to leave 
 behind him as a monument to his enterprise feels that 
 in a sense this material structure is a part of his im- 
 mortality. How much satisfaction of this kind can an 
 employee have, even though he works a lifetime in one 
 establishment, when he knows that at any time the organ- 
 ization can dispense with his services and scarcely miss 
 him? If aman cannot build himself into the concern of 
 which he is a part, if he cannot think and originate and 
 initiate in a way to make himself indispensable to the 
 industry, and if he cannot see some fruit of his own crea- 
 tive effort, he is not likely to thrill over his occupation. 
 
 WoRKERS AS OWNERS 
 
 We hear much about the cooperative movement as a 
 remedy for inequalities in our economic system, and 
 surely no student of the present-day tendencies can ignore 
 the cooperative movement. It has profound and growing 
 significance, especially in agriculture. Chiefly, however, 
 in this country it is a consumers’ or a sellers’ movement, 
 and has to do, not with primary industrial processes, but 
 with marketing. Cooperative societies employ labor just 
 
92 CHRISTIAN IDEALS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 as capitalistic organizations do and are not free from 
 “labor troubles.” The cooperative movement is of great 
 social and economic significance, but it has not yet indi- 
 cated a solution of the labor problem. 
 
 There are examples of producers’ cooperation where the 
 workers in an industrial establishment themselves own 
 the plant, either from its inception or by purchase from 
 the original owner. Where the capitalist and labor func- 
 tions are combined, the question of relative status is 
 greatly simplified. The worker is an owner and the 
 owner is a worker. Some of the recent Catholic litera- 
 ture on industrial problems makes much of this plan, 
 restoring as it does on its face much of what the workers 
 lost when the old gild system gave way to the modern 
 factory regime. 
 
 Tt must not be supposed that what we are talking about 
 is the equivalent of profit-sharing through the ownership 
 of stock. The participation in proprietorship here re- 
 ferred to has to do with the workingman-as such, not with 
 the workingman as capitalist. There is much to be said 
 for profit-sharing. But when the workers in a concern 
 acquire each a bit of stock and become members of the 
 army of minority holders they have done only what any 
 outsider may do. Their holdings constitute a very small 
 interest and represent no real power. If every industrial 
 concern in the United States were a fifty-fifty profit-shar- 
 ing enterprise, the labor problem would, in its essence, 
 still remain. 
 
 Then what is the answer? We have just noted that 
 some Christian students and writers believe cooperative 
 ownership by the workers is the answer, or at least one 
 answer. But, granting the worth of this plan, it would 
 manifestly take a great while for the workers to absorb the 
 capital involved in modern industry. It would seem that 
 if we can liberate the spirits of men as they go about the 
 day’s work, the precise form of the fellowship they would 
 create is a secondary matter. We must remember, how- 
 ever, that there is involved not only a title to a job and 
 perhaps to property, but the exercise of power, dignity, 
 and initiative as well. The real trouble was indicated, 
 
THE RULES OF THE GAME 93 
 
 better than she knew, by a little garment worker in New 
 York who was telling to the arbitrator her grievance 
 against the factory boss: “Why,” said she, “he looked at 
 me sarcastic.” | 
 
 INDUSTRIAL CITIZENSHIP 
 
 In politics men find satisfaction in making their laws 
 and securing the administration of those laws in accord 
 with their will—or at least in making an effort to do so. 
 The requirements of industrial government are comparable 
 to those of political government. In fact, is it not prob- 
 able that one of the reasons for the scant interest on the 
 part of people in general in political affairs is that the 
 major issues of life which center about our economic needs 
 are so seldom determined by political action? It is much 
 more important to a man to have a voice in determining 
 the issues of his working life than to be able to vote for 
 or against a protective tariff. And the very act of par- 
 ticipating in industrial government furnishes a large 
 measure of that interest and initiative of which the worker 
 has been robbed by modern industrialism. As a highly 
 specialized worker he cannot be expected to show enthu- 
 siasm over the machine processes which he facilitates. It 
 seems rather—and this brings us to the crux of the 
 matter—that he must find his interest in the intellectual 
 and social aspects of his working life and thus overbalance 
 the monotony of the factory regime. Is it work that men 
 dislike, or meaningless routine work, which makes no pro- 
 vision for intellectual participation and the exercise of 
 personality? “We have removed the humian factor,” says 
 an advertisement displayed in the New York subway in 
 announcing how safe the road has made its machinery. 
 Just so. 
 
 Here again the analogy of politics is instructive. Every 
 schoolboy knows that the Boston Tea Party was not a 
 revolt against taxation, but a revolt against taxation with- 
 out a voice in the fixing of the tax or in the subsequent 
 expenditure of the money. A large number of industrial 
 disturbances which cripple industry to-day occur over 
 fairly trivial matters and are the expression not so much 
 
94 CHRISTIAN IDEALS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 of material demands as of dissatisfaction with an inferior 
 status—a position of relative helplessness and unim- 
 portance. Wage reductions have frequently been accepted 
 without protest where there was an opportunity for free 
 discussion and for dignified representation. Men have 
 voted themselves reductions in pay and have done it with- 
 out protest when they would have been sullen and re- 
 bellious if the reductions had been forced upon them. 
 
 DEMOCRACY IN INDUSTRY 
 
 The term “industrial democracy” has been so freely 
 used that it no longer has any definite meaning. Never- 
 theless, it denotes a tendency which is one of the distinc- 
 tive signs of our time. It begins with that surrender of 
 autocratic control of industry which the twenty British 
 Quaker employers called upon industrial leaders to make, 
 and the substitution for it of conference, and government 
 by consent. It often takes the form of collective dealing be- 
 tween organizations of employers and labor unions. In fact, 
 it is difficult to see how it can come about unless there is a 
 mutual willingness to negotiate with the existing recog- 
 nized organizations on each side, save where there is a 
 compelling moral objection to such recognition. The 
 price of recognition on the part of such an organization is 
 honesty of purpose and fidelity to agreements. But bar- 
 gaining is only a step in the democratic process. If the 
 germ of democracy—might we not also say of Chris- 
 tianity?—is present, the relationship becomes one of 
 mutual respect and mutual concern for rights and duties. 
 
 The essence of this new game, as we have been calling 
 it, is a spirit; its visible body is a structure of joint gov- 
 ernment which makes a constantly widening place for 
 human fellowship. Structure without spirit is no better 
 than formless debris. Many a concern has tried to put 
 over a “plan” which, to adapt a Scripture phrase, “had 
 the form of democracy but denied the power thereof.” 
 Such a procedure is likely to end in a labor strike that 
 will be hailed by uncomprehending employers as an evi- 
 dence of the employees’ ingratitude. 
 
THE RULES OF THE GAME 95 
 
 On the other hand, a spirit without a structure of gov- 
 ernment is of little permanent value. With the passing 
 of some engaging and benevolent personality it becomes 
 but a ghost of what might have been. The best ideas and 
 impulses ever let loose, if they are not to be speedily for- 
 gotten, need to be blue-printed and built into a firm struc- 
 ture. 
 
 Are Att Men Equa? 
 
 Democracy in industry, like democracy in politics, is 
 not to be confused with any arbitrary notions of equality. 
 Probably few people know what they mean by that term. 
 Most of us, doubtless, would agree that men are not equal 
 intellectually, not equal spiritually, not equal in personal 
 force, not equal in social influence. But just as the most 
 obscure man in a factory when his initiative is released 
 may create something of inestimable worth, so one mind 
 in a fellowship of minds may register in terms of spiritual 
 values beyond all expectation and beyond all estimate. 
 This means that democracy is more an act of faith than 
 a theory of government. It has to be validated in experi- 
 ence, but experience shows that there is no way to limit 
 the. possibilities of the obscurest human being. And it is 
 in an atmosphere of freedom, of respect for the individual, 
 of appreciation of the rights and possibilities of others— 
 those who are regarded as enemies as well as those who are 
 regarded as friends—that the structure of an enduring 
 government can be built, whether for industry or politics. 
 
 Puayine THE New Game WITH THE PUBLIC 
 
 Obviously it would be a simple matter for employers and 
 workers to bury the hatchet if they buried it in the head 
 of the consumer. ‘This is what many people are afraid 
 of. But the new game that we are talking about is a 
 straight game. It leaves no place for exploitation. The 
 fulfillment of industrial citizenship is in service, just as 
 the fulfillment of political citizenship is in patriotism. If 
 there is anything in the fellowship ideal for industry, it is 
 inclusive. It lifts the minds of men above the level of 
 their physical performances and widens their interest be- 
 
96 CHRISTIAN IDEALS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 yond the shop. Bargaining must give way to service, 
 _ fear to trust, competition to mutual aid. This is not a 
 dream—it is beginning to come to pass. 
 
 For tHE Discussion GROUP 
 
 Is there any evident desire on the part of either labor 
 or capital for full cooperation? Do the unions want it, 
 or would they prefer to trust to bargaining power to pre- 
 serve their interests? Do employers want cooperation 
 from their workers, or only tractability ? ? 
 
 Is there any danger that harmonious cooperation be- 
 tween employers and workers may lead to the exploitation 
 of the consumer? Does this happen now? Can the “new 
 game” leave the public out? | 
 
 Is there anything unchristian in the mere act of bar- 
 gaining between organized interests? Does bargaining 
 necessarily imply that one party gains what another loses? 
 
 Some. people oppose labor unions because they are 
 belligerent and they keep industry divided into two hostile 
 camps. Is the hostility in industry due mainly to labor? 
 Should a belligerent union be curbed, or should its power 
 and discipline be utilized in the direction of a responsible 
 government in industry? 
 
 Is an employer justified in refusing to recognize labor 
 unions because they make for division instead of unity? 
 Can harmony ard loyalty be promoted by denying the 
 right of collective bargaining? 
 
 Does a voice in management compensate the worker for 
 the monotony of his job? Is the average worker competent 
 to share the duties of management? Is he eager to do 
 so? 
 
 Employers are sometimes advised to go through the 
 form of referring important matters to the workers so 
 that “they will think they are doing it.” Does that satisfy 
 the requirements of democracy? Does it fool the men? 
 
 Should a Christian employer share profits? Should he 
 admit the workers to privileges of ownership? Should 
 they be allowed, as rapidly as they are able, to have a voice 
 in shop control? wages? discipline? finance? 
 
THE RULES OF THE GAME or 
 
 What does democracy mean? Is there any sense in 
 which all men are equal? Someone has given this defini- 
 tion: “Democracy means a chance for every man to be all 
 that it is in him to be and the recognition of every man 
 for all that he is.” Is that a good statement? Is it 
 good Christianity? 
 
CHAPTER X 
 STANDARDS OF LIVING—EVERYBODY’S GAME 
 Matthew 5. 3-9; James 2. 1-5 
 
 ARE we as Christian members of the community ready 
 to assume a share of the responsibility for making indus- 
 try a public service? How much have we to do with mak- 
 ing the standards toward which the workers strive, and 
 creating the economic conditions against which they con- 
 tend? When we complain that the “innocent public” 
 is made to bear the brunt of industrial disturbances, are 
 we as innocent as we fancy? Are we in our individual 
 lives an asset or a liability to the community? 
 
 THE ConsumMER’s RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 If there is to be fellowship in industry, it cannot be 
 confined to employers, managers, and labor. The con- 
 sumer of goods, the common citizen, must play his part. 
 And what part is it that the consumer plays? In the 
 long run he makes the standards of production since he 
 makes the standards of life. He pays the bills. He is 
 the potential organizer of the buyer’s strike—the most 
 effective strike of all, the one that the employer can never 
 break. The citizen-consumer has it in his power to de- 
 termine the style of clothes that are worn, the richness 
 of the food that is eaten, the elaborateness of the house- 
 holds of the community, and the degree of luxury that peo- 
 ple enjoy. The very existence of multitudes of industries 
 and the value of miles of real estate in the average city 
 are dependent upon the citizen-consumer’s idea of what 
 is a desirable thing to eat or to wear, and what is a desir- 
 able place to live. Here again in the matter of living 
 standards we find ourselves falling back on the figure of 
 a game—a game which everyone is playing. Most peo- 
 
 98 
 
STANDARDS OF LIVING 99 
 
 ple are like the guests at the scriptural marriage feast, 
 waiting for the behest to “come up higher.” 
 
 Our Sranparps OF LiviIne 
 
 Much is said about the sins of the rich in setting arti- 
 ficial standards which are then adopted by all classes in 
 society whether there is any possibility of their realiza- 
 tion or not; but the underlying fact is that the whole 
 world pays tribute socially to the “lord of things as they 
 are.” Thus, paradoxically, the things that divide us are, 
 after all, the things that all classes have in common— 
 the love of beauty and comfort, the satisfactions of the 
 senses, the tendency to hero worship and the love of praise. 
 Most people, no matter how poor—and perhaps more 
 eagerly the poorer they are—read with rapt attention the 
 accounts of royal weddings and thrill over the portrayal 
 of luxury. They covet. attention from “social superiors” 
 and are cowed by the frowns of those who sit in the seats 
 of the socially mighty. Psychologists have regarded this 
 an instinctive performance, and it used to be described as 
 the instinct of “mastery and submission.” The interest- 
 ing thing about it is that one changes with the greatest 
 ease from one réle to the other. The man in the parable 
 who cringed before his creditor and then went out and 
 took his debtor by the neck was a type of humankind. 
 We are creatures of a social environment which has 
 arranged us all in a sliding scale. Everyone’s standard of 
 living is a creation of economic circumstances which the 
 whole community has a share in creating. 
 
 Is tHe INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBLE ? 
 
 But even recognizing this interdependence of social 
 groups it is hardly fair for the individual to claim an alibi. 
 This is a delightfully convenient thing to do. A young 
 woman whose father pointed out to her that her sister’s 
 spending allowance was less than her own said with com- 
 fortable unconcern: “That’s all right. It costs more to 
 keep me than it does to keep Rose.” This was equivalent 
 to saying that one takes his standard of living as he does 
 the color of his hair, as something belonging to native 
 
100 CHRISTIAN IDEALS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 equipment for which he has no personal responsibility. 
 As is usually true of questionable doctrines there is much 
 to be said for this argument. It is quite absurd to say 
 that all people, regardless of their cultural level, can live 
 on the same amount of money. Would not a piano, which 
 is a cultural necessity in some homes, be an absurd ex- 
 travagance in others? And what shall be said of a library 
 or of a collection of classic paintings? Undoubtedly cul- 
 ture alters the whole texture of one’s life and makes one 
 dependent upon certain environmental conditions to which 
 others are not sensitive at all. But is it necessary that a 
 home should be elaborate in order to be artistic? that a 
 diet should be costly in order to be appetizing as well as 
 wholesome ? 
 
 Merely to say this suggests an important caution. Do 
 not most of us view critically the standards of those who 
 live on a higher scale economically than ourselves and 
 find some measure of satisfaction in the greater frugality 
 and simplicity of our own lives, and then excuse ourselves 
 from practicing the economies of those who have smaller 
 incomes on the ground that their standards of living are 
 lower than our own? © 
 
 THe Lever or “Socran Erricrency” 
 
 This is a realm in which it is not possible to dogmatize ; 
 and perhaps the most useful thing to do is to ask searching 
 questions. If Christian people asked more questions con- 
 cerning the requirements of the Christian way of life and 
 discussed them with their friends, should we not make 
 vastly greater progress in that direction? There is some- 
 thing splendid in the spectacle of those twenty British 
 Quaker employers taking solemn counsel together and then 
 calling upon their fellow employers of other faiths or 
 of no faith “to consider very carefully whether their style 
 of living and personal expenditure are restricted to what 
 is needed to insure the efficient performance of their func- 
 tions in society.” Even this standard of social efficiency 
 may conceivably justify extraordinary expenditures at 
 times, but is it not clear that a Christian will not take 
 such things as a matter of course ? 
 
STANDARDS OF LIVING 101 
 
 The question is sure to arise whether this business of 
 simplification may not be carried so far that the possibili- 
 ties of culture would be reduced. Suppose the patronage 
 of art should disappear and the pursuit of higher intellec- 
 tual and esthetic interests should be unprovided for. The 
 whole world is enriched by the intellectual and artistic 
 efforts of a few. We cannot, even in the interest of the 
 simple life, sacrifice the results of research and of creative 
 artistic activity. But when we reason this way do we 
 not forget that there are social and antisocial ways of 
 supporting art and culture? A rich man may buy a 
 porcelain collection and give it to a public museum, or 
 he may lock it up at home for his own private satisfac- 
 tion and the delectation of his friends. He may buy a 
 great organ and place it in a public auditorium or he may 
 confine its strains within the limits of his own domicile. 
 He may encourage a talented artist by buying a picture 
 that everybody may see or he may engage an artist to paint 
 his own picture, which nobody is particularly anxious to 
 see. 
 
 But this may all be very simple and easy for us because 
 we are not rich. It is one of the besetting sins of the 
 middle class that they obscure their own sins in the 
 shadows of those that seem larger. What about our own 
 extravagances ? 
 
 How Lavine Stanparps AFFECT FELLOWSHIP 
 
 The whole scale of living standards that we have been 
 talking about cuts across the spiritual ideal of fellowship. 
 It separates where fellowship unites. It creates rivalries 
 and animosities where fellowship creates good will. The 
 man who maintains two automobiles for uses that could 
 be as well performed by one, the woman who maintains a 
 wardrobe beyond the requirements of utility and simple 
 beauty—might it not be said that they are trafficking in 
 the things that separate human beings in spirit rather 
 than in the things that unite them. The minister whose 
 living standard is away beyond that of the majority of his 
 parishioners—is he not building up a barrier that all his 
 spiritual ministrations will find it impossible to over- 
 
102 CHRISTIAN IDEALS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 throw? The material consequences of this great variety of 
 living standards are as great as the spiritual. The con- 
 sumption of luxury goods keeps men and women engaged 
 in producing them. Money that is invested in produc- 
 ing luxury goods might be invested in producing goods 
 for use. Luxury goods for the most part are consumed 
 only by the wealthy. “Use” goods are consumed by every- 
 body. If we look at it this way, the money and the time 
 and the effort that we expend in ways that mean nothing 
 to humanity as a whole are unjustified. 
 
 We often hear it said that poor people are to blame 
 for their condition because of wasteful expenditures and 
 the habit of living beyond their means. But might it 
 not be argued that the extravagances of the poor are cheap 
 imitations of the extravagances of the well-to-do? It is 
 not the libraries and art collections and opera tickets and 
 vacations in the mountains—the more esthetic of the 
 indulgences of the well-to-do—that the poor imitate, but 
 their superficial display and noisy elegance. Might not 
 people satisfy their taste for beauty and refinement with- 
 out violating fellowship? The things that are most appeal- 
 ing and permanently satisfying are the things that are 
 most human—the things we can share. 
 
 How Livine Stanparps AFFect INDUSTRY 
 
 But are we still discussing industry, or have we run off 
 into “stewardship” or something else? The fact is that 
 nothing could be more germane to the subject of this 
 course than the matter of personal expenditures. In the 
 first place, it is because we have such a wide range of liy- 
 ing standards and insist on defending them that the ques- 
 tion of a living wage for the workers has thrown us into 
 so much difficulty. Any attempt to budget the expendi- 
 tures of a workingman’s family must result in assigning 
 them a level of living that benevolently minded persons 
 would be ashamed of or in putting the minimum at such 
 a liberal level that the national income would never stand 
 it. The easy course, therefore, has been to take refuge 
 behind the economic difficulties of the situation and quit 
 talking about a living wage. After several years of study, 
 
STANDARDS OF LIVING 103 
 
 resulting in the promulgation of minimum standards by 
 employers’ groups, labor agencies, and independent in- 
 vestigators, there has been a tendency to abandon the 
 whole “budget theory” of wage fixing. 
 
 But in spite of this confusion the fixing of a minimum 
 wage by law is favored by many people, especially for 
 women workers. It is done in a number of States, al- 
 though the Supreme Court decision in the District of 
 Columbia case—that the fixing of a minimum wage is con- 
 trary to the freedom of contract guaranteed by the Consti- 
 tution—has made the future of this sort of legislation very 
 doubtful. In any case, the fixing of a minimum wage by 
 law is but a small part of the problem. The solution must 
 be found within industry, not outside it. Wage increases 
 that are forced invite the pyramiding of prices. Where 
 there is no cooperative good will, no restraint self-imposed 
 by the will to fellowship, no device will serve the purpose. 
 
 Secondly, artificially high living standards (or perhaps 
 we might say low, from an ethical point of view) require 
 that many workers shall be permanently employed in 
 producing luxuries and rendering needless services. This 
 taxes our whole economic order and is partly responsible 
 for the national deficit in production. Could not the 
 economic ills of the world be largely met by deflecting 
 capital from the production of luxuries to the production 
 of necessities? That is, cost might be lowered to the 
 point where the poorest might obtain food, clothing, and 
 shelter in proportion to normal human needs. Labor 
 employed in producing goods that only a few can enjoy 
 lessens the production of goods that the many need. 
 
 Tr LimItInc oF PrRopUCTION 
 
 Furthermore, and most of all to the point, the differ- 
 ence in living standards which so conspicuously violates 
 fellowship is apparently the psychological reason for low 
 production. The workers are naturally slow about in- 
 creasing their product when the net social result seems to 
 be merely a widening of the gulf that separates the eco- 
 nomically dependent from the well-to-do. It is rather 
 startling that in the last thirty years, in spite of a con- 
 
104. CHRISTIAN IDEALS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 siderable increase in the production from land and indus- 
 try in America, the real wage—that is, purchasing power 
 —of labor appears not to have increased. American labor 
 is not radical—not yet. It is not demanding exclusive 
 control of anything. Making due allowance for the more 
 favored occupations, the heart has been taken out of labor 
 by the seeming impossibility of improving its status in 
 any marked degree. Employers are saying that labor is 
 not playing the game. Quite so. Labor is coming to feel 
 that the game—the old game—is not worth the candle. 
 If society cannot devise a means whereby through dili- 
 gence a worker may gradually improve the standard of his 
 family’s living until it includes more and more of the 
 things that go to make up a “good life? what can we 
 expect but that he will put less and less energy into his 
 work ? 
 
 All this is unintelligible to a person whose attention is 
 fixed on the high wages of certain privileged groups. That 
 such groups profiteer when they have a chance simply 
 serves to call attention to the crudeness of the old com- 
 petitive game. The deficiencies of the workers and the 
 noncooperative policies of many labor bodies are well 
 known. Labor has lost many opportunities for signal 
 service. But the fact that is written largest in the indus- 
 trial situation, morally considered, is the inequality of 
 privilege, emolument, and power. ‘This inequality is 
 permanently registered in the contrast between living 
 standards. 
 
 A “Derictt InpustTRY” 
 
 The textile industry gives an apt illustration of the 
 difficulty. A high-minded employer in that industry has 
 been trying for some years to put his establishments on a 
 Christian basis. He has accomplished much, but he finds 
 that the level of wages in the industry is so low and the 
 margin of profit so small that even sharing profits “fifty- 
 fifty” does not bring the workers within sight of what 
 might be called a minimum comfort standard. Under 
 such circumstances high production is not likely to be 
 secured. Obviously there is an unlimited market for 
 
STANDARDS OF LIVING 105 
 
 textile goods provided the workers of America had the 
 purchasing power to consume them. More production 
 would cheapen the cost and put this higher grade of goods 
 within the reach of the workers themselves. But until 
 there is some assurance that the result of greater effort will 
 be greater justice and more service, rather than greater 
 privilege for the few, the workers will continue to do 
 only a fraction of what they are capable of. 
 
 In this connection there comes to mind a clothing fac- 
 tory where a sudden increase in wages and an announce- 
 ment of a square deal brought about an astonishing 
 increase in production. The workers, generally speaking, 
 can do much more than they are doing, but it is not Just a 
 matter of saying to them, “Go to, now, produce.” They 
 want to know what their labor is going to mean. So 
 should we. 
 
 Our Own Part IN THE GAME 
 
 The fact seems clear that the question of comparative 
 living standards must be faced resolutely before anything 
 definite can be said about “fair” wages and a “fair re- 
 turn? It is to be feared that these terms have served 
 chiefly as a smoke screen. The United States Railroad 
 Labor Board has demonstrated how much difficulty even 
 a government agency can get into by trying to maintain 
 the concept “just and reasonable” without any compara- 
 tive treatment of living standards and living costs, Unless 
 we face this question we must be content to play the old 
 game, whose stakes are material stakes, and whose spir- 
 itual effect is a widening gulf between man and man. 
 
 For tHE Discussion Group 
 
 Most of us make some attempt at budgeting our ex- 
 penditures; what criterion have we followed? Can this 
 group agree on a reasonable budget of expense for a 
 family of average size? 
 
 Working people are commonly criticized for buying 
 luxuries they cannot afford, and middle-class people are 
 often criticized for “living beyond their income.” Is it to 
 
106 CHRISTIAN IDEALS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 be taken for granted, then, that the chief requirement is 
 to live within one’s income? 
 
 Where do we get our living standards? Can we change 
 them at will? Would it be an easier matter to simplify 
 our living if groups of people tried it together? 
 
 Were the British Quaker employers right in their state- 
 ment concerning extravagance and “social efficiency”? 
 What is an extravagance—an automobile? two automo- 
 biles? a trip to Europe? What is the determining prin- 
 ciple? i | 
 
 Some Christians have laid down the rule that they 
 should “not eat cake while any of their fellows were de- 
 prived of bread.” Is that a safe rule to follow? Would 
 such abstinence have any effect on the actual supply of 
 bread? Would it have any moral effect? | 
 
 Is the living-wage idea valid? How can it be de- 
 fined ? 
 
 *“‘A man is entitled to what he earns.’ Yes, but how can 
 we determine what he earns? Some Christians consider 
 that if a man works hard at useful labor, he “earns” a 
 good living. What do you say? 
 
 If some of us insist on having more than others can 
 hope to have, are we violating the principle of fellowship ? 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 CHRISTIANS AS INVESTORS—THE RISKS OF 
 THE GAME 
 
 Matthew 6. 19-23 
 
 Oncr again, have we not overlooked an important part 
 that many of us play as individuals in the industrial 
 game? Does the ownership of stocks and bonds impose 
 a definite obligation? Whose is the primary responsibility 
 —the person who owns the security or the corporation 
 director who determines policy in accord with what he 
 thinks the owner desires? Is there any difference between 
 the Christian investor and any other investor when proxies 
 are turned in or coupons are clipped? What can a con- 
 Sam stockholder do to secure recognition of his 
 ideals ¢ 
 
 Wuo ARE THE CAPITALISTS? 
 
 It is when we come to the question of investment that 
 we appreciate the full force of the figure of the game which 
 we have been carrying through this whole series. We are 
 all potential investors. It has been said with a good deal 
 of truth that we are all potential gamblers. Now, there 
 is no question at all as to the necessary part that capital 
 plays in the world. Even those who are very hostile to 
 what is known as the capitalist system—that is to say, to 
 the system of production for private profit—recognize that 
 capital as such is a necessity of the industrial world. 
 Capital means equipment, machinery—everything in the 
 nature of resources, except human resources, that makes 
 it possible to carry on industrial enterprise. Capital is 
 the social surplus, the savings of society which are used 
 for the future production of goods. It is also the means 
 by which the “time gap” is bridged between the beginning 
 of an industrial process and the actual marketing ef the 
 
 107 
 
108 CHRISTIAN IDEALS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 product. There are many opinions as to how capital used 
 in the production of goods should be owned and con- 
 trolled, but these questions really belong in a course in 
 economics. In our system capital is privately owned, and 
 therefore all industry depends ultimately upon the in- 
 vestor. 
 
 It is a common error, often pointed out by bankers, that 
 “capital” denotes chiefly rich and powerful investors. The 
 bulk of the money to run business enterprises comes not 
 from the wealthy (because there is not enough wealth con- 
 centrated in a few hands to supply it) but from the great 
 mass of men and women of moderate means. When this 
 fact is recognized it throws new light on the responsibili- 
 ties of capital. In the long run monetary power resides 
 where political power resides—in the people themselves, 
 excepting, of course, that section of the working class, far 
 too large, which is not able to save and invest. But the 
 difficulty lies, as it does in politics, in securing organ- 
 ized action on the part of the multitude of individuals who 
 count for little as they stand apart, but who could 
 decisively influence the policies of great corporations if 
 they stood together. And just as in politics the multitude 
 lacks the knowledge, the initiative, and the sense of respon- 
 sibility to play an intelligent part, so in business the ma- 
 jority of investors are too ignorant of the facts and too 
 timid or too little interested to exercise any important 
 influence. 
 
 Tur Turory or INTEREST 
 
 In the old game that we have been considering, the 
 investor is perhaps the hardest player. He usually in- 
 vests his first earnings with a view to safety and a small 
 but consistent reward. As his holdings increase, he begins 
 to seek more lucrative investments and he is willing to 
 take a greater risk because he has more resources to fall 
 back upon; and in return for the greater risks he expects 
 a larger reward. With the increase in risks there comes 
 into existence what is known as speculative investment, 
 where the person’s desire is not merely to obtain a divi- 
 dend but to double or treble or to multiply manifold the 
 
CHRISTIANS AS INVESTORS 109 
 
 value of the investment itself. That is to say, beginning 
 with the buying of securities for the purpose of gaining a 
 “fair return” in stated income, the business investment 
 often becomes ultimately a gamble on an increase in the 
 market values of securities or other property. We have 
 already seen how the idea of interest itself was originally 
 repugnant to the Christian mind and was, in fact, illegal 
 in England until late in the sixteenth century. Since that 
 time, however, comparatively few people have ever raised 
 a question as to the ethical quality of interest. It is 
 assumed that just as a person earns a money reward by 
 working, so he earns a similar reward by abstaining from 
 the use of his money in order that it may be productively 
 employed. “Let your money work for you,” is an old 
 investor’s motto. A new concept expressed by the words 
 “fair return” has been evolved to cover the moral obliga- 
 tions of investors. 
 
 THe Prorrt Mortve 
 
 But what about the speculative motive, or, in other 
 words, the profit motive? Is it ever legitimate from a 
 Christian point of view to choose deliberately an invest- 
 ment regardless of its other qualities solely because it is 
 likely to yield a return for which no effort has been made 
 and no equivalent sacrifice suffered? Is it consistent 
 with a Christian order that our motive should be to secure 
 something for nothing? To illustrate, assuming that 
 eight per cent or ten per cent is commonly accepted as a 
 fair return on capital, is it legitimate to seek a hundred 
 per cent, the first eight or ten of which would represent, 
 on this basis, a “fair” return and the additional ninety- 
 two per cent would be a sheer gratuity—something for 
 nothing? To be sure, it may be asked what would become 
 of the surplus earnings of a very profitable enterprise if 
 they were not absorbed in dividends. If a great surplus 
 accrues, it must accrue to somebody. One answer would 
 be that all the surplus should become new capital, that is, 
 should be “put back into the business.” But our inquiry 
 has to do not so much with the actual distribution of 
 wealth or capital as with the motives involved. 
 
116 CHRISTIAN IDEALS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 A “Goop INVESTMENT’ —MORALLY 
 
 This whole matter bites into the social conscience at the 
 point where we discover the difference in the moral quality 
 of investments. If all securities were of equal social sig- 
 nificance and value, it might well be argued that that 
 which offers the greatest return is the one to choose with- 
 out reference to any other consideration. If the only 
 important thing about money is what one does with it, 
 the more one can make the better, so long as he keeps 
 within the law. Indeed, there was a time when, while 
 great emphasis was placed upon spending money, little 
 was said concerning the ethical quality of the methods 
 by which money was made. Now, however, “stewardship” 
 is coming to be interpreted to cover the acquisition of 
 wealth as well as its expenditure. A popular evangelist 
 is reputed to have said, when criticized because of his large 
 fees, that he gave a tithe of his income to the Lord, and 
 it was no one’s business what he did with the rest. The 
 utter inadequacy of such a defense from the modern Chris- 
 tian point of view does not need to be pointed out. But 
 we have much careful thinking to do before any consensus 
 among Christian people can be arrived at as to what 
 constitutes a valid motive in investment. Should we not 
 be guided by a study of the actual social consequences of 
 the imvestments themselves? What are some of these 
 consequences and what are some of the evident differ- 
 ences between various types of investment? 
 
 Tuer Praoticat Trst 
 
 First, there is the distinction corresponding to the one 
 made earlier between occupations that are socially pro- 
 ductive and those that are not. Might we not say that 
 no person is justified in putting his money into an enter- 
 prise which he would be unwilling on ethical grounds 
 to engage in personally? He might, of course, be un- 
 willing to enter it on other grounds, such as temperament 
 or aptitude. But if he could not conscientiously perform 
 a given act, how can he let his money hire someone else 
 to do it? Then there is the question of the relative use- 
 
CHRISTIANS AS INVESTORS aa 
 
 fulness of an industry or a business that is beyond criti- 
 cism as to its moral character, as ordinarily considered. 
 What will a Christian do when he has an opportunity to 
 invest his money at eight per cent in a boot and shoe 
 factory or at three per cent in annuity bonds of an educa- 
 tional enterprise? Is there any moral quality in such a 
 choice? This brings us to the main issue of the matter 
 —the risks of the game. In the old game, risk was merely 
 an incident to the play for profits. In the new game, the 
 cooperative game, whose aim is the establishment of fel- 
 lowship in the world, the risks are of a moral nature. 
 They are undertaken in order that not only material but 
 ae goods may be released upon the markets of the 
 world. 
 
 “SPECULATIVE INVESTMENTS” AND HuMAN VALUES 
 
 A year or two ago a business man in New York pro- 
 posed to a group of churchmen that a company should be 
 organized which would invest half its resources in market- 
 able securities paying current rates of interest, and the 
 other half in an effort to rehabilitate the industrial estab- 
 lishment of Europe. “Thus,” he said, “we can say to peo- 
 ple that they may be fairly assured of an average return, 
 and a much larger return if the European venture suc- 
 ceeds, but that the latter portion of the investment is 
 financially uncertain and may be lost. But that part of 
 the money will be a spiritual investment and we will ask 
 them to be willing to lose it in order to take the chance of 
 being of service to the rest of the world.” Perhaps this 
 distinction between types of investment throws some light 
 upon the Christian principle. 
 
 Some persons have expressed great interest in what 
 might be called exploratory investments—that is to say, 
 enterprises which involve experimentation in the fields of 
 industrial organization. No matter how convinced indi- 
 viduals may be on the point, society demands a demonstra- 
 tion that the principle of brotherhood can be established 
 in industry, that industrial democracy is a valid concept. 
 How are we going to prove it? We have considered the 
 requirements of our Christian faith which call upon us 
 
112 CHRISTIAN IDEALS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 to make the experiment. But such experiments require 
 money as well as faith. They require capital, equipment, 
 brains. People must be found who are willing to invest 
 their money at a small rate of interest and at more than 
 ordinary risk in order to, test out the theories of Chris- 
 tian idealism with respect to industrial organization. 
 There is more than a fifty-fifty chance that many such 
 experiments will fail before the proper adjustment of 
 means to ends has been discovered. But can a faith that 
 is not worth “putting something up on” be called Chris- 
 tian? Donald Hankey said that religion is “betting your 
 life that there is a God.” He had every right to say 
 that: later he wagered his life “on Flanders Fields” and 
 lost—and won! Is it not possible that the establishment 
 of the Christian ideal in the world requires just such ad- 
 venture ? 
 
 Wuat Can One Lone Person Do? 
 
 One of the writers, who had been investigating work- 
 ing conditions in industry, was asked by a friend to in- 
 form him concerning the labor policy of a certain concern 
 which had advertised a bond issue. He wanted to buy a 
 bond, provided he approved the labor policy of the con- 
 cern in question. A ring on the telephone brought the 
 perplexed retort, “What has the labor policy to do with 
 buying a bond?” “You see,” it was explained, “this 
 gentleman does not want to put his money into a concern 
 whose labor policy he does not approve.” ‘This elicited 
 many expressions of disgust and the interesting admis- 
 sion that the office of the concern had experienced much 
 annoyance during the day by requests for information 
 about the labor policy. What would happen if the Chris- 
 tian people of America for one week would take seriously 
 their obligation as investors for industrial conditions in 
 establishments which their money maintains? What 
 would happen if they merely insisted on knowing the 
 facts? What would have happened ten years ago to the 
 twelve-hour day in the steel industry when a stockholders’ 
 committee urged that the regime be done away with, if 
 the Christian people who held stock in the corporation, 
 
CHRISTIANS AS INVESTORS 113 
 
 or any considerable minority of them, had demanded that 
 the long day be abolished? And that means, of course, 
 if they had been willing, if necessary, to decline attrac- 
 tive dividends rather than to share responsibility for an 
 industrial regime that a Christian conscience could not 
 approve. 
 
 Tuer TREATMENT OF PROXIES 
 
 But what good do isolated protests of this sort do? As 
 in politics, it is perfectly obvious that people could do 
 great exploits collectively, while separate and alone they 
 are negligible. A young woman who is a small holder of 
 railroad securities when asked, as usual, for her proxy 
 came back with some pointed question as to labor policy, 
 but was met only with courteous evasions. Can a person 
 single-handed accomplish anything? Surely we should 
 all grant that even if a person acting alone cannot register 
 in any evident way, he can at least square himself with his 
 conscience by acting alone! But there are definite ways 
 of making protests, and it sometimes requires but a few 
 protests to turn the scale in a matter of policy. If a 
 few weeks of publicity and activity on the part of out- 
 siders induced the heads of the steel industry to revise 
 their judgment in the matter of the twelve-hour day, is it 
 not reasonable to suppose that more persistent protests 
 on the part of stockholders might have had a pronounced 
 effect? A single stockholder may accompany his proxy 
 for stockholders’ meeting with a definite proviso or pro- 
 test concerning any matter of policy which he believes to 
 involve an important moral principle. He may attend the 
 meeting in person and require a public statement there 
 concerning such important questions. He may claim the 
 right to inspect the list of stockholders and then make it 
 his business to approach his fellow security holders in 
 relation to these moral issues. 
 
 Waar Can Onze Do WirH A Dovustrrut Srcurtry ? 
 
 In a small meeting of Christian people of inquiring 
 mind where this question of morally safe investments was 
 raised, a bond expert suggested that if anyone has con- 
 
114 CHRISTIAN IDEALS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 scientious scruples against a particular investment, he has 
 an obvious way out by simply disposing of the securities. 
 But is not that too obvious? What is the net result of 
 such action? The securities have passed out of the hands 
 of a conscientious holder into the hands of one less con- 
 scientious. The perplexed investor has simply found an 
 obliging individual who will do his sinning for him. An 
 unhappy solution, surely. In an extremity, a holder might 
 call upon the corporation to take his securities off his 
 hands and return the amount of his original invéstment. 
 Probably most concerns would rise very promptly to such 
 an occasion. But should not that be the last resort, after 
 every possibility of bringing about a change of policy has 
 been exhausted? Merely to unload the troublesome 
 security upon someone else too strongly reminds one of 
 the minister who said midway in his discourse, “And now, 
 having looked the difficulty squarely in the face, let us 
 
 pass on !” : 
 
 FINANCIALLY SAFE oR MoraAtty SAFE? 
 
 Business experts are likely to take the view that an in- 
 vestment that is morally unsound is to be avoided for 
 business reasons also. But does not this oversimplify the 
 problem? What the business expert usually means by a 
 morally unsafe investment is one that the business com- 
 munity itself considers questionable. It would be the 
 greatest mistake, and injustice as well, to overlook the 
 importance that the business community attaches to 
 integrity, honesty, and loyalty. But here is where our 
 problem arises. Because business men are preoccupied 
 with the rules of the game, many of the questions which 
 socially minded Christians are asking about investments 
 have as yet no meaning for them. A New York banker, a” 
 man of high personal character and gentle, attractive 
 personality, was asked by one of the writers about the 
 relation of labor policy to the validity of industrial securi- 
 ties. He replied that, of course, if an employer should 
 shoot his men at sunrise some such question might be 
 raised, but otherwise he could see no reason for contesting 
 the validity of securities on moral grounds. Another 
 
CHRISTIANS AS INVESTORS 115 
 
 banker remarked that the one great sin “below Fulton 
 Street” is to have a bad credit; that other questions are 
 of minor importance. We even hear of men of far from 
 impeccable moral character in their private life who sur- 
 vive in the financial community. The most questionable 
 things are done by corporations in breaking faith with 
 the public or with creditors and “got away with” so long 
 as the concerns remain solvent. But these latter cases 
 will be said to be exceptional; and doubtless they are. 
 Nevertheless, the fact remains that it is precisely those 
 matters in which the financial community is not interested 
 that the conscience of the modern Christian is exploring. 
 How does a concern treat its employees? What wages 
 does it pay? Has labor a personal status or only a “‘com- 
 modity” status in the industry? What is the policy of 
 the concern toward the public? Is any moral principle 
 recognized as to the relation between profits, prices, and 
 costs? What is done with the surplus—is it poured out 
 in dividends, or does the community share it in larger 
 enterprise, increased production, more stable prices, and 
 more employment? It may well be said that in the long- 
 run the best moral policy is the best financial policy. But 
 in the short run, with a view to immediate returns, who 
 can say so? Oil and steel continue to sell on the securi- 
 _ ties market no matter whether the workers put in long 
 hours or not—and no matter how many lives may be sacri- 
 ficed to the building up of a mammoth industry. 
 
 For tHE Discusston Group 
 
 Do you know any investment concerns that are ac- 
 customed to include in their advices to investors the con- 
 siderations referred to in this chapter? If not, what is 
 the reason ? 
 
 Js there any difference morally between one’s claim to 
 money that he earns by labor or other service and his 
 claim to money that his investments earn? If so, how 
 would you state it? 
 
 Is there any difference morally between money that is 
 earned at the “market rate” of interest on capital and 
 money that accrues from a lucky sale or purchase, or a 
 
116 CHRISTIAN IDEALS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 sudden discovery of wealth—“unearned increment,” as it 
 is sometimes called? 
 
 Granted that all such gains belong rightfully to the per- 
 son who acquires them, is there any special obligation 
 attaching to the use to which they are put? 
 
 Tf a Christian has an opportunity to invest his money 
 at the same expected rate of return in an enterprise that 
 is relatively sure but is a purely “business proposition” 
 and also in an enterprise involving greater business risk 
 but promising more in terms of social value and progress, 
 what choice will he make? Can a general rule be laid 
 down covering such a situation ? 
 
 Ts one’s conduct as an individual investor a fair stand- 
 ard by which to judge his social ethics? Does it reflect his 
 personal character ? 
 
 Would a person be justified in selling a stock or bond 
 that troubled him to a person who had no scruples about 
 it? If not, would he be justified in giving it te him? 
 Why? 
 
 Is there any sense in which “financially safe” and 
 “morally safe” mean the same thing? Could a morally 
 bad investment be doomed by the collective disapproval of 
 Christian investors ? 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE CHURCH AND INDUSTRY—THE SPIRIT OF 
 THE GAME 
 
 Romans 12. 9-21 
 
 Wuar part should the church play in the redemption 
 of industry? What part is it actually playing? Is the 
 subject too technical for the pulpit to deal with? Should 
 the church take up controversial matters at the risk of 
 dividing its constituency? Does the church command the 
 respect of labor to-day? Does it command the respect of 
 capital, or only its indulgent good will? 
 
 Tue Puptprr’s DILEMMA 
 
 It is one thing to say that Christianity has a message 
 for industry and quite another to attempt to relate the 
 church as an institution to industrial problems. If the 
 church undertakes to become in any way responsible for 
 the industrial policies maintained by its members and 
 within the community which it serves, all sorts of em- 
 barrassing questions may arise. The minister may at- 
 tempt to admonish where he is not very well informed ; 
 he may arouse antagonisms that will interfere with the 
 internal life and harmony of the church itself; unfair 
 discrimination may result; unfair judgments may be pro- 
 nounced; the minister may get beyond his depth in eco- 
 nomics; and so on through a long list of objections which 
 are often heard. All these things may happen, do happen. 
 But entirely different inferences are drawn from them by 
 different groups of people. Many, probably the majority, 
 of ministers and laymen are inclined to drop a ques- 
 tion when it gets hot—not necessarily because they lack 
 courage, but because they don’t know what to do. 
 
 Ministers Versus LAYMEN 
 
 At present it appears that the ministers are a bit readier 
 117 
 
118 CHRISTIAN IDEALS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 to take advance ground than the laymen. In a convention 
 of the Massachusetts Diocese of the Protestant Episcopal 
 Church early in 1923 it was proposed to initiate under 
 ehurch auspices an investigation of the textile industry in 
 order to learn why so many crises occur in it that have 
 serious human consequences. ‘The proposal was voted 
 down, the ministers being conspicuous among the minority 
 and the laymen among the majority. But it must be 
 recognized that there is no rush on the part of either the 
 clergy or the laity to get the church into active participa- 
 tion in industrial affairs. The prevailing view seems to 
 be that the church must teach, and the pulpit must preach 
 Christian principles as applicable to industry, but that 
 the application must be left to the individual Christian. 
 There is, however, an insistent minority that urges a 
 more aggressive policy. 'They think that unless principles 
 are concretely applied they are not really taught. They 
 hold that if the preacher is weak on economics, he ought 
 to study it. They argue that the church which partici- 
 pated in the prohibition movement cannot consistently 
 keep out of the movement for industrial betterment. They 
 prefer what they consider a more active and effectual min- 
 istry on the part of the church even though some animosi- 
 ties may result and some people may leave the church in 
 consequence. 
 
 There is room for suspicion that many preachers would 
 find the method of confining themselves to general prin- 
 ciples an easy way out. People seldom fight over “gen- 
 eral principles.” The minister who pronounced from 
 his pulpit the unexceptionable moral admonition “Thou 
 shalt not lie” secured no visible response, but when he 
 particularized: “Thou shalt not lie in making out thy in- 
 come-tax return,’ one of his elders left the church. The 
 experience of educators indicates that we learn by contact 
 with the particular, not by discussing generalities. 
 
 FREEDOM OF THE PULPIT 
 
 There are a number of examples of ministers who have 
 used their pulpits to expound the social gospel fearlessly 
 and have maintained their positions. There are also not 
 
THE CHURCH AND INDUSTRY 119 
 
 a few ministers who have lost their pulpits because of 
 their liberal social views. It is often said that if a min- 
 ister uses wisdom and maintains a Christian spirit, he 
 can preach with the greatest freedom. Certainly it is 
 important for the minister to remember that he is sup- 
 posed to be a teacher of ethics, and that proclaiming is 
 not necessarily teaching; also, that no good teacher tries 
 to tell his whole story at once. There are preachers who 
 have set about their social ministry as if they desired 
 nothing so much as martyrdom, and one who is headed 
 that way never has to wait very long. The progress of 
 the Kingdom requires not merely men who are willing 
 to lose their pulpits, but men who can retain them with- 
 out compromise. Yet one would be rather credulous to 
 suppose that mere tact and a benign countenance will get 
 a socially minded preacher over the rough places. And 
 why should the preacher be everywhere well spoken of? 
 His Master most decidedly was not. And he gave his 
 disciples a special warning against being spoken well of 
 by everybody. John Wesley was troubled in spirit when 
 he ceased to draw the hostile fire of the mob. He feared 
 that if the “scandal of the cross” had ceased, there must 
 be something wrong with his ministry. No doubt the 
 founder of Methodism was a bit austere and not to be 
 taken as an example in all things, but might not the 
 modern preacher do well to take a Jeaf or two out of his 
 book? There is a sense in which one is best known by 
 the enemies he makes. Where would such a judgment 
 leave most modern apostles of Christianity? If there is 
 anything more questionable than to antagonize recklessly, 
 it is to antagonize nothing or nobody. 
 
 THe CouRAGE oF A LAYMAN 
 
 There is surely something wrong with a church which 
 lets its preacher stand on the firing line alone. Perhaps 
 not many do just that, but is not the conception of the 
 church as a militant organization getting a little rusty? 
 It is a delightful thing for brethren to dwell together in 
 peace and unity—if it is an honorable peace and a real 
 unity. But the temptation to regard every departure 
 
120 CHRISTIAN IDEALS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 from complacent harmony as an evil is very strong among 
 both ministers and laymen. It is amazing how many 
 legitimate complaints a congregation can find a way to 
 bring against a preacher who talks too boldly about the 
 social transgressions of church members or the social sins 
 of society. His mannerisms become more conspicuous, 
 his conversation is less attractive, his family is less 
 popular, when seen against the background of distasteful 
 social and economic doctrine. Yet there are outstand- 
 ing examples of fighting laymen—that is, of men and 
 women who deliberately share the prophetic office of the 
 minister and in a pinch make his fight their own. It is 
 doubtful if any minister can long succeed unless he 
 rears up a group of such spirits to his support. They 
 serve more than one purpose. They hold up the min- 
 ister’s hands; they support his faith and courage when he 
 weakens; they supply the lay wisdom that a clergyman is 
 likely to lack. More than this, a group of laymen may 
 even bring a timid or recalcitrant minister forward to the 
 front-line defenses. There are probably many laymen 
 who secretly entertain a sort of contempt for a minister 
 who is not a bold ethical leader even though they conceal 
 this feeling by an external courtesy and deference. 
 
 Facing INTIMIDATION 
 
 It is a question whether many laymen who have ceased 
 to take their minister seriously would not be better pleased 
 with him if he preached a more virile gospel, even though 
 they winced under his message. A certain minister in 
 New England was warned by his leading layman on a 
 Saturday night that he should recede from his announced 
 intention of speaking on a local industrial dispute the 
 following day. He quietly told that gentleman that he 
 never allowed anyone to take such a liberty with him and 
 terminated the interview. The address was given as 
 planned and the layman had a change of heart. It must 
 have been something of this element of fearless finality 
 in the ministry of Jesus that led men to say of him, “He 
 taught as one having authority.” Would it not be a whole- 
 some thing if Christian laymen should assume a larger 
 
THE CHURCH AND INDUSTRY 121 
 
 measure of responsibility for the ethical platform of the 
 church? If there is any courage needed, why leave it 
 all to the man who has to risk his position and the living 
 of his ehildren in order to exercise it? College trustees 
 —or some of them—are coming to feel a definite respon- 
 sibility, regardless of their own views, to preserve “aca- 
 demic freedom.” A man well known in American finan- 
 cial circles said recently of a college of which he was 
 trustee: “I don’t approve of all the economics taught there, 
 but I’m willing to have it taught. In a liberal institution 
 the professors ought to be free.” Should not the preacher 
 be as free as the college professor ? 
 
 Tru CHurcH AS EMPLOYER 
 
 At the convention of a great religious organization a 
 year or so ago a telegram was received from the officers 
 of a bookbinders’ union urging the churchmen to see to 
 it that men and women who were working on Bibles and 
 hymn books be paid a living wage! No matter what merit 
 there may have been in their contention or their way of 
 bringing it forward, the message of the union officials was 
 rather startling. It called attention to the fact that 
 a church body can have as serious a conflict with its em- 
 ployees as often occurs in the case of a secular concern. 
 _ And the points in dispute are the same—wages and work- 
 ing conditions and recognition of the trade unions. It 
 seems a little strange when a church body in its capacity 
 as employer refuses to confer or to arbitrate or even to 
 accept friendly offices of conciliation. Several of our 
 church bodies have large publishing concerns. It should be 
 said for them in this respect that probably in no indus- 
 try have more provocative things occurred against the 
 employers’ interest in recent years than in the printing 
 trades. But the complexity of the problem only accentu- 
 ates its importance. 
 
 The duty of the church as an employer is not always 
 clear. Is it sufficient that employees of the church be paid 
 the going rate of wages, or should the church be con- 
 sciously exemplary in these matters, going beyond what 
 is required? Should the church as an employer seek to 
 
122 CHRISTIAN IDEALS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 exemplify the employer-employee relationship that we try 
 to bring about in industry? Is it not worth considering 
 that the church’s business ventures should be deliberately 
 
 ut on a basis of moderate profit and under the most 
 skillful human management, in order to make a demon- 
 stration of Christian principles, even though it might mean 
 a temporary loss in revenue? 1 3 
 
 Tap Cource sas InpUSTRIAL ARBITRATOR 
 
 There is no question as to whether the minister can 
 successfully act as arbitrator, for he has often done so. 
 The dean of the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in 
 New York a few years ago gave an award in a quarry 
 workers’ dispute that would have done credit to a skilled 
 arbitrator. And the award was cheerfully accepted by 
 both sides. There are doubtless many examples of such 
 action that never become widely known. What could re- 
 flect more honor upon the church than that its pulpit 
 should be associated with the pronouncement of fair judg- 
 ments in that area of human relationships which is most 
 prolific of disturbances? But the minister when appealed 
 to as an arbitrator acts as a citizen precisely as any other 
 person would act under the same circumstances. It is a 
 different situation when in the name of the church he inter- 
 venes in a controversy against the opposition of one or 
 both of the disputants. Is it a prerogative of organized 
 religion to assert itself in such a situation? 
 
 If the difficulty were one of law enforcement, the sup- 
 pression of commercialized vice or the liquor or drug 
 traffic, the church would not hesitate. Why should it 
 hesitate in an industrial dispute which may have most 
 serious, perhaps tragic, consequences for the whole com- 
 munity? There is one obvious difference in the fact that 
 in a reform crusade the church attacks outsiders only, 
 while in an industrial dispute the disputants are probably 
 both represented inside the church. “A house divided 
 against itself cannot stand.” Hence, it is freely argued, 
 the church should keep out. But that depends on how 
 one looks at it. If regeneration, like charity, begins at 
 home, should not the church act all the more quickly in a 
 
THE CHURCH AND INDUSTRY 123 
 
 matter which threatens to disrupt its own fellowship? 
 Would it, perhaps, strengthen the grip of the church on 
 its membership and on its community if it were to disci- 
 pline its members more resolutely? It is at least arguable 
 that the church was a more admirable as well as more 
 potent institution when its prelates did not hesitate to 
 discipline severely for moral offenses and even to deny fel- 
 lowship to the persistent offender. 
 
 Tur CHurcH’s CONTRIBUTION TO INDUSTRY 
 
 This suggestion of the authority of the church brings 
 us again to the essential principle of Christianity which 
 the church exists to exemplify—the principle of fellow- 
 ship. It is central in Christian teaching that men are 
 brothers, and unless the suggestions put forward in this 
 course are wrong, the key to Christianity’s power is in the 
 fact of fellowship. It would seem, then, that the church— 
 not merely the local congregation, but the whole church— 
 has a definite ministry to a divided industrial world, 
 namely, to unite the fragments of that world within its 
 own fellowship. Is it not strange that employers who 
 continually call for the recognition of partnership in indus- 
 try do not realize that the one institution whose avowed 
 purpose is to create the spiritual harmony on which 
 “partnership” depends is an indispensable ally? Though 
 the spokesman of organized religion can serve the indus- 
 trial expert but little in his own technical field, the church 
 has its own field of expertness; it is the field of human 
 relations. In this field should not the supremacy of the 
 church be unchallenged? Is there not a danger that when 
 called on to perform this high and spiritual office the church 
 may find the altar fires of its own fellowship burning too 
 low to melt the animosities that divide mankind ? 
 
 The church’s office in promoting fellowship not only 
 gives it authority ; it is the substance of the church’s oppor- 
 tunity. By definition, the church is a community—the 
 “communion of the saints.” Many of these “saints” have, 
 it is true, few of the visible accomplishments of sainthood, 
 yet they “belong” to the church, and the church is their 
 schoolmistress. A noted Christian teacher once said, “The 
 
124 CHRISTIAN IDEALS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 only way to know God as a Father jis to act like a son.” 
 And no one can act like a son who cannot act like a 
 brother. The chief business of the church, as Dr. Charles 
 E. Jefferson has said, is to “build a brotherhood.” If the 
 church can embrace, with a tie that binds, the men of 
 industry who have been fighting one another, it will demon- 
 strate its spiritual supremacy in the world. 
 
 Tie DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A CHURCH AND A CLUB 
 
 But this is not an ice-cream-social performance. A 
 prominent churchman recently proclaimed his resentment 
 of the charge that the church is not a friend to the work- 
 ingman. He cited the welcome given to the plainly 
 dressed stranger, and things of that sort. All this may 
 be wholly true yet wholly irrelevant. The fellowship 
 we are talking about is easily faked—for a while. People 
 very easily fool themselves about it. The biggest aristo- 
 crats imagine themselves democratic. The real question 
 is not one of tolerance or even courtesy; it is one of re- 
 spect, honor, companionship, friendship. The fellowship 
 of the church capitalizes the things men hold in common, 
 not those that separate them. It is something quite other 
 than what the social club or the trade association or the 
 trade union offers. In it a man finds his brother because 
 he needs him—needs him not as a social or a business asset, 
 but as a fellow. ' This fellowship cannot be bought; men 
 have renounced fortunes for it. When it is exchanged for 
 material prosperity, the things men set their hopes upon 
 turn ashes. When the church ceases to be the home of that 
 kind of fellowship, it ceases to serve the purpose for which 
 that institution exists. 
 
 PREPARING YouNG ProrPLE FoR LIFE 
 
 Such a spiritual fellowship cannot be created overnight ; 
 It is the product of education. Here is a task for the 
 church school. To-day, to be sure, it teaches boys and 
 girls that love and service are the great things in life, 
 but somewhere between the Sunday-school stage and the 
 adult stage of church membership much of this idealism 
 disappears. The young idealists go to work for the mature 
 
 } 
 
THE CHURCH AND INDUSTRY 125 
 
 realists, and in the process of coming to maturity and a 
 knowledge of the world young people learn to distinguish 
 between what is “practical” and what is “mere idealism,” 
 just counsels of perfection, not to be taken too seriously. 
 What is the reason? Is it, perhaps, to be found in our 
 failure to teach Christian ethics concretely? We did 
 not learn to walk while sitting in our high chairs. How 
 can one learn what Christianity means for industry and 
 business except by studying these subjects in the con- 
 crete? An American member of the High Commission of 
 the Rhineland, when relating to a group of ministers on 
 his return to this country the tangle of European indus- 
 try and trade, declared, “You ministers must study eco- 
 nomics.” If the minister must get practical economics 
 along with his ethics, what about the layman? 
 
 In other words, the old game will “get’’ us all unless 
 we are prepared and eager to play the new game. The 
 stakes of the new game appeal only to those who have 
 learned to love and honor their fellows and who can find 
 satisfaction not in destructive competition, but only in 
 mutual aid. It is the business of the church to prepare 
 people to play for spiritual stakes. 
 
 For tHE Discussion GROUP 
 
 Which is the greater danger—that the pulpit will mis- 
 place its influence in industrial affairs through lack of 
 knowledge, or that it will have no influence at all? 
 
 Would the average minister take a more active part in 
 industrial affairs if he were assured of the sympathetic 
 support of his laymen? Does the average layman want his 
 minister to discuss these questions? 
 
 Which is the proper course for a minister to follow— 
 
 (a) Take sides definitely in industrial disputes when 
 he is satisfied as to the merits of the controversy ? 
 
 (6) Confine himself to the statement of general prin- 
 ciples, and avoid pronouncing judgments? 
 
 (c) Avoid industrial subjects altogether, giving his 
 attention only to questions relating to individual char- 
 acter and conduct? 
 
 Do you know of cases where ministers have lost their 
 
126 CHRISTIAN IDEALS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 pulpits through plain utterances on economic and indus- 
 trial questions? Was it due to courage or to recklessness? 
 What is the difference? 
 
 Are the churches usually generous employers? Are you 
 thinking now of the minister’s salary or the janitor’s? 
 What about the church publishing houses and administra- 
 tive boards? 
 
 A Jewish community has been known to deny ritualistic 
 burial to a man who during his life took usury. How far 
 would a Christian church go in discipline for a social 
 offense? How far has it a right to go? 
 
 Does a person who violates Christian principles in his 
 business continue to feel at home among church people? 
 If so, does it indicate Christian charity on the part of 
 the congregation or something else? 
 
 What do you think of the suggestion that a church body 
 might forego profits in its publishing enterprises, for ex- 
 ample, in order to conduct experiments in industrial rela- 
 tions? Would it be more useful as an example if it should 
 operate avowedly on a business basis in order to demon- 
 strate that Christianity is not inconsistent with business 
 success ? 
 
 Does the average Sunday school fit young people for 
 sie part in the game of life? If not, what is the rea- 
 gon ! 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 BUILDING THE FELLOWSHIP IN INDUSTRY— 
 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 
 
 2 Timothy 2. 3; Hebrews 11. 1; Revelation 21. 1-3 
 
 Is the kind of religion we have been presenting in this 
 course one to command the respect of virile men? Must 
 we be pacifists to be Christians? Are we willing to be 
 called pacifists if bearing our Christian testimony incurs 
 that epithet? Will young men enlist for the new game 
 as readily as for the old competitive struggle? Have we 
 as Christians sufficient faith for the great adventure to 
 make Christianity regnant in the world? 
 
 A “Mascuuine” ReELicion 
 
 Perhaps the mere use of such a title calls for an 
 apology to women. But it embodies an issue which the 
 ideas presented in this course are sure to encounter sooner 
 or later. There is a popular tendency to give great honor 
 to what are called “he-man” traits of character. The 
 manner of life that seems to be most admired by women 
 as well as men has a large measure of combat in it. What 
 little honor is given to pacifism is apologetically rendered. 
 It is considered at best a negative virtue. We should prob- 
 ably all have to agree that when Roosevelt spoke 
 about “spineless pacifists” he was far from the New-Testa- 
 _ ment ideal, and inaccurate in his description, but there 
 was something elemental in the characterization that no 
 one can escape. 
 
 It is related that an imaginative moralist visited a 
 public school in Philadelphia and told the pupils about 
 a boy who was threatened by a bully and escaped a trounc- 
 ing by bestowing upon his assailant a big red apple. The 
 story left the children “cold.” Then another visitor arose 
 and innocently remarked that it was the boy who was able 
 and willing to fight who got the apple. This commentary 
 
 127 
 
128 CHRISTIAN IDEALS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 brought a storm of applause. Perhaps this is typical in 
 more ways than one. The boy who preferred peace to a 
 thrashing, even at the cost of rewarding conduct that, 
 should have been condemned, is taken as a type of those 
 who repudiate force. Most people \are not sufficiently 
 interested in the pacifist position to state it fairly. It is 
 still taken for granted that combat plays a primary part 
 in life, whether one thinks of individuals or of nations. 
 Too generally people who profess Christianity may be 
 classified, with reference to their attitude toward its teach- 
 ings, in two groups: those who limit the sphere of its 
 application and spend most of their time out of that 
 sphere, and those who make their own version of Chris- 
 tianity, putting into it the “pep” which they think it 
 lacks as ordinarily conceived. 
 
 INDUSTRIAL. WAR AND THE WARS OF NATIONS 
 
 It might seem at first glance that we are here mixing 
 up our course of study with one on international relations. 
 But the fact is that the ethical problems of industry are 
 ‘one with the problem of war. It is the rivalries of indus- 
 try and trade that constitute the most frequent cause of 
 international disputes and hostile outbreaks. If the 
 struggle going on in industry were satisfactorily termi- 
 nated, there is good reason to think that there would sel- 
 dom be occasion for war between nations. Moreover, the 
 substitution of agreement for strife and of cooperation for 
 competition is the same kind of a human task whether 
 it is industrial groups or political governments that we 
 seek to reconcile. It requires the same surrender of the 
 “right” to get mad and demonstrate; the “right” to take 
 what one has the power to take. It means getting one’s 
 fun not out of trouncing someone but out of comrade- 
 ship with him in doing something worth while both to him 
 and to oneself. 
 
 Tae THriItt or ComBAtT AND ADVENTURE 
 
 There is something thrilling in war; everybody knows 
 that. Likewise there is something thrilling in individ- 
 ualistic industrial enterprise that develops independence, 
 
THE GREAT ADVENTURE 129 
 
 fearlessness, and hardihood. Even the cruel principle of 
 “survival of the fittest” has an austere sublimity about it 
 which the apostles of individualism have always made 
 much of. The war against war is a deliberate effort to 
 substitute other virtues for those that are paid for in 
 human blood, to find channels of heroism that will con- 
 serve manhood rather than destroy it. If this be pacifism, 
 we must make the most of it. At any rate it is anything 
 but spineless. It is a man-sized job—if the twentieth 
 century has one to offer. The redemption of industry is 
 a part of that great task. It means finding some other 
 foundation for the structure of enterprise, invention, and 
 creation that the modern world is building than the old 
 foundation that was laid in poverty and bitterness and 
 the wrecks of those who were not stalwart enough to en- 
 dure the strain. It means a federation of workers of 
 hand and brain, a traffic in the satisfactions of fellowship, 
 that will make man’s spirit supreme over the things of. 
 the flesh. 
 
 BonDAGE To Pacan IpRALS 
 
 it would be far from correct to say that our industrial 
 history has been barren of social achievement. The old 
 individualistic game has created a mechanism of produc- 
 tion that was undreamed of a few centuries ago. The 
 Industrial Revolution was manifestly one of the outstand- 
 ing material achievements of history. But this great 
 mechanical achievement, furnishing as it does the indis- 
 pensable basis for a universal culture, has been totally 
 inadequate on the side of motive. It whipped men up to 
 the limit of what “enlightened self-interest’? can accom- 
 plish. It has not even surveyed the possibilities of co- 
 operative good will. Reliance upon self-interest as a mo- 
 tive makes inevitable the appeal to force as a method. 
 Throughout industry to-day we find the easy assumption 
 that force is the answer to any perplexing question that 
 arises in the field of industrial relations. War in indus- 
 try is an institution well established, financially well sup- 
 ported, for which leaders are especially trained and a 
 professional technique has been developed. The making 
 
130 CHRISTIAN IDEALS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 of strikes is an art; equally so the breaking of strikes. 
 If they should go out of vogue, a good many people would 
 be out of a job. And they would not by any means be 
 all labor leaders. Many men connected with manage- 
 ment have as their chief qualification an ability to func- 
 tion quickly and economically when “strong-arm” methods 
 are desired. But these rather unlovely accomplishments 
 have been carefully cultivated in industry on both sides 
 and they cannot be scrapped overnight. 
 
 Two Srets oF REVOLUTIONARIES 
 
 Many people have become so weary of the contest going 
 on in industry that they have felt like saying to the con- 
 tending parties, “A plague on both your houses!” This 
 feeling is responsible for the effort to take the whole 
 matter out of the hands of employers and workers and 
 put it in the control of the State. But that would be 
 merely substituting a new regime of force for the old one, 
 and it has thus far not succeeded. 
 
 There are two groups of people who are to-day advanc- 
 ing revolutionary doctrine with reference to the industrial 
 -situation. On the one hand are those who advocate 
 -abolishing summarily the present system of private prop- 
 -erty and enterprise. On the other hand are those who 
 advocate doing away with the machinery by which a 
 ‘beginning has been made of joint government in industry 
 through organizations of employers and workers. The 
 first group of propagandists is little listened to in this 
 country, but the second group has produced a great deal 
 of industrial unrest. Perhaps it is only fair to say that 
 they have been actuated in their aggressiveness by fear 
 of what the propagandists of socialism might do. The 
 net result, however, seems to be that the attention of the 
 labor movement is focused on the efforts of employing 
 interests to destroy it, and this means a continuance of 
 belligerent tactics on labor’s part. It is, to be sure, argu- 
 able that the solution of our labor problems is to be 
 brought about not through any existing form of organ- 
 ization or any present device of bargaining and agreement; 
 certainly we have a long way to go before we shall have | 
 
THE GREAT ADVENTURE 131 
 
 an industrial government based on cooperation and good 
 will. But those who are best informed and wisest look 
 for the progressive redemption of the present industrial 
 organization on both sides, not for the arbitrary overthrow 
 of what has been gradually evolved in response to a neces- 
 sity. Men cannot be made either happy or just until they 
 are made free. Self-limitation in the interest of greater 
 freedom—that is the spirit of the new game and the chart 
 of the great adventure. 
 
 Any plan for the reorganization of industrial life 
 should take account of what we now find in industry—two 
 fairly well-organized groups each contending for a set of 
 “rights” which the other is unwilling or reluctant to recog- 
 nize. To be sure, organized labor includes only a fraction 
 of the industrial workers of America, but the fact re- 
 mains that so many key industries, such as transporta- 
 tion, coal mining, building, and printing, are strongly 
 organized that the influence of the labor unions is quite 
 out of proportion to their membership. This may be 
 taken for granted, and would it not be wiser for employers 
 and the public to accept it as a continuing condition in. 
 industry ? 
 
 THe REDIRECTION OF ForRCcE 
 
 Given a free hand for the exercise of their proper func- 
 tions, the belligerency of both workers’ and employers’ 
 organizations may disappear. A wild lad who attached 
 himself to a city Sunday school had his teachers nearly 
 distracted with his disturbing conduct and the general 
 destructiveness which organized itself wherever he was. 
 By a stroke of inspiration he was appointed custodian 
 of the hymn books. When that occurred he asked leave 
 to address the school and made the following effective 
 speech: “The first bloke that busts the back of one of these 
 books will get his block knocked off.” It was not his 
 destructiveness that was primary in the situation but his 
 undirected activity. It was a simple matter to be use- 
 ful when there was something worth doing at hand. The 
 particular method of discipline that he adopted was hardly 
 exemplary but that too improved in due course. 
 
182 CHRISTIAN IDEALS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 Nrw INCENTIVES 
 
 The building of fellowship in industry is going on 
 to-day, slowly, to be sure, but it is going on. And those 
 who are engaged in it are getting a greater thrill out of 
 the process than ever they had out of the old game. The 
 old game yielded compensations not to be despised, but 
 they were material and soon consumed. There is a limit 
 to what one can consume. 
 
 “Ror you can only wear one tie, 
 And one eyeglass in your eye, 
 Have one coffin when you die, 
 
 Don’t you know?” 
 
 But the stakes of the new game are measured in per- 
 sonality and power and the joy of fellowship and the com- 
 mon quest of nature’s secrets and the conquest of nature’s 
 forces. There are industrial workshops which are psycho- 
 logical laboratories in which men and women are finding 
 out the possibilities of joint effort and the strength of 
 newly released motives. We are on our way to a great 
 demonstration. Could anything be more thrilling than to 
 have a part in it? | 
 
 Wuere War Has Gtven Way To PRACE 
 
 The maintenance of peace and a high production rate 
 in the garment industry in Chicago during the last dozen 
 years is a monument to the constructive powers of even 
 the most aggressive forces in industry when there is a 
 will to create something new in the field of human rela- 
 tions. Here the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of 
 America, one of the strongest and most aggressive, so far 
 as its philosophy is concerned, of the labor unions in this 
 country, have developed in cooperation with the employers 
 a sort of constitution for industrial relations and indus- 
 trial rights with the avowed end of strengthening the 
 interests of all parties concerned. It would be hard, per- 
 haps, to connect this movement in any definite way with 
 the development of “Christian ideals in industry,” 
 because these people are nearly all Jews. But it is not 
 the first illustration of the fact that the Hebrew race, 
 
 a 
 
THE GREAT ADVENTURE 133 
 
 from which Christianity sprang, is likely to put the 
 exponents of our religion under a heavy obligation for 
 the refinement and application of Christian ideals. 
 
 The work agreement that obtains in the factories of 
 Hart, Schaffner & Marx in Chicago undertakes to secure 
 to the employer the maintenance of “a high order of 
 discipline and efficiency”; and to the workers in the plant 
 “that they pass from the status of wage servants, with no 
 claim on the employer save his economic need, to that of 
 self-respecting parties to an agreement which they have 
 had an equal part with him in making.” And as for the 
 national union in whose name, representing the workers, 
 the contract is negotiated, it undertakes “to maintain, 
 strengthen, and solidify its organization so that it may be 
 made strong enough . . to command the respect 
 of the employer without being forced to resort to militant 
 or unfriendly measures.” It seems impossible to contem- 
 plate such a working agreement, whose success is a matter 
 of several years’ demonstration, and still hold to the mih- 
 taristic philosophy which so largely dominates the indus- 
 trial world. 
 
 To be sure, this plan of joint government is only the 
 beginning of what we might call the creation of an indus- 
 trial fellowship. It is still in the stage of bargaining, 
 but there is the recognition of a mutual obligation to keep 
 the agreement working and to maintain the integrity of 
 the industry. It goes beyond the mere keeping of the 
 industrial peace: the agreement calls expressly for 
 “mutual consideration and concession, a willingness on 
 the part of each party to regard and serve the interests of 
 the other, so far as it can be done without too great a 
 sacrifice of principle or interest.” Would not Jesus say 
 to these Jews in the clothing industry, in so far as they 
 seek to live up to such an ideal, “Ye are not far from the 
 kingdom of God’? 
 
 Tort New So.LiIpARITY 
 
 It would be an imperfect account indeed if we should 
 not notice such establishments as the Columbia Conserve 
 Company, of Indianapolis, where a striking effort is be- 
 
134 CHRISTIAN IDEALS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 ing made to organize the entire personnel, brain and hand 
 - workers, into a self-governing industrial unit, and where 
 the president is deliberately trying to make the organiza- 
 tion so effective that it will not need him; the Dutchess 
 Bleachery at Wappingers Falls, New York, where in a 
 textile establishment which offers many obstacles to the 
 creation of fellowship, a notable demonstration of joint 
 management is going on and a true partnership of effort 
 is in the making. If space permitted, a considerable list 
 of fruitful experiments might be given. 
 
 The remarkable thing about all this is the fact that 
 there is growing up in these establishments that very 
 loyalty to the industry which employers have complained 
 was lacking in the labor movement. The “solidarity” of 
 labor which the employer fears readily gives way to a 
 new solidarity in which loyalty to the industry is primary, 
 and the service of the community is an ultimate ideal. 
 
 Industrial establishments can be found to-day that 
 present all stages of transition, from the old game of com- 
 petitive self-interest to the new game of mutual service. 
 Tt is true that the most notable approaches to an indus- 
 trial fellowship are found in small institutions. Large 
 employers are wont to say that such idealistic undertak- 
 ings could not be carried out in large concerns. But 
 the experience of the small establishment is vital to the 
 Christian quest in industry. Great movements have 
 modest beginnings. The small establishment is the best 
 experiment station. This is an important fact when it 
 is remembered that the vast majority of industrial con- 
 cerns are small enough to make such experimentation 
 possible. There are difficulties all along the line, but 
 what is Christian faith for? 
 
 Tre GREAT ADVENTURE 
 
 What is driving these employers and workers—these 
 “idealists” who are so ready to set at naught industrial 
 traditions? It is all very simple when you have watched 
 them for a while. They are playing a great game. 
 Profits and wages are of secondary importance when men 
 engage in the great adventure of making a Christian 
 
THE GREAT ADVENTURE 135 
 
 world. They feel the thrill of the fisherman-disciple who 
 has heard the call, “Follow me, and I will make you a 
 fisher of men”! To “carry on” there must be young 
 men and women who will go into business precisely as 
 others go into the foreign-missionary service. There 
 must be young men of ideals who will take up industrial 
 engineering as a profession. There must be men and 
 women who will enter the labor movement with the same 
 spirit that would take them into the most exalted public 
 service. 
 
 We quoted earlier a part of Burton Braley’s poem “Busi- 
 ness Is Business,” In the concluding stanzas he has well 
 characterized the great adventure: 
 
 “Business is Business,” the Big Man said, 
 “But it’s something that’s more, far more; 
 
 For it makes sweet gardens of deserts dead, 
 And cities it built now roar 
 
 Where once the deer and gray wolf ran 
 From the pioneer’s swift advance; 
 
 Business is Magic that toils for man. 
 Business is True Romance. 
 
 “And those who make it a ruthless fight 
 Have only themselves to blame 
 
 If they feel no whit of the keen delight 
 In playing the Bigger Game— 
 
 The game that calls on the heart and head, 
 The best of man’s strength and nerve; 
 “Business is Business,” the Big Man said, 
 
 “And that Business is to serve!” 
 
 THe Conqurst or InpustrRY 
 
 A religion to which the twentieth century will give 
 allegiance must have a program as large as life. 'The 
 biggest thing in life is the work men do; they can never 
 be saved apart from it, only in it. Work itself must be 
 redeemed, and the Christian program for its redemption 
 is the building of the industrial fellowship. It is in the 
 world of work, still more than on the far-flung battle line 
 of our foreign missionary crusade, that Christianity must 
 be vindicated and its supremacy established. Jt is in 
 industry, where men have fought so bitterly, that the most 
 
136 CHRISTIAN IDEALS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 obstinate resistance to the Christian faith is being put 
 forth. Industry is the great modern mission field. Men 
 are to-day walking and working in darkness under the 
 domination of pagan ideals of self-interest and conflict. 
 It is the faith of a modern Christian that Christianity 
 can penetrate and dispel that darkness and, in Milton’s 
 splendid metaphor, create a soul under the ribs of death! 
 
 For rue Discusston Group 
 
 Why do we hear so much about a man’s religion? Are 
 the so-called “masculine” traits in our religion the best 
 traits ? 
 
 Does human nature require the satisfactions of con- 
 quest? Must it be gained through .personal encounter? 
 Does “peace on earth to men of good will” have any defi- 
 nite relation to the world of business and industry ? 
 
 Is our continued dependence on force—physical, mili- 
 tary, and economic—due to a natural love of combat, or 
 does fear play a part in it? 
 
 Why is the military hero accorded first place in human 
 esteem? Is this as true to-day as formerly? Who has 
 gained the largest measure of satisfaction out of life— 
 Marshal Foch or Thomas Edison? 
 
 Ts there more romance in the struggles and hazards of 
 business enterprise than in acts of moral heroism and 
 social endeavor? Who had more fun out of living—Jacob 
 Riis or the elder J. P. Morgan? 
 
 What was the incentive of the “dollar-a-year men” who 
 gave their services to the government during the war? Is 
 it possible to develop a similar incentive in time of peace? 
 
 Are the demonstrations of cooperation in industry that 
 are cited in the text significant or are they the result 
 of an unusual idealism of which most people are incap- 
 able? What would the average employer say about them? 
 
 To-day we send ministers, teachers, and doctors into 
 our mission fields. Why not industrial experts and 
 engineers ? 
 
 Ts it fact or fancy that “business is true romance”? Is 
 it more or less true than it used to be? What have we 
 as individuals had to do with it? 
 
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