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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. LIII. No. 1380 



and dispersed. Shares of ownership are 

 bought and sold daily by hundreds of thou- 

 sands. Certificates of ownership are often re- 

 garded by their holders more as sources of 

 income than as symbols of responsibility. 



As a working plan the rights and duties 

 of ownership are delegated to boards of di- 

 rectors, and the active management of our in- 

 dustries rests in the hands of employees. Thus 

 the older distinction of employer, meaning 

 owner, and employee, meaning workman, has 

 largely ceased in our largest industrial cor- 

 porations. All are essentially employees but of 

 two distinct classes, brain workers and hand 

 workers. The brain workers build up, main- 

 tain, and manage the business, and direct the 

 hand workers, as brain directs hands in the 

 individual, with this important and sometimes 

 vaguely realized difference, that the hands in 

 this case are not instruments only but inde- 

 pendent thinking, feeling personalities. 



The older or traditional attitude toward 

 labor unrest was that the questions involved 

 were purely economic questions. More 

 thoughtful and more widely informed people, 

 and there are many of them, feel that the prob- 

 lem is not so simple, but involves many addi- 

 tional elements, chiefly those which enter into 

 all human relationships. 



Purely for the sake of illustration, let us 

 take the case of a not uncommon type of 

 workman who becomes dissatisfied with his 

 job. He feels little or no loyalty to the busi- 

 ness nor to the foreman or manager who per- 

 sonifies it. He understands neither the man- 

 ager's work in relation to production, nor the 

 manager's pay. 



There are further enviable differences be- 

 tween the manager's apparent freedom of ac- 

 tion, his more comfortable working surround- 

 ings and those of the laborer. The laborer 

 fails to realize the economic reasons for these 

 differences. The manager in his sight pro- 

 duces nothing, hence the laborer doubts in his 

 heart the importance of managers and higher 

 officials in general. From his warped outlook, 

 wages would be higher if these men who med- 

 dle, but do no real work, were removed from 

 the payroll. 



Thus he feels little respect or liking for the 

 management. The manager may also seem 

 lacking in respect for a sour-tempered opera- 

 tive. The motives behind the simplest mani- 

 festations of good will may be misconstrued 

 and distrusted. Thus a mutual economic ne- 

 cessity is the only binding material which 

 holds these two together, and each chafes at 

 the bond. 



Dissatisfied, the laborer shirks and hates his 

 employment which, in this mood, is without 

 human appeal or interest for him. Furtively 

 shirking, he loses some of his sense of per- 

 sonal dignity and much of his self-respect. 

 Sooner or later, as circumstances favor, he 

 will try to regain a feeling of self-importance 

 by trying with others who are like-minded a 

 concerted confiict with the management jn 

 the form of a strike. 



If the strike is won, the worker feels his 

 course justified, his conduct approved, his self- 

 esteem in a measure restored. If lost, he re- 

 turns to his work liking it and his superiors 

 none the better, only to wait sullenly for an- 

 other trial of strength. 



The laborer's indiscriminate and integrated 

 discontent he is likely to attribute to the spec- 

 ter called capitalism. Capitalism is, therefore, 

 his enemy. This monster he attacks in the 

 one spot where he believes its nervous system 

 is centered — its purse. To the agitator of dis- 

 organization this mass of accumulated and un- 

 sorted discontent is his one great opportunity, 

 and we know he is quick to make the most of 

 it. To the typical proletarian, not the least of 

 the attractions of a world-leveling-down pro- 

 gram is the removal of the people he believes 

 respect neither him nor his labor. 



This brief view of the tangle of disorders 

 and misconceptions, which may arise in a 

 workingman's mind, shows mental states of by 

 no means infrequent occurrence. 



E"ow the true essence of successful industry 

 is mutual respect between employee and man- 

 ager, willing cooperation, a sense of mutual 

 opportunity and responsibility, and a shared 

 personal or institutional loyalty. But these 

 factors are human rather than economic. Eco- 

 nomic necessity alone is not only powerless to 



