Working With the Working Woman

by Cornelia Stratton Parker

The first move—and by that we mean the thing to start doing to-day—is to begin converting the non-industrially conscious group into the industrially conscious group. Group 3 is peaceful—they call no attention to themselves by any unrest or demands or threats. But they are not efficient or productive, the reason being that they have not enough interest in their jobs, or in many cases are not physically or mentally competent. Theirs are sins of omission, not commission.

The process of this conversion means many things. It means first and foremost an understanding of human nature; a realization that the great shortcoming of industry has been that it held, as organized, too little opportunity for a normal outlet to the normal and more or less pressing interests and desires of human beings.

It worked in a vicious circle. The average job gave the worker little or no chance to show any initiative, to feel any sense of ownership or responsibility, to use such intellect and enthusiasm as he possessed. The attitude of the average employer built up no spirit of loyalty or co-operation between management and men. Hence these very human tendencies, compelling expression in a normal personality, became atrophied, as far as the job was concerned, and sought such functioning as a discouraging environment left them capable of in fields outside of industry—in many cases, within the labor movement itself. The less capacity the job called out, the more incapable the worker became. Tendencies inherent in human nature, whose expressions all these years could have been enriching the individual and industry, and therefore the nation as a whole, have been balked entirely, or shunted off to find expression often in antisocial outlets. In some cases the loss to industry was small, since the individual capacities at best were small. In other cases the loss was great indeed. In every case, encouragement of the use of capacities increases the possibilities of those capacities.

The first step in this process of conversion then is to reorganize the relationship between management and men so that as many outlets as possible within industry can be found for those human expressions whose functioning will enrich the individual and industry. Which means that little by little the workers must share in industrial responsibilities. The job itself, with every conceivable invention for calling out the creative impulse, can never, under the machine process, enlist sufficient enthusiasm for sustained interest and loyalty on the part of the worker. He must come to have a word in management, in determining the conditions under which he labors five and a half to seven days a week.

It is a nice point here. The parlor Bolshevik pictures all labor eager and anxious and capable of actually controlling industry. The fact of the matter is that most individuals from any and every walk of life prefer to sidestep responsibility. Yet everyone does better under some. Too much may have a more disastrous effect than not enough—to the individual as well as industry. Here again is where there must be caution in generalizing. Each employer has a problem of his own. Nor can the exact amount of responsibility necessary to call out maximum efficiency and enthusiasm ever be determined in advance.

I have talked to numerous employers whose experience has been the same. At first their employees showed no desire for any added responsibility whatever. Had there not been the conviction that they were on the right track, the whole scheme of sharing management with the workers would have been abandoned. Little by little, however, latent abilities were drawn out; as more responsibilities were intrusted to the workers, their capacities for carrying the responsibilities increased. In two cases that I know of personally, the employees actually control the management of their respective companies. In both these companies the employers announced that their businesses were making more money than under one-sided management.

On the whole, this development of the partnership idea in industry is a matter of the necessary intellectual conviction that the idea is sound—whether that conviction be arrived at via ethics or “solid business judgment”—to be followed by the technical expert who knows how to put the idea into practice. That he will know only after careful study of each individual plant as a situation peculiar unto itself. He is a physician, diagnosing a case of industrial anæmia. As in medicine, so industry has its quacks—experts who prescribe pink pills for pale industries, the administration of which may be attended with a brief show of energy and improvement, only to relapse into the old pallor. As between a half-baked “expert” and an “ignorant” employer whose heart is in the right place—take the employer. If he sincerely feels that long enough has he gone on the principle, “I'll run my business as I see fit and take suggestions from no one”; if it has suddenly come over him that, after all, the employee is in most ways but another like himself, and that all this time that employee might be laboring under the notion, often more unconscious than conscious, that he would “like to run his job as he saw fit and take suggestions from no one”; if, then, that employer calls his men together and says, “let's run the business as we all together see fit and take suggestions from one another”—then is that employer and that business on the road to industrial peace, efficiency, and production, expert or no expert. The road is uphill, the going often rough and discouraging, but more often than not the load of management becomes lighter, easing overburdened muscles; the load of labor in a sense heavier, yet along with the added weight, as they warm to the task there develops a sense that they are trusted, are necessary to the success of the march, that they now are men, doing man-sized work. Perhaps in only a minimum of cases will the load ever be divided “fifty-fifty.” Too soon would the workers tire of their added burden, too few could carry the added weight. The fact remains that with management carrying the whole load, the march is going very badly indeed on the whole. At times the procession scarcely seems to move. There can surely be no harm in the employing end shifting a bit of the burden. A bit cannot wreck either side. Managerial shoulders may feel more comfortable under the decreased weight and try another shift.

In recruiting Group 2 from Group 3, it is the employer, on the whole, who must take the initiative. Labor may show no desire to help shoulder the burden. Yet they must shoulder some of it to amount to anything themselves, if for no other reason. It may take actual pushing and shoving at first to get them on their way.

Recruiting from Group 1 is a different matter. There sometimes are workers who would grab most of the load at the start—or all of it. Their capacities are untried, the road and its twistings and turnings is unknown to them. Each side has been throwing stones at the other, tripping each other up. There is a hostile spirit to begin with, a spirit of distrust between management and men. Here then is a more difficult problem. It is more than a matter of shifting the load a bit; it is a matter of changing the spirit as well. That takes much patience, much tact. It is not a case of the employer making all the overtures. Each side is guilty of creating cause for suspicion and distrust. Each side has to experience a change of heart. It is one thing to convince a previously unthinking person; it is another to bring about a change of heart in one frankly antagonistic. Making industrially enthusiastic workers out of class and labor-conscious workers will indeed be a task requiring determination, tact, patience without end, and wisdom of many sorts—on both sides. Some one has to sell the idea of co-operation to labor as well as to the employer. And then know the job is only begun. But the biggest start is made when the atmosphere is cleared so that the partnership idea itself can take root. Some on both sides never will be converted.

What about the great body of workers unfit physically, mentally, nervously, to carry any additional load at all? Here is a field for the expert. Yet here is a field where society as a whole must play a part. Most of the physical, mental, nervous harm is done before ever the individual reaches industry. Indeed, at most, industry is but one influence out of many playing on the lives of the human beings who labor. Nor can it ever be studied as a sphere entirely apart. Much is aggravated by conditions over which industry itself has no direct control. Health centers, civic hygienic measures of all sorts, are of great importance. A widespread education in the need of healthy and spiritually constructive influences during the first ten years of life, if we are to have healthy, wholesome, and capable adults, must gain headway. Saner preparation for life as a whole must take the place of the lingering emphasis on the pedagogical orthodoxy still holding sway.