The Iron Man and the Mind
I
MEN go to machines under the same compulsions which have sent them into field and forest, ocean-lane, and battlefield, since ever the world began — their needs and their instincts.
Continuing attempts by the innovating animal, Man, to feed, clothe, and satisfy himself with the least effort, brought forth naturally, and in process, the application of machinery to production, at first haltingly, but latterly with a rush which finds this generation well on its way to as complete automatization as human nature is capable of sustaining. The limiting force resides, not so much in the ability of our most enterprising selectmen to mechanize the planet, as in their seemingly more restricted ability to make the job appear worth while to those who come to grips with machinery in action — the common folk.
Economic Man is an abstraction essential to scientific enquiry, though nowhere found in the flesh, and, where approximated, not pleasant to have as a neighbor. Homo Sapiens is Social Man and Political Man and Religious Man, as well as Economic Man. He loves, mates, breeds, fights for and labors for his wife, his home, his children. And presently he dies, in the hope of an extension of life beyond the grave, and is buried with honor by his kind. In his life he has many governors; among them the state is sovereign and the shop parvenu.
This composite mystery enters the shop and takes his place beside the machine, to use a small but definite fraction of his powers in assisting it to produce and distribute goods. Call him Number 3141 if you choose; nevertheless, he differs from Number 3140 and 3142 and all other men living or dead. No one, from this time forward to eternity, ever will be cast in exactly the same mould as he. Labor is more than labor; each labor unit is also an individual, immeasurably dear to himself even in despair.
What the shop precisely wants, it cannot hire. It may want, though never wisely, mere hands and feet and backs; they do not exist detached from lusts, faiths, superstitions. It may want eyes, sensitive fingers, or specialized knowledge; they are not to be divorced from nerves and prejudices. Instead, the labor market presents men and women in infinite variety; but in each is incorporated something, be it little or much, which the shop cannot use. The shop picks and chooses, combs and examines, consults records; nevertheless, the chosen ones carry inside the gates that which may result in an appeal from its regimen to the anarchy of force, or to the authority of the state — the appeal to Demos or to Cæsar.
This mental luggage, largely superfluous from the standpoint of immediate industrial need, may be catalogued for analysis; but the catalogue, however extended, remains a convenient lie, since each element merges with all the others and affects all the others. With this attainder established, the mental luggage of the man going to the machine may be listed briefly as instincts, emotions, traditions, beliefs, habits of thought and conduct — those qualities of mind and spirit which, in their interplay, not only establish the individuality of their possessor, but also govern his reactions to authority and to the responsibilities involved in home and social relationships.
These primary qualities of the mind have their roots in the dawn of life on this planet: in Creation, if you deny Darwin; in intertidal scum, if you accept Wells. But, whatever their origin, they are the fruits of race-experience through many generations; and under the lash of sex we shall pass them on, perhaps with minor changes, to our successors. Our contribution to the subconscious mind is not likely to be as rich and important as the press-agents of our braggart era declare. Indeed, we may influence the subconscious more than any preceding generation, and yet add but a mite to its store, so ancient is its origin and so vital its accumulations. The subconscious mind may be reckoned the reservoir of human experience; here is the cause of Man’s rise to command on the planet; here the rough foundations of his social and political institutions; here the explanation, perhaps never to be unraveled, of his greeds, wars, sins, as well as of his virtues, loyalties, and visions.
Subtract the subconscious from high intelligence — the residue is not Man, with his hates and loves, urges and repressions; but a monstrosity of greed and reason. Subtract it from a person of low intelligence; and the result is a semblance of the bestial. Both asocial: the one, a menace through his efficiency; the ot her, a menace through his deficiency. Therefore, it is of the subconscious mind that one may say: ‘This is the reality of human existence. The truth about human affairs is not to be found altogether in what is written in the bond and certified to in the records. You must consult the instincts; you must go back to the wells of life. Peer into those misty, uncertain depths diligently enough, and you may get some hint, however faint, of the reality of the human spirit in travail or in joy.’
Comes now this heavy-laden, complex Ego to the machine. Pleasant, indeed, for both parties, if the management could separate the workman from such mental luggage as is superfluous inside, and check it at the door, to be reassumed upon return. How simple if the mental man could shuck his cravings as the physical man doffs his coat! Yet, until we know more of the meaning of life, it is perhaps just as well that Man is indivisible, and that the shop must take the useless with the useful, the bitter with the sweet. For it is the unknown and unassayable which gives life its zest, labor its hope, and industry its adventure.
No doubt, those mental traits and prepossessions which we group and label under the convenient title, ‘subconscious,’ at one time had clearer economic significance than they possess at present. However men compete for their livings, those attributes which make for survival tend to be passed on, while those less utilitarian are eliminated under the stern pressure of necessity. Every piece of subconscious luggage which the modern carries to the machine must at some time have been of conscious value to enough of his ancestors to fix that trait for survival. Else it must have been sunk without trace in the laborious business of keeping alive.
Labor is the price of life. The tree labors in growth; the field-mouse labors in each search for grain. Man differs from other animals in that he is conscious of his labors and articulate concerning them. Labor-pain stirs him to thought and expression; but he may be even more distressed by, though less conscious of, his indirect labor-strains. Industrial labor-pain, being easily recognized for what it is, can be alleviated or compensated for inside the shop; labor-strain, on the other hand, less simple of diagnosis, has a way of eluding direct action and spreading out and down, until, massed and complicated, it presents itself, not to the principals in their principal relation, but to society and the state — to the principals, that is, in their more remote relations as neighbors and citizens. Labor-pain, by and large, gives us labor-problems into which the state injects itself only as a last resort ; while broad and continued labor-strain begets social and political problems, powerful cross-currents of opinion, which first agitate the homes of the humble, and in due course agitate the parliaments of the world.
With this distinction between laborpain and labor-strain established, but remembering always that the twain are more easily separated on paper than in the flesh, let us examine the effect of automatic and semi-automatic machinery upon the minds of its attendants, the mill operatives.
Such machines make relatively small demands upon the wits of their companions; the operative’s job is more passive, mentally, than active. Once his limited function is learned, once the man knows how to place standardized material in proper, predetermined fashion, he can earn his pay without further mental effort. He must be attentive, dot and carry one exactly so, because the machine is valuable, and failure to move when and as directed may cost his employer more in spoilage than the operative’s yearly wage. The man is not driven, so much as paced; his usefulness depends upon his never failing the strident call of the Iron Man. He nurses his charge, feeds it, relieves it of produce, and perhaps makes slight repairs in a jam. But, if the case is serious, he calls a machinist, just as an infant’s nurse calls for the physician in emergency.
I watched a man shove metal rings across six inches of space, to a guide from which they were taken automatically through the machine, emerging slotted some seconds later, without more human ado. That was his job from morning until night, his pay depending upon how many slotted rings passed inspection. Eyes concentrated on his little platform, one hand moving thus, the other so, in unending repetition, he missed not one revolution of the wheels, which were grinding out his life even as they ground out the goods. Economically he was part of the machine — an automatic feeder who chanced to be flesh-and-blood-andmind. Presently, no doubt, he will be relieved of that particular job by a mechanical extension of that particular Iron Man, since the human was doing nothing that could not be done better by metal in motion.
Assembling of interchangeable machined parts proceeds, in efficient plants, with almost equally minute division of function. Your automobile frame, let us say, is hoisted so that it may acquire axles. Then it moves along a conveyer, before gangs of men, each of whom performs thereon a certain specified task for which just so much time is allowed, because the conveyer moves at a fixed rate of speed, and each gang is allotted a space alongside, and moves forward and back in that space as the conveyer works. One attaches the right front-wheel; another the left rear-wheel; a third tightens certain screws with a pneumatic wrench. Let a single human fail in his assignment, and rather than permit that delay to clog the whole line of cars in process, the lagging unit, is pulled out of line to await the next shift. Thus, within an hour from the time a naked frame starts down the assembly line, a shrewd and swiftly moving division of labor has completed thereon a finished motorcar, capable of moving to the loading docks under its own power. Its powerplant has been both painted and dried within the hour. To it have been given a body highly polished, curtains, cushions, tools, and, finally, a tag setting it apart for someone near or far — Doc Kennicott of Gopher Prairie, or the Gaekwar of Baroda.
In that swift progress hundreds of men have worked upon each car, combining into effectiveness the work of other thousands, whose produce is brought up by truck from storerooms and source-factories, and rushed into assigned positions. Each man performs the same task over and over: tightens identical nuts, lifts identical parts off a rack, and applies each one of them precisely to something like its predecessor to the thousandth of an inch. This accurate, monotonous toil goes on swiftly, amid hissing air-valves and paintstreams, roar of drying ovens, clatter of tools, thunder of trucks arriving and departing. As evidence of the organizing faculty in master minds, as a study in unity and synchronized power over divers beings and things, the action is impressive, in totality almost beautiful; but for its individual contributors it leaves something to be desired as an expression of the art of life. Not altogether for this, surely, is Man made.
Some of these operations involve much muscular effort, others little; but , whether little or much, each operative uses the same set of muscles for approximately the same length of time in each repetition of his assigned operation. Roustabouts enjoy far more of the luxury of variety in toil than machinetenders in automatized factories.
The operating of automatic and semiautomatic machinery evolves evidence tending to show that fatigue, instead of being simply weariness from muscles stretched too much or too often, is rather a pathological condition, due to the poisoning of the system through over-secretion of the endocrinal glands. Whatever the theorizing as to endocrinal glands, it is probably true that there is an excessive outpouring under nervous tension, when effort is prolonged beyond the normal fatigue limit , which outpouring causes pathological fatigue, indicated by preternatural activity. This theory, held by competent investigators, and advanced by them with reservations proper in a matter where exactness is difficult, seems to explain, as well as receive support from, many of the reactions of our industrial operatives to their labors.
In general, machine-production of goods involves less muscular and sensory strain than that put forward under the handicraft system. Fatigue in industrial workers must be ascribed more to monotony in movement and problem than to foot-pounds of energy expended. One may use merely his finger-tips feeding metal discs into a machine, and yet be as weary in the evening as if he had been swinging an axe. The lumberjack’s weariness is an all-round fatigue, and he is ready for bed at sundown; while industrial workers seem moved to abnormal activity after working hours.
My fellow citizens, most of whom work in factories where the industrial function is minutely divided, and where machines set the pace, display astonishing energy in after-work pursuits. The married men reëstablish their equilibrium by gardening prodigiously, and tinkering furiously around their homes — a socially satisfactory adjustment. The homeless rush hither and thither by motor when they are flush; or wander aimlessly around the streets when they are broke. Books and quiet conversation are a bit too tame for men who feel that, while they get their living in the shop, they must live their lives outside the shop. This may be explained as Nature’s effort to correct a nerve-distortion resulting from the exercise of certain muscles and faculties while all others are held out of use. Glandular secretions, roused by an over-stressed fraction of the anatomy, spread beyond that fraction to stimulate the rest of the man into heightened activity. These men are in a condition parallel to that in which many a business man finds himself after prolonged concentration upon a problem which defies satisfactory solution. He becomes too tired to sleep; works feverishly; and, unless he lets down, breaks down. Either type is apt to seek relief in stimulants, and to crave thrills temporarily blotting out the discontent that overlays their lives.
II
At the root of this discontent lies the difficulty of adjusting human beings to modern industry. Race-inheritance fits us for other, simpler pursuits. For unnumbered generations we white folks have been building up resistance to, and recovering from, the fatigue which follows muscle-labor. Except for the comparatively small fraction of our ancestors who went in for learning, trade, or the handicrafts, the life of the masses, until the Industrial Revolution began in England, about 1765, had been the slow life of soil and water — agriculture, hunting and fishing, with occasional relapses into war; occupations requiring intense physical exertion through short periods, and allowing frequent let-ups. Until so recently Man worked by the sun and the seasons instead of by 1 he calendar and the clock. Even the villein ploughing his lord’s glebe could stop for a chat with his neighbor passing on the highway. Thrills a-plenty filled common lives; there were the touch-and-go of the chase, rustic ceremonies at seedtime and harvest, a chance to look in through the servant’s door upon the festivities of the manor house; and always a close, if servile, relation with his boss. Bond the villein was, but his bond held both ways — upon master no less than upon man. The worker at least had the blessing of security in his job, now so uncertain: he could not be fired, even as he could not hire himself away.
That simple existence seems to be the kind of life for which the common man is constituted. Physically, he goes his best gait for a hundred yards, fells his third tree more accurately than he fells his thirtieth, ploughs his straightest furrow toward the rising sun. He needs a measure of monotony in toil; shifting at quick-step from this job to that bothers him: but the work which gives him most satisfaction, and which, all things considered, he does best, is that furnishing variety in detail with sameness in essentials. Were every tree placed exactly like every other tree, to be felled from a like stance in the one direction, with no nice problem of adjustment presenting itself to the common sense and skill of the axe-man, then our lumberjack would return to his shack, not only more fatigued in body than usual, but infinitely more weary in his mind. If a high-grade carpenter faced the prospect of building identical houses all the rest of his life, with never a chance to revel in a bit of improvisation, would he relish that prospect? Hardly. What he wants — what every man above the grade of moron craves in toil — is a chance to express his personality within the limits of a specialty in which he knows himself proficient. Even the scavenger is not without his craft-pride. Your carpenter desires no other trade; he would rather build a hen-coop than paint his own dwelling; but inside his trade he wants a bit of leeway to devise ways and means, and a living hope of quiet adventure. Not enough variety to upset him, but enough to stimulate the exercise of his full powers in security — such is the common man’s ideal job.
Variety in minors compensates for the major monotony. In the beginning, and for æons thereafter, when Man, in an environment niggardly in food and crowded with dangers, was ‘getting set’ in build and character, labor— the price of life — must have been a constant succession of adventures. Merely keeping alive involved prowling and stalking, sally, pounce, battle, flight. Power to put all into a single effort determined whether one returned to the home-lair or died miserably on the heath. Little by little, to satisfy accumulating economic wants and social ambitions, Man tied himself down to occupations more prosaic — to agriculture, to the tedious shaping of tools from stone, and the application of manual skill and fire to earth-materials. Ability to withstand monotony then acquired survival value; but there continued that zest for variety inside the frame of monotony, that zest for projecting his unique self upon his environment.
From the projection of these individualities upon matter through toil followed many of the subsequent, changes in Man’s estate. Simple tools, now standardized, must have measured the individuality of their originators and adapters, just as innovations in modern mechanics publish to a critical world the personal triumphs of those who dare to originate. The more play we allow this instinct for variation, the swifter economic evolution must be; and, conversely, when it has no play, innovation ceases. Civilization, on its material side, has been built little by little, through trial and error rather than design — by the personal energies of the world’s artificers and organizers rather than by the plans of its statesmen.
Monotony in labor, then, is the price men pay for living together in order and security — one of the returns that society exacts from the individual in exchange for safety, comfort, and opportunity for advancement within the group. But monotony intensifies laborstrain; and unless the laborer can find release therefrom, through variations of physical and mental effort in the minutiæ of the job, his weariness sits upon him like an incubus. Let him do this thing a little differently from that; let him use what ingenuity he has; and his Ego, somewhat different from all others under the sun, is compensated in a degree for the surrender of his freedom in the larger concerns of groupliving, which surrender society demands and enforces through law and custom.
But, lacking this compensation of variety in toil, human nature finds the social order oppressive. This seems to me at least as definite a cause of the present resentment against the established order as those more frequently cited; and the situation is not altogether relieved by reflecting that, as long as the instinct toward variation is repressed by the machines themselves, its consequences will continue in some measure as long as machines are operated, no matter whether they are owned by private persons or by the state.
How long may a person’s innovating tendencies be repressed without dulling his mind? Suppose our first-rate carpenter undertook a two-year stint laying identical floors in identical onestory houses. Would he be as good an all-round craftsman, as good a stairbuilder and roof-builder, at the end of his grind? Obviously not. He might grow more deft in what he had to do; but surely he would grow more clumsy in what he has no chance to do. He would emerge from that job less efficient for the all-round work of the community, less sure of himself, less secure in his home and his living, less interesting as a personality and less valuable as a neighbor and citizen. To what extent this decline in the individual might, affect his descendants, and through them the race, is an interesting question reserved for future discussion.
This devolution of the individual is what Secretary Hoover notes when he says: ‘The vast, repetitive processes are dulling the human mind.’ And again: ‘We must take account of the tendencies of our present repetitive industries to eliminate the creative instinct in their workers, to narrow their fields of craftsmanship, to discard entirely the contributions that could be had from their minds as well as from their hands. Indeed, if we are to secure the development of our people, we cannot permit the dulling of these sensibilities.’
So far as the great majority of the workers are concerned, modern industry presents this phenomenon — the dulling of the mind — on a scale unequaled in extent, and to a degree unequaled in intensity, by anything on record in history. Slavery of the galley was not more uninspiring, per se. Military orders may be more imperious than those of industry; but at least the military life provides change of scene and problem from time to time, some release from routine on pay, much companionship, and occasional thrills — all appealing to the common man because they fit in so neatly with the inherited memories lying at the back of his mind. Industrial efficiency calls for the elimination of many of these boons — for close concentration upon the unvarying task, for suppression of variations in toil, for rigid control of the work-environment, for elimination of distracting excitements, for subordination of personalities, for the reduction of the common man to the status of automaton.
III
Who is this common man? He is the fellow who made up the ranks of the army as examined for the draft — an adult, male, with an intelligence by test of from fourteen to sixteen years. He is a dependable being on the average, capable of taking care of himself and his family in ordinary times and not too complicated situations; fairly adaptable; amenable to law and social usages; requiring and accepting leadership in all pursuits calling for special knowledge or quick decision; fundamentally loyal to his country and its institutions; inherently conservative and provincial; shaking down after the first flush of youth into a steady, plodding citizen, more prone to excitement over little things than to thought over fundamentals; strongly sexed, but controlling his sex-calls more or less successfully with the aid of church and state, of which institutions he is ever the pillar and support. Not a complete portrait, but ’t will serve!
This is he who, in the main, mans industry; and upon whom modern industry grinds. It grinds less upon those definitely above or below this level. More effective, more adaptable persons, keen in devising, sage in planning, and strong in pushing men and materials into action — these find in industry broad and lucrative outlets for their relatively stronger instincts toward dominance. Men of this sort find capital, invent machines, improve processes, route materials, organize shops, produce goods in quantity, and sell them to the ends of the earth. No danger of repetitive processes and automatic machinery dulling these highpowered minds; on the contrary, these are as manna to their hungry souls. By reducing room for error in operations, by contracting the play of human fallibility in toil, by increasing man-power, the Iron Man has freed business of important limitations, relieving enterprises of what were once serious difficulties.
But the slack so gained is more apparent than real. Competition, never resting, drives them on ever and ever to more refined machines, better coördination of effort; and presently they find in social unrest, plant obsolescence, high labor-turnover, and lowered morale, that they have merely substituted one sort of executive vexation for another. In the old days of more skill and less machines, the executive problem was to master materials; now the executive problem is to a much greater degree the handling of men.
Neither does the Iron Man get on the nerves of those below the average mentality. He is a consistent friend of the defective. Just as deafness is an advantage in certain industrial occupations, — our shops employ many mutes with satisfaction both ways, — so mental lacks may become assets for certain industrial purposes. Given enough sense to master simple routine occupations, and enough appreciation of duty or fear of relatives to come to the shop regularly, the below-average person can soon be adjusted industrially. And, when adjusted, the moron will be found immune to many of the pricks which irritate the normal man into seeing red, less fretted by monotony, less worn by rhythmic clatter. The less mind one has, the less it resents that invasion of personality which is inseparable from large-scale and mechanized enterprises. I have heard industrial engineers and welfare-workers say that industrial efficiency, as it is working out in our day, puts a premium on mental deficiency.
Men who take more to the machines than do the morons are subjected to a rigid selective process by the Iron Man. The law of ‘use or lose’ begins its inexorable operation upon their minds as well as upon their muscles and nerves. Just as muscle or nerve, unused, refuses to yield its utility without a struggle, causing its possessor pain and inconvenience, so those mental qualities unused in toil continue to struggle for existence to the limit of their strength. It is easy to find in any industrial town the shop-sick man — upset, out of sorts, doubtful if he can stick it out. The man is out of harmony with himself; his mind is divided against itself. The weaker the Ego at the start, the shorter the struggle, and the more quickly does the individual become‘shop-broke.’ Some refuse to wait so long, and get out, either fired for insubordination, which is more often an attack of ‘nerves’ than meanness, or going out voluntarily to search for jobs more to their liking. Sometimes they merely shift from one shop to another; every factory town has its disappointed rainbow-chasers, who never stay put, and who never learn that the Iron Man is about the same everywhere. Many, however, drift back to the farm and other less mechanized occupations.
Labor-turnover is heavy; that is where this labor-strain shows in the shop records. The workman and his boss may adjust, in one way or another, disputes on wages and shop-conditions; but of necessity they have difficulty in treating this intangible, indefinite, not always recognized or recognizable, workneurosis arising from the cleavage between old and new, between the innovation — the Iron Man — and that ancient inheritance of the human — the mind. So one man goes, and another, and another; their several departures, listed together, become evidence of so many loss-items to the shop. The expense of breaking in a single novice may be small; but multiplied many times, it becomes something to reckon with in quantity, and a definite economic back-lash. Let a key machine be idle even a few hours, and bang goes far more than sixpence!
So the leaders of industry are forced, from strictly economic motives, to consider the psychological aspects of toil. The remedies they apply are of infinite variety — shifting men from one job to another as an antidote for monotony and a cure for maladjustments; more rigid selection in employment, with growing emphasis on the mental as well as physical fitness of the novices for the jobs open; welfare-work in all its phases: housing-developments, grievance committees, shop-councils, employee representation, bonus and profit-sharing plans — all aimed at relieving in one way or another, either directly or by distraction of interest, the nerve-tension under which the average man suffers when he is brought into double harness with the Iron Man.
However, the best friend of both man and master, in this connection, is habit — simple, old-fashioned habit. If one does the same thing over and over, action tends to become automatic. Attention may be trained through use even to the point where the tender of the machine may do his work accurately without undue strain, while his mind busies itself elsewhere. The strain increases, of course, as the work is prolonged; but given reasonable timelimits, there is ground to believe that a man thoroughly shop-broken and well adjusted to his job may get a good deal of pleasure from this autistic thinking while at work. But autistic thinking may be painful as well as pleasurable. The day-dreaming of a well-balanced, not too highly organized mind, at peace with itself and with the world, is one thing; the fretting of a mind under worry or injustice is quite another. If we conceive habit to be a barrier behind which the mind may shelter itself against fatigue, then we may say that the assaulting force must succeed if the workperiod be stretched unduly; and, moreover, that it will carry the habit-barrier much sooner than that, if the mental forces behind the barrier are discordant and undisciplined. Consequently, the constructive effort to harmonize automatic machinery and mental health must take a threefold path: first, to select individuals carefully for given jobs; second, to adjust both pace and hours to the individual’s powers of resisting fatigue; and, third, to hasten such changes in the shop, home, and community as will tend to content the common man with his lot, reduce his worry and envy, and increase his delight in life.
At the automatic machine a man must stew, mentally, in his own juice; in so far as he thinks at all, his thought must range away from his task. If he fears dismissal, if he thinks of himself as bested by unknown forces or cheated by individuals, if he finds himself and his home the playthings of tragedy or the butts of injustice, then his autistic thought is bound to be subversive. One sort of man becomes melancholy; another rages against things as they are. On the other hand, he whose life is even and sustained by faith, he whose memories and prospects are alike pleasurable, has time inside the task to plan his holiday, turn over again the delights of last week, and settle the small but inspiring problems of his home and garden.
To put the machine operative into this frame of mind, where he is insulated more or less against the early coming and more devastating inroads of pathological fatigue, must ever be a first concern of industrial society, as well as of the shop which profits by his content. The state must do its bit by seeing that he gets full measure of justice; the community by providing facilities for mental and physical recreation; and the shop by internal adjustments calculated to increase the worker’s confidence in the security of his job and his sense of coöperation in the enterprise.
All-important, also, is the cultivation of self-discipline in the individual. Much restlessness arises from envy, lack of disposition to make the best of things until better appears, and failure to train the emotions toward cheerfulness. Mental hygiene in home and school is a positive need for a rising generation destined so largely to associate with machines and coöperate in large-scale enterprises. How the emotions may be schooled is set forth briefly in Dr. C. B. Burr’s trenchant book, Practical Psychology and Psychiatry, now in its fifth edition — and a mine of wisdom. ‘The relation of emotion in the abstract to muscular expression is profitable for study,’ says Dr. Burr, ‘ not only because of its psychological interest, but because of its practical bearing upon human conduct. Clench the fist and shut the teeth firmly, and there immediately arises in consciousness a sense of resentment , of pugnacity. Draw down the corners of the mouth, and the emotional tone takes on a shade of depression. This has an important relation to mental development. To cultivate the muscular play that accompanies pleasurable states [of feeling] must inevitably affect the disposition of the individual in a favorable manner.’ Thus he who does the necessary with a show of willingness finds, before the task is done, that he is truly willing its accomplishment.
‘Be good and you’ll be happy’ is a precept of practical religion. ‘Make good or you ’ll be miserable,’ is a precept of business which seems to have crowded the older ideal out of public education, and to have jostled it sadly even in the home. An educational system over-emphasizing efficiency must needs wreck itself in time, because there can never be quite enough of the good things of life at hand to satisfy all. A homely philosophy of give-and-take, a gospel of endurance as contrasted with acquisition, the truth that life’s best values are spiritual rather than economic — these the school should teach, no less than the home, to young folk who presently shall take their places beside the machines in industrial routine.
Yet such preparation will not be sufficient of itself. As those once more potent ideals of contentment in toil have been pushed aside so strenuously by industrialism, so also they cannot be rehabilitated in any compelling measure until the industrial status quo is modified by state, community, and shop in such wise that training for contentment may withstand the attrition of work-relations in adult years. As long as life renegs on promises made to youth that joy, honor, and abundance shall reward toil, sobriety, and loyalty, it is idle to expect any generation of American factory-hands to bear stoically their participation in industry.
However successful these efforts may be, there is likely to remain an unavoidable residuum of labor-strain. This, spread as it is over the mass, filters down upon home and state, generating social problems which, in a democracy, shortly become political. In our average man, the will to survive is more potent than the will to power; security means more to him than opportunity; he is static rather than dynamic; and the state is the highest expression of his dominant ideal — to live comfortably under conditions in which he can be true to his not-too-demanding nature. To the state, therefore, the man of the masses gives, as clearly as he can, his mandate. First, labor-strain rouses thought, then speech, then writings in the press, then debates in parliament, then — if checkmated all along the line — in mobs and armies. The politician with his ear to the ground serves this function, at least — he gets the case of the plebs before the state. Ensues then a new phase of the old, old duel between the state and the captains, going forward in our day as the State versus its legal children, the Corporations, in which the captains, for greater power and profit, group themselves.
One finds in the current phase of this contest small promise that the state, by legal processes, can relieve the common man from the labor-strains incident to automatic production. It may relieve his feelings temporarily, with restrictions that are more noise than substance; he may draw some comfort from seeing the state crack its long whip over the boss; but political coercion has its limits, both economic and constitutional. Regulation toward fair play in industry is right and proper, but may so easily be overdone that the state’s most telling contribution to the mental hygiene of industry may be considered that of education — the marshaling of the public schools for the teaching of contentment in toil and culture in leisure.
Because mind must be cured by mind, or stay sick; because human maladjustments yield only to the human touch, the mental phase of the problem of automatization in industry challenges particularly the community and the shop; to them we must look for the chief ameliorating influences which shall permit the common man to withstand, without deterioration of mind, association with the Iron Man. And because the man at the desk moves more swiftly than the folk in the town meeting, the shop may well become the more effective of the two. Once management grasps clearly the situation created by the grinding of the automatic machine upon the mind of the worker, the challenge to proximate service and ultimate interest cannot but inspire the directing intelligences of American industry. Their hegemony, indeed, depends upon their leaping into this breach without delay.