are of course indispensable. Experience teaches, however, than an intelligent, appreciative attitude upon the part of the worker is essential to the best results from humane architecture, which architecture includes physical provision for wise promotion of the social life of the worker. Healthy workers are more valuable than unhealthy ones. A health department is an indispensable part of the new business. Applicants for work, and also periodically those at work, should be medically examined to determine fitness for employment, to safeguard the whole working force against contagion and infection, to insure greater working efficiency through timely medical advice. Business health departments have been found valuable also in cultivating good feeling between corporation and worker. Such a department may easily promote good feeling and work a saving for both worker and corporation, by, for example, putting a bruised finger back to work in half an hour, curing a headache, preventing infection, decreasing pain, saving a life. Even a slight industrial injury affords an opportunity for promoting good feeling between capital and worker. Accident compensation will soon be universal in this country. Industrial health compensation is no less humane, logical, and desirable. Industrial disease is simply accident in successive doses. With the adoption of health compensation, the business health department will become a business necessity. It is already a good investment and a humane institution. Next in fundamental importance to the health of the worker is his proper adaptation to his work and his work to him. Efficiency and justice both demand science in the hiring and management of workers. Helter-skelter hiring, firing, and promoting, attended too often by ignorance, prejudice, favoritism, and graft, are conducive neither to maximum output at satisfactory cost nor to reasonable justice. Science, conservation, and a less uncertain justice are coming into employment through regularly organized employment departments. Employing workers is ceasing to be an offhand, extra duty pushed off upon some easy-going manager, assumed by one whose confidence in his judgment and instincts induces him to look after the employment of his establishment as a subsidiary and relatively unimportant duty, or scattered among superintendents and foremen. Employment is coming to be a regular and constant responsibility of a manager and corps whose only business is employment. An employment manager must know intimately the work to be done in the store, shop, or system with which he is associated. He must, in addition, be a student of human beings. Physiology and psychology enter into his work. He knows that some people are predominantly mental, some vital, some dynamic. Some are sensitive; others obtuse. Some have manners and breeding. Some have tact; others are blunt, heedless, inconsiderate. Some are more adaptable than they are reliable. Some are neat; others are slovenly. Some are optimistic. Some are analytic; others synthetic. Some are aggressive; others are retiring. Some are selfish; others altruistic and ideal. Some are artistic. Some are accurate. Some are persistent. Some are scrupulously honest. Facial, cranial, and bodily formation, the look out of the eye, the manner of address, the consistency of the individual-whether hard, rigid, soft, or flexible, the condition of the body-all of the above are of importance to an employment diagnostician. Forty or more questions may be asked an applicant, both to elicit information and to show reactions. As has been pointed out by another writer, the applicant who with a grand flourish gives himself positive credit for all the virtues thereby reveals a trait of character. Do you smoke, do you drink, do you gamble? Are you moral? Are you in debt and if so, why? Being in debt is sometimes highly virtuous. Are you fond of animals? Have you ever been arrested? Forty such questions not only afford some valuable information, but they test the temper, the Vide Blackford and Newcomb: The Job, the Man, and the Boss. Reviews of Reviews Co., New York, 1915. spirit, the patience, the intelligence, the poise of the applicant. Employment diagnosis is very difficult, but it is decidedly valuable, provided the diagnostician is not too cocksure of himself and his judgments. The The first responsibility of an employment manager is to make skilful selections to meet the labor demands reported to him. In the second place he must follow up his selections. Do they fit their work? Is their working environment suitable to them? Do they work well with their team mates and their team mates with them? Some people do not form "happy chemical combinations." rough and the refined, the courageous and the cowardly, the selfish and the ideal, the petty and the broad-minded, are not always good team mates. Two workers equally positive in temperament are likely to clash. Temperament must be reckoned with in business management. Encouragement and appreciation are the modern keynotes in handling workers. As a rule these will inspire fidelity, enthusiasm, and industry. Of course, as every intelligent employer knows, the same method of treatment will not give the best results with all workers. Discipline by fear, however, is out of date, although still employed even in educational work. The old plan of keeping "the fear of God" in the hearts of workers is poor economy. Fair play and square dealing, pride and hope have taken its place. Napoleon showed appreciation of the value of praise when he declared: "The Thirty-second Demi-brigade would have died to a man for me, because after Lonato I wrote, 'The Thirty-second was there and I was at ease.' "'6 Fear, worry, anger, hate, grief, uncertainty, discouragement in workers are signs of poor management and sources of business loss. In a crisis fear may be an asset. By driving the blood outwardly it may facilitate superhuman effort. may assist coagulation in the healing of a wound by adding to the natural output, in the human system, of adrenalin. But business is not a crisis. It is a continuous performance. Fear is not one of its stand-bys. Fear interrupts digestion. It may favor diabetes. It promotes constipation. Chronic fear by lowering vitality may facilitate invasion by other diseases. Fear uses up valuable nervous tissue. It generates poison in the system. Fear and its ravaging relatives, anger, etcetera, reduce capacity, output, and profits. Any uncertainty or irritation in the situation surrounding a worker is likely to reflect itself in the annual report of the employer. The Arabic story of Sidi Naami the Haj has a significance in this connection. Sidi Naami, sitting at the eastern gateway of the city of Bagdad, was told by the Plague as he entered the city that the latter would slay 600. (Sidi Naami could see the plague, "since it is given to the just to see where other men are blind.") But, lo, 3,000 actually fell stricken within Bagdad. The Plague on leaving the city was taken to task by Sidi Naami, to whose violent denunciation the Plague replied "I have done according to my promise. I have slain but 600. My twin brother Fear slew the rest. 19 Hope, pride, courage are positive and constructive. They spell capacity and bigger output. These cannot be achieved altogether, however, by a sort of occupational Christian Science. They depend largely upon good working conditions. A railroad 10 was reported (September 18, 1915) to have advised its workers to "live complacently" and "avoid worry, to cultivate the art of living with yourself Quoted by Blackford and Newcomb, op. cit. Quoted by E. B. Gowin: The Executive and His Control of Men. Macmillan Co., New York, 1915, p. 260. It is a significant sign of the times that some business houses can teach educational systems and institutions the value of humane management. A valuable recent book on the subject of fear is W. B. Cannon: Bodily Changes in Pain, Hunger, Fear, and Rage. D. Appleton & Co., 1916, 311 pp. $2.00.. The Stories of Stories, Minneapolis Journal, July 10, 1916. 10 The Illinois Central. as you are and the world as it is." "This nation," continued this railroad company, "once had a strenuous president who always explained his good health by saying, 'I like my job.' Contentment with your daily lot, satisfaction with one's regular employment, is a great aid to dispelling worry." Such absolute complacency would stifle ambition and prevent any progress, business, political, or social. This railroad overstates the subjective cause of worry. It decries the wholesome discontent that has made progress possible. There is a difference between peevish, futile grumbling and wholesome ambition born of a healthy preference for improvement. Happiness, for the worker, not dumb complacency, is good business for the employer. The right work, good environment, good environment, good management, and health insure a happy and successful worker. It is both uneconomical and unjust to let human capacities lie dormant. Yet they do lie dormant. Our national loss in dormant capacity is incalculable. If in a college department the head runs his department for shortsighted egoistical satisfaction or he weakly allows jealous mediocrity to combine and to fashion departmental policy, unusual ability and character and those who possess them are dwarfed. This does happen in American education. If, in a commercial house, high offices are given to cub sons of heavy stockholders, many a man and woman is likely to fail of his or her full stature as a worker and as a human being. And this does happen in American businesses. The worker should be given full encouragement to express his ideas and to voice his objections. Especially when his suggestions are not workable, there should be full and free consultation. Time lost? Not at all. But rather time spent in developing and correcting your working force. (The writer is well aware of the occasional eccentric whose chief stock is unworkable notions.) The worker, furthermore, should feel free to reveal frankly to his superior so-called his ambitions. It should cease to be true that to him who frankly seeks should be denied." Promotion should always be strictly according to merit, and there should be abolition of the pernicious policy of overlooking talent at hand in appointing to places of responsibility. 12 The American Radiator Co., it is reported, never goes outside of its own organization for an executive. Each head is expected to train his ̧successor. 13 Scientific employment aims also to reduce "firing" to a minimum. It allows foremen and other heads to dismiss but not to "fire."' "Firing" is centralized in the employment office. In a given case, the foreman or other chief and not the worker might be the one at fault. Besides, a worker who has poor success in one place may be a brilliant success in some other position or department. It is neither fair nor wise to "fire" without impartial investigation, and in many cases further experiment. In the Ford Motor Works, it is said, a man will be tried out until all possibilities have been exhausted. Ford builds over men as well as makes cars. The loss of the old system is sometimes tremendous. A labor turnover of 1,100, 250, or even 200 per cent cannot help but be costly to both business and to society, and is certainly evidence of poor conditions-in wages, working environment, or treatment. The best management keeps its people and causes them to grow in efficiency. Management under the scientific system is a bigger job. Modernized employment calls for personality, education, and even culture in its 11 The writer has known of glaring cases in university management of punishment for ambition. Indeed, wherever a mistaken democracy substitutes for power in the individual, subject to control and regulation through publicity and this tenure resting upon fair and satisfactory service, rule by the supposedly representative small group, personal ambition is likely to find difficulty in expressing itself with impunity. Government by an oligarchy of one's peers is likely to be unfair to the one who commits the crime of being conspicuous, of forging ahead, of expressing an innate capacity for leadership. The result is often a side tracking of natural leaders and the breeding of a lack of outspokenness and of dishonesty in those whose flexibility of morality inclines them to win by adapting themselves to circumstances. This evil is more pronounced in education and in public and quasi-public service than in business. 13 Gowin, op cit., p. 155. managers. Big, cultured personality may banish from a factory, store, office, or educational system-gloom, suspicion, irritation, petty jealousy, discord, and may put in their places harmony, cooperation, hope, interest, enthusiasm, happiness. Home happiness for workers will tell decidedly in the manager's balance sheet. The man with the sick wife, the girl with the cruel stepmother or drunken father cannot do their best work. Badly fried eggs, sleepless nights, poorly spent evenings, crowded or sordid living conditions, destructive thinking will tell in the shop report, the record of output, the report of dividends." 14 The rights of private property and of private enterprise are not absolute. Legal and moral obligations and restrictions hedge them in. All private property carries with it some obligation to regard the rights of others. When modern society allows private ownership of offices, stores, factories, etc., it puts into the hands of a relatively few the making or the marring of millions of workers. The directors of a corporation usually except of its managers at least conservation of the capital invested and at least reasonable dividends. What may society expect? John D. Rockefeller, Jr., in his Pueblo speech of October, 1915, referred to four partners in the business of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Co.-stockholders, directors, officers, employes. Referring to workers as well as to officers, Mr. Rockefeller used the phrase "my partners." This of course marked a splendid advance in attitude. But there is still another partner in every business. Society is an investor in every business. Society has a right, therefore, to hold business officers to an accounting. Every business enterprise is turning out, daily, weekly, yearly, either better or worse human beings. A factory manager's record sheet may show only boxes, crates, dozens, and dollars, but there is an unwritten record showing talents dwarfed or talents developed, health lost or health gained, more human life or less. Society may ask of business at least two questions: What have you done with my human capital, and what have you earned for me? A school principal aims at producing better human beings; a business manager usually aims at products or services. A business house, however, should produce both products and people. Society should demand such business leadership as makes the work place a school of richer character and riper development. Big and socially satisfactory leadership sends into the street, home, church, society, and to the ballot box increasingly stronger, better human beings. The business manager is a steward of society. From the viewpoint of human welfare, every business is in a sense of public utility. 15 The leadership that understands this, the really big leadership in business, meets the twentieth century demand for the payment of human dividends in the form of more useful and happier human beings. 14 The apparent philanthropy of corporations is really good business, if not paternalistically managed. "The company covets a real partnership with its employes in all that pertains to their living and working conditions."-Colorado Fuel and Iron Company Industrial Bulletin, July 31, 1916. 15 The Northwestern National Bank (Minneapolis) said recently: "A national bank is in many respects a public utility." This indicates an awakening attitude. THE MAN WHO LOVED GHOSTS The house was haunted. Evil tales Made it a place folk shunned and hurried by; Until one day an old gray man Came saw the place said he liked ghosts, And made at once the place his home. The first night just at dusk he saw "Where is your sweetheart? Does he too And where the wide white orchard spread Some wee ghost children ran about They made his household-gentle folk He long had thought of spirit things- Less for the world and dwelt apart With his ghost friends. They told him wonderous things Things marvelous as fairy lore and strange, A most mysterious philosophy. So great he grew in spirit things That people said; "The man is mad." -A. B. Leigh, 32°. |