1921

times, to get men in large numbers into the habit of work. One tribe conquered another tribe and put the conquered to toil. The Normans slowly bred in the enserfed Anglo-Saxons of England the habit of work, and that was the final making of the Anglo-Saxons. They came through strong, and pushed the idling Normans out of power, and have themselves been in power all over the world ever since. But such "soldiering" as there is in American industry is partly also the product of the industrial system. It is partly the fault of poor, unhuman, untactful foremanship-a fine foreman in the plant with me claims that fifty per cent of it is thus caused. That is probably too large. And the war methods of American industry increased "soldiering." A vast amount of production was called for on the cost-plus basis. The drag-net was thrown out for workers in every direction. Many factories were saturated with excess of help. Easy-going ways readily developed when the volume of workers, at any wage to procure them, was greater than the ill-organized volume of work.

One of the chief causes of "soldiering" seems to be the doubt about steady and continuous employment on the part of the worker. The staid economist jeers at the fallacy of the union belief that slowing up of effort will "make work" for a greater number. But the laborer I who has been connected with an industry which is cursed with slack times, who has seen a rushing business followed again and again by a period of unemployment, who gets word through underground channels that the raw stock is running low and that the faster he works the sooner he and his comrades will be out on the street again looking perhaps for a long time in vain for a livelihood, who believes the charge that there have been many shut-downs in this country only for the purpose of keeping prices up by causing demand to speed hot-footed after supply, who hears that speculation in materials and not the steady flow of materials often controls output and employment-how can you blame a generation of workers, schooled in this combination of fact and belief, if they "soldier" on their jobs, with the thought that they are keeping employment steadier for a greater number of their kind?

THE NEW FREEDOM

The American worker insists on a reasonable measure of personal liberty, and the mass of factory workers are still smarting under the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment by a process which they regard as the snap judgment of war conditions. Most of them could get along without beer, but a large majority of them are still resentfully quarreling with the fate which denies them the long-accustomed privilege of taking a drink when and where they please.

The American worker also dislikes being regarded as merely a worker, a member of a lower social class in his country. Above all, he is demanding an opportunity for self-expression and a

Smith & Lindsley, Syracuse

square deal. This tendency is the moving force of the great tide of so-called industrial democracy. This means to the worker a great deal more than shop committees and industrial councils. The worker has not been alone in his sense of serfdom. It has been felt by the members of a political organization in the invisible presence of the power of the inner ring; the small merchant who does not dare to think differently from what his banker thinks; the member of the college faculty who kowtows faithfully to the patron trustee.

These men have their prejudices as well as their generosities. They will tell you that the Interchurch World Movement was wrecked because it ran head on against the brotherhood of wealth, which they hold is in eternal conflict with the brotherhood of man. They blame management and capital for evils for which the management and capital of any plant are only remotely responsible. When the falling off in the demand for automobiles came last summer, chiefly because the bankers of the country would not extend further credit to automobile dealers, and the workers were dropped by the hundred, one worker said to another on the street

car:

"Well, I hear you got laid off, too. How long have you worked there?" "Three years," said his comrade. "Well, that shows how much they think of you, too. We don't own our own jobs."

The majority of these men would overturn the Eighteenth Amendment. And yet there are evidences of a better judgment forming. An intelligent foreman talked to me of the clearer minds of

some of his men as soon as they let up on drink.

"They think of things they never thought of before," said he. "A while ago the newspapers had a lot to say about talking with Mars, and one of my men who had quit drinking because he had to, timidly asked me one day if i would explain this Mars business to him. I did as best I could, and he absorbed it like a child. While he was drinking he wouldn't have given a darn about it. There is a big intelligence in these men that has not been tapped. These fellows begin to understand that the saloon was never their real friend. This same man who wanted to talk about Mars came to me around Christmas-time and said:

"What do you think? I can't go to the saloon nights, and so I am buying a Victrola and staying at home with the kids.'"

In this plant, where the percentage of discharge for drinking was formerly high, since the abolition of the saloon less than one-tenth of one per cent are discharged for this cause.

CAUSES OF UNREST

One of the blacksmiths, speaking of vacation, said: "I thought last night I was going out of town with my family on a little vacation, too; but I got home and found that the landlord had been around and was going to raise my rent so high that I can't afford to go on a vacation. The politicians have been putting assessments up in the city and the landlord is passing the extra taxes on to me." A workman who had taken off his shoes to rest his feet said:

"You see those shoes? I wer!

the night before last and I said to the wife, 'I must have a new pair of shoes.' She said: 'All right; go downtown and get a good pair, because a good pair is cheaper in the end.' And I said: 'I have only six dollars to put into shoes at the most, and I can't get a good pair that I would like short of fifteen dollars.' And the best I could do when I got downtown was this pair at $4.50 in a bargain sale. They are not what I want. They don't fit exactly, and I have to take them off once in a while until I get them worked in. I would not buy such trash if I could help it; but what can I do?"

Worry seems to be the greatest single cause of unrest and inefficiency and lack of production-worry about a man's own health or the health of his family, worry about what will happen to his family if he is disabled or dies, the haunting fear of the loss of his job. The man who solves the problem of the stabilization of employment would just now be one of the greatest benefactors of mankind.

Also the monotony of modern factory specialization contributes greatly to unrest, I believe. The vice-president here was telling me of a worker who came in recently for a job. When they inquired what he had been doing previously, he said: "Me work on nut 45 in Ford." A iman performing a simple automatic operation, who has nothing to do but watch his fellows and brood upon his and their unsatisfactory condition, begins to see red after a while about the inadequacy of his wage and the pettiness of his bosses. And the result is apt to be a desire of change for change's sake, for larger and larger wages which may be unfair to the employer and the public, for violence and excitement

anything to relieve the strain of monotony.

The man who solves the problem of monotony of operation in industry would be another exceedingly great benefactor of mankind. It is one of the chief causes of ineffective production and industrial unrest. It is an important factor in a large labor turnover. You cannot get men, especially young men without family ties, to stay long in one place, on one operation, even at a high wage. There is danger of the very high progressive methods of specialization getting rapidly to the point of diminishing returns. As one man expressed it to me, "It's too near slavery!" We have here a problem not only in industry, but of course also in citizenship.

Managers are going at this problem of monotonous specialization through training schools within the plant. There is one here where I am. A great rubber plant in Akron has a large school for apprentices between fifteen and eighteen years of age, where a general high school education is carried on side by side with a technical training in many of the operations of the particular industry. Such an apprentice is not only a better citizen, but he can perform more than

In a later issue Senator Davenport will tell of some other experiences of his as No. 4626 in a factory.

one operation, and change from one to another occasionally is a relief. The broader education of apprentices could be carried on in every large city with good results, as it is being carried on in Dayton by the National Cash Register Corporation, the industrial high schools of the city acting in unison with the plant and with the technical university at Cincinnati.

Our superintendent tells me that every week at the foremen's conference is adopted the plan of giving each man a problem to work out and report on at the next meeting. He says it doesn't make much difference whether the problem is immediately practical or not. It starts the mental activity, develops men, and helps to cut down productive hours and costs. Breadth of interest makes a better specialist. That is the reason, I suppose, that the keenest managers like their technical experts to have a good college education.

There is a fatigue period in machine industry beginning in the morning between ten and eleven and in the afternoon between three and four. It is therefore of the greatest consequence that the lunch hour in a great plant should have careful attention. If the men rush out to junk hash houses and eat hurriedly a coarse and unbalanced ration, and then stand outdoors and bake on the sidewalk in the summer or freeze in the winter, they are not prepared properly for the work of the afternoon. A great lunch floor, well lighted, with a balanced meal, well served, at cost, with opportunity for smoking and perhaps music or movies, is one of the most profitable, as well as one of the most human, of modern industrial developments. Any large factory without it is a back number.

U

NCLE BEN, the villagers all call him, and indeed most of the folk along that pleasant New England countryside are his kin, and proud to acknowledge the relationship. He is a big man, six feet tall and two hundred pounds in weight, and when I first visited the valley fifteen years ago he was proudly seventy-five years young. Though he had done the heaviest farm work all his life, he stood as straight as a soldier, and his white hair and beard and his jovial face with its round rosy cheeks made him resemble very closely a picture-book Santa Claus.

Surely there was nothing in this man's appearance to suggest Adonoram, the well-drawn character in Mary Wilkins Freeman's story "The Revolt of Mother," nor did his home resemble in the least the dreary place in which Lizzie and Sammie had been brought up. The house was comfortable, with a good sized pantry adjoining the cheery

kitchen, a sunny sitting-room, and a stiff little parlor where an old rosewood piano stood. Aunt Abbie graduated from a select female seminary back in the fifties, and the thin sweet voice of the instrument still tinkled bravely under the touch of her roughened fingers. The bedroom was large and airy, and there were pleasant chambers abovestairs that could accommodate a host of grandchildren at holiday time. And yet

How Adonoram would have gloried in Uncle Ben's farm buildings! They stretched in an irregular line from the back door to the edge of the home meadow: the carriage house, with slatted shelves for seed corn above the ample floor space; the large chicken-house, with row upon row of nests; the icehouse, filled each winter from the nearby river; the milk-house, equipped in the most up-to-date way; the big horse barn, an imposing structure with huge haymows above the stables; and the cow

barn, with comfortable accommodations for twenty-five cows. Two hundred acres of the choicest land in the valley lay about these well-kept buildings, and any man might well be proud of such possessions.

If days instead of years had passed since my first meeting with Uncle Ben and Aunt Abbie, his gentle little wife, my memories of it could not be more vivid. I was spending a summer with a schoolmate at the other end of the valley, and we had driven over to solicit for a Ladies' Aid supper. Aunt Abbie won my heart at once, and when she suggested that I stop and rest while my friend went on to the next house I was only too glad to comply. Presently she invited me upstairs to look at a wonderful old quilt that had been her mother's, and we were soon in the midst of an animated discussion of patchwork designs. Suddenly a thunderous voice bellowed from below, "Mother!" The

WARNING

SK me nothing now, my dear

A The stars are all too large and near;

At dusk the peepers in the pool
Make my pulses play the fool;
Robins with morning winds awake
And in my spirit barriers break;
The willows are too golden green,
The grasses are too young and clean,
The little brooks too loud and swift;
Too red a crest the maples lift.

The heart of life beats high and glad-
Can we keep wise when earth goes mad?
Do not ask me anything

Lest misfortune fall.

I am in love with Love and Spring And not with you at all!

little lady sprang to her feet and flew down the stairs as though some one's life depended upon her haste. I followed, expecting some awful calamity. Apparently nothing unusual was going on. As I reached the door the big man remarked, calmly: "Going to town. Where's my pocketbook?" As she handed it to him Aunt Abbie was looking him over carefully. "Wait a minute, father. I must brush your hair, and you need a clean collar. Come in, child, come in." And while I visited with Uncle Ben his wife put on his collar, fastened his tie, tucked a clean handkerchief into his pocket, and smoothed his thick white hair.

During the five years that followed I spent many a happy day with Aunt Abbie. The scene which I had witnessed on my first visit to the house I found to be a daily, almost an hourly, occurrence. Every time Uncle Ben entered the house that commanding cry of "Mother!" rang through the quiet rooms. No matter what Aunt Abbie was doing-cleaning the attic, shaking the furnace, rolling out cookies, or taking a nap-she hurried to his side. I have sometimes wondered what would have happened if just once she had answered with that familiar phrase, "In a minute." old man's imperious demands were those

The

of a spoiled child. It was evident that he neither knew nor cared where any of his belongings were-"mother" always laid out his clothes and supplied him with clean collars and handkerchiefs. She fastened his shoes and put on his rubbers. She kept his diary and made out his checks. She cooked the food he brought according to his direction, and at the end of the day she read aloud from his agricultural papers while he dozed on the sofa. Just how she managed to keep her home so exquisitely neat, her cookie jar filled, and her grandchildren supplied with knitted socks and mittens was a mystery. She was a wonderful manager.

Adonoram's wife was mistress within her tiny house, with its shabby walls and scant furnishings; but Uncle Ben's wife, in her more comfortable home, was merely valet, secretary, and cook. Her husband bought, not only cows, but household supplies as well, without her knowledge and consent. No great crisis came to bring the thought of revolt to Aunt Abbie's patient soul. For years no word or look betrayed the fact that she realized the slavery of her life. When, flushed with happiness, I went to her to tell of my own coming marriage, however, she said: "Husbands are what we make them, child. Don't you ever

begin the way I did. At the start a man is glad to consider his wife, and don't you let yours know any different. He'll be happier that way, and you'll live to do for him longer."

There came a time when there was dust on the old piano and the cookie jar was often empty. More and more frequently Aunt Abbie was roused from the sofa by her husband's voice, and we noticed that her hands shook when she tried to fasten collar buttons and shoestrings with the old haste. Every one except Uncle Ben knew that the little lady was wearing out. If we who loved her voiced our fears, he was indignant -he was hale and hearty at eighty, and was she not a full ten years younger? A bit tired to-day, that was all. Aunt Abbie was tired-tired out and we could not grieve when she fell asleep one soft spring morning, though we should miss her sadly.

Uncle Ben is ninety now. He is not as spry as he used to be, but he is still wonderfully hale and hearty; while the devoted daughter who has answered his summons since "mother" slipped away is aging fast. As in the days when Aunt Abbie met his demands with such loving, loyal patience, he is proud of his age, proud of his strength, and utterly unconscious of his tyranny.

I

WILLIAM DE MORGAN'S LAST NOVEL

-T is not often that the relation between reader and writer is so intimately personal in feeling as it was in the case of the author of "Joseph Vance," "Somehow Good," "It Can Never Happen Again," and the many other long, rambling, and entertaining stories that in varying degrees have given pleasure to all those English and American readers who are not afraid of being called lovers of the Victorian type of fiction. De Morgan quietly but incessantly cultiɣated this intimacy. It was of the kind that existed between Thackeray and his admirers, but not between Dickens and his countless readers, and this although De Morgan always stoutly maintained that as a writer he owed most to Dickens. However that may be, De Morgan had a way of his own of taking the reader into his confidence, of slyly sharing a joke with him, of involving him by what he once called his "button-holey" manner in a sort of sotto voce discussion of situation and motive. The result is that one feels a personal loss now that he can no longer look forward to "the next De Morgan," and even in a measure a personal grief that so delightful and lovable a personality as William De Morgan has finished his course.

To be perfectly frank, neither "The Old Man's Youth" (no one can reasonably be expected to quote the complete cumbrous title, given in the foot-note) nor the preceding posthumous novel, "The Old Madhouse," may be ranked with the three novels named above in virility and charm. In both the manner is the same; the quality is there, the talk is clever and humorous, but the total impression is fainter, as might be expected of a man doing creative imaginative work after his seventy-fifth year.

It

But, if one would not select "The Old Man's Youth" as a reader's introduction to De Morgan, it should surely be read by all confirmed admirers. has his touch and his charm, if not his full flood of vitality. It is not, moreover, a work half De Morgan's and half not, as some erroneous advance notes have stated. His wife, who has also died since the work was completed, has stated that, with the exception of a very few brief connecting and concluding chapters (which are pointed out by being called "The Story," while the rest is "The Narrative of Eustace John"), the book is left exactly as her husband wrote it. At least nine-tenths is De Morgan verbatim. The chief structural defect of the story is the premature disclosure, dramatically speaking, of the peculiarly heartless criminal act of a self-seeking woman. This is told in one of the interpolated short chapters, and one wonders whether Mrs. De Morgan could have misunderstood the intention. 1The Old Man's Youth and the Young Man's Old Age. By William De Morgan. Henry Holt & Co., New York.

Probably not; but it was not like De Morgan to dispel the mystery of a situation until he simply had to do so. In the main Mrs. De Morgan's chapters carry on the tale clearly.

A single passage may be quoted from "The Old Man's Youth" as an illustra

WILLIAM DE MORGAN

tion of the author's fashion of playing about in a byway of criticism:

Few of us have the hardihood to express opinions about color to real artists, but now and then a meek voice rises in protest against emerald green eyes and blackberry-juice lips, and is told that its owner is colorblind. How can he know that he isn't? And when he points out that another real artist has painted the same original with emerald green lips and blackberry-juice eyes, he does not score a single run. Because that is interpretation. It is always a case of heads, Inspiration wins; tails, you lose. Respectful silence is always open to bystanders, whose consolation it must be to reflect that the most original and powerful neosophies may pass and be forgotten.

It is odd that De Morgan's last book should have had in part the same theme as his first. "Joseph Vance" appeared in 1906-and it is a pleasure to record that The Outlook's reviewer then referred to it as "a novel that aligns itself with the best English fiction." The reviewer noted also that Joseph Vance (the narrator, not his father) is "a sweet-spirited old man who has loved much, known many friends worth knowing, and suffered in silence for love's sake." Almost these words might be used of the old man who narrates his life in this last work. The message of

the two is not the same. Mr. De Morgan himself stated that of "Joseph Vance" in these words: "The highest good is the growth of the soul, and the greatest man is he who rejoices most in great fulfillments of the will of God." It is true that Joseph Vance had a happy old age and that Eustace John Pascoe died in an institution, and that the tone of the one life is warm satisfaction and that of the other gentle depression and hopelessness, but the spirit of the two men is alike sweet and unselfish.

The passage above quoted from "Joseph Vance" was selected by Professor William Lyons Phelps as the motif of that novel, and the choice was affirmed as correct by the author. A prize had been offered to a class at Yale for the best essay on De Morgan's novels, and in corresponding with Professor Phelps De Morgan had remarked that he always tried to have a dominant motif in his book and wondered whether the contestants would detect that in "Joseph Vance," adding, "None of the reviewers did." This appears in an article by Professor Phelps in a recent issue of the New York "Times's" Book Review section. The article should be read by all who care for De Morgan, as it contains many extremely interesting and characteristic letters hitherto unpublished.

De Morgan's literary career, and his whole life for that matter, was remarkable and unusual. We will repeat here its outline as it was given in our columns when the first of the two posthumous novels appeared:

"He was sixty-four years old before he ever thought of novel-writing. Then, like Scott with 'Waverley,' he wrote a chapter of Joseph Vance,' laid it aside unfinished, and only at his wife's solicitation finally completed it and sent it to a publisher. Between 1905 and 1917 (when he died at the age of seventyeight) he published eight novels and romances, most of them quite unusual in length and notable also for their vivacity, optimism, and cheerful philosophy; in other words, written with the spirit of youthful vigor rather than what might be expected from a man who began his apprenticeship to fiction in late middle-age. Apart from his novelwriting, Mr. De Morgan's career was one of versatile talents; he was artist, inventor, and craftsman; he took part in William Morris's movement for household art; he designed and, we believe, manufactured tiles and stained glass; he invented a duplex bicycle, a sieve, and a smoke-consuming fire-grate; he had an intense interest in aviation; during the Great War he abandoned work on "The Old Madhouse' to study out scientific inventions for war use. In art, science, and literature his mind was active and his knowledge extensive; his ceramics and luster-ware work were said by Holman Hunt to compare well with the best Italian periods."

After her husband's death Mrs. De Mor