A LABORING NATION book: THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY 331 G?d6t Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2015 https://archive.org/details/laboringnationOOgene bidaslrial RetrtioaB \ktft. A LABORING NATION Additional copies may be obtained from the Publicity Department, Nela Park, Cleveland, O. FOREWORD ^ r M IHIS world needs work. It needs work Ji faora everybody^ work through all the work- ^ ing days. It is, in sober, literal truth, a ''workaday world,'' not for a group or a class, but ^ for everyone. And here in America, where the ^ habit of work has been well-nigh universal since ^ man's toil first began to wrest a living from the wilderness, it is to this universality of work that we owe our greatness. About this matter of work, two great facts stand out: Nearly everyone has to work. And nearly everyone wants to work. The exceptions are so few that we can discard them, indeed, in the general statement, and allow them merely to be conspicuous as exceptions. In this country certainly, and to . a great extent throughout the civilized world, practi- ^S\^ally everyone has a job, and practically everyone has, deep within him, the ineradicable instinct of workmanship. For the community, our work is needed. For ourselves, we are not happy in idleness. As one writer puts it, "almost everyone in America belongs to the working class." Another writer, an investigator of industrial conditions, has pointed, out that there is more real difference be- tween skilled and unskilled labor than between "Labor" and "Capital." We are all workers; we differ merely in the kind of work we do. A Laboring Nation But it is not enough that we are all working. There are things about work that we must see and understand. "Where there is no vision the people perish,^' and we are sorely in need of a wider vision nowadays. We need a vision in this matter of work. We need to realize that, for ourselves and for others, work is interesting. We need to grasp the necessity for working together. On the question of the inherent inter estingness of work, we should respect the other man's instinct for workmanship, and comprehend the satis- faction of our own. "We'' does not mean merely "Capital" and it does not mean merely "Labor:" it means both; it means everybody. In this day of highly specialized mechanical technique, the laborer often fails — through no fault of his own — to understand the value and the essential interest of the thing he is doing; he is doing creative work, work that could be full of a big sat- isfaction; but under present conditions of special- ized machine manufacture, it is not always easy for him to see this. Upon the employer, who does see it, rests the responsibility of showing it to him. Students of present-day industrial "unrest" say that much dull discontent, misunderstanding, and consequent ill-feeling is caused simply by the 6 A Laboring Nation employer's failure to take the laborer's instinct of workmanship into account, to explain the value of his work and to stimulate his creative interest. On the other handy both "CapitaV and "Labor' often have a way of thinking — or of speaking and writing as if they thought — that "the other fellow" is merely "out for the coin." The manual worker calls the capitalist a "thief or a "parasite." The capitalist thinks the laborer cares for nothing but his pay envelope, and frequently looks upon him as a "shirk." Too often, in individual cases on both sides, this may be true. But it is not generally true. It cannot be thrown as an accusation at either side as a group. The employer, manager, capitalist, knows that he himself works hard and is interested in his work, quite aside from the ques- tion of "profits;" he ought to be just enough, al- ways, to understand that the laborer is made of the same human material as himself, and that the instinct for work and workmanship is something big and broad and human. The laborer, on his part, ought to realize both that the employer and the capitalist are working, and that their work is necessary, just as is his own. It is to point out some of the concrete details of this universality of A Laboring Nation ivork, of the need for work, and of the work instinct, that we are publishing this book. We shall never solve the human problems that face us unless we succeed, in this matter as in others, in understanding each other and respecting each other as human beings. And when we get as far as that, the next necessary point in our vision is easy: we must see the need, not only for every- one's working, but for everyone's working together. Present day production is achieved by machines — but these machines must be controlled by men. And unless men agree in their management of the machine, unless they work together, the machine produces nothing. During the imr, ivhen the great flame of a common heroic purpose fused our strength into 07ie tremendous effort, the eyes of the 2vhole world turned with admiration upon what America urns able to do. When that flame died, lohen we forgot our essential oneness, when we began to quarrel over the management of our machine, our loork became once more, as one man phases it, "crippled by confusion.'' We need the vision now. For we must all work. We mustfulflll our own tasks, and respect each other's. We must work together. Cleveland, Ohio, April, 1922 Terry and Tremaiiie 8 A LABORING NATION SOME years ago a European visitor was giving an American business man his impressions of the United States. 'Tt's a wonderful country/' he said, ''but there is one thing here that seems strange to me: you have no leisure class." ''What do you mean, leisure class asked the American. The visitor hesitated to find just the right words. Then he said, slowly, "I mean a class, or group, of people who don't seem to feel that it is necessary to work. Wherever I go in America, I find everyone working. No matter how rich a man is, he goes on working just the same. It seems to me that everybody in Amer- ica works. Nobody seems to think of such a thing as just living without working. Every- body is busy at something. That is what I mean by saying that you have no leisure class, no group of gentlemen of leisure, if I may use that term." The American smiled, "Oh, we have a leisure class, all right," he said, "but I guess you haven't 9 A Laboring Nation happened to come across any of them. You see, we haven't many of them, and we don't say much about them, and a visitor wouldn't be very hkely to meet any of them, anyhow. We have them, floating about here and there. Only, you see, we don't call them gentlemen. We call them tramps." It is probable that in these years of upheaval. Everybody the uumbcr of pcoplc in the older European Tramps countrics whosc ideal was to ''live without work- ing" has shrunk to a much smaller figure! But in the United States, the comments of the two men we have quoted have always been true. We have never had what the visitor called a ''leisure class." We have a great many rich men, but nearly all of them work. America is a nation of workers, and it is because it is a nation of work- ers that it is so great a nation industrially. And we are no moie proud of the few rich men who live lives of idleness than we are of the ragged roadsters who beg their vagrant way from door to door. Everybody works in America — every- body except the tramps ! And this matter of work is really more a matter of interest and desire than of money. Does that sound like a wild statement ? We are going to look into it in detail. Meanwhile we may note that the tramp has no money — but he manages to keep alive. On the other hand, the millionaire president of a great corporation is rich beyond the dreams of avarice — but he is 10 A Laboring Nation at his office every day. The average human being — and that means an enormously large proportion of men and women — is blessed with a natural instinct for work and a natural desire to stand on his own feet. The average man, rich or poor, is both industrious and honest. A poor man could be a beggar or a thief, but he doesn't want to. A rich man could be a waster and a parasite, but he prefers to live a self- respecting life in the world of active men. For each of them work is the normal thing to do. Deep down in the heart of nearly every human being lies the sound instinct of workmanship. And our life in America has tended to encourage and emphasize this instinct. We have never had a ''class" of idle men, inheritors of great ''landed" fortunes who from generation to gen- eration lived on the money that their fathers left. So it is that here in America, more than in any other country, the average man, rich or poor, is a worker. And, rich or poor, he has a job. Of course the great majority of people work to earn a living. And many of us, who have to work hard because we and our families are dependent upon our month-by-month earnings, think that if we were just "rich" we wouldn't work at all. And yet, somehow, it doesn't turn out that way. Have our rich men stopped working ? Mighty few ! There are two great reasons why rich men 11 A Laboring Nation Interested work. One is that they are interested in what Needed th^ are doing. The other is that they are doing necessary work. But before we begin to examine why they do it, let us look a little closer at this statement that they do! Are we sure it's true.^ We hear so much, nowadays, of men who ''don't have to work," of ''capitalists" who don't have to do anything but "clip coupons" and "draw dividends," while "laborers" toil all day long! And of course it is entirely true that most men have to earn wages or salaries in order to support themselves, while some other men have so much money that they could live in comfort all their lives without ever "earning" a cent. They are not obliged, these "rich" people, to work for money. Do they work for something else ? Workers All The present writer once had occasion to "inter- view" Elbert H. Gary, president of the Board of Directors of the United States Steel Corpora- tion. Judge Gary is an old man, and a very rich one. He has been very rich for many, many years. He is one of the first men that most of us think of when we hear the word "capitalist." Judge Gary is one of those men who "don't have to work." But when the vis- itor called upon Judge Gary it was not in his Gary's Job 12 A Laboring Nation home, or in any other place of ''leisure"; it was in his office on lower Broadway. Outside was an office boy, and in a small room there was probably a stenographer or two, and in one office was Judge Gary's secretary; and they were all busy. And in his own office, one of America's most famous capitalists was seated at his desk, busy at his day's work, like all the rest. And the point of that story is not that there was anything surprising about it, but that there wasn't! Of course the president of the Board of Directors of the United States Steel Corporation was working. What else would he be doing .^^ What is the president of a Board of Directors for ? Gary has a job. It also happened that the present writer once had occasion to talk with Thomas A. Edison, and journeyed out at an early hour to Orange, where he fives and has his laboratory. Was Edison at home.^ No, indeed! He was in his laboratory, working, surrounded by other men who were working. Edison is an old man, too, and he has worked all his life. He has amassed a fortune. He is personally ''free" to do as he likes every minute of the day. And he goes on working. That is what he fikes to do. There is no one who realizes both the impor- Edison's tance and the satisfaction of work more keenly than this great inventor, and there is no one whose life illustrates more plainly the value of a man's work to himself and to the world. If 13 A Laboring Nation Edison had only worked long enough and hard enough, to lay up some money and take it easy for the rest of his life, we can see for ourselves that he would have lost an enormous amount ot interest and satisfaction from the passing years. But we can see just as plainly, too, that the country would have lost far more We are the richer for more conveniences and luxuries than we can quickly count, because Edison went on working. This is more markedly true of Edison than of most men, of course, because Edison is a great genius who has done a peculiar individual work. But in some degree it is true of all our busy rich men. The country needs their work, iust as it needs the work of the coal-miner or the steel-worker or the "reamer" m the shipyards It isn't a matter of their personal fortunes; it is something far bigger than that. To go back to Edison as an outstanding type. TICK AND "When Thomas A. Edison is bent on reahzmg Results j j^-^ -^^^g^ ^is absorption in his work exemplifies Emerson's dictum, 'Nothing great was ever accomplished without enthusiasm. He shuts himself away from all interruption in his laboratory. He works for hours oblnaous to everything but his idea. Even the demands of his body for food and sleep do not rise above the threshold of consciousness. Edison himself says that great achievement is a result, not ot gieat ge^u!, but of just this kind of concentration in work. And until the mediocre man has CONCENTRA TION AND 14 A Laboring Nation worked as Edison has, he cannot prove the con- trary. Mr. Edison has results to prove the value of his way of thinking. Even our most expert statistician and mathematician would find it difficult to calculate the amount of material wealth this one worker has added to humanity's store. In the unseen but higher values in culture, in knowledge, and in greater joy of liv- ing for millions of people, there are even greater results. Other men of the past and present, in every phase of activity, have demonstrated that Edison s utter abandonment to his task is the keynote of efficiency and achievement, Mr. Edison is doing work for which he is supremely fitted. He shows his fitness by doing it supremely well."* At the present time Edison, who is seventy- five years old, is still putting in from twelve to sixteen hours of work a day — sometimes more. And the last thing he does every night is to map out his ''problems," as he calls them, for the next day. One morning not long ago he said, in reply to a question, that that particular day's calendar held fifty-seven items of work! We have always known that a man must work to get to the top. But it is just as true that he goes on working when he gets there! Sometimes he works harder than he ever worked in his life. ♦Katherine M. H. Blackford, M. D., and Arthur Newcomb, "The Job, The Man, and The Boss" (Doubleday, Page & Co.). (Italics ours.) 15 A Laboring Nation B. C. Forbes, editor of 'Torbes' Magazine/' and author of ''Keys to Success," ''Men Who are Making America," and other books of the same kind, a student of men, a student of busi- ness, an authority on this subject of success and achievement, was talking the matter over a few weeks ago. Said Mr. Forbes: He Goes on "Do rich men work ? Well, I should say they Working ; ^j^^^ p^^j^^- J always think of a story that seems to me typical: the elder J. Pierpont Morgan was once asked by a friend why he went on working so hard when he was so very rich, and no longer young. Without looking up from his desk Mr. Morgan said, 'When did your father retire.^' The friend was a little puzzled, but replied, quickly enough, 'My father retired in 1908.' 'When did he die.^' Mr. Morgan asked. The younger man hesi- tated a moment, and then he said, 'Well, he died toward the end of the next year.' 'Huh,' said the great financier, 'If he'd gone on working he'd be alive still!' "This habit of keeping on working after amassing a fortune is a deep-rooted American doctrine," Mr. Forbes went on, "and we have more conspicuously successful men of affairs than any other nation as a result. In most other countries the habit has been to quit work at a comparatively early age — but not here! "And that is one reason why the United States is now the leading industrial nation on earth. 16 A Laboring Nation Our big men dont get off the bridge of the ship as soon as they have learned how to sail it with extraordinary success. They go on with their work — and the country benefits. 'Tf China could import a dozen American 'giants' who are over sixty-five years of age, it would be worth untold millions to the Chinese republic ! ''I once took a vote of between five and six thousand business men as to who were the fifty foremost men of affairs in this country. The average age of the fifty men was sixty-one years ! And of the fifty almost every one was daily on the job. With few exceptions our great 'cap- tains of industry/ no matter whether they are , sixty, or sixty -five, or even seventy years of age, work very much harder than the average 'workman.' "Judge Gary is noted for the amount of work Some he gets through, notwithstanding the fact that Mtllion- he is over seventy. Theodore N. Vail, the man ExrMPLEs who really gave America the telephone system, worked like a Trojan up to the time of his death, at the age of seventy-five. George F. Baker, who, with J. P. Morgan and James Stillman constituted the 'Big Three' in the financial world, is still very actively on the job, although he is over eighty years old. Robert Dollar, the Pacific lumber and steamship king, is so con- stantly on the move, looking after his vast world-wide interests, that there's not a year 17 A Laboring Nation that he doesn't cover enough ground to travel more than around the world; he is seventy- eight. John H. Patterson, the famous National Cash Register man, remains dynamically active, although he is past seventy-five. John D. Rockefeller says he doesn't work any longer, but as a matter of fact he does; hardly a day passes but what he closets himself with his associates and attends to important matters, though nowadays most of these relate to dis- tributing, rather than to making, money; he is eighty-three years old. His son, John D. Rock- efeller, Jr., born to an enormous fortune, is a very busy man. Both Hill and Harriman, our greatest railroad men, were in harness practically up to the day of their death. Producers, ''What is morc — and very important — " NOT ' added Mr. Forbes, emphatically, ''These and Parasites ^^^^^ ^^^^ ^^^^ ^^^y exceptional cases, actuated by any consuming desire to pile up more milhons. They feel that they have a work to do in the world, a service to render to keep the scheme of things going. They want to be producers, not parasites — leaders, not loafers. They want to construct, and to develop the resources of the country. And this is not merely in order to add to their bank accounts — bank accounts mean little to them when they reach that stage— but for the sake of accom- plishing big things, of building up the nation's resources, helping to raise its place among the 18 A Laboring Nation industrial nations; and, on the other hand, to provide employment for large and still larger numbers of citizens, at wages that will permit their employes to live decently, and bring up and educate their children. "This is their work. ''And one can't emphasize too strongly the Manage- fact that the management and development of ^^J^Jg.^^^ industry takes work and careful management as well as the investment of money. Idle capital, like idle hands, can produce nothing. If these men were to try, for instance, to lock up their money in vaults, not only would it not produce a cent of income for them, but their way of 'saving' it would be distinctly harmful to the country, because the money would be withdrawn from use, and capital would be wasted that could be usefully employed to develop some line of business or industry, and provide employment. But that isn't all! It is not enough for these rich men to put their money to work! Idle capital is no more harmful than capital mis- applied. And it takes brains to use capital wisely and productively. The 'capitalist' has got to keep using his brains. That is work! There is a saying, you know, that 'it takes more brains to keep money than to make it.' Certainly it takes brains to keep money properly busy! "That is one thing. Another thing," Mr. Forbes went on, "is that nearly all these men 19 A Laboring Nation love to work. If they hadn't loved to work, they wouldn't have been successful in the first place. You can't find two lazy self-made millionaires in America. They wouldn't have got rich if they were lazy, if they didn't enjoy work for its own sake. The same principle that enables a workman to rise to be foreman or superin- tendent applies to men who have risen up to millionairedom. Every intelligent workman knows that if he aspires to be a foreman, and so on, he must apply himself with all the industry and diligence he can command. He must show that he knows more about his job and can do it better than the average workman, or else be content to remain an average workman. Lazi- ness is absolutely the greatest barrier of all to attaining advancement in any line of work— the man who has 'made good' isn't lazy; he is an active person who enjoys activity and is interested in what he is doing. No matter how rich he gets, he doesn't want to loaf! Nothing "Moreover, the men who have achieved suc- Can Run ^.^gg building up of any enterprise know that if you leave a thing to run itself there is only one way it will run — downhill. They know the necessity of being on the job every day and all day. Brains are as essential as capital. Idle brains are just as unproductive and useless as idle capital. The president of a company knows that he cannot fill his job satisfactorily unless he works hard and keeps his mind on 20 A Laboring Nation his business, any more than a machinist can. ''So we come back to where we started! It isn't enough for any man to make one 'ten strike/ achieve one briUiant idea, and then hve on his laurels. It is necessary to keep jogging along, whatever it is one does. One of the worst foes to attaining success in any line of endeavor is impatience. We all feel that things don't come our way quickly enough. We see other men's results and think they are 'lucky.' We don't know anything about the planning, schem- ing, sweating, plodding, perseverance, that led up to the result we see. We can see the trunk and the branches of the oak tree, but we don't see all the work going on, under the ground, by the myriads of roots. Most of us would like to sport fine trunks and branches and leaves, but we don't realize that it's only the labor of the roots that makes the oak possible!" In his book, "Men Who are Making Amer- ica," Mr. Forbes says: "The more I dig into the lives of successful men the more convinced I become that all have had to travel the same sort of hilly road, sweating brow and brain, meeting and overcoming obstacles, but never losing sight of their lodestar, no matter how great the prov- ocation. The scale that weighs success and mediocrity, I verily believe, oftentimes is tipped by an extra ounce or two of energy, an additional hour or two of labor, an added yard or two of foresight." 21 A Laboring Nation But do they stop when they are ''successful"? Indeed they don't! One Man's Story An "Empire We might run ou for hours with stories of |u^ilder's" j^^j^ who, in their work, and their work's con- tinuance, have won satisfaction for themselves and benefit for the community — whose toil was of vast interest to themselves and vital impor- tance to the country, long after the spur of finan- cial need had ceased to prick. We are a nation of laborers ^ — laborers with hand and brain. Because we are a nation of laborers we have risen to a power and greatness and promise that are immeasurably more than mere ''wealth." We could tell interesting stories of the work of our great laborers all day long. We choose one story, as an historian tells it, because it illustrates very strikingly and very simply the great points about work. From a short biog- raphy in "iVmericans by Adoption," by Joseph Husband (The Atlantic Monthly Press), are taken these items from the life of the great rail- road builder, James J. Hill: "When he was fourteen his father died, and, reahzing the responsibilities which were now resting upon his shoulders, the boy gave up his hope of a professional career, and for four years supported his mother and her household with such small wages as he earned as clerk in the village store. 22 A Laboring Nation "For several years, in the imaginative brain of the boy, had grown the hope of some day crossing the western plains and sailing across the Pacific. ... He had but little money; but he had faith in himself and in his future. Each year the longing grew, until, when he was eighteen, he could stand it no more, and his new life began. ''Without money, friends, or influence, he crossed the boundary into the United States, and after visiting several of the large eastern cities made his way to St. Paul, then a small town situated at the head of navigable water on the Mississippi River. North and west the unbroken prairie and the forests were peopled only by the Indians; buffalo roamed the prai- ries. Only along the navigable rivers were the cultivated farm lands of the settlers. "The young man had no money. . . . Money He was eighteen years old, but he was willing S^^Lt to turn his hand to any honest work, and ms vivid imagination inspired him to work hard so that his future hope might be realized. . . . The position of shipping clerk in the ofl&ce of the agent of a steamboat company was open, and he grasped it. The work was varied; he received incoming and outgoing freight, ran the ware- house, inspected its contents, kept an open eye for new business, and when labor was scarce helped the men load and unload the steamboats. 23 A Laboring Nation On this early experience was to be built the great triumph of coming years. ''Not content with performing well his daily work, young Hill spent his evenings largely in studying the more technical and theoretical aspects of the transportation business, and the possibilities, dependent upon adequate trans- portation, of the development of the great unex- plored Northwest. Moreover, he saved his money, realizing that a time might come when his savings, however small, might prove vital to the grasping of an opportunity. ''In a few years, his steady attention to his work and the long hours of study had put him in a position from which he could now step fearlessly forward. He was a man of affairs. . . . He realized that the time had come to strike out for himself." Work, As a young business man now, Hill was of Dr^NG^' course well-to-do compared with those days, only a short time ago, when he had supported his mother on a fourteen-year-old's wage. But the important thing about his success, so far, was not that it had brought him enough money to "rest on," but that it was opening up new activities. He began to identify himself with the traffic carried on between St. Paul and the North; he developed and enlarged his ware- house business; he worked with freight; above all, he studied the thing that had always thrilled and held him^ — transportation itself, the devel- 24 A Laboring Nation opment of the railroads. He dreamed of open- ing up the Northwest; he beUeved that trans- portation would do it. "His romantic vision led him on in his thoughts far beyond the boundaries which surrounded the mental vision of his fellow citizens, and his years of study and varied business experience enabled him, step by step, to turn his dreams into real- ities. . . . Many are the stories that are told of Mr. Hill in those early days. In the heat of summer and in the bhzzards of the northern winters, he personally inspected and carried forward the work which he had designed. He endured every kind of hardship. On his steam- boats in the open months, and with sled and dog train in winter, he passed back and forth over the route, examining every local condition, studying the soil, the climate, and the mineral deposits along the way." And for seventeen years of work and dreams and savings he watched the possibilities for railroad develop- ment. When the opportunity came to purchase a railroad, it was a road that had gone to pieces and was heavily in debt, and it took every cent that Hill could scrape together to make this wreck of a road his own. That road — "two streaks of rust reaching out into the desert" — was the beginning of James J. Hill's greatness; as such, it was the signal for even harder work. By work and plans and daring, he built up that railroad, and 25 A Laboring Nation extended it to open up new lands — the great wheatlands of the Northwest. In 1893 he began actively to carry out the biggest part of his dreams — the extension of his road to the Pacific coast. ''It is hard to realize the tre- mendous difficulties which faced him. But he was undismayed; every obstacle was overcome, the road was built, and the empire again extended its boundary, this time to the blue waters of the Pacific." And still through the passing years he dreamed his dreams of bigger railroads still, and worked to carry them out to fruition. 'Tifty years before, the penniless country boy had left the village of his birth to seek his fortune; and now, after this life of usefulness, he found himself able to pay in cash over $200,000,000 for the Northern Pacific Railway system." But did the millionaire Hill stop working.^ By no means! He had things to do! He always believed firmly in the basic impor- tance of agriculture — the extension of the rail- roads meant the opening up of new agricultural lands; he worked to help the farmers and settlers, giving them cattle which he had bred on his own farms. He was interested in the country's mineral deposits — ^he investigated the coal fields of the Northwest, followed up the rumors of the presence of iron ore, went into the mining business. He experimented with a steamship line to the Orient, and made special studies of 26 A Laboring Nation China's food problem and the possible market in China for American flour. His activities continued throughout his life. All this was not a matter of money; it was a Money matter of work. Even if he had got the money Without without working for it, the money itself would Work have been useless without the man's constant toil. One writer has summed up in a sentence what was perhaps the secret of James J. Hill's success: ''AH his life it was his custom to know all the facts about anything in which he was interested, a good deal earlier, and a little better, than anybody else." That meant work! It meant work that didn't stop when James J. Hill had made a fortune ! * We have not related this story of James J. Hill with any idea of telling anyone else that he can go and do likewise. Hill was absolutely an individual, with his individual ambitions and his individual genius. Every one of us is an individual. Even if it were possible for every one of us to become rich and powerful, there would never be anyone else just like James J. Hill. And there are only a few leaders, only a few giants, among men. But if this story of one giant's life does not prove that everybody else can be like him, it does prove that in one essential particular he was pretty much like *" Americans by Adoption," the book from which the quotations and facts cited above have been taken, is a fascinating little collection of short life-stories — the stories of men who have come from other countries to work out their dreams and find success, in widely differing fields, in this nation of workers. In acknowledging our debt to the book for the paragraphs above, we recommend the volume itself to our readers. 27 A Laboring Nation everybody else! He was like everybody else because he ivorked. "The Day's Work" "The Day's Hill's life is especially striking because his Wall work Opened up a new country and accomplished Street SO much for the United States and thousands upon thousands of its citizens. Both his own love for his work, and the importance of the work itself, stand out. He had his job, and he never shirked it. But we could run over the lives of almost every ''capitaUst," ''captain of industry," ''financier" in the country, and find just the thing that is so striking in the great railroad man's career: practically all of them are working. Samuel Crowther points out in one of his books that there are almost no "owners of capital" who are not busy in "management" of one kind or another. Says Guy Emerson: "American business men have been deeply devoted to their own work. They have learned the value of concentration. They have done a century's work in the past generation. Wall Street today is the great Mecca of trained men from all over America. . . . And the predominant motive today is not money, but rather the absorbing fascination of the day's work. . . . These banks supply the life- blood for the transaction of essential business, and with various shifts of workers are practically never closed day or night, year after year. . . . 28 A Laboring Nation The groups of men whose business it is to supply credit to productive industries are just as essen- tial to the industry of any nation or community as is the coal to a locomotive."* Before we leave this detail of the universality of the day's work, there is an interesting little side-light to be thrown on it by an interview with a policeman! In front of Trinity Church in New York City, where Wall Street runs down from Broadway, the same policeman has been on duty every morning for years. One day last fall 'The New York Evening Post" sent a reporter to have a little talk with him; and here is part of the story of that interview: "Does he look at the clock to see the time, or does he wait to hear the bells toll out their message of the hour.^ He does not; he knows what time it is by the appearance of the million- aires in their automobiles. ''Millionaires, he says, are 'far more demo- cratic' than are the junior clerks and stock run- ners who pass him every hour in the day. " 'So you heard I could tell the time by the people who pass.^^' he inquired in answer to a question. 'Well, you are right; I can. There's nothing mysterious about that, and I'll tell you why. " 'Millionaires, men of finance, and prominent "Regular- men in public life, are set in their ways. They ^o^^mE" have regularity and routine in their lives. Each *"The New Frontier" (Henry Holt). (Italics ours.) 29 A Laboring Nation day is plotted out before it actually comes. Every hour, every minute, is accounted for. So what more natural than that they should select a certain time for coming down and getting to work in the morning ? " 'Of 'em all, I think George Baker, Sr., of the First National Bank, gets down before the others. He always arrives, rain or shine, be- tween 9 :15 and 9 :30. This despite the fact that he is eighty-two years old. " 'Here! There you are! There goes John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and his wife. He always drives his own car himself. He gets down at 10:30 every morning. Leaves his office about five o'clock every evening. " 'J. P. Morgan doesn't come to work as early now as he formerly did. He generally arrives at eleven o'clock, his car stopping in front of Trinity Church. He gets out there and walks down himself. Seems to like to walk down this old street, somehow. His son, Junius, gets here earlier 5 tliou^li. " 'Elbert H. Gary generally arrives down here at ten o'clock. Since he's come back from Europe he's been down here even earlier of mornings. " 'That's the way it goes. They keep on coming day after day, until one day they don't come any more, like Mr. Schiff and Mr. Carnegie, and a host of others. It's life, that's all, and death follows it, and there are no two ways about it.' " 30 A Laboring Nation Different Needs As we look at the activities of these typical ''capitalists" and ''big business men," and see that they are not "gentlemen of leisure/' but as busy as any of us, we can't help noticing another thing: The world needs a lot of different kinds of work! There is a certain phrase that is heard often A** Catch- on the lips of "radical" talkers of a certain type, and met often in the reading matter that these "radicals" circulate. It is — "Labor produces all." It means that all industry, all wealth, all progress, is brought about by the manual toil of the laborers in mine and mill and factory, that "Labor" and "Labor" only, is the producer of the world's goods. And from this first state- ment the man who makes it goes on and argues that since laboring men alone produce, laboring men alone should possess: "Labor produces all," he says, "therefore Labor should get all. The capitalists and financiers and all the rest of 'em — all except laborers — are simply parasites and thieves. They are all living on what other men earn." That statement, that "Labor produces all," A Half- Is a misinterpretation and distortion of a basic fact. It is a sort of half-truth — and a half- truth is the most dangerous kind of lie : we think it must all be true because we know that some 31 A Laboring Nation of it is, and we can't dispose of it by denying the whole thing; yet ''the whole thing" is not true! There is something that is true to start with — and then that true something is twisted into something else, that is not true at all! It is true that nothing can be produced without labor — the labor of men's hands. It is true that unless men toiled in mines to get coal and iron we should have no coal and iron; that unless men toiled in mills to make steel we should have no steel; that unless men toiled in factories we should have no automobiles, or threshing machines, or clothing, or electric lamps, or furniture, or anything. It is true that ' 'Labor " is absolutely essential in the pro- duction of the wealth of the world, in the crea- tion of the world's goods. It is true that Labor is a necessary producer. It is not true that Labor is the only producer. It is true that Labor produces, and it is also true that Capital produces, that Management produces, that Science produces, that all skill and expertness and brain- work produces. What we said a moment ago of the necessity for Labor in mines and mills and factories is just as true of the necessity for Capital, for Management, for Science, for headwork of all sorts. Change the words about, and the sentences still stand. In Russia the Bolsheviki started out by saying that "Labor produced all," and that everyone should be paid alike, and there should be no 32 A Laboring Nation ''experts" or ''capitalists" — and they found that under such a dream production simply stopped. We all know how they have offered concessions to technical experts, how they have fairly begged foreign capitalists to invest money in their industries, how they have formally admitted the utter failure of "equal pay." In Italy the workers who were trying to run their own fac- tories declared at the outset that they must have technical experts. Wherever any attempt is made to try out the principle that "Labor produces all," it is seen to be utterly impossible. What really "produces all" is work — every- Division body's work. Alfred E. Zimmern, a liberal ^^^''^^^ economist, says, "Under any system of manage- ment there must be division of labor; there must be those who know all about one subject and are best fitted to deal with it." That is another way of saying that everybody's work is needed. For example, let us look at the making of lamps. Not a lamp could be made if the workers weren't sitting at their tables, before their gas flames, doing their work. But — aside from the investment of capital in machinery and buildings and wages and other necessities (we shall have more to say about that another time) — the making of lamps depends on the work of many other people besides those who put the glass tubes into the bulbs, or give the lamp its magic bit of tungsten filament. Not a lamp could be made — and not a worker 33 A Laboring Nation employed — without the busy day's toil of factory managers, of department directors, of sales superintendents and salesmen themselves, of executives in offices, of scientists in labora- tories. To make lamps, there must be scientific knowledge of electricity and how to use it, with constant research to keep this knowledge at the head of man's knowledge in this field; there must be expert investigation and improvement of lamp-making equipment; there must be a great ''sales department" to attend to the distribution and sale of the lamps, else there w^ould be no market for them, and they would cease to be made because they would cease to be delivered and sold; there must be accounting departments to look after all the expenses of manufacture, balancing the ''income" and the "outgo," keeping tabs on all the financial end of the business so that it can continue to be a "paying concern" for employes and investors; there must be manag- ers — floor managers, department managers, fac- tory managers, company managers — each to take the*^ responsibility and attend to the direction of his own field, so that the thousands of workers will be working systematically to fill a need, and not just hit-or-miss at anything that comes into someone's mind. There must be execu- tives, directors, experts. And just as these executives and directors could not accomplish anything without the "manual workers" in the factories, so the factory 34 A Laboring Nation workers could not accomplish anything without the ''executives" and the rest. They could do their own work alone, but ''their own work" could not stand — could not continue to exist — by itself. Sometimes, when it is pointed out that execu- *'Super- tives and directors, as well as manual workers, are needed in manufacture, somebody or other raises an indignant protest because he assumes that when you say that a factory can't get along without executives you mean that the workers can't get along without supervision: he thinks that "executives" are just people who "stand over the workers" and tell them what to do! But anyone who really knows any factory, any industrial business, and goes to the trouble of taking a good hard look at it, can see at once how mistaken such an idea is. The indigna- tion is all wrong because the assumption is all wrong in the first place. Of course the workers could get along without "supervision." They probably would not get so much done without direction and assistance — that depends largely on the nature of the work. But no intelligent worker who has mastered his job needs to have someone "standing over him" all the time, tell- ing him how to do it, and no conscientious worker has to be "checked up" to see that he doesn't shirk! However, the work itself needs super- vision — the amount to be done, the payment of wages, the employment of new "help," the main- 35 A Laboring Nation tenance of good working conditions, the daily recording of achievements, expenses, details of one kind or another that must be ''kept track of." And the work needs direction, too; as we said, there must be knowledge of what is required, fitting of ''supply" to "demand" in many ways. It isn't supervision of the workers — it's supervision of the work! Direction When the war broke out in Europe, women all AND over the United States began to knit, and sew, System ^^^^ bandages, to do what they could to help in relief work. As time went on and the devastation and tragedy of the war grew worse and worse, as we ourselves entered the conflict and our own boys went overseas to fight, more and more of the patriotic and devoted women of America gave their time and their strength to this effort. And at first everyone did just what she wanted to, or thought of first, or had heard someone say was needed. They were all work- ing, working hard, working unselfishly, but work- ing without direction or "system." And as a result Red Cross warehouses began to be filled to overflowing with things that weren't needed at ah — bandages that were too short, knitted articles of the wrong size or the wrong kind, various sorts of things that were ah right in themselves, but were no longer in demand because a sufficiently large supply had already been sent in. For example, someone came back from France one time and said that there was a 36 A Laboring Nation great need for knitted wash-cloths, and all over the country women began to knit wash-cloths to meet that need; thousands upon thousands of wash-cloths were sent to Washington, whole rooms were filled with boxes of wash-cloths; there had been a need in the first place, but the need was quickly filled ^ — and still the wash- cloths kept coming by the thousand, and women worked away to make wash-cloths, when, if they had only known it, they were wasting time and strength and material that were needed for other things. So the Red Cross started in and ''systematized" everything; expert investi- gators were sent overseas to find out just what was needed, what kind, what size, what material, how much of each. Directions were prepared and sent out to all the divisions, to all the chap- ters. The supply was regulated to meet the actual demand. New workers — investigators, directors, clerks — were busy. Even in so simple a matter as knitting, the Red Cross had found that direction and system were necessary things. And so it is in every business, every manu- facture, every making of anything. Whatever it is that is being done, it needs a dozen different kinds of work! A scholarly weekly magazine remarked recently that one of the scientists at the Nela Research Laboratory was probably the country's ''greatest expert on color and arti- ficial lighting," and added a tribute to his 37 A Laboring Nation "profound knowledge of the history of the devel- opment of lighting from the earliest times." A writer on modern social and economic prob- lems stated a short time ago that certainly a hundred former professors of economics were now connected with American business life, and that the co-operation between business and the colleges was drawing closer all the time. And these are not remarkable things, they are mat- ters of course. Like Judge Gary's being on the job of a morning, the noticeable point about them is not that they are surprising, but rather that they occasion no surprise. Of course a company that manufactures electric lamps must enlist the aid of science, and employ scientists ! Of course great manufacturing firms with great economic problems to deal with must employ trained econ- omists and cooperate with the colleges where Evert One experts are trained! Knock out any one of the IS Neces- many essential kinds of work, and all the work goes to pieces. You can not build a house with- out steel; you cannot build a house without wood; you cannot build a house without plaster. Every one is necessary — every one is useless alone. Yes, we are all of us working. We all of us have work to do. And in the best sort of indus- try, the best factory, the workers — superinten- dents and laborers, employers and employed — are all working together and know it. There is something wrong with the factory in which either the workmen or the employers are shirk- 38 A Laboring Nation ing. We have gone a long way toward ideal conditions when each respects the other as a worker, and is proud of his own part in the work of the whole. But the employes don't always see that the man who pays the wages is working too! They don't always see his responsibilities, his active days, his planning and ''headwork," his zeal for good work in his own job — which, if he is the right kind of employer, is just as great as theirs. His work is different — but it is work just the same! "On the Job" A salaried worker was talking one day with A Cap- a millionaire ''capitalist," a man who employs ^^d'hh thousands of people, and is at the head of one Work of the big ''business concerns" of America, and the conversation turned on the matter of travel- ing, of ''going abroad." The capitalist went to Europe quite often, it appeared. "It seems wonderful the first time," he said, "but you soon see that it is pretty much like everything else ! It is exciting to go on the boat, and the band is playing, and there are crowds seeing people off — and then the boat pulls out, and you get your chair on deck, and send for a stenographer, and get out your correspondence and the other things you have to attend to; and for the next five days you are working on ship- board instead of working in your ofiice — and that's all there is to that!" 39 A Laboring Nation It gave the salaried worker a good deal of a jolt! He knew that his millionaire friend went abroad every once in a while, that he didn't have to think about the price of his passage, that he sailed on the fastest boats, and did every- thing in the quickest and smoothest way. He had himself been able to go to Europe once or twice, very carefully and economically — and he had rather envied the rich man his "ease." And now it occurred to him for the first time that those European trips of his friend's were mat- ters of zcorJ:. "When he himself went abroad, it was a vacation; he had taken it for granted that the capitalist's travehngs were hoHday jaunts, like his own. Now he suddenly realized that the man of big responsibilities wasn't free for holiday-making. Unlike the salaried man, he was unable to close the office door on his work at some stated time. Nobody could do his work for him; he was too important; he couldn't get out of touch with that great business; he had to keep it on his mind, to be busy over it, just because he was "a big man." He wasn't even any more free in the choice of a steamship than the poor man was! The poor man had to travel on a slow boat because it was cheap; the rich man had to travel on an expensive boat because it was fast; he might have preferred a more leisurely crossing, but he hadn't time ! It was only one little thing— but altogether, the man on a small salary did a good deal of 40 A Laboring Nation thinking on the basis of that one casual remark! Before we leave this subject of being ''on the job/' let us take a look at a famous factory, and a famous man^ that stand out as types: The Baldwin Locomotive Works, in Philadelphia, is ninety-five years old, employs about 17,000 men, and has never had a strike, or even a serious wage dispute. Here is what an investi- gator has to say about ''Baldwin's" and the man at the head of it: "The heads and the workers together devote Managers themselves pretty exclusively to work. The Workers wages seem pretty well able to care for them- Together selves. . . . And here is another fact to bear in mind : these employers have always been more interested in the work than in the stock market — in the product than in its price. "The reason is not hard to find. The ani- Work— mating force of man is the creative instinct; he money finds his happiness in creating. A real leader of industry seldom finds any particular pleasure in the money he earns. The real fun is in doing things. The workman who is creating some- thing never bothers about wages or hours, be- cause his chief fun is in doing. But . . . the president who thinks that his company exists mainly to supply stock quotations is in exactly the same case with the workman who looks at his day's work not as a means of doing some- thing, but as a means of getting money with- out exertion. 41 A Laboring Nation I "The Baldwin Locomotive Works is something i more than a locomotive building plant — it is an institution. For some time past Samuel M. Vauclain has been its president, but for twenty years he has been the dominating figure. Mr. Vauclain worked his way up from an apprentice in the Altoona shops of the Pennsylvania Rail- road. His principal joy in living is to build locomotives. He reaches his office somewhere around seven in the morning and leaves between six and seven in the evening, although sometimes he will work eighteen or twenty hours at a stretch. He has never taken a vacation, be- cause he never could find anything to do that would give him as much fun as building loco- motives. He has never bothered with personal finance, and he further told me that he had not, for fifteen years, known what his own salary was— he said that he did not have time to bother with money, and simply had the com- g pany pay his salary to a trust company. He I knew the amount could not help being large ■ enough because he was doing his work, and therefore it was of no particular use to bother about it. He is a locomotive builder. He will not build a bad locomotive at any price. A locomotive leaving those shops is regarded as tenderly and with exactly the same spirit as a sculptor regards a finished statue going out of the studio. The tradition of the company is: Good work. Every man in that place, from 42 A Laboring Nation draughtsman to the lowest grade of mechanic, knows that Mr. Vauclain is a locomotive expert from any angle. . . . He is their natural leader. They honor him as such. Taking his personal example they resent bad work as bit- terly as he would resent it. They are satisfied that if they work well they will be well paid, and they always are. They do not work for wages — they create locomotives."* Samuel Vauclain is a great genius. Perhaps not every employer can be a Vauclain any more than every one who plays the violin can be a Kreisler. But if he is going to do anything, every employer, like every violinist, has got to work at his job. And the truly successful man, no matter what it is that he is doing, is inter- ested in his work. ''Creative Work" Nowadays We often hear that work is ''not interesting nowadays." There are never lacking people to remind us that "the good old days" of personal handicraft, several centuries ago, offered a "creative interest" that is gone forever now. In a sense, thai is of course true. It is not so inter- esting to make only a part of a thing as it is to make it all. It does not seem nearly so "crea- tive" to work by machinery as to work by hand. The normal human instinct for work is all of a piece with the normal human instinct for crea- *Samuel Crowther, "Common Sense and Labor" (Doubleday, Page & Co.). 43 A Laboring Nation tion — for making something. And in much industrial work nowadays that creative instinct sees no satisfaction: the day's work is not an achievement, but a task. "The The creative instinct sees no satisfaction, we Creative g^^^j fo a Very great extent, where that hap- iNSTiNCT" p^^^^ j^^j^ ^£ employer, manager, foreman. For the satisfaction is there: it just has to be pointed out. In some ways, it is true, industrial work is less interesting than it was a few centuries ago. In other ways, the interest is not less, but more. And there is a creative satisfaction just the same. . In the story of Mr. Vauclain and the Baldwm Locomotive Works we saw that the spirit of that great plant was to make locomotives, and that for everyone, from the president of the company to every worker in the place, making locomotives was a tremendously interesting thing. Every man who punched a hole for a rivet was doing his part in the making of a locomotive, that great powerful panting thing that not even the least imaginative person in the world could think of without a sense of life. Suppose a man was only punching holes all day. He was helping to create a locomotive, none the less! His interest was in making locomotives. His pride was in making good locomotives. His ambition was that his part in the creation of the thing should be perfect always. And every 44 A Laboring Nation locomotive engine that his hand touched was partly his. No matter what the work is — rolling steel "That into plates to make the sides of automobiles, ^m^'^ taking part in the giant's cauldron of operations that make steel itself, making stoves, making lamps, making textiles — whatever it is, the worker's part in the creation of the thing is present still. The ''man in charge" may not take the trouble to remind him of it. The worker may not, in the hurly-burly of a great factory or mill and the necessary devotion to his one operation, catch the sense of the whole, understand the creative value of his own work. But it is there; the creation is there; the pride is there; the personal joy in making, that is an integral part of man's spiritual life. There's not a steel worker in the country who can pass by one of our towering sky-scrapers, catch sight of one of our beautiful steamships, listen to the roar of vibrant life as one of our great locomotive engines pulls a mail-train at a mile a minute across the continent, without thinking, ''That thing is mine! Out of my day's work, the work of my hands and the hands of my comrades, the work of all who labored with hand or brain in the making of steel, came that thing of beauty and wonder and power. We made it. To each of us belongs the joy of its miracle!" And it is true, every time, that the employer, the "head of the company," who is only inter- 45 A Laboring Nation ested in making money, and the worker, the wage-earner, who sees nothing in his job beyond his pay-envelope, are both missing, in ignorance or dull inattention, the sheer creative satis- faction that is one of the great abiding joys of life. Man must work— rich man or poor— if he is going to be a self-respecting member of society and make his living with the rest; but if he only works to "make his living," if he never looks beyond his daily task to its final signifi- cance, if the only thing that interests him in his job is the money it brings him — then he had better open his eyes! And if, as possibly in the case of a manual worker occupied with some one detail, he does not quickly see for himself the creative value of his own work, then someone ought to show it to him. The creative value is still here! And, although the exact interest of the ancient days of hand-manufacture is gone forever, there is a new interest in the work of these industrial days. It is the interest in the machine, and in the forces that work through the machine at our command. Power and The man who hammered out somethin !, m THE mediieval times, with his own hand tools, knew Machine .^^ visible hand work. He never knew the joy of power over the forces that work in the machine. • i u It is we, in these days of mechanical tech- nique," of "specialized" work, who drive elec- 46 A Laboring Nation tricity at our bidding, who breathe hke a flash the melting heat of a tiny gas flame, who master giant steam engines to do our wiU with a turn of the wrist. We hear much of the monotony of machine work — we hear Uttle or nothing of its romance. Yet the power of this matter-of- fact day's work has the thriU of a miracle. And every worker in every factory, in every mill, in every mine, has his part in the miracle's daily operation. The ''interest" gone from industry ? The interest of industry was never greater! Rudyard Kipling has a poem which tells how the people of every age have looked back regret- fully to the interest and romance in the every- day life of the age before them, seeing none in their own. "Life was interesting, romantic, vivid, a hundred years ago," they complained. ''Nowadays everything is dull and prosaic and utterly stupid. Everything has changed." And so the men and women of each succeeding era sighed for the "romance" of the era just before them, until in our own day they cried out that everything that was interesting and beautiful and wonderful had gone out of man's day -by- day life. And then, the poem says, " . . .all unseen Romance brought up the nine-fifteen. "His hand was on the lever laid. His oil-can soothed the worrying cranks. His whistle waked the snowbound grade, 47 A Laboring Nation His fog-horn cut the reeking banks; By dock and deep and mine and mill, The Boy-god reckless laboured still! "Robed, crowned and throned, he wove his spell, Where heart-blood beat or hearth-smoke curled. With unconsidered miracle Hedged in a backward-gazing world; Then taught his chosen bard to say 'The King was with us— yesterday !"' * The It's all so true ! "The King," as the poet calls Romance ^jjg Spirit of wondcr and romance that makes OF Work ^.^^ interesting, is with us in every workshop, in every office, today. Manufacture, commerce, the making of things, the moving of trains— they are interesting, marvelous operations. And doubtless a hundred years from now people will look back to the vivid days when a man m a mine, a girl in a lamp factory, a manager m an office, worked with or directed the forces of electricity and steam and gas in the machines of this present age, and compare it with the "dull- ness" of whatever changes their own era may have brought! Whereas the truth is that this glory of wonder and interest is always a part of man's work, because it is always a part of man's spirit; ♦From "The King," by Rudyard Kipling, published in "The Collected Verse of Rudyard Kipling" (Doubleday, Page & Co.). 48 A Laboring Nation man is always creating, always conquering, always mastering. Different ages have their different inventions. Different kinds of labor show their power in different ways. But always the thing itself is there, and always we can find it and thrill to it, in whatever it is that we do. Man is always the maker, the conqueror, because he is always the worker, and his work is always mastery. And always, whether he is directing vast activities as the president of a great corporation, or attending to his own part in the process of manufacture, as a manual laborer, he is a worker among his fellows, doing work that is necessary, that is powerful, and that, in the very nature of industry and commerce and life itself, is inter- esting and great. For work ''produces all" — the work of every one of us! 40 This is the fourteenth booklet of a series. Other booklets will be issued from time to time. The preceding booklets of the series as Hsted below are available: 6. Bolshevism and the Workers. 7. Your Vote and You. 8. Thrift. 9. Be a Capitalist. 10. Wages. 11. The Excess Profits Tax. 12. The Labor State. THE CAXTON COMPANY CLEVELAND /