TO PRODUCE MORE

Hokitika Guardian, 16 August 1921, Page 3

TO PRODUCE MORE

BRAINS- ORGANISATION—HUMANITY. (Contributed b.v the N. Z. Welfare League.) Some employers think that the call for “More- production” is a demand that the operatives ftiall work harder. What alKiut the employers ? Have they all been doing their best during the war and since!' We have heard of Burners, manufacturers, and other employers, sporting about in their Motor Oars to •all sorts of meetings and pleasures when they ought to he attending to business. If you want better work set the example is a good line to follow. brains tn industry. The fact is that as a factory grows in size something else has to grow with It besides the buildings, the plant and the staff, and that is the directing brain. Everyone has observed c ases in which the decline of a given factory has been due to a change in direction, owing perhaps to a son succeeding a father, and a falling off in brain power has inevitably led to a failing oft in productive power. This, perhaps looks n broad and simple proposition, but you will not pursue your studies in economies very far before yon find that il is nrecisely this kind of proposition which entails the biggest consequences. Many of von will rank in the hierarchy of business ns “little men,” and von mnv feel discouraged when yon reflect that you have i« nit vonr small plant, against the giant plants that surround you. There is no valid e.-ono-mic! reason for Elds dLcoiirapemenf Kvorvthing will depend upon the brains vou put into your work. organisation. Organisation, as the economist sees it. has two sides; (1) technical ; (2) human. Tp these days the latter is becoming more and more important. Tt is often said, and with truth, that one of (V effects of the large scale production was to divorce master and limn, to mb industry of nnv kindly personal relation between thus., wlm commamWl and those who had to obey. AVo-her; to feel that they were liofh-’im 1 ’ ’ parts, dehumanised parts, of a machine for grinding out profits' for the a<b "n----tage of an omuloyer whom thev saw and to whom they never spoke. To pay attention to the Organisation o*‘ human beings is of the very greatest, importance. THF. HUMAN ELEMENT. If you are to organise for bigger output you must get back into the f”' - tory, somehow or the other, this almost spiritual element which has hepn squeezed out of it by the last >0 M’.us of expansion. Machines may become even more important than they are to-day, but you may depend unm it tliat you will never succeed in turnin'' men into machines. The ain't sensible and informed lenders of labour knew perfectly well that they cannot offer labour a much higher real wage as a result of the socialisation oi industry. They make their appeal by saving that fhev are going to provide a better employer, not merely efficient producer, hut a better employer on the human side. Tt 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 are .thinking of. If you are to organise for bigger output you must prove a better employer than nnv substitute which “advanced” thought can suggest.