The most depressing fact that confronts one who is trying to interpret to each other men or classes that are at issue, is the immense sub-stratum of ignorance and prejudice that exists on both sides, and that is found on examination to be the result of persistent misinformation; of facts torn from their connection, or partially stated; of bitter, or scornful, or inflammatory words, spoken often by those who represent no one but themselves, and that are flung abroad in displayed type, or with sensational expansion of editorial comment, to be the spark that anew kindles social resentments or inflames class hatreds. We are facing to-day a whole group of grave questions, of real difficulty, of extreme delicacy often, and almost as often of almost entire novelty. They grow out of conditions that, until the present century, never had an existence, and they are complicated by perplexities which what we call our industrial progress does not diminish, but often greatly complicates. In such a situation, what the hour waits for is a cool temper, restrained speech, a judicial hesitancy in flinging about loose opinions, and a wide knowledge of a very wide range of facts. Under these circumstances the swift imputation of motives, the ready inference of malign intent, the exaggerated descriptions whether of the heartlessness of one class or of the malignity of the other, to which we are frequently treated, is precisely as mischievous as the act of the anarchist or incendiarist who drops bombs or petroleum about the streets or homes in which his neighbors live. That we have become so far wonted to it as we have; that the mischief of it appears so little to concern or to alarm us, is itself an element of danger that has constrained me to refer to the matter here. On the occasion to which I referred at the opening of this paper, I was striving to say some words to bind men togetherthe more favored classes in intelligent sympathy with those whose lot is that of unremitting labor, the hardships of which have unquestionably been greatly increased, often, by those modern conditions under which labor has to be performed. In illustration of this point I referred, as has already been indicated, to the purely mechanical and unintelligent character of much that is required of a working man in serving or feeding some great mechanism, and pointed out that the utter monotony of it must needs account for the intemperate reaction from such monotony, of which one sometimes heard. These temperate and, as I venture to think, timely words have been widely heralded as a denunciation of the employment of machinery in manufacture and an unreserved condemnation of it in connection with our modern industrial life. It is not necessary, I hope, that I should disown so absurd a misrepresentation. Any one of even the most limited intelligence cannot fail to perceive the enormous gains in convenience, comfort, and luxury from the application of machinery to the arts. But no great gain of such a character is without cost, in many ways and of many kinds. The cost to the individual who works at a handicraft is real and serious, and it is concerning this that we need to recognize the present situation and to do what we can to ameliorate it. The case is admirably stated by Mr. Whately Cooke Taylor, in his work The Modern Factory System, in terms so true and temperate that I cannot refrain from quoting them : "This type of industry is new in the world. In all previous modes of labor (including the earlier factory systems) all the processes were performed by means of manufacture proper; either, that is, by the 'fitting together (by human hands) of partial products made independently,' or by the conducting them through 'a series of connected processes and manipulations,' with or without the aid of more or less simple machines and tools. In the present instance it is the processes themselves that are performed by the machines, and the human hands that only assist them. It is machiue industry; not industry merely aided by machinery. A weaving establishment of 200, 2,000, or 5,000 years ago (say in England, Greece, or Egypt) would equally well afford an example of the first type, and the same general description of what occurred be fairly applicable. The yarn, spun independently with a simple tool, a distaff- -or a simple implement, a spinning wheel-is fitted to the loom as warp and weft, and woven on that more complicated implement into a web. But it is not woven by it. The shuttle is passed back and forward or in and out by hand. Adam Smith's celebrated description of pin-making as practised in his day furnishes a good illustration of the second category. 'One man draws out the wire; another straights it; a third cuts it; a fourth points it; a fifth grinds it at the top for receiving the head; to make the head requires two or three distinct operations; to put it on is a peculiar business; to whiten the pin is another; it is even a trade by itself to put them into the paper; and the important business of making a pin is, in this manner, divided into about eighteen distinct operations, which in some manufactories are all performed by distinct hands.' Here the finished product is the result of a 'series of connected processes and manipulations,' all manual, and directed under a common superintendence to a definite end. But compare now these proceedings with the same or similar ones all performed by machinery; or rather let us return to textile industry for the comparison. The warp and weft both spun by, not merely with machinery, are by machinery wound on the shuttle and the beam, and being conducted to a proper place, are then again by a machine wrought into the web. The เ connected processes' are still there, but they are no longer 'manipulations.' Nay, if this machine does its work badly and the yarn breaks, it is not the weaver who detects the fault, but the machine that informs him. By an ingenious contrivance a bell is rung, the loom stops, and all that is left for human faculties to perform is the common place operation of tying the broken ends together. Is this machinery aiding human labor or human labor aiding machinery? It is clearly the latter; it is machine in dustry; a different thing from anything that had yet been known, one of the special characteristics of modern industry, and among other forms of it, of the modern factory system. The full significance of the change thus introduced in labor is not yet understood, nor can any adequate exposition of it be attempted here. It is clearly a much larger question than is involved in the rise or fall of any particular factory system, for it obviously affects forms of labor lying altogether outside it. But the difference made in the position of the factory worker is fundamental. In earlier factories the human element was the supreme one; under the modern system that supremacy belongs to the machine."* Precisely. And the question for all right-minded people is : How far shall this supremacy be allowed to extend? It is idle to pretend that this domination of the machine in the life of the working man can long obtain without affecting that in him which is of incomparably more value than anything that the machine can produce. In fact, in this connection the testimony of those who can speak with a technical knowledge and wide experience to which I can make no claim is substantially conclusive. Says Hobson in his Evolution of Modern Capitalism:t "Though the quality of intelligence and skill applied to the invention, application, and management of machinery is constantly increasing, practical authorities are almost unanimous in admitting that the proportion which this skilled work bears to the aggregate of labor in machine industry is constantly diminishing. Now, setting on one side this small proportion of intelligent labor, what are we to say of the labor of him who, under the minute subdivision enforced by machinery, is obliged to spend his working life in tending some small portion of a single machine, the whole result of which is continually to push some single commodity a single step along the journey from raw material to consumptive goods? "The factory is organized with military precision, the individual's work is definitely fixed for him; he has nothing to say as to the plan of his work or its final completion or its ultimate use. The constant employment on one sixty-fourth part of a shoe not only offers no encouragement to mental activity, but dulls by its monotony the brains of the employee to such an extent that the power to think and reason is almost lost.' The work of a machine tender, it is urged, calls for 'judgment and carefulness.' So did his manual labor before the machine took it over. His 'judgment and carefulness' are now confined within narrower limits than before. The responsibility of the worker is greater, precisely because his work is narrowed "The Modern Factory System." W. C. Taylor, pp. 75-77. down so as to be related to and dependent on a number of other operatives in other parts of the same machine with whom he has no direct personal concern. Such realized responsibility is an element in education, moral and intellectual. But this gain is the direct result of the minute subdivision, and must therefore be regarded as purchased by a narrowing of in. terests and a growing monotony of work, It is questionable whether the great majority of machine workers get any considerable education, from the fact that the machine in conjunction with which they work represents a huge embodiment of the delicate skill and invention of many thousands of active minds; though some value may be attached to the contention that 'the mere exhibition of the skill displayed and the magnitude of the operations performed in factories can scarcely fail of some educational effect." The absence of any true apprenticeship in modern factories prevents the detailed worker from understanding the method and true bearing even of those processes which are closely linked to that in which he is engaged. The ordinary machine tender, save in a very few instances, e. g., watchmaking, has no general understanding of the work of a whole department. Present conditions do not enable the 'tender' to get out of machinery the educational influence he might get. Professor Nicholson expresses himself dubiously upon the educational value of the machine. 'Machinery of itself does not tend to develop the mind as the sea and mountains do, but still it does not necessarily involve deterioration of general mental ability.' Dr. Arlidge expresses a more decided opinion. 'Generally speaking, it may be asserted of machinery that it calls for little or no brain exertion on the part of those connected with its operations; it arouses no interest, and has nothing in it to quicken or brighten the intelligence, though it may sharpen the sight and stimulate muscular activity in some one limited direction." " The writer from whom I have just quoted furnishes, in the same discussion, a very striking illustration of these words in connection with the work of railway engineers: "A locomotive superintendent of a railway was recently questioned as to the quality of engine-driving. After twenty years' experience, he declared emphatically that the very best engine-drivers were those that were most mechanical and unintelligent in their work, who cared least about the internal mechanism of their engine. Yet engine-driving is far less mechanical and monotonous than ordinary tending of machinery. "So far as the man follows the machine and has his work determined for him by mechanical necessity, the educative pressure of the latter force must be predominant. Machinery, like everything else, can only teach what it practices. Order, exactitude, persistence, conformity to unbending lawthese are the lessons which must emanate from the machine. They have an important place as elements in the formation of intellectual and moral character. But of themselves they contribute a one-sided and very imperfect education. Machinery can exactly reproduce; it can, therefore, teach the lesson of exact reproduction, an education of quantitative measurements. The defect of machinery, from the educative point of view, is its absolute conservatism. The law of machinery is a law of statical order, *Taylor," Modern Factory System," p. 435. Cf. the comparison of conditions of town and country labor in Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations," Bk I. Chap. x., part 2. "Diseases of Occupation," pp. 25-26. "The Social Horizon," p. 22. that everything conforms to a pattern, that present actions precisely resemble past and future actions. Now the law of human life is dynamic, requiring order not as valuable in itself, but as the condition of progress. The law of human life is that no experience, no thought or feeling is an exact copy of any other. Therefore, if you confine a man to expending his energy in trying to conform exactly to the movements of a machine, you teach him to abrogate the very principle of life. Variety is of the essence of life, and machinery is the enemy of variety."* With those words I am content to rest my case. There is no one who will read them who will not own the enormous strain that comes from the pressure of an unremitting monotony. It is to such a monotony that our modern industrial life increasingly tends; and it is to its effects, first upon the nervous system of men and women, and then upon their reasoning and imaginative powers, that the present unrest of the industrial classes is largely to be traced. It would seem as if it were the part of reason and of common humanity to recoguize such facts, and to own the appeal which they make to those of us who have it in our power in any way to ameliorate these untoward conditions. The first obstacle to be faced is a profound and widespread indifference, based, I believe, upon a large ignorance of the facts, and a very superficial judgment as to any efforts that may have been made to modify them; and the other, of which I would that I had space to speak now, is that increased distance and ever-enlarging ignorance which, to-day and in this land, divide from each other those who are differently circumstanced. We are eating the fruits of an irresponsible prosperity, which has grown rich and luxuryloving with a fine indifference, too often, to the processes by which our wealth has been gained. What it has cost, what it is costing others, has, at the best, very little concerned us. But a day of reckoning will come; and the awakening of the privileged classes to conditions in the life of working people which they ought long ago to have recognized may easily be a very painful and costly one. Surely, a wiser and a nobler way will be to seek first to recognize and to own the conditions in our present industrial life that need bettering, and then to touch them with a wise, and generous, and fraternal hand. HENRY C. POTTER. "The Evolution of Modern Capi'alism," p. 257. |