[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
the employees and asking himself, How little can I get them to take? Nor the employee by
glaring back and asking, How much can I force him to give? Eventually both will have to turn
to the business and ask, How can this industry be made safe and profitable, so that it will be able
to provide a sure and comfortable living for all of us?
But by no means all employers or all employees will think straight. The habit of acting
shortsightedly is a hard one to break. What can be done? Nothing. No rules or laws will effect the
changes. But enlightened self-interest will. It takes a little while for enlightenment to spread. But
spread it must, for the concern in which both employer and employees work to the same end of
service is bound to forge ahead in business.
What do we mean by high wages, anyway?
We mean a higher wage than was paid ten months or ten years ago. We do not mean a higher
wage than ought to be paid. Our high wages of to-day may be low wages ten years from now.
If it is right for the manager of a business to try to make it pay larger dividends, it is quite as right
that he should try to make it pay higher wages. But it is not the manager of the business who pays
the high wages. Of course, if he can and will not, then the blame is on him. But he alone can
never make high wages possible. High wages cannot be paid unless the workmen earn them.
Their labour is the productive factor. It is not the only productive factor poor management can
waste labour and material and nullify the efforts of labour. Labour can nullify the results of good
management. But in a partnership of skilled management and honest labour, it is the workman
who makes high wages possible. He invests his energy and skill, and if he makes an honest,
wholehearted investment, high wages ought to be his reward. Not only has he earned them, but he
has had a big part in creating them.
It ought to be clear, however, that the high wage begins down in the shop. If it is not created there
it cannot get into pay envelopes. There will never be a system invented which will do away with
the necessity of work. Nature has seen to that. Idle hands and minds were never intended for any
one of us. Work is our sanity, our self-respect, our salvation. So far from being a curse, work is
the greatest blessing. Exact social justice flows only out of honest work. The man who
contributes much should take away much. Therefore no element of charity is present in the
paying of wages. The kind of workman who gives the business the best that is in him is the best
kind of workman a business can have. And he cannot be expected to do this indefinitely without
proper recognition of his contribution. The man who comes to the day's job feeling that no matter
how much he may give, it will not yield him enough of a return to keep him beyond want, is not
in shape to do his day's work. He is anxious and worried, and it all reacts to the detriment of his
work.
But if a man feels that his day's work is not only supplying his basic need, but is also giving him
a margin of comfort and enabling him to give his boys and girls their opportunity and his wife
some pleasure in life, then his job looks good to him and he is free to give it of his best. This is a
good thing for him and a good thing for the business. The man who does not get a certain
satisfaction out of his day's work is losing the best part of his pay.
For the day's work is a great thing a very great thing! It is at the very foundation of the world; it
is the basis of our self-respect. And the employer ought constantly to put in a harder day's work
than any of his men. The employer who is seriously trying to do his duty in the world must be a
hard worker. He cannot say, I have so many thousand men working for me. The fact of the
matter is that so many thousand men have him working for them and the better they work the
busier they keep him disposing of their products. Wages and salaries are in fixed amounts, and
this must be so, in order to have a basis to figure on. Wages and salaries are a sort of profit-
sharing fixed in advance, but it often happens that when the business of the year is closed, it is
discovered that more can be paid. And then more ought to be paid. When we are all in the
business working together, we all ought to have some share in the profits by way of a good
wage, or salary, or added compensation. And that is beginning now quite generally to be
recognized.
There is now a definite demand that the human side of business be elevated to a position of equal
importance with the material side. And that is going to come about. It is just a question whether it
is going to be brought about wisely in a way that will conserve the material side which now
sustains us, or unwisely and in such a way as shall take from us all the benefit of the work of the
past years. Business represents our national livelihood, it reflects our economic progress, and
gives us our place among other nations. We do not want to jeopardize that. What we want is a
better recognition of the human element in business. And surely it can be achieved without
dislocation, without loss to any one, indeed with an increase of benefit to every human being.
And the secret of it all is in a recognition of human partnership. Until each man is absolutely
sufficient unto himself, needing the services of no other human being in any capacity whatever,
we shall never get beyond the need of partnership.
Such are the fundamental truths of wages. They are partnership distributions.
When can a wage be considered adequate? How much of a living is reasonably to be expected
from work? Have you ever considered what a wage does or ought to do? To say that it should pay
the cost of living is to say almost nothing. The cost of living depends largely upon the efficiency
of production and transportation; and the efficiency of these is the sum of the efficiencies of the
management and the workers. Good work, well managed, ought to result in high wages and low
living costs. If we attempt to regulate wages on living costs, we get nowhere. The cost of living is
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]