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PHYSICS AND CIVILIZATION

BY ARTHUR D. LITTLE

WITHIN the last ten years the United States has become the first industrial nation of the world. No one, though he be the seventh son of a seventh son and born with a caul, can hope to forecast with any degree of definiteness the form which the industrial structure of the country will ultimately assume. Even the general trend of industrial development is the resultant of a bewildering complexity of forces, each of a magnitude largely conjectural. Certain conditions, influences, and tendencies are, nevertheless, recognizable as directive factors in the situation, and from them some conclusions may be drawn legitimately, although without guaranty or recourse, concerning the direction in which our industrial development is likely to proceed.

Since 1870 the curve of population has been rising at a rate which — with some allowance for restricted immigration indicates a population of 152,000,000 for the country in 1950. We must then prepare to clothe and feed and house some 42,000,000 more people than we do at present. They will, like ourselves, demand much more than food, clothing, and a place to sleep. They will require fuel, though we find it hard enough to get at present; and they will use it in somewhat different and more effective ways. Power must be provided for new industries, new factories, new machines, and for greatly augmented systems of transportation. Many of these new people will travel

I

by the New York subways, and a sagacious management should already be opening boxes of sardines that it may determine how best to insert more sardines. Everywhere room must be found for the automobiles of these new millions, where now there is scant room for our own. Pressure which — like that on water—is exerted in all directions will come heavily upon our natural resources, our agencies for production, and our systems of distribution.

II

In 1919 there were over a million marriages in the United States, whereas in that year only 70,000 homes were built. We are short at least a million dwellings, and some estimates treble that figure. In most parts of the country practically no houses are being built for workingmen. They still cost more and rent for more than many workingmen can pay. Meanwhile, the population grows, and two or three families live where one lived before. The result is not so commendable as where blades of grass are concerned.

Not more than 40 per cent of our population now Own their homes. Many apartments have shrunk to one room and bath. We are living on the diminutive scale. Kitchenettes provide our breakfast, luncheonettes supply icecream soda and a ham sandwich, and now, in Boston, one may assemble the family in a diningette for the serious

meal of the day. The census may soon designate as a familyette the maiden lady with two goldfish.

Only the very well-to-do can now afford servants, and they can do so only on increasingly burdensome terms. At Christmas, who now has the courage to present the cook with ten yards of gingham for a dress? It is not worn with silk stockings and a fur-trimmed coat. College-bred girls now approach matrimony with the expectation of doing their own housework, and fivestory houses with basement kitchens are as unsaleable as Shipping Board boats. We must obviously rebuild our houses with due regard to the readjustments which the prosperity of the masses has forced upon us.

We may expect, therefore, a great increase and expansion of all those industries that tend to lessen household labor. Already have most domestic industries disappeared in competition with the factory. Who makes soft soap to-day, or spins and weaves and dyes butternut-brown? Where is the little dressmaker who came, with Godey's Lady's Book, to live with the family for a fortnight while she made the season's gowns? She is working for better wages behind the counter of the department store, selling ready-made dresses cut from piles of fabrics with an electric cutter from patterns that embody the latest hints of fashion. Already our trade in women's apparel amounts to more than a billion dollars a year.

Bread-making, to the advantage of the product, is becoming more and more the business of great companies operating many bakeries, equipped with every facility for orderly and economical production under scientifically controlled conditions. No youthful Franklin would to-day suggest to his father that time might be saved by saying grace over the barrel of pork. We buy our bacon sliced, in half-pound

jars. Intimate culinary products, such as baked beans, fish balls, and hash, come to many a table hot from the can.

Under the conditions likely to prevail in American domestic life, we must anticipate a steadily increasing output of package-goods of every sort. The American housewife no longer buys in bulk. Her disinclination to do so ensures more business to the makers of tin plate, container-boards, and paper, and to the lithographer and the printer.

The same conditions may be expected to augment the already remarkable development of the chain restaurant, which justifies the lure of the pancake in the window by the cleanly brightness of its interior and the excellent quality of its food. They may bring emancipation, but they do not seem to make for domesticity.

The Chinese laundryman was a pioneer. He recognized a demand which has immeasurably outgrown his modest and mysterious facilities. Such proximity to godliness as he conferred upon the few it is now the function of many thousands of machine-filled laundries to provide for all. The washing of linen has become as democratic as the referendum and vastly more scientific.

In my youth I knew a gentleman of large means and frugal tendencies, who kept upon his mantel a jar of benzine, in which reposed those of his black ties which seemed to require restoration of their sober lustre. Now the dyers and cleansers, like the laundrymen, have their national association. To them now go our garments, that for a brief period we may show ourselves unspotted to the world.

All those things that relieve household labor of its drudgery have their assured place in the future. Nature abhors a vacuum only because she has no carpets and rugs to clean. More and more homes will be equipped with electric appliances: toasters, irons, and

washing machines; and the electric refrigerator is almost here. There will be a similar extension in the domestic use of gas. It is easier to turn a gascock than to carry coal upstairs, and the discerning ash-man will apprentice his son to the pipe-fitter.

One obvious result of the crowding, to which our urban population will be subjected in constantly increasing measure, will be the gradual elimination from our homes of much that has characterized them in the past. A library is already a luxury beyond the reach of many who grew up surrounded by books. There is little place in our present scheme of living for grand pianos, or large furniture of any sort. We are tending in our homes toward the compact and diminutive. We have neither walls nor floor-space for the superfluous.

III

Demand, to be effective, must be backed by purchasing power, and never in the history of the world has the purchasing power of the masses been so great in any large population as in the United States during and since the war. It is not likely to recede permanently from this high level. In the seventy years from 1849 to 1919 the value of our manufactures increased more than sixtyfold. In the same period the number of wage-earning operatives increased not quite tenfold. The gain in producing capacity per operative is striking and significant. During recent years the number of persons engaged in agriculture has remained practically stationary. We have passed from an agricultural to an industrial economy, though the basis of our prosperity is still deeply rooted in the soil. During the transition period wages in industry have doubled, while hours of labor have notably decreased. We have thus in

prospect a large increase in population with greater producing power, more leisure, enhanced ability to purchase. We must, therefore, assume a greatly intensified demand both for the necessities of life and for many things that we still regard as luxuries.

We have seen old-time necessities as candles and open fires come to be classed as luxuries. In 1886 there was but one bathtub in a certain Southern city of 6000 inhabitants. At a much later period furs and silk stockings were the insignia of the rich. They are now the attributes of democracy. Where our plutocrats progressed ten miles an hour behind a pair of horses, our workmen now go thirty in a Ford. The melon, too expensive for the woman of means, is purchased by the wife of the plasterer, who inquires how to cook it. Association, fashion, and the ability to spend may be relied on to push the standard of living to still higher planes. When, in a Southern lumber town, the Negroes would work only three days a week, a better display of goods in the company stores held them steadily to their jobs. In a town in central New York, girl operatives receiving war wages found four days' work a week sufficient for their requirements until the company brought in some operatives from New York City, whose Georgette waists and all-silk hose soon inspired the local girls to work full time. In response to such demands the tendency will be to produce for the masses products resembling as closely as may be those made for the wealthy few. A wrist watch from the jewelry counter of a Woolworth store asks a handicap of only three feet and does not require winding.

One striking feature of our times which is of peculiar significance for the future is the rate at which labor is becoming capitalist. Universal education has always tended to lift labor

into higher ranks. The process is now accelerated by restricted immigration. We may not and do not hope to see our Americanized labor descend from its high position, and we have checked the influx of ignorant and low-priced labor, which alone can bring it down. We must then expect even higher wages in the future, and these will be reflected in a higher cost of living measured in terms of money. The time-cost of living has been going down consistently over a long period.

In a single recent year the people of the United States have saved more than twelve and a half billion dollars. Since it takes two persons to make a quarrel, we may entertain the hope that the long struggle between capital and labor is in a way to find permanent adjustment, for capital and labor are rapidly becoming one. Possession breeds conservatism, and to have inspires to hold. The surplus of the Amalgamated Association of Street Railway Workers is already over $6,000,000. The entire expenses of the organization are met by interest on deposits and investments, and its surplus is growing rapidly. In October of last year the United Mine Workers had on deposit in Indianapolis over $1,100,000, and the dues of the union bring in $250,000 a month. In nine months, recently past, the Amalgamated Bank of New York of the American Clothing Workers showed a tenfold increase in deposits. The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers is now said to exercise control over $100,000,000 through the nine banks in which the Brotherhood is interested. A few months ago a new labor bank was opened in New York City, and on the first day it took in over $5,000,000 in deposits, while multitudes could not reach the window.

There is a pronounced trend toward corporation ownership of manufactur

ing enterprises. During the last twenty years the average size of manufacturing establishments, as measured by the number of workers, has greatly increased, although even now less than one per cent of such establishments employ more than five hundred workers. Nevertheless, in 1919 over eighty-six per cent of our industrial wage-earners were in corporation-owned plants. This assumes a broad significance in view of the spreading tendency of corporations to offer their stock, frequently on preferential terms, to their employees and customers. Nearly one half of the 100,000 owners of Armour and Company are employees, and a recent offering of its stock displayed a surprising financial status among day laborers, truck-drivers, and office workers. Two hundred and fifty electriclight companies are now selling stock to consumers and employees, and nearly three and a half million shares were so sold in 1922. The employees of the Philadelphia Rapid Transit Company now own 120,000 shares of its stock and are expected to buy 60,000 more in 1924, which will bring their holdings to thirty per cent of the total issued.

The normal trend of wages in the United States is upward, and this upward movement was, of course, greatly accelerated by the war, but wages are now up to stay. The normal tendency has in the past been obscured and the curve held below its normal course by the great influx of immigrants, which we have permitted and which employers have very generally encouraged. The restriction of immigration must operate to permit the curve to follow its normal tendency more closely than heretofore, with continued improvement in the purchasing power of the masses. With a broader market should come a stabilization of industry through the increasing participation by labor in ownership of the producing agencies.

IV

The restriction of immigration should further prove a powerful stimulus to the development of labor-saving machines and devices. There is, moreover, evidence of an awakening recognition on the part of labor that the full advantage of high wages can be realized only when these are accompanied by low costs of production and distribution. The two are in no way incompatible, as Mr. Ford and many others have demonstrated. Where benefits are so obvious we may reasonably expect a less restrictive policy on the part of union labor regarding per-capita production. Increases in purchasing power, now often nominal, will then become real and be reflected in the activity of general business.

The pressure always upon the manufacturer to enlarge production and diminish costs will become increasingly heavy. One striking difference between the old industry and the new is that the large investment now required sets up heavy overhead charges which drive one to production at the highest possible rate. Nothing -except stopping is so expensive as slowing down. Standardization of machines, processes, and product, and the installation of larger and larger units must then follow as a natural sequence.

One of the most important of the factors affecting the industrial situation of the future, and one whose significance is seldom noted, is the remarkable increase in the per-capita freight-ton mileage of our railroads. In 1890 they hauled about 1250 tons of freight a mile for each inhabitant; in 1923 they hauled 4160 tons. Part of this increase is due to the more lavish consumption of goods by our people, part to the growth of population in districts more remote from centres of production, and part to the

depletion of reserves of raw material, which compels the manufacturer to go farther afield for his supply. With the per-capita tonnage steadily rising and a population as steadily increasing, the time is not far distant when no readily conceivable expansion of our transportation system will suffice to handle the traffic. We cannot then continue indefinitely to haul Hood River apples from Oregon to Maine, or transport crude and low-priced materials thousands of miles by rail only to return them to their point of origin in forms not greatly enhanced in value. We are in consequence about to witness a gradual decentralization of industry. To-day nearly half the industrial activities of the country are concentrated in a narrow zone extending along the Atlantic seaboard from Boston to Washington. That proportion is destined to change.

In a relatively few years Michigan has passed from an agricultural to an industrial status. Prior to 1880 there was practically no cotton industry south of Mason and Dixon's line. Today about one half the active spindles are in the South. Since 1910 the Northern mills have hardly increased their production, whereas the output of Southern mills has become greater by more than fifty per cent. Longer working-hours, a mild climate, lower living-costs, and proximity to the raw material give to the South an advantage which is likely to prove commanding so far at least as staple and coarser textiles are concerned, and the mills of the North will perforce turn to the finer goods and to specialties.

Our production of cotton reached its peak in a crop of more than 16,000,000 bales in 1914. It had fallen to half that amount in 1921 and has now risen to about 10,000,000 bales, of which we ourselves consume about sixty per cent.

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