Early or easy realization of the ideal of a pro longed working life will not come of itself. In dustrial evolution seems to be moving in the con trary direction. Invention in the arts has out stripped invention in social policy. Long hours, a seven-day week, the constant strain on nerves and muscles in tending machines, the minute sub division of labor, the inconsiderate application of efficiency tests, the speeding process, the setting of the pace and rhythm by power-driven machines instead of by the natural movements of human beings, the cunning shift from time-wage to piece wage and back again in such a way as to extract the last ounce of energy from labor; the growing ap preciation of swift deftness, of springy alertness, of plastic adaptability in industry; the disappear ance of the individual worker from the conscious knowledge of the employer through his submer gence in mere numbers and the more impersonal and arbitrary estimate of his usefulness which naturally follows; the increasing bitterness and intensity of labor controversies; and the relative increase in the number of industrial wage-earners in the population, whose working life is shorter than that of clerical, professional, and agricultural work ers—many of the large outstanding facts of modern industry point to an earlier rather than a later old age. And yet these facts are all wrong and the ideal will prevail over them. We shall come to understand these stubborn facts of industry and change them. We shall eliminate the dangers which industry has developed. We shall increase physical resisting power. We shall cut down hours, bring in more leisure and variety. We shall adjust industry to man and install some system of human audit by which the effect of industry on physical and moral well-being can be accurately judged, by which its essential nature, not as a source of. dividends, but as occupation for rational living men, can be evenly and continuously ap praised.
When the question arises as to how these things, which we have so clearly failed to do, are to be done, there is no new answer. We may pin our faith to the various means by which we have made progress already; for there are other facts of in dustry than those to which we have just referred. We rely first on trade unions and the principle of collective bargaining which they represent. When a prominent banker at a public hearing recently expressed ignorance as to what collective bargain ing is, and made an equally naive and refresh ing acknowledgment, when it was explained to him, that it looked like a good thing, he was not, after all, more than a few years behind a great many employers who have been finding out to their sur prise that a bargain made by an association of em ployers with an association of employees has many advantages and does not necessarily or even prob ably mean disaster or bankruptcy.
We may rely, secondly, on voluntary action by individual employers, and by officers, directors, and stockholders of corporations, action based upon accurate and comprehensive surveys, inti mate personal acquaintance with workingmen and their families. I am firmly of the belief that the normal man of wealth and power in industry does not desire to exploit or oppress; to destroy health or morals and subject children or youth to undue risks or certain injury; to take dirty profits either from customers or from employees; and that in creasing knowledge will mean increasing prolonga tion of life by the voluntary improvement of in dustrial conditions.
We may rely, last, on public opinion, working when necessary, but not exclusively, through legis lation and the courts. Trade unions, voluntary reforms in industry, the pressure of public opinion and education, are the means by which we are to secure that normal life for working men and women and for their families at home which is the only remedy of premature old age.