'Labor Once Lost'

I

How many and how vast, are our wastes, and how attractive, to certain minds, is the study of the many forms in which we squander our heritage! The exhaustion of the soil, the waste of fertility, was a subject uppermost in the thought of the late Mr. James J. Hill. The waste that results from competition and duplication exercised the mind of the elder Mr. Rockefeller. The waste of timber aroused Mr. Gifford Pinchot to launch his great campaign for the conservation of our forests. The waste of water-power agitates the people of many States, and interests Mr. Henry Ford in Muscle Shoals. The waste of labor through unemployment, and the conscious restriction of effort, induce Mr. Herbert Hoover to undertake some important investigations, and to hold many conferences in Washington, which may result in some useful reforms.

The study of waste becomes an obsession in some cases. Since the day of Charles Fourier and Albert Brisbane, the socialist has never been so eloquent or so convincing as when he depicts the waste of competition and of capitalism. Indeed, some socialists have thought that if, in some manner, the obvious, gigantic, incredibly multitudinous wastes could only be stopped, nothing would seem more certain than that we must all become very comfortable upon the savings which would accrue.

In the absence of accurate data, one would be very indiscreet to speak of this or that waste as the greatest of all. The wars men wage with each other would seem to have first place. Preventable illness, accidents, and death make a showing that is appalling. But if we pass over those wastes that are not exclusively economic in character, a strong case might be made, it seems to me, for the waste of labor through its employment upon materials that have the shortest possible life. I mean upon cloth that goes the soonest into tatters, upon leather that tears and cracks, upon timber that is not well seasoned, upon roads that fall into immediate decay, upon motors that must be junked in a few years, upon houses that are jerry-built, and, in fact, upon nearly every article manufactured in quantity for the American public.

I have not seen any writings upon this subject, or heard it widely discussed. I think no adequate data exist, which would enable one to estimate the annual loss to this nation from this form of waste. But anyone who gives a little thought to the matter can imagine how huge this loss must be in labor-power. The cost of the labor that produced the Wonderful One-Hoss Shay

was probably but little more than the cost of the labor that built one of the many which fell to pieces in a few years.

The problem of saving labor seems to me far more important for our country than for any other. Because we have here the most costly labor in the world, we should use care in seeing that it renders us full value. We cry out against the wages that must be paid, and yet we employ labor upon materials that would be discarded in many countries of Europe. What traveler abroad has not marveled at the churches and public buildings centuries old, at the substantially built dwellings, well-laid pavements, everlasting stone bridges, excellent cloth, stout boots, sturdy vehicles, and nearly everything else that meets the eye. Permanence is written all over the European product. It is meant to last. Even the poorer workingmen in England often wear cloth and leather that we might well envy. Some English woolens seem everlasting, and the leather is not so split into layers nor so cured and tanned as to render it wellnigh useless. Where else does one find such thread? Even the parcel that arrives from the tailor is done up in stout wrapping paper and tied with linen string that might serve for a trout line. Permanence everywhere; even in those places where it, too, seems wasteful. It is paradoxical that in England, where labor demands much lower wages than it does here, it should be employed, as a rule, upon honest materials for the creation of products that are lasting, while in our country it is too often put at work upon materials that have little life in them.

II

My taste is very likely not that of the many, and I am free to confess that, on the whole, I prefer old things. I am not offended when I see a welldarned piece of cloth. I am particularly fond of any old homespun, and rejoice especially in one that has done me service for some seventeen years. I am grieved to see the thread rotting in my favorite brogues, with soles hardly showing wear after years of honest labor. Linen, silk, woolen, and leather of quality arouse in me a lively affection.

My old friend Riggs, a connoisseur of fine linens, once astonished a small party at dinner by putting the tablecloth to his lips. When we all laughed, Riggs rebuked us with the words, ‘Such material and such workmanship deserve our reverence.’

What can be a greater luxury than to be clothed in soft, fleecy Shetlands? What odor is more redolent of honest worth than the aroma of the smoke of peat in a Harris tweed? When Morris produced his beautiful chintzes, at prices little higher than those of the best wall-papers, he found welcoming them an appreciative and enthusiastic public; but they would not use them for house decoration. They dressed themselves in bis wall-hangings! The taste of the public is, perhaps, too much maligned. Think of the prices paid for Japanese and Chinese embroideries, for porcelains, for delft and willow ware, for copper and pewter pots, and indeed for any everlasting product of the old regimes.

If materials like the serges, jerseys, friezes, whipcords, meltons, and broadcloths of old were now obtainable, the demand for them would, I believe, outstrip the supply. In the presence of such cloth, one trial of our modern products, which lose their color and their shape and become threadbare in a few months, would be a lesson to any man. We shall never have again, I suppose, such laces, velvets, tapestries, carpets, damask, porcelains, pottery, cabinetwork, leathers, pots and pans of brass, pewter, silver, and gold as the age of handicraft gave us. This is a machine age, and even some of the old processes are lost; but all the raw materials used in the past — and indeed some new ones — we still have, and men can, if they will, have modern labor employed upon good, honest stuff capable of rendering durable service.

It is said, I know, that this day of ours has altogether different tastes from those of our fathers, and that, while old things are sometimes treasured as curious, the real demand nowadays is for things new and fresh. We prefer new clothes, new china, new furniture, and all the rest of it. New styles arouse the most lively interest, not only in hats and gowns, but in clocks and watches, and in a multitude of other things, like these last, where durability would seem to be the quality most to be desired. No thoughtful observer of our time can deny t he prevalence of this passion for the new; but while it is responsible for much that is obviously good, it is responsible also for economic evils that are leading us into serious troubles.

More and more, if this tendency grows, will our manufacturers be led to vie with each other in creating new styles for each change of season; and the time is not distant when every product of last season will be unbearable to our eyes. With the poorest of materials employed,— yielding up their feeble existence upon the slightest strain, — it will be no difficult matter to make the new not only desirable but necessary.

Of course the cost to society will be heavy. Labor so employed will be wickedly squandered, and only the merchant, builder, and manufacturer will profit. Less than ever will they be concerned in conserving labor-power for the benefit of the community. Let the turnover be as frequent as possible, in order that profits may be repeated as often as possible, will be the one guiding principle of business. Twelve times the labor in twelve pairs of silk hose will not serve our daughters so long as the labor in one pair in the good old days. Five times must labor be employed to build me suits, where one would have sufficed in the old time. If every morning, on our way to work, we are forced to purchase a new pair of shoes, the profit to the manufacturer will be immense and the prevailing ideal of trade achieved at last.

Well, let this world go on its way, and this passion for the new turn to madness! Somewhere I shall find a bit of honest tweed, a side of sound leather, a good linen thread, and some competent workman who will build my things in the logical way.

III

There are, of course, many products where durability is unnecessary. Foodstuffs should be used, as a rule, as soon as possible. Speed is desired in most forms of transportation; and in the labor employed in buying, selling, bookkeeping, directing, and similar occupations little or no saving could be effected.

But it is astonishing to note the many industries in which more durability in the product would make possible a considerable saving.

The quality of the implements with which men work in agriculture, in carpentry, and in all mills, mines, and factories could be bettered. The materials used in tents, awnings, sails, baskets, carpets, rugs, draperies, dresses, suits, furniture, plumbing, kitchen-ware and table-ware should be far more durable than those now obtained in the ordinary course of trade. Vehicles, whether impelled by steam, electricity, gasoline, or the old Deacon’s ‘rat-tailed, ewe-necked bay,’ should be made of better stuff than is customary at the present time. The materials used in paving are, perhaps, of good enough quality; but labor is squandered in this trade by using insufficient material and in bad construction. Many of our States have been bonded for forty years to lay pavements that have to be reconstructed in less than ten years.

During the war, when labor-costs were higher than they had ever been, the general policy of our manufacturers was, so it seemed, to employ their labor upon the poorest materials that could be purchased. Home-building stopped except where the contractors could pick up trashy materials out of which they could build houses for sale. In 1918, I noticed a number of small houses being built on some cheap lots, and I made some inquiries into the problem of how the contractor could, in such times, make them pay. I watched every stage of the building, and, so far as I could see, there was not a sound bit of material used in any part of their struct ure.

They were all sold immediately to workingmen, and I venture to say they will cost as much in repairs as they were ever worth, and, to the moment of their complete collapse, will be a source of expense and worry to their unhappy owners.

The deluded workingmen were not the only ones to suffer in those days. We all bought shoes, shirts, suits, motor-cars, houses, and what not, at tremendous prices, knowing, if we thought at all, that the labor which went into their production had been in large measure squandered. At a time when labor-costs were almost prohibitive, the country was flooded with the cheapest and nastiest products that we shall ever see, let us hope, in our time. There were excellent reasons for this state of things, and I am recalling the facts to mind only as an interesting example of this economic paradox; at the time when labor was scarcest and most highly priced, it was feverishly employed in building things of all sorts which were destined to the shortest possible life.

Fashion, it is true, demands rapid changes of style in many things, and shrewd tradesmen play to the full upon this weakness of ours. And then there are the bargain-hunters, who exercise everywhere a powerful influence in lowering the quality of purchasable things. To attract them, the merchant and manufacturer employ every possible device to achieve the last word in style, and yet cheapen to the last degree in quality the product of human labor.

Our newspapers, now one of the great American industries, are mainly given to the task of agitating these frenzied folk, who are forever seeking bargains and never finding them, forever buying bargains and never getting them. The prices of every imaginable article fill the pages of our papers; and while good quality is, in reality, nearly always cheap, and poor quality nearly always expensive, price nearly always determines the sale.

But the mob, however imposing, is never the majority; and, although it is true that the creatures of fashion and the victims of bargains may be numbered by the million, there yet remains a considerable portion of the public which is protesting more and more audibly against fraudulent practices, misrepresentation, and inferior quality. Moreover, among people of taste and intelligence, both rich and poor, good, sound, well-made products always find appreciative buyers. The desire for new and more fashionable articles accounts for much wasted labor, but surely not for the prevalence of bad paving, jerry-built houses, substitulion, adulteration, and many other evil practices which habitually victimize the public.

To determine what this policy of our merchants and manufacturers costs this nation annually would be an intricate problem in economics. Perhaps it can never be exactly measured, but we know, if a group of laborers produces something that lasts a day and might have been made to last a month, that that labor must be expended thirty times in order to render the same service. Even if labor in certain fields were made to go only twice or thrice as far by the use of better materials, the annual saving to the public would be immense.

The few precious articles of furniture which I possess promise to be as useful to my children as they are to me. The cost of the labor in some oak chairs, supposed to be three hundred years old, which I use daily in my dining-room, was probably only a few shillings, and yet, had it been three hundred dollars, the age and sturdy endurance of these chairs would have made it cheap labor.

If I purchase a suit which lasts me a year, the cost of the labor employed in its making may be exorbitant. If the suit, lasts me two years, it may be reasonable. If the suit lasts me three years, it may be cheap labor.

Obviously, it is not so much a question of the high price of labor as of the poor quality of material, which makes the cost of modern production so great a burden upon the consumers. It would, perhaps, be impossible to double the life of the products of the several million workers engaged in those industries where durability in the product is desirable, yet, supposing it could be done in the case of, let us say, three million workers, it. is startling to realize that the saving would approximate $2,000,000,000 yearly.

IV

British tradesmen have never been as successful as our own merchants in putting over the ‘cheap and nasty,’ as Charles Kingsley used to call the products of the sweatshops. Jerrybuilt houses have always aroused the indignant clamor of the English public. Poor quality may at any moment be openly rebuked in a letter to the Times. The English newspapers are not mainly billboards camouflaged as newssheets and insinuated into one’s home. The front windows of a department store do not stare us in the face as we turn over the pages of our favorite journal. Advertisements have their modest place, but the more reliable merchants rarely use this method of attracting trade, and the English public is as suspicious of those in business who blow their own horn as we are of doctors and dentists who do likew ise. Quality rather than style or price has ever been the object of the most active demand. Consequently, men of business seek above all things to establish a lasting reputation for themselves by the high quality of their output. Everyone in England seems to know the men who build the best boots, guns, rods, golf clubs, and so on. And rarely does one see in the advertisements the names of the most reliable tradesmen in any line.

By keeping the consumer’s mind only on price, and by constantly advertising, unscrupulous merchants can keep going for a long time; but high quality and entirely satisfied customers are essential to men of business who do not use newspapers and magazines to entice the public. Completely satisfied customers have kept many British firms going and prosperous for a century or more.

Notwithstanding that the standards of trade are higher in England than here, nearly every product of industry there has been the subject of lamentation since the introduction of the modern factory-system. John Ruskin and, later, William Morris were among the most severe critics of the quality of British products. When Morris built his famous Red House at Upton, he was forced to build the furniture, to weave the draperies, to make his own glass, and I know not what else, in order to get the quality and design which he desired. He found poor materials and bad workmanship in nearly every craft in which he was interested, — and they were many, — and in order to get what he wanted he was forced to make it himself. The happy result of this necessity was to produce in him the master craftsman of his time. He made a profession of household decoration, and, in his shops at Merton, he designed and executed carpets, embroiberies, tiles, furniture, printed cotton-goods, paper hangings, figured woven stuffs, velvets and cloths for upholstery, painted-glass windows, and tapestries woven in the high-warp loom. Morris died nearly thirty years ago, but the products of his shops — even his draperies, carpets, and furniture—bring prices to-day, wherever such things are dealt in, far above what they brought fresh from his hand.

V

I am not, however, so pessimistic as my words might lead one to believe. We are, I like to think, on the eve of better things. In the darkest days of the late war, when prices were soaring and no one seemed powerful enough to stay their flight, the Housewives’ League suddenly sprang into existence. Once again — because such things have happened before— it was definitely shown that consumers, when organized, can exercise a powerful influence upon the trend of prices and the methods of trade. Other things also promise better days. There is hardly a trade which does not now employ efficiency experts for the purpose of studying and eliminating waste, wherever possible. Mr. Herbert Hoover recently asked the American Engineering Council, and instructed the employees in his own Department at Washington, to study and report upon certain forms of economic waste and upon the most practical methods of reform. The newspapers are beginning to refer to these activities as the New Conservation.

Fortunately, Mr. Hoover is practical in whatever he undertakes, as one would expect him to be from his education and training; and he has assailed his quarry at exactly those points where it seems most likely that ore is to be found. His first appeal is made to the self-interest of the capitalists and he points out various ways in which their profits may be increased by the elimination of waste. So far as this goes, it is excellent; but he will, I imagine, meet with difficulties in dealing with unemployment, which he speaks of as the greatest of all wastes, and also with purposely restricted effort, which, under certain conditions, becomes the most effective form of sabotage.

Mr. Hoover reminds us that ‘Labor once lost is lost forever’ — a thought that might profitably be placarded all over the country, and kept at all times uppermost in our minds. Unhappily, the saving of labor for the public weal is not a matter that appeals to the selfinterest of the capitalists. But, while they will not be benefited to an extent sufficient to arouse their active support, by reducing unemployment the community as a whole would make an immense saving. Yet I think it is not too much to say that, if we have lost during the last two years by unemployment more than we can compute, we have lost even more by employing on poor materials the millions of workers who have been actively engaged in production during the same period. The general public would certainly be aroused if Mr. Hoover should have his Department place in his hands a carefully prepared report upon this subject. The cost of labor is high in this country, not so much because of the wages it receives, nor yet because of whatever lack of effort it may put forth, but chiefly because the product of this labor is not as lasting as it should be.

For wages paid, no matter how high, the entrepreneur is usually reimbursed; but the consumer must pay, not only for high-priced labor, but also for the wretched quality and poor material upon which this labor is so often squandered.

The problems involved in so simple an economic question as the one under consideration are far more complicated than they appear at first thought. For instance, if we could achieve immortality for all the products of human effort what a misfortune it would be! We might then see the end of progress, and the world littered with our feeble and awkward first attempts to accomplish something useful. The mere thought of it causes one to shudder. It would not have been wise to make the first steam-engines and motor-cars everlasting. It is better at times to build only for our own day. New devices, inventions, and ideas, constantly issuing from the ingenious mind of man, will make many things upon which we pride ourselves to-day utterly useless to-morrow. Trinity Church, at the head of Wall Street, is sometimes used as an example of the folly of making things too durable; but the point is not a good one. Trinity Church is a typical case of that waste which must ever result from building in the wrong spot. By foresight and proper planning much of this sort of waste could be eliminated, but by no means all. Necessary changes in the growth of any great city will force us to demolish, from time to time, many fine structures. But while due allowance must be made often for the necessity — and, indeed, the great value and economy even — of change, careful students could find a thousand ways in which we as a nation could be enriched by adding to the life of the products of labor.

Heretofore, I have dwelt only upon the loss of that labor actually employed in making short-lived articles for our consumption. But there is a further loss in providing factories, fuel, light, machinery, transportation, bookkeeping, salesmen, and what not, to make and dispose of several articles where one might have sufficed. It is also worth noting that, in times of prosperity, we often overreach ourselves by building too many factories, opening too many stores, drilling too many oil-wells, and developing too much coal and ore. In order to be in position to supply any demand that may arise, we keep our industries ready for expansion. For such occasions there must be also, standing by, a large reserve of unemployed. The cost to society of this sort of thing is heavy. Labor must suffer hunger and distress, the shareholders loss of dividends, and the consumers generally must bear the burden of paying interest, taxes, insurance, and profits upon capital that might better be used in ways more socially useful.

Socialists maintain that the evils I have dwelt upon cannot be remedied in a capitalist society. Production for profit must always defraud both the worker and the consumer, they insist. Manufacturers, builders, contractors, merchants, and all others who make profil the chief aim of their lives, will not be interested in serving mankind if it cuts into the net return upon their capital. Moreover, it is said that competition among the capitalists themselves prevents any considerable improvement being made in the quality of production. Price decides in most cases whether or not a sale is made, and the most unscrupulous producer has consequently the best chance to survive.

But there is at least this much of error in these indictments: the producer must create what the public wants. When the public refuses to accept anything of inferior quality, business will hasten to mend its ways. Attempts to eliminate profits and to render better public service by municipal ownership and coöperative production have been successful abroad, but for some reason they have, with few exceptions, failed rather miserably in this country. It, would seem, therefore, that we must devise some new method of forcing capitalism to serve better the publicneeds.

Education and organization would seem to be the most practical and effective way of accomplishing this end. The taste, intelligence, and judgment of the public must be improved before the standards of trade can be raised.

If the press would undertake such a task, much could be accomplished in a very short time; but we can hardly hope for this. In some manner the buyers themselves must be brought together.

Perhaps the housewives of America, who are, after all, the buyers, could be organized into a National Consumers’ League, and employ experts to make inquiries into the best materials obtainable and executives to direct the buying of its members. Upon the payment of merely nominal dues, millions of women could be kept informed us to the best method of employing their funds to effect an improvement in the standards of trade and the quality of production. The first gain would surely be the elimination of adulteration, substitution, and other fraudulent practices. The manufacturers and merchants who habitually deceive the public could not long survive. This would be a real achievement; but perhaps even more important would be the support that millions of buyers would bring to the aid of those conscientious producers and tradesmen who, while seeking their legitimate profit, desire also to serve their patrons honestly and well.