Onward Sweep of the Machine Process/The Onward Sweep
The Onward Sweep of the
Machine Process.
By Nils H. Hanson.
In the good old times, when the machine was just beginning to come in to do the work done by the human hand, it happened something like this:
The Past.
Mr. Jones is a shoemaker employing one hundred men. Mr. Smith owns another factory employing the same number of men. In both these factories the shoes are made by hand. No machines are used. Every bit of leather is cut by hand, and every stitch made by hand. All polishing is done by hand, and one man makes the whole pair of shoes. He takes the piece of leather, cuts it, sews it, puts it together, and finishes the shoe. He gets hold of more leather and makes another pair, and so another and another. He keeps it up, fitting, nailing, sewing, and brushing pair after pair.
There are no big factories. Most work is done in small shops, and by individuals, one or two or a few men perhaps being hired. This holds good not only in the process of making shoes, but also in other lines of work. We see the dressmakers and the tailors sitting sewing clothes by hand, with a few men or women helping them, besides some apprentices learning the trade.
In these days there is no machinery at all. We hear no factory whistles blow; no trains send their shrieks through the mountains; no street cars clang; and no trucks rumble along loaded with the necessities of life. Transportation is done by horse teams. Everything is done on a small scale. Most stores are small mixed stores, about the size of the country grocery of modern times.
A Change.
But while everything is going on so slowly, and the people are living quietly, there comes the invention of machinery. Someone, for example, saw it was easier to turn a rock with a bar than by hand. He began to figure whether or not that couldn't be used to a larger degree in different walks of life. The idea spread out and like wildfire it seems to be apparent most everywhere at once. Instead of the old horse-back methods, stages, and the slow transportation, trains are beginning to run and the factory whistle blows.
Instead of making shoes by hand the machine comes in to do the greater part of the work. And, to use the illustration we started with, Mr. Jones, having a trifle more cleverness than his rival, installs some machinery. He rubs his hands with delight on finding that with the machine he won't need more than half of the men he now employs. The machines in his factory, he lays off fifty of his men, because he can now get as much work done by fifty as before by a hundred hands. Also he can make his shoes cheaper than can that other fellow, Smith. He can put down the price of shoes and still be able to pay for all the machinery he has bought. So he sells his shoes at a lower price, and gains more customers. Smith sees this, begins to scratch his head, and finally decides that in order to keep up in competition he also has got to install machinery. So Smith buys some machines and lays off about half of his men also.
Mr. Jones and Mr. Smith both have now installed machinery, which, put together, displaces one hundred men. With fifty men each they are able to make just as many pairs of shoes a day as they used to do with a hundred, and to sell their product cheaper and still make more profit.
The Result.
So we see that those two shoemakers alone lay off one hundred men. Each one still has fifty men working for, say, $2 a day. As time passes and the one hundred men outside can't find any work—because machinery is coming in rapidly in other branches of work also, and consequently men are being laid off everywhere—some of these fifty who used to work for Smith come to him and say: "Mr. Smith, I want some work. I've got to live; I've got a wife and some kids depending on me, and we've got to live somehow. If you'll only give me a chance to work again, I'll work for 25 or 50 cents less a day than I used to."
Smith's face begins to shine, because now he sees a chance to make more money yet. He sees a chance of cutting the wages. So after he has his scheme worked out he walks over to some of those working for him, saying: "Boys, I have a proposition to make. I've got to have this work done cheaper; I can't pay you more than $1.50 a day, and I can't use anybody who won't work for that."
This causes some of the men working for him to quit. As they leave, Smith opens the window, waves his hand to some of those fifty he laid off when the machines came along, and tells them if they want to work for $1.50, all right; if not, he can't use any of them. Some of them are already so hungry they eagerly shout at the top of their voices that they will work for $1.25 a day, if only given a chance.
Over in Jones' shop the same thing is happening. So now we have the wages down to $1.50 and $1.25, and still more men are outside ready soon to work for a dollar a day. Then something happens: Someone gets an idea into his head that if that keeps up, pretty soon they won't get any wages at all. So he proposes that, in order to uphold their interests, those outside the factory get together with those working in the factory.
And thus we have a union in embryo. The men begin to realize that if they want to live they will have to get together, all of them, and by so doing force their employers to pay them something for their work.
The Master's Method.
The above may not be exactly as it did happen, when the machinery came, but it is an illustration that holds good in general.
Since that time machinery has been improved; instead of the small individual workshop we have today the modern factory employing thousands of men and women. But the conditions created by the first machines still exist—although today we don't see the slaves in fifties or hundreds only outside the working places, but by the thousands, hundreds of thousands, and millions. Today they are standing outside the shops, factories, mills and mines, the same as the fifty, where the first machine factory whistle blew. And as machinery began to become dominant in society, those owning this machinery began to form organizations also, till today we have the employers' organizations—the trusts and the merchants' and manufacturers' associations. Since the time when the first machines made the workers get together they have kept on getting together—and they are still at it.
At first the shoemaker stood alone, competing with the other shoemakers. Then came the organizing of these "shoemakers" or shoe manufacturers, in order to uphold their interests. Today no shoes, or very few, are made by hand. They are mostly made in big factories, employing thousands of men and women. Not one of these workers could make a whole pair of shoes if he tried to. Everything is specialized; each worker does one little part of the whole, then it goes to the next, and so on down the line. The human being gets so used to his movements that his body becomes formed accordingly—he becomes a living mechanism of production.
The Skilled Man—The Molder.
Of late years machinery has been installed rapidly. There isn't one line of work which cannot be done, to some extent at least, by machines. Take the molder's trade for instance. No molder of 25 or 30 years ago dreamed that there would ever be any machines doing molding. He knew that it required the sensitive touch of the artist to finish a mold; he knew that the sand had to be just so hard, and never did he think that a dead thing, a machine, could pack the sand just right. But today there are foundries having machines which ram the sand for more than fifty men. Five men can do more work with these machines than could sixty by hand. Everything fits together, and there is hardly a sensitive touch by the human hand needed any more. The sand is shoveled in (in some foundries the sand comes down from above and no shovel is needed, either); the flask is put on a "gumper" (name of one kind of machine used for heavy work), the molder turns a handle, and the machine gives a jerk which packs the sand together; the molder counts the jerks and, what would perhaps have needed all day to do by hand, takes only a couple or a few seconds to perform with the machine.
And there are dozens of different molding machines. Some small ones, used on bench work, make one mold every minute. So this trade, which used to take (and is still SUPPOSED to take, of course) three or four years to learn, can now be picked up in a few days, a few weeks or few months at the limit. Now in case the molders go out a few unskilled can soon be broken in to do the work. As old molders usually say: "Nowadays they bring him in at seven in the morning and at ten he is a molder." Of course there is still some molding that requires skill, but it is getting less every year and will soon be a thing of the past. And so it is in every line of work. "The machine of wood and iron is taking the place of the machine of flesh and blood."
When the machines first appeared, the workers began to organize in small bodies—just big enough to fight the small masters of those days. As these masters began to get bigger, it was a natural consequence that the workers' organizations had to get bigger also. And as the employers began to organize to get control, not only of one shop or a few shops, one town or a few towns, but of the industries from coast to coast, from one land to another, the workers saw that the only way to fight them would be by organizing on the same lines as they did. Therefore the workers' organization grew from the small one to the big body of men—with units in every part of the country and with similar organizations seeking to form an international.
In the beginning, when the masters were only partly organized, an organization of the workers by craft was apparently sufficient to safeguard their interests. Within the limits only of each separate trade or craft these unions organized (and still organize) the workers; each one of these unions pulled each in its own direction, and solidarity of labor was an impossibility.
Another thing was that the masters got together in big industrial organizations; it began to be hard for the craft unions to cope with the situation—and so the industrial union was born. In this union all the workers in any industry stand together side by side, and strike together so as to completely stop the production of the shop or of the entire industry, when strikes are necessary.
Unfortunately, we still have the craft organization, as well as the contract system. The workers are split up, so that when the miners, for instance, go on strike in one place or one part of the country other "organized" miners in other parts of the country are working overtime to fill the orders. They have signed a "contract" with the employers (a piece of paper which "binds" them together, though it never binds the employers), so they can't help each other or get unity of action. But there are thousands of workers who are beginning to realize that they have nothing in common with the employer they are working for. While the craft unions (the American Federation of Labor) says that the workers must organize to get a "fair share" of what they produce, the industrial organization (the Industrial Workers of the World) says that the workers must organize to get all they produce. The I. W. W. also says: "The workers made the machines, and the workers run the machines; therefore, by God, the machines should also belong to the workers."
The Future.
The number of those making millions out of the hides of the workers is increasing, at the same time as the number of those starving is increasing. In 1861 there was only one millionaire in the United States; today there are over 40,000 of them, with a good many owning hundreds of millions.
The number of parasites is increasing constantly and at the same time the bread lines are getting longer and larger. No longer are there individual shoemakers, or fifty or a hundred men only thrown out of work—but today we have the whole of organized society, with its murderous institutions, jails, pens, militia, armies and navies, pitted against the men and women who are closed out because of modern machinery. In order to change this and to do away with the misery, injustice and degradation caused by this grinding "civilization," the workers must organize on such lines that they can all stand together and meet the organized masters with a union just as widely, well, and powerfully organized as is their enemy's; and thus, by tying up ALL THE INDUSTRIES at once, change the whole to a better world—a world of the workers.
That is what the workers of all ages have been after—a better world. No one knows the suffering better than the slave himself, and therefore it must be he who must free himself from the lash of the masters. Nothing can be stronger than the working class, when all the workers are properly organized; when they all stand together, the same as the masters do today. And none are higher and better than the ones who produce everything needed in sustaining life.
The machines are today used to enslave the workers, while they could be used to help the workers and society as a whole. Practically all inventions and everything worth while are made by the workers; and as soon as they wake up to the fact that everything—machines, industries and all should belong to those only who produce, and who do useful labor—then they need not suffer any longer, because then the machine—the real organizer—will be a blessing to the human race, instead of a curse as it is today.
Then will come the time about which poets all through the ages have dreamed; the time which broken-hearted, sweating toilers, men and women, have suffered for; the time which the Industrial Workers of the World is fighting for, and will fight for until the workers come to their own, and the master and the slave shall have disappeared from the earth.