154 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



The reason for this undue emphasis is not far to seek. As has been 

 suggested, the enormous strides which have been taken in the invention 

 and development of various forms of power and of labor-saving 

 machinery has in itself, no doubt, been a potent reason why the labor 

 factor should temporarily be neglected. Moreover, the universal con- 

 fusion among practical men of affairs between labor and capital un- 

 doubtedly helped to obscure the importance of the former. Even 

 to-day the manufacturer is prone to place his labor supply in the same 

 category as his supply of raw materials, and to think no more about it 

 than to be sure that there are men enough to run his machines and to 

 do the work demanded. To the consideration of the relative cost and 

 efficiency of two machines he will give hours; to the choice of men to 

 run the machine he will devote scarcely ten minutes. It is these and 

 similar facts that have lain at the bottom of the failure to appreciate 

 properly the importance of efficiency of labor as contrasted with the effi- 

 ciency of machines. Not that labor unions and the backers of progres- 

 sive labor legislation have been negligent, but their work lies in the 

 main within the scope of the last half or even quarter century, and 

 their labors are just beginning to bear full fruit. As one of our great 

 railroads says to its employees in a recent bulletin: 



There are so many things of the past, so many things of the present, to 

 persuade us to the opinion, if not indeed to the assumption, that man has been 

 so intent upon improving and developing and helping toward perfection the 

 things over which he was given dominion in Eden that he has left the matter 

 of his own intelligently directed evolution until the last. 



The result of all this has been that even up to the present, though 

 to the standardization of nearly everything in the mineral and vegetable 

 kingdoms and a goodly portion of the lower orders in the animal king- 

 dom men have worked with earnest and often enthusiastic cooperation, 

 when it came to standardizing men and developing efficiency in them, 

 there has existed a confusion and lack of cohesion equal to that of 

 Babel. Efficiency in machinery has been taken for granted by those 

 interested in production, efficiency in labor has been largely overlooked 

 until the modem efficiency engineer appeared upon the scene. 



But times are changing, and men generally are slowly coming to 

 realize the full significance of the term " labor efficiency." Part of this 

 has been due unquestionably to the influence of labor unions. The 

 increasing stress given by economists upon the distinction between 

 labor and capital, as economic concepts, has not been without its effects. 

 The natural and inevitable failure of mechanical invention to keep 

 abreast of the pace set at the outset of the industrial revolution has 

 also served to detract attention from the purely mechanical aspect as 

 soon as something else arose which demanded attention. To all this 

 we must add the exhaustion of the frontier and the other influences 



