It would be quite
outside the spirit of what we are trying to do, to
take on men because they were
crippled, pay them a lower wage, and be
content with a lower output.
That might be directly helping the men but
it would not be helping them
in the best way. The best way is always the
way by which they can be put
on a productive par with able-bodied men.
I
believe that there is very
little occasion for charity in this
world--that is, charity in the
sense of making gifts. Most certainly
business and charity cannot be
combined; the purpose of a factory is to
produce, and it ill serves the
community in general unless it does
produce to the utmost of its
capacity. We are too ready to assume
without investigation that the
full possession of faculties is a
condition requisite to the
best performance of all jobs.
To discover
just what was the real
situation, I had all of the different jobs in the
factory classified to the kind
of machine and work--whether the physical
labour involved was light,
medium, or heavy; whether it were a wet or a
dry job, and if not, with what
kind of fluid; whether it were clean or
dirty; near an oven or a
furnace; the condition of the air; whether one
or both hands had to be used;
whether the employee stood or sat down at
his work; whether it was noisy
or quiet; whether it required accuracy;
whether the light was natural
or artificial; the number of pieces that
had to be handled per hour;
the weight of the material handled; and the
description of the strain upon
the worker.
It turned out at the time of
the inquiry that there were
then 7,882 different jobs in the factory. Of
these, 949 were classified as
heavy work requiring strong, able-bodied,
and practically physically
perfect men; 3,338 required men of ordinary
physical development and
strength. The remaining 3,595 jobs were
disclosed as requiring no
physical exertion and could be performed by
the slightest, weakest sort of
men. In fact, most of them could be
satisfactorily filled by women
or older children. The lightest jobs were
again classified to discover
how many of them required the use of full
faculties, and we found that
670 could be filled by legless men, 2,637
by one-legged men, 2 by
armless men, 715 by one-armed men, and 10 by
blind men.
Therefore, out of
7,882 kinds of jobs, 4,034--although some
of them required strength--did
not require full physical capacity. That
is, developed industry can
provide wage work for a higher average of
standard men than are
ordinarily included in any normal community. If
the jobs in any one industry
or, say, any one factory, were analyzed as
ours have been analyzed, the
proportion might be very different, yet I
am quite sure that if work is
sufficiently subdivided--subdivided to
the point of highest
economy--there will be no dearth of places in which
the physically incapacitated
can do a man's job and get a man's wage. It
is economically most wasteful
to accept crippled men as charges and then
to teach them trivial tasks
like the weaving of baskets or some other
form of unremunerative hand
labour, in the hope, not of aiding them to
make a living, but of
preventing despondency.
When a man is taken on by the
Employment Department, the theory is to
put him into a job suited to
his condition. If he is already at work and
he does not seem able to
perform the work, or if he does not like his
work, he is given a transfer
card, which he takes up to the transfer
department, and after an
examination he is tried out in some other work
more suited to his condition
or disposition. Those who are below the
ordinary physical standards
are just as good workers, rightly placed, as
those who are above. For
instance, a blind man was assigned to the stock
department to count bolts and
nuts for shipment to branch
establishments. Two other
able-bodied men were already employed on this
work. In two days the foreman
sent a note to the transfer department
releasing the able-bodied men
because the blind man was able to do not
only his own work but also the
work that had formerly been done by the
sound men.
We have experimented with
bedridden men--men who were able to sit up. We
put black oilcloth covers or
aprons over the beds and set the men to
work screwing nuts on small
bolts. This is a job that has to be done by
hand and on which fifteen or
twenty men are kept busy in the Magneto
Department. The men in the
hospital could do it just as well as the men
in the shop and they were able
to receive their regular wages. In fact,
their production was about 20
per cent., I believe, above the usual shop
production. No man had to do
the work unless he wanted to. But they all
wanted to. It kept time from
hanging on their hands. They slept and ate
better and recovered more
rapidly.
No particular consideration
has to be given to deaf-and-dumb employees.
They do their work one hundred
per cent. The tubercular employees--and
there are usually about a
thousand of them--mostly work in the material
salvage department. Those
cases which are considered contagious work
together in an especially
constructed shed. The work of all of them is
largely out of doors.
At the time of the last
analysis of employed, there were 9,563
sub-standard men. Of these,
123 had crippled or amputated arms,
forearms, or hands. One had
both hands off. There were 4 totally blind
men, 207 blind in one eye, 253
with one eye nearly blind, 37 deaf and
dumb, 60 epileptics, 4 with
both legs or feet missing, 234 with one foot
or leg missing. The others had
minor impediments.