Omaha daily bee., 1920-02-27

employers and workers. and is
spreading with great rapidity.
Today the two ideas-democracy
versus autocracy-are struggling
for mastery in American industry.
Upon the issue hangs, to large ex-
tent, the future welfare and progress
of the nation.
Need of World.
The great need of world that is
short of clothing, food, housing,
manufactured materials of all kinds,
is more production.
The old autocratic method of con-
troll has been weighed in the bal
ance and found wanting. 1t has
been inefficient and wasteful to a de-
gree that few people realize. Scien-
fists in industry have declared that
our industrial plants are producing
only about quarter as much as they
might produce, without a cent of
additional capital, if methods OF
handling both machinery and per-
sonnet were perfected. Morale in
industry has dropped below zero.
Autocratic employers think some
times that when they have pre-
vented labor organization or held it
back they have presented strikes and
secured efficiency; but as a matter
of fact they suffer continually from
a kind of chronic disease of strik-
ing. Experienced men leave their
jobs, and new and inefficient men
have to be brought in and trained
a very expensive process. The 'la-
Dor turnover" today in American
industry is appalling, and labor
turnover is only a chronic phase
of the disease of striking. It is as
though general were trying to
fight battle with half or two-thirds
OF his trained men deserving all the
time, with raw recruits taking their
places! Another element of Grass
inefficiency is to be found in inter-
mittent employment, as in the coal
mining industry; another is the want
of any systematic effort to train and
educate workers to do their work
well instead of carelessly.
Importance of Team Play.
Under the new plan of co-opera-
tive effort production increases with
the new spirit of the shop. Team
play becomes as important to in
dustry as to base ballZteam play
and sacrifice hitting. And with hon
est cooperation the worker will
share in the rewards of the in
creased production resulting from
common effort. Some form of profit
sharing eventually appears in indus
tries where the new system is intro
duced, and this adds further stimu-
lation to efficiency. The autocratic
employer often complains bitterly
that the worker does not produce
as much as he could.
why should ?" asks the worker.
81 get nothing out of it. None of
the profit of added production comes
to me. The employer takes it all"
One of the questions that is al
ways fired straight at the advocate
of the new system by the employer
who is still skeptical about it is this:
Peculiar Difficulties.
'Now, that's all right in the cloth
lug trades-or at Wappingers Falls
or in the Dennison Manufacturing
company-but it won't work with
us"-and he begins to tell of his pc
culiar difficulties and of how unusu-
ally ignorant his workers are, and
how atrocious are the labor leaders
he has to deal with. Or he says that
the owner of such-and-s4ch a plant
IS ricn and can afford to experiment.
The trouble with many employers
IS that they want to, be absolutely
assured of success before they ven
ture, and that isn't the way the
world is Quilt
Nevertheless, it is a fact that a
scheme which succeeds in one in
dustry may fail in another. There
IS the hackneyed contract between
4 water power plant with an enor-
nous investment of capita! and a
aDor force Of half a dozen men, and
4 laundry with little or no capital in
vested and a large number of work.
.rs No mechanical plan can fit
both cases.
Industry is as various as life itself;
wholly different groups of conditions
present themselves; for example, in
The building trades, in public service
corporations, like railroads; in gov
eminent or municipal employment.
Small town and small factory condi-
lions are wholly different from those
in the great steel and textile indus
tries.
No Panaceas Will Suffice.
No mere mechanism-especially
no patent panacea, and there are
patent panaceas in this department
of life as in any other-will solve
the problem. Everything depends
upon the spirit of approach, the
attitude of employer and worker. If
there is a real desire for co-opera-
ton, a genuine wish to substitute a
democratic for an autocratic point
of view, the method will soon ap-
pear. Each situation must be stud
led for itself. 1t is a wholesome
sign in America that we are taking
hold of the problem in the American
way-experimentally, locally, with
small respect for former experience
and with little attention to theories
"a mehod which irritates some
critics who want US to think
through" and to shave a program"
like the Germans or the British.
The variety and enthusiasm of the
experimentation in America seem,
however, a sign of health. We are
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