Of all the nations of the world, Americans are supposed to be the hardest working. We have attributed our industrial success to the fact that there is a bustle and snap to our work which are not equaled in any other country. But recent students of the industrial world are now telling us that even in the case of day and piece labor this characteristic is frequently a weakness rather than an advantage. They say that the American product ``suffers from hurry, want of finish, and want of solidity.''— ``Industrial Efficiency,'' Arthur Shadwell, Vol. 1, p. 26.
In the great middle class of American society, there is a lack of repose and an absence of relaxation which astonishes foreign observers.
They tell us that we are wild-eyed and too intense. Dr. Clauston of Scotland is quoted as saying:—
``You Americans wear too much expression in your faces. You are living like an army <p 207> with all its reserves engaged in action. The duller countenance of the British population betokens a better scheme of life. They suggest stores of reserved nervous force to fall back upon, if any occasion should arise that requires it. The inexcitability, this presence at all times of power not used, I regard as the great safeguard of our British people. The other thing in you gives me a sense of insecurity, and you ought somehow to tone yourselves down. You do really carry too much expression, you take too intensely the trivial moments of life.''
The late Professor William James of Harvard makes the following pertinent remark concerning the overtension of Americans:—
``Your intense, convulsive worker breaks down and has bad moods so often that you never know where he may be when you most need his help,—he may be having one of his `bad days.' We say that so many of our fellow-countrymen collapse, and have to be sent abroad to rest their nerves, because they work so hard. I suspect that this is an im- <p 208> mense mistake. I suspect that neither the nature nor the amount of our work is accountable for the frequency and severity of our breakdowns, but that their cause lies rather in those absurd feelings of hurry and having no time, in that breathlessness and tension, that anxiety of feature and that solicitude of results, that lack of inner harmony and ease, in short, by which with us the work is apt to be accompanied, and from which a European who should do the same work would nine times out of ten be free. . . . It is your relaxed and easy worker, who is in no hurry, and quite thoughtless most of the while of consequences, who is your efficient worker; and tension and anxiety, and present and future, all mixed up together in one mind at once, are the surest drags upon steady progress and hindrances to our success.''—``Talks to Teachers,'' pp. 214- 218.
Mr. Joseph Lyons, who is recognized as one of the particularly active and efficient men of England, has taken great interest in the way things are done in America. And after ob- <p 209> serving us at work here he expressed himself as dissatisfied with the tension under which we work. His words areas follows:—
``I do not believe in what Americans call hustling. The American hustler in my opinion does not represent the highest type of human efficiency. He wastes a lot of nervous power and energy instead of accomplishing the greatest possible amount of work for the force expended. Judging the American hustler from my observation of him in his own country, I should say that the American hustler shows a lack of adaptation of means to ends because he puts more mental, physical, and nervous energy into his work at all times than it demands. Regarded as a machine he is not an economical one. He breaks down too often and has to be laid off for repairs too often. He tries to do everything too fast.''
When Mr. Lyons was asked to explain how he had been able to accomplish so much without hustling, he replied: ``By organizing myself to run smoothly as well as my business; by schooling myself to keep cool, and to do <p 210> what I have to do without expending more nervous energy on the task than is necessary; by avoiding all needless friction. In consequence, when I finish my day's work, I feel nearly as fresh as when I started.''— Quoted from New York Herald, Aug. 30, 1910.