DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.22140#0213
THE ECONOMIC DOCTRINE OF WASTE.
197
servative agencies do. For the efficiency and the due continuity
of industrial energies is, and always has been, a very complicated
"business, to the completion of which, relative as that completion
still is, many agencies have contributed, towards which many new
agencies have to be found out, and frequently are found out by
people who are merely drawing inferences from observation.
The restraint of children's labour, the introduction of the half-
time system, the discovery of the fact that short hours of work
are constantly cheaper in the end than long hours, may be, and
as I think, have been, as economically useful as the inventions
of steam power and spinning machinery. What we are in search
of, indeed, is not unproductive consumption, which is, I hope I
have made clear, a mere metaphysical phrase, but waste, which
is the great economical evil, which the economist detects, if he
has the skill to do so, and criticizes, if he has the adequate
courage for his utterances. This waste arises from many causes,
some inevitable, some excusable, some corrigible, some entirely
and wholly indefensible, some justly punishable by the action of
government. Let us look at a few of these separately.
There is a kind of waste which belongs in some form or another
to all organic energy, and to every substitute for organic energy.
This, in the latter, is friction; in the former, the gradual weakening
of vital powers; and, I should add, the variable period of nonage,
Avhich precedes the fullest manifestation of vital power. In
every human being, in every animal which has been pressed into
the service of man, a certain time must elapse before the agent
can be useful. Human skill has been engaged in shortening this
time, and great progress has been made in selecting and maturing
animals which serve for human food, and in selecting and
strengthening those who are employed in substitution for human
labour. But in human labour, where the development of mental
is more important than that of mere physical strength, though
the latter cannot be lost sight of, the process of securing the
maximum of utility, is found on economical grounds to be
bettered by retarding rather than hastening it. Two or three
generations ago, human beings were put to work in extreme youth,
to the manifest injury of economical utility; what seemed to be
industrial activity was found to be economical waste, and better
197
servative agencies do. For the efficiency and the due continuity
of industrial energies is, and always has been, a very complicated
"business, to the completion of which, relative as that completion
still is, many agencies have contributed, towards which many new
agencies have to be found out, and frequently are found out by
people who are merely drawing inferences from observation.
The restraint of children's labour, the introduction of the half-
time system, the discovery of the fact that short hours of work
are constantly cheaper in the end than long hours, may be, and
as I think, have been, as economically useful as the inventions
of steam power and spinning machinery. What we are in search
of, indeed, is not unproductive consumption, which is, I hope I
have made clear, a mere metaphysical phrase, but waste, which
is the great economical evil, which the economist detects, if he
has the skill to do so, and criticizes, if he has the adequate
courage for his utterances. This waste arises from many causes,
some inevitable, some excusable, some corrigible, some entirely
and wholly indefensible, some justly punishable by the action of
government. Let us look at a few of these separately.
There is a kind of waste which belongs in some form or another
to all organic energy, and to every substitute for organic energy.
This, in the latter, is friction; in the former, the gradual weakening
of vital powers; and, I should add, the variable period of nonage,
Avhich precedes the fullest manifestation of vital power. In
every human being, in every animal which has been pressed into
the service of man, a certain time must elapse before the agent
can be useful. Human skill has been engaged in shortening this
time, and great progress has been made in selecting and maturing
animals which serve for human food, and in selecting and
strengthening those who are employed in substitution for human
labour. But in human labour, where the development of mental
is more important than that of mere physical strength, though
the latter cannot be lost sight of, the process of securing the
maximum of utility, is found on economical grounds to be
bettered by retarding rather than hastening it. Two or three
generations ago, human beings were put to work in extreme youth,
to the manifest injury of economical utility; what seemed to be
industrial activity was found to be economical waste, and better