What's What in America

by Eugene V. Brewster

PART I.

THE A. B. C. OF POLITICAL ECONOMY.

(Simplified for the Uninitiated.)

The one great desire uppermost in the minds of men is to get the greatest good from the earth, the source of all wealth, with the least possible labor and effort. In the so-doing, both experience and reason teach that economy is the watchword. It is the life blood of civilization—the essence of industrial prosperity. The basis of all philosophy is "I want," and in the pursuit of happiness and contentment, economy must be the watchword.

WASTE.

The destruction of the smallest useful atom is an injury to every living person; and the more useful the atom, the greater the injury. A great fire, a flood, a devastating cyclone, is not only a calamity to those immediately affected, but it is a universal loss; for, the great human family is just so much poorer, the world's progress has been retarded, and our onward march toward the perfect civilization has been checked. Likewise, every stroke of labor that does not go toward making the world better or richer is wasted energy. The man who insists on making shoes, or raising wheat, or digging coal, when he is mentally, physically and by nature ill-adapted to that calling, is a drone and a burden upon society. He is wasting energy and impeding the general progress, because he is doing something which others could do better or quicker, and he is therefore the cause of misplacing two persons in unproductive and unnatural callings.

MACHINES.

The labor saving machine is the personification of economy. It, and all great inventions, are welcomed by civilization as great economizers of the world's work. It is wasted energy for man to do by hand that which a machine can do as well and in less time. The machine economizes production and therefore lightens and lessens the toil of the human family. Ten men in a shop or industry, each assigned to that branch of the business to which he is best adapted, form a combination for economy identical with a machine. If a linotype machine, operated by one man, can do the work of say five type-setters, the world is richer to the extent of about what four men could create in other vocations,—allowances being made for the labor required to make the machine itself.

DEPENDENCE.

A person can no longer make his own hat, coat, shoes and house, and raise his own vegetables, as Crusoe did. Ten thousand men are co-operating to give him his shoes alone. There are the men who kill the animal which provides the hide, the men who carry it to the jobber, the men who strip it, the men who cure and tan it, the men who pack it, load it on the trucks, put it on the cars, unload it, carry it to the leather merchant, and the innumerable clerks, bookkeepers, advertisers and stenographers who help sell it to the shoe manufacturer, the additional transportation, the endless variety of hands it passes through in the factory, and the countless hands that handle the finished shoe before it reaches the consumer; and then,—the telegraph's part in the manufacture or sale or transportation of that shoe, and the mails and the advertising, each employing thousands. Even the linen thread used in the shoe has a similar history; likewise the pegs, the needles, the machines, the cloth lining and the metal eyelets. And the shoe is a small part of a man's necessaries. What does all this show? The inter-dependence of men, one upon the other.

CO-OPERATION.

We have come to that stage of human progress when we could not return to the Crusoe method if we desired. We must depend upon our brothers in distant parts. A vast industrial machine has been created, of which each member of the human family forms a part. A must look to B for his shoes, B must look to C for his meat, C must look to D for his coal, and all must look to one another for every needed thing. Even the savages in distant lands are at work procuring ivory and other commodities for us while we are creating suitable articles for them, and thus the human family are co-operating together for the common good.

If this system of co-operation or trade is not interfered with by unnatural and artificial devices, every man will sooner or later find his level and bend his energies in that calling to which he is best fitted by nature, education, training, and environment. A natural law is at work. To interfere with it is to divert commerce from its natural channels and cause friction in the great industrial machine. The machine needs no oiling or mending; it simply requires direction. It develops, expands and lubricates as it runs. It is not revolution that wears out a machine; it is friction.

COMBINATION.

Two or more persons can enjoy the heat of one stove, or the light of one lamp, or the shelter of one roof, as well as one person, and without depriving anyone of an equal quantity thereof. A printer can produce 1,000 circulars with but little more cost than 50. A truck or car can carry tons with but little more expense than pounds. Two fish can be fried in one pan as well as one. A professor can teach a class of 500 as well as of five. Hence the advantages of combination and co-operation, and hence the uneconomy of individual isolation. How much wiser for Crusoe to take Friday in his household and divide their labors, each doing that which best suits him, using,—so to speak—only one stove, one lamp and one frying-pan.

Suppose at Christmas a man has 100 presents to distribute in various localities. A messenger for each of the 100 presents would mean an expense of say $50 and much wasted energy. A single messenger could so systemize the work, by mapping out the shortest routes, that he could accomplish the work in far less time, comparatively, than the 100 messengers, and his bill would be only about $5. Now, suppose the man should ascertain that each of his 199 neighbors in the block also had 100 presents to deliver. That would make 20,000 presents in all. If each man should employ a separate messenger it would cost about $1,000. One messenger would go to First street and leave a package (little knowing that another messenger was to deliver a package at perhaps the very next door), thence to—say Nineteenth street, thence to a distant section of the city, thence to still another district, and so on. Each of the 200 messengers would have the same long journey to make, wearing out his shoe leather, making the cars do useless work, and wearing and wasting his own energy. But suppose the 200 neighbors should combine and co-operate. They would soon find that about five messengers could deliver their 20,000 presents in about the same time that 200 could; and, at $5 each, or $25 in all, with a saving of $975 to themselves. Mapping out the city in five districts and assigning one messenger to each, they would probably find that many presents were to be delivered in adjoining houses, and some to different residents of the same house. Witness the many steps that have been saved, and the time, and the labor of 95 men who have thus been freed to work in some productive vocation.

Method and system are parents of economy. They allay waste, eliminate useless labor, and lighten and lessen the toil of the human family.

ANOTHER ILLUSTRATION.

Some morning at break of dawn witness the confusion in the simple industry of delivering milk. A wagon rattles up to your door and leaves a bottle of milk. It clatters down the street and leaves a bottle to a neighbor in the next block. Then it turns down the avenue and leaves a bottle several blocks away, and thence perhaps to a distant section. But watch, and you behold another wagon coming. It stops at the next house to yours and deposits a bottle on the window-sill, then dashes down the block and leaves a bottle at some distant house, then to a house perhaps several blocks away, and so on until it has covered, in spots, a large territory. Soon, a third wagon appears and leaves a bottle at the second house from yours, and then dashes away to distant parts to cover its route.

And so on until nearly 200 different wagons, or grocer clerks, have visited the 200 houses in your block to deliver 200 separate bottle of milk. In every block the same scene is being enacted. Remember that every employer has horses, wagons, harness, drivers, a store, books, a cashier, advertising, fuel, light, and a plant to maintain.

[1]Now compare the unsystemized milk delivery with the scientific, methodical system of delivering the mail. The letter-carrier leaves a letter or paper at your door, hurries on to the next house, then to the next and the next; then, he does likewise on the other side of the street until nearly every house in the block is visited; then he proceeds to the next block and continues his systematic, economical labors; and so on until he approaches the line where another carrier has been doing likewise in the adjoining district.

Suppose mail should be delivered in the unorganized, unmethodic manner that milk is delivered; it would require many times as many carriers to do it, and this additional work would be just as useless and wasteful to the world as if they were employed to dig holes in the earth only to fill them up again. If the milk business were to be organized similar to the letter-carrying business what an enormous amount of wasted energy and labor would be saved. What an immense amount of useful and wealth-creating work could those now useless extra milkmen perform in other callings.

THE FUTURE.

The question is asked: Will all of the milk dealers one day combine and form a Trust? And should they? My answer is, Yes. Competition will perhaps drive them to it; but if it does not, some day they will see the advantages and benefits of such a combination and they will wisely follow the example of the oil and steel magnates. If they never see it, then some of the larger and wiser milk dealers will, and they will perhaps enlist sufficient capital to control the market by buying up the milk supply at the farms, thus driving the smaller dealers out of the business or into the Trust.

What is true in the milk business is also true of nearly every other similar business, and that is the condition which this country has to face in the near future.

PARTNERSHIP.

A is engaged in the manufacture of shoes. B is a rival. They sell a certain shoe for $3. Each has a separate plant to maintain; a bookkeeper; a delivery wagon; and fuel, light, rent and advertising bills to pay. After a while A and B form a partnership under one roof, with only one delivery wagon, one bookkeeper, etc. With this great saving in expenses they find that they can produce as many shoes with the one enlarged plant as the two old plants produced and at much less cost. They can now pay a little higher wages, make a little more profit and still reduce the price of their shoes to, say, $2.90. C now comes to town and opens a rival establishment. He has difficulty in producing as good a shoe for $2.90 as does the firm of A & B, but he competes for a while until D comes to town and starts another shoe factory. Then C and D join their plants into one and the two firms go on competing, each spending large sums in advertising, etc. Finally they all get together and combine the several plants into one. They build an extension on A and B's building and move C and D's machinery therein. The new firm of A, B, C & D now have a large plant. Where formerly the individual manufacturers employed say six bookkeepers, they can now get along with but two. Where they once had ten delivery wagons they now require but two or three, because of the systemized routes mapped out. Instead of each manufacturer spending $10,000 a year for advertising, or $40,000 in all, the new firm now spends only say $15,000. The saving and economy is so great in nearly everything, that they can now pay still higher wages, make still greater profit and sell their shoes for perhaps $2.75—if they want to. Thus everybody is benefited by the enlarged partnership except those who have been thrown out of employment, and they shall presently be taken care of as we proceed.

Now, if four men by combining and forming a partnership can reduce the price of shoes from $3.00 to $2.75 and pay higher wages and make more profit than if they were operating separate plants, how great must be the advantages of 100 or 1,000 men and plants combining into a partnership. This would be a Trust. If two men can use the light of one lamp or the heat of one radiator without one depriving the other of any light and heat, so can 100 men do likewise, provided there is enough light and heat to go around, and on this simple principle is the great Trust founded. It economizes; it eliminates useless energy; it allays waste; it saves. Our letters are delivered by the Trust system; our milk is delivered by the old system of individual enterprise and is inconsistent with modern civilization.

ORGANIZATION.

If the industries were not organized, if Trusts and Combinations were unknown, if there were no corporations and no partnerships and everything was carried on by individual units, what would be our industrial condition? What an enormous amount of waste would there be and what a colossal volume of extra work would the human family have to perform to produce what we now have!

Organization is the key-note of the century. "Individual Enterprise" is a relic of past ages. A partnership of two or more is organization on a small scale. A corporation is practically a combination of two or more partnerships, or an enlarged legalized partnership. A Trust then is simply an organization of several smaller organizations. The greater and more perfect the organization, the greater the economy. The greater the economy the lower will be the cost of production, and the smaller will be the amount of work to be performed and, likewise, the cheaper will be the article—if! (See later).

ADVERTISING.

Most advertising is wasted energy. One of its purposes is to take trade from another and bring it to itself,—a snare set by A to attract B's customers. It creates nothing, and is only useful as a means of communication or notification, and it imposes an unnecessarily heavy burden upon the human family. While it does give employment, it is not much more useful employment than the hiring of men to shovel dirt into the river and then hiring them to shovel it out again. If employment is all we seek, why not tear down the public buildings and then hire men to build them up again? (The question of employment for labor will be dealt with elsewhere.)

This illustration is not intended to discourage advertising, for advertising has its uses, and under present conditions is almost synonymous with success. But suppose, for example, there were 100 telephone companies in New York instead of one. The competition would be bitter. Prices would come down to the lowest competitive margin. But, as prices and profits came down, so would wages. The rivalry would encourage dishonesty, hatred and envy, and result in various impositions, such as compelling every subscriber to have several 'phones.

Each company would have the expense of maintaining a separate plant, with its small army of employees, and wires strung over the city like a mosquito netting, and each would be spending large sums in advertising which would finally be paid by the consumers.

Now, contrast this unorganized confusion with the present single system with its one small advertising bill to pay, one system of wires, one set of canvassers and other employees, one engine room, one president, etc. Has not the burden of the world's work been lightened and lessened by this combination and organization?

THE WORLD'S WORK.

Given a population of 80,000,000 of which say 20,000,000 are working people, and given a certain amount of work required to provide the 80,000,000 people with food, clothes, shelter and the numerous minor conveniences,—how many hours a day must these 20,000,000 working-people labor to produce what we now produce, under the old unorganized system of individual enterprise? If there were 100 telephone companies in New York instead of one, here at once we require about ten times as many men in this single industry as are now required, and these hundreds of thousands of men required to operate the 100 telephone companies must be taken away from other industries. And so on, throughout all the trades, professions, factories and industries.

If the average day's work is now ten hours, and all those who want to work are now employed, and only one-half of the industries are now organized into Trusts, what would be the result if all the other industries were organized into Trusts? First, there would not be so much work to do, owing to the great saving and economy of combination as before explained; and second, several hundred thousand workers who are now employed would be thrown out of employment. Here we arrive at an apparent obstacle. One of two things must be done; either the great unemployed must leave the country, or be supported in idleness, or die of starvation, or, the hours of work must be reduced! If 20,000,000 can do the required work, working ten hours a day, with half the industries unorganized, and if organization (Trusts) would throw say 5,000,000 out of employment, then we must reduce the hours of daily work so as to give the 5,000,000 employment!

If the hours were reduced to say six, the remaining 15,000,000 could not do all the work in that time, and the 5,000,000 unemployed must be called in to help. A demand for the labor of the 5,000,000 would at once be created. Everybody would then be employed. Every industry would be organized. Useless work and wasted energy would be eliminated. Everybody would have shorter hours of work. The uneducated would have more time to study and develop. The arts would then be generously patronized. Paupers would disappear. Wealth would multiply. Ignorance and drunkenness would have received their death-blow, because their father—Poverty—would have been destroyed. But hold,—other difficulties present themselves: Who would compel the organized industries (Trusts) to reduce the hours of work? What would prevent them charging exorbitant prices? Who or what would prevent the captains of industry filling their own pockets and keeping the great profits to themselves? Who or what would prevent the rich from growing richer, and the poor poorer?

SYNOPSIS.

The informed reader might well have passed over the preceding pages, for they are purely rudimentary; but if he has been kind and patient enough to follow me thus far, so much the better, for he has refreshed his memory and will be more ready to grasp that which is to follow.

Before proceeding let me recite in synopsis these important truths which I have already illustrated:

1. Economy.—We desire to get the greatest good from mother earthwith the least possible labor.
2. Waste.—The destruction of every useful atom.	}
Every useless stroke of work.	} Is a loss to all the world
For 100 men to do what 10 men could do.	}
3. Employment.—We should not aim simply to give men employment. Wemust aim to make them useful—not merely laborious. To dig holesand then fill them up is employment, but it is not useful. So isall that work useless and wasteful which fewer men could do betteror quicker under the Trust or Combination system.