“ This achievement of Perkin stands out as one of the great discoveries of chemistry. And the story of Mauve shows how science has led the way for industry, just as the story of soda shows how industry has pointed out the way for science.
Many more stories of the victories of scientific industry could be told. Much has been done. But the chemist does not live in the glory of the past. He lives in the possibilities of the future. Every advancement of the past has opened up many fields of possibilities. If much has been done, much more remains to be done. ”

“ There is still another vast army of business men—salesmen, clerks and wage-earners of all classes—who are beginning to catch a glimpse of the dawning of a new business era, the greatest the world has ever known, an era impregnated with possibilities and opportunities for those who are ready with wicks trimmed and oil in their lamps. ”

“ In view of these facts we may fairly conclude that workmen are inferior to employers as bargainers and that protective legislation is necessary in order to put them on a real equality. “When laborers have to make a forced sale of their labor, their freedom of contract is more nominal than real. When women and children stand individually before the manager of hundreds of thousands of capital, it is possible that there may be little freedom and less equality in the contract by which they sell their services.” ”

“ I find that at the foundation, the machinery of business is simple, but whether it is plain or complicated, all who would succeed must make every effort to comprehend it thoroughly. All I care to emphasize at present is the great truth that knowledge, established and classified, is the basis of all business success. ”

“ Discrimination in their favor is a short cut to the common prosperity. Men of comfortable means and the poor even owe what they have to the enterprise which scatters wealth everywhere. There is sufficient truth in this feeling, when not too boldly put, to hide its failures. The expenditures of the very rich in the purchases and exchanges they involve do carry a measure of advantage to all, but they also bear with them an unjust distribution, a luxury and a poverty, which weaken the unity and sap the strength of society. It is the very gist of democracy that each man shall count one ”

“ There is no profitable labor at disposal, and to provide labor means farther loss; it is charity in its most disguised, expensive and unrequited form. The worst lesson we can teach those already inclined to negligence is that a form of labor may be put in the place of real labor, and that the question of adequacy is one to be answered by society, not by the needy, recipient of favor. Whatever we may do for men of feeble productive power we are not to lead them still farther on in the direction of indolence and worthlessness. ”

“ Such advances of capital are known as wages.” Here we have the essence of the wage system in a nut shell. The laborer sells his labor to an employer for a stipulated wage. He has a commodity, his labor, consisting of a certain amount of strength and skill, which he is free to dispose of on the market to the best advantage, as the owner of any other commodity might do. Legally, labor is property. Owing, however, to the fact that all modern production requires capital, the only buyer of his labor is a capitalist, who directs the way in which the labor shall be applied. ”

“ A second peculiarity of the sale of labor is that the laborer and his work are inseparable. The seller of an ordinary commodity disposes of it absolutely when he makes a sale. “It matters nothing to the seller of bricks whether they are to be used in building a palace or a sewer; but it matters a great deal to the seller of labor, who undertakes to perform a task of given difficulty, whether or not the place in which it is to be done is a wholesome and a pleasant one, or whether or not his associates will be such as he cares to have.” ”

“ Show me the man who says he has no time to read of new methods and principles, and I will show you the one who utterly fails to perceive that familiarity with business literature of this kind means pecuniary advancement. Show me the man who says he cannot afford to invest in such a set of books, and I will show you one who apparently CAN afford to waste his energy in misdirected effort—that energy and effort which are to every wage-earner and tradesman both his stock in trade and his invested capital. ”

“ Among the chances of productive enterprise are those due to the rise and fall in the prices of the raw materials, the labor, and the finished product between the time when the process of production is begun and the time when it is completed. Every farmer, every manufacturer, every student even who invests capital in his own education, is to some extent a speculator. Along certain lines he can protect himself by insurance, but that is not possible in all. Is there no way, then, by which he can guard himself against price fluctuations and assure himself of the legitimate gains of his business? ”

“ Before the introduction of the factory system, under the so-called “domestic” system of industry, the laborer carried on his work in his own home, where he provided the raw material, owned his own tools, furnished the motive power—his muscles—and was his own master. Today every one of these conditions is changed—the work is carried on in the factory, the raw material, the tools, the motive power are all provided by the capitalist, the laborer contributing only his own more or less skilled labor, while the conditions under which he carries on his work are largely determined for him. ”

“ Wages have steadily increased, the hours of labor have been reduced, and the material well-being of the wage-earner is greater today than it has ever been before. It has more than once been pointed out by writers on this subject that with an equal distribution of wealth no one would be well-to-do, while many others insist that inequality in itself is a desirable thing. Greater diffusion of wealth can come about only by very slow processes, and permanent plenty can be secured only by a great increase in the accumulations of capital and the efficiency of each worker. ”

“ Men should be subject to their own incentives of hope and fear, success and failure, as far as possible. The same discipline which comes to the active, is the natural spring of action in the sluggish. Any compassion which reduces the motives of effort that should come to the entire community, or which leaves the community satisfied with a maladjustment of duties, can never provide an adequate correction of bad distribution. We are placed between a narrow and a wide humanity, between an immediate reduction of suffering and a removing of its conditions. ”

“ The development of business is one of the marvels of the new century. A few years ago science, as a factor in commerce, was little known and less appreciated. The amazing advantages to business of intellectual attainments were utterly without recognition. Today, however, business has become a contest in which the quickest perception wins, thus transforming the counting room into a battle ground upon which brain matches brain for supremacy and success. ”

“ The greatest problem in modern industry as well as the greatest curse to the laboring classes, is unemployment. While unemployment has always existed under all systems of labor, it assumed added significance when the introduction of the wage system threw every worker upon his own resources and made him responsible for the care of himself and his family. ”

“ With all due respect to the opinions of others, I submit that the path of safety, progress, and justice lies in the middle course—in the recognition of the right of organization on the part of both labor and capital, by which and through which these factors in our industrial progress may work out their inevitable destiny, contracting freely each with the other upon all questions of mutual concern. ”

“ That injuries should be still left with the workmen on whom they have accidentally fallen is another proof of the slight hold they have on the public mind.
Any remedy for the lack of employment which is prompted simply by compassion and still leaves the evil to overtake the workman is not social hygiene; is not a recognition of the partiality and disproportion which still inhere in our productive methods. Labor should be successful and rewardful when left to its own development. It is bad to create a pauper temper and most difficult to contend with it when it has once been called out. ”

“ Industrial corporations have been, in the present generation, a conspicuous means of production, but they have also conspicuously promoted a bad distribution of wealth, and so helped to promote irregularity and ultimate suspension in the productive process. There may never come a time in which the adventuresome capitalist will not magnify his own usefulness to the community, but there may come a time in which men shall see that the wealth of a few may be purchased at the expense of that general comfort which is the proper return of industry. ”

“ Ah, that enchanting word, S-U-C-C-E-S-S. It does not require a magic key to unlock the door to business efficiency. There is nothing mystic, nothing mysterious in the applied method of the really resourceful men in this day of great successes, of marvelous achievements in business enterprise. The sum total is contained in two words, words that electrify, nevertheless. ”

“ The ordinary wage system has at least the merit that the reward of the laborer is made dependent only on his own efforts. The lot of the modern worker is too unstable and employment too unsteady to add a new element of uncertainty in wages. If the laborer has really earned the premium, say labor leaders, why not add it to his wages instead of adopting this roundabout method. The sliding scale, or a system of premiums or bonus payments for increased output, would be better than profit-sharing, and is rapidly spreading. ”

“ It is, however, not quite clear in most cases whether the men’s wages are low because the women and children work, or whether the women and children work because the men’s wages are low. It may fairly be concluded, however, that the evil effects of low wages for women are not confined to themselves but are felt by all with whom they come in competition.
What conclusion shall we draw then, in view of all these facts, as to the desirability of employment of women? The fact of their low wages and industrial dependence is not sufficient to lead one to condemn it. ”

“ This fact is obscured by the great growth in population, which has more than doubled in the last hundred years in Europe and has shown a twentyfold increase in the United States. The larger income is divided among more people, and though each today gets more than his grandfather, there is not yet enough produced to make all rich. Indeed, if the wealth of the United States were divided equally, it would not provide a competence for anybody. The difficulty is not merely that there is inequality in distribution, but that the need of a much greater production of wealth must also be met. ”

“ Profits are the reward which the manager of a business receives for his services in organizing and superintending the business. This share of the social income was the last to be recognized by economists, and its rightfulness is even yet denied by the socialists. They insist that profits are really the earnings of labor which have been withheld from the laborer by the superior skill and economic strength of the capitalist manager; they are institutional robbery, the exploitation of labor. ”

“ Production in all its forms and in all its agents must be subject to that temper of fairness, and come under those principles of equal rights, which bind the parts of the community together, and make them one producing and one enjoying agency. Every assertion of settled superiority in persons, classes and races must be set aside, and the world in its physical, intellectual and spiritual wealth be left open to all. ”

“ Saving may take the form of hoarding or withdrawing things from use, but nowadays this is practised only by misers; saving ordinarily takes the form of investment in some productive enterprise, either directly or through a bank. In this way a demand is created for goods just as truly as though the money had been spent for a dinner or a suit of clothes. Saving is spending, but it is spending for the future rather than the present; it usually causes the production of permanent material goods rather than transient or immaterial pleasures. ”

“ They have one standard when they look out on the community at large, and another standard when they are preparing the way to make and hold fast their own gains. The directors of business come easily to think that the welfare of the community is identical with their own welfare, and that the enterprise with which they sustain their own affairs is identical with that on which the public prosperity depends. They readily come to the conclusion that their activity, so essential to the community, should be cherished by the community. How possibly can production progress without them. ”

“ Even in the days of alchemy, that fantastic forerunner of our present science, her devotees were concerned with the changing of the base metals into the noble ones, of lead into silver, and of copper into gold, and also with the search for the philosopher’s stone, that mysterious something which would give perpetual youth. ”

“ In this direction lie the achievements of the chemistry of the future. As the nature of matter and the nature of energy gradually unfold themselves to the advances of chemical investigation, remarkable possibilities for future development are disclosed. We are beginning to see how really wasteful we have been. The frightful wastes which the movement toward the conservation of our natural resources has called to our attention, sink into utter insignificance when we consider what we have lost on account of our ignorance. We are just beginning to appreciate our wastefulness of chemical energy. ”

“ It is conceivable that during or after a revolution industry would be so interrupted that ordinary employments would not be open. But in ordinary times such a statement is simply an assertion of the fallacious lump-of-labor theory, that there is just so much work to be done and no more. New wants are continually pressing for satisfaction, waiting only for the prior ones to be satisfied before they urge their claims. So soon as the old ones are satisfied, additional employment is provided in meeting the newer desires. The aim of society is to expand continually the circle of gratified desires. ”

“ The evils of society which may have originated far off in the action of the leaders of men, are apt to go booming downward till they reach, in their most distinctive form, the pauper class, or those but little above it. Diligence, thrift, skill, ward off the blow and escape with only a partial loss. Those who are always in the way of it are the weak ones, to whom prosperity brings but little and adversity occasions immediate overthrow. When those who at best are but partially occupied, find that labor is altogether failing them, the question of relief becomes most difficult. ”

“ The world is never deficient in occasions for labor, no matter how defective we may be in performing it. Nor is well-devised labor wanting in its returns; intelligence and diligence, in full exercise, always contradict the notion. The world could not be the home of man on any other terms. [Pg 391] Human life begins to be superfluous the moment labor miscarries, and the miscarriage sinks down to those who have the least intelligence and industry. The constitutional disease of society, that which it has propagated with most show of knowledge, is ignorance and indolence. ”

“ With paucity of pay on the one side goes the superabundance of profits on the other side. The returns of management should be more moderate, more uniform, more consonant with the general welfare. We can hardly doubt that an industrial community, well-organized, with a fair share of intelligence, diligence and honesty, will commend reasonable prosperity extending to all its members. Indeed this is what actually takes place in the midway forms of effort. The very poor and the very rich complement each other. Healthy and wholesome activity is as possible to the community as to the individual. ”

“ While some gains are pretty sure to accompany the acquisition of great wealth, once acquired, it disturbs the even flow of economic forces, and may easily give rise to irregular occupation that brings serious disturbance to those whose daily wants are to be supplied by labor. It may be thought that these fluctuations in production arise from its very nature, and that if we leave men of very different degrees of intelligence to contend with each other for the prizes of industry, great inequalities of prosperity are sure to appear. ”

“ The momentous change in the status of the workman which accompanied the revolution of industrial processes, transformed the whole problem of labor from the question of production to that of distribution, and it is the effort to find an equitable adjustment of the problem of distribution that is taxing to the utmost the ingenuity of economists, philosophers, and statesmen. ”

“ We speak of the industry which has prevailed since the middle of the eighteenth century as ‘machine production’ not because there were no machines before that time but, firstly, because a vast acceleration in the invention of complex machinery applied to almost all industrial arts dates from that period, and secondly, because the application upon an extended scale of non-human motor powers manifested itself then for the first time. ”