so lost to the association is deducted from the face of the note-in other words, the note is sold, the loss deducted, and the balance turned back to the grower, whose stock share in the association is also made liable for desertion losses.

Naturally, one might think that such a binding agreement would meet with opposition. In point of fact, in the instance above mentioned and in the case of the Michigan Potato Exchange, this binding contract has been one of the leading selling features. A guaranteed acreage, and the control of that acreage, means business volume and the business stability of the association, and the man who might hesitate about going in without such assurance feels that he is joining a strong organization.

Under this plan of pledging it is provided that the note given shall be used for no other purpose than as a protection to the association against loss through breach of contract, and for the further purpose of establishing a revolving fund out of which to conduct the current business of shipping.

And since the Potato Exchange follows the sound co-operative practice of not buying outright, but merely moving the produce forward to market on joint account for all the shippers, substantially as done by the live-stock shipping associations and the creameries, this guaranty note is peculiarly safe, in a business way, from any loss through mismanagement.

Some one, I am sure, is wondering just how this will work in case the grower is offered a price better than that bid by the association. A fair question. It would be a one-sided bargain that would force the grower to deliver to the association at all times and cause him to lose sales that he might secure through accepting outside bids.

And right here is where the competitive buyer has always done his most effective work of destruction. He has paid above the market until the cooperative association has been crushed, and then has taken it out of the hides of the men he used as tools for the destruction of their own association. The new plan-I call it new merely because we of the Middle West have just begun to adopt it, though it is perhaps fifty years old in Denmark and in Holland and has had a shorter but successful life in the fruit-growing regions here in America-the new plan provides in the contract that the grower may have the benefit of the highest price offered, but that he shall turn all bids in to the association!

What happens? John Jones comes to town with a load of potatoes, or anything else pledged under this plan. Call it potatoes. A buyer is in town, anxious to get a car loaded out that day. He

offers John ten cents above market. John goes and turns his offer in to the manager of the association, who sells the load for him to the buyer! John gets his price, and the buyer gets his potatoes. And if the buyer wants more, the manager can help him get them.

This supposititious case is one of entirely fair competition. But suppose the buyer comes in for the purpose of putting the association out of business. Don't you see how the same plan will work? He will get potatoes at his own price-all the potatoes that the association controls, if he holds out that long. And with every bushel he buys he adds to the success of the business he is trying to down!

Does the plan actually work that way? Ask those who have tried it. Ask the Michigan Potato Exchange, Cadillac, Michigan. Or ask the farmers' elevator men who have adopted, in an informal way and years ago, similar methods to defeat the "cutting under" policy of the line houses. Of course it works!

So, as the first and most important part of the new co-operative programme, we have a local association built along correct business lines, according to wellestablished co-operative principles, and safeguarded against business undermining by the new-to us-feature of the pledged business of the member.

But the big job in marketing, as we are coming to understand, is to get onto the terminal market with enough volume of business to command the attention of the buyers-with enough so that we can go out and hunt the best markets and place our products upon them.

And on these larger markets the small offerings of the local association are at a disadvantage. The direct competition of individual farmers is replaced by the no less direct competition of individual associations. The work done by one group of middlemen has been taken over, only to find that we are up against another line of the same sort of fellows, firmly intrenched in the trade knowledge and trade practices and trade acquaintance acquired during a lifetime in the business.

The answer to this situation is the federation of the local co-operative associations and the formation by such federation of one central selling agency having a large enough volume of business so that it can afford to go out and establish its own connections with the jobbing or retail markets, or, at any rate, come as close to the consumer as it is possible for it to come, with profit to the producer, whose indirect agent it is.

This is the Potato Exchange plan, now in successful operation in Michigan, and already adopted in Minnesota, New Jersey, and Colorado. It is the plan of the citrus-fruit growers of the

Pacific coast, whose business has grown to a volume of something like $125,000,000 a year, and whose agents you will find in every fair-sized city from the Pacific to the Atlantic. And, going back to the Danes, it is a plan that has made Danish butter and Danish bacon the standard of quality in these products the world over.

The Exchange is formed, not by the individual farmers, but by the local associations. The local association gathers and grades and handles and ships out the produce of its members. But just as the individual agrees with it to sell through it, so the local in turn agrees to sell only through the Exchange, and pledges itself to that effect, giving as a guaranty a $500 note to the Exchange. All the business relationships between the two, including the sales privilege of the local, offered a higher bid than the market, are the same as for the local association I have already described. And just as the local is managed from its membership, so the Exchange plan of management makes each local a member, with one vote, and provides that the directors shall come from the membership of the locals. This system provides both a local association and a wholesale organization, directed and controlled by the farmers who compose the locals. In so far as possible the plan safeguards against the danger of too much centralized power. And as far as it has been tried out in this country such centralization has not reached a point where the welfare of the individual has been lost to sight.

In conclusion, just a word about what this plan of federated co-operation does to, or rather with, the "middleman," of whom we hear so much. It doesn't do away with him. That, as any one who has studied the actual labor performed in moving a car of wheat or hay or live stock or potatoes forward from the producer to the consumer knows, is impossible. But it does take over his workmakes him, if you please, the hired man of the farmer. And this is as it should be. Without destroying or even disturbing any of the machinery that society has painfully built up through centuries of experimentation as to the best ways of selling and buying, under the federated co-operative plan the farmer steps forward and takes a place in the big markets; and whether he shall go still further forward toward the consumer, or whether he shall wait for the consumer to organize and come the other half of the way to meet him, is still a question of the future.

But that the farmer has found a form of co-operation that will bring him safely, and with power in his arm, into the wholesale markets of the Nation is no longer a question. It is a fact, to be used by him in such fashion as he sees fit.

Α

N intercollegiate game is, or ought

A to be, a contest between the un

dergraduates of two competing colleges. It should be managed by undergraduates, coached by undergraduates, and played by undergraduates. Our National vice of over-administration has in all these respects robbed the games of their proper character. Our managed by outsiders, games are coached by outsiders, and, in a very real and lamentable sense, played by outsiders. For this the authorities of the college are largely responsible. In our games, just as in our teaching, we have said, "What the undergraduates cannot do for themselves we will do for them." And the result is in both cases rather pitiful.

PRESIDENT OF AMHERST COLLEGE

(C) Geo. H. Hill

Thirty or thirty-five years ago our colleges made what is for older people always a startling discovery, that boys are in danger of over-emphasizing sports. They thereupon took over the management of those sports to keep them within proper bounds. The favorite device was to set up Joint Boards of Control, on which faculty, graduates, and undergraduates were represented. To that and like forms of organization we owe most of the exaggeration of colour It has the authority and lege sport. prestige of all the parts of the college or university. It becomes inevitably an independent body, representing all other bodies, and therefore subject to none. It has done in the way of enlarging the scope of athletic management what no undergraduate board would ever have dreamed of doing or being allowed to do. It has built Stadiums, Coliseums, Bowls; it has brought the gate receipts of a team for a season into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. In a word, it has over-managed our college games, has given them the money and the public place from which every other type of exaggeration inevitably comes.

In

In the second place, this over-management has given us over-coaching. every college a staff of "outsiders"-so far as the game is concerned, graduates or non-graduates of the college-are brought in to take charge of the team. These men build up a system. In the hands of that system the players are puppets used in the conflict, with a like If we have one system elsewhere. coach, Williams must have two; and then we, three. We will not allow our students to earn money by playing, because that would destroy the amateur quality of the college sport. But these outsiders, demanding for ten weeks' work salaries twice those paid to our best professors for a year-these outsiders make the rules of the games, dominate the play, and substitute for

1 From an address delivered before the Alumni of Amherst in New York City.

I should stop here to discuss for what teams coaching is or is not allowable, Let me say but the time is too short. simply that as genuine competition comes in outside coaching must go out. There is a difference between teaching and coaching.

And, thirdly, coaches and graduate managers in greater or less degree bring into the college outsiders, men who are in no genuine sense members of the college, to play on its teams. Here, again, are the fruits of our own wisdom.

I am not saying, or intending to say, that undergraduates have too much interest in their athletic games. My own impression is that their active interest is too little, rather than too great. They supplement our desire by preferring to their own the more "efficient" management of their elders.

I do not think that, on the whole, we play too many games, though in many cases the trips are far too long and expensive. One game of football in a week, two of baseball-this is not too much if the distances are reasonable. And the intercollegiate visiting is, or might be, both delightful and worth while.

I do not think the games should be made private affairs, the "public" being

On the other hand, I do not think that winning teams really add to the repute of a college. A winning team does not indicate very strongly that a college is giving good education. And, in the last resort, the only worth while recommendation of a college is that it does give good education. There is much nonsense talked about other kinds of advertising.

Nor should I like to be understood as attacking the games or their importance in college life. Next to the studies, I should place them as the determining and beneficial influences in the life of a college community.

But what I do say is that we, the college authorities, have foozled our attempt to control and direct these games. It is time that we began to give them their freedom, demanding at the same time that they respect the rights of those other activities which we have in control. Good sport rests upon equal terms of competition, and so it is hard for any college to do much alone. But by co-operation we might work our way back out of the desert or the tempest. If only Harvard or Yale or Princeton, or all three, would call a conference and would announce the scrapping of boards of control, and especially of armies of coaches, the way to peace might be opened. If the way were found, I think we would all very gladly follow it.

387

ASTEFULNESS is an American trait, the by-product of vast National resources and of the rapid exploitation of these resources. For the first time in our history there is an overwhelming economic pinch, following the Great War and stretching around the world. We have turned our attention in this country, as never before, to the problem of waste-waste in Governmental expenditures and processes, waste in industry.

We happen to have in public life at this period a very great engineering mind, that of Herbert Hoover, Secretary of Commerce in President Harding's Cabinet and organizer of relief on an international scale during the World War. The function of the genuine engineer, in the broad sense, is the application of organizing intelligence to human affairs.

Towards the end of 1920 the Federated American Engineering Societies became a reality; Herbert Hoover was elected its first President, and he at once suggested a study into the wastes of industry in this country. Early in 1921 seventeen engineers were selected for the work. For the purpose of arousing public attention immediately they proceeded to make a swift intensive study of six typical branches of industry, in order to stimulate general action and lay the foundation for further investigation. Within six months a report was made to the American Engineering Council and to the country upon the findings of the Committee. The report as a whole represents the combined effort of eighty engineers and their associates. The six typical studies included the building trades, men's ready-made clothing, boots and shoes, printing, metal trades, and textile manufacture.

The findings may be summed up in a single paragraph. We are a powerful industrial country, but we have much yet to learn. We have ingenuity and efficiency comparable with those of any other nation. But we tolerate to an alarming degree wastes of labor conflict, wastes of seasonal operation, wastes of unemployment, wastes through high labor turnover, wastes through speculative booms and over-production. the industry of America, while exceedingly favorably situated with respect to physical resources, is as yet profoundly lacking in that high average degree of the mental and moral forces of management which alone make certain the permanent prosperity of the economic life of a country.

Above all,

The survey puts the burden of waste squarely upon management. The re

1 Waste in Industry. By the Committee on the Elimination of Waste in Industry of the Federated American Engineering Societies. Published by the Federated American Engineering Societies. Washington, D. C.

sponsibility of labor is real, but less in degree. Management has the greater genius, the greater capacity. It has also, therefore, the greater obligation. According to the definition of the engineers, management is the art and science of preparing, organizing, and directing the human effort which is applied to control the forces and to utilize the materials of nature for the benefit of man. Management is the general. The mistakes of management are of vital consequence.

Of the whole burden of waste disclosed by the engineering survey within the six great branches of industry under review, the findings place over fifty per cent of the responsibility at the door of management and less than twenty-five per cent at the door of labor. There are outstanding examples of good management, but the average of management is much below the standards set by certain individual executives who have achieved notable success.

In shoe production, for example, there is very little system about the economizing of leather, and the loss from idleness occasioned by waiting for work and material amounts to more than a third of the time. In the building trades and the printing trades, while of course anything like complete standardization is impractical and undesirable, there is much opportunity for reasonable standardization of thickness of soles and brands of paper, for example, which would result in a considerable margin of saving in these particular fields.

The majority of the plants studied had no adequate knowledge of costs and no method of judging accurately when improvements are needed and when waste is taking place. In the men's clothing plants there are no research methods to improve materials, processes, equipment, or product. In the shoe industry the number of plants using modern employment methods is very few. The personal relations with the employees are defective, and men are discharged or quit work without any executive knowing the reason why. Very costly separations from the working force are thus going on constantly, and unnecessary expense connected with training new workers to take the place of those who leave is a growing burden. The cost of training an inexperienced man for cutting upper leather in a wellmanaged shop is $576; for a semiexperienced man the cost is $450. The high labor turnover here, as everywhere else in industry, is a great economic waste, and is due to the lack of human sense and of human method on the part of great sections of American management. The building trades have given almost no consideration to the subject of labor turnover, and large losses are

constantly occurring through wholesale percentages of workers passing in and out of work on separate jobs. The low production from inefficient workmanship in all the trades studied is also partly due to the failure of management to provide opportunities for education or special training in the processes and operations of the particular trade. But much ineffective workmanship arises also from lack of interest and lack of pride on the part of a good deal of unregenerate human nature in the labor population.

The survey does not spare wasteful regulations of labor unions. Recognition is clear of the fact that in the past enormous losses have been produced through direct or indirect restrictions of output. Among these narrow and unwise regulations which are condemned are the requiring of skilled men to do work that could be performed by the unskilled; the restricting of individual incentive through making wages too uniform; the limiting of the number of apprentices in the interests of a labor monopoly; the excessive reduction of working hours; the absurd opposition to labor-saving devices; the jurisdictional rules which distribute certain types of work to different trades without regard to expense. In one case in order to move a pump and set it in a different location in the foundation hole it was necessary to get a pair of steam-fitters to disconnect the steam-pipe, a pair of plumbers to remove the suction apparatus and replace it, a structural-iron man to erect the rig to lift the pump, and an engineer to operate the valves on the pump. This took eight men for the operation who had to be taken from other work, whereas one man assisted by a laborer could have accomplished the entire job.

Certain painters' unions do not permit their men to use a brush wider than 42 inches for oil paints, although for certain classes of work a wider brush is more economical. Painters' unions refuse to allow their men to work on a job where a spraying machine is used. The claim is made, with little foundation, the engineers find, that this is unhealthful. Plumbers and steam-fitters prohibit the use of bicycles and vehicles of all sorts, charging up the walking time to the customer.

A part of this enormity of willful waste is also chargeable to owners and management. In the building trades, for example, widespread collusions between employers and labor have been unearthed and conspiracies to maintain high prices have greatly restricted production.

The engineers go into the problem of unemployment. They find that a million men are always unemployed in America in the most prosperous time. They find cyclical depressions occurring about a decade or less apart, with their wastage of productive capacity.

WOLIC 1. BRARY

Do Fo, Pr

They

(C) Paul Thompson

"WE HAPPEN TO HAVE IN PUBLIC LIFE AT THIS PERIOD A VERY GREAT ENGINEERING MIND, THAT OF HERBERT HOOVER, SECRETARY OF COMMERCE IN PRESIDENT HARDING'S CABINET"

find, of course, much intermittent unemployment in the seasonal trades. They estimate the losses from unemployment due to labor disturbances as less than popularly supposed, inasmuch as more than one-half the employees thrown out of work thereby are in highly irregular and seasonal occupations where the loss can be made up easily through a somewhat lengthened production during the working period which follows the strike. Nevertheless unemployment in the aggregate is the most disquieting phenomenon in our industrial life, the most prolific source of social unrest, the problem most needing to be grappled with by the wise men in industry as well as the wise men in government.

There should be set up a National watch-tower, either of real industrial experts within the Government or of similar experts co-operating within private industry, or both, to catch the first signs of too great industrial extension, of fall. ing demand, of approaching economic disaster. The Federal Reserve Board has facilities for doing this in a measure, but its reaction was too slow in 1920, when the present great depression appeared upon the distant horizon.

The waste of ill health in industry is discussed in terms of loss in production. There is no more depressing phase of waste than this in the mills and factories of the United States. It is particularly depressing because, although the great extent of illness loss to workers and to production is well known, very little has been done to check it. In this field intelligent and co-operative effort between employer and employee is absolutely essential; and there is still far too much hostility between the worker and his employer in America to insure effective collective action in illness prevention; there is still far too

much individualism in the American philosophy about such matters to insure practical consideration of the problem. The medical profession is actively hostile to the collective working out of plans for the reduction of illness loss in industry, and most owners and managers still look upon all genuine methods of relief as an added burden upon business. And this in spite of the fact that the lessening of illness loss and the strengthening of the health of the workers results directly in increased quality and quantity of production, much more than sufficient to pay the costs, and bringing effects in the direction of more human relations between employer and employee which pass all computation.

This engineering survey computes that the enormous present loss from illness in industry could be materially reduced by co-operative effort and leave an economic balance in the working population alone over and above the cost of prevention of at least a billion dollars a year in America. The engineers also believe that a vast saving could be made through better control of industrial accidents than we seem yet to be capable of.

The remedy seems chiefly to be the employment of more brains and humanity on the part of American manage. ment. Labor organizations, now somewhat in the slough of popular disrepute, have an opportunity to draft for themselves a new bill of rights and responsibilities. The owners of industry through the banking function should insist upon the better stabilization of production. The Government has a duty to perform in providing some statistical and scientific center of expert vision which shall be the protecting eyes and ears of advancing industry. A body of principles for the adjustment of labor disputes must be built up soon out of human sympathy and human experience. There must be an aggressive, continuous National public health policy and the breaking down of the philosophy of narrow and destructive individualism in this field.

And a final word for the engineers. They are in a position to render disinterested expert service for the Government, for the trade unions, for the employers' associations. They have an open and detached point of view. They are the party of the third part among conflicting economic groups. They have an intimate and peculiar understanding of intricate industrial problems. They line up with the facts. They are not swayed by the prejudices. They can be used far more than they are now used to mark out a path for the elimination of vast human and economic waste in the industrial life of America.

BIOGRAPHY LETTERS AND JOURNALS OF THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON. 1846-1906. Edited by Mary Thatcher Higginson. Illustrated. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston. $4.

The interest in these letters and journals is more historical and less literary than we had anticipated. They I will be read chiefly by two classes. Those who have lived through this period, 1846-1906, will be glad to have their faded memories of persons and events refreshed and vivified. Those who are studying or reading that critical period in American history will find significant incidents described which give the atmosphere of the times as the greater events do not. There are some admirable thumb-nail sketches of men whom America will not readily forget and vivid pictures of a class of radical reformers, the stormy petrels of their epoch. Colonel Higginson was a radical abolitionist; he admired William Lloyd Garrison, whom he describes as "the

A fascinating story. It contains all the elements of a modern melodrama. The hero passed through the experiences of poverty, competence, poverty again, and ended a "multi-millionaire in francs;" he was at first an enthusiastic monarchist and later an enthusiastic radical; he was the idol of the people, but fled from France for his life and remained in self-exile until the death of Napoleon III; he was a poetical believer in God, but in his will wrote, "I refuse the service of all churches;" he was a moral reformer but could not reform himself, a humanitarian but so supreme