The six-hour day & other industrial questions

Front matter

THE SIX-HOUR DAY AND OTHER INDUS- TRIAL QUESTIONS

THE SIX-HOUR DAY & OTHER INDUS- TRIAL QUESTIONS hi 1 1 am Vieob^U^

LORD LEVERHULME

Contents

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EDITOR'S FOREWORD v

INTRODUCTION BY VISCOUNT HALDANE . . ix

Introduction

By VISCOUNT HALDANE

Truth does not stand still. What is enough for one generation may prove inadequate when that generation has done its work and a new one has arrived. He would be bold who ventured to say that any plan for settling the relations between labour and capital could be reckoned on to prove sufficient in times ahead, merely because it would improve the state of things to-day.

None the less it is an event of importance when a captain of industry on a colossal scale has planned out a means towards the end of making things work in his own time, and has so far put Co- Partnership into successful operation. The pages of this book set forth not only the broad conclusions to which Lord Leverhulme has come about reform in the relations of capital to labour in great productive undertakings, but the book describes the fashion in which he has actually sought to apply these conclusions in his own very large works. It is this feature in the exposition that gives it much more than an academic importance. There will doubtless be many questions raised, and many who will assert that the point which he has reached falls short by much of the end of a journey the whole of which they wish to accomplish. But it cannot but be to the good to have before us the record which the book contains of a great attempt at progress. Lord Leverhulme's endeavour has been to x INTRODUCTION

mterest labour in the results which modern direction of labour and of the capital employed is accomplishing. His principle is progressive profit-sharing on the part of labour. He describes the system under which the worker is given a share in profits without being subjected to the temptations and uncertainties of the common type of shareholder. He says frankly that his motive has been no merely sentimental one, but the desire to do what is at once best for his business and at the same time beneficial and just to those employed in it. It is plain that the conception which underlies Lord Leverhulme's conclusions about productive undertakings is very different from that put forward more than half a century ago by Karl Marx. The socialists of those days taught that labour was the real source of wealth, and that the competition for employment brought about by increase of population enabled the monopolist who chanced to own capital to dictate rates of wages tending towards the minimum that would avert bare starvation. For them the obvious and only remedy was the abolition of private ownership of capital, including land. But the advent on a large scale of the modern banking system, and particularly of the joint-stock company, has to some extent changed the premises of the syllogism. Capital is now no monopoly. It is a widely diffused commodity which can be hired in the open market at a moderate interest by any one who can command public confidence. The particular form of capital which is called land is not in reality in a different position. We are rapidly tending to the general opinion that it must not be withheld where it is required, and that all the owner is entitled to is its market value. Capital, including land, is therefore to-day becoming an instrument of which he who can really wield it can get the use freely. It does not create wealth. That is created by the unlocking of the potential energy

INTRODUCTION xi

stored up in the world beneath, around, and above us, and by the conversion of this potential into kinetic energy in its appropriate form. Coal, for instance, enables men to produce heat and steam, and the energy of steam is turned into electricity. But labour is for this purpose only an instrument, no more adequate by itself to the task than is capital. What impels both is participation in thought-out and complete operation, and what is the fountain and origin of the activities of both is mind. The initiation and direction cannot be given either by the mere capitalist or the mere labourer. As progress takes place, as increase of output becomes more and more essential, as competition sets in, only to be met by fresh invention, it becomes plain that no industry can stand still. If it is to succeed it must be constantly adapted, and to this end not only mind but trained mind, and the increasing command of scientific knowledge and invention, are essential. The director who has genius will accordingly always possess something of the power of a monopolist.

Now, how is this new form ot peril to be met ? To begin with, it cannot be wholly met. Nature will always produce men and women of quite unequal capacity for direction, and a few with talent for it which will give them colossal advantages in the competition for the foremost place. In the second place, I do not think that we need worry ourselves over the fact that we cannot prevent nature from denying us equality in this particular form of talent. As civilization progresses, if the minimum standards are raised as regards the home and the means of living, if knowledge is more widely diffused and higher ideals prevail, inequality in wealth will count for less than it does to-day. What are called " values " will change ; I mean those ends which people judge as conclusively best in themselves, and to be chosen without question.

xii INTRODUCTION

Men and women, relieved from the grinding pressure of poverty, and having enough to live on, may well prefer, as the main thing that counts in life, to know more rather than to have more wealth. The possessions of the millionaire may, in days to come, count for less to the average man than under existing conditions. And here comes in the real point of Lord Leverhulme's ideal of a six-hour day. The labour of such a day must be concentrated if it is to bring a sufficiency in wages. But if it does bring such a sufficiency it leaves leisure for the things of the soul.

One of the nascent ideas which are taking root in this country, an idea which is being fostered in particular by the Workers' Educational Association, is adult education. We have forgotten too often that a man's mind can be developed in a high degree comparatively late in life. Under sufficient stimulus of ideas he can acquire a freedom of spirit which is just as important to him as his bodily liberty. For freedom is the essential characteristic of mind at its best, the freedom which enables it to detach itself and to choose freely ; to be the spectator of time and of eternity, and to abstract, if need be, from its own pain and even from its own death. We want to produce in this country a generation of an outlook large enough to see things steadily and to see them whole. If the doctrine which underlies Lord Leverhulme's conclusions is right, the production of such a generation is of high importance for industry itself as well as for spiritual ends. Now the six-hour day is a means to the attainment of this object.

But the conception of direction as the source of wealth has another application. Probably it is best that in the supreme command of every great industrial undertaking there should be a single great intelligence. Unity of conception and of execution is not, in its highest form, easy to produce co-

INTRODUCTION xiii

operatively. We have seen something of this truth in connection with the armies in this war. But just as even in an army devolution can be carried very far and with great advantage, if the level of general intelligence is high enough, so it is in industry. The object ought always to be to get the operations that are merely mechanical performed by machines in relief of men, and to entrust to the men in charge of them the duty of arriving at a result by their own intelligence and initiative rather than by mere rule of thumb. So only are initiative and invention to be stimulated. So only is labour to be relieved of the monotony which always comes in when the mind is not called on to play any real part.

In other words, the object should surely be to make the workman in the future more of a director of instruments than a labourer, and to unite hand and brain as of necessity implying each other. Monotony will at least be diminished when men feel that they have always to be thinking when they act, and that the occupation of the workman depends on knowledge and skill, and belongs to what is truly a profession. It will require education and training to bring this about, but if it can be done, even partially, it will give more freedom of the spirit and it will give something more besides. It will afford an opening for exceptional talent, and for its development to the man who possesses it. For the factory and the mine will tend to become places where there is a gradation of direction, dependent on capacity for directing. It will be open to every man to rise, and it will be in the interest of the organization as a whole that he should have the chance of rising, and of so bringing to bear his own special gift To this end not only do Lord Leverhulme's six-hour day but his profit-sharing arrangement also seem to lend means. And in the nation as a whole the tendency will be to substitute for the existing aristocracy xiv INTRODUCTION

of wealth a new aristocracy, an elite of talent, the members of- which will always be changing, and which will be open to the humblest if only he renders himself capable of entering it.

Such a reorganization of industry and of society can only come gradually. But the gradual process of its evolution may produce results more rapidly than people are apt to think. It is not. only the new earnestness of spirit about education and the things of the soul that promises much. It is the new and impressive demand to bring production up to the level of the scientific standards which are now being reached. As Lord Leverhulme says, our waste of energy by not developing electrical processes and machinery is a hindrance. We seem, however, to be in sight of great reforms in this connection which may enormously diminish the waste of coal and water-power which has obtained hitherto. With a copious and well-distributed national system of distribution of electrical current from great central generating stations, instead of its inadequate and costly supply from the multitude of little generators which are strewed about the country to-day, a vast improvement becomes conceivable. If this were done, much reduction in standing charges would be possible, together with greatly increased production and much improved wages. The energy furnished could be employed mainly in the day for giving power, and at night largely for giving light. But it would at least be easier to provide for the continuous operation in different forms of a uniform electrical current which would make practicable the provision required for the introduction of a succession of short shifts for those employed in production.

In these matters, which are of such tremendous importance for the future of our nation, the Government and the great captains of industry, such as Lord Leverhulme, must play their part. Much thought and much guarding against

INTRODUCTION xv inertness and the selfishness of the individual are required. But, after all, what is most important is a high level of intelligence and interest in our people. And it will not be enough to confine this intelligence and this interest to things that are only material, however important. Further ideals are required — ideals of knowledge, ideals of beauty, and ideals of conduct. The whole man must be kept in view throughout. The spiritual leaders, in Churches and in Parliament and elsewhere, must co-operate. For it is not by bread alone that man can live.

But the soul cannot be saved unless the body is attended to, and it is because I think that the result of Lord Leverhulme's striving will be, if he succeeds, to better the condition of both soul and body that I have ventured by his desire to write these introductory lines in his book, and especially to that part of it which considers the six-hour day.

I

INTRODUCTORY. THE INDUSTRIAL SITUATION

When this world-war is over we shall be confronted with problems which, whilst in no way new, will be presented in new and acute forms. How shall we, as an empire, emerge from this ordeal ? Are we to continue a progressive democracy or sink into the slough of Socialism and Anarchy ? The decision will rest not with the Socialists or Anarchists ; not with politicians or Governments, but with the business men and working men of the Empire. Hitherto on both sides there has been a disastrous exhibition of short-sightedness and of greed, or lack of knowledge of those economic laws on which all solid well-being must and can only rest. Every increase in wages and shortening of hours has been resisted by business men as a raid on their ability to meet competition and make reasonable profits. And every attempt by business men to increase output and reduce costs has been met by the workers with sullen indifference or the active opposition of " ca' canny " methods.

Now we shall, after the war, be entering upon the most fateful and critical stage of our Empire's career. This war has thrown all previous rules and practices into the meltingpot. How will the Empire emerge ? Are we to attempt after the war to restore old decayed, wrong, and ruinous practices, or is there to be a radical recasting of all our business and labour methods ? It has been truly said that " to govern and in turn to be governed is the only form of true liberty/ ' In a true democracy and in this sense there is no governing class and no class that is governed : all classes govern, and all classes in turn serve alike and together. All classes serve one master — the only master whose service all liberty-loving citizens can be proud to serve — and that i9 their country's welfare.

Amidst all this confusion and clash of arms, this return to conditions of savage barbarism, our great encouragement and confidence are that the British Empire stands solid and united to face her foes, and loyal to our King as Sovereign of the British race at home and in our Colonies as never before in her history. Some timid people, suffering from an attack of cold feet, nervo^°ly ask, " What about Labour ? " The answer we can fin>i most clearly written in our history is, " Trust Labour wl jleheartedly and wisely, and all will be well." A good an<^ wise lover of the cause of Labour can never be a bad or undesirable citizen of the British Empire. And it will be our own fault if, by distrust and suspicions, we make him so. Let us never forget that the British spirit responds best when trusted, and can only become stupid, morose, and bad when distrusted and viewed with suspicion. This nation as a whole has never yet really trusted Labour. We have always borne a mental attitude of suspicion and distrust towards Labour. Well, this attitude won't help us, and is doomed to most serious failure and may bring possible disaster to the Empire. We have, with unbounded success, trusted our Colonies and other sections of the community that make up the British Empire, and, when we have done so, all has been well. We have even trusted the Boers in South Africa, who were so recently at war against us ; and now who amongst us dare to-day to come forward and say that our trust has not been amply and fully repaid by the loyalty and devotion to the British Empire of our South African brothers, Boer or Briton ? Distrust and suspicion can only breed distrust and suspicion, whilst confidence and trust inspire confidence and trust. The sympathy of every right-thinking man or woman is with those who toil ; with those who produce the necessities and comforts of life ; with those who bear the burden and heat of the day in whatever position they may be working : employer-capitalists or employee-workers.

Our national future stability has its sure foundation in the fact that both employer-capitalist and employee-worker are each becoming more and more intelligent every year that passes. The day is fast coming when both will be intelligent enough to recognize that their interests are identical and that the prosperity of either depends on the prosperity of both.

Life is not merely a respite between the sentence of death which is passed on all life at birth and the execution of that sentence. Every healthy human being seeks for happiness, and has to find happiness in supplying the wants of the body with food, clothing, and shelter. And equally happiness can only be found in feeding mind and soul with ideals of beauty, art, and learning. Happiness of the lasting, permanent type, without after shadows of regrets or ghosts of repentances, is the only good, and everything that tends to produce such happiness in men and women is good, and to do whatever produces this state and condition is to achieve the highest possible gain for the Empire and the whole of mankind.

Our industries progress, science progresses, but we have little or no corresponding progress in conditions of comfort of the workers. The employee- worker lags behind in that culture, education, social and economic well-being which he ought to enjoy under modern conditions of civilization. Our manufacturing towns are squalid and overcrowded, with ugly dwellings, without gardens. They are unlovely congestions, without beauty or possibility of refinement, and the great bulk of the workers remain at a relatively low state of betterment. The individual Home is the solid rock and basis of every strong, intelligent race. The more homes there are and the better these homes are, the more stable and strong the nation becomes. Men and women who get up to go to work before daylight and return from that work after dark, cannot find life worth living. They are simply working to earn enough one day to prepare themselves to go to work again the next day. Their whole life is one grey, dull, monotonous grind, and soon their lives become of no more value to themselves or the nation than that of mere machines.

Every year the workers become more intelligent and more acute reasoners. Think of the intelligence required in the workers to produce a modern locomotive or a greyhound of the Atlantic, or to work and operate the same, and to make and operate all the thousands of different types of machines now producing and working for the good of man. And each succeeding year demands still higher intelligence to produce still higher, better, and more complex mechanical utilities.

The requirements of our ancestors were few, but as civilization advances, not only do the wants of the body for variety in food, raiment, and shelter increase, but as the mind and soul expand, the intellectual horizon widens and the higher plane of living demands more and more leisure to feed its hunger for better conditions of life.

In the dark ages that are past, man believed in the supernatural as the direction in which he should search to satisfy his super- wants. To meet disease and death, primitive man believed in charms, magics, fetishes, and incantations. In chemistry he sought for the transmutation of base metals into gold, and his idea of mechanics was a search for perpetual motion ; and as to Governments, he relied on the Divine Right of Kings and Infallibility of Popes.

Are we not equally ignorant and equally doomed to disappointment if to-day the employer-capitalist relies on the magic of the " perpetual motion " fetish of long hours of toil, with low wages for employee-workers ; and are we not also doomed to disappointment if to-day "the employee-workers rely on the " Philosopher's Stone " of " ca' canny " and the " transmutation " of restriction of output into the " Elixir of Life " ?

The struggle of science and right thinking against ignorance and prejudice during the dark ages was long and bitter, but to-day no chemist is seeking for the " Elixir of Life " or trying to discover the " Philosopher's Stone." And equally our present-day ignorance of those economic laws that govern costs of production will disappear, and we shall learn that by development and encouragement of individual effort for increased output in fewer hours with higher wages we can best serve all mankind and best overcome all obstacles to progress, and so, by taking advantage of discoveries of science in invention and industrial development, supply all our wants with less exertion and secure a greater reserve of leisure to satisfy the hunger of mind and soul.

We are all agreed that the industrial situation has become the most pressing after-war problem to be solved, and that the solution will not be easy, not because there is more poverty in the United Kingdom to-day than ever — as a matter of fact there is less poverty than ever before in our history — but because there is a wholesome Labour unrest and national craving for vastly better conditions of life. The poor are not growing poorer, and the workman of to-day is better off than his employer was two centuries ago. But because — and I rejoice that it is so — the workman is each day becoming more ambitious, his mind and soul are expanding at a greater rate than, under existing conditions — even with higher wages — his leisure time permits him to keep pace with. Each year the workman is becoming a better educated man, with better social outlook. Whilst his social outlook is expanding, the workman in the twentieth century finds himself simply a seller of service, and that he has gradually become a cipher in a most complex industrial system, and has his life absorbed and controlled as a mere unit in a great factory or workshop that leaves him no scope for the exercise of the higher intellectual developments of modern life.

Whilst science is making life more livable and lovable by means of rapid transit and greater range of interests and wider scope, the time of the worker is occupied almost entirely in the provision of food, shelter, and clothing, with little or no leisure time remaining, even if he had the means, to provide for a higher level of living. He sees other sections of the community dashing about in motor-cars and generally living what appear to be, in contrast to his own life, lives of leisure and comfort. So long as the workman's life is passed in monotonous toil in factory and workshop from daybreak to sunset, no wages, however high, can make up for this separation from all that is highest and best in life : the workman is not content to be exhausted in the task of providing food, shelter, and clothing for himself, wife, and children, with practically no leisure for other pursuits.

This is perhaps a subconscious state, and is a condition that the workman himself would probably be unable to put into clear language, but that it exists is plainly shown by the so-called " Labour Unrest," and by the readiness with which a section of the Labour Party is prepared, Samson like, to break the pillars and throw down the whole structure of Society, rather than continue under the present conditions of the workman's life (which hateful conditions are far from being merely and solely a question of wages) — he disregards social usages, awards of umpires, his own Trade Union leaders, and the legal rights of Society, and would seek industrial

8 THE SIX-SOUR DAY

revolution in order to obtain redress from his present industrial position, and often merely imaginary grievances.

All this "Labour Unrest" arises from the fact that his life in factory and workshop has become one dull, monotonous grind, from schoolage to dotage, and this state of mind is as dangerous to the workman himself as it is to the nation — dangerous to himself, because, while he smarts under the oppression of his lot in life, he does not quite know how to obtain that fullness of life and happiness, comfort and well-being, leisure and advancement for which he hungers.

It is a basic law of all healthy, permanent growth that no one part of a whole can increase and develop without all other parts being symmetrically and proportionately increased and developed. This is equally true of Society as a whole or viewed in sections. No section of Society can enjoy improved conditions without all other sections enjoying improved conditions — otherwise there would be lack of symmetry in the whole and danger of the social tree toppling over at the first gale that tested the strength of the hold of its roots on the solid ground. The future security, or the present danger that menaces the industrial world, will be exactly in proportion to the symmetrical growth or lack thereof in all its parts. We can have no so-called leisured class or moneyed class unless all classes can enjoy the opportunity in their lives of leisure and money in symmetrical proportion. Not in equal proportions, because there is no such thing as equality or uniformity in God's scheme of man or of nature. But nature's and man's Creator never planned that one section should be starved whilst another section be overfed without decay and death resulting. Therefore our problem can only be solved by increasing wealth and increasing leisure. Then equal distribution would have no meaning, because the mere fact of equal distribution would increase neither the total wealth nor the total leisure — in fact, equal distribution would decrease both, by withdrawing the stimulus of reward from those possessed of the power to create wealth and leisure, and would encourage the " leaners " and " apathetics " to cease from all efforts and to make no use of opportunity as a means for development in skill and knowledge for production of wealth.

The power to create wealth is not a power against the public interest and well-being, any more than is bodily health and strength or great intellectual power. A man is not an enemy of the human race because, by exercise of foresight, thrift, and intelligence, he has accumulated great wealth, any more than is the man who, by temperate living and good habits, accumulates a store of good health, and consequently is fitted to live a long life. It would be as logical, as right, and as reasonable for the consumptives, the weak, the feeble, and the diseased to denounce the healthy and strong as it is for those possessing little or no wealth to denounce the rich and wealthy. And it would be just as effective a cure for consumption, weakness, feebleness, and disease to take steps to reduce the healthy and strong to a state of weakness, feebleness, and disease as it would be a cure for poverty to attempt to conscript the riches of the wealthy.

Take, for instance, the crude Henry George theories that to abolish all property in land by confiscating the rents received from land, and the more recent suggestions of others, that to abolish all ownership in capital by confiscating all interest and profits on capital would abolish poverty, and this wealth, when shared in by all equally, would bring about the millennium. These proposals are shown up in all their grotesque absurdity when we examine the figures, for we then find that their product, on pre-war basis, would, if divided equally, be under nd. per head per day for each man, woman, and child in the United Kingdom. In this calculation we take, of course, no count of salaries or wages, or of foreign investments, but merely of profits, rents, and interest on capital invested in the United Kingdom.

So that equality or uniformity of wealth is clearly no way to abolish poverty

A man is not a criminal merely because he is wealthy nor is a man a criminal merely because he is weak, feeble, or diseased. A man is not judged merely by his state of health or disease, or his state of wealth or poverty, but by his acts and how he lives, be he healthy or diseased, be he wealthy or poor, and he is also rightly judged by how he came by his health or disease and how he came by his wealth or poverty.

Some men acquired their health and strength, their feebleness, ill-health, or disease from their parents ; others gained their strength and health, or acquired their ill-health, feebleness, or disease, by their own acts. Equally, some men inherit their wealth or poverty from their parents, whilst others have gained their wealth or become poor by their own acts. A strong, healthy man can use his health and strength not only for his own benefit and happiness, but also for the good and happiness of others, and so become a gain to the whole human race. Equally, a wealthy man can use his wealth and riches not only for his own benefit and happiness, but also for the good and happiness of others, and so become a gain to the whole human race. The well-being and happiness of the whole human race depend not on equality of health or of wealth, but on each man and woman making the best use of their health or wealth, be either or both little or great, for the production of more health and more wealth. It is only so that gradually all can become healthy and all wealthy. Every advantage must be taken of every opportunity for creation of conditions that make it easier for each man and woman — if they so will — to become more and more healthy and strong, more and more wealthy and happy.