Library Essays; Papers Related to the Work of Public Libraries

by Arthur E. Bostwick

SYSTEM IN THE LIBRARY[10]

It has been said by Mr. W.H. Mallock that what we call labor-organizations are mis-named, because their object is, in most cases, the organization not of labor, but of idleness. This somewhat cryptic statement may be understood to mean that trade unions have endeavored usually not to improve the methods and results of labor, nor to make its output larger and more satisfactory, but rather to improve the condition of the laboring man; to make his life more comfortable and his task easier, to shorten hours and lessen output, and often, as a result, to make that output of lower grade.

This will be regarded as a base slander by many people, and it is doubtless exaggerated; yet there is an amount of truth in it that cannot be overlooked by any worker or any combinations of workers—which is the same as saying that it interests almost all of us in this country; for the only Americans able to work who do not work are tramps and a very few millionaires. We shall try to consider its bearing on library workers, but before doing so, it will be well to look at it a little longer in its more general aspect.

Those who desire to improve the worker’s condition will justify themselves very properly on economic grounds by saying that to do this is also to improve the methods of work and the quality of the product. No one can do good work who is ill-housed, underfed, improperly clothed or overworked. This is true; but it is not also true that if we make it our primary aim to see that the worker is as comfortable as possible, to lift from him all the difficulties and burdens of his task, we shall also improve his output proportionally. Rather should we do away with that output altogether. We should simply be “organizing idleness.” We may consider, as an analogy, the difference between a tariff for revenue and one for protection. The total abolition of import duties is impossible, we are told. They are necessary for revenue. Even England, the world’s greatest free-trade country, has import duties. Very true, but the amount of the duty and the objects on which it is laid will differ absolutely according to its purpose. Again, we will suppose that the same company owns an elevated railway and a surface trolley line. They will naturally, if left to themselves, adjust fares, speed and stops on the former so as to induce a larger proportion of people to travel by the slower surface line, which is less expensive to operate. If the surface line were owned by a rival company, there would be an entirely different schedule of fares, speed and stops on the elevated road, intended to crowd it with passengers and to derive the largest possible revenue from it alone.

In like manner, we must doubtless look out for the worker; and he must doubtless look out for himself. His conditions of life and work must be made such that he will perform his task as well as possible. But those conditions will be adjusted quite differently if we regard the comfort of the worker as the prime object from what they will be if we regard the excellence of the output as the prime object and the worker’s comfort as a means to that end.

This will bear statement in still another way. We are put into this world to do our appointed tasks, and it is our business to do them as well as we possibly can. This means that we must take the proper amount of rest, eat good food, keep happy and contented, and all the rest of it. But he who regards his work simply as a means of furnishing him the wherewithal to be happy, to take expensive vacations, live in a fine house, and so on, will neither do his best work, nor will he enjoy the good things of life as he ought.

Our friends, the Socialists, whose propaganda is receiving more attention from thoughtful men to-day than it did a few years ago, both because of the truths that it presents and the menace that it offers to our present civilization, are making the mistake of dwelling upon the importance of the worker’s comfort rather than that of the worker’s improvement. They promise us that we shall all be in comfortable circumstances and will have to work only three hours a day. Incidentally, the output is to be better. But by putting the matter thus, instead of the other way about, they have appealed to the element of laziness that exists in all men—they have held out the prospect of idleness instead of labor.

I have not lived west of the Mississippi long enough to know whether the same conditions obtain here as in the East; but there, comparing things to-day with what I remember of my boyhood, I seem to see an increasing tendency among all workers to put self first and work second. The policy of “ca’ canny,” as they call it in Scotland—of “go easy”—doing as little as one can and still keep his job—is creeping in and has secured a firm foothold. It is increasingly difficult to get any kind of work, manual or mental, done really well—so well that one feels like saying, “Well done, thou faithful servant.” And yet the shirkers are all anxious to get to the top; and they wonder why they do not. They comfort themselves by saying that success nowadays is solely a matter of pull. But it is not so. Look around you and you will see, for the most part, men in charge of large enterprises who are efficient, and who have put work before self—men who are engrossed in what they are doing, who love it and therefore do it effectively.

There never was a baser slander than the common assertion that we Americans love money. If we loved the dollar for itself alone, we should never sling it about as we do. We love the excitement and the fun of making money. Look at our working millionaires! They want no more money; they can not use what they have. They enjoy the task of owning and running a great railway system, of organizing and managing some great industrial combination. We may find it necessary to clip their wings a little, but we can not call them lazy and inefficient—they make the job too hard for us. There is no “go easy” policy here, and those who favor it will never get to the top.

Let us hope that this pernicious idea that self is worth more than work will never find a foothold in the library. We see it here and there, but I believe that, taken by and large, library workers love their tasks and that they are efficient in proportion to that love.