Walter Renton Ingalls

“ When leading exponents of commerce and industry exhibit misconceptions on this subject, sincere without any doubt but based on superficial data, they do an immense amount of harm. It is they whom I blame most, rather than the labor leaders whom we view as creating all kinds of trouble for us. If financiers and captains of industry, who are supposed to know about such things, tell the people that we are in a state of great prosperity why should not the workman get all of it that he can? ”

“ My classification of “the rich” as those who possessed incomes of $3,000 and upward per annum in 1916 is decidedly a broad one. There were 375,000 income tax payers classed between $3,000 and $20,000 per annum in that year, and the aggregate of their income was 40 per cent of the total. I do not mean to fix $20,000 as the line of demarcation between those who are rich and those who are simply well-to-do, but merely to point out that this exhibition is in line with all the other evidence respecting the great diffusion of wealth in the United States. ”

“ In capturing a greater share of the produce of industry town labor does not get it only from what are technically called property and management, but it robs the farmers, and shopkeepers who theoretically are capitalists. Moreover, the stronger classes of town labor prey upon the weaker of the proletariat. This upheaval of what used to be a delicate economic organization is in itself of ominous portent. But the people who capture an increased share of the produce of industry and proceed to make merry with it commit other crimes. ”

“ In its efforts to accomplish this it should not attempt to abate competition in production and distribution, but on the other hand it should not be hampered by political restrictions or the opposition of labor.
We do not deny the right of labor to enter into unions, either company or industrial or of national scope, for the betterment of its condition; but we uphold the right and freedom of every man to work without any artificial restrictions. ”

“ Without any doubt a great deal of bad feeling of labor toward capital is an expression of resentment against bad treatment by foremen. It is the duty of management to create and maintain a proper spirit within its several organizations, and we hold that the spirit in any organization is that which trickles down from the top.
It is the duty of management to exercise its best efforts to establish equilibrium in industry and minimize the fluctuations in the conditions of employment. ”

“ The antithesis of capitalism as an economic system is socialism. Capitalism is not an advocacy of the concentration of wealth in the bands of a few or a repudiation of the desirability of a wider and wider distribution of wealth. Anybody who owns property that is used for the creation of more wealth, whether he be a magnate, who individually owns a railway, or a farmer who owns land, or a mechanic who owns his tools and uses them, is a capitalist. ”

“ Diminished production spells diminished scale of living. The idealists who say to the laborers of a country that they should not work so hard tell them at the same time, though not in words, that they should not live so well.
Who can doubt that the shortening of hours in the United States, which here is coupled with an increased inefficiency per hour in many industries, is having the same effect? We do not see it plainly, for several reasons. Our labor statistics are but fragmentary. Our engineers and managers are making intense off-setting efforts. ”

“ When the farmer ships a carload of hogs to Chicago and finds that the produce of his hard work, which knows no eight-hour day, has vanished into nothingness, it is not the railway companies and the packing companies that have appropriated it, but it is the railway men and every other class of laboring man who has participated in the transportation, manufacturing and distribution of the food products, right down the line to the ultimate consumer. ”

“ No creature in the world—human, animal, or, it might also be added, vegetable—has ever regulated his, her or its life upon a basis such as that under consideration. And when it is considered that the world has already lasted for some millions (or billions) of years, and that countless billions of billions of breathing creatures have inhabited this world in that period, an experience so unanimous and so entirely unaffected, either by Christianity or by civilization, at least affords to a scientific observer the material for an irresistible generalization. ”

“ No one will deny the theoretical desirability of reducing excessive hours of work, but let it be clearly understood that the present successful efforts in that direction, whether they be statutory eight-hour day in Europe or the abolition of the 12-hour day in continuous work in the iron and steel industry of the United States, are in the nature of an economic restriction, which while conferring more ease upon the worker tend inevitably to impair the scale of living of people as a whole. ”

“ In economics there is the great natural law of supply and demand. A few years ago, amid the madness of the war, fools alleged that the law of supply and demand was an archaic thought, which should, could and would be dismissed. They might as well have chattered that the law of gravitation is a myth and that apples may be made to drop from a tree on a slant instead of perpendicularly; or that the law of the conservation of energy can be so annulled that an aeroplane may soar forever, refuting both this law and the law of gravitation. ”

“ It may even with reason prohibit the use of alcoholic drink, for although the deduction from natural law would be to let drunkards drink themselves to death they may do too much economic and social damage in the process. But Society may not with safety propagate or preserve the unfit. Nor let them have a hand in the management of things under the guise of democracy. Nor may it safely try to nullify the human motive of self interest, which springs from the law of the survival of the fittest, no matter how repugnant to the spirit of idealism that may be. ”

“ We must therefore decide how we stood on balance. My own judgment is that we did not stand so well in 1922 as in 1913, there having been impairment in major things, except in food, and improvement only in the luxuries in the main. Moreover it is probable that the enjoyment of luxuries fell especially to the people living in towns, rather than to the people as a whole.
Of course it is obvious that the quantities and quotients computed for consumption do not necessarily measure the limits of supply. In some instances they do; in others they do not. ”

“ The obligation that rests upon the engineers is not only to lead the way in further progress, but also to preserve that which we have gained. Dismiss management from its control of mines, factories and railways, the workers in them would promptly begin to starve to death, just as they did in Russia, for they would know not what to do. Engineers understand this best of all, and while the owners of capital may be timid and compromising toward the forces of ignorance, the engineers must of necessity stand firmly upon a platform of sound economic principles, substantially like the following. ”

“ American labor, in its superior wisdom, does not. American labor has consistently turned its face against false prophets and has been directing itself according to what I shall describe as the parasitic theory of labor. This is founded on the economic theory of the residual claimancy of labor but is a perversion of it. It supports capitalism, because capitalism can make the most production, but aims to claim the maximum that it can and let capitalism survive, which is shrewd but dangerous, for no dog can support too many fleas without running the risk of some impairment of health. ”

“ The welfare of any people depends upon production and saving, it being self-evident that people can live only by having goods and that there should be a surplus saved out of current production in order to provide for the needs of increasing population, especially in means for housing, for transportation and for fuel and clothing. Anything that tends to curtail production and saving is bound to react to the disadvantage of a people as a whole. Wages come out of production and from no other source. ”

“ Here we have one view of what makes “prosperity,” viz. general employment and rising wages. Superficially this is a meritorious idea, and fundamentally it would be sound if rising wages meant the general production of more goods. Under the existing conditions, however, this thought, no doubt innocently, includes a great deal that is cruel and shameless. The rising wages, of which so many are boastful, are at the direct expense of the farmers, who have no way of boosting their prices, and at the expense of the humbler among the town dwellers. ”

“ The farmer who is supporting himself out of the land and does not raise enough bushels of potatoes, wheat and corn to feed the hungry mouths for which he is responsible is under no illusion that the rest of the community ought to make good his deficiency out of its produce. Yet it is just that which town labor is demanding, and it has so arranged things that to more or less extent it is exacting its demands. ”

“ The policy of labor unions in “making work,” either by increasing the number of men that are to do a specified job or reducing the performance of a man doing one job constitutes an economic restriction of the first order of magnitude, one whereof the consequences are bound to be grave. There are some of their evil practices that may be, and should be, forbidden by law. The great remedy is, however, the open shop and the establishment of free competition and the general right of everybody to work, which theoretically is possessed by all citizens but practically is not. ”

“ Even if physical production remains undiminished, in proportion to the population, failure to make adequate savings is bound to have adverse economic consequences to the people. There is reason to fear that physical production is falling behind the rate of increase in the population and that this is a potent factor in maintaining a high level of prices for commodities.
The labor of a human being is not a commodity nor an article of commerce, but labor, like any service and like any commodity, is subject to the economic law of supply and demand. ”

“ These are some of the truths that real leaders would preach, but above everything else they would proclaim that the war did not do anything to raise permanently our scale of living, that the entrance of some people upon the enjoyment of such luxuries as never before was paid for by the patriotic by mortgaging their principal, and that the present is a time that calls for hard work in production, economy in living, and thrift in saving. ”

“ It seems to me strange that any intelligent person, much less than being a victim of happy fallacies, can fail to be impressed by the horror and cruelty of the present situation. Town labor is simply sweating and eating up agricultural labor. Among town labor there are some classes that are eating up other classes. The white-collar classes are the great victims, but many of the humbler workers with their hands, such as many in your own factories, many charwomen, etc., are also the victims of the aristocrats of labor who have been having their own way. ”

“ There has been a revolt against what is called capitalism. There has been the stupid representation that although capitalism had served to elevate the scale of living of the civilized world it had outlived its usefulness and could no longer succeed in functioning properly. Herein we find the germ of state socialism and pink socialism, which are founded on the preposterous idea that experienced people do not know how to conduct affairs properly and that inexperienced can do everything better. ”

“ It is leadership along these lines, and these only, that will remove the present discontent and promote the general welfare. If anybody should not like it—and the labor unions will not—the sooner they be brushed away, without any further catering to them, the better it will be.
Collapse of the principle of authority and absence of leadership spell chaos. Self-seeking politicians, wilfully acting in groups, are unable to accomplish anything for the welfare of their people. ”

“ Now, I am not finding much fault with anybody, not even with labor unions, although there are some serious things for which they are undoubtedly responsible. It is not, however, the labor unions that have caused wages to run high and hold high, except to limited extents. What has really done it is the law of supply and demand. Everybody in the Eastern part of this country knows that the wages for domestic servants have risen proportionately as high as for most building mechanics, but there is no union of domestic servants. ”

“ I find no evidence in the statistics of national production or accumulation of wealth that the efficiency of the American people has so increased during the last 10 years as to afford them an enjoyment of a higher scale of living on the whole. The evidence points rather to failure of production to increase commensurately with the population. ”