10 TWENTY-FIRST REPORT. 



iudustrial conditions so as to offer as far as possible an outlet for the under- 

 lying impulses of mankind. 



Heretofore, economists and other social scientists have been prone to con- 

 sider men — workingmen at least — to be single-track individuals, — persons of 

 few and fairly simple guiding instincts and impulses. We have built up a 

 sort of straw man, and then proceeded with calmness to argue on the basis 

 of this artificial, air-castle-like development of our own making. Students of 

 American industrial problems have rarely stopped to study the actual, flesh- 

 and-blood man and his motives. We have paid little attention to the problem 

 of adapting industry and environment to men. We have naively accepted the 

 crude idea that the great mass of people must fit into the new industrial envir- 

 onment even though it be quite dissimilar to that of preceding ages, — the ages 

 in which the type of man was molded and cast. It was a maxim of Catherine 

 II of Russia that a ruler operates on human skin which is exceptionally tick- 

 lish. The same proposition holds in regard to direction and control in the 

 industrial field. It is a ticklish proposition in which the wants, prejudices, 

 preconceived notions, ambitions and instincts of human beings cannot be dis- 

 regarded with impunity. 



For example, is industrial inefficiency and restriction of output due to the 

 lack of potent incentives which touch the rank and file of industrial workers ? 

 Upon the correct answer to this -question depends the possibility of formulat- 

 ing worth-while plans for industrial improvement. The late Professor Parker 

 declared that laziness, in so far as it exists, is "an artificial habit, inculcated 

 by civilization." The slacker in industry is produced by "the job and the 

 industrial environment." Students of child life are practically agreed that 

 the normal healthy child is neither lazy or bad. The artificial environment 

 which adults ignorantly or selfishly provide, often makes him appear to be so. 

 Tb*> normal adult is only the youth overlaid with custom, precepts, inhibitions 

 and experiences. 



On the other hand, a recent writer who is a student of psychology quite 

 emphatically asserts that "peoples and individuals are by nature indolent." 

 And, certainly unless prodded by opposition, rivalry, changed environmental 

 conditions, imsatisfied wants or some other potent incentives, human beings 

 tend to settle down comfortably into ruts, amiably to let well enough alone, 

 and to be satisfied with much less than their best or near-best. The normal 

 individual may not be lazy in the sense of desiring merely to loaf ; but he does 

 not love the routine of present-day industry as a regular day-after-day, year- 

 in-and-year-out process from which the only tangible result from his point of 

 view is a meager living for himself and family accompanied by extreme weari- 

 ness of the flesh. Normal men may indeed possess an imperious instinct of 

 workmanship or contrivance; but the up-to-date factory, practicing minute 

 subdivision of labor is equipped with excellent means of inhibiting this instinct. 



