It was never more apparent than
it is now, that an increase in a wage rate is a temporary expedient
and that wage rewards are not efficient media for securing sustained
interest in productive enterprise. It is becoming obvious that the
wage system has not the qualifications for the cooerdination of
industrial life. As the needs of the nations under the pressure of war
have brought out the inefficiencies of the economic institution, it
has become sufficiently clear to those responsible for the conduct of
the war and to large sections of the civil population, that wealth
exploitation and wealth creation are not synonymous; that the
production of wealth must rest on other motives than the desire of
individuals to get as much and give as little as particular situations
will stand.
In England and in the United States, where the individualistic
conception of the industrial life has been an inherent part of our
national philosophy, the governments, with cautious reservations, have
assumed responsibilities which had been carried in normal times by
business. Because business administration had been dependent for its
existence on a scheme of profiteering it is not in the position where
it can appeal to labor to contribute its productive power in the
spirit of patriotic abandon. But governments as they have taken over
certain industrial responsibilities are in a better position to make
such appeals to capital as well as to labor.
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