There is no doubt that efficiency can be achieved most quickly under a well-wielded boss’s whip, but at the sacrifice of initiative and invention.  Moreover, remove the whip, and the efficiency quickly goes to pieces.  On the other hand, the efficiency achieved by voluntary effort and free cooperation comes much more slowly, but it lasts.  Moreover, it develops, hand in hand, with initiative and invention.

The negro, doubtless, has never been so generally efficient as before the civil war, in the South, under the overseer’s whip; yet every negro who, to-day, has character enough to save up and buy a mule and an acre of ground, tills it with a consistent and permanent effectiveness of which slave labor is never capable.  In the one case, moreover, there is the average economic result, in the other, the gradual development of manhood.

Organize a factory on the feudal lines so prevalent in current industry.  Get a strong, dominating superintendent and give him autocratic authority.  Quickly he will show results.  Always, however, there is the danger of strikes, and if the strong hand falters, the organization disintegrates.  On the other hand, let a corporation take its artisans into its confidence, give each a small proportionate share in the annual earnings.  Each worker will feel increasingly that the business is his business.  He will take pride in his accomplishment.  Gradually he will attain efficiency, and work permanently, without oversight, with a consistent earnestness no boss’s whip ever attained,

The experience of the National Cash Register Company at Dayton, Ohio, proves this.  The experiments of Henry Ford are a step toward the same solution.  So, in lesser measure, is the plan of the Steel trust to permit and encourage its employees to purchase annually its stock, somewhat below the current market price, giving a substantial bonus if the stock is held over ten years.

If you wish an illustration on a larger scale, consider the mass formation tactics of the German soldiers, in contrast to the individual courage, initiative and action of the French.  There are the two types of efficiency in sheerest contrast, but beyond is always the question of their effect on manhood.  France has saved and regenerated her soul; but Germany—?

Further, the breakdown of paternalistically achieved efficiency has been evident in Germany’s utter failure to understand the mind of other peoples, particularly of democracies.  She had voluminous data, gathered by the most atrociously efficient spy system ever developed, yet she utterly misread the mind of France, England and the United States.  The same break-down is evident in Germany’s failure in colonization in contrast to England’s success.