My Life and Work

t so easily say: "I have nothing better or cheaper to sell than any one has." No manufacturer in his right mind wo

g power and the curtailing of the home market? What good is industry if it be so unskillfully managed as not to return a living to everyone concerned? No question is more

a minimum of five dollars; before that we paid whatever it was necessary to pay. It would be bad mor

ip. The moment a man calls for assistance in his business-even though the assistant be but a boy-that moment he has taken a partner. He may himself be sole owner of the resources of the business and sole director of its operations, but only while he remains sole manager and sole producer can he claim complete independence. No man is independent as long as he has to depend on another man to help him. It is a reciprocal relation-the boss is the partner of his worker, the worker is partner of hi

employer's benefit-and not at all for their own. It is a pity that such a feeling should exist. But it does exist and perhaps it has some justification. If an employer urges men to do their best, and the men learn after a while that their best does not bring any reward, then th

well goes dry. And when the well runs dry, those who depend on it go thirsty. And if, perchance, they imagine they can pump one well dry and then jump to some other well, it is only a matter of time when all the wells will be dry. There is now a widespread demand for more justly divided rewards,

o be done? As a rule a business means the livelihood of too many men, to be tampered with. It is criminal to assassinate a business to which large numbers of men have given their labours and to which they have learned to look as their field of usefulness and their source of livelihood. Killing the business by a strike or a lockout does not help. The employer can gai

e? Nothing. No rules or laws will effect the changes. But enlightened self-interest will. It takes a little while for enlightenment to spread.

ean by high

ago. We do not mean a higher wage than ought to be paid. O

never make high wages possible. High wages cannot be paid unless the workmen earn them. Their labour is the productive factor. It is not the only productive factor-poor management can waste labour and material and nullify the efforts of labour. Labour can nullify the results of good management. But

tion. So far from being a curse, work is the greatest blessing. Exact social justice flows only out of honest work. The man who contributes much should take away much. Therefore no element of charity is present in the paying of wages. The kind of workman who gives the business the best that is in him is the best kind of workman a business can have. An

s and girls their opportunity and his wife some pleasure in life, then his job looks good to him and he is free to give it of his best. This is a good t

men working for me." The fact of the matter is that so many thousand men have him working for them-and the better they work the busier they keep him disposing of their products. Wages and salaries are in fixed amounts, and this must be so, in order to have a basis to figure on. Wages and salaries are a sort of profit-sharing fixed in advance, bu

shall take from us all the benefit of the work of the past years. Business represents our national livelihood, it reflects our economic progress, and gives us our place among other nations. We do not want to jeopardize that. What we want is a better recognition of the human element in business. And surely it can be achieved without d

truths of wages. They are

the efficiency of these is the sum of the efficiencies of the management and the workers. Good work, well managed, ought to result in high wages and low living costs. If we attempt to regulate wages on living costs, we get nowhere. The cost of living is a result and we cannot expect to keep a result constant if we keep al

ker's outside obligations. And certainly it ought to be made to take care of the worker's sunset days when labour is no longer possible to him-and should be no longer necessary. And if it is made to do even these, industry will have to be adjusted to a schedule of production, distribution, a

facts. How are you going to figure the contribution of the home to the day's work? You pay the man for his work, but how much does that work owe to his home? How much to his position as a citizen? How much to his position as a father? The man does the work in the shop, but his wife does the work in the home. The shop must pay them both. On what system of figuring is the home going to find its place on the cost sheets of the day's work? Is the man's own livelihood to be regarded as the "cost"? And is his ability to have a home and family the "profit"? Is the profit on a day's work to be computed on a cash basis only, measured by

nergy the day's work takes out of a man. But it is not at all possible accurately to determine how much it will require to put back that energy into him against the next day's demands. Nor is it possible to determine how much of that expended energy he will never be able to get back at all. Economics has never yet devised a sinking fund

an a fraction of the wages that ought to be paid. That is part of the work we have before us. It does not help toward a solution to talk about abolishing the wage system and substituting communal ownership. The wage system is t

s, then that money is going to be spent and it will serve to make storekeepers and distributors and manufacturers and workers in other lines more prosperous and their prosperity will be reflected in our sales. Co

st, divided a percentage of our earnings with the employees. For instance, as long ago as 1909 we distributed eighty thousand dollars on the basis of years of service. A one-year man received 5 per cent. of his year's wages; a two-year man, 7-1/2 per cent., and a three-year ma

tter than a guess. Therefore, starting about 1913 we had time studies made of all the thousands of operations in the shops. By a time study it is possible theoretically to determine what a man's output should be. Then, making large allowances, it is further possible to get at a satisfactory standard output for a day, and, taking into consideration the skill, to arrive at a rate

standard output below which a man is not expected to fall. Were it otherwise, neither the workman nor ourselves would know whether or not wage

-eight hours. This was entirely a voluntary act. All of our wage rates have been voluntary. It was to our way of thinking an act of social justice, and in the last analysis we did it for our own satisfaction of mind. There is a pleasure in feeling that you have made others happy-that you have lessened in som

ards-violating the custom of paying a man the smallest amount he would take. There is nothing to such standards and customs. They have to be wiped out. Some day they will be. Otherwise, we cannot abolish poverty. We made the change not merely because

this one, and hardly any one got the facts quite right. Workmen quite generally beli

e profits had been earned-to approximate them in advance and to add them, under certain conditions, to the wages of those persons

with and taking good

y-two years of age who ar

ars of age, and women who are the

it sharing rate was divided on an hour basis and was credited to the hourly wage rate, so as to give those receiving the lowest hourly rate the largest proportion of profits. It was paid every two weeks with the wages. For example, a man who received thirty-four cents

will do his work aright. And then, too, we wanted to avoid the possibility of lowering the standard of work through an increased wage. It was demonstrated in war time that too quickly increasing a man's pay sometimes increases only his cupidity and therefore decreases his earning power. If, in the beginning, we had simply put the increase in the pay envelopes, then very likely the work standards would have broken down. The pay of about half the men was doubled in the new plan; it might have been taken as "easy

errors. It was expected that in order to receive the bonus married men should live with and take proper care of their families. We had to break up the evil custom among many of the foreign workers of taking in boarders-of regarding their homes as something to make money out of rather than as a place to live in. Boys under eighteen received a bonus if they supported the next of

year-which would be pretty nearly an impossible proposition. Even with the minimum of instruction that is required to master almost any job in our place, we cannot take on a new staff each morning, or each week, or each month; for, although a man may qualify for acceptable work at an acceptable rate of speed within two or three days, he will be able to do more after a year's experience than he did at the beginning. The matter of labour turnover has not

system, but we have not de

It pays. Our profits, after paying good wages and a bonus-which bonus used to run around ten millions a

prying into employees' private concerns is out of date. Men need counsel and men need help, oftentimes special help; and all this ought to be rendered for decency's s

inciple we have changed