Nor can there be much doubt that a great part of mechanical workmen, having a skilled trade into which it is possible to put interest and a progressive spirit, are animated by the sense of sharing in a great productive whole. Perhaps, like most of us, they need at times the spur of knowing that they must work, but this is not what is most present to their imaginations or elicits their best endeavors. The wage question, as the focus of controversy, is kept before our minds and leads us, I believe, to exaggerate the part which pecuniary calculations play in the mind of the handicraftsman. For the most part he resembles the teacher or doctor in that he wishes to think no more about money in connection with his work than he feels he has to. The mechanics I see about me—plumbers, masons, furnace-men and the like—are as full of the zest of life as any class; they like the struggle, the sense of hope and power and honest service.
How far the same is true of business men I shall not attempt to say; certainly more than theories of the “economic man” would lead us to expect; yet here, without doubt, we have the class in which a pecuniary individualism is most rife and in which there is most need to foster a higher spirit.
There is a trend throughout society to substitute higher motives for lower, and this is not only because the former are more agreeable, but because they are more effectual. It was formerly thought that school children would not learn to read, write, and spell without constant fear and frequent experience of the rod; but now good schools dispense entirely with this incentive, and find emulation and the pleasure of achievement more efficacious. In the church the fear of hell fire is being supplanted by appeals to love, loyalty, and service. Even those convicted of crime, it is believed, can be more easily managed and with better results to themselves by a discipline which appeals to their self-respect and gives them a chance to show that they are men like the rest of us. Fear is a poor motive, because it does not evoke those energies that are bound up with ambition, sympathy, social imagination, and hope.
It is gratifying to find that the organizers of industry are coming to ascribe more and more value to human sympathy and the golden rule. In an article by a manufacturer, published in a business magazine, I read that the aim in handling men is to bring about a “family feeling.” “The best way to hold them is to know them.... It is important not to drive. Fear of the boss never inspired any real team-work, and no good working force was ever built up without team-work. The men in positions of responsibility must make the men under them really want to work with and for them.”[[34]] Another manufacturer, a man of phenomenal success, says: “It is the easiest thing in the world to inspire this loyalty, but it is not to be done by any trick. It’s simply a matter of honest and sincere understanding of the workman’s interests, a recognition of his ambitions as a human being. If your men feel that is your attitude toward them they will do their best every hour of the day.”[[35]]
In so far, then, as our social order fails to cultivate the sense of willing service in a worthy whole it is failing in higher efficiency. In great part the actual working is as if we formed an army of intelligent and high-spirited men, and proceeded to drive them to their duty by the lash, as was formerly done, instead of appealing to patriotism and the emulation of regiments and companies, as in modern armies. It operates on a low plane of discipline and without the spiritual co-operation of the agent.
No doubt there are workers, under existing conditions, who take no pride in their work and will not work at all, perhaps, except when they are driven to it by the fear of want. But there is reason to think that these are chiefly those who have had a brutalizing and discouraging experience. A good military officer will recruit a company of just such men, and after a few months of discipline have them eager to excel in their duty and ready to face death. It is all a matter of how they are appealed to. And is it not the case, also, that there is a large class in industry who display more pride in their work and sense of duty and service regarding it, than could reasonably be expected, in view of the inconsiderate, mechanical, and selfish way in which they are commonly treated? If a man finds that he is hired when he is a source of gain and turned off when he is not; treated usually without personal appreciation and often with harshness, and set at monotonous work whose value to the world is not easy to feel; it would hardly be supposed that he would show much loyalty or spirit of service, and yet many do, under just such conditions. The truth is that human nature needs to believe in life, and even as we see that people cling to the goodness of God when he seems to send them nothing but misfortunes, so they often show more loyalty to the economic order than it appears to deserve.
It is almost certain that the grosser forms of economic want and terror, like corporal punishment in the schoolroom, paralyze rather than stimulate the energies of society. This liability to starvation and freezing, degradation and contempt for not having money in one’s pocket, with no inquiry why, this nightmare of evil to be averted not by service but by money, and only money, no matter how you get it—this is overdoing the pecuniary motive. It brutalizes the imagination and creates an unhuman dread that impels to sensuality and despair.
I do not deny that there will be shirkers under any system, but it seems plain that their numbers are rather increased than diminished by harshness and neglect, and will be reduced in proportion as we make the whole life, from infancy onward, one that develops self-respect, hope and ambition.
The argument for savagery—facilis descensus Averni—is much the same in all spheres of life. A parent beats a child, and, finding him still recalcitrant, thinks he needs more beating; a teacher whose suspicious methods and appeals to fear have alienated his scholars is all for more suspicion and intimidation; an employer who, having made no effort to gain the confidence of his men, finds that they are disloyal, is convinced that nothing but repression can solve the labor question; the people that are trying to control the negro by terrorism and lynching believe that more of these methods is the remedy for increasing negro crime; governments exasperate each other into war by ill will and hostile preparations, and then argue that, war being inevitable, ill will and hostile preparations are the only rational course to take. We shall never get out of these vicious circles until we take our stand on the higher possibilities of human nature, as shown by experience under right conditions, and proceed to develop these by faith and common sense.
One of the main forces in keeping economic motive on a low moral level has been the doctrine that selfishness is all we need or can hope to have in this phase of life. Economists have too commonly taught that if each man seeks his private interest the good of society will take care of itself, and the somewhat anarchic conditions of the time have discouraged a better theory. In this way we have been confirmed in a pernicious state of belief and practice, for which discontent, inefficiency, and revolt are the natural penalty. A social system based on this doctrine deserves to fail.