What's What in America

by Eugene V. Brewster

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.