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Page 33
The model employer first considered, provided a large sum in his will
with which to build and equip a polytechnic school, which will doubtless
be of great public value. This again shows the advantage of individual
management, in the spending as well as in the accumulating of wealth,
but this school will attain its highest good, in so far as it incites
the ambition to provide other schools from public funds. The town of
Zurich possesses a magnificent polytechnic institute, secured by the
vote of the entire people and supported from public taxes. Every man who
voted for it is interested that his child should enjoy its benefits,
and, of course, the voluntary attendance must be larger than in a
school accepted as a gift to the community.
In the educational efforts of model employers, as in other attempts
toward social amelioration, one man with the best of intentions is
trying to do what the entire body of employees should have undertaken to
do for themselves. The result of his efforts will only attain its
highest value as it serves as an incentive to procure other results by
the community as well as for the community.
There are doubtless many things which the public would never demand
unless they were first supplied by individual initiative, both because
the public lacks the imagination, and also the power of formulating
their wants. Thus philanthropic effort supplies kindergartens, until
they become so established in the popular affections that they are
incorporated in the public school system. Churches and missions
establish reading rooms, until at last the public library system dots
the city with branch reading rooms and libraries. For this willingness
to take risks for the sake of an ideal, for those experiments which must
be undertaken with vigor and boldness in order to secure didactic value
in failure as well as in success, society must depend upon the
individual possessed with money, and also distinguished by earnest and
unselfish purpose. Such experiments enable the nation to use the
Referendum method in its public affairs. Each social experiment is thus
tested by a few people, given wide publicity, that it may be observed
and discussed by the bulk of the citizens before the public prudently
makes up its mind whether or not it is wise to incorporate it into the
functions of government. If the decision is in its favor and it is so
incorporated, it can then be carried on with confidence and enthusiasm.
But experience has shown that we can only depend upon successful men for
a certain type of experiment in the line of industrial amelioration and
social advancement. The list of those who found churches, educational
institutions, libraries, and art galleries, is very long, as is again
the list of those contributing to model dwellings, recreation halls, and
athletic fields. At the present moment factory employers are doing much
to promote "industrial betterment" in the way of sanitary surroundings,
opportunities for bathing, lunch rooms provided with cheap and wholesome
food, club rooms, and guild halls. But there is a line of social
experiment involving social righteousness in its most advanced form, in
which the number of employers and the "favored class" are so few that it
is plain society cannot count upon them for continuous and valuable
help. This lack is in the line of factory legislation and that sort of
social advance implied in shorter hours and the regulation of wages; in
short, all that organization and activity that is involved in such a
maintenance and increase of wages as would prevent the lowering of the
standard of life.
A large body of people feel keenly that the present industrial system
is in a state of profound disorder, and that there is no guarantee that
the pursuit of individual ethics will ever right it. They claim that
relief can only come through deliberate corporate effort inspired by
social ideas and guided by the study of economic laws, and that the
present industrial system thwarts our ethical demands, not only for
social righteousness but for social order. Because they believe that
each advance in ethics must be made fast by a corresponding advance in
politics and legal enactment, they insist upon the right of state
regulation and control. While many people representing all classes in a
community would assent to this as to a general proposition, and would
even admit it as a certain moral obligation, legislative enactments
designed to control industrial conditions have largely been secured
through the efforts of a few citizens, mostly those who constantly see
the harsh conditions of labor and who are incited to activity by their
sympathies as well as their convictions.
This may be illustrated by the series of legal enactments regulating the
occupations in which children may be allowed to work, also the laws in
regard to the hours of labor permitted in those occupations, and the
minimum age below which children may not be employed. The first child
labor laws were enacted in England through the efforts of those members
of parliament whose hearts were wrung by the condition of the little
parish apprentices bound out to the early textile manufacturers of the
north; and through the long years required to build up the code of child
labor legislation which England now possesses, knowledge of the
conditions has always preceded effective legislation. The efforts of
that small number in every community who believe in legislative control
have always been re�nforced by the efforts of trades-unionists rather
than by the efforts of employers. Partly because the employment of
workingmen in the factories brings them in contact with the children who
tend to lower wages and demoralize their trades, and partly because
workingmen have no money nor time to spend in alleviating philanthropy,
and must perforce seize upon agitation and legal enactment as the only
channel of redress which is open to them.
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