THE STRIKE OF THE SAVIOURS
A factory in ---- some ten years ago employed one hundred men. Three of
these men were in the office and ninety-seven were hands in the works.
To-day this same factory which is doing a very much larger business is
still employing one hundred men, but thirty of the men are employed in
the office and seventy in the works.
Ten years, ago to put it in other words, the factory provided places for
one artist or manager and two inventors and places for ninety-seven
Hewers.
To-day the factory has made room for thirty inventors, one manager and
twenty-nine men who spend their entire time in thinking of things that
will help the Hewers hew.
It has seventy Hewers who are helping the Inventors invent by hewing
three times as hard and three times as skilfully or three times as much
as without the Inventors to help them, they had dreamed they could hew
before.
The Artist or Organizer who made this change in the factory found that
among the ninety-seven Hewers that were employed a number of Hewers were
hewing very poorly, because though hewing was the best they could do,
they could not even hew. He found certain others who were hewing poorly
because they were not Hewers, but Inventors. These he set to work--some
of them inventing in the office.
On closer examination the two Inventors in the office were found to be
not Inventors at all. One of them was a fine Hewer who liked to hew and
who hated inventing and the other was merely a rich Hewer who was an
owner in the business who saw suddenly that he would have to stop
inventing and stop very soon if he wanted the business to make any more
money.
There are four things that the Artist has to do with a factory like this
before he can make it efficient.
Each of these things is an art. One art is the art of compelling the
mere owner, the man with the merely hewing mind, to confine himself to
the one thing he knows how to do, namely to shovelling, to shovelling
his money in when and where he was told it was needed, and to shovelling
his money out when it has been made for him.
The art of compelling a mere owner to know his place, of keeping him
shovelling money in and shovelling money out silently and modestly,
consists as a rule in having the Artist or Organizer tell him that
unless the business is placed completely in his hands he will not
undertake to run it.
This is the first art. The second art consists in having an
understanding with the inventors that they will invent ways of helping
the Hewers hew.
The third art consists in having an understanding with the Hewers that
they will accept the help of the Inventors and hew with it. The fourth
art is the art of representing the consumer with the Hewer and with the
Inventor and with the Owner and seeing that he shares in the benefits of
all economies and improvements.
These are all human arts and turn on the power in a man of being a true
artist, of being a man-inventor, a man-developer and a man-mixer, daily
taking part of himself and using these parts in putting other men
together.
These organizers or artists, being the men who see how--are the men who
are not afraid.