Page:The stuff of manhood (1917).djvu/58

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capital and industry have come to see this clearly. Here is one typical utterance by a leading engineer at a meeting of the Immigration Committee of the Chamber of Commerce of the United States:


"Industrial Americanization is a part of the prevalent present-day movement towards the humanizing of industry. It aims to make what is commonly called 'welfare work' not an exercise of the individual employer's 'paternalism,' but a legitimate kind of business organization everywhere. There are now innumerable kinds of 'welfare work.' One employer does it from the point of view of 'good business'; another on the 'big brothers' theory. One man confines himself to playgrounds, another to safety appliances. In one firm it is under the employment manager; in another under a Y. M. C. A. director; and in a number of other firms it is classified in as many different ways.

There is no agreement among American employers as to where the organization of the human side of industry really belongs. And there are absolutely no standards for it. What we need to do is to extend scientific methods to the human phases of industrial organization, and thus give 'welfare work' a definite place and definite standards. The engineer as the 'consulting mind' of industry must be the leader in this work. It is he who determines the site of the plant and its construction. Inside the plant again, the engineer has much to do with efficiency methods. No efficiency methods that are unrelated to the men in the plant can prosper permanently."


But there is another sort of resource and national treasure greater by far than these, which