1. The Industrial, i.e. between the classes of persons associated together in industry:
(a) Capital and the Administrative Staff.
(b) Capital and the Manual Workers.
(c) The Administrative Staff and the Manual Workers.
(d) Manual Workers between themselves.
2. The Social—between industry and the community.
3. The National—between industry and the nation. These relationships are of paramount importance. The individual is no longer the unit—in things industrial, it is the group of those associated in production—in things social, it is the community—in things national, the whole people. Each small group is included in, and directly reacts on, a larger group. Labour, in its Official Policy for Reconstruction after the War, truly says: “We are members one of another. No man liveth to himself alone. If any, even the humblest, is made to suffer, the whole community and every one of us, whether or not we recognize the fact, is thereby injured.” How frequently Labour forgets its own irrefutable proposition! The problem then is so to organize the processes of industry and harmonize the human relationships involved in it, that to the utmost practicable extent productive efficiency will be secured, the human qualities of all those associated in industry recognized, their capacities fully developed and utilized, their aspirations satisfied, and their respective services co-ordinated to promote the benefit and happiness of all of them, the good of the community, and the welfare of the nation.
Capital and the Administrative Staff
Let us first examine the relationship between Capital and the Administrative Staff. In the Administrative Staff, I include every one from the managing director down to the gate-keeper. They are the brains and mechanism of the organization and management, the connecting link between Capital and Labour. The success of an employer’s business is dependent on their tact, judgment, and power of governing men, but Capital has not yet risen to that conception. It has not conceded to the Administrative Staff a status commensurate with their enormous private and public responsibilities, nor, except at the very top, adequate financial recognition. The art of managing men so as to get the best out of them and secure their cordial co-operation, is generally considered by Capital to be a customary by-product of technical ability. In truth, it is a special qualification requiring its own special training, exceptional attributes of mind and temperament, and particular fibres of character, of the possession of which technical ability is no criterion whatsoever. If industry is to progress, Capital must elevate its conception of the duties of the Administrative Staff and recognize that administration, even in its lowest branches, is work as skilled as that of an expert craftsman.