Industrial policy

“ Capital and the Administrative Staff—Capital and the Manual Workers—The Manual Workers inter se—The Administrative Staff and the Manual Workers—Industry and the Consuming Community—Industry and the Nation.
Before we can construct any scheme of reform of our industrial system we must have a clear idea of what is industry. In the prosaic language of economics it is a purposive production of commodities and services, the immediate object of those engaged in it being to provide, through the result of their work, the material means of satisfying their wants and desires. ”

“ We must now consider the relationship of Government to industry in normal times. Whether or not any particular industries should be nationalized and thereafter conducted as State industries or under some other system than the present, are constitutional questions to be decided by the Government in power in accordance with what they believe to be the will of the people. That the author of this book is strongly opposed to nationalization as a general principle of industrial organization is sufficiently apparent from what has already been written and for the reasons given. ”

“ But when such a policy had been applied for a period sufficiently prolonged to test their value as national economic agents, further action might become desirable in their case as in that of the railroads. The industrial, unlike the service corporations, cannot, however, be considered as belonging to a class which must be all treated in the same way. Conditions would vary radically in different industries; and the case of each industry should be considered in relation to its special conditions. ”

“ The next most pressing reform in our present industrial system is to secure for the individual worker a definite status in industry. To describe what is intended is easier than to define it. At present the individual worker complains that the government of industry is conducted by the employer entirely as the latter thinks fit. ”

“ It is that, desiring the creation of a new industrial system which shall gradually but speedily replace the old, the workers can see no indication that either the government or the employers have realized the necessity for any fundamental change, or that they are prepared even to make a beginning of industrial re-organization on more democratic principles. ”

“ Factories containing machinery operated by steam power could produce cloth, shoes, implements, and almost every other sort of manufactured commodity more cheaply than they could be made by hand-industry in the homes or in small shops. So the factory system spread over the length and breadth of the land, drawing large investments of capital into its vortex, giving rise to great industrial corporations, creating a new labor class, fostering the growth of great cities, and compelling the government to take a hand in the regulation of industry. ”

“ The strongest and uppermost sentiment in the Island, as I have found it since the close of the war, is for peace and reconstruction under the guidance of the United States. Those who have made the greatest sacrifice for independence are apparently willing to rest for a while and enjoy the glorious results of industrial and commercial independence and a release for ever from Spanish misrule. Let the future shape its own political policy, is the desire of all intelligent Cubans. ”

“ When we come to the more specific problem of industry, which is our immediate concern, a glance at history shows that the era of most rapid economic progress the world has ever seen has been the era of the greatest freedom of the individual from statutory control in economic affairs. The features of the last hundred years have been the rapidity of development in industrial technique, and constant change in the form of industrial organisation and in the direction of the world’s trade. ”

“ Once recognition is given the four parties to industry, the solution of the problem of industrial relations is a matter simply of proceeding in accordance with principles which have long been regarded as obviously fair and just. ”

“ Only after we have mastered the principles upon which American industry is based, shall we be in a position to solve the problems which arise directly from the nature of our economic organization.
46. INDUSTRIAL REFORM.—Our industrial life is so clearly based upon certain fundamental institutions, such as private property, free contract, and free competition, that an industrial "system" is said to exist. Certain great evils, notably poverty, have accompanied the development of this system. ”

“ If you attempt to govern by carpet-bag legislation, you will bring on an insurrection. If you help the indigent, and bring them to a condition like they were before the war, you will do them no good. Therefore, you must have a force to establish an indisputable power, and then you must have a policy in which each one finds a solution to his own interest and welfare, under the idea that the Cuban people are unable to take care of themselves to-day, and that none of them have definite ideas or definite plans for their welfare. ”

“ I think our businessmen know that scientific research and transportation services and more steel mills and power projects are not luxuries, but necessities to keep our business and our industry in the forefront of industrial progress. ”

“ In centralizing manufacturing plants in cities, certain industrial economies are secured, such as: (1) economy in motor power, whether it be water or coal; (2) economy in machinery—it is not necessary to duplicate machines ”

“ In our modern state the function of organizing and regulating industry has lost none of its importance. The impersonality of modern industry has increased the importance of all the rules by which the parts of the industrial organization are held in harmonious relations. The interests have been subdivided, multiplied, and recombined into new and intricate relations, and of course the rights and duties have followed parallel lines of refinement and complication. The dependence of industry on political action has become greater and greater. ”

“ Mines have been opened, factories established, railroads built, electric plants constructed, by some individual or [Pg 67] corporation interested in making a profit on the investment, and with little or no relation to the well-being of the community. There has been no recognized intelligent guidance behind the development of the industrial system. ”

“ The decision of the regime to increase production of consumer goods and expand social benefits is intended to raise the living standards of industrial workers and to show that the leadership is concerned about their problems. ”

“ In presenting this plan of organization of industries, as it exists today, we have in mind only the object before explained. The workers, forced by capitalist ownership of the means of production to do service in all these industries, must organize themselves in their proper places in the industries in which they are engaged. Every worker who studies this map will find where he will fit in when the industries are organized for the control of the workers through industrial organization. ”

“ After Spain has abandoned her sovereignty here you are under the responsibility of keeping a force here which will make it a crazy enterprise to dispute. This is a moral duty which you are obliged to fulfil; you cannot have the excuse of want of power that Spain had. The first element of success is the destruction beforehand of all insurgent or insurrection element. All minor things should be put aside and the American mind have a national policy toward the colonisation and final prosperity of Cuba. ”

“ And as we have seen, the intention of the industrial reformers is to introduce public management into the heart of the American industrial system; that is, into the operation of railroads and public service corporations, and in this way to bring about by incessant official interference that harmony between public and private interest which must be the object of a national economic system. ”

“ What are the boundaries that divide the Jack of all Trades, the specialist and the victim of an overdose of repetition work.
Why industrial managers should know the cardinal principles of invention, of industrial engineering, industrial management, industrial relations and the human factor in engineering and in the industries.
Why a plant may be growing in size and paying dividends and may still be dead so far as the spirit of enterprise is concerned.
Why some men try to manage industrial plants regardless of the cardinal principles of progress of workers and the state. ”

“ But the modern State has gone further than this: it has realized the necessity of taking an active part in modern industrial life, for the equalization of the terms of competition, the redress of grievances, and the furnishing of utilities, either because it could do it better or because it was the only agency capable of acting. ”

“ And throughout the kingdom, production as well as 'distribution is similarly carried on with the smallest amount of superintendence which proves efficient; while the quantities of the numerous commodities required daily in each locality are adjusted without any other agency than the pursuit of profit. Suppose now that this industrial régime of willinghood, acting spontaneously, is replaced by a régime of industrial obedience, enforced by public officials. ”

“ The forces which had exhibited themselves in increased manufacture and railway development between the Civil War and the panic of 1873 now found expression in a general concentration of industries into fewer plants with vastly greater capital and output, in the combination of partnerships into corporations, and of corporations into agreements, pools and trusts to avoid competition and to secure the needed capital and economies for dealing with the new problems of industrial magnitude. ”

“ And this third great party should be given its proper share of any gain. In fact, a glance at industrial history shows that in the end the whole people receive the greater part of the benefit coming from industrial improvements. In the past hundred years, for example, the greatest factor tending toward increasing the output, and thereby the prosperity of the civilized world, has been the introduction of machinery to replace hand labor. And without doubt the greatest gain through this change has come to the whole people—the consumer. ”

“ The whole industrial situation is changed by the swift dominancy of the competitive system, with its ever increasing brood of trusts, which have swallowed up all natural opportunities, and monopolized all the leading business enterprises, of this hitherto progressive nation.
"The people of the Republic are divided into two classes; the employers, and the employed. The invention and introduction of new and expensive machinery each year, augments the power of the trusts, to control the markets and the industrial situation. ”

“ The world has progressed, or retrogressed, as the most powerful interests at any time adjusted the institutions and customs governing wealth production to their own advantage. As the controlling interests in our present scheme are the business interests, it is the business man, not the workman, who directs industry and determines its policy as well as the general policy of the nation in which it operates. ”

“ This leads us to the third branch of industrial administration the settlement of the conditions under which the human beings are to be employed. The adoption of one material rather than another, the choice between alternative processes or alternative ways of organising the factory, the selection of particular grades of workers, or even of a particular foreman, may affect, for the worse, the Standard of Life of the operatives concerned. ”

“ The same federal authority that is charged with the control over inter-industrial problems will likewise charge itself, in each instance, with these common questions not immediately related to industry. ”

“ That there is a range of industrial production beyond this limit which is quite legitimate but which is nevertheless not a matter of universal concern is obvious; and it seems very questionable whether it is the business of the state to do more than to secure that the conditions under which these industries are conducted are of a piece with those obtaining in the primary industries. ”

“ Since then the forms, methods and yield of production have rapidly developed in one direction, in every industrially advanced country. The means of production were centralized ever more in fewer and fewer hands. With the centralization of the means of production and distribution, the agencies protecting the interests in power also grew proportionately. Gradually all elements that obscured the lines of cleavage between the producers of wealth and the class that expropriated all economic resources of the world are eliminated. ”

“ In the first place, in the department of production, they freely allow that just as there are many industrial enterprises in the conduct of which individual initiative must, for want of resources or other reasons, yield to joint-stock companies, so there are others for which individuals and companies alike must give place to the State, because the State is by nature or circumstances better fitted than either to conduct them satisfactorily ”

“ Bound up with this general relation between the manufacturing corporation and the consuming public is one between it and producers of raw material which it buys and with laborers whom it hires. In this last relation what is endangered is the normal rate of pay, present and future. The type of measure which protects consumers protects the other parties who are affected by the great corporation's policy. Workers are safe and producers of raw materials are measurably so if the power of competition in the making and selling of the goods is kept alive. ”