Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 27.djvu/604

584 are supplied with food, clothing, and other necessaries, and with luxuries, through excellently organized co-operative stores, and a savings bank and building association are also in operation under guarantee of the firm. The work-people are reported to be remarkably cleanly and well dressed, and to show in a high degree the effects of comfort and civilization, which, considering that, as compared with the English and American standards, their incomes are very small, is gratifying evidence of the beneficial effects of such a system (vide vol. i, "Second Report of the Royal Commissioners on Technical Education").

Another exemplification of the practical wisdom of what would by some be classed as Utopian ideas can to-day be found nearer home in the town of Pullman, near Chicago, where proper provision for the comfort and welfare of the attachés of the great works there located has secured for this manufacturing company the most skillful workmen in their respective departments probably to be found in the country; that without any marked increase of current wages has made a most satisfactory return for invested capital, and built up a town surrounded with influences that refine and elevate the minds and character, and permanently benefit alike the company and its workmen. Abundant evidence is furnished by manufacturing and other corporations abroad that paternal care and solicitude for their operatives are not thrown away, but tend in no small degree to establish good feeling and community of interest, and that, instead of conflicting with the cold calculations of business economy, such care is in reality the prompting of self-interest best understood. While railroads nor other corporations employing large masses of labor can withhold their employés altogether from improvidence and recklessness, from the consequences of which the employer must generally suffer, they can, by means kindred to those above suggested, compel their people to provide for their future welfare, and in other ways elevate their standard of efficiency; and neither the lukewarmness nor opposition of the servant releases the employer from an obvious duty to himself, his ward, and the public. Railroad corps especially are, like armies, amenable to rigid discipline judiciously applied, and where the necessity for self-protection is so obvious the justice of the employer inaugurating and enforcing measures promotive of their mutual interests will always be early recognized, and opposition will be sporadic and short-lived. Arguments and statements illustrative of the great necessity for the employer securing a closer affiliation, if not co-partnership, between his interests and those of his employés through other and additional means than are now operating among our American railways, manufactories, etc., might be multiplied ad nauseam but, on the assumption that the foregoing, if not within itself convincing, will at least suggest what will be conclusive upon this point, let us consider the manner in which substantial gain may be effected at least cost and with less risk to capital, premising the discussion with a