Bonus Systems.—By giving cash bonuses for special accomplishment, much the same results can be obtained in some departments as by contracting. A bonus per foot of heading gained above a minimum, or an excess of trucks trammed beyond a minimum, or prizes for the largest amount done during the week or month in special works or in different shifts,—all these have a useful application in creating efficiency. A high level of results once established is easily maintained.
Labor Unions.—There is another phase of the labor question which must be considered and that is the general relations of employer and employed. In these days of largely corporate proprietorship, the owners of mines are guided in their relations with labor by engineers occupying executive positions. On them falls the responsibility in such matters, and the engineer becomes thus a buffer between labor and capital. As corporations have grown, so likewise have the labor unions. In general, they are normal and proper antidotes for unlimited capitalistic organization.
Labor unions usually pass through two phases. First, the inertia of the unorganized labor is too often stirred only by demagogic means. After organization through these and other agencies, the lack of balance in the leaders often makes for injustice in demands, and for violence to obtain them and disregard of agreements entered upon. As time goes on, men become educated in regard to the rights of their employers, and to the reflection of these rights in ultimate benefit to labor itself. Then the men, as well as the intelligent employer, endeavor to safeguard both interests. When this stage arrives, violence disappears in favor of negotiation on economic principles, and the unions achieve their greatest real gains. Given a union with leaders who can control the members, and who are disposed to approach differences in a business spirit, there are few sounder positions for the employer, for agreements honorably carried out dismiss the constant harassments of possible strikes. Such unions exist in dozens of trades in this country, and they are entitled to greater recognition. The time when the employer could ride roughshod over his labor is disappearing with the doctrine of "laissez faire," on which it was founded. The sooner the fact is recognized, the better for the employer. The sooner some miners' unions develop from the first into the second stage, the more speedily will their organizations secure general respect and influence.[*]
[Footnote *: Some years of experience with compulsory arbitration in Australia and New Zealand are convincing that although the law there has many defects, still it is a step in the right direction, and the result has been of almost unmixed good to both sides. One of its minor, yet really great, benefits has been a considerable extinction of the parasite who lives by creating violence.]
The crying need of labor unions, and of some employers as well, is education on a fundamental of economics too long disregarded by all classes and especially by the academic economist. When the latter abandon the theory that wages are the result of supply and demand, and recognize that in these days of international flow of labor, commodities and capital, the real controlling factor in wages is efficiency, then such an educational campaign may become possible. Then will the employer and employee find a common ground on which each can benefit. There lives no engineer who has not seen insensate dispute as to wages where the real difficulty was inefficiency. No administrator begrudges a division with his men of the increased profit arising from increased efficiency. But every administrator begrudges the wage level demanded by labor unions whose policy is decreased efficiency in the false belief that they are providing for more labor.
CHAPTER XVII.
Administration (Continued).
| ACCOUNTS AND TECHNICAL DATA AND REPORTS; WORKING COSTS; DIVISION OF EXPENDITURE; INHERENT LIMITATIONS IN ACCURACY OF WORKING COSTS; WORKING COST SHEETS. GENERAL TECHNICAL DATA; LABOR, SUPPLIES, POWER, SURVEYS, SAMPLING, AND ASSAYING. |
First and foremost, mine accounts are for guidance in the distribution of expenditure and in the collection of revenue; secondly, they are to determine the financial progress of the enterprise, its profit or loss; and thirdly, they are to furnish statistical data to assist the management in its interminable battle to reduce expenses and increase revenue, and to enable the owner to determine the efficiency of his administrators. Bookkeeping per se is no part of this discussion. The fundamental purpose of that art is to cover the first two objects, and, as such, does not differ from its application to other commercial concerns.
In addition to these accounting matters there is a further type of administrative report of equal importance—that is the periodic statements as to the physical condition of the property, the results of exploration in the mine, and the condition of the equipment.