Life — December 15, 1910 — page 10: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

“ While there is Life there's Hope.” VOL. LVI. DECEMBER 15, 1910, No. 1468 Published by LIFE PUBLISH COMP, JoAL MITCHELL, Prete, A. MILLER, Sec 17 West Thirty-frst Street, New York M* BRANDEIS, speaking for the shippers of the Eastern Seaboard, told the Interstate Commerce Commission that it was a pity to let the railroads raise freight rates at a cost of 27 millions to his cli- ents when they might just as well save that money and much more by introduc- ing into their business the economies that are being devised and applied by industrial engineers. He did not say that the railroad business was car lessly or inefliciently managed as busi- nesses go, but he held that it might be managed better, and that if the latest economies of the efficiency engineers were introduced in all the railroads the resulting savings would amount to three hundred millions a year. It is a great deal better, he argued, to have the railroads save that money, or so much of it as they need, than to let them get it out of the shippers, who will get it in turn out of the con- sumers. The exploits of the industrial engi- neers in improving the processes of labor, thereby saving time and money in surprising quantities, are intrin- sically interesting and astonishing and seem worth the advertisement that Mr. Brandeis has given them. The aim of these experts is not to get harder work out of men, but to increase the results accomplished without increasing the effort of the workers. This is done by putting thought on processes and system; putting the bricklayer’s bricks where they come handiest to his use, furnishing the shoveller with the shovel best suited in size and shape to the substance he is shovelling. Brains and thought in most lines of business are more used and better paid “LIFE « in the office than in the shop or yard or field. Industrial engineering is a slop-over of some brains from the office into the shop. Whether Mr. Brandeis has done any- thing more or not, he has advertised a new profession and emphasized a possibility. The improved methods he advocates are not unknown to rai roads, for it is in some of the railroad shops that their possibilities have been best worked out. But Mr. Brandeis argues that railroads that ask leave to raise rates must be ready to show that their management is well up to the times in efficiency and economy. The Wall Street Journal thinks that if Mr. Brandeis had “made his attack upon methods of purchase and of financing, rather than upon the man- agement of transportation and me- chanical facilities, he might have set the commission upon a more profitable trail of investigation,” though all these matters, it thinks, concern the stock- holder more than the shipper. is not so much the shipper th. Brandeis seems to have on hi as the consumer back of the shipper. He is looking for chances to give the consumer a little more for his money, and he deprecates any change that will raise prices on him. HERE seems to be a growing inter- est in the consumer. It has gone so far that the consumer has even be- gun to take some interest in himself. He showed that in the late election. The possibility of the production of the things that add to the comfort of life in this age and country is enormous, but it is the devil’s own job for the consumer to get his hands on those things. The Government taxes him, the railroads take their rake-off, the trusts skin him, the high tariff people subject him to conscienceless exactions, the strikers win their strike and the cost is charged to him, the middle- men live off of him. The consumer is the natural prey of every enterprising person who is trying to improve his condition. Luckily for him he is not only the consumer, but also and co- incidently he is the government, the railroads, the trusts, the labor union and the middle-man, and the enterpris- ing person, and when his hide as a consumer is lifted off of him he gets a little of it back sometimes in his other capacities. But he doesn’t get enough. When Miss Tarbell tells him that the tariff- kiters have taken all the wool out of his undershirt, it is cold comfort for him to remember that the tariff-kiters are also consumers. He would like to have more wool in his undershirt, and when Mr. Foss tells him in Massachu- setts that the Hon. Cabot Lodge is an accessory to the December chills that run up his spine, he begins to wonder whether Mr, Lodge is a suitable per- son to represent him in the Senate. The chief end of Government is to provide that the consumer: shall have sufficient to consume, and peace and liberty in the consumption of it, and due chance to invite his soul if he has one, All over the world the consumer shows increasing realization that this great aim of government has been much less perfectly fulfilled than the means warrant, and everywhere he shows increasing inclination to attend to it himself. That is what is at the bottom of the spread of democratic influence in Europe and of Insurgency in the United States. It is a fine emo- tion the consumer is having, and we wish him luck with it, His problem is to keep the machinery of the world going, better and better all the time, to keep the brains that run it fairly sat- isfied, to offer capital due inducement to accumulate and seck employment, to have enough gamble in the great work of production to keep adventurous spirits excited about it, and still to re- tain for his own maintenance and im- provement a due proportion of the product. It is a nice job, to be sure; a very nice job; but the consumer is powerful when he wakes up, and can get very able and expert men to help him do his thinking. It is time he had his turn, and it is important to civi- lization that he should have it; but it is also important that he should be reasonably patient and not smash the machinery or retard its beneficent operation.