第26章 Chapter 4(7)

In the absence of all reflection this crude estimate may seem recklessly hasty, perhaps it may even be thought scandalously unflattering to our substantial citizens who have the keeping of the community's material welfare; but a degree of observation and reflection will quickly ease any feeling of annoyance on that score. So, e.g., if the account as presented above does not appear to foot up to as much as the conclusion would seem to require, further account may be taken of that side-line of business enterprise that spends work and materials in an effort to increase the work to be done, and to increase the cost per unit of the increased work; all for the benefit of the earnings of the concern for whose profit it is arranged. It may be called to mind that there still are half-a-dozen railway passenger stations in such a town as Chicago, especially designed to work at cross purposes and hinder the traffic of competing railway corporations; that on the basis of this ingeniously contrived retardation of traffic there has been erected a highly prosperous monopoly in the transfer of baggage and passengers, employing a large equipment and labor force and costing the traveling public some millions of useless outlay yearly; with nothing better to show for it than delay, confusion, wear and tear, casualties and wrangles, twenty-four hours a day; and that this arrangement is, quite profitably, duplicated throughout the country as often and on as large a scale as there are towns in which to install it. So again, there is an exemplary weekly periodical of the most widely reputable and most profitable class, with a circulation of more than two million, which habitually carries some 60 to 80 large pages of competitive advertising matter, at a time when the most exacting economy of work and materials is a matter of urgent and acknowledged public need; with nothing better to show for it than an increased cost of all the goods advertised, most of which are superfluities. This, too, is only a typical case, duplicated by the thousand, as nearly as the businesslike management of the other magazines and newspapers can achieve the same result. These are familiar instances of business as usual under the new order of industry. They are neither extreme nor extraordinary. Indeed the whole business community is run through with enterprise of this kind so thoroughly that this may fairly be said to be the warp of the fabric. In effect, of course, it is an enterprise in subreption; but in point of moral sentiment and conscious motive it is nothing of the kind.

All these intricate arrangements for doing those things that we ought not to have done and leaving undone those things that we ought to have done are by no means maliciously intended. They are only the ways and means of diverting a sufficient share of the annual product to the benefit of the legitimate beneficiaries, the kept classes. But this apparatus and procedure for capturing and dividing this share of the community's annual dividend is costly -- one is tempted to say unduly costly. It foots up to, perhaps, something like one-half of the work done, and it is occupied with taking over something like one-half of the output produced by the remaining one-half of the year's work. And yet, as a business proposition it seems sound enough, inasmuch as the income which it brings to the beneficiaries will presumably foot up to something like one-half of the country's annual production.

There is nothing gained by finding fault with any of this businesslike enterprise that is bent on getting something for nothing, at any cost. After all, it is safe and sane business, sound and legitimate, and carried on blamelessly within the rules of the game, One may also dutifully believe that there is really no harm done, or at least that it might have been worse. It is reassuring to note that at least hitherto the burden of this overhead charge of 50 percent plus has not broken the back of the industrial community. It also serves to bring under a strong light the fact that the state of the industrial arts as it runs under the new order is highly productive, inordinately productive. And, finally, there should be some gain of serenity in realising how singularly consistent has been the run of economic law through the ages, and recalling, once more the reflection which John Stuart Mill arrived at some half-a-century ago, that, "Hitherto it is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day's toil of any human being."