CHAPTER VIII
THE LOVE OF THE GAME
AS A MEANS OF INCREASING HUMAN EFFICIENCY
THE motives discussed in previous chapters are fairly adequate for developing efficiency in all except the owner or chief executive. The employee may imitate and compete with his equals and his superiors; he may work for his wage, and he may be loyal to the house. To increase the industry and enthusiasm of the head is a task of supreme importance. Interest and enthusiasm must be kindled at the top that the spark may be passed down to the lower levels. It can never travel in the opposite direction.
How, then, is the president to light his fires and transmit his enthusiasm to his managers and other subordinates? Not by working for <p 186> <p 187> money alone, nor through imitation, competition, or loyalty to the works of his own hands. All these may be essential, may be powerful subordinate incentives to action, but singly or collectively they are not adequate. In any organization, the head who attains the maximum of success must depend for his enthusiasm upon an instinctive love of the game.
The subordinate possessing such love of the game and independent of others for his enthusiasm is sure to rise. The subject is, therefore, of vital importance both to the executive and to the ambitious employee. Every employer feels the need of such an attitude towards work, both in himself and in his men.
An attempt will be made in this chapter to comprehend this instinctive love of the game, to discuss to what extent it is inherited and to what extent subject to cultivation, and to analyze the conditions most favorable for its development in respect to one's own work as well as that of his employees.
The love of the game is in part instinctive, <p 188> and its nature is made clear by consideration of certain of the instincts of animals.
The young lion spends much time in pretended stalking of game and in harmless struggles with his mates. He takes great delight in the exercise of his cunning and in his strength of limb and jaw. Fortunately for the young lion this is the sort of activity best adapted to develop his strength of muscle and his cunning in capturing prey. However, it is not for the sake of the training that the young lion performs these particular acts. He does them simply because he loves to. In like manner the young greyhound chasing his mates and the young squirrel gathering and storing nuts have no thought beyond the instinctive pleasure they find in performing these functions. To each there is no other form of activity so satisfactory.
Man possesses more instincts than any of the lower animals. One pronounced instinct in all normal males is the hunting instinct. Grover Cleveland went fishing because he loved the sport, not because of the value of <p 189> the fish caught. Theodore Roosevelt did not hunt big game in Africa because he was in need of luscious steaks or tawny hides. He was not working solely in the interest of the Smithsonian Institute nor to secure material for his book. Doubtless these were subsidiary motives, but the chief reason why he killed the game was that he instinctively loves the sport. He endured the hardships of Africa for the same reason that fishermen spend days in the icy water of a trout stream and hunters lie still for hours suffering intense cold for a chance to shoot at a bear.