Lynden Livingston Macassey

“ He has come to regard work as a species of thraldom, instituted, not for his profit or improvement, but solely for the maintenance of his employer and the swelling of his profits. This, of course, is merely a weak dilution of the Marxian fallacy. The modern manual worker, because he has never been taught to look upon work as a moral duty or upon industry as one of the highest forms of national service, sees no dignity in work, and is sensible of no obligation incumbent on him to work to the best of his ability or even for the duration of the working day. ”

“ If only every one had a fair start and began life with an equal chance of turning his industry and powers to good account, it would be difficult to devise a scheme of economic life more likely to produce great results from human nature as it now is; by stimulating its instincts for gain and rivalry to a great output of goods and services and by sharpening its faculties, not only for exercise in this purely material use, but also for solving the bigger problems of life and human intercourse that lie behind it. ”

“ If formulation on paper of ideals of humanitarianism, and quixotic Utopianism, without any consideration of cost or practicability, is statesmanship, the Labour Party’s policy is truly admirable. It outlines in glowing splendour a wonderful new mechanism of politics, society and industry, in which every exterior part falls into place with the smoothness and precision of a model engine constructed out of a box of parts—but, like the toy, with no works inside. ”

“ No one can dogmatize and say what system of industrial remuneration should be adopted, whether time, piece-work—collective [276] or individual—premium-bonus, bonus on output, profit-sharing, or co-partnership. That all depends upon the conditions of the industry, its peculiar psychology, especially its past history; it must always be a matter for negotiation. But I am the strongest believer in a fair system of payment by results, as being, under proper safeguards, the best for the worker, the employer and the consumer. A steel worker or boilermaker will swear by it ”

“ Happily for the country, the ordinary worker is no more intrigued with the intellectuals’ proposals for the reconstruction of industry, or society or the State than he is with their schemes for the reconstitution of his Trade Union, all of which he has with contumely turned down. What he is most keenly interested in is whether their proposals are the soundest, safest and quickest way to afford him relief against unemployment, and give him a human status in industry and a fair share in the product. ”

“ It is said that Labour under the capitalistic system is bought and sold as a commodity. That is one of those phrases which expresses more than is meant. The lawyer sells his legal advice, the surgeon his operative skill, the musician his powers of technique, taste and expression just as a person who owns a commodity sells it. I cannot see any moral degradation whatever in the worker accepting wages any more than a private lawyer accepting his salary in a financial house, or a house-surgeon accepting his in a hospital or an organist his in a parish church. ”

“ As long as we allow these theories to remain victorious, industry to-day is merely a process by which the capitalist constitutes himself the conduit-pipe to the sale-room for the workman’s labour, and as the latter passes through his hands filches for himself the “surplus value.” ”

“ Industry as a whole does not appreciate the close relationship between itself and the community, nor its responsibilities to the community. In reality industry has to rely on the community for innumerable services, and for many facilities vital to its existence, and to its prosperity, and for a market for its product. Yet almost invariably strikes and lock-outs are called, regardless of the effect upon the consuming public. In fact, Labour claims the right to use its economic power in furtherance of its own interests, irrespective of the damage to the community. ”

“ Want of work is the menacing spectre which haunts the background of every working-class home. Intermittent employment produces serious decay of human fibres and moral degeneration—an inevitable result of the discouragement caused by fruitless seeking after work, and of the shifts to find food for wife and family. The inability to organize any uniform routine of living leads straight away to improvidence: when a man is in work one week, he spends all he has, relying on continuance of the work; next week, if unemployed, he has nothing except perhaps some unemployment pay or benefits. ”

“ How frequently Labour forgets its own irrefutable proposition! The problem then is so to organize the processes of industry and harmonize the human relationships involved in it, that to the utmost practicable extent productive efficiency will be secured, the human qualities of all those associated in industry recognized, their capacities fully developed and utilized, their aspirations satisfied, and their respective services co-ordinated to promote the benefit and happiness of all of them, the good of the community, and the welfare of the nation. ”

“ No political party is immune from intrigue or from cabals and conspiracies against its accepted leaders, but it is not an exaggeration to say that the Labour movement is more impregnated than any other movement in this country with those unlovely tendencies. You have only to follow the course of a branch committee or a district committee election, or the election of an executive committee-man or general secretary of a Trade Union, to realize the prevalence and power of personal jealousies. ”

“ Our great industrial difficulty, under modern conditions, is to combine human development with human work, and persuade people to be industrious. Formerly, men worked to benefit themselves; now, they are apt to refrain from working for fear they may benefit other persons. The injury to employers from such a course is evident; but the detriment to the workers themselves is less obvious, and the calamitous effect on the community is seldom realized. That difficulty is what we call “the Labour problem”; a knowledge of the principles on which it can best be solved is our chief national necessity. ”

“ These methods of mass production are quite inevitable in modern efficient practice, and the only antidote is to encourage the workers to acquire a wider interest in industry, and in the prosperity of the works in which they are employed, and to cultivate a spirit of culture so that their minds may be filled with other things which satisfy their human aspirations, and replace the noble satisfaction which a tradesman used to feel as the creation of his handicraft grew beneath his skill. ”

“ Industry will never progress to vigorous and healthy development unless our conception of the relationship between industry and the nation is radically revised. That conception to-day is mean, stunted, and utterly devoid of any power of inspiration. Industry I have defined, in the language of economics, as the production of commodities and services for the purpose of satisfying the wants and desires of men. ”

“ It is not enough merely to tinker with particular grievances or to endeavour to reconstruct the old system by slight adjustments to meet the new demands of Labour. It is essential to question the whole basis on which Our industry has been conducted in the past and to endeavour to find, in substitution for the motive of private gain, some other motive which will serve better as the foundation of a democratic system. This motive can be no other than the motive of public service, which at present is seldom invoked save when the workers threaten to stop the process of production by a strike. ”

“ There is in regard to unemployment but little difficulty in coming to a sound conclusion. Unemployment, and to a less extent under-employment, is on every ground—humanitarian, social, economic—a curse so great that no reasonable effort should be spared to reduce to a minimum the probability of its occurrence, and to mitigate as far as possible its dire effects when once it has supervened. Many will differ as to how far it is right to go in the provision of measures of alleviation, but that is a difference more in degree than in principle. ”

“ The number of expedients to which I have known manual workers resort—in other respects honest, upright men—in order to scamp the job, or cut time, would be perfectly surprising to those not conversant with industry. To-day the moral obligation to work seems inverted into a duty to do as little as possible for the wages. Sometimes the motive is to make the job last longer, at other times, to assist unemployment by making work go round, and, where remuneration is based on payment by results, for less altruistic reasons, to force up the prices paid for the job. ”

“ To capitalism, it is customary, and, indeed, necessary for his argument, for the Socialist to attribute all the ills from which industry suffers and most evils to which the community is heir. With the exit of capitalism the Socialist says that unemployment would disappear and adequate maintenance be secured for sickness, old age and other incapacity, equality of opportunity afforded to all, full scope provided for individual expression and development, and a universal millennium inaugurated. ”

“ They are concrete exemplifications of the appalling extent to which the false doctrine of limiting output is rampant in industry—operative as an active orthodox Trade Union principle.
By limiting output the workman genuinely believes that he is performing a moral duty to himself and to his trade. He argues first, that he is reducing unemployment by making the work go round; secondly, that he is keeping up the value of his handicraft by putting a premium on its application. Workmen have described to me the difference between possible and actual production as being “their reserve fund.” ”

“ He complains, especially in the matter of being taken on or discharged or put on overtime or night-work, indeed, with respect to the whole conditions of his employment, that little or no regard is paid to him as a human being. He is content to accept the theory of the Labour intellectuals—it is certainly not his own conception—that he is a wage-slave taken on and discharged just as it suits his employer’s interests, and that his labour is bought and sold on the same principles as any other raw material in industry. ”