We have as yet no deep philosophy of industry. For better or for worse
work came into the world as a result of desire. Men did not desire
work, but they desired that which could be obtained only by work.
These desires multiplied and the modern industrial world is the
result. When material objects alone were desired, the motive of work
was relatively simple; but as we pass from the desire for goods to the
desire for wealth, and to the desire for wealth as a means of gaining
power and prestige, the industrial movement becomes more complex. We
go on and on, producing ever greater wealth and generating more and
more power, and we do this we say with no deep purpose and with no
philosophy of life. For the justification of it all, if it be under
our control at all, we can only say that through industry we realize
an abundant and enriched life.
The good and evil of work put upon us some of the most perplexing of
our problems. Industry, we say, is the way to the rich and the
abundant life. It makes life more complex. The relations of life are
multiplied by it. It represents and it achieves man's conquest over
nature. It puts force into his hands. It has its ideal side and its
romance. It gives scope to pure motives of creativeness.
But the
industrial life has also its dark side. It has created the city with
all its good and its evil. It has created great nations, but see what
the added populations consist of. It brings on the old age of nations.
It stands for struggle that is often fruitless and unproductive. It
engenders moods and arouses interests and powers that lead to wars
and revolutions. It fosters sordid interests, and has made almost
universal the necessity of an excess of toil in order barely to live.
The great majority of workers do not live in their work, because they
produce nothing that is in itself satisfying. The spirit remains
outside their daily life. Life is divided into a period of toil
without deep interest and motive, and play which may be only a
narcotic to kill the sense of monotony and fatigue.
Individuals have
specialized at the expense of a whole life. Men have been exploited
and used like material things. Bergson says that by industry man has
increased his physical capacities, but now it is likely that his soul
will become mechanized rather than that his soul will become great
like his new body. Industry, worst of all, has become an end in
itself, rather than a means to higher ends. To live, on the one hand,
to gain wealth on the other, men give all there is in them to toil.
We saw all this before the war, but one important result of the war
has been that we now see that this industrial life which has so
rapidly created new institutions, and which grips the world almost
like a physical law, is not in all its ways so fixed and inevitable as
we had perhaps thought. In regard to the industrial life, more than in
any other department of life, we see new and radical thought, and the
possibility of conscious effects, although it must be admitted that
some of the proposed changes may well cause apprehension.
We had hoped, even before the war, to see industry and art become
gradually more closely related, and to see industry become more
socialized. Its physical hardships were to some extent already being
ameliorated. We hoped to separate the great industrial interests from
politics, and to curb the powers industry has that make it a trouble
producer in the world. But now, after the war, we see possibilities of
more fundamental changes in the industrial order than these
improvements implied. Our thoughts now touch upon the whole theory of
the industrial life. We see that by a coördinated effort and common
understanding which it is no longer chimerical to hope for, the
conditions of the industrial life might be very different. In the
first place we are convinced that the world could produce vastly more
and could use its products with far greater economy than now. We see
that much greater return for less labor could be gained.
Even the
desires themselves upon which many of the evils of industrialism are
based have shown themselves to be controllable. It is no longer idle
to believe that the restraint and coöperation necessary to eliminate
most of the poverty from the world are possible to be attained. The
isolation of the individual worker, which has made his struggle so
hard, seems about to be relieved to some extent at least. We even hope
for permanently better relations between the capitalist and the
laborer, and to see some of the evils of competition, even the
industrial competition among nations, lessened.
Although the interest here is in the relations of industry to
education, rather than in the practical changes pending in the
industrial world, we must think of the two as related.
Changes that
take place in political and industrial conditions will be likely to be
temporary and ineffectual unless they are supported by changes in the
field of education. The reformer and the educator must work together.
Noyes says that the most fundamental change that has occurred during
the war has been the world-wide assertion of public control of
industry by the government. Perkins says that centralization is the
order of the day, and that the government now properly takes on many
functions that once belonged to the states, and that this process of
centralization naturally extends to international relations. Smith
speaks of the growing interdependence of government and industry which
will especially give security to investment in productive enterprises.
Hesse says that there must be national team work in all industries,
and that in a democracy everything that autocracy can accomplish must
be repeated, but upon a basis of voluntary coöperation.
In France it
has been proposed by Alfassa that there shall be established a
department of national economy, to bring about a closer coöperation
than there has been in the past among private interests, and to
centralize industry. Wehle thinks that in America, even before the
war, industrial concentration was leading to political concentration
and that the states were losing their relative political importance.
The grappling of states individually with large industrial problems is
now, he says, at an end. Dillon has expressed the view that England
ought to adopt industrial compulsion. Clementel, the French minister
of commerce, thinks France ought to substitute for liberty without
restraint in the industrial field, liberty organized and restricted.
There can be no doubt that the world is thoroughly awake to the need
of more effectual coöperation in industry, and it is natural that the
first thoughts should turn to government control as the simplest and
readiest method of securing it. When we examine these suggestions
about the coördination and centralization of industries it becomes
evident that most writers have been strongly influenced by Germany's
remarkable success, both in peace and war, under the system of
governmental control of industries. The manner in which the German
government turned all the country into one great industrial plant has
appealed to the imagination, and many writers see in centralization
under the control of government the means of curing most of the evils
of industrialism. There are many proposals, all the way from the plan
to introduce cabinet ministers with limited power to have oversight
over industry to the total abolishment of the capitalistic system and
all the rights of property. Many of course, while still believing in
concentration and coöperation, cling to the system of private and
individual ownership, and believe that the best results will be
obtained in the end without any radical change in the relations
between government and industry, and without resorting to any
socialistic reform.
Another phase of the problem of industry in which we may expect to see
great changes in the future concerns the status of labor and its
relation to capital. The rising of the laboring class is certainly the
greatest internal result of the war. Here again the question is
whether the changes will take place by coöperation or by compulsion--either on the part of government or of some organized
class. Will labor and capital continue to be antagonistic, or will
they find common interest; or will the only solution be again some
radical change involving change of government or abrogation entirely
of our present system of ownership? That the position of labor has
become stronger as a result of the war no one can doubt.
Perkins says
we are just entering upon a period of copartnership, when the
tool-user will be part tool-owner, and capital and labor will share
more equally in the profits. Increase in wages will not be the remedy,
but only profit sharing. Others think the same; they see that the
laborer's discontent is not all a protest against his hard physical
conditions. He wants more social equality, more equality of status in
the industrial world. He objects not so much to what the capitalist
has as to what he is.
There has no more illuminating document come out of the war than the
report on reconstruction made by a subcommittee of the British Labor
Party. This report calls for a universal minimum wage; complete state
insurance of the workers against unemployment; democratic control of
industries; thorough participation by the workers in such control on
the basis of common ownership of the means of production; equitable
sharing of the proceeds by all who engage in production; state
ownership of the nation's land; immediate nationalization of
railroads, mines, electric power, canals, harbors, roads and
telegraph; continued governmental control of shipping, woolen,
leather, clothing, boots and shoes, milling, baking, butchering, and
other industries; a system of taxation on incomes to pay off the
national debt, without affecting the living of those who labor.
Although such a document as this could hardly up to the present time
have been produced by American workmen, since here political doctrines
of socialism have never obtained a strong hold upon the laboring
classes, in England these radical demands are nothing surprising. They
have the support at many points of so keen a thinker as Russell.
Russell does not, it is true, believe that Marxian socialism is the
solution of the problem of capital and labor, but he does believe in
the state ownership of all land, that the state therefore should be
the primary recipient of all rents, that a trade or industry must be
recognized as a unity for the purposes of government, with some kind
of home rule such as syndicalism aims at securing.
Industrial
democracy, as planned in the coöperative movement, or some form of
syndicalism, appears to him to be the most promising line of advance.
That such demands and proposals as these are significant signs of the
times can hardly be doubted. That from now the status of the workman
will be changed and changed in directions more satisfactory to the
workman we may accept as one of the chief results of the war.
Politically the laborer is prepared to assert his independence. Both
his social and his industrial status are likely to be improved. He
will be better safeguarded against unemployment. Wages in the old form
and the old tradition that the worker has no contract with his
employer will, in all probability, be less generally acceptable. Work,
if these new conditions are realized, will mean more to the worker.
His own interests and the purposes of his work will be more
harmoniously related. The individual made more secure in his work,
protected more by law and participating more in the affairs of
business and government, will have a sense of playing a more dignified
part in the social economy. Conceal as we may the inferiority of the
laborer's position under the pretenses of democracy and liberty and
equality, this inferiority of position exists and the inequality that
prevails in democratic society is certainly one of the fertile sources
of evil in the world to-day. We have still to see to what extent the
workman, his lot ameliorated in many ways, and his position changed,
will himself become a new and different man, and thus make the world
itself a different place in which to live. All that is thus suggested
we have a right at least to hope for now. If it is also worked for
with intelligence and good will, why should it not come to pass?
The third idea which is beginning to make great changes in the whole
field of the industrial life and throughout all the practical life is
the _idea of economy_. This means that in many ways questions of the
values, the purposes, and the ways and means of what is done in the
world are being sharply examined. Labor has been uncritical of its
purposes, and lavish and wasteful of its energies, however watchful it
may have been of its rights. Production has been governed too much by
desire, too little by careful consideration of need.
Distribution has
been carelessly conducted, allowing large losses of time and material.
Consumption has been quite as careless as the rest, and has been
thoroughly selfish as well. The war has changed many of our ideas.
Thrift has become a word with a new meaning. We see what industry at
its worst might do in the world, and on the other hand what wise
control of all the motives and processes that enter into labor and all
the economic life might accomplish.
Some of these changes are coming from readjustment in the coördination
of industrial processes themselves. We hear much of standardization
and stabilization. An economic technique and the control of
fluctuating conditions might do much to increase the efficiency of
industry in every way. This idea of the application of scientific
procedure to life we see extending to the control of the energies of
the human factor. We have already spoken of guarantees that affect the
spirit and the morale of labor. We hear of the prevention of
unemployment, the removal of the bugbear of "losing the job." Most
advance of all is being made in the application of the principles of
mental and physical hygiene and of scientific management to the actual
details of movement and the whole process of expenditure of energy,
counting costs in terms of time and energy, in much the same way as
all the items of value that enter into production are estimated. Some
writers, for example Gilbreth, see in this movement a great advance.
It is a way of giving equal opportunity to all. Economy becomes a
factor in freedom, since it helps to eliminate the drudgery and
depression of toil.
Plainly, then, economy or thrift has a much wider meaning than mere
saving. It is many-sided, and the study of economy in the use of
essentials is but a part of it. The war has, of course, emphasized
this, and this idea of saving has served the purpose of awakening an
interest in the whole theory and purpose of work. There is a better
understanding of values, and of the difference between the essential
and the unessential, and we see that not all labor that commands pay
is useful labor. Many things that the public knew but little about
before are becoming better understood. Industry, finance, business,
taxes, transportation, have all to some extent become popular
subjects. The present high cost of living raises questions in the
theory of the economic aspect of life that have compelled the
attention of the public. The theory of money, interest, savings,
foreign investments, the place of gold in the world's economy is
carried a step further and is popularly more extended.
We hear all
sorts of proposals about the production, the distribution and the
consumption of goods, which are intended to make living easier and
less expensive. Increased production of staples and more direct route
from producer to consumer are urged upon all, and the economists have
many suggestions for increasing our prosperity: while financiers try
to direct to the best purpose our investments at home and abroad.
Fisher attacks the whole theory of costs at what he believes its root,
suggesting a plan of "stabilizing the dollar itself" by using the
index numbers of standard articles as units of value, and regulating
the weight of gold in the dollar according to the fluctuations of
these. All these plans, hasty and narrowly conceived as many of them
seem to be, are of interest and have value, for they indicate a
serious determination to solve the fundamental problems of the
practical life.
Any educational theory that could hope to deal adequately with the
needs and the impending changes in the industrial situation of to-day
must take into consideration the basic facts both of the individual
and the social life. Teaching of industry and all attempts to teach
vocation must be seen by all now to be but a small part of education
with reference to the industrial life. We must do much more
fundamental things than these. We must plan far ahead and seek to lay
a firm foundation for the idea of coöperation which appears to be the
leading thought of industrialism to-day. Every individual, we should
say, ought to be educated in the fundamentals of labor, so that he may
understand for himself what labor means. Finally the idea of thrift in
all its implications must be made a part of the educational program.
All this may seem too ideal and impracticable to think of in
connection with industrial education, but if we consider industry and
industrialism as the center of our whole civilization, as it appears
to be now, what less ideal educational foundation will be sufficient
as preparation for and control of the industrial life?
No teaching of
trades, we assert, will be enough. We shall need to apply, in
industrial education or in an educational plan that takes industry
into account, all the methods of teaching: those that employ industry
itself, but also art, erudition, and play.
It is first with industrialism as a world condition that education is
concerned. Industrialism has been, as all must recognize, too
individualistic. It has motives and moods and products, and it grows
in social conditions, that are full of danger for society.
Industrialism lacks a soul, as Bergson would say. Yet it is a movement
that sweeps on with almost irresistible force. Its most characteristic
product is not what it turns out in shops, but city life itself. Many
would agree with Russell in saying that all the great cities are
centers of deterioration in the life of their nations.
Education,
then, must undertake to control industrialism. This does not mean,
necessarily, that it must try to check it, but that the motives in
individual and social life that produce industrialism must in some way
be under the control of educational forces.
First of all it seems certain that no political arrangement, and no
change taking place entirely within the industrial system itself, and
no simple and direct educational procedure will give us control over
the forces of industrialism. It is mainly by preventing the city
spirit or mood from developing too fast and thus engulfing the
children of the nation that we can introduce a conscious factor strong
enough to hold industrial development within bounds.
This means, we
must earnestly demand, turning back the flow of life from country to
city by educating all children in the environment of the country. This
would have a double effect upon the industrialism of the day. _It
would break up the present inevitable inheritance by the city child of
all the ideals and moods of the city, and it would give opportunity
for training in the activities that are basic to all industry, which
alone, in our view, can give to industry a solid and normal
foundation._ By such effects, in such a general way, upon the children
of an industrial nation, we might reasonably hope to prevent the evil
effects upon our national life from the fatigue, the routine, and the
deadening of the spirit which even under improved conditions cannot be
overcome in an industrial life that is left to its monotonous grind
and its morbid excitements and exaggerations.
Another work that education must in the end do for the industrial life
is to infuse into it an ideal and a purpose. Industry is too
individualistic, we say. It works for a living, for power, from
necessity. It lacks through and through as yet the spirit of free and
intelligent coöperation for common and remote ends.
Coöperation in the
industrial world, we have seen reason to believe, is likely to be the
great word of the future. It is precisely the work of education to
make the future of industry an expression of free activity, to make it
democratic, and to such an extent, we might hope, that socialism,
whether as a governmental interference or as a class system, would not
be necessary--or possible. In trying to give industrialism an ideal,
we must presumably go back to elemental mental processes. We must, in
the beginning, present the world's work dramatically to the child. We
must give work interest, and it is certainly one of the chief purposes
of that nondescript subject we call geography thus to give the child a
deep appreciation of the world as a world of men and women engaged in
work. We must show industry as a world-wide purpose, not as something
essentially individual and competitive. We must show it as an
adventure on the part of man in which he goes forth to seek conquest
over the physical world; we must think of it as a means to an end, of
fulfilling purposes not all of which perhaps can as yet be foreseen,
but which certainly can be no mere satisfaction of the individual's
desires of the day. This is what we mean by putting a soul into
industry. Soul means purpose--purpose which includes more than the
desires of the individual, and in which the interests of the world as
a whole are involved. Industry that has thus a purpose, and that is
imbued with a spirit of freedom takes its place among the psychic
forces and becomes a part of the mechanism of mental evolution. It is
this idealism of industry, toward the production of which we must turn
every educational resource, that must offset its materialism. This is,
in part, the work of the æsthetic experiences, the dramatic
presentation of the day's work to the child; but art can of course
work only upon the soil of experience; the child must see the world
teeming with human activity, but he must observe it in a detached way,
rather than as a participant in its realism and its dull and its
unwholesome moods. Then we shall have a content upon which the
æsthetic motives can work. In this idealized industrial experience, we
try to make visible the real motives which in the future must dominate
the world's work.
All this may seem too general and too ideal, but if we do not begin
with broad plans, and if we do not take a far look ahead, we shall
fail now at a vital point of the social development of man. The result
at which we aim is _the socialisation of the motives of industry_. We
make work voluntary by bringing into it persu