Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/794

 78o THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

they work. "Efficiency" has doubtlesss been used to cover both these mean- ings, but the confusion is not peculiar to adherents of the productivity theory, and it will certainly not be found in the writings of the distinguished protagonist of that theory.

Professor Williams maintains that under our system of privately owned capital, the laborer almost never reaches his highest efficiency — using that term apparently in the internal sense above suggested — because the capitalist cannot be sure of realizing on an investment of capital put into educating a free labor as he can on that spent on a slave or a machine. In other words, an insufficient proportion of the social income is invested in the training of ordinary workers to raise them to their highest potential eflSciency. This is undoubtedly true. To bring in an endless stream of for- eign cheap laborers, and to invest surplus income, not in their education, but in machinery and natural resources, would appear to be the most rapid way of increasing the income of the capitalist, whatever be its eflFect on social income and well-being. The practical conclusion, laying aside all questions of more fundamental changes in distribution, is that a democratic society must in self-defense take more and more of the social income in taxes for the support of free public education, and that it must set such minimum educational standards and must develop such a system of public-school training as will give to each child a reasonable chance of attaining his maximum possible efficiency, both economic and civic.