<h2>CHAPTER 20</h2>
<h3>LABOR AND CLASSES OF LABORERS</h3>
<h4>§ I. RELATION OF LABOR TO WEALTH</h4>
<div class="sidenote">Work and play defined and distinguished</div>
<p>1. <i>Labor is any human effort having an aim or purpose outside of
itself.</i> It is difficult to define satisfactorily the term labor. No
definition will quite mark off all the cases. The efforts put forth by
men may be classified according as they are pleasant in themselves, and
according as they have separable useful results. These two factors
combine to form four groups of actions.</p>
<div class="center">
<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
<tr><td align="left">Effort</td><td align="left">Objective result sought</td><td align="left">Name of action</td></tr>
<tr><td align="left">1. Pleasurable</td><td align="left">Not useful</td><td align="left">Play</td></tr>
<tr><td align="left">2. Pleasurable</td><td align="left">Useful</td><td align="left">Labor</td></tr>
<tr><td align="left">3. Painful</td><td align="left">Useful</td><td align="left">Labor</td></tr>
<tr><td align="left">4. Painful</td><td align="left">Not useful</td><td align="left">No special name</td></tr>
</table></div>
<p>The fourth combination is not found in rational life, for no motive
exists to do a painful act for a useless result. Let us consider the
other three.</p>
<div class="sidenote">Play</div>
<p>The first group comprises most of the sports, games, and pastimes found
in every land and time. In the mere putting forth of the powers of mind
and muscle there is a joy felt by children and men of all races, and
this is heightened by companionship, emulation, and even by a spice of
danger.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</SPAN></span> Play is not dependent on a useful objective result later to be
enjoyed, but, like beauty, is its own excuse for being. The tired
student goes out-of-doors to bat the tennis-ball, making no change in
the material world, except to wear out his shoes and to lose the ball,
but finding that hour rich in the joy of life. If properly chosen, play
strengthens and vivifies both soul and body, leaving an afterglow of
health and happiness. The choice of sports and temperance in their
pursuit are among the surest tests of wisdom in men and in societies. A
love of vigorous play no less than the power of sustained work, marks
the dominant and progressive peoples of the earth.</p>
<div class="sidenote">Labor as pleasure</div>
<p>Acts in the second group give pleasure and at the same time leave an
objective result. The hunter gets more pleasure if he returns with
well-filled bags of game, but the distinction between the sportsman and
the "pot-hunter" is not hard to find. The one has his joy in the sport,
the other in the material results of the sport. This kind of action
presents some puzzling cases, but in general must be classed as labor,
since labor is to be judged by the objective economic results rather
than by the pleasure of the act itself.</p>
<div class="sidenote">Labor as sacrifice</div>
<p>In a third class are the acts that are painful in themselves, that are
done unwillingly, but that leave a pleasurable result. Unfortunately a
large part of the actions of men are of this class, which to most minds
is the typical labor.</p>
<div class="sidenote">Joy in work is the ideal</div>
<p>There is thus labor that is pleasurable in itself and labor that is
painful though it leads to a desirable result. The social ideal clearly
is that all human labor should be made pleasurable. Social dreamers love
to picture a day when all shall find for effort a full reward in the
mere doing,—the reward of the artist, of the scholar, of the saint, in
addition to the objective result in economic wealth. Probably we are
slowly nearing this ideal. Not only in the professions and in the
esthetic arts, but in commerce, in mechanics, and in the humblest walks
of life are found men free from envy,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</SPAN></span> rejoicing in their daily tasks.
Such is the normal feeling of the healthy optimist. And yet in every
serious occupation there are numberless moments and occasions when the
spirit flags and only hard necessity holds men to their tasks. The
dilettante does not go far or long or steadily; the real tasks of the
world are done by men that labor, now with joy, now wearily.</p>
<div class="sidenote">The distinction between men and things</div>
<p>2. <i>The agents of production compose two great species, material goods
and human services.</i> Our discussion of consumption goods, rent, and
interest has been an analysis of the nature and uses of material goods.
We now come to the other great species, human services, which comprise
those acts of men (one's own or other's) that minister to the
gratification of wants. There are also misdirected efforts, and evil
deeds which are "disutilities" to all but the doer.</p>
<p>The distinction between men and things is fundamental in modern economic
discussion where each man is looked upon as free. It is not so clear
where slavery exists and the master looks in the same way upon the
services of his cattle, of his chattel slaves, and of his land. Even in
the freest society, man's services are compared purely as to their
utility, with the uses of other parts of the material world. It is said
that the price of mules at the Pennsylvania mines has been affected by
immigration, because a man and a mule sometimes represent
interchangeable services. But in the study of political economy the
distinction between men and other material things must never be lost
sight of; they are the two fundamental classes of economic agents, the
one being solely a means to an end, the other being an end in itself.</p>
<div class="sidenote">Rent and wages mutually affect each other</div>
<p>3. <i>Labor and material wealth are complementary and indispensable to
each other in most of their uses.</i> The discussion of material wealth and
its value apart from the subject of labor, of the problem of rent and
interest apart from that of wages, does not imply that this material
wealth would have the same value in real life if labor were absent. As
one field affects the value of another field, and one good,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</SPAN></span> by
substitution, the value of another good, so does labor affect material
wealth. Some material wealth can be used apart from labor, but most of
it must be used in combination with some labor. Rent, therefore, is not
determined in concrete cases apart from men and their services. It is
allowable, however, in abstract analysis, to simplify the question by
leaving out a difficult complication, and thus to set forth more clearly
the logical bearing and effect of a certain factor.</p>
<div class="sidenote">Certain shares of the product are logically attributed to
each</div>
<p>Each of two kinds of agents used together affects the utility of the
other, and the value of the product. If neither can be credited with the
whole value, how is any distribution to be made between them? It is not
possible to measure their technical services in the product, but it
usually is possible to gage their marginal utility under particular
conditions. Flour, water, and labor are needed to make biscuits; but
water being a free agent, does not enter into the combination with any
marginal utility. A match also is almost indispensable to start the fire
(and who has not seen the time when he would give far more for a match
than for a bucket of coal), but as things usually are, the match is
credited with a value of a very small fraction of a cent. Again, how is
to be measured the economic service of the tree and of the labor needed
for gathering its fruits? There is here suggested the superficial aspect
of what is known as the problem of complementary values. Where two or
more things are indispensable to a product, how much shall be credited
to each?</p>
<div class="sidenote">Labor gratifies directly and indirectly</div>
<p>4. <i>Human service has the same general relation to wants that material
goods have, affording gratification either directly or indirectly.</i> It
is axiomatic that to be "economic goods" human efforts like material
goods must afford utilities whose importance is felt. Many services give
pleasure directly and are immediately consumed. A tropical potentate has
an attendant to fan him, and another to carry an umbrella; a humble
citizen is shaved, doctored, sung to, and<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</SPAN></span> played for. The gratification
in such cases is directly produced in personal comfort, in the
consciousness of heightened beauty, in the feeling of self-esteem. Value
is thus created and consumed immediately, taking no material form apart
from the consumer.</p>
<div class="sidenote">Labor embodied for a time in material form</div>
<p>But the results of most human services may be seen to rest, at least
temporarily, in some material form. Effort is put upon a material thing
to be used later. The work of the waiter in spreading and arranging the
table is not an immediate service, for it is embodied in material form
an hour or two before the meal. The service of cook no less than that of
gardener and butcher, is put into material form before it comes to the
consumer. The woodman fells, cuts up and splits a tree, and piles it at
the door, putting his labor into a utility to be consumed months
afterward. The old economists used to class labor as productive and
unproductive according as it was or was not embodied in material form.
The classing of the services of cook, waiter, valet, etc., as
unproductive seems, even from the old point of view, to have been
inconsistent, and the attempt to distinguish services by any such test
is now wholly given up. Whether the service rests in material form for a
week, a month, a year, or as often happens, for a much longer period, is
not essential. The test of the productiveness of services is not their
embodiment in material form, but their appearance as psychic income,
their ministry to wants. The most varied kinds of human activity may be
unified by this thought in the concept of economic labor.</p>
<h4>§ II. VARIETIES OF TALENTS AND OF ABILITIES IN MEN</h4>
<div class="sidenote">Grades of labor are analogous to grades of wealth</div>
<p>1. <i>As material things differ in their fitness to gratify wants, so do
men differ in their powers of labor.</i> The fields, hammers, plows, tools,
and machinery of different kinds and qualities have been seen to grade
off from the best to the poorest. The poorest, discarded or just about
to be<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</SPAN></span> discarded, are no-rent agents. The utility felt and recognized in
the better qualities is expressed in the rents they yield. Recognizing
the variety and inequality of human talent, some economists of late
speak of the "rent" of ability, meaning that, like land rent, the
greater utility (and corresponding reward) of some labor as compared
with others, reflects the difference in the quality of agents. But this
expression, though often met in contemporary economic writings, is one
to be avoided because it tends to blur the essential distinction between
human and other agents. Pursuing the same analogy some economists have
talked of capitalizing the worker,—expressing in a lump sum the value
of the man as the present worth of the series of incomes which he may be
expected to earn in his working life. This, also, is to be avoided, for
while possibly it is suggestive in studying some problems, it is on the
whole a misleading analogy, dimming the distinction between free-workers
and owned and exchangeable wealth.</p>
<div class="sidenote">Physical differences among men</div>
<p>2. <i>The physical strength of workers differs according to age,
individual, race, and sex.</i> Differences due to age are the most obvious.
The child, at first weak, grows toward his maximum of physical strength,
which he attains before his fullest intellectual capacity. The period of
maximum physical working power lasts fifteen to twenty-five years
according to the individual, and then gradually declines as the old
worker approaches again the inefficiency of the child. Mental efficiency
develops more slowly and longer, the highest qualities of judgment and
wisdom being the fruits only of a life rich in experiences. Families and
strains of stock differ notably in physical and mental powers; one
excels in stature, another in development of muscle. The differences
within families are inexplicable, sometimes one brother excelling in one
thing, the other in another. The physically perfect man is a rare
product. Among three thousand students are but two score endowed with
the remarkable combination of lungs, heart, muscle, nerve, and
character, that makes possible the finest athletes. The national and<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</SPAN></span>
racial differences in working power, even in the simplest tasks, are
marked but difficult to explain, as so many influences of customs,
habits of life, and varieties of diet modify the result. We cannot tell
how much of the Englishman's great superiority over the East Indiaman is
due to individual, native differences of mind and body, how much to the
social environment in which they have lived. Certainly, though, the
difference is not mainly one in size; in the Chinese War the little
brown men of Japan outmarched all the others. Certainly fiber counts for
more than bulk, and character for more than muscle.</p>
<div class="sidenote">Comparative strength of men and women</div>
<p>A difference in the physical strength of the sexes is found in some
degree throughout the world, but it would appear to be far more marked
in civilized than in savage communities. Compare the records at the
Vassar field-games with that of the men in any leading college: in the
hundred-yard dash, fifteen seconds as against ten and a fraction; in the
high jump, forty-eight inches as against six feet and over. The muscular
force of American college women as tested in the Yale and the Oberlin
gymnasiums is but one third that of men, that is, taking all the
students, the weaklings and the little men along with the athletes, and
the women large and small. As to strength of back the average for men is
154 kilograms, for women 54 kilograms; legs, average for men 186,
average for women 76.5; right forearm, average for men 56, average for
women 21.4. This is an abnormal difference. The natural and possible
strength is more nearly attained by men than by women under our social
conditions. Women escape the physical toil which strengthens, but not
the mental strain which kills. Men carry more of the wood, but the women
not less of the worries. A fairer test is applied among peasants in
field-work in France and Germany, where the strength of women is found
to be about two thirds that of men. American women should do and will do
more to attain their natural strength when we attain sounder ideas of
education and saner modes of living.</p>
<div class="sidenote">Talent and training as factors of efficiency</div>
<p>3. <i>Differences in intelligence are a resultant of native<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</SPAN></span> talent and
acquired ability.</i> It is difficult to distinguish these two factors
sharply. Two men sitting side by side in an examination, get the same
grade; one of them has had excellent preparation from childhood, and all
the opportunities that money, travel, and cultured associates can give;
the other, under great difficulties, has prepared in a country district
school with a little coaching now and then, and struggling against great
odds, has at last entered college. The same grade does not mean that
their natural ability or even their efficiency in this particular class,
is equal. Yet the grade is the best expression to be had of their
efficiency in the particular work. Native intelligence shortens the time
needed for preparation in any calling; hastens new methods; decreases
the cost of supervision; saves materials, tools, and time; diminishes
loss from breakage; makes possible the use of finer machinery and better
appliances, and imparts those subtler qualities that distinguish the
best from the mediocre products. Education and native talent are in a
degree interchangeable; one supplements the other. Education increases
adaptability; the trained mind will outstrip the untrained mind of
greater power. It makes direction easier, fits for higher tasks, and
decreases the difficulty of coöperation. Any ability may be helped by
education in the broad and true sense, though a fool cannot be made wise
by training, and though many a potential genius doubtless has been
dwarfed in dusty school-rooms by stupid teachers.</p>
<div class="sidenote">The moral qualities required in industry</div>
<p>4. <i>The moral qualities of the worker are increasingly important as
society grows more complex.</i> The need of a particular moral quality is
relative to the special task in hand. Honesty is needed in the bank
teller, but he need not spoil a good story. The champion broncho-buster
of Arizona is not a Sunday-school superintendent. So, discipline,
obedience, self-control, regularity, and punctuality are needed, for
more and more in these days business is run by the watch; confidence,
patience, good temper, in fact all the virtues in the calendar are
necessary at some time and<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</SPAN></span> place, and most of them are needed all the
time in business. Places may be found in our developed society for those
who are deficient in these qualities (it is fortunate that it is so),
but these are the poorer places. Many men fail to examine the qualities
necessary for success, and do not understand the causes of their own
failure. Blind to their own faults, they are dropped down one notch
after another in the scale of industry, and, equally blind to the
virtues of their successful rivals, they rail against the unjust fates.</p>
<div class="sidenote">The union of many qualities needed</div>
<p>5. <i>Skill and capacity in industrial tasks is a resultant of many
qualities.</i> The simplest task calls for a combination of force and
judgment,—even the digging of a ditch, the raising of a window, or the
fitting of a stovepipe. For most industrial tasks rarer combinations of
qualities are required. The retail clerk must be neat, punctual, polite,
and long suffering. A confidential clerk must have discretion, judgment,
and other moral qualities in an unusual combination. The substitution of
qualities is possible within limits; a rare quality may make amends for
the lack of a commoner one, and a man may, because of peculiar fitness
in some regards, continue to hold a position for which in other ways he
is little fitted. The rarest and most valued worker is one uniting many
good qualities and fitted to deal with emergencies. The economic
efficiency of the worker often is no stronger than its weakest link. A
strong motive for training is offered by the fact that supplying some
one lacking quality may raise the total efficiency in a remarkable
degree.</p>
<div class="sidenote">Inequality of talents shown by biologic studies</div>
<p>6. <i>Biologic studies have of late made clearer the existence and
continuation of the inequality of talents.</i> The political philosophy of
the eighteenth century was based on the idea of natural rights and
natural equality. Adam Smith, accepting the prevailing view, discussed
wages on the assumption that all men had equal natural ability. It is
still a favorite assumption of radical social reformers that the natural
ability of all men is equal, and that all the differences in success
result from political injustice. The study of<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</SPAN></span> biology of late has made
patent the unending differences that prevail throughout the animate
world. No two members of the same family or species are just alike; no
two pigeons have wings of just the same length. Nature by numberless
devices is experimenting constantly with variations on either side of
the established mean. The accepted fact of biologic evolution rests on
the foundation of inequality in structure and powers, making possible
selection and adaptation. Men in all their qualities of mind and body
display this kaleidescopic variety. In all life there is inequality, and
the whole drama of human history as well as that of biologic evolution
must be meaningless or illusory to the man who does not see this truth.
Accustomed now to this point of view, we as inevitably think of the
natural inequalities in men as did Adam Smith of their equality.</p>
<p>This fact does not force to the conclusion that industrial inequality as
it exists to-day, the great disparity of incomes, correctly or justly
reflects the degree of difference in men's qualities, either native or
acquired. It does not follow that a thousand-dollar income represents
ten times the ability of a hundred dollar one—far from it. But to those
who ignore the inequality of men, the whole problem of industrial
remuneration must remain a mystery. A crude socialism is possible only
to those who are blind to the enormous differences in human capacity.</p>
<div class="sidenote">Scarcity of labor is essential to wages</div>
<div class="sidenote">Unlimited demand for labor</div>
<p>7. <i>The scarcity of human services, relative to wants, is the
fundamental fact in the problem of wages.</i> It is clearly seen that some
qualities of service are scarce. Most women will confess that they
cannot warble as Patti could, most men will admit that they have not the
mercantile ability of John Wanamaker. The man of mediocre capacity
recognizes even through the fog of his self-esteem that there is a
reason for the high value of certain rare services. But it must also be
recognized that the commonest services have value only because they are
scarce. There are many things to be done if there were labor enough to
do them. There is<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</SPAN></span> no need to "make work," in the popular sense; it is
here, but labor is lacking to do it. It is true there may be a temporary
superfluity of human labor at a time of an industrial crisis. There is
at all times a superfluity of "useless" human agents whose qualities are
such that they have no net utility. The ignorant, insane, feeble-minded,
vicious, drunken, and debauched, can give to the world only negative
utilities. But services that are in any degree useful are nearly always
in demand, and the higher services are so rare that they are in great
demand. The proverb, "There's always room at the top," is seen to be
true when conditions are thus analyzed. There is a large, though
limited, supply of the commoner kinds of services at the bottom of the
scale, but in every branch of human effort there is a never-ending lack
of that higher qualification and training required for the best
results.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</SPAN></span></p>
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