The Arizona copper camp., 1920-03-27
WALL STREET SERMONS |
(By William Peter Hamilton)
A Problem of Modern production

j towards CASTLE The preacher
could say pretty much what he liked,
and any interruption from the congre-
cation was construed as "bawling" by
the courts and punished accordingly.
But writings sermons in the Wall
Street Journal is a different matter
The preacher is open to comment and
criticism from people who can write
much better sermons than himself
Sometimes they take a form of com.
pliment which may lure the preacher
out of his depth.
A Thought from President Eliot
Charles W. Elidt, president -emer-
titus of Harvard, says:
"In the Wall Street Journal of Feb
ruary IA appears a Wall Street SER
mon by William Peter Hamilton That
sermon deals in plain fashion with the
fundamental labor trouble which orig
mated with union labor, but has now
spread to multitudes of laboring peo-
pie who have never been organized
1t deals with a great evil which the
factory system has developed in the
manufacturing nations, namely the
reduction of the individuals daily
work to small number of move.
ments which soon become automatic,
which can be acquired in a few days
:. or even hours, and can never possess
;r+o
or allow him to take any joy or salts
faction in his work. What the labor
ing classes need in this distracted and
suffering world is again to do good
work for good works sake This ar
ticle describes with the utmost accu-
racy the evil in the present eindus-
trial world; but the proper compass
of the article did not permit Mr. Ham
ilton to describe the remedy. Will
he not go on in another sermon to
deal with the remedy in plain terms?"
The Workers Vacant Mind
This is a large order, and no one
realizes it with more rumility and
trepidation than the present writer.
1t is the evil of modern production
that labor is specialized SO completely
that the motions of the worker be-
come merely mechanical, calling for
no intellectual effort. There is a
worker in factory not far from New
| York with what amounts to single
motion. The factory is producing ball
bearings. A touch of his hand upon
the lever releases a plunger and
stamps out a cup for the ball. He
does not even see his finished product
1t passes, away Immediately along
travelling machinery to the next work
er, who adds a flange.
What is occupying the mind of this
worker throughout the long day? Is
he thinking of baseball or the last
moving picture show, or the girl he
means to marry, or the man she means
to marry, or the sick mother at home,
or the expected baby, or even the last
lecture in the night school? So far
as his occupation is concerned, his
mind is vacant, an empty hall where
all sorts of devil may dance. Who
can read that human heart? Ger
tainly not the preacher here, or that
preacher to whom the worker listens
with such avidity-the labor agitator
To those of us whose life and inter
ests are so largely intellectual, how
intolerable would such a mental con
dition be! We know that if we are
to keep our minds free from evil
thoughts we must fill them with good
ones. But does he know?
How to Fill His Mind
Remember that this is called skilled
labor, small as is the skill required.
The worker is producing part of some
thing of ultimate usefulness, not max
ing ropes of sand or rolling Sisyphus
stone up an impossible hill His mind
is container for potential dynamite,
as we'll as for things lovely and fruit
full. The problem then seems to be
how to fill his mind worthily. Every
| .
has an inescapaEle moral side. 1t is
not difficult to see that something
more is required here than a cut-and-
dried system of settling labor dis
putes.
Who is this brothers keeper? The
deepest moral law says that he shall
have one, and we all require one, un-
less society is to- fall to pieces from
an excess of the wrong kind of in
dividualism. DR.. Eliot Justly con-
dennis the doctrines of the strike, the
limited output and the closed shop,
with the demoralizing teaching which
goes with them, as being among the
things we have to combat if we are to
save this denatured worker from his
self-chosen leaders and himself.
Responsibility of the Public