Page:Minority of One February 1961.pdf/8

When a Nation Cheats Itself

Even a chaste man is a bigamist: he is married both to his wile and his work. In his pursuit of self-fulfillment both play equally decisive roles: either can make him happy, either miserable. That work is a means of sustaining oneself is only a partial truth. Even if man could sustain himself without earning a living, his mental and physical health would depend on work so greatly that he would even pay for the privilege of working. Work is not man's bondage but his freedom and reward. Only work provides a social justification for his being, establishing society's need for him. In a final sense, the only thing that differentiates the living from the dead is work and not only because the latter have no needs to be labored for, but because the thrill of achievement cannot permeate them.

AN ODE TO WORK

This is not empty sentimentalism but a literal truism that is basic to society as well as to the individual's psyche. In the Bible there is nothing more depressing, dehumanizing and spirit-destroying than the sight of ready-made manna raining down from heaven. Where is the man who never found a confirmation of his usefulness in the fruit of his labor? Where is the man who was never flattered by his ability to create? Could he go on living? Could he ever experience the joy of living? Would his soul ever allow him to absorb any beauty, even that found in nature's abundance?

No one doubts a woman's ability to make her husband happy or miserable. No one expects a man frustrated in his family life to be otherwise a happy, constructive, well balanced and self- fulfilled individual. Man just could not achieve all this in spite of his extreme family frustrations and disillusionments. Yet, a perverted sense of values tells us that man can achieve self-fulfillment in spite of frustrations emerging from his work. No matter how unsatisfying or distasteful work may be, this argument goes, you are well paid for the heartaches and frustrations by the money you get. As if all you worked for was money. As if work had nothing else to offer but a paycheck. As if nothing but the paycheck counted and influenced your life. It would be like judging your wife by nothing but her culinary efficiency.

Because work is so overwhelmingly important to a person's mental life, one must choose it as cautiously as he chooses the person who will share his life. Long before actually taking up a professional career, one should establish his preferences and aptitude. It is not a one time affair which, if unsatisfactory, can be easily abandoned for the next experience. It is a life commitment as permanent as the vows in a Catholic wedding. Even if a person should decide to change the type of work he initially chose, he is never going to divorce himself completely from the influences of that first professional encounter: his mind and emotions will remain, at least to a degree, molded by whatever he had been doing. His next choice will greatly depend on his former choice and its consequences. His new place in society will be vastly influenced by his former place in society. In a sense. he will always remain an ex-.., a prejudice established not by snobbishness but by mental influences within him that can never be completely obliterated. He will be like Mrs. X who will always remain the former Mrs. Y.

THE SELF-CHEAT

Watch, therefore, a man at his work and you can find out all about him. You will learn what makes him tick, whether or not he has personal dignity, whether he has the ability of enjoying life, whether he is honest or crooked, what are his loyalties A summation of all these will easily tell you not only what his relationship is with his work but also with his fellow men, whether at work or in any other encounter.

Recently I watched a mechanic do some work on my car, and in watching him I believe I gained an insight even into such aspects of his personality as were seemingly unrelated to his repairing of my car. Within the 40 minutes that the car was at his disposal he left his service area seven times for reasons that had nothing to do with his work. On one occasion he went across the station to get a coke from the dispenser, remaining there until he had emptied the bottle. Next he approached a fellow mechanic to ask him for a light for his cigarette even though a short while before I saw him use his own lighter. The cigarette lighting ceremony led to a conversation between the two men that lasted for several minutes. He had hardly finished his cigarette when a boy came in carrying a tray with coffee which once more distracted my mechanic. A while later, he reached for a piece of paper in his pocket, strolled over to the pay telephone and looking at the piece of paper dialed a number. Certain other distractions were not wholly his responsibility: other mechanics kept coming over, one to exchange impressions on the World Series, another to make a secretive reference to "that dame last night".

As I watched this nerve-wracking forty minute ceremonial. I asked myself how in the world such a man made a living. Was it possible that his demoralized attitude towards his job could still provide enough of an income to support a family and himself? A saving factor was provided by the excellence of the tools at the man's disposal. In between his escapades across the plant he would reach for an electric revolver and in no time unscrew a bolt with it. But then. I reflected. the American worker did not always have such sophisticated machines at his disposal, yet he must have earned a living. Furthermore, the present availability of an electric machine amply testifies to the exertions of former American generations. So, sometime in the past, work must truly have meant work. But that belongs to the past.

THE CHEAT IS CHEATED

It is not the whole truth that my mechanic's saving factor was the electric machine that replaced such a relatively uncomplicated and unstrenuous manual effort as unscrewing a bolt. One other saving factor was the bill presented to me a while later. Compared to the forty minutes the mechanic worked on my car, half of which was devoted to anything but work, the bill listed, in black and white, 4½ hours labor. When I questioned the service manager about the obvious discrepancy. I was made to realize that something was definitely wrong with me for questioning him. "Now listen, Mister", he said in a voice that was a mixture of inward indignation and outward threat, "I can show you the book and you'll see that that repair takes 4½ hours labor." Before I was totally intimidated, I managed to utter another word of protest only to be told: "Now, it ain't none of your business how long the man worked on that car, the book says 4½ hours and you have 4 hours on your bill!" Whether it was his words or his still higher raised voice and fiery glance that "convinced" me is quite irrelevant. Suddenly, however, I realized that a man is capable of working 108 hours within an 8-hour work day. Or, at least charge a fee at that rate. If so, I asked myself how come my mechanic (or his employer) is not a millionaire by now. The arithmetic seemed simple enough: if a man like my mechanic could devote no more than twenty hours a week to actual work yet be paid for $40 hours, and if even 40 hours weekly could support him and his family, then he should be able to accumulate a very substantial fortune in no time. Chances are, instead, that my mechanic has difficulties in meeting his bills and is forced to buy clothing for his children on the "lay away plan". How is that possible?-I asked myself. The answer was obvious: had he alone discovered a way of collecting exorbitant fees for minimum work, he could indeed enrich himself: but since the entire economy of which he is a part is an economy of such cheating and usury, his gains from his customers are neutralized by the gains of those he patronizes, or is employed by, in turn. After victimizing his customers, he in turn becomes their victim. His rent is paid on the same basis that enabled him to gain the equivalent of 4 hours in twenty minutes of work. So is his food and clothing. When he takes his child to the physician for some kind of a vaccination. he and the hundreds of patients lined up on that "vaccination day" from morning until evening will each receive a $5 invoice more surely than any degree of physical immunity. Or, when he buys vitamin pills for his child, he may have to pay a price that includes a 17.000 per cent markup of the manufacturer (the Upjohn Company, for instance). Then suppose he has some disabling accident at work and for a month or two his income ceases. He has to engage legal counsel to collect any compensation or indemnity. But legal counsel is no longer obtainable against a fee. Instead, the arrangement will be one of consignment in other words, the lawyer gets a commission on his client's broken leg or smashed skull because the lawyer too can no longer afford charging a fee in a fee-free society in which everybody overcharges everybody, in which everybody is a "sucker" as often as he buys anything or avails himself of any service. (A recent printer's bill of TMO typically included a charge of $44.00 for the wrapping of 12 packages, for which 9 hours of labor were listed. All protests were rejected by the plant manager who does not need to fear more competitive billing standards by other local printers.)

THE UNLIMITED PROFIT

The consequences of such demoralization are fatal to the notional economy. The fact that American products cannot compete on the international market except in times of a war-inflicted scarcity is due not so much to the higher standard of living of the American worker as to the internal inflation of values. The higher standard of living of the American worker, as far as prices are concerned, is largely, if not completely, offset by the much higher productivity and volume of the American economy due to its technical superiority and vast market. The uncompetitive prices of the American products on the international market have more to do with the speculative markup inherent in the American economy than with the actual cost of production.

In the pricing policies of American producers and marketers there is a lack of a direct relationship between the actual cost of production and the price of the merchandise. All too often, the two are only remotely, if at all, related. In our business psychology there is a lack of appreciation that markup and profit should amount to only a small fraction of the actual production cost. Rather the approach is "How much is it worth to you?". I have seen, for instance, encyclopedias produced at 30 to 40 dollars sold for 500 dollars. As the sales pitch goes: "Isn't all that knowledge you get out