Onward Sweep of the Machine Process/The Diesel Motor

by Barbara Lily Frankenthal

The Diesel Motor.

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By Barbara Lily Frankenthal

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Day by day more of the work of the world is taken up by machinery. In a bulletin recently issued by the United States Government, it is estimated that four and one-half million factory hands of the United States turn out a product equal to the hand labor of forty-five million men.

This means that 90 per cent. of the work in the factories is done by machinery, or that one man, with the help of machines, is enabled to produce ten times more than he needs; in other words, to satisfy the wants of one man for one day, a factory worker requires only one hour, instead of ten, as he is working now. For whom does he work the remaining nine hours?

The bankers, brokers, merchants, soldiers and the whole gang of parasites do not produce one day's need in their whole lifetime; they make money, but do not create wealth. But, one might say, the capitalists furnish the machines. But it was the steel mill workers who did that. The capitalists keep them alive while they are building the machines and then take the machines away from the workers, by power of police, if necessary.

But to come back to the story. A very large part of the machinery in use is driven by steam power, which means largely coal power, and both the getting and the burning of this coal involves a terrible waste of human labor.

First the coal is dug from the mines, where one-third of it is lost or left in such shape that it cannot be used. After being brought to daylight, it is shipped by railroads or ships, sometimes thousands of miles before it comes to the steam engine. Here it is shoveled and burned beneath the boiler to transform the water into steam, by which operation perhaps 90 per cent. of the heat escapes unused through the chimneys.

The steam is led into the cylinder to give the piston the to-and-fro movement through its expansive energy, thereby turning the power wheel. It so happens that ordinarily not more than five per cent. of the stored energy in the coal becomes available for human needs. Even the finest quadruple-expansion engines with all the modern devices for superheated steam, etc., to augment their capacity, do not use more than 15 per cent.

By far a greater advance is represented by the gas engines, in which, by first turning the coal into gas and then exploding this in the motors, more than double the amount of energy now becomes available. In the best types of gas engines the yield rises as high as 25 per cent.; and in Germany the residual products from turning the coal into gas far more than pay the cost of doing this, so that the gain is clear. But all this is commercially feasible only in the great manufacturing centers and the cities, and, consequently, the gas engine, in spite of the great saving it achieves, has yet but a restricted field.

For quite other reasons the same is true of the gasoline, benzine and similar motors such as are used in automobiles. Here the price of petrol is almost prohibitive for commercial purposes and has become increasingly so with the enormous extension of the use of motor cars.

However, we are now on the eve of a new epoch in this line through the invention of Dr. Rudolph Diesel, the German engineer, who so mysteriously disappeared last October on his voyage to England.

It is now 20 years since Dr. Diesel published the first sketch of his remarkable theory and of the motor which was to realize his idea. The motor is simplicity itself. Every schoolboy knows that if air is compressed very sharply it becomes hot and can be used to explode powder, etc., in a tube. Dr. Diesel's plan was to use the stroke of the piston to compress a considerable volume of air into a very small space, so as to put it under a very high pressure; and at the instant the pressure reached a maximum, to force into this chamber a jet of vaporized oil. The compression was to be so high that the air would instantly ignite the oil and burn it under highly favorable conditions. It is a true burning, and not an explosion, as in the ordinary gasoline motor of the automobiles. His idea was taken up by some of the engine works in Germany, but it required fully four years to effect a commercial device. The superiority of the new motor was evident from the first. Actually it realized a full third of the theoretical heat energy of the oil, and this latter did not need to be gasoline or other expensive essence, but could be ordinary crude oil, such as comes out of the earth. The device is self-igniting, requires no auxiliary system and little or no attention.

It was soon found, however, that the new motor had to be made with exceptional care, and that, therefore, the cost of its development for commercial use was high. The fact that capitalists are not interested in progress as such, but in profit, explains why it is that, in spite of the great economies it achieves, the Diesel motor is now only becoming widely known.

In Germany, at the current price of crude oil, the Diesel motor produces power at from a quarter to a half cent per horse-power-hour. In the United States the cost is rather less. This is far beyond the economy of any other form of engine, and four or five times cheaper than the ordinary steam engine. Its only concurrent is waterpower, and waterpower is not everywhere available, and often requires a heavy outlay that it may be utilized. Crude oil, on the other hand, may be shipped and stored much more easily than coal, and the supply of it is very large and widely distributed over the earth.

The escaping hot gas from the Diesel motor can be employed for heating, and the by-products which can be obtained from it will, it is estimated, under proper conditions, more than cover the cost of the original fuel, so that the Diesel motor promises to rival the waterfall in future as a producer of the world's power. Like the waterfall, it will, under the most favorable conditions, mean that the expense will be simply the fixed charges of a plant and the cost of maintenance.

It is already evident that the Diesel motor will largely displace steam and this will first make itself felt upon the ships, not merely because it realizes four or five times the power from the amount or volume of fuel, but it only occupies, together with the motor, about a quarter of the space required for a steam engine and its boilers and coal bunkers. This new motor has been successfully tried on railroad locomotives and experiments are under way with a view to introduce it for driving automobiles. Most of the leading engine works in Europe have taken up the construction of the Diesel motor in all sizes. A large number of middle-sized ships and various municipal power plants are already driven by it. In the United States a powerful company has just been organized for the purpose of constructing these motors, and the General Petroleum Company in California is going to erect a plant in San Franciso for the construction of motor ships for the coastwise trade, which, of course, will force the owners of steamers to follow.

Indeed, the development of the crude-oil and coal-tar industry has been so rapid that the running of a Diesel motor may become a source of profit sufficient to cover all charges, and will actually mean power without cost. Consider what this will mean when, at no distant day, nine-tenths of the work of the world will be done by machines operated free of expense!

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What the Diesel Motor Means to the Unskilled Laborer.

Unskilled labor is synonymous with cheap manual labor. Why is it cheap labor? Because it is worth little? No, quite the contrary; all the brains of the world could not accomplish anything without the manual, executive labor. It is the creative part of work, while brain effort is the directive one. What is the use of a man that has superior brain and excellent ideas, but no arms to bring them into reality?

The low valuation of manual labor has no original basis. The workers, not having free access to either the sources or the means of production of wealth, are compelled to sell their labor power at the market price. The market price of any commodity is determined by the cost of production of that commodity, varying somewhat according to the relation of supply to demand. The market price of labor power is determined by the cost of production of that labor power, not by the production of that labor's product. Unskilled or manual labor is cheapest everywhere because there are so many who have a chance to do that kind of work, as there is nothing to learn. If so many had a chance to become lawyers, the municipal lodging houses would be besieged by lawyers. As to the cheapness of production, the labor power of the Diesel motor leaves everything far behind. A Chinese laborer in China receives about 10 cents for a day's work, because it does not require more to keep him alive. One horse power of the Diesel motor turns out at least three or four times the amount of the work of the Chinese laborer for sixty minutes every hour and twenty-four hours every day, without grumbling, rest or sleep, and all this for 10 cents. All the "Diesel motor man" requires is a little oil for his stomach and a little bit of oil for his joints; he never strikes, nor does he care for holidays. This machine requires no food when out of work. In short, this is indeed a "willing and loyal" worker for the employer.

To give an idea of the fearful competition of the Diesel motor, one must imagine an invasion of hordes of strong and tireless men from an unknown country that are willing to work incessantly for twenty-four hours every day for about 10 cents. Wherever there is work done by a gang that possibly can be done by machine power, the "Diesel motor men" will take it away from the unskilled laborers, those extravagant gentlemen who ask a fair wage for a fair day's work.

To Firemen and Machinists.

Fireman? The Diesel motor will fire him. It has no use for firemen, no more than it has for coal-passers. A turn of the valve of the oil-supply pipe is all that is necessary to do away with the drudgerous work of the firemen and coal-passers.

The motor itself is so simple and so well regulated that trained machinists can be dispensed with. While they might be preferred, the number of their jobs will be greatly reduced. So, for instance, in the engine and boiler-rooms of these big modern ocean steamers about 300 to 400 coal-passers, firemen and machinists, are now employed. If Diesel motors are installed, thirty or forty machinists and helpers will be amply sufficient to run them.

To Coal Miners and Railroad Men.

Without going into details as to what extent the world's output of coal will be affected by the advent of the Diesel motor as a power and heat-producing means, it is safe to say that coal miners will lose their best weapon in the struggle against the oppressing class by it.

When the Diesel motor has supplanted the steam engine of the private and municipal plants, also of railways and steamships, the necessity of coal will be no more of such an imperative nature as it is today. Coal will then occupy but a secondary position in modern industries.

Therefore, the future strikes of the coal miners will not have the same compelling strength and important consequences as they have at present. No more will it be possible to stop the country's railroads, to shut down factories and to cripple the world's commerce by tying up the steamships as it has been attained lately during the coal miners' strike in Great Britain.

The same is the case with the railroad men. A well-organized railroad strike has the same, if not a stronger, effect than a miner's strike; the coal is of no use in front of the mines, the railroad men must first bring it to the place where it is needed. The coal traffic is indeed the chief item of railroad transportation, at least this is so in the United States. Not even a combined strike of the miners and the railroad men will have a reasonable fraction of the fundamental effect that a strike of either has today. The reason for this is that the oil for the Diesel motors undoubtedly will be conveyed to the industrial centers and to the sea coast through pipe lines, as it is largely done nowadays.

To the Small Farmers and Farm Hands.

More power is spent through the plow than in all the factories in the world. The toil of turning the cultivated face of the earth once each year by the plow consumes more power than all the railways, street cars and automobiles combined. For every single acre of land, a man with plow and team must traverse a distance of eight miles. In order to run the mechanism of the farms in the United States alone, it requires 20 million horses and mules. According to the United States Agricultural Department, a horse needs five acres yearly for keep, so that it necessitates 100 million acres to produce the motive power to run the farms. This is a larger area than is required for raising the country's crops of wheat, potatoes, rye and rice. On the other hand, the continuous rise in value of farm land does the rest to make a change for another source of motive power absolutely indispensable.

And the change is at hand. It is the tractor that will replace the horses and most of the farm hands and also squeezes out the small farmer. The onmarch of the farm tractor is so sudden and victorious that the United States census of 1910 did not bring out any statistical figures about it, while now the yearly output is more than 50,000 of these machines. They may be considered as having a combined working capacity of about twenty-five horses and ten men, which can be doubled if circumstances call for it.

The uses of the all-round tractor in the field, shop and barn are indeed numberless, and any intelligent farm hand can learn in a few hours to operate them. This tractor can do the plowing right behind the binder when it is too hot for the horses to do it, and, with a headlight, may be operated during the night. The plowing done by the tractor is not only better, but also one dollar cheaper per acre than it can be accomplished with horses. Besides, it can be used for seeding, harvesting, threshing, hay baling, hauling grain to the market, pumping water, road building, and so on. This wonderful adaptability of the tractor can be exploited to its full advantage on big farms only, where there is enough work for it. On the other hand, it is too expensive for the small farmer to buy.

The farm tractor was the missing link in the combination that made it possible to manage agriculture on a big scale and along strictly capitalistic business lines. Therefore, every improvement of the farm tractor will strengthen and hasten the passing of the small farmer. According to the United States census of 1910 more than 30,000 small farms went out of business in the three best middle west states of Indiana, Illinois and Iowa, while the population of their rural districts showed a decrease of 255,002 persons during the time of 1900 to 1910.

Not only the capitalist's tractors do better, cheaper and quicker work, but also they stand in the barn without an extra expense during the winter or when out of work, while the small farmer's horses are eating their heads off.

All tractors now in use are driven by high-priced fuel, such as gasoline, kerosene, etc. The coming of the Diesel tractor, therefore, will further lessen the running expenses of the capitalist farm and thereby contribute to outdistance the small farmer more and more in his struggle for existence.

It is evident that many farm hands will lose their jobs as long as this kind of "progress" is going on.

Conclusions.

The foregoing lines give a clear instance of how the master class gains ground from the working class through one single invention. There come every day new inventions that have similar consequence to those of the Diesel motor. Almost every invention in machinery has as its purpose increased production with less human help, and that means a loss to the workers under present conditions.

In order to avoid complete annihilation or to make any headway at all, the working class must completely change its attitude in the class struggle against the masters. Up to the present time the workers have fought only when they were forced to do so. They strike or take drastic measures when the cost of living has gone up to such an extent that they cannot live on the prevailing wages, or they cannot endure any longer the shameful working conditions.

In short, the workers have always been on the defensive to recover lost ground, so that after the fight they are in the same position as some time before the fight. The spirit of defense, however, is "Not to lose." That is all.

To go toward victory in the industrial revolution that is already in its beginning stage, the workers must embue their brains with the spirit of attack. That means, "To Win."

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