"We have counted it our good fortune," says Professor Fisher, "to dwell in a land where nature has been so prodigal that we have not needed to fear want. We are only beginning to realize that this very prodigality of nature has produced a spirit of prodigality in men.
"It is the purpose of the conservation movement to rebuke and correct this national trait, and the resources of science are now concentrated in this mighty effort in that direction.
"The conservation of human life will, I believe, constitute the grandest movement of the twentieth century.
"Not only do human beings constitute by far the greatest part of our natural resources, but the waste of human life and strength is by far the greatest of all wastes. In the report of President Roosevelt's conservation commission, although his commission was primarily appointed to conserve our natural rather than our vital resources, it was pointed out that human beings, considered as capitalized working power, are worth three to five times all our other capital, and that, even on a very moderate estimate, the total waste and unnecessary loss of our national vitality amounts to one and one half billions of dollars per year."[56]
When the "State Socialist" policy has taken possession of the world, which may be in the very near future, or, more correctly speaking, when the world's business and politics are so organized as to give this policy a chance for a full and free application, is it not evident that every advanced nation will consider it as being to its business interest to put an end to this vast, unnecessary loss of life? And if half a billion a year is lost through unnecessary deaths of very young children, is it not probable that an equal sum is lost through death later in childhood or early youth, another similar sum through underfeeding in later life, or through lack of sufficient exercise, rest, recreation, and outdoor life, and a far larger amount through lack of industrial training? Is it not certain that unnecessary industrial accidents, sickness due to overwork and early old age due to overstrain, are responsible for another enormous loss? And, finally, is not unemployment costing a billion a year to the "nation, considered as a business firm"? This last-named loss has been calculated, for the United States alone, as 1,300,000 years of labor time annually. If a round million of these years are saved—if we estimate their value in profits at the low figure of $1000 each,—we have another billion (even allowing for 300,000 unemployable).[57]
Is it not clear that nearly every element in the community will soon combine to do all that is humanly possible to put an end to such costly abuses and neglect; and that conscientious and wholesale efforts to preserve the public health and to secure industrial efficiency cannot be a matter of the distant future, when movements in that direction have already been initiated in Great Britain, Australia, Germany, and some other countries? Sir Joseph Ward, Premier of New Zealand, says that the people of that country have already calculated the value of each child—and, on this basis, made it the subject of certain governmental investments. He says:—
"To return to the annuity fund, apart from the assistance it gives to the wife and children if the father is sick, it also contributes the services of a medical man for a woman at childbirth, and the State pays $30 for that purpose. If all of this is not needed to pay the physician, the rest may be used for carrying on the home. This has all been done with the view to helping the birth rate and bringing into the world children under the most healthy conditions possible, so that they may have a free chance of attaining man's or woman's estate.
"We assess the value of an adult in our country as $1500. So, from a business standpoint and on national grounds, we regard the expenditure of a sum up to $30 as judicious, when the value of the infant to the country may be fifty times that sum. Thus the small wage earner's wife and children are provided for, and his fear about being able to provide for a large family is decreased." (Italics mine.)[58]
"I am of the opinion," declares Mr. Churchill, "that the State should increasingly assume the position of the reserve employer of labor," and that "the State must increasingly and earnestly concern itself with the care of the sick and aged, and, above all, of the children." He looks forward "to the universal establishment of the minimum standards of life and labor, and their progressive elevation as the increasing energies of production may permit."[59]
Mr. Churchill rejects the supposition that the government intends to stop with the extension of the eight-hour law to miners. "I welcome and support this measure, not only for its own sake," he said, "but more because it is, I believe, simply the precursor of the general movement which is in progress, all over the world, and in other industries besides this, towards reconciling the conditions of labor with the well-ascertained laws of science and health."[60]
It might be supposed that this measure would prove costly to employers, but this is only a short-sighted view. In the first place, working for less hours, the miners will produce somewhat more per hour, but an even more important ultimate benefit comes from the fact that the most experienced miners, those who are most profitable, being subject to less overstrain, will have a longer working life.
Another measure already enacted towards establishing "a national minimum" applies to the wages in ready-made tailoring and some less important industries, to which shirt-waist making is soon to be added. These are known as the "sweated" trades, "where the feebleness and ignorance of the workers and their isolation from each other render them an easy prey to the tyranny of bad masters and middlemen one step above them upon the lowest rungs of the ladder, and themselves held in the grip of the same relentless forces,"—where "you have a condition not of progress but of progressive degeneration." Mr. Churchill asked Parliament to regard these industries as "sick and diseased," and "to deal with them in exactly the same mood and temper as we should deal with sick people," and accordingly boards were established for the purpose of setting up a minimum wage.[61]
But if employers are forced to pay higher wages, it may be thought that they will lose from the law. This Mr. Churchill effectively denies.
"In most instances," he says, "the best employers in the trade are already paying wages equal or superior to the probable minimum which the Trade Board will establish. The inquiries I have set on foot in the various trades scheduled have brought to me most satisfactory assurances from nearly all the employers to whom my investigations have addressed themselves.... But most of all I have put my faith in the practical effect of a powerful band of employers, perhaps a majority, who, whether from high motives or self-interest, or from a combination of the two—they are not necessarily incompatible ideas—will form a vigilant and instructed police, knowing every turn and twist of the trade, and who will labor constantly to protect themselves from being undercut by the illegal competition of unscrupulous rivals."