Social efficiency

“ In the broadest sense, social efficiency is nothing less than that socialization of mind which is actively concerned in making experiences more communicable; in breaking down the barriers of social stratification which make individuals impervious to the interests of others. When social efficiency is confined to the service rendered by overt acts, its chief constituent (because its only guarantee) is omitted,—intelligent sympathy or good will. ”

“ It is of importance to society as well as to the individual that talent should be discovered in time, that tasks should be fitted to aptitudes, that each member of society should attain to his highest efficiency. The approach to this ideal, made possible by popular education, the decline of caste, the spread of genuine democracy, the progress of social justice, will increase not only the workers' efficiency, but society's abiding welfare. ”

“ Efficiency is a term which is the product of the mechanical era, which originated in the business world, and which is now being applied to all phases of social organization.XXVI-46 Its aim is perfection in social mechanics. Social efficiency includes not only social engineering but social knowledge, social philosophy, social ethics, and social religion. Evidences of social inefficiency are common; for example, the failure to use and apply the social knowledge that467 we have, and the loss of energy through an over-emphasis on competition. ”

“ A society which has grown rich by mechanical discoveries and industrious organisation has acquired the power of greatly raising the average level of comfort. If, in point of fact, its power has been greatly misused, if a great development of [Pg 126] poverty has taken place side by side with a great development of industrial efficiency, the proper inference is not that we should denounce the desires from which the efficiency is derived, but that we should direct them into such channels as may lead to the more universal distribution of the advantages which they create. ”

“ But the profit which he gained after a laborious life was but an infinitesimal fraction of the enormous increase of efficiency which resulted to the national industry. We cannot doubt that the whole gigantic system which at least maintains a population several times multiplied, which maintains part of it in wealth and a large proportion in reasonable comfort, has been due to the labours of many men, each working for his own interest and animated chiefly by the desire of wealth. So much remains true of the economist's doctrine of the natural harmony between individual and public interest. ”

“ Since the wage is the means ordinarily employed to awaken in workers the three instincts

of self-preservation, of social distinction, and of hoarding, it is not strange that an industrial age should regard it as the chief means of increasing efficiency. ”

“ Society may determine the forms and the limitations under which it will have business energy expended, and it may decide what are the social ends toward which it will have business effort contribute. Guided by wise social policy, efficiency and service go hand in hand.
Since business is subject to control by society, it follows that the efficiency factors in a particular business, in a whole industry, or in business generally, must adjust themselves to the decisions that society has made, and they must also take account of decisions that it may make in the future. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Society cannot, through any one institution, bring itself to perfection; many elements enter into the making of prosperity. It depends on individual ability and training for industry, on an understanding of the laws of health and keeping the body and brain in a state of efficiency, on peaceful relations between groups, on the successful balancing of supply and demand, and of wages and the cost of living, on personal integrity and group co-operation. All that the government can do is to instruct and stimulate. ”

“ And now imagine the moral, intellectual and economic condition of a community whose principal and most anxious—I might say hysteric—care is the solution of the paramount problem “how to keep the nigger down”—that is, to reduce a large part of its laboring population to stolid brutishness—and that community in competition with other communities all around which are energetically intent upon lifting up their laboring forces to the highest attainable degree of intelligence, ambition and efficiency. ”

“ It enlarges human interests. It stimulates socialization of habits and broader ideas. It encourages industry and thrift and promotes division of labor. It strengthens social organization and tends to make it more efficient. Altogether, exchange of goods must be regarded as among the most important functions of society. ”

“ And will not the community gain by thus refusing to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs; by thus refraining from muzzling the ox that treadeth out the corn; by thus leaning to industry, and thrift, and skill, their natural reward, full and unimpaired? For there is to the community also a natural reward. The law of society is each for all as well as all for each. No one can keep to himself the good he may do, any more than he can keep the bad. Every productive enterprise, besides its return to those who undertake it, yields collateral advantages to others. ”

“ Those early lessons which had formed her industrial education, were of life-long value, both in enriching her own life, and by adding to her economic and therefore social value, alike as a member of her own household, and as a contributor to the wealth of the little community. ”

“ A society so constructed survives, where the same number of living beings, unorganized, would perish. The specialization of labor and exchange of product in a social body is identical in its nature with the specialization and exchange of function in an individual body. This process, on orderly lines of evolution, involves the gradual subordination of individual effort for individual good to the collective effort for the collective good,—not from any so-called “altruism,” but from the economic necessities of the case. ”

“ Whatever merits it has consist in its possible ability to promote the national economic interest in a progressively improving general standard of living, in a higher standard of individual work, and in a general efficiency of labor. ”

“ The economic sphere would have as its basis the principles:
that work should involve incentives worthier than money or survival. It should be educative, not stultifying; creative, not mechanical; self-directed, not manipulated, encouraging independence, a respect for others, a sense of dignity, and a willingness to accept social responsibility, since it is this experience that has crucial influence on habits, perceptions and individual ethics ”

“ And yet, if the need of the times demand associated effort, it may easily be true that the action which appears ineffective, and yet is carried out upon the more highly developed line of associated effort, may represent a finer social quality and have a greater social value than the more effective individual action. ”

“ This means increase in prosperity and diminution in poverty, not only for their men but for the whole community immediately around them. As one of the elements incident to this great gain in output, each workman has been systematically trained to his highest state of efficiency, and has been taught to do a higher class of work than he was able to do under the old types of management ”

“ Use of wealth individual.—It is necessary to realize that the social organization is maintained solely for the sake of individuals. All study of welfare and illfare is a study of individual human beings. The mutual relations of these human beings in society are means to individual life, growth and enjoyment. Even the total power of a generation in society is dependent upon how the individual wants of individual members of that society are met. ”

“ Support of family, of church, philanthropic benefactions, political influence, automobiling, command of luxuries, freedom of movement, respect from others, are in general terms some of the obvious activities into which economic activity fits. This context of activities enters into the real make-up and meaning of economic activity. Calculated pursuit of gain is in fact never what it is made out to be when economic action is separated from the rest of life, for in fact it is what it is because of a complex social environment involving scientific, legal, political and domestic conditions. ”

“ Import into the society the law of the family, and let the life-sustaining supplies be inversely proportioned to the life-sustaining labors, and the society decays from the increase of its least worthy members, and disappearance of its most worthy members: it must fail to hold its own in the struggle with other societies, which allow play to the natural law that prosperity shall vary as efficiency. ”

“ Effect upon individuals and classes Who can say to what infinite powers the wealth-producing capacity of labour may not be raised by social adjustments that will give to the producers of wealth their fair proportion of its advantages and enjoyments? Every new power engaged in the service of man would improve the condition of all. ”

“ Again, many non-economic forces continually obtrude themselves upon the student of industrial conditions, such as custom, invention, imitation, standards, ideals, and the like. These are general social forces which play throughout all phases of human social life and so show the dependence of industry upon society in general, and, therefore, of economics upon sociology. ”

“ An effective society must be composed of effective individuals. In no other way can a high social standard be maintained. The growth of the individual, in a modern community depends, in large measure, on the way in which he uses his leisure. ”

“ The Chances of Progress.—Every economic problem resolves itself into a social problem. The satisfaction of human wants is the province of the manufacturer, the merchant, and the transporter, but it is not limited to any one or all of these, nor is society under their control. The range of wants is so great, the desires of social beings branch out into so many broad interests, that no one line of enterprise or one group of men can control more than a small portion of society. ”

“ Is it not, rather, economically experimental and constructive, amounting in substance to a simple insistence that henceforth the hiring and paying of labor shall express a wider range of social interests—shall signalize a more clearly self-validating level of comprehension, on the part of employers and consumers, of the social significance of industry than the old? ”

“ We have social welfare as the result of wealth consumed, or used up. Society is interested in all the wealth accumulated, and the methods of its accumulation and its fair distribution are a part of social machinery; yet these have their chief significance in the final consumption. It is not what we have, but what we do with it, that makes society interested in our possessions. It is not what society has, but how it uses it, that settles the chief questions of welfare or illfare. ”

“ In other words, what are the chief lines of economic change required to bring about a readjustment between modern methods of production and social welfare? The answer to this question requires us to amplify our interpretation of the industrial evolution of the past century by producing into the future the same lines of development that they may be justified by the appearance of consisting with some rational social end. ”

“ Since every attitude tends to influence social institutions, we may expect that an organization and a division of labor based on occupational interests may gradually replace the present organization based on demands of economic productivity. In other words, with the appropriate change of attitudes and values all work may become artistic work. And with the appropriate change of attitudes and values the recognition of economic success may be subordinated to the recognition of human values. ”

“ You may thus perceive how industry lies at the very root of human civilisation; how, by providing in an abundant measure for man's lower wants, it affords occasion for the manifestation of the higher exigencies of his nature, which, but for these inferior satisfactions, would lie dormant and inert; how it is, as it were, the lever which originally set in motion the machinery by which society is carried forward from one stage of improvement to another; in a word, how it promotes not only the physical welfare, but also paves the way for the moral and intellectual advancement of mankind. ”

“ It may be possible, indeed, that certain changes in the future, as the requirement of greater skill and efficiency in all kinds of labor, may make combinations in this class of occupations easier and more effective. Our domestic affairs, for instance, are constantly growing more complex, and require greater skill in their operation. ”

“ On social and moral grounds, also, apart from dry considerations of political economy, progress intelligence and a higher standard of life are more likely to be found with large cities, manufactures, and a variety of industrial occupations than with a dead level of a few millionaires and a few shepherds, or of a few landlords and a dense population of poor peasants. ”