THE COLLEGE MAN IN INDUSTRY

An address delivered before Dartmouth Lunch Club, March, 1912:

American colleges are centers of social service ideals. It is not strange that this should be so, for the college, from its charter to its teaching is salted with a social service passion. The people who are responsible for its foundation have rendered social service in giving it birth. The trustees who outline its policy and nourish it jthroughout the years give their time and talent freely, as social service. The faculty who energize and vitalize its policy are notably underpaid, but are not altogether cast down thereby, for they regard themselves as social servants. This iideal fixes itself firmly, too, on the student heart, to such a degree , that whatever criticism may be made regarding the morale of the modern student, this remains uppermost, that never in the history of modern, secular education has there been in our college student ranks so great a multitude of social idealists. To many skilled athletes, the time given to the team is so given not for the glory of the prize and the applause, but as their distinct, unique contribution to the college ideal. Our colleges and even some of our preparatory schools are notably alert in sending out bands of student social workers to the nearby communitie: musicians, bible teachers, instructors of elementary knowledge to aliens, entertainers, preachers, lecturers and play directors! In this way Dartmouth College socializes the isolated farming and manufacturing villages within a radius of miles. Harvard and Yale, and other New England institutions help socialize the needy spots within their territory: slums, factories and homes.

During the four years of his life in college, then, the student has little difficulty in nourishing social idealism. It is in the campus air and large cups of it are supped in the classroom. With his slippers perched on a table, at night, he chats familiarly of it with his roommate—and is sympathized with; understood, for it is part of the daily speech. But at Commencement time the thought troubles him: "Will the stout roots of this idealism, so well fed, so deep and firm, become a tree of life in the world?" If he is to enter the ministry or become a settlement worker, or develop into a medical or institutional missionary or, perhaps, become a Y. M. C. A. official, he is assured, full well, that the root will become a tree. His only concern is, how pink will the blossoms be that shall come out at springtime or how perfect will be the fruit of the tree at harvest?

On the other hand, here is the student who is to become an employer of of labor, a director of industry, the manager of a business. There are certain, proverbial conditions in the industrial life of the country that call a halt to his idealism: that stand up before his youthful purpose like those high garden walls one sees in England, with broken glass on top of them, over which none may climb. He has heard it broached from many angles, that first of all a college man in industry is less desirable and less a success than the "self-made man with a shrewd knowledge of the world and of men; possessing an acute, native bargaining ability." There appears a sound reason for this, too. for he has seen a check-list of the famous captains of industry: a majority of them non-college trained men, "self-made." On account of this, the student is liable to be found shivering on the brink of Commencement, fearing that his degree may be, after all, a handicap, rather than an asset. The annual jokes in the comic papers, and the grandiloquent addresses of "self-made" men to working boys' classes: these deepen this latter impression.

The argument is familiar. Business, modern business, is strongly antihumane. It is a "struggle for existence," the "survival of the fittest." "Corporations have no souls: if they did, they could not survive." "The dollar is the god." "Under the bank-note banner the employers fight." "The only ideals in industry are those having to do with the sale of goods. No employer of labor can afford to quibble about ethics." The best and only equipment for the man in industry is sound sense, the business instinct and a shrewd eye. He cannot afford to conduct a humanitarian institution and call that an 'industry' or a 'business.' " "No college can instill these things. It fills a man full of theories of technical quibbles, so that he loses in competition with the 'hard-headed'' man."

Under this energetic, perennial advice, the college man, if he has chosen to suffer with the social idealists rather than endure that unhuman standard of business, turns aside with a sigh from the vocation for which he is fitted, and plunges into some third-rate social work, for- which, as a technical profession, he is not fitted. In this wise, many are deflected into the ministry, into missions, into fads. On the other hand, if the student has been other, worldlyminded, he has put aside his social ideals with his college mementoes and has gone into the .whirl of competition, fighting fire with fire.

This has been the record, up to date, of American industry." The "hardheaded man" has been the highest type of business and industrial success. The "self-made," "shrewd" man has dominated industry: has led all others, whether loaded down with college diplomas or nurtured in technical schools. Out of this type of leadership, too, have come some of our more acute labor issues. "Hard-headedness" has not been interested in. the welfare of the employees: whether in sanitation, the protection of life, the mental or social status of the workers. "Hard-headness" has taken the hand of its sister, "hard-heartedneiss" and hence, as an obnoxious sediment from the financial success of the "self-made" man, have fallen in our midst, for us to clear away laboring men's hostilities, many selfish and crude —almost pagan—conceptions of employer's justice. This type of industrial leadership has given birth to terrible paradox: the more successful theemployer, the less successful the employee!

But the college man, stands in the midst of a sudden shift in the industrial ideal. It is so remarkable a shift that already the paradox on which industry formerly did rest has been turned into an epigram, which reads, in wonderfully luminous type. The more successful the employer the moresuccessful the employe!

This shift may be interpreted in two ways. It may be described as the practical idealism of college men in industry. It was strikingly illustrated in the president's office of a large industrial concern, in which I sat This man, young and polished, so unlike in figure and conduct the stage and story book "man of affairs," pointed with pride to the portraits of a number of captains of industry: spoke of their successes in spite of difficulties: in fact unfolded about each one the usual, romantic episodes of the rise from mill boy to manager. Then, after he had spoken, I thought of the personal tale my host had unfolded, a tale that reeked with pagan episodes in the mills of those men he had just lauded. I also thought, of the man before me, college trained and an idealist: of how he had been providently permitted to help wipe out those pagan practices, those vicious conditions of labor, because he had the broader vision of a college training. I thought of his persistent fight—a winning one—to bring a host of "hard- headed" managers and "shrewd" stockholders, to his humanitarian point of view: a view based on ethics, sociology and history; and yet, economical! I thought, too, of his firm insistence that this practical idealism put to work in industry, turned out to be the best business policy!

Perhaps the most revolutionary shift, in the industrial ideal, however, has come about through the introduction of "scientific management of industry." The "hard-headed," "shrewd" employer has not been scientific. "Hard-headed" is merely a synonym for "non-scientific." Everything in industry, heretofore, has been "approximated," "guessed at." That is why the college man, with his exact, scientific training, has had such a poor time of it in beginning his industrial career under the dictation of such an employer. He, in turn, has become unscientific, because dominated, controlled by that type of manager.

Now the striking points about "efficiency," brought out by practical mill men are: that rightly applied, the college man may go into the mill of the old type, "self-made," successful, industrial manager, and by the application of scientific, college wisdom, increase that man's efficiency from fifty to four hundred per cent!

But beyond the economic advantages of the college man in "scientific management," comes that which gives the note of hope to the idealist who wishes to take his idealism into his life work, as an employer. For "scientific management" the "efficient use of" the workingman. takes the employer not only into the humanitarian aspects of his factory, but into the social, recreational and domestic affairs of his employee. The "scientific" management of all those various sides of the employee's interests enter into the day's task of the employer. Beyond the mere scholasticism of social, psychological, ethical, economic and mechanical studies—all of which enter into "efficient" and "scientific management,"—must be the coloring of idealism, the orange glow of social purpose: all lighting and beautifying the path towards economy!

As one talks with the managers of industry, sees the armies of young college men going to and fro in the land with stop watch, social eye, and moral purpose, under the "efficiency banner"; as one finds at work these college-bred idealists including in their regulation of modern, efficient industry, such items as: "cow sheds for the employees," "bath houses for the miners," "trained nurses for the quarters," "a company lawyer for the free use of the workers," "club rooms," "improvement classes," "prize gardens," "domestic science," "mental efficiency," "community righteousness," there comes a hope that the evils left in the trail of the old type, non-scientific employer, will be wiped out. For the striking thing lies not in the fact that these social, welfare items have the sanction of the employers, but at last they find their place on the books as efficient helps towards a better type of workingman: that they are "tools" for good business; like a sharp saw or a correctly adjusted watch.

To include these items in the daily, business routine, demands the highest type of broad, scientific culture, which only the college or the modern technical school can give. At last the mixed curriculum: psychology, sociology, economics, history; at which the "self-made" employer has hurled derisive taunts, are to become focused upon the man at the machine; giving the college man the advantage in the scientific insight into human nature,- the scientific knowledge of the domestic and social welfare of his employee, the proper and just alignment of wages—for the highest efficient response from the worKers—and a historical perspective through which he will see the truth that the prosperity of the employer is scientifically dependant upon the prosperity of the man employed. Then the industrial world will look up, for there will be loose in it those good-bringers: scientific socialisers!