Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 82.djvu/165

Rh must be expected from men who are driven instead of led will wreak its own evil consequences, but in the meantime something else must be substituted. The details must needs vary with the individual shop and trade. It is necessary, however, that in some manner the employees in their collective capacity be recognized. From this point of view the plans of the Pennsylvania Railroad, the United States Steel Corporation and the National Biscuit Company, who offer a limited stock to their employees at reasonable prices, are weak. Few men can buy a sufficient quantity of stock to insure an effective interest, or if so, they can not hope to exercise the faintest semblance of influence upon the policy of the concern. The plan of the William Filene Sons' of Boston is far better. According to it the employees have a permanent shop committee, with certain privileges of recommendation regarding shop condition, methods of manufacture, and so forth, to a similar committee representing the employers. A combination of these two plans would undoubtedly be still more satisfactory wherever practical. Nothing is better established than that arbitrary, dictatorial methods on the part of the employer are fatal to the real interest and cooperation that an efficiency system demands. Such an attitude can result in nothing else than suspicion and antagonism. Whatever plan be adopted, therefore, it is essential that a channel be provided through which the workmen can express themselves.

It will be seen, therefore, from what has been said up to this time, that the question of efficiency is a far more complex one than appears at first sight. Perhaps, indeed, the efficiency expert is himself not entirely blameless in the matter, in that he has seemingly placed undue emphasis upon some system of wage payment and not enough upon the deeper significance of such a reform. For after all the introduction of some new plan for paying wages is but a superficial thing, if considered by itself. True, output may be tremendously increased by artificially stimulating the workmen through some form of piece-work; "speeding" increases output, despite the fact that it also kills men. The permanent, vital results of efficiency schemes appear after a man's wages have been increased as a result of added output. It is the things a man buys with his increased income and the improvement in his environment which it makes possible that constitutes the real basis of efficiency. Additional wages are of no value unless they bring to the earner better food and clothes, better housing conditions, relief from the monotonoymonotony [sic] of factory toil, reasonably safe and sanitary places in which to work—in short, unless they mean a higher standard of living.

There is probably no efficiency expert worthy of the name who does not realize all this or who does not appreciate its full significance. It