Creative Impulse in Industry | Page 5

a group for independent and associated experimentation. But even in
such cases the technological content does not necessarily supply the
impulse to solve the problem or secure a free and voluntary
participation in its solution. Those who are interested in its solution are
inspired by its economic value for them. In all technological
laboratories, either where the problem is broken up and its parts
distributed among the employees of the laboratory, or where it is given
to them as a whole for solution, it is given not as a sequence in the
creative purpose of the individuals who are at work on it, nor is its final
solution necessarily determined by its use and wont in a community.
Problems brought to the laboratory are tainted with the motive of
industry which is not creative, but exploitive.
The tenure of each man employed in production is finally determined
not by any creative interest of his own or of his employer but by
whether in the last analysis, he conforms better than another man to the
exigencies of profits. If profits and creative purpose happen to be one
and the same thing, his place in an industrial establishment has some
bearing on his intrinsic worth. Under such circumstances his interest in
the creative purpose of the establishment would have a foundation, and
he himself could value better than he otherwise would his own part in

the enterprise.
The economic organization of modern society though built on the
common people's productive energy has discounted their creative
potentiality. We hold to the theory that men are equal in their
opportunity to capture and own wealth; that their ability in that respect
is proof of their ability to create it; a proof of their inherent capacity. It
is a proof, as a matter of fact, of their ability to compete in the general
scheme of capture; their ability to exploit wealth successfully. While
the prevailing economic theory of production takes for granted men's
creative potentiality there is no provision in our industrial institution for
the common run of men to function creatively. There is no attempt in
the general scheme for trueing-up or estimating the creative ability of
workers. In the market, where the value of goods is determined, a
machine tender has a better chance than a craftsman. The popular belief
is that the ability of workers has native limitations, that these
limitations are absolute and that they are fixed at or before birth. This
belief is a tenet among those who hold positions of industrial mastery.
Managers of industry for instance who control a situation and create an
environment, demand that those who serve them meet the requirements
which they have fixed. They do not recognize that industrial ability
depends largely on the opportunity which an individual has had to
make adjustments to his surroundings and on his opportunity to master
them through experiment. A factory employee is required to do a piece
of work; and he does it, not because he is interested in the process or
the object, but because his employer wants it done.
In Anglo-Saxon and Teutonic countries, where people have fallen most
completely under the influence of machine production and business
enterprise, and where they have lost by the way their conception of
their creative potentiality, work is universally conceived as something
which people endure for the sake of being "paid off." Being paid off, it
seems abundantly clear, is the only reason a sane man can have for
working. After he is paid off the assumption is his pleasure will begin.
A popular idea of play is the absence of work, the consumption of
wealth, being entertained. Being entertained indeed is as near as most
adult men in these countries come to play. Their Sundays and holidays

are depressing occasions, shadowed by a forlorn expectancy of
something which never comes off.
The capacity of the French people for enjoying their holidays is much
the same as their capacity for enjoying their work. This, no doubt, is a
matter of native habituation. But however they came by it, it has had its
part in determining the industrial conditions of France. The love of the
people for making things has resisted in a remarkable way the
domination of machine industry and modern factory organization. The
French work shop, averaging six persons, is as characteristic of France
as the huge factory organization with the most modern mechanical
equipment is characteristic of American industry. As the workers in
these shops participate more intimately in the fabrication of goods they
come more nearly to a real participation in productive enterprise. This
close contact with the actual processes of production gives the workers
a sense of power. A sense of their relation to the processes and their
ability to control them engenders courage. Indeed it