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I come now to the second test which I conceive
should be applied to all employers' policies, namely
this: do they tend to promote good-will between
employers and employed? After all, the great
thing to be done to make the industries of any
people effective is to secure the good-will of the
men and women that labor in those industries.
What is the reason that slavery as an industrial
method is
NOTORIOUSLY UNPRODUCTIVE
and costly? There is no good-will in it. What
is the reason that any man who feels that he is
working for the direct benefit of his family and
himself will work a deal harder than a man who
has no such belief? It is all a question of goodwill.
If all the work-people in our country, organized
or unorganized, felt to-day that they were
working for their own uplifting and then their
own happiness, they would work with such a will
that the productiveness and general efficiency of
labor would mount to an inconceivable height.
The ultimate question about the industrial situation
is, therefore, how to promote good-will in
labor. We must all desire that every individual
employer should constantly bear in mind this test
of his own policy, and of his association's policy—
does it tend toward good-will between the employer
and the employed? How can this tendency
be secured? Only by thoughtfulness, consideration
and sympathy, and by constant care for
right relations between the employer and employed.
How can such right feelings be expressed?
Not by any form of benevolence or condescension,
and not by the giving of favors, but
by the recognition of rights and the giving of
earned privileges. Of course we all believe that
the arrangements called "welfare" arrangements
tend in the direction I am now advocating; but
welfare arrangements should never be presented
as if they were a benevolence. They are really
means of promoting efficiency and productiveness,
and of securing the natural good-will and the
natural co-operative effort between employer and
employed. All health arrangements come under
this head. The great depressing influences that
DIMINISH NATIONAL PRODUCTIVENESS
are low bodily condition, sickness and premature
death, all of which result from failure to take
care of the bodily vigor and the animal spirits of
the workmen.
All contrivances which make the workman feel
that he has a personal share in the success of the
shop or factory in which he labors tend strongly
to the promotion of good-will. We need, however,
many more inventions of this sort. We
already have the method of piece work, of contract
work by groups of workmen, the premium
method, the method of commission on sales, the
rising wage with length of service, and the sharing
THE COAL TRADE BULLETIN. 33
of profits with the employes. All these are experimental.
There is a difficulty with all of
them—namely, that a method which works well
when the establishment is profitable may work ill
or not at all, when the same establishment is unprofitable.
New inventions and new experiments
are needed in this direction, new means of promoting
the sense of common interest between the
employer and employed. The problem of establishing
good will between the employer and the
employed will, however, take us much farther
than welfare arrangements and profit-sharing.
The employer will have to interest himself not
only in the efficient productiveness of his workmen
while they are at work, but in their social
surroundings and their opportunities for rational
pleasure. There is no separating attention to the
general physical and mental well-being of large
groups of working people from the industrial
problem of establishing good-will. Municipal well
being must be made a part of industrial well
being; and
THE THOUGHTFUL EMPLOYER
will interest himself in the condition of the town
or city where his works are established, and in
the opportunities for enjoyment it affords, just
as he will interest himself in the tidiness and
wholesomeness of his factory, and in the appearance
of the grounds about his works. A dirty,
squalid, ugly town, without parks, playground,
libraries, cheerful schools, gardens, lectures and
concerts, and overhung night and day by a pall
of smoke, can never be the permanent seat of a
prominent industry where reign health and goodwill.
Among sound employers' policies may always be
included their policy in regard to the discipline
of the works or shops, for the reason that this
policy has a great deal to do with the establishment
and maintenance of good-will. It is a reasonable
expectation on the part of workingmen,
who feel that they are in partnership with the
owner, that they should have a right to confer
with him about the rules of the works. It is a
reasonable expectation that complaints should be
promptly attended to and investigated by the
right person— not by the person who is complained
of, or by any impartial and arbitrary
person. It is amazing how rough and thoughtless
many employers have been in this respect.
An employer of many thousands of men in a crude
industry which demands vigor and a certain daring
in the individual workman once told me that
he attributed his exemption for thirty years from
serious labor difficulties to a careful method of
DEALING JUSTLY WITH COMPLAINTS.
The employer's ignorance about just sources
of complaint, or his failure to provide a just
method of dealing with complaints, is the com-