employee through
an improvement of the wage system, but in the larger sense the
industrial problem is a social and moral one. Sociologists reckon
among the social forces a distinction between elemental desires and
broader interests. Wages are able to satisfy the elemental desires of
hunger and sex feeling by making it possible for a man to marry and
bring up a family and get enough to eat; but there are larger
questions of freedom, justice, comity, personal and social development
that are involved in the labor problem. If wages are so small, or
hours so long, or factory conditions so bad that health is affected,
proper education made impossible, and recreation and religion
prevented, the individual and society suffer much more than with
reference to the elemental desires. The industrial problem is,
therefore, a complex problem, and not one that can be easily or
quickly solved. Although it is necessary to remember all as parts of
one problem of industry, it is a convenience to remember that it is:

(1) An economic problem, involving wages, hours, and conditions of
labor.

(2) A social problem, involving the mental and physical health and the
social welfare of both the individual worker, the family, and the
community.

(3) An ethical problem, involving fairness, justice, comity, and
freedom to the employer, the employee, and the public.

(4) A complex problem, involving many specific problems, chief of
which are the labor of women and children, immigrant labor, prison
labor, organization of labor, insurance, unemployment, industrial
education, the conduct of labor warfare, and the interest of the
public in the industrial problem.

195. =Characteristics of Factory Life.=--Group life in the factory is
not very different in characteristics from group life everywhere. It
is an active life, the hand and brain of the worker keeping pace with
the speedy machine, all together shaping the product that goes to
exchange and storage. It is a social life, many individuals working in
one room, and all the operatives contributing jointly to the making of
the product. It is under control. Captains of industry and their
lieutenants give direction to a group that has been thoroughly and
efficiently organized. Without control and organization industry could
not be successfully carried on, but it is open to question whether
industrial control should not be more democratic, shared in by
representatives of the workers and of the public