262 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



lectual keenness, (3) disease-resisting power, (4) length of life. No 

 employer who desires to maintain the efficiency of his working force, 

 and what employer does not desire to do so, can afford to tolerate for a 

 moment any one of these four conditions. 



He can not afford to work with a labor force which is devitalized 

 physically. Even though modern industry does not demand of the 

 majority of operatives great physical strength, it does demand a good 

 physique, since neither work requiring strength, dexterity nor brain 

 power can be carried forward efficiently and enduringly in the absence 

 of physical stamina. " A sound mind in a sound body " is a good old 

 saying, which holds true in a vast majority of cases. 



Intellectual keenness and foresight in the wage worker is one of the 

 essential factors in the success of the employer. Workers must be 

 interested in their work ; they must work for the firm ; they must apply 

 themselves seriously to the tasks in hand. All of these and many other 

 commonly named requirements are impossible to attain in the face of 

 mal-nutrition, bad housing and insanitation. 



Sickness is one of the greatest foes of the manager. Hands are 

 " off." They have headaches, colds, and like ailments in endless pro- 

 fusion. Irving Fisher estimates that in the United States 3,000,000 

 persons are at all times seriously ill ; while the " well man " loses four 

 or five days every year from minor ailments, such as colds, headaches 

 and the like.^^ Much of the illness is preventable and would be impos- 

 sible if men and women .were not devitalized by low standards of living. 



Employers have perhaps their greatest difficulties in replacing men 

 who drop out of the work because of sickness or death, yet the average 

 length of life in the United States is only half what it might well be. 

 Men born in American cities of native white parents live on the aver- 

 age only 31 years. ^^ The length of life in America is astoundingly 

 short, and short because men and women have not the wherewithal to 

 maintain efficiency — a fact which is fully established by the enormously 

 higher death rates among the working classes. When a man or woman 

 drops out of your factory, and you struggle for years to fill his or her 

 place, you are often striving to cure what you might more easily 

 prevent — early death due to low living standards. 



Efficiency is an essential item in the success of any business — not the 

 efficiency of any one man, but of the entire working group. Although 

 efficiency is so intimately connected with success, on the one hand, it is 

 no less closely related to standards of living, on the other. The effi- 

 ciency which leads to success can, therefore, be secured only by main- 

 taining living efficiency through the payment of efficiency wages. 



'' ' ' Modern Social Conditions, " W. B. Bailey, New York, The Century Co., 

 1906', p. 227. 



