The labor journal. [volume] (Everett, Wash.) 1909-1976, 1914-06-19
A CALL TO REASON
Efficiency Wrongly Directed a
Menace to Public Welfare.
IMPORTANCE OF BALANCE.
Business Health Demands That Pro-
duction and Consumption Be Equal
ized--Reduced Hours of Work Will
Eliminate Enforced ldeness.

Eliminate Enforced ldleneSs.
Business and social reformers and
pseudo economists just now seem to be
obsessed with the idea of efficiency"
1t is on the tip of thousands of tongues
in the industrial world, and well mean
ing people of philanthropic natures are
establishing vocational schools" to
provide efficiency for the young and
thus fit them for life's industrial battle.
But they have an entire misconcep-
ton of the general effect of efficiency
and its responsibility for present condi-
tons. Efficiency lies at the root of ev-
cry great business and industrial prob
lem of the day, writes A. A. Hill In
the Auto Dealer.
Efficiency is responsible for price cut
ting so ruinouS that already legal meth
DDS are being taken in some of the
states as well as by the federal gov
eminent. to prevent it.
Efficiency is responsible for the great
trusts and business combinations and
for the ruinous competition that pre-
ceded them. an evil, by the way. that
neither the sherman law nor any other
INV yet enacted Ut suggested Is Hheiy
to dispel
These are few of the things that eff
fciency is responsible for, and yet with
an efficiency three times greater than
twenty-five years ago and from five to
ten times greater than fifty or seventy
five years ago there is a sudden yearn-
ing to make man still more efficient
Recognizing an industrial condition
that is fast becoming intolerable and
that is menacing in the extreme, good
people are doing all in their power to
intensity it,
But don't you believe in efficiencyT
we now hear some one ask. OF course
we believe in efficiency, and any one
who propounds such a question must
fail utterly to get our viewpoint How
can any sane man not believe in eff
cheney and not favor it?
Yet let us understand its relation to
business and to the public welfare. Let
us make it our servant and not our
master; let it be of public advantage
not of public injury.
Ask any manufacturer. whether it be
of automobiles or things Of less value
if he has any difficulty in producing all
he can sell. and if he replies frankly
ard honestly he will say his chief
problem is not to produce what he can
sell. but to sell what he can produce.
Nor is there an exception to this condi
ton save in the single instance of farm
products 81
When business men find it necessary
to ignore the law of supply and de
mand they cast off from the moorings
of reason and safety and with a rud
derless ship sail out into an unknown
and uncharted sea. When price and
value part company justice is at once
superseded by impulse. An impulse is
equally demoralizing in business wheth-
er it takes the form of charity or of
parSimony.
Efficiency should produce leisure, the
blessing of civilization, and not en-
forced idlenesS.. its curse. 1t should
produce that competition among bust
ness men which is the life of trade and
not its death. Any efficiency that is
not followed by corresponding lessen
ing of the hours of work is a public in
jury and not benefit.
We fancy some one is asking how the
increased leisure will be employed by
the workers, and we reply that it will
probably be employed much as is their
present leisure-in good. bad and indif-
ferent ways. But no matter how it be
employed, it will be far better than the
present condition of enforced idleness
and infinitely better than the present
tendency toward revolution, anarchy
and sabotage villainy.
Any increase in efficiency beyond the
normal power of public consumption
that is not followed by correspond
ing decrease in the hours of work
leads to enforced idleness, the curse Of
civilization, rather than to leisure, the
blessing of civilization.
The great law of balance is just as
important in the industrial and the
business world as it is in the world of
nature. Balance is life and health;
out of balance is disease and death.
When the human body is out of equi
librium it is out of health; when the
business or industrial body is out of
equilibrium it is diseased.
There is but one way to restore the
business body to health. Let demand
and supply be kept in a comparative
equality of relations. Confused issues
and wrong headed methods have never
been wanting in connection with re-
form movements. But no reform can
ever be reached until effects are distin-
guished from causes and remedies are
applied that will aim at causes rather
than at effects.
God never gave man the inventive
genius or the power to produce beyond
his needs for his injury or for his en-
slavement. Reduce the hours of work
! until there is no enforced idleness and
the present industrial menace will be
quickly dispelled. Then and then only
will the industrious get their reward
and the lazy their punishment. Then
and then only will business be again
done upon a safe and sane footing.