TO PRODUCE MORE

Evening Post, Volume CII, Issue 35, 10 August 1921, Page 4

TO PRODUCE MORE

BRAINS, ORGANISATION, HUMANITY

(Contributed;.by the New.Zealand Wei- ■■','• ■ fare League.)* (~ v '„.",:. '; "

' Some employers think the call for "more production" is a demand that the ■ operatives shall work , harder What about the employers? Have .they all; _ being doing' their best during the war and since? We have heard of farmers, manufacturers, and other employers, sporting about in their motor-cars to all sorts of meetings and pleasures when ' they ought to be attending to business. If you want better set the example is a good'line to take. ■ BRAINS IN INDUSTRY! . The fact is that as a, factory growa in size, • something else has to grow with it besides the buildings', the plant, and the staff, and that: is the directing brain. Every one has observed cases in which the decline of a given factory has been due" to, a change *n direction, owing, perhaps, to a son succeeding a - father, and .a falling-ofi in brain power has inegtably. led to a falling-off in pro- ._- ---ductivfippower. This, perhaps,^ looks ■„', broad and simple proposition, but youwill not pursue your studies in economics very far before you find that it is precisely this kind of/ proposition which entails the biggest consequences. Many of you will rank in the hierarchy j£ of business as "little .men,"' and you may feel discouraged when you reflect that you have to pit your small plant against the giant plants that surround you. There is no valid reason for this discouragement. 'Everything will • depend upon the^brains you put into your 'work;' » x OBRSANISATION. . Organisation, as the economist sees it, ha| two sides: (1) technical; (2) human. In* these days the later ia becoming more and more important. It is often said, and with .truth, that one of the effects of large scale production was to 'divorce master and man, to rob industry of' any kindly personal relation between >^ those who commanded and those who had to obey. Workers came to feel that . they .were nothing but . parts, dehumanised parts, of a machine for grinding out profits for the advantage of an employer whom they rarely saw, and to whom they never spoke. To pay attention to the organisation of human beings is of the very greatest import-' anCe" THE HUMAN ELEMENT. If you are to organise for bigger output you must get back into the factory, somehow or-other*-'this nlmOßt spiritual element which has""been squeezed out of it by the last 50 years of expansion. Machines may become even .more important than they are to-day, but you may depend upon it that 'you will never succeed in ■ turning men into machines. The most sensible informed leaders of labour know perfectly well that they , cannot offer labour a much higher real wage, as a result of the socialisation of industry. They mak§ their appeal by saying that they are going to provide a better, employer, not a more efficient producer, but a better employer on the human side. It is useless merely pointing out that' no State, no guild, no Soviet is likely to produce better economic results, since it- is not economic results that they arej thinking of. If you; are to for bigger output you muct prove a better employer than any substitute which "advanced" thought can suggest. __ '