Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 215, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 September 1916 — So-Called Efficiency Which Breaks Man Down in Prime Really Is Inefficiency [ARTICLE]

So-Called Efficiency Which Breaks Man Down in Prime Really Is Inefficiency

By DARWIN P. KINGSLEY

President of the New York Life Insurance Company

The inefficiency of “efficiency” has proved both costly and brutal. Every system of efficiency of the future, must consider human life first. If human life is to be .jeopardized by haste, don’t hurry. If human life is to be sacrificed by speeding up efficiency, be less efficient; if the human body is to be maimed or destroyed in order to secure speed and power, get along with less power. This doctrine is not merely sentimental; it is more than a reflection of the woe and heartbreak that follow the cruel strokes of industry and traffic. Human life is the only thing in the world that has any value; all other values are derived from serving this primary value. The asset of the average man, the only thing that stands between his family and perhaps future dependence on charity, is his earning power. Some plan which capitalizes his future earning power, his physical strength, must be incorporated in the efficient industrial system of the future. An -enormous vitality gain has been achieved in the earlier stages of life. A much larger percentage reach maturity through improved methods of sanitation, but the human machine begins to go to pieces at fifty-five. It is the result of the heavy strain in the United States, a product of our modern life. It is the outgrowth of tty; worst form of inefficiency, of an attempt to be efficient without properly counting the cost. Think of the value of lives snuffed out at fifty-five! Just when these lives have reached their maturity of power, when knowledge has become wisdom, when judgment has become well balanced—fifteen years of the choicest part of their lives snuffed out! A man should be at his’best up to seventy. If a man disappears at fifty-five he is inefficient, no matter what he has done before that time inefficient because he has thrown away the ripe fruit of all his life. . It’s inefficiency, though the man and the system may call it efficiency.