something, and might have done still more, if our efforts at scientific analysis had not been so often underweighted on the human side. These very discoveries of harmony between wholesome practice and good business constitute a part of the body of fact of which a truly scientific method must take account. When a review of all the cases in which compulsion has changed existing methods shows an almost invariable adaptation and a tendency toward better results after the level of competition is raised, a man of scientific training immediately asks the question, whether a fundamental law is not at work.

A glance at social legislation during the last century reveals some interesting uniformities. Every step in the development of the English Factory Acts as they stood at the beginning of the present war, starting with the first Child Labor Bill in 1802 and ending with the Shop Regulation Act of 1912, had been taken against the protest of the most vocal elements in the trades concerned. In nearly every case investigation will show, either that the requirements of the measure enacted fell considerably below the practice of the best concerns, or that the whole industry was in need of some outside impulse to start it in the way of more efficient organization. As long as it is permissible to employ five women and five children to tend five machines, there is not the right incentive to make adjustments by which all five of them can be tended by one man.

In this country in our forty-nine jurisdictions we have been going forty-nine times over the experience of England and other countries, in connection with each effort to force up the competitive level. We have seemed to be quite unable to apply the most obvious lessons of experience either at home or abroad to new cases, and yet essentially the same uniformity of adaptation has occurred here as abroad. Like our employer, whom a strike impelled to adopt an advanced policy toward labor, we find after the event that we should not know how to do business under the standards in force before the law compelled a change.

Enforcement of the Sherman Anti-Trust Law has been frequently cited as an example of unwise government interference. With respect to many of the incidents of enforcements, criticism has been well founded. But the net result of that enforcement has been a much sounder body of law on the important subject of fair and unfair competition. Besides, we now have in the Federal Trade Commission the beginnings of an administrative organization for dealing with the whole subject of monopoly and restraint of trade. And more than all this, we have a better prospect than ever before, of some sort of mutual respect between government and business, and of honest coöperation in working out their mutual problems. It is not likely that the Anti-Trust Law has prevented honest men from earning legitimate profits from legitimate business service to anything like the extent which would be indicated by the vigor with which it has been opposed. But even if it has, we have received something for the price paid.

And so the list might be lengthened, pure food and drugs, meat inspection, public service regulation, industrial safety, and the rest,—in nearly every case, from a purely business point of view, opposition, in so far as it related to the main point of government policy, has been a mistake. Refusal of the business men affected to accept a policy of regulation has tended to shut them out of the councils in making adjustments of detail. This fact has hindered the government in performing a service which in most cases both the public and the business needed to have done.

Even when we admit, as obviously we must, the persistence of conflict between different interests with respect to a large mass of business detail, the fact of group influences and social control still remains an important consideration to which business analysis must give due weight. There has been a large mass of business in this country, in which the community has been unable to recognize any productive service; it has been regarded only as a means of acquisition for those who pursue it. Legislation, public opinion, and the evolution of enforceable standards within particular business groups are tending all the while to narrow the sphere of purely acquisitive business. With respect to that great mass of business which has both an acquisitive and a productive side, these forces are gradually bringing us to an attitude of mind in which we regard gain as a by-product of service.

The public is also recognizing that the purpose of goods and services is to promote individual and community welfare, and as fast as public policy to that end can be worked out, it is carrying emphasis even beyond specific products and services to the social ends for which these products and services exist. In these ways society too is trying, clumsily perhaps, to take a long-time view of its business and to conserve the human values that make for progress.

Obviously it is but a partial and incomplete analysis of a business situation that omits these human factors; a working policy that fails to anticipate their force and then to reduce the zone of conflict to its lowest limits is neglecting an important element in the definition of long-time efficiency. And business men are beginning to see this.

A few weeks ago the manager of a large department store in San Francisco was kind enough to show me his record of departmental profits for a number of months. The fluctuation in relative profits of different departments month by month was apparent, especially the fact that after a certain month several departments which had previously earned high profits became relatively much less profitable. I asked the manager to explain, and he did in this way: At the time when the change occurred a new policy had been inaugurated by which employment of help had been centralized and standardized for the whole concern. As a result, when certain departments which had been decidedly sub-standard with respect to wages were brought up to standard, they were unable to earn anything like the profits which they had previously shown.

Without going into the question of the connection between high wages and profits, of which this incident in my opinion was an exception, it was clear to the manager as to me that the increase in wages in these particular departments had been accompanied by an immediate loss in profits. Furthermore, the manager was unable to determine, from figures available before and after the change, that this loss had been directly compensated by gains in other departments. In order to get his viewpoint concerning the change at issue, I asked him two questions: (1) Why was he willing to make a change of such a fundamental character without being able to ascertain in advance whether or not it would be profitable? (2) In the absence of facts that could be incorporated in the accounts, was it his belief that the change would in time be profitable, and if so, how did he reach his conclusion?

His response to the first question revealed to me an intensely natural but nevertheless complex motive. He said, substantially, that he was confident that standardized employment was the only acceptable policy, from the standpoint of the general manager. Given the necessity of standardizing, it was necessary for the general reputation of the business to standardize upward rather than downward. He wanted his business to be regarded as one in which the best standards of employments obtained. Furthermore, he added, "California will soon have a minimum wage law, and I want this business to be well in advance of any wage standards which may be imposed by law."

Answering the second question more specifically, the manager recognized the advertising value of a reputation for having good conditions of employment. He had discovered no tendency for general profits to diminish or for the rate of increase to be retarded more than temporarily. In the absence of definite facts to the contrary he considered it safe to assume that as soon