We trade position and influence. The evil of the spoils system is not that one gets something for something,--it is that one gets something for something less, or for nothing. Whatever we have to give may be rightly given; the wrong comes when we give it to the idle or unworthy.
When we trade political preferment for high merit, both the office-holders and the country are gainers by the exchange.
Marriage is the great mart of exchange. Here the possessions of one s.e.x are set up against those of the other. Everywhere marriage is spoken of as a good or a bad "bargain." Each man shall say: "Sweetheart, in Myself I offer you the treasures of manhood. I give strength, courage, magnanimity, action, protection, and the indomitable will." Each wife should say: "Dear, in me are all gentleness, courtesy, beauty, grace, patience, mercy, and hope. I, too, am brave, but my courage is of the heart. I, too, am strong-willed, but my will is deep-set in love." As years go on, there comes a time when Love says: "Between us now there is neither mine nor thine. The universe is ours together!"
Human love is not all. There is yet a higher impulse. The most business-like question that ever touches the heart of man is this: For what shall I trade my soul? We hold our souls high: we perceive that eternity itself is not too much to ask. And hence the highest barter is that of the earthly for the spiritual; of the temporal for the unseen and eternal. We say, Give me G.o.d, give me heaven, give me divine and sacrificial Love, and I will give my heart. And thus the last transaction is between G.o.d and the soul. G.o.dliness is great Gain, and to exchange earth for heaven is a satisfying and unregretted Trade.
IV. THE WORLD-MARCH: OF WORKERS
[ARMAGEDON]
Jesus, Thou hast bought us Not with gold or gem, But with Thine own life-blood, For Thy diadem.
With Thy blessing filling Each who comes to Thee, Thou hast made us willing, Thou hast made us free.
By Thy grand redemption, By Thy grace divine, We are on the Lord"s side; Saviour, we are Thine!
Not for weight of glory, Not for crown or palm, Enter we the army, Raise the warrior psalm; But for love that claimeth Lives for whom He died, He whom Jesus nameth Must be on His side.
By Thy love constraining, By Thy grace divine, We are on the Lord"s side; Saviour, we are Thine!
FRANCES RIDLEY HAVERGAL
What is work? Work is energy applied to the creation of either material or immaterial products. The digging of the soil preparatory to raising a corn-crop is work; the making of brooms; the writing of fugues. There is no one who does not work, at one time or another, and a man"s social value depends largely upon the amount of work that he can do.
Even the energy which is seemingly applied to destructive tasks is really subsidiary to a constructive ideal. Thus the hewing of timber is a destructive task, but its object is not to scatter trees around, but to make a clearing on which to plant wheat; or to have lumber, in order to build a house. So, also, we blast rock, in order to get stones for a stone wall, or for the filling of a road-bed. And we rip up old clothes in order to have rags, and to make room in our homes for other things.
Destructiveness from a sheer love of destructiveness is not work--it is vandalism. The true Man works. When Adam"s crook-stick turned over the brown earth to make it fertile, he began the industry of the world. The whole horizon of man"s endeavor is spanned by one word, Work. It has built cities, bridged rivers, united continents, and sent the myriad spindles of trade whirring under a thousand changing skies.
Work is the open-sesame of success. It is curious to see how uneasily some men will roam from one end of the earth to the other, trying to find an easy place, a place where work will not be needed or required.
There is no such place. The higher the honor, the harder the work. The power to work is ordinarily the measure of a man"s possibilities of success. Long hours, hard toil, lack of recognition and appreciation, drudgery, a thousand attempts to one successful issue,--these are the ways in which the colossal achievements of mankind have been built up.
Work, as has well been said, is an ascending stairway. On its broad base are ranged all the mult.i.tudes of the earth. Those who can climb mount the higher and ever-narrowing stair.
The great man can begin anywhere, or with any task. He says, If I am going into the giant-business, I may as well begin now! Born and bred in the forest, he lays hand to his axe, and looking up at some tall oak, cries out, I will begin here! With the first stroke of the axe, success is not less sure than in his last endeavor. Success of the right kind is a scientific achievement.
The line has not yet been drawn, and I doubt whether it ever can be drawn, between productive and non-productive labor. There is a cleavage of tasks, however, which may be approximately expressed, as work that is done for support, for daily bread, and work which is done because certain faculties of mind and heart and soul demand expression, development, and scope. We all have powers which are willing to be set in action primarily for self-preservation--for personal, material, and transitory ends. We are also endowed with faculties which react, primarily, in behalf of universal aims, though that may not debar them from also bringing an advantage to ourselves. In proportion as we are talented, magnanimous, and high-minded, we delight in spending a part of our lives in working for the race.
Thus Th.o.r.eau, when he, "by surveying, carpentry and day-labor of various other kinds," had earned $13.34, was doing income-work, the work by which he had to live. For the same purpose, he worked at raising potatoes, green corn, and peas. When he wrote _Walden_, he did a kind of work which also in time brought him an income. But he did not write _Walden_ for food or money; he wrote it primarily because he liked to write, and for the benefit of mankind.
In order to be contented and happy, each normal adult human being must have at least the chance of doing these two kinds of work. Unless he or she can do income-work, he or she is not economically independent; unless he can do universal work, he is not socially and spiritually free.
Much of the present-day discontent is owing to the fact that these two kinds of work are not represented, as they should be, in every working-life.
The problem in regard to the working-man is not how to pet him, nor to patronize him, but how to educate him and inspire him! He is not a parasite to be fed by the capitalist, nor is the capitalist a parasite upon the working-power of the working-man. Both are men. The problem is, How shall the capitalist lead the n.o.blest, most public-spirited, and helpful life in relation to those in his employ? How shall the working-man lay hold on the best that life can give? How shall he find a work which he is competent to do, and likes to do, and may be supported by doing--and at the same time have a chance to grow; to enter into the large, free culture-life of the world?
The complaint of the working-man, when really a.n.a.lyzed, runs down to this: I do income-work, but it does not bring me bread enough to live.
Not only that, but ground down as I am by toil, all possibility of the larger, universal work is shut away from me. My faculties are atrophied--paralyzed--and hence my soul smoulders with deep and angry discontent. This ceaseless and sordid anxiety for bread cuts me out of my world-life, my world-toil. I cannot do scientific research-work, or write the books and papers that I ought. My universal labor is interrupted: I cannot be happy until I can take up this larger work again.
As the trade of civilization advances, the meaning of bread changes. The university professor, no less than the day-laborer, finds his income too small for him, and says, "I, too, do income-work which does not bring me bread, books, travel, society, a summer home, and surroundings which are not only decent and sanitary, but refined and beautiful."
Is it not also the source of the discontent to-day, among almost all cla.s.ses of women, except the most highly educated and efficient? Women say--our modern daughters, wives, and mothers: "In the home, we do income-work for which we do not receive income. When strangers do this work, they are paid, and we are not." In addition, many a woman is so bound down by daily tasks, that her whole soul cries out, and we hear of the high rate of insanity among farmers" wives, of nervous prostration of the housewives in our towns, and become accustomed to such expressions as "the death of a woman on a Kansas farm."
This discontent takes many restless forms. It leads daughters, who ought to be at home, out into morally dangerous but income-earning work; it takes wives out into all manner of clubs, without regard to the fact: as to whether the particular club, in its atmosphere and influence, is good or bad; it brings discouragement, disorder, and unrest into the home, dissatisfaction with house-duties and home-tasks, and is sapping our life where it should be best and strongest--in the home--taking out of it youth, spirit, enthusiasm, inspiration, and content.
The three questions asked in regard to each worker are: 1. What work can he do? 2. Of what quality? 3. In what time? The difference between industry and idleness is that work is one thing which no one may honorably escape. Since it must be done, the problem of life is not how to escape work, but how to find the right work, and how best to do it, and most swiftly, when the choice is made.
"_Forth they come from grief and torment; on they wend toward health and mirth, All the wide world is their dwelling, every corner of the earth.
Buy them, sell them for thy service! Try the bargain what "tis worth, For the days are marching on.
"These are they who build thy houses, weave thy raiment, win thy wheat, Smooth the rugged, fill the barren, turn the bitter into sweet, All for thee this day--and ever. What reward for them is meet?
Till the host comes marching on._"
WILLIAM MORRIS
SECOND
The trade of toil for money has led to many problems and discussions.
To-day the trenchant question: "What More than Wages?" is a matter of eager talk. Is this a living-wage?--Just enough warmth, not to freeze.
Just enough clothing to be decent. Just enough food to go through the day without actual hunger. Just enough shelter to keep out the wind and rain and snow. Just enough education to learn to read and write and count.
No. As the theory of bodily freedom demands for each man life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, so the highest theory of to-day lays down demands of economic freedom beyond the mere fad of possible existence.
Dr. Patten has formulated certain "economic rights" of man. Each employer must say: Before I settle back with a serene belief that I have given my men a living-wage, let me ask: Have they sun? air? sanitary surroundings and conditions? medical care? leisure? education? a chance to grow? Have they enough money for ordinary occasions, and a little to give away? No man or woman has a living-wage, who has no money to give away.
Education and comfort add to the value of the employed. The cook who has a rocking-chair, a cook-book, and a housekeeping magazine in her kitchen will do more work, and better work, other things being equal, than the cook who has none. The workman who lives in a clean, sunny, well-aired place, where he can found a home, and bring up healthy children, will do more work, and better work, than the workman who lives in a damp, dark, ill-ventilated tenement, and who goes to his day"s work with a heart sullen and broken because of avoidable illness and sorrow in his poor little home. Five thousand employees who have a night-school, luncheon-rooms, little houses and gardens, a savings-bank, and a library of books and pictures are worth more than those who are given no such advantages of happiness, growth, and content. The Railroad Young Men"s Christian a.s.sociations are said to be a good economic investment, as well as an uplifting moral influence.
This appears to be a fundamental economic law: _Every physical, mental, or spiritual advantage offered to an honest working man or woman increases his economic efficiency_. Therefore even the selfish policy of shrewd corporations to-day is to screw up, and not down; while the more philanthropic are beginning to see, in their social power, a luminous opportunity to do a G.o.d-like service.
But the capitalist, however just or generous, cannot do for a man what he cannot or will not do for himself. Too many workers imagine that a living-wage is to be given to each man, no matter how he behaves or works. This is a false a.s.sumption. Underlying all human effort, there runs a final law, that of Compensation: _What I earn, I shall some day have_. This is a very different proposition from this: _What I do not earn, I want to have_! For every stroke of human toil, the universe a.s.signs a right reward--a reward, not of money only, but of peace of heart, joy, and the possibilities of helpfulness. But when the work done has not been done faithfully, or well, or honestly, or in the right spirit, the reward is lessened to that exact degree. To the end of time, the idle and the lazy must, if they are dependent on their own exertions, be ill housed and fed. If a man wastes, or his wife does, he must not complain that his income will not support him. If he lets opportunities of sustenance and advancement go by, the capitalist is not to be held to account.
There are two chief kinds of economic difficulties. One is the problem of the capitalist: How much ought I to pay? The second is that of the working-man: How much service must I render? How much ought I to be paid? Of the second kind, nearly every phase of it begins right here, that men and women demand for labor something which they have not earned. They do careless, indifferent, shiftless, reckless work, and then demand a living-wage. The capitalist is not inclined to raise his scale of prices, knowing that he has built up his business by prudence, sagacity, and tireless application--the very qualities which his dissatisfied employees lack.
We need not pay--we ought not to pay--for incompetence, for impertinence, for disobedience of orders, for laziness, for shirking, for cheating, or for theft. To do so is a social wrong. It is the wrong that lies back, not only of sinecures and spoils, but of employing incompetent and wasteful cooks and dressmakers.
What we make of our lives through wages depends upon ourselves. For instance, a man gives each of five boys twenty-five cents for sweeping snow off his sidewalks. One boy tosses pennies, and loses his quarter by gambling. One boy buys cigarettes, and sends his money up in smoke. One boy buys newspapers, and sells them at a profit which buys him his dinner. A fourth boy buys seeds, plants them, and raises a tiny garden which keeps him in beans for a whole season, The fifth boy buys a book which starts him on the career of an educated man: he becomes an inventor and a man of means. The man who paid out the twenty-five cents to each boy is in no way responsible for the success or failure of their investment of this quarter. He is responsible only for the fact that he did or did not pay a fair price for the work.
G.o.d, the great Paymaster, gives to each of us the one talent, the two talents, or the ten talents, of endowment and opportunity: after that, we are left to our own devices!
There are four things which every employee should constantly bear in mind, if he wishes to advance,--skill, business opportunity, loyalty, and control. Until a man has mastered what he has to do, he cannot be expected to be accounted a serious factor in the economic world. The moment he achieves skill in what he has to do--and this is a question of thoroughness, accuracy, and speed--he has achieved power, a possibility of dictation in the matter of hours and wages.
The next point is business opportunity. Two men, of exactly the same opportunities and endowments, take up the same task. One man idles and is surpa.s.sed by the other, or he does only what he is told to do, without further thought. The other performs his set task, but at the same time he is examining into the principles of his engine, or into the conduct of the factory or business. In a few years he is the foreman, or an inventor, or a partner, with independent capital of his own. Again, there is a blind way of doing skilled work, or of merely doing it without noticing where it is most needed, or how the market is going for this special kind of work. The one who has his eyes open reads, notes the state of the market, adds to his skill the power of counsel, and can gradually take a larger responsibility upon him, which will advance the economic value of his time, as well as the work. There is a constant flux in the labor-world, which is the result largely, not of special opportunity, but of worth, application, and concentrated thought.
Third, loyalty has a high mercantile value. Disloyalty is a sin.
The fourth point is control. Does it not strike wonder to think how some men have under them, either in their industrial plant, or in their railway systems, or in their syndicate-work, anywhere from a few hundred to ten, fifteen, or twenty thousand men? How do they maintain discipline, either themselves, or through their subordinates? This problem of control is a serious one in business. Every angry threat, every sullen hour, each case of insubordination, every strike, every widespread dissatisfaction, means economic waste. It means expense both of time and money to send for Pinkertons to keep order and preserve discipline. The man who adds to his technical skill, and his knowledge of the market, the power of control adds great force and value to his work. Higher yet is executive force, the power to adjust responsibilities and duties in such a way as to get back a high economic return in the way of service. But above all, there is that force of character which impresses itself on a company, on a decade, on a generation--so that some names are handed down in business from generation to generation, all men knowing that from father to son, and again to his son, there will pa.s.s down that certain integrity, n.o.bility, steadfastness of purpose, fidelity, and honor which give credit throughout the business world, and which promise health and happiness for those who are happy to be in their employ.
Before a man complains of his wages, then, let him ask himself: Have I mastered my work? Am I loyal? Am I capable of larger responsibilities, and of wider control?