SOME OF THE LESS KNOWN EFFICIENCY
"Why is it that this seems to be a nation of professionals while
ours seems to be a nation of amateurs? I suppose it is, of course,
because of the more general spread here of thorough instruction."
"Yes, with us unskilled mediocrity is the popular level because it
is within the reach of everyone in a democracy. With the German,
high skilled, highly instructed efficiency is the ideal. The failure
of America to rise into the expert level is due to our unenforced
higher education. We compel our people to have a common school
education in order to preserve the Republic. Its voters must know
how to read and write and 'figger' or they won't be able to vote
intelligently.
"Now if we did in addition what Germany does, we would insist, as
far as practicable, on advanced education or instruction in every
family. Then we, too, would have a wealth of trained talent.
Comparing the riches and population of the two countries there is a
much greater proportion of university men and other competently
instructed men in Germany. Only relatively few Americans can show
diplomas for genuine and severe mental training. Take your own
Bucher family as an illustration. All its men will have sheepskins
that are worth while to show. With us, out of such a family none
would have a sheepskin, or at most one. One of the boys might have
gone to a university. And as for the difference in the women--little
comparison. Your Frau, as you have told me, has several framed
diplomas to her credit.
"You can see what a tremendous advantage all this gives the German
people over us. You have hit it very well--we are nearly always
amateurs. They are nearly always able to be professionals."
"Is it the same with the laboring classes--the mechanics and all
that?"
"The same is true, in its way. A poor American boy thinks he will
like to be a machinist. He gets a job as a new hand on a salary. He
works at it a couple of years. Then somebody offers him ten dollars
a week more to drive a truck, which is a simple, elementary task. He
drops his machinist career for this. He gets more money and it
requires no tedious training. So he remains an indifferent mechanic.
It's the money he's looking for, not the satisfaction of proficiency
in a skilled trade.
"Now, by contrast, the future of the poor German child is decided in
a fashion at about the age of ten. When a boy is elected to go into
industry, for instance, he is apprenticed at about fourteen for,
say, four years to be a mechanic. He is given no wages. In fact he
has to pay something, very often, for the opportunity to learn. But
he must, at the same time, attend what they call here continuing
schools. It is these schools, which we do not have in America, that
hold him fixed to his line of work--prevent him from jumping from
one kind of thing to another. He not only works in the shop but is
forced to go to a continuing school.
"Hence at eighteen the German factory and Government are sure to
find in him just the kind of instructed worker they need. There has
never been any danger of his meanwhile changing to driving a truck.
He sticks to his trade through life. He becomes a master mechanic.
You can't lure him away into an unskilled channel by more money.
It's not the money alone he is thinking of. It is also the pride of
having a specific calling that lifts him out of the great
commonplace market of untrained labor. So Germany is full of
competent mechanical men while we limp along with our huge supply of
the partly experienced. Every such German knows how to do at least
one thing as well as and usually better than anyone else.
"This is one big reason why Germany is pushing ahead of every nation
in the industrial world and one reason why I fear her. No matter
what she wants to do, she has an abundance of efficient brain and
muscle right at hand with which to do it well and at once. In our
great United States the lack of this is the bane of American
industry and development, and causes such immense and continual loss
in time and money because of our having to deal with such a mass of
inexperienced young workmen.
"But more than this. The German who is taught a trade acquires not
only the technic of it in a shop or laboratory, but also acquires
in his studies something of an enlightening and inspiring knowledge
of its history and significance. He is, consequently, much more than
a mere drudge. He is made intelligent about his calling. This
particular feature, so pregnant and valuable, is not incorporated in
the American plan, if we can be said to have a plan in these
matters. For the Yankee ambition is to make plenty of money in _any_
quick way, and therefore to rise above a trade which a German is
content to remain in. We feel no keen necessity about careful
instruction in such vocations. Luck, "pull," "cheek," mere
cleverness, are prominently relied on in its stead.
"There is another thing in this trade instruction that we do not
have in any noticeable degree. It teaches the German mechanic to
become wedded to his Nation and Government. He is made to realize
the great benefits and responsibilities he owes to them. He becomes
an integral national citizen ready to serve his homeland. He is
taught to think of something higher than his pay envelope. Under our
system such a mechanic grows up loosely connected in thought and
acts with the governing public under which he enjoys all his
liberty and opportunity. In so far as national necessities go he is
apt to be a weakened unit or pulling the wrong way. Unlike the
German, he has been educated to have no self-sacrificing ideal of
state or country."
Anderson had, at one time, drawn Gard's attention to the immense
advantage Germany uniquely derived by completely organizing and
keeping at work that vast majority of incurable mediocrities--mere
plodders--who are found in every race and who often weigh down its
destiny to the point of sinking hopelessness.
Kirtley had since observed that one conspicuous German method was
largely to employ this empty talent in small Government jobs. In
general, these tasks seemed to be expressly for the swarming and
uninspired nonentities, and meant most trivial duties for trivial
pay. But such tasks kept this population occupied, orderly and more
than self-respecting. In America incurable mediocrity is left to
shift for itself in huge masses.
The natural ambition of a Teuton was to be in the national service.
Rare was the German family who had not one member in "Government
circles." Or if not, it was building expectations toward such a
future. One in every eight wage-earning men a bureaucrat! It was not
only a question of the salary, assured if small, but the honor. Any
Government clerk or roustabout, not to speak of functionaries in
higher duties, was looked up to in a way unfamiliar in America, for
under that continuous régime his position remained fixed for life.
Government officials and employees in the United States are quite
freely thrown out under the frequent election upheavals and may
to-morrow be ordinary citizens bereft of any sort of authority over
their fellows. So they enjoy only a passing deference.
In Germany, owing to the use of plodders who made up extensively its
ubiquitous and commanding official class, this bureaucratic scheme
proved useful in more ways than one. It put faith and expectation
into these stolid, menial lives and took them out of the ranks of
the idle and discontented dullards who, in other countries, are a
source of danger or decay. It attached Fritz firmly and loyally to
the Nation. It held the links between the ruling caste and the
people hard and tight. At the same time it tied his family and
friends to the Hohenzollern, uniting them in a bond almost servile.
The ever-swelling ranks of bureaucrats, in such a large measure
imbecile and applying themselves to imbecile occupations,
strengthened the incomparable solidarity of the race. And it was
this army of State employees who were actively helping diffuse
through Germany in 1913 the frothy ideas of a national triumph that
intoxicated the populace.
But Kirtley, admiring this manifestation of practical and
administrative wisdom, felt that there must be somewhere a
tremendous weak spot. The expense of this plan and its withdrawal of
muscle and even poor brain from directly productive channels, were
costly. And there was about it a pompous vacancy, an arrogant
nonsensicalness, a latent peril resulting from such a large number
of automatons in unquestioned positions, that should all logically
indicate this: If Germany once broke, it would collapse somewhat
like an eggshell. It would be a formidable eggshell but with a
content surprisingly void.
In a sentence, the mighty German bureaucracy kept the population
from thinking. It meant--Obey and make no inquiry! And where in
history, Gard asked himself, has a nation of such political and body
slaves endured as against nations where the common individual was
free to ask questions? Slavery in any important form is acknowledged
to be an outworn, decadent economic policy. It cannot compete in the
long run.
As a result of this bureaucratic domination in Germany there were,
as Kirtley observed, many aspects of the organized public life so
excessively worked out and applied in their development as to be
unbelievable to Americans who had not come in actual contact with
them. These logical extremes and exhaustive minutiæ often enough
combined a ferocious ostentation and comical absurdness that were so
little realized by those afar who learned of the mighty seriousness
and intelligence of the Germans merely from the printed page. The
conduct and operations of the limitless bureaucracy were usually the
form in which the foreigner in the flesh ran counter to this
unconscionable discipline.
Of all this Government routine, the spy system stood out in relief,
although, at the same time, it was so dovetailed into the civil
administration as to be frequently indistinguishable. Like a
typical Yankee Gard, always greatly impressed by the general
emphasis everywhere laid on the perfection of the Germans and their
methods in everything, had regarded Anderson's remarks and hints
about the spy régime as exaggerations. He still could not believe
that Rudolph was a kind of Government sleuth or that Teuton
existence was honeycombed from cellar to roof with official
suspicion and the tyranny of the detective.
But this phase was now brought within range of his personal
knowledge, and he had a glimpse of this famous German service.
And through whom? Of all persons, Jim Deming. Strange to relate,
it brought to a sudden head the latter's stirring courtship of
Fräulein Elsa.