done under this impulse but the bulk of the world's work is harnessed to the motive of self interest. There may be some question whether there is a separate instinct of contrivance, whether the pleasure which a man has in the possession of a watch which varies a second a week, though he has no real use for so accurate a time-piece, is not also part of some wider aspect of human nature. However that may be, there is no doubt of the better quality of work done under the creative impulse and of the educative effect which such work has on the worker. Where work is done purely for the remuneration received, on the other hand, the quality is lower and the educational effect is bad. Socialists have long held out the lure that under a system of organization which did not put profit in the forefront, the world's work might all be done under the same stimulus as has produced the masterpieces of art and literature. It is, of course, Utopian to think that in any sudden change of organization the creative impulse would provide sufficient stimulus for the performance of the arduous work of modern industry. It will always be sufficient for the masterpieces but less often for the hack-work of the world. Recent experience, however, with wide-spread restriction of output has made clear that the wage incentive is not enough, that there must be some further incentive, some interest in or control over the work if the maximum efficiency is to be attained. It is this problem more than any other which has brought so much attention to personnel administration in industry and to that new study psychology is giving its share. From a wider point of view the creative impulse has an equal importance in respect to workers in managerial positions. As Taussig has pointed out, even in the accumulation of dollars the instinct of contrivance plays a large part. Business is to some extent a game and the score is counted in dollars. Not the profit but the success which the profit stands for is in many cases the incentive to life-long activity. There seems some truth in the socialist's claim that we have bound together accumulation and business success when they need not have so been bound. Few will deny that the unequal division of wealth which has followed is to be regretted. Once, however, profit making is the customary standard of economic success, it is a slow process to substitute another standard. It requires a mental conversion. To effect this is perhaps the widest task of the collegiate schools of business. When the science of business has been developed, when scientific standards of economic effectiveness are established as they are in the process of being established, when, in short, business is professionalized, as medicine has been professionalized, profit and executive success will no longer be correlated. Inequality of wealth will, of course, not disappear, but something of the money-making age, 'the acquisitive society', will pass from us. Department of Economics, Queen's University. W. A. MACKINTOSH. References Dickinson, Economic Motives, Harvard University Press. Watt, Introduction to the Psychological Problems of Industry, Allen THREE SONNETS PSYCHE. June's pleasure-queen has fallen into woe, She is alone. All heavily and slow She beats about the grass on broken wing, Outdistanced soon by any creeping thing That never dared in Heaven's path to go. O shame! that this poor fairy-bug should fall. She was not formed to languish on the ground, To soil her rainbow tints with miry stain. She suffers most because she hears the call Of dancing breezes and the joy she found In their pure region measures now her pain. PHANTOMS. The lights have faded from the dancing hall, The cold air carries flakes of snow which fall On tingling cheeks where, ever as they meet With maiden's breath, they melt in dimples sweet Like phantom kisses lost beyond recall. But some poor woman will awake to tears, THE HARVEST. I stood, last night, beside a man in pain Then the gray shadow crept across, and vain They closed the mouth and shut the staring eyes, Unveiled a beauty that he could not see. -Beauty he loved and mocked and so he dies, Turned to a corpse with cold face pinched and drawn; A grinning thing; the mask of tragedy. R. W. CUMBERLAND. |