Connecticut western news., 1917-11-22
CLOSER kINSHIP lS TIE NEW IDEAL IN
 AMERICAN INDUSTRY
Harmony BGt&GC3:l MGN aEd Man. aggmGnt Recognized as a
 Desirable FaDtOry Asset.
IS NOW AA I,..'.'EhTORY L. ITEM
Modern Manufacturer Cultivates Good. Will Of Workers-His Interest No
 Longer Confined to Conversion of Raw Material into Finished Product.

Raw Material into Finished Product
 No established business can operate efficiently without inventory. The in- ventory tells tho Story of whether the business is successful or otherwise. You put almost everything you have in an inventory, and the value that you think tho article bears in relation Go your business.
 But there are many things which go into the composite body of inventory beside personal property. There ij the question of good will. There is the item of the contentment of em- ployees. There is the question of the relation of employer to employee. There is the item of the health hy- giene of artisans. And there is the final item, which is always eloquent, of whether or not the men who work are better citizens in the community iE which they live.
 The time has come and gone when manufacturers are exclusively inter- ested in converting raw into finished product. The time has come when all employers must be. interested in the quality of manhood of the men who work.
 Industrial conservation means the preservation and protection of the lives, liberties and rights of men i1 industry as much as it does the pro- lection of the economic agencies of manufacture It spells industrial in- tegrity. The age of ruthless compe- tition is relegated to the past. The interests of employees and employers are not necessarily identical, but they are mutual. If the humblest employee in any industry is not interested in the success of the concern for which he works he should be eliminated. If the executive of any large industrial concern is not interested in the hum- blest toiler the executive should be eliminated,
 The Meaning of Cooperation.
 The new idea in industry is a closer kinship and deeper appreciation of the necessity for mutuality and co-opera- tion. Cooperation means not merely the physical coordination of industry; it means the spirit with which the la- bor is performed. Cooperation is not a question of wage or hours of labor; it is an agency for the the betterment of employees; stockholders and off, cers. If an industrial concern cannot manufacture good will, it ought to go out of business.
 Industrial conservation means mobi- lizing industrial forces, both internal ly and externally. It means protec- tion, not in the tariff sense of that word but in the sense of establishing an industrial Rock of Gibraltar against the international trade conditions which will follow on the termination of the European war. The vast eco- homie changes to follow the Euro pean conflagration cannot be worked out by a group of men. The test of democracy depends upon the contri- button of everybody interested in the maintenance of Democracy, independ- ent of political sectional or racial considerations.
 Just as someti,les industrial plants are reorganized, so now American in dustry is undergoing a process of re- organization. It is no longer an age of tho brutality of competition, but of skill in bringing about coordination.
 Business now means making better men and better conditions for labor, more highly specialized vocational training, and non-provincial outlook and realization that the eventual great ness of American industry cannot be measured in terms of dollars and cents, but in terms of the manhood of the men who constitute the fibre inter- woven in our scheme of democracy.
 Welfare of Worker Considered.
 Measures designed to reduce the cost of accidents in industry, the high est degree of safety apparatus for workmen, the study of fatigue and its consequences on the operative, the de- velopment of the individual efficiency of workmen, the problem of sickness insurance, either through voluntary or involuntary plans; the study of the economic factors involved in shorter working day, the standardization of cost systems and dozens of oth- CT problems are all part and parcel of industry today.-IndustrtdI Conser0G- ton, Ne1o York.