§ II. SOCIAL CONDITIONS FAVORING EFFICIENCY
Government to insure the reward to labor
1. The first social condition for the workers' efficiency is political security. For the same reason that this condition is favorable to the growth of capital, it is essential if men are to labor in the present and for the future. As the framers of the Constitution expressed it, the function of government is to insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, and insure the blessings of liberty to the citizen. Directness and certainty of reward are more essential than mere size of reward in insuring action and effort. There must be a close relation between work and the fruits of work. Political insecurity weakens this relation and makes the reward dependent on chance.
Common honesty as a condition to efficient labor
2. The prevalence of standards of honesty in private and public business is a condition to high efficiency. Corruption in government has the same effect as political insecurity; in fact, it is but another form of it. We are accustomed to the thought that in an Asiatic despotism a worker beginning a task is uncertain whether he will reap the reward, as public officials may at any moment seize upon the fruits of his labor. But in our own country similar evils are not entirely lacking. Assessments often are unfair, and justice sometimes is bought. Men in high executive positions are able to make or mar the fortunes of their followers. Sometimes a legislator from a country town goes to the state capital poor and returns rich. Such things becoming generally known tend to break down the motives to industry. They breed the notion that wealth is more dependent on chance or jobbery than on efficient service. Dishonesty in private business means the use of energy not to produce wealth, not to add to the sum for all to enjoy, but to get it from some one else. Public corruption and commercial dishonesty alike entail on the industrious not only the immediate loss, but the far greater cost of weakened character, relaxed energy, and decreased efficiency of labor.
Effect of caste on efficiency of lower and upper classes
3. Custom and social ideals that raise or depress hope and ambition, affect efficiency. The institution called caste, which fixes the place of the worker and makes it impossible to rise out of the social position in which he is born, and disgraceful to do any work reserved to other castes, is deadening to energy. It exists in some form throughout the world, and where it is not called by that name, the same caste spirit is at work. The European peasants in the Middle Ages lived under the shadow of it. Where slavery exists the master class at times feels its hardships. "It is not so hard to live," says the hungry Creole daughter in "The Grandissimes," "but it is hard to be ladies.... We are compelled not to make a living. Look at me: I can cook, but I must not cook; I am skilful with the needle, but I must not take in sewing; I could keep accounts; I could nurse the sick; but I must not." Nowhere in the world is there less caste than in America, but it is here. The negro's low measure of industrial virtues is partly the cause of the prejudice against him, but in turn doubtless inherited class feeling is in some measure the cause of his inefficiency. To close to a worker all but the menial occupations is to take from him the most powerful motives for effort. The thought is paralyzing. The race problem in America is in part one of caste sentiment, whatever can or cannot be done about it.
American democracy and the efficiency of labor
Democracy makes for the efficiency of American industry not less than do the great natural resources. If America is to surpass the world in all the great industrial lines, it will be largely because of her ideas and institutions. They lead to greater energy and to a faster working pace in all grades of labor than is found anywhere else in the world. There is danger that as the West is closed to settlement something of the spirit of enterprise will be lost. To Western eyes already the young men in the older East seem to be trammeled by social conventions. In an older community there is less of hopeful ambition; one's position depends more on what his fathers achieved; in the new community, more on what he does himself. If it is true, as wise students declare, that the frontier has been the nursery of our democratic ideas, we may well ask what effect the closing of the frontier will have on our national sentiment and on our material prosperity.
The balance of advantage between work and leisure