goods or in limiting the population, not in making the process of production pleasant. The utility theorists took the same view, except that they emphasized the variations in the irksomeness of labor during the working day. After work had been fairly started it might be positively pleasant for a time, and so long the worker gained both the pleasure of exercise and the pleasure of having products to consume. This fact, however, might be set aside once it had been mentioned. For the factor that helped the economist to explain prices was the marginal sacrifice of labor-the sacrifice made in the most difficult hour of the working day. That sacrifice was taken for granted and the economist passed to other problems. In this field so lightly tilled there is a deal of work to do. That work may start with Veblen's naïve question, Why is labor irksome? He has shown that man has an "instinct of workmanship' which finds satisfaction in the skillful performance of a job, and dissatisfaction in waste of good materials or waste of effort. He has suggested that our feelings which contradict the instinct of workmanship, pride in "conspicuous waste" and disesteem for manual labor, may have no more permanent foundation than a set of institutions which make riches the chief criterion of success in life. Is that true? If it is true, is it the whole truth? May not the conditions of work imposed by the machine process be repugnant to the kind of human nature we inherit? But if they are repugnant is there nothing more to be done? Can we not find ways of adjusting work and workers so as to lessen the irksomeness of labor if not to make it attractive, "energizing" instead of "enervating" in Dean Schneider's phrase? A practical movement will drive these questions home. In this country and still more vigorously in England the working classes are insisting with new vehemence on the old truth that labor is not a mere commodity to be counted among the costs of production like the coal burned in the factory furnace. For labor cannot be separated from the laborer and the laborer is a citizen who believes he has rights to as satisfactory a life as anybody else. These rights he seems minded to enforce by peaceful methods if they suffice, perhaps by violence if that proves necessary. He wants not merely good wages and leisure hours, but also a share in the management of industry to secure satisfactory working conditions, and to gratify his craving for power. Between such demands and current conditions there is a great gulf fixed. That gulf can be bridged only by scientific social en gineering. In making and trying designs for this bridge men of constructive imagination among the employing class and among the working class will play the most active rôles. But the professional students of the social sciences will also have a share in the work. Men have an extraordinary variety of aptitudes in detail; different jobs call for the most diverse qualities of mind and body. It is necessary to analyze both men and jobs with care to find the capacities of the first and the requirements of the second. If that can be done with success, it should prove possible to place a large part of the workers, perhaps, in the end, all the workers, in jobs that will give ample scope to their faculties without overstrain. Then the average factory operative may get as much satisfaction from his job as the average professional man now gets, provided always that in the processes of change we shuffle off our conventional disdain of manual labor. Such a consummation is one of the working ideals that economists will come to cherish. They will think of production not merely as a process of making goods, but also as a set of human activities in which the workers are being cramped or being developed. They will be even more concerned with what man does than with what he gets. At the beginning I said that the prospect of making progress in economics is bright, that we seem to be entering upon a period of rapid theoretical development and of constructive application. My reasons for that faith are now apparent. The grave problems of the war and of reconstruction will restore to economic theory the vitality it had after the Napoleonic Wars. In dealing constructively with these problems economics will develop rapidly on the quantitative side, it will lay increasing emphasis upon the production of serviceable goods, it will focus its attention upon the cumulative change of institutions, it will realize that it is one of the sciences of human behavior, as such it will become less the science of wealth and more the science of welfare, from this new viewpoint it will gain clearer insight into its relationship to other sciences, its past accomplishments and its future tasks. All this is full of promise. But I must add that the task of the social sciences is supremely difficult, that progress will be chequered, that the particular changes I have prophesied in economic theory may not take place, that our generation may pass before men find a really fruitful way of attacking economic problems. How all will go we cannot foresee. Yet if we do the work of today and tomorrow according to our lights we shall at least be helping on that long process of trial and error by which mankind is striving toward control over its own doings. A chance to share in this work with its exacting demands, its frequent disappointments, but its thrilling possibilities is open to all who will. |