practice in this respect is remarkable and has led to the organization of an effective service in this direction.

The generous treatment of foremen and the steady drawing-out of their capacities for leadership and for interpreting to workmen the policies and ideals of liberal-minded owners is the open secret of some of our most happy and contented businesses.

How the Workman Thinks

What do we find when the workman gets representation and comes down to details? What is the attitude of mind he discloses? These conferences have shown that some of his unrest vanishes readily before personal contact and vanishes for good, but we also find that he entertains fallacies and misconceptions about industry to which he clings tenaciously, and to which many of our foremen, who are frequently the sole source of enlightenment, are not qualified to make an adequate response.

Our foremen are too often during periods of industrial friction mere onlookers when they might be efficient leaders and molders of thought among the small groups which they supervise. Here are a few of the ideas which guide the average workman in judging his employer:

1. He is all for the concrete, the direct, and the personal.
He must be shown effectively how each proposal would
affect his own industry, his own plant, and especially
his own job.

2. He frequently believes that all his aspirations and the
claims of his trade on industry could easily be satisfied
here and now out of present profits and with no more
production.

3. He often claims that "raising the sales price" will
settle all his employer's difficulties, reward them both
more liberally, and possibly reduce the effort demand-
ed of them.

4. When the obvious objection to this in its effect on all
other trades and commodities is pointed out he says,
"Well, let them pass the raise on also."

5. Not a few workmen act on a conviction that it is a distinct advantage to employment and labor to restrict

output and that in doing so they are performing a moral
duty to themselves and their trades.

6. Finally, the average workman is little interested in
community or national welfare. The public interest as
a rule is too remote for him to be influenced by it.
He often has the ideas that there is just so much work
to go round, that profit is always a certainty, and these
fallacies lie at the bottom of many stubborn and fool-
ish quarrels in which they are never even mentioned.

What Our Foremen Lack

It may be said that these are commonplaces in the industrial world but we wish to emphasize here that they are commonplaces to which several thousand foremen had no effective answer where it would have done most good.

It is our experience that large numbers of foremen ranging from 25 to 65 years of age can be sufficiently educated in a very short time by intensive processes to appreciate the industrial economics and human engineering of their job and to apply such teaching with enthusiasm in their daily routine.

Certain it is that no ideas which we fail to sell to our foremen can be permanently conveyed to our workmen, and while a wealth of endeavor is being expended on the moving soil of labor at present we should not overlook the permanency of a liberal investment in the education of our numerous minor executives.

Apart from technical proficiency, our extensive survey has revealed the same lack of training in the methods and principles of modern production as it did in handling men. Production methods are being increasingly elaborated by experts and converted into systems of operation but it is generally admitted by employers that unless these are related in the minds of the foremen to general industrial practice. they awaken little interest.

Education for leadership in handling men and things has usually been concentrated on young men preparing for the higher positions, but the workman makes his contacts and

has most of his differences with the foreman and judges his employer accordingly.

For over a year intensive three-month courses have been given to several thousand foremen and executives in many plant groups. These have covered personal development, handling men, production principles and industrial economics; not in academic form but through four special channels, namely: Simple brief texts specially written for foremen; practical problems of leadership on which they correspond; lectures at intervals of two weeks to each group; and open discussions after lectures at which any topic is admissible.

The method is the Plattsburg one of short intensive training. It is found that any group of associated foremen can be effectively held together for that time with increasing interest. They have not the zest of adolescents for longcontinued studies but they do respond to interesting brief

courses.

The reactions of executives in widely differing industries in the discussions have been remarkable. Apparently no such opportunity has ever been afforded them though there is much about which they are curious. They practically talk on the same topics and many employers have testified that such an intellectual awakening has served many of the purposes of "a council of the whole" for the foremen of their plants.

A number of the classes have permanently organized on this basis. In the small plants it has been felt that such an enlightened, energized body of foremen in any concern might well form with the mass of the employes "a committee of the whole" on all industrial relations.

The High Cost of Living

Naturally among several thousand foremen, a class which did not profit like labor in recent years, the cost of living in one phase or another was a frequent topic.

Here are the

conclusions arrived at in conference after careful discussion of facts and principles:

1. Mankind can only have what it earns. The fifty-cent dollar in the American pay envelope is due partly to unavoidable currency and credit inflation but chiefly to the scarcity of goods and services. We must continue our war-thrift and diligence, in spite of the temptation to relax, until we have paid our debts.

2. No juggling or jockeying by law, compromise or force with wages and hours of labor will bring the desired ease and comfort unless it is associated with greater effort or better directed effort. The ugly weapons of direct action and the general strike are a betrayal of representative government.

3. The effects of proposed conscription of wealth cannot be confined to the rich. They spread everywhere and the poor are least able to bear them. Private enterprise can always produce more goods at less cost than socialized industry with its loose, extravagant control and absence of the economic urge. The way in which goods should be divided is always open to adjustment by common consent in a democracy but the goods we must have and every proposed new road to freedom must guarantee them. None of them does.

4. The laws of economics are as rigid and immutable as the laws of physics. It would be just as easy to produce perpetual motion as to provide for a community which goes indifferently through the motions of production and then calls upon its government to divide something which it has not produced.

5. The high cost of high living has not a little to do with the present unrest but there is no single cause for our troubles and no single remedy. "Profiteering" does not explain them, though it greatly aggravates public feeling; it calls for firm repression when practiced by either side in industry.

Conclusions

The relation of industry to the four partners concerned, namely labor, capital, brains and public interest, was studied

in each class of foremen with special reference to the conditions of harmony and productiveness. Here are the conclusions arrived at:

The workman will be contented as a rule if he obtains:

1.-Security of employment.

2.-A voice in fixing employment conditions.
3. A fair share of the profits.

4. Working hours yielding reasonable leisure.
5.-Prevention of profiteering.

6. Suitable housing and welfare provision.
7.-Economic instruction.

8.-Opportunity to rise..

The contented workman will co-operate if there is:
1.-Elimination of all suspicion of his employer.

2. Creation of confidence between him and the executives.
3. Recognition of mutual interest in industry.

4. Creation of machinery for facilitating acquaintance.
5.-Absence of all paternalism in industrial relations.

The contented and co-operative employe will be exceptionally efficient and productive if he is scientifically directed with special incentives, modern methods and appliances and if he ignores all labor restrictions on output and narrow trade demarcations.

Contentment in the workman is purely relative. In democratic industry and life a healthy discontent is the normal attitude of forward-looking people. Hence it is useless in our day for employers to aim at and plan for a quite docile organization of human units as some have done. American and alien alike should be encouraged in self-expression and given sufficient education about the nature of industry to use their self-determination intelligently.

In too many cases both workers and foremen are allowed to drift, so far as improving their intelligence is concerned. In connection with personal ambition the subject of profit sharing was extensively discussed and it was the general conclusion that no long-deferred benefit, or reward more dis