The Warriors - Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
The Law of Equity is the final law of trade. But in whose hands is
equity? Who appraises value? Who sets price? In whose hand is the final
price of the necessaries of life--wheat, rice, sugar, soap, cotton,
wool, coal, milk, iron, lumber, ice? The man who puts a price on an
article, as buyer or seller, enters an arena which is not only
commercial--it is judicial and ethical: he declares for what amount a
man's life-blood shall be used.
No one absolutely sets price. It is determined by far-reaching
industrial conditions, and by economic law. War, weather, famine,
stocks, strikes, elections, all have a say. Yet, to a certain degree,
there are those who rule price. As a representative of the ideal, as
executors of social trust, how shall each one use his Power of Price?
The man who has control of a price--a price for a day's labor, for
wages, for a cargo, or for any kind of product--has control of the
living conditions of the one who works for him. The question is not: How
shall I grind down price to the lowest? It is: What price will be an
ethical return to this man for his social toil?--just to me for my
brains, my capital, my energy, my distributing power,--just to him for
his brains, his time, his skill, his artistic perceptions, his fidelity
and honor? Each buyer must henceforth not only resolve: I will buy only
what I can pay for, but, what I can pay for at a just rate. So far as
lies in my power, I will make an adequate return to society for this
personal benefit.
Some one says: Do you realize that you are making a moral laughing-stock
of much of our system of trade? that you are setting an axe to that
system, more cutting than the axe of any Socialist, Nihilist, or
Anarchist in the world? Oh, no. I have simply set myself to answer the
question: How can the business man stand among the ideal-makers of the
world, so that he shall no more, in spiritual assemblies, be told to
go away?
Woman is the real economic distributer. The millionaire manufacturer
imagines that he himself runs his business. Oh, no. It is run by
farmers' wives. When they do not care for yarn or calico, his looms
stand idle for a year; the vast machinery of the world turns on woman's
little word: _I want_. Hence the education of women should include this
factor: the desire to want the right things. Extravagance is not a part
of woman's make-up; it is extraneous.
_Gain is that which permanently enriches the life._ By every act of
charity, or justice, or insight, or right barter, the soul is made more
grand. True trade everywhere may be made a new method of inspiration,
growth, and power.
Money is a makeshift of the race. God is the only real appraiser, and we
never get back a money-value for our soul's toil. Whether we pass
wampum, or nickels, or taels, or bank-checks, we are not yet paid for
our trade.
The higher value of money is its spiritual capacity. Not what it will
bring me is primarily important, but what I can buy with it for the
race. Sometimes the question comes over me: What am I trading for money?
My time? My energy? My ideals? Part of my soul is passing from me: do
dollars ever repay? Hence it comes about that all money transactions are
fragmentary and symbolic.
Money may lead to poverty, or to spiritual wealth. The gift of trade is
a gift of God, as much as the gift of prophecy or song. In a right way,
we should all love gain. We are not born to go out of the world as poor
as when we came into it. We should gain stature, wisdom, strength,
influence, ideals. If our latent business capacity were more fully
aroused, we should get much more out of life. We would refuse to barter
a spiritual heritage for carnal things.
We trade thoughts and feelings. But it is very hard to trade fine
impulses with those who are intrinsically vulgar. Their treasury is
empty of spiritual coin, and their storehouse contains no
world-thoughts. We can send a caravan across the desert, a ship across
the sea, but we cannot send a Thought into a flaccid or a pompous brain.
We trade position and influence. The evil of the spoils system is not
that one gets something for something,--it is that one gets something
for something less, or for nothing. Whatever we have to give may be
rightly given; the wrong comes when we give it to the idle or unworthy.
When we trade political preferment for high merit, both the
office-holders and the country are gainers by the exchange.
Marriage is the great mart of exchange. Here the possessions of one sex
are set up against those of the other. Everywhere marriage is spoken of
as a good or a bad "bargain." Each man shall say: "Sweetheart, in Myself
I offer you the treasures of manhood. I give strength, courage,
magnanimity, action, protection, and the indomitable will." Each wife
should say: "Dear, in me are all gentleness, courtesy, beauty, grace,
patience, mercy, and hope. I, too, am brave, but my courage is of the
heart. I, too, am strong-willed, but my will is deep-set in love." As
years go on, there comes a time when Love says: "Between us now there is
neither mine nor thine. The universe is ours together!"
Human love is not all. There is yet a higher impulse. The most
business-like question that ever touches the heart of man is this: For
what shall I trade my soul? We hold our souls high: we perceive that
eternity itself is not too much to ask. And hence the highest barter is
that of the earthly for the spiritual; of the temporal for the unseen
and eternal. We say, Give me God, give me heaven, give me divine and
sacrificial Love, and I will give my heart. And thus the last
transaction is between God and the soul. Godliness is great Gain, and to
exchange earth for heaven is a satisfying and unregretted Trade.
IV. THE WORLD-MARCH: OF WORKERS
[ARMAGEDON]
Jesus, Thou hast bought us
Not with gold or gem,
But with Thine own life-blood,
For Thy diadem.
With Thy blessing filling
Each who comes to Thee,
Thou hast made us willing,
Thou hast made us free.
By Thy grand redemption,
By Thy grace divine,
We are on the Lord's side;
Saviour, we are Thine!
Not for weight of glory,
Not for crown or palm,
Enter we the army,
Raise the warrior psalm;
But for love that claimeth
Lives for whom He died,
He whom Jesus nameth
Must be on His side.
By Thy love constraining,
By Thy grace divine,
We are on the Lord's side;
Saviour, we are Thine!
FRANCES RIDLEY HAVERGAL
What is work? Work is energy applied to the creation of either material
or immaterial products. The digging of the soil preparatory to raising a
corn-crop is work; the making of brooms; the writing of fugues. There is
no one who does not work, at one time or another, and a man's social
value depends largely upon the amount of work that he can do.
Even the energy which is seemingly applied to destructive tasks is
really subsidiary to a constructive ideal. Thus the hewing of timber is
a destructive task, but its object is not to scatter trees around, but
to make a clearing on which to plant wheat; or to have lumber, in order
to build a house. So, also, we blast rock, in order to get stones for a
stone wall, or for the filling of a road-bed. And we rip up old clothes
in order to have rags, and to make room in our homes for other things.
Destructiveness from a sheer love of destructiveness is not work--it is
vandalism. The true Man works. When Adam's crook-stick turned over the
brown earth to make it fertile, he began the industry of the world. The
whole horizon of man's endeavor is spanned by one word, Work. It has
built cities, bridged rivers, united continents, and sent the myriad
spindles of trade whirring under a thousand changing skies.
Work is the open-sesame of success. It is curious to see how uneasily
some men will roam from one end of the earth to the other, trying to
find an easy place, a place where work will not be needed or required.
There is no such place. The higher the honor, the harder the work. The
power to work is ordinarily the measure of a man's possibilities of
success. Long hours, hard toil, lack of recognition and appreciation,
drudgery, a thousand attempts to one successful issue,--these are the
ways in which the colossal achievements of mankind have been built up.
Work, as has well been said, is an ascending stairway. On its broad base
are ranged all the multitudes of the earth. Those who can climb mount
the higher and ever-narrowing stair.
The great man can begin anywhere, or with any task. He says, If I am
going into the giant-business, I may as well begin now! Born and bred in
the forest, he lays hand to his axe, and looking up at some tall oak,
cries out, I will begin here! With the first stroke of the axe, success
is not less sure than in his last endeavor. Success of the right kind is
a scientific achievement.
The line has not yet been drawn, and I doubt whether it ever can be
drawn, between productive and non-productive labor. There is a cleavage
of tasks, however, which may be approximately expressed, as work that is
done for support, for daily bread, and work which is done because
certain faculties of mind and heart and soul demand expression,
development, and scope. We all have powers which are willing to be set
in action primarily for self-preservation--for personal, material, and
transitory ends. We are also endowed with faculties which react,
primarily, in behalf of universal aims, though that may not debar them
from also bringing an advantage to ourselves. In proportion as we are
talented, magnanimous, and high-minded, we delight in spending a part of
our lives in working for the race.
Thus Thoreau, when he, "by surveying, carpentry and day-labor of various
other kinds," had earned $13.34, was doing income-work, the work by
which he had to live. For the same purpose, he worked at raising
potatoes, green corn, and peas. When he wrote _Walden_, he did a kind of
work which also in time brought him an income. But he did not write
_Walden_ for food or money; he wrote it primarily because he liked to
write, and for the benefit of mankind.
In order to be contented and happy, each normal adult human being must
have at least the chance of doing these two kinds of work. Unless he or
she can do income-work, he or she is not economically independent;
unless he can do universal work, he is not socially and
spiritually free.
Much of the present-day discontent is owing to the fact that these two
kinds of work are not represented, as they should be, in every
working-life.
The problem in regard to the working-man is not how to pet him, nor to
patronize him, but how to educate him and inspire him! He is not a
parasite to be fed by the capitalist, nor is the capitalist a parasite
upon the working-power of the working-man. Both are men. The problem is,
How shall the capitalist lead the noblest, most public-spirited, and
helpful life in relation to those in his employ? How shall the
working-man lay hold on the best that life can give? How shall he find a
work which he is competent to do, and likes to do, and may be supported
by doing--and at the same time have a chance to grow; to enter into the
large, free culture-life of the world?
The complaint of the working-man, when really analyzed, runs down to
this: I do income-work, but it does not bring me bread enough to live.
Not only that, but ground down as I am by toil, all possibility of the
larger, universal work is shut away from me. My faculties are
atrophied--paralyzed--and hence my soul smoulders with deep and angry
discontent. This ceaseless and sordid anxiety for bread cuts me out of
my world-life, my world-toil. I cannot do scientific research-work, or
write the books and papers that I ought. My universal labor is
interrupted: I cannot be happy until I can take up this larger
work again.
As the trade of civilization advances, the meaning of bread changes. The
university professor, no less than the day-laborer, finds his income
too small for him, and says, "I, too, do income-work which does not
bring me bread, books, travel, society, a summer home, and surroundings
which are not only decent and sanitary, but refined and beautiful."
Is it not also the source of the discontent to-day, among almost all
classes of women, except the most highly educated and efficient? Women
say--our modern daughters, wives, and mothers: "In the home, we do
income-work for which we do not receive income. When strangers do this
work, they are paid, and we are not." In addition, many a woman is so
bound down by daily tasks, that her whole soul cries out, and we hear of
the high rate of insanity among farmers' wives, of nervous prostration
of the housewives in our towns, and become accustomed to such
expressions as "the death of a woman on a Kansas farm."
This discontent takes many restless forms. It leads daughters, who ought
to be at home, out into morally dangerous but income-earning work; it
takes wives out into all manner of clubs, without regard to the fact: as
to whether the particular club, in its atmosphere and influence, is good
or bad; it brings discouragement, disorder, and unrest into the home,
dissatisfaction with house-duties and home-tasks, and is sapping our
life where it should be best and strongest--in the home--taking out of
it youth, spirit, enthusiasm, inspiration, and content.
The three questions asked in regard to each worker are: 1. What work
can he do? 2. Of what quality? 3. In what time? The difference between
industry and idleness is that work is one thing which no one may
honorably escape. Since it must be done, the problem of life is not how
to escape work, but how to find the right work, and how best to do it,
and most swiftly, when the choice is made.
"_Forth they come from grief and torment; on they wend
toward health and mirth,
All the wide world is their dwelling, every corner of the
earth.
Buy them, sell them for thy service! Try the bargain what
'tis worth,
For the days are marching on.
"These are they who build thy houses, weave thy raiment,
win thy wheat,
Smooth the rugged, fill the barren, turn the bitter into
sweet,
All for thee this day--and ever. What reward for them
is meet?
Till the host comes marching on._"
WILLIAM MORRIS
SECOND
The trade of toil for money has led to many problems and discussions.
To-day the trenchant question: "What More than Wages?" is a matter of
eager talk. Is this a living-wage?--Just enough warmth, not to freeze.
Just enough clothing to be decent. Just enough food to go through the
day without actual hunger. Just enough shelter to keep out the wind and
rain and snow. Just enough education to learn to read and write
and count.
No. As the theory of bodily freedom demands for each man life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness, so the highest theory of to-day lays down
demands of economic freedom beyond the mere fad of possible existence.
Dr. Patten has formulated certain "economic rights" of man. Each
employer must say: Before I settle back with a serene belief that I have
given my men a living-wage, let me ask: Have they sun? air? sanitary
surroundings and conditions? medical care? leisure? education? a chance
to grow? Have they enough money for ordinary occasions, and a little to
give away? No man or woman has a living-wage, who has no money to
give away.
Education and comfort add to the value of the employed. The cook who has
a rocking-chair, a cook-book, and a housekeeping magazine in her kitchen
will do more work, and better work, other things being equal, than the
cook who has none. The workman who lives in a clean, sunny, well-aired
place, where he can found a home, and bring up healthy children, will do
more work, and better work, than the workman who lives in a damp, dark,
ill-ventilated tenement, and who goes to his day's work with a heart
sullen and broken because of avoidable illness and sorrow in his poor
little home. Five thousand employees who have a night-school,
luncheon-rooms, little houses and gardens, a savings-bank, and a library
of books and pictures are worth more than those who are given no such
advantages of happiness, growth, and content. The Railroad Young Men's
Christian Associations are said to be a good economic investment, as
well as an uplifting moral influence.
This appears to be a fundamental economic law: _Every physical, mental,
or spiritual advantage offered to an honest working man or woman
increases his economic efficiency_. Therefore even the selfish policy of
shrewd corporations to-day is to screw up, and not down; while the more
philanthropic are beginning to see, in their social power, a luminous
opportunity to do a god-like service.
But the capitalist, however just or generous, cannot do for a man what
he cannot or will not do for himself. Too many workers imagine that a
living-wage is to be given to each man, no matter how he behaves or
works. This is a false assumption. Underlying all human effort, there
runs a final law, that of Compensation: _What I earn, I shall some day
have_. This is a very different proposition from this: _What I do not
earn, I want to have_! For every stroke of human toil, the universe
assigns a right reward--a reward, not of money only, but of peace of
heart, joy, and the possibilities of helpfulness. But when the work done
has not been done faithfully, or well, or honestly, or in the right
spirit, the reward is lessened to that exact degree. To the end of time,
the idle and the lazy must, if they are dependent on their own
exertions, be ill housed and fed. If a man wastes, or his wife does, he
must not complain that his income will not support him. If he lets
opportunities of sustenance and advancement go by, the capitalist is not
to be held to account.
There are two chief kinds of economic difficulties. One is the problem
of the capitalist: How much ought I to pay? The second is that of the
working-man: How much service must I render? How much ought I to be
paid? Of the second kind, nearly every phase of it begins right here,
that men and women demand for labor something which they have not
earned. They do careless, indifferent, shiftless, reckless work, and
then demand a living-wage. The capitalist is not inclined to raise his
scale of prices, knowing that he has built up his business by prudence,
sagacity, and tireless application--the very qualities which his
dissatisfied employees lack.
We need not pay--we ought not to pay--for incompetence, for
impertinence, for disobedience of orders, for laziness, for shirking,
for cheating, or for theft. To do so is a social wrong. It is the wrong
that lies back, not only of sinecures and spoils, but of employing
incompetent and wasteful cooks and dressmakers.
What we make of our lives through wages depends upon ourselves. For
instance, a man gives each of five boys twenty-five cents for sweeping
snow off his sidewalks. One boy tosses pennies, and loses his quarter by
gambling. One boy buys cigarettes, and sends his money up in smoke. One
boy buys newspapers, and sells them at a profit which buys him his
dinner. A fourth boy buys seeds, plants them, and raises a tiny garden
which keeps him in beans for a whole season, The fifth boy buys a book
which starts him on the career of an educated man: he becomes an
inventor and a man of means. The man who paid out the twenty-five cents
to each boy is in no way responsible for the success or failure of their
investment of this quarter. He is responsible only for the fact that he
did or did not pay a fair price for the work.
God, the great Paymaster, gives to each of us the one talent, the two
talents, or the ten talents, of endowment and opportunity: after that,
we are left to our own devices!
There are four things which every employee should constantly bear in
mind, if he wishes to advance,--skill, business opportunity, loyalty,
and control. Until a man has mastered what he has to do, he cannot be
expected to be accounted a serious factor in the economic world. The
moment he achieves skill in what he has to do--and this is a question of
thoroughness, accuracy, and speed--he has achieved power, a possibility
of dictation in the matter of hours and wages.
The next point is business opportunity. Two men, of exactly the same
opportunities and endowments, take up the same task. One man idles and
is surpassed by the other, or he does only what he is told to do,
without further thought. The other performs his set task, but at the
same time he is examining into the principles of his engine, or into the
conduct of the factory or business. In a few years he is the foreman, or
an inventor, or a partner, with independent capital of his own. Again,
there is a blind way of doing skilled work, or of merely doing it
without noticing where it is most needed, or how the market is going for
this special kind of work. The one who has his eyes open reads, notes
the state of the market, adds to his skill the power of counsel, and can
gradually take a larger responsibility upon him, which will advance the
economic value of his time, as well as the work. There is a constant
flux in the labor-world, which is the result largely, not of special
opportunity, but of worth, application, and concentrated thought.
Third, loyalty has a high mercantile value. Disloyalty is a sin.
The fourth point is control. Does it not strike wonder to think how some
men have under them, either in their industrial plant, or in their
railway systems, or in their syndicate-work, anywhere from a few hundred
to ten, fifteen, or twenty thousand men? How do they maintain
discipline, either themselves, or through their subordinates? This
problem of control is a serious one in business. Every angry threat,
every sullen hour, each case of insubordination, every strike, every
widespread dissatisfaction, means economic waste. It means expense both
of time and money to send for Pinkertons to keep order and preserve
discipline. The man who adds to his technical skill, and his knowledge
of the market, the power of control adds great force and value to his
work. Higher yet is executive force, the power to adjust
responsibilities and duties in such a way as to get back a high economic
return in the way of service. But above all, there is that force of
character which impresses itself on a company, on a decade, on a
generation--so that some names are handed down in business from
generation to generation, all men knowing that from father to son, and
again to his son, there will pass down that certain integrity, nobility,
steadfastness of purpose, fidelity, and honor which give credit
throughout the business world, and which promise health and happiness
for those who are happy to be in their employ.
Before a man complains of his wages, then, let him ask himself: Have I
mastered my work? Am I loyal? Am I capable of larger responsibilities,
and of wider control?
THIRD
WILLIAM MORRIS says: "_It is right and necessary that all men should
have work to do which shall be worth doing, and be of itself pleasant to
do: and which should be done under such conditions as would make it
neither over-wearisome, nor over-anxious._"
This theorem cannot be upheld in its entirety, though there is a deep
truth beneath it. There are many things, such as the collecting of
garbage, the washing of the dead poor, the cleaning of cesspools, the
butchery of cattle for the market, and the execution of capital
criminals, which can scarcely be called pleasant to do, and must yet be
done. As long as the world is the world, and there is in it sin, decay,
disease, and death, we cannot hope to make the work or the conditions of
work absolutely ideal: we _can_ make ideal the spirit in which work
is done!
A fine story is told that long ago, when the cholera once broke out in
Philadelphia, the hospitals fell into a fearful state. One day, a plain,
quiet little man stepped into the chief hospital, looked about a moment,
and set to work. No task was too dirty or disagreeable for him; no
detail was too disgusting. He did anything he saw to be done,--called in
additional doctors, organized the nurses, and himself waited on patients
night and day. He soon had the hospital in good shape again. When the
crisis passed, and every one began to demand, Who is this man?--they
were told: It is Stephen Girard. The work was not pleasant, but the
spirit was kind, and the heart delighted in its self-appointed toil.
Work in general, however, that has worth has several elements. First, It
must be individual. It must be joyfully done: there must enter into work
the vitality of a happy spirit. It must be spontaneous. This is why
machine-work can never be thoroughly beautiful: it lacks the spontaneity
of life. The hand never makes two things alike. With the mood, the
weather, the occasion, there are little touches added which a machine
cannot give. Life always varies and thinks of new effects.