y the delicate and exacting
processes of the modern technology. The shortening of this working-life
of the workman is due both to a lengthening of the necessary period of
preparation, and to the demand of these processes for so full a use of
the workman's forces that even the beginning of senescence will count as
a serious disability,--in many occupations as a fatal disability. It is
also a well ascertained fact that effectual old age will be brought on
at an earlier period by overwork; overwork shortens the working
life-time of the workman. Thorough speeding-up ("Scientific
Management"?) will unduly shorten this working life-time, and so it may,
somewhat readily, result in an uneconomical consumption of the
community's man-power, by consuming the workmen at a higher rate of
speed, a higher pressure, with a more rapid rate of deterioration, than
would give the largest net output of product per unit of man-power
available, or per unit of cost of production of such man-power.

On this head the guiding incentives of the businessman and the material
interest of the community at large--not to speak of the selfish interest
of the individual workman--are systematically at variance. The cost of
production of workmen does not fall on the business concern which
employs them, at least not in such definite fashion as to make it appear
that the given business concern or businessman has a material interest
in the economical consumption of the man-power embodied in this given
body of employees. Some slight and exceptional qualification of this
statement is to be noted, in those cases where the processes in use are
such as to require special training, not to be had except by a working
habituation to these processes in the particular industrial plant in
question. So far as such special training, to be had only as employees
of the given concern, is a necessary part of the workman's equipment for
this particular work, so far the given employer bears a share and an
interest in the cost of production of the workmen employed; and so far,
therefore, the employer has also a pecuniary interest in the economical
use of his employees; which usually shows itself in the way of some
special precautions being taken to prevent the departure of these
workmen so long as there is a clear pecuniary loss involved in replacing
them with men who have not yet had the special training required.
Evidently this qualifying consideration covers no great proportion