Capacity

“ Yet the capacity is often, even to the last minute, as perfect as in the vigour of health. Were all within, as well as all without, material, would not the blight to one involve, uniformly, the blight to the other? ”

“ Even in this demonstration it is conclusively shown that the productive capacity of the country is the real measure of value, and that, finally, no matter how irrelevant the process of wealth and prices may have been to it, it is the power which ultimately measures all values. ”

“ To succeed in the other trades, capacity must be shown; in the law, concealment of it will do. ”

“ A capacity, and taste, for reading, gives access to whatever has already been discovered by others. It is the key, or one of the keys, to the already solved problems. And not only so. It gives a relish, and facility, for successfully pursuing the [yet] unsolved ones. ”

“ That capacity is a matter of training, tradition and habit, at least as much as of pecuniary stimulus, and the ability of a professional association representing the public opinion of a group of workers to raise it is, therefore, considerable. ”

“ It is the belief of the advocates of scientific management that if we thus make the individual efficient, his productive capacity will be raised twenty-five or fifty per cent., or even sometimes doubled. ”

“ Like the weights in an eight-day clock, or the water in a reservoir, they have a capacity for doing work, owing to [77] the position to which they have been raised. How vast the influence of a Primate or a Premier, a General or a King! And yet their power is chiefly potential energy, arising from the position they occupy, not from the individuals themselves. ”

“ On all sides there is heartening evidence of great energy--of capacity for economic development-and even more important, capacity for spiritual growth. But accompanying this great activity there are equally great questions, great anxieties, and great aspirations. ”

“ Doors opening in heathen lands. 2. Capacity. To sow a field requires some knowledge of the kind of work. City men would make sorry work. So the spiritual sowing requires some capacity. Two mistakes may be made. There is the mistake of those who think any kind of work will do; and of those who estimate the requirements so highly and their own power so humbly that they never venture anything. ”

“ The more tangible kind of social power—so far as it is intrinsic to the man and not adventitious like inherited wealth—depends chiefly upon organizing capacity, which may be described as the ability to build and operate human machinery. ”

“ You have noticed that where you put three employes to do the work formerly done by two, it is almost impossible—if you take the employe's word—to get two employes to do the work after three have been doing it.
The work should push the employe. The employer should get full capacity of his employes. ”

“ Organized society needs and will use capacity of all degrees, from that of a man who can load 197sand on a carrier, and be satisfied thereby, to that of the man who can with satisfaction work out a new theory of inflammation, or construct a drama to interpret existence anew. ”

“ It must be remembered also that economic work in modern times is carried on by consciously or unconsciously associated effort, and although it must always require high qualities of judgment, capacity and energy, many of the difficulties which at first sight appear so insuperable give way when they are attacked. ”

“ The relative position or grade, on the human scale, of any tribe or race of men — much like that of any one man among his fellows — is to be measured by the sum and range of their capacities, and the degree of their self-improvement by the use of means, resources, and appliances within their reach. And the capacities of men are also to be estimated by the extent to which they actually avail themselves of these means, appliances, and resources ”

“ Different parts of the same series of operations require unequal degrees of skill and bodily strength; and those who have skill enough for the most difficult, or strength enough for the hardest parts of the labour, are made much more useful by being employed solely in them; the operations which everybody is capable of, being left to those who are fit for no others. Production is most efficient when the precise quantity of skill and strength, which is required for each part of the process, is employed in it, and no more. ”

“ Do the advantages more than compensate for the disadvantages, or vice versa? You perceive? Sometimes there seems to be a complete balance of forces—an equilibrium—the scale will not incline either way. ”

“ These phrases, if they have any meaning at all, can mean one thing only—the emancipation of the average man, endowed with average capacities, from the control, from the guidance, or, in other words, from the help, of any man or men whose capacities are above the average—whose speculative abilities are exceptionally keen, whose inventive abilities are exceptionally great, whose judgments are exceptionally sound, and whose powers of will, enterprise, and initiative are exceptionally strong. ”

“ The Essentials for Maximum Returns
The efficiency of the economic unit—the mine, the factory, the railroad division—depends upon the attitude of the individual human beings of which the unit is composed. Just as the entire economic system is made up of an aggregate of functioning units, so each unit is made up of functioning individuals. ”

“ It is, therefore, clear from these examples that we should possess the power of transporting ourselves from place to place if we could only discover a means of raising a weight perpendicularly in the air, which would then act as a capital of power, only requiring to be expended at will. ”

“ Wants promote industry, industry gives food, food increases numbers: the next question is, how numbers are to be well employed?
It is a general maxim in the mouth of every body; increase the inhabitants of the state: the strength and power of a state is in proportion to the number of its inhabitants. ”

“ One hears nowadays a vast amount of chatter about efficiency—that magic word—and social organisation, and there is no doubt a huge expenditure of energy upon these things and a widespread desire to rush about and make showy and startling changes. ”

“ While each individual must put forth the best that is in him, whether in bucking the line or in playing the open field, that best must be so directed as to add to the sum total of the strength and efficiency of the united eleven. ”

“ Thorough system in every detail will conserve the capacities of all his subordinates and leave him in a measure free to observe the actual conditions and to plan and to put into effect improvements along moral, industrial, physical and financial lines. ”

“ These principles the Professor goes on contentedly to investigate, never appearing to contemplate for an instant the possibility of the first principle in the whole business—the maintenance, by force, of the possession of land obtained by force, being ever called in question by any human mind. ”

“ Constant and steady use of the faculties under a central purpose gives strength and power, while the use of faculties without an aim or end only weakens them. The mind must be focused on a definite end, or, like machinery without a balance-wheel, it will rack itself to pieces. ”

“ These new aspects almost inevitably spring from the more basal factors as these rise into function with the progress of experience or the stress of new demands. Those who have sought only [Pg 156] the immediate and the superficial, at the expense of the basal, and especially those who have neglected to acquire the power and the disposition to search out the fundamentals, are quite sure to be left among the unfortunates who trail behind; they are little likely to be found among those who lead at the times when leadership counts. ”

“ To resume; all natural agents which are limited in quantity, are not only limited in their ultimate productive power, but, long before that power is stretched to the utmost, they yield to any additional demands on progressively harder terms. ”

“ We should further expect that the fitness of every one for the particular governmental position he is called to fill, would be perceived and acknowledged by all, and that all administrative powers would be so kindly and wisely exercised, that nothing like friction would be felt in the working of the machinery, but that all would move on as smoothly and harmoniously as the machinery in a loving family or a healthy human body. ”

“ But I believe that the practical principle in which safety resides, the ideal to be kept in view, the standard by which to test all arrangements intended for overcoming the difficulty, may be conveyed in these words: the greatest dissemination of power consistent with efficiency ”

“ It is obvious that all of these elements are indispensable to produce anything of any value, or of any use-value. His child not only directly received some of the use-values produced by him, but was initiated into all of his experiences and observations. (As we know, power, as defined in mechanics, means the ratio of work done to the time used in doing it.) ”

“ Theories of Social Order and Efficiency.—Out of social experience and social study have emerged certain theories of social order and efficiency which have received marked attention and which to-day are supported by cogent arguments. ”

“ Wherever you employ a force of any sort, to carry a point of real importance, reject all nice calculations of economy. Better to be a thousand per cent, over the mark, than the smallest fraction of a unit under it. ”

“ If the perceptives are large it will be penetrating. The skin is firm to the touch, though the grain may be either fine or coarse. The entire organization is built upon the principle of strength, but the direction in which this strength will be applied will depend upon the temperamental conditions. ”

“ Accumulated energies.—The force accumulated through personal effort in training, education and discipline is similar to capital in the fact that it represents a period of time between the effort and its full accomplishment, and that it is devoted to production of wealth. ”

“ The Accumulation, as we called this power, because we feared to call it by its true name, rewarded its own with gains of twenty, of a hundred, of a thousand per cent., and to satisfy its need, to produce the labor that operated its machines, there came into existence a hapless race of men who bred their kind for its service, and whose little ones were its prey almost from their cradles. ”

“ We think, also, that we have shown that the accumulation of former labour in the shape of tangible wealth, and the accumulation of former labour in the shape of the no less real wealth of knowledge, are processes which go on together, each supporting, directing, and regulating the other. ”

“ It might at first seem questionable whether we should endeavour to maintain a small number of persons of the highest type of beauty and intelligence, or a larger number of an inferior class. But I shall be able to show in the sequel, that the way to maintain the largest number is first to aim at the highest standard. Determine the noblest type of man, and aim simply at maintaining the largest possible number of persons of that class, and it will be found that the largest possible number of every healthy subordinate class must necessarily be produced also. ”

“ These three factors, land, capital equipment, and human energy, are the three-fold apparatus upon which 3.7 billion human beings depend for the goods and services which sustain them from day to day and year to year. ”

“ It overlooks the illimitable faculty of the creating Power, and disregards the great fact that such a power acts by an economy that is saving where uniformity will accomplish what is intended, that is profuse where variation is needful, and that can guide its own exertions of power, or its abstention from such exertions, by unerring wisdom, to the most varied and exact results. ”

“ Under these circumstances the entire source of productive power lay in the will-energies of living beings, whose bodies had to be supplied with food, clothing and housing; and to provide these, other productive powers of a similar kind were required near the same place. ”

“ In the description of things under the present organization of society, we continually make use of a system of weights and measures. Thus, a commodity is evaluated in terms of size—shape, weight, value, etc. ”

“ The rate at which skill is acquired has been the subject of many careful studies. The results have been charted and reduced to curves, variously spoken of as ``efficiency curves,'' ``practice curves,'' ``learning curves,'' according to the nature of the task or test. ”

“ These are simple instances, but the conduct of life is throughout an attempt to organise impulses so that success is obtained for the greater number or mass of them, for the most important and the weightiest set. And here we come face to face again with the problem of value. How shall we decide which among these are more important than: others, and how shall we distinguish different organisations as yielding more or less value one than another? ”

“ Bodily training, fine art (itself an aggregate of alternations) , language, science, do not exhaust all the varieties of acquirement, but they indicate the chief departments whose alternation gives relief to the mental strain, and economizes power in the whole. Under these, as already hinted, there are variations of attitude and exercise ”

“ When we examine [Pg 357] the sources from which capital mainly comes, we shall further test the probability that the instrumentalities which add productive power to human effort will increase through the longest period that science needs to take account of. ”