Part 42

We may clearly recognize these facts and suppose them a sufficient explanation of the farther fact, that so many are thrown out of employment and find themselves the waifs of society with no secure attachment to it. They do, indeed, make conspicuous the failure of occupation and determine the direction it will take. Their numbers are seriously increased by it, and their very presence gives the conditions of its recurrence. They are both causes and effects. They stand on terms of action and reaction with all the embarrassments of production. They help to reduce wages, and when wages are reduced, they are the first to be driven out of employment. They are the symptoms of the disease, the product of the disease and the means by which it is carried farther. All failures in the productive process extend, in their worst results, to this class of defectives. They are the recipients of past evils, of present and of coming evils. They arise in connection with a false form of production, must be treated with it and removed with it. They are a composite product, their faults not being wholly their own but in part the faults of the economic system with which they are associated. They are not the scapegoat on whose head the sins of the people may be laid and then be borne into the wilderness.

In discussing the causes and remedies of unemployment, we shall see how far and in what way these feeblest workers are involved in it. We cannot improve society by simply striking off the evils that have been developed under it. Healthy growth alone can rid itself of failures. It often happens in physical disease that what is accepted as a remedy in the end aggravates the difficulty.

One dislikes to use the word pauper, it so frequently carries with it an unreasonable and cruel contempt. Yet there are paupers in the human household, and when the temper is once present it is most difficult of removal. It is a form of leprosy that eats out all vital power. The 387 pauper temper indicates a disposition to secure immediate ease with no reference to the comfort of others. It accepts any advantage that offers without the slightest wish to return it. Yet even this spirit may offer some excuses for itself. The evils of society which may have originated far off in the action of the leaders of men, are apt to go booming downward till they reach, in their most distinctive form, the pauper class, or those but little above it. Diligence, thrift, skill, ward off the blow and escape with only a partial loss. Those who are always in the way of it are the weak ones, to whom prosperity brings but little and adversity occasions immediate overthrow. When those who at best are but partially occupied, find that labor is altogether failing them, the question of relief becomes most difficult. There is no profitable labor at disposal, and to provide labor means farther loss; it is charity in its most disguised, expensive and unrequited form. The worst lesson we can teach those already inclined to negligence is that a form of labor may be put in the place of real labor, and that the question of adequacy is one to be answered by society, not by the needy, recipient of favor. Whatever we may do for men of feeble productive power we are not to lead them still farther on in the direction of indolence and worthlessness. Actions are not to be separated from their normal results. We may frequently be called on to bear the injury which proceeds from another man’s wrongs, but we are never called on to disguise the wrong itself. A portion of the wrong is our own; that we should correct. While the evils are in the process of infliction we are to bear them sympathetically, but not in a form which disguises their true character.

Something of the same danger inheres in old-age pensions. Workmen of usual diligence should receive a return for their labor which would enable them to provide for age. As long as workmen, reaching the age 388 of three score, generally become dependent on the public, it is perfectly plain that their wages are too low, that the returns of production are not fairly distributed. A pension acknowledges the evil, but does not remove it, it tends rather to confirm it. That the losses which accompany industrial accidents should be divided between workmen, managers and the community at large is plainly just, and is no temptation to remissness. The accident is not the fault of any one person or class of persons. If it falls upon a large number, it is more readily borne and increases the motives to care. Our machinery is operated for the benefit of the entire community, and it is only fair that the entire community should help to bear the increased dangers. That injuries should be still left with the workmen on whom they have accidentally fallen is another proof of the slight hold they have on the public mind.

Any remedy for the lack of employment which is prompted simply by compassion and still leaves the evil to overtake the workman is not social hygiene; is not a recognition of the partiality and disproportion which still inhere in our productive methods. Labor should be successful and rewardful when left to its own development. It is bad to create a pauper temper and most difficult to contend with it when it has once been called out. Men should be subject to their own incentives of hope and fear, success and failure, as far as possible. The same discipline which comes to the active, is the natural spring of action in the sluggish. Any compassion which reduces the motives of effort that should come to the entire community, or which leaves the community satisfied with a maladjustment of duties, can never provide an adequate correction of bad distribution. We are placed between a narrow and a wide humanity, between an immediate reduction of suffering and a removing of its conditions. The final result is the test of our wisdom and good will.

There are partial remedies of the failure of employment which are 389 fitted to give relief without endangering the future or disturbing the general conditions of employment. Occupations especially irregular, like that of the stevedore, may receive especial attention, or may be united to other forms of labor so as to secure greater uniformity. In these occupations the employer may frequently have but little motive to correct an evil from which he prospers by reduced wages. Excess and deficiency in the various branches of work should be made, as far as possible, to correct each other. Workmen are often not in a position to meet successfully these evils. They accept the drift of the labor market with small power to control it.

Bureaus of intelligence should be established so that the variable demands for labor of different localities may be quickly met. This is a public service, and should have the ease and certainty of such service. The same reasons which lead the Government to take the direction of immigrants should lead it to render similar aid to workmen. Workmen are often ignorant of the extent and character of the employment offered in the distance, and are subject to the exactions which arise in connection with this want of knowledge. The greater one’s want the more difficult is the change of locality. Quickness of response demands both intelligence and nobility.

Savings banks and insurance, while not directly affecting the demand for labor, tend to equalize and reduce the losses which accompany variability. They also tend strongly to call out that forecast of evil and preparation for it which belong to thoughtfulness. The strokes of fortune lose something of their unexpected and injurious character, and men are put on voluntary and better terms with the world.

We are not, however, to look on these reductions of danger as covering the whole problem. Life has its accidents and we can greatly reduce the evil results of them by patience and prudence, but there still 390 remains the more thoroughgoing effort by which the evil is anticipated and turned aside.

There should be that general harmony of effort, that proportion of its several parts to each other, that recognition of the common welfare, which fortify us against disaster, and force it in the background when it comes. There is a wise method in production, and a just relation of its agents to each other, which should greatly reduce the liability of a want of labor, and should ultimately remove it altogether. A true democracy should be exempt from this general failure in the results of activity. Much of our political economy has rested on inferences drawn from a faulty state of society, as if it and the conclusions contained in it expressed the real laws of our being. Society, in its most civilized forms, has always developed a proletariat, it has suffered drainage, and we have come to think this a sort of necessity, a natural result of social growth. With this starting point and expectation we are ready for periods of unemployment, and look at the misery which arises from them as a corrective. Superfluous lives cannot be gotten rid of on cheaper terms. We might as well suppose that disease is an inevitable attachment of physical life and must be left to go with it. Society never has too many workers, and when they are not wanted it is because they have been in some way misdirected. Strong men, industrious and intelligent men, are the wealth of society. There is never a time in which there is little or nothing to do in the world; if we think so it is because we cannot see, or see falsely. Our intelligence determines what is to be done and our diligence performs it. The world is never deficient in occasions for labor, no matter how defective we may be in performing it. Nor is well-devised labor wanting in its returns; intelligence and diligence, in full exercise, always contradict the notion. The world could not be the home of man on any other terms. Human life begins to be superfluous 391 the moment labor miscarries, and the miscarriage sinks down to those who have the least intelligence and industry. The constitutional disease of society, that which it has propagated with most show of knowledge, is ignorance and indolence. When we reach this stratum we are always in difficulty; the more in difficulty because we come to it in a sluggish rather than in a corrective temper.

Incident to indolence and ignorance are those vices of temper by which we wish to reach results without labor, or to reach them by the labor of others rather than by our own labor. As long as these vices are prevalent among men, whether in the upper or the lower strata of society, or, as is sure to be the case, in both, periods of arrest will come. Men will be baffled in their narrow aims, and will have no broader, more generous ones to put in their place. For a time they will lie idle till the customary impulses revive and once more set them in action. Industrial inactivity is like a financial panic. It is the result of the transient suspension of habitual feelings, and does not relax till men return to their usual frame of mind. These distrustful and apprehensive periods are liable to return as long as men are not pursuing sound purposes in a sober way. Any deficiency in fairness, integrity and mutual confidence divides society against itself, and renders a portion of its efforts futile. This is the more true as the division and subdivision of labor increases, and the final adjustment of returns is made by complicated exchanges. When a portion of the community finds its share of good things much reduced, when in the distribution of the rewards of labor, custom or cunning or force has robbed them of a reasonable portion, the motives of labor are greatly lessened, the means of exchange are lessened and the sense of unity and integrity of society is lost. There is in civilized society a large body of just and honest production which goes far to sustain the mind in renewed effort, and keep firm the ties which bind men 392 together. Yet the element of distrust, as in a financial crisis, extends through the community and weakens the points of life.

The first condition of social, economic strength is that all the members of society shall find suitable occupation and by means of it become the givers and receivers of aid. This plain, simple fact has been much obscured by accepting competition, often in an unethical and unsocial form, as the general law of economic activity. This law it is not; and it needs at all times to be held in check by ethical impulses and by the welfare of the community. It is this welfare which is the supreme law. Labor owes much of its degradation to a rigid and unreasonable application of competition. As we go down in the scale of occupations, and in efficiency in those occupations, the greater is the injustice and injury that attend on competition till we reach a point at which large numbers are pressed by it to the very verge of life. Then comes in that mischievous generalization which tends to make human degradation a permanent product of nature. The increase of human life is said to be geometrical, the increase of the means of life arithmetical, and so the two tendencies grind eternally against each other. Our best sympathy is expressed in letting this collision come to the quickest, shortest results. Some of this crushing process obtains between ill-trained and sluggish, well-trained and active men. Let it have way.

Yet the agricultural products of the world have not only never given out, they have never been brought near a maximum. Food, raiment and shelter are most varied in kind and abundant in quantity where men are most numerous. The Algonquin Indian wandered in the forest in the winter, unfed and unsheltered. The foundation of his trouble was his indolence and ignorance. The inhabitants of India may perish by famine in large numbers. The distress arises not from the fact that the people have outstripped the productive power of the world, but 393 because they have outstripped their wisdom in handling those powers.

Let men covet wealth, and at the same time use narrowly and competitively the means of attaining it, and the two strata of society, upper and lower, will shape between them a human life in which want will stand over against luxury, hatred over against contempt, and the two classes, oppressed by spiritual destitution and physical poverty, will wage with each a variable and hopeless warfare such as wisdom and good will can alone leave behind us.

A first remedy for unemployment is to make employment remunerative; so remunerative that the workman shall be the buyer of many things as well as the seller of one thing. When his single sale of labor stands in equipoise over against his many purchases, we shall have buyers as well as sellers and our production and traffic will never cease. We have in trade-unions a first step in the adjustment of exchange. Workmen strive to escape the competition of the incompetent and shiftless, to redirect distribution in ways more just and equal, and by this means to be able to play their own part in economic life more advantageously for themselves and for all. This effort is new in its breadth of application, but has never been new with the wise and thrifty. Personal skill and professional attainments have always lifted themselves above the storm-swept plain of competition, and gathered about themselves a prosperity and comfort resting on special and superior exertion. So long as we subject ourselves to the fortunes of the indolent and set up our standards of life at the very foot of the slope, we shall have a competition like that of the Chinese to contend with. We shall march so near the verge of the precipice that many will be pushed over it, and the least flurry will be disastrous. A sufficient return for diligence is the first claim and the safety of labor; it enhances its motives and fortifies it in the 394 possession of what it holds.

With paucity of pay on the one side goes the superabundance of profits on the other side. The returns of management should be more moderate, more uniform, more consonant with the general welfare. We can hardly doubt that an industrial community, well-organized, with a fair share of intelligence, diligence and honesty, will commend reasonable prosperity extending to all its members. Indeed this is what actually takes place in the midway forms of effort. The very poor and the very rich complement each other. Healthy and wholesome activity is as possible to the community as to the individual. The chief difference lies in the increased complexity of communal action and the ease with which results are misunderstood and misinterpreted. The instinctive and voluntary life of the individual is replaced in the community by divided counsels. Men shape opinion and interpret results in view of their own interests rather than in view of the public welfare. The public welfare is as much within the scope of human thought, when attention is directed to it, as is individual well-being. Indeed the universal and stable prosperity of economic society is as much dependent on the diligence and sobriety of its members as is individual welfare on well-ordered labor. The qualities which enhance success in the one direction are much the same as those which cause it in the other direction. Extreme and intemperate action work the same mischief in the one field as in the other. Society is sufficient unto itself when its purposes and methods are truly social. A sudden suspension of labor, a large number out of employment, are the result of disturbing causes which have found their way into the ordinary processes of production. These causes are an unreasonable accumulation of power in single hands, speculative ventures and a social philosophy which holds in light esteem the immediate interests of the mass of 395 the community. I have in mind a peculiar manufacture which had provided the needed buildings, and surrounded itself with the homes and help called for. There came a combination of those engaged in this industry. The works, comparatively new, were discontinued. Production sought a new center and the old community was left to suffer the loss of slow dispersion.

We are protected against theft and criminal violence, but we are not protected against the unprovoked losses which come to us from the speculative aims of the adventuresome capitalist, though these losses may greatly exceed those of robbery. The stability of labor and the returns of labor are often affected in the great centers of production by opportunities, fanciful or real, which offer themselves to a few of achieving large wealth; opportunities not so much of creating wealth as of raking it together. The mass of men do not so much as conceive that they have any ground of complaint of operations which sweep out from under them the supports of well-devised industry. Wealth which in its making and use tends to break up the ordinary methods of industry, to throw off the minds of men from the familiar reconciliations of industry and, above all, to weaken the sense of responsibility which lies between labor and capital, must, from time to time, issue in industrial disaster to the confusion and loss of labor. Do the best we may and we cannot anticipate every disturbance, but we are inexcusable for overlooking the disasters we bring upon others who are working with us. Much of what is called enterprise renders those engaged in it almost wholly negligent of the incidental injuries which fall to those about them. The equilibrium of labor is dependent on the equilibrium of productive enterprises, and when these accept no restraints the disturbance will reappear here and there in the productive world very much at random. Labor presses at one point and is relaxed at another, subject to the speculative schemes of capital. Extreme wealth in the hands of a few lacks the economic and social and moral motives which 396 make it a calculable and reliable means in the hands of many. When it is in the process of accumulation it is lawless; when it is accumulated it sinks into indolence.

While some gains are pretty sure to accompany the acquisition of great wealth, once acquired, it disturbs the even flow of economic forces, and may easily give rise to irregular occupation that brings serious disturbance to those whose daily wants are to be supplied by labor. It may be thought that these fluctuations in production arise from its very nature, and that if we leave men of very different degrees of intelligence to contend with each other for the prizes of industry, great inequalities of prosperity are sure to appear. We can escape them only by forcing back enterprise and making the moderate, medium men the standards of achievement. This presentation seems plausible, and will always be urged by those who are willing or eager to take large risks. Men of large productive power are easily stimulated, and their resources are kept, in reference to the community at large, in the most fruitful form when they are compelled to moderate their efforts, and are not left to the extreme and eccentric ways normal to them. The community is interested in habitual lines of industry more than in those which disturb the minds by sudden profits which cannot be emulated or repeated. Men will separate themselves from their fellows in the rivalries of production. Only thus is the power of intelligence fully disclosed, yet the ordinary arrangements of society, its privileges and opportunities, should be made as equal as possible; no unfair advantage should be given to one or another form of production; nor methods be allowed to the successful in achieving wealth which are not admissible in the community at large. The laws of the game should be wisely framed and firmly preserved. It is the able and ambitious who bring the most strain to safe restrictions, and for whom they are chiefly made. Equality of opportunity is the cardinal 397 principle, and cannot be sacrificed in favor of enterprise. The enterprise that is wholesome keeps within this law. It may also be thought that this rigid restraint would deprive the community of some of the most prevalent means of welfare as well as of some of the most illustrious agents in prosperity, and that those great and efficient combinations which we have come to designate as trusts would be lost to us; that as the result of this loss we should quickly settle down into a sluggish routine, mediocre ideas ruling the public mind, and so miss that very prosperity of which we are in search. Industrial corporations are most efficient agents in wealth-making. We cannot for a moment think of throwing any real obstacle in the way of their formation. But while we need their aid, we should also remember the evils which are liable to come with them. They are the creatures of law, and the law in giving birth to them should assign them the form and restrictions which are most consistent with the public welfare. They are not to be allowed to fall into speculative hands, an instrument of unrestrained power.