July 12, 1917 
LAND ik WATliR 
Past and Future— V 
The Secret of Industrial Power 
By Jason 
WHE^ a battery goes into action every man from 
the Battery Commander downwards works at 
the top of Ins speed. There is no whisper of 
ca canny. The drivers turn their teams as 
smartly as they can : traces are released with the rapidity 
of a flash of hghtnmg: guns are swung round detach- 
ments fly to their places, and in a few seconds teams and 
limbers have disappeared in the distance and everyone 
IS waiting for the first orders from the Batterv Commander 
When the orders are rapped out, the laver makes minute 
manipulations with his fingers and traverses the gun on to its 
target : the man behind him loads, another closes the breech 
the gun IS fired, and as it flies back from the recoil, the breech 
3.S opened : everything bqing done so rapidly and quietly 
that one might suppose it a single operation carried out by a 
single hand. As a piece of rapid and dexterous movement 
by a group it is as neat a performance as one could wish to 
see. And to secure that efficiency men and officers will 
spend hour upon hour repeating a monotonous routine, with 
a constant strain on hand, eye, ear, memory and attention 
until the very name of gun drill sounds like a sentence of 
penal servitude. For there is a common inspiration, a common 
driving impulse, since every man knows that success and 
honour and safety for his battery, and therefore for the cause 
for which his battery is in the "field, depend on the rapidity 
and accuracy with which that group can learn; to act and 
move together. 
Soldiers of Industry 
Carlylc invented the name " Captains of Industry ' when 
he wanted to find an arresting watchword for an age that 
seemed sunk in a purely commercial creed. The metaphor 
is natural and we often talk to-dav of soldiers of industry 
If we go into a great workshop or factory we see masses of 
men, women and children working together on the thousand 
and one details that make up a wonderful whole, the product 
which very likely none of them wUl ever see. There are 
foremen who l(K)k like the N.C.O.'s, there are managers 
who are like the regimental officers, and somewhere or otiier ' 
m the background there are directors who form the General 
Staff. The metaphor ?s natural, but it is misleading. For 
whcrdH5 in a battery under fire there is a common object 
before the eyes of every man in the battery, it is only in a 
very quahfied sense that there is any common object before 
the eyes of every person in the workshop. 
It is true that there are a great body of men. women and 
children all engaged in producing something together, that 
they are co-operating, that they are carrying out orders 
designed for some intelligible jiurpose which stands in 
direct relation to their work, and that under some circum- 
stances the failure of that purpose reacts on all engaged in the 
workshop. But there the resemblance ends. If we want 
• to appreciate the difference between the two cases we have 
only to ask ourselves what the driver or gunner thinks when 
his sergeant urges him to put his last ounce of power into a 
movement : he knows that his own safety and the safety of 
everj'body else depends on that effort, 'and he makes it. 
But the foreman, when he urges' a workman to put his last 
ounce of power into ct movement, cannot appeal to that 
motive. For the industrial system, which, seemed to the 
political economy of our grandfathers to be an admirable 
arrangement for harmonising interests, does in fact create 
separate interests, and employers and workmen are governed 
by considerations that may, produce conflict at any time and 
on any point. 
Let us take, , for example, the' whole question of improve- 
ments, both of machinery and of method. The outside 
observer is apt to argue on the lines of the old economist, 
and reassure himself with gencndisations about industry 
adapting itself to new concUitions, without thinking very 
precisely about what happens^ while that adaptation is in 
process. It is better, he will say> for everybody engaged in 
industry, whether he is capitalist or manager or worker, 
whether he supplies money or directing mind or skill, or even 
mereinuscle, that the industry should prosper and e.xpand. 
We have formidable competitors, pcrseveri-^g, ingenious, 
resourceful. To hold our own we must use all tlic brains and 
power at our command. The man then who makes difficulties 
about adopting this or that macliino, who stands out against 
industrial economy, wiio refuses to help to' save time or 
money or skill, such a man in the workshou is like a gumaer 
who says that he will mutiny if a new type of gun is Intro-' 
duced, and that his own army must carry 'on with an obsolete 
muzzle-loader while the enemy is making improvements in 
the latest breech-loading piece. The argument is so plain 
that the inference drawn from the attitude of the men in ^ 
these cases is that they have not the sense to understand 
their own interests. It is supposed that their malice is the 
result ot stupid ignorance or conservatism. 
False Reasoning 
The argument is plain enough, but it leaves a great part of 
the question undiscussed. During some bitter strikes a 
century ago over the introduction of machinery, certain 
economists tried to reason with the workpeople. In the long 
mn, they pomted out, everybody benefits by the introduction 
of machinery and the hardships are only "temporary Yes 
replied the workmen, but man's life is only temporary also! 
the answer pierced the weak point in the philosophy of the 
times. Industry was regarded as a world in which men and 
women were pawns, to be moved here or there as the circum- 
stances of the market suggested, and not as human beings to 
whom th(i temporary hardships, dismissed so lightly bv 
economists as mere incidents in the progress of industry, meant, 
in Lord Acton's words, " want and pain and degradation 
and risk to their own lives and their children's souls." 
The workman was regarded as the abstraction, " Labour " 
The economists talked of Capital and Labour as if they were 
comparables, as if the transference of labour from one in- 
dustry to another were as simple as the transference of capital 
Brougham put the whole process in a nutshell. If too much 
capital IS attracted to a particular industry, the rate of interest 
will fall, and so th6 disproportion will be corrected, for the 
superfluous capital will seek some other sphere where the 
higher rate of interest shows that capital is in demand 
Similarly with labour. The demand for labour falls off in 
one industry, perhaps because of changes in that industry 
wages fall, and the superfluous labour follows the example 
of the superfluous capital and seeks some sphere where wages 
are higher, tuat is, where labour is in demand. These force"" 
rep^ilated the supply and demand of capital and labour, and 
all- that was necessary was that the workman should be 
intelligent enough to understand them. They would then 
appreciate the fundamental harmony of interests. By this 
kind of reasoning economists came to forget that when talking 
. of "labour " they were talking of the disDosal of human fives, for 
they thought that a formula which explained how capital and 
labour responded to the fluctuations of the markets should 
convince . the workman that temporary hardships do not 
matter. 
From the workman's point of view, there was more in al 
this than the working of an interesting and abstract economic 
law. Smith is employed at a workshop at a week's notice ' 
Some machine is introduced which makes Smith superfluous 
Smith goes. He may be out of work for weeks or for months, 
"Do you not see, you slow-witted fellow,"says the economist] 
" that the introduction of this machine means industrial pro- 
gress, and that you as a member of the race stand to gain 
hke everybody else ? " Smith may believQ this, but mean- 
while he is more particularly interested in the fact that he is 
in danger of losing his home, that his children are threatened 
with starvation, and that the prospect of the workhouse is 
becoming unpleasantly intimate. 
Speeding Up 
Or let us look at the question of speeding up. In America 
and Germany the whole topic of industrial fatigue has been 
_made the subject of careful experiment and study. All kinds 
of expedients have been adopted for testing fatigue and 
strain and for discovering the conditions under which men 
do their best work and are least exhausted. This study has 
become an exact if rather dangerous science. Take this 
example of " Taylor's law." Taylor was a great prophet of 
scientific management in the United States. 
" Taylor's law is that for each given push or pull on a 
maris arms it is possible for a workman to be under load 
for only a definite percentage of the day. For example, 
when pig iron is being handled (each pig weighing 92 lb.), 
a first-class workman can only be under load 4J per cent, of 
the day. He must be entirely free from load during 57 per 
cent, of the day. And as the load becomes fighter, th^ 
