Address, “The Duty of the Employer”
Dr. Rumely—Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: Four generations ago, there were but three millions of Americans scattered along the Atlantic Seaboard. Back of them was a vast virgin continent, the richest the white man had ever found in the long migration upon which our race started ages ago. The American continent was rich in timber, in the soil fertility of its vast valleys and prairies, and rich beyond measure in the superabundant deposits of mineral wealth. The first settlers were few in number; they brought with them but few tools and little wealth that today we would call capital. It was the natural and proper thing for them to set to work to gain, with the least possible labor, the great natural wealth that the virgin continent treasured for them.
They killed the fur-bearing animals, felled the trees to export lumber, dug in the quickest way the mineral wealth of the land and started to grow such crops as would carry to market the greatest value from the fertility of the virgin prairies. Wheat was easily transported, and each bushel contained from twenty to thirty cents of soil value. Hence with wheat our prairies were taken under cultivation, and from the returns of the wheat crops cities and railroads and homes were paid for.
Only today, when the average yield per acre has gone down from forty to thirteen bushels are we beginning to see clearly that by this process we have been drawing heavily upon our soil capital.
While the population was small, labor was difficult to secure. Cities had to be built, roadways opened, railroads constructed, rivers bridged, and a continent brought under subjection. The process of the past four generations was possible only because our fathers economized their own labor and created, as fast as possible, the values they needed to barter off into the markets of the world for capital from the superabundant natural wealth that surrounded them.
Today, we are mining our iron, copper, lead and other metals more rapidly than any other country in the world. The pioneer farmers who worked the soils of the south with tobacco and of the east with wheat, can no longer move off to the west, when, having exhausted the fertility of our lands, they find farming no longer profitable. The hundred thousand vigorous Americans who went last year to Canada with energy, capital and American tools are a concrete evidence that we have reached the end of the course which we have been traveling.
The whole country has been startled by the warning of the far-sighted men, and now the demand for conservation of our natural wealth is becoming more and more insistent. We have been made to realize that every child born brings a mouth that must be fed, a body that must be sheltered and clothed, but no increase in natural wealth. We must still learn that every child does bring two hands which can work, and which, when highly trained and backed by scientific knowledge, can create untold values. Stated otherwise, we must care for our increasing population, not by increased exploitation of our natural stores, but by providing abundant work for skilled labor.
AMERICAN FARM MUST BE FACTORY—NOT A MINE.
Our agriculture has been a process of mining. The farm must now furnish a field for the profitable employment of skilled labor, for the use of capital, and the application of the principles of scientific management, becoming thereby a workshop instead of a mine.
In order to sell the labor power of our people, we must encourage the development of all secondary industries. By “secondary industries” I mean those industries which take raw materials that are largely the product of crude machinery and unskilled labor, and add to them in a large measure labor and capital values.
The agricultural implement manufacturer purchases steel and iron at approximately one cent per pound, and by further refinement creates implements worth eight cents to twenty cents per pound. The automobile maker takes lumber and iron, worth from two cents to four cents per pound, and produces a car worth from thirty cents to one dollar per pound, while the same materials, worked up into cash registers, typewriters, etc., would be worth from $3 to $10 per pound, and in watches from $50 to $5,000 per pound.
CREATE VALUES FROM LABOR.
We began by cutting the maple tree into a cord of wood, worth from three to seven dollars, and each tree furnished material for one day’s work. This same tree—if sawed into lumber—is worth twenty dollars and would furnish employment for one man for three or four days. If quarter-sawed and more carefully treated, it might be worth forty dollars and would furnish employment for more skilled and better paid workers and for a period of from ten to twelve days. And this same lumber, in a furniture factory would produce furniture worth from $100 to $500 and would furnish employment directly and indirectly equal to from six months to one year’s work for one man.
The whole range of values in this series, from the seven dollars’ worth of cord wood or $500 worth of manufactured goods, depends upon the degree of refinement extended to identically the same raw material through the quality and quantity of labor employed upon it, the capital expended and the application of greater scientific knowledge to the processes of production.
The secondary industries that we must now begin to encourage are characterized by a wide variety of work. They have different standards, are not easily susceptible to organization on a large scale, and hence politically have never acted as a concerted and effective force. The National Association of Manufacturers has been held together largely by an exaggerated emphasis upon the struggle against trades unionism. This ideal of strife with labor is no longer sufficient, and many believe that much more can be gained by co-operating with labor to build up the productive power of our people.
SECONDARY INDUSTRIES AND CONSERVATION.
Today, the interests of the secondary manufacturer coincide closely with the demands of the conservation movement, and with the best interest of the Nation. The secondary manufacturer needs a permanent supply of raw materials. It is to his interest to see that coal, lumber, iron, electric power generated from our waterfalls, and every other raw material of manufacture be permanently available at reasonable prices. Where undue monopoly of the power of such raw materials exists, the secondary manufacturer will be acting in accordance with his own enlightened interests if he helps to restrict and regulate by political action. Reckless exploitation, leading to exhaustion of any natural store, threatens the very existence of his business.
In order to produce in large quantities, the secondary manufacturer must sell into broad markets; must use freely and extensively the transportation systems of the country. He realizes that the development of railroading in the United States (which surpasses that of any other country in the world, and has knit together a population of a hundred millions with great buying and consuming power into one homogeneous market) is one of our great national assets. On the basis of this broad market, quantity manufacture can be developed as nowhere else in the world.
President White—Before introducing the next speaker, I will read a letter from Dr. Charles A. Doremus, of New York, whom we expected to be here.