THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. MAY, 1888. THE ECONOMIC OUTLOOK-PRESENT AND PROSPECTIVE. BY HON. DAVID A. WELLS. ECONOMIC DISTURBANCE SERIES No. VIII. PART III. ATTENTION is next asked to the second (assumed) cause for the prevailing discontent of labor, namely: Changes in the character or nature of employments consequent upon the introduction of new methods-machinery or processes-which it is claimed have tended to lower the grade of labor, impair the independence, and restrict the mental development of the laborer. That such changes have been in the nature of evil, can not be questioned; but they are not new in character, nor as extensive in number and effect as is popularly supposed. Subordination to routine and method is an essential element in all systematized occupations; and in not a few employments and professions-as in all military and naval life, and in navigation and railroad work-an almost complete surrender of the independence of the individual, and an unreasoning mechanical compliance with rules or orders, are the indispensable conditions for the attainment of any degree of successful effort. In very many cases also the individual finds compensation for subordination and the surrender of independence in the recognition that such conditions may be but temporary, and are the necessary antecedents for promotion; and routine and monotony are doubtless in a greater or less degree alleviated when the operative can discern the plan of his work as an entirety, and note its result in the form of finished products. But in manufacturing operations, where the division of labor has been carried to an extreme; VOL. XXXIII.-1 where the product of the worker is never more than a fraction of any finished "whole," and where no greater demand is made upon the brain than that it shall see that the muscles of the arm, the hand, or the finger execute movements at specific times and continuously in connection with machinery, there are few such compensations or alleviations; and the general result to the individual working under such conditions can not, to say the least, be in the line of either healthy mental or physical development. Happily, however, the number of industries, in which division of labor and its subordination to machinery has been productive of such extreme results, is not very large; the manufacture of boots and shoes by modern machine methods, in which every finished shoe is said to represent sixty-two distinct mechanical employments or products, being perhaps the most notable. And yet even here there is not a little in way of compensating benefit to be credited to such a system. Thus, for example, it is stated that "the use of machinery has compelled employés to apply themselves more closely to their work; and, being paid by the piece, has enabled them to make better wages." When shoemaking was a handicraft, "the hours of labor were very irregular; the workmen, who decided their own hours of labor, working some days only a few hours, and then working far into the night for a few days to make up for lost time. It was once customary for shoemakers (in New England) to work on an average fifteen hours a day;" now the hours of labor in the shoe-factories are not in excess of ten hours. It is also claimed that the introduction of the sewing-machine into the manufacture of boots and shoes has greatly increased the opportunities for the employment of women, at better rates of wages. In the manufacture of clothing, which, in routine and monotony, is analogous to the manufacture of boots and shoes, it is generally conceded that the influence of the sewing-machine has been to increase wages, and that "notwithstanding the constantly growing use of these machines, the number of employés is greater than formerly, owing to the enlargement of the business." * Furthermore, the "collective work which admits of being carried on by the factory principle of great subdivision of labor and by the bringing together of large numbers of people under one roof and one control" does not at present, in the United States, give occupation to more than one in ten of all who follow gainful occupations in the whole country; while for the other nine the essential elements of industrial success continue, as of old, to be found in individual independence and personal mental capacity; and this experience of the United States will probably find a parallel in all other manufacturing countries. * "Report on the Statistics of Wages," J. D. Weeks, U. S. Census, vol. xx. 66 The supersedure of men by women and young persons in textile manufactories, which (as previously noticed) has occurred to such an extent in New England that certain factory towns have come to be popularly designated as she-towns," at first thought seems deplorable. But, on the other hand, it is certain that such supersedure has been mainly the result of such a diminution of the severity of toil through the improvements. in machinery, or such a greater division of labor consequent upon new methods of production, as have opened up new opportunities for employment to women, by making it possible for them to do easily work which, under old systems, required the greater strength and endurance of men; children, for example, being able to spin yarn on a "ring-frame," which men alone were able to do on a "spinning-mule." And, however such changes may be regarded from the standpoint of the male operatives, the greater opportunity afforded for continuous work at higher wages than could be readily obtained in other occupations, is probably not regarded by the women in the light of a misfortune. Experience also shows that the larger the scale on which capitalistic production and distribution is carried on, "the less it can countenance the petty devices for swindling and pilfering," and the neglect and disregard of the health, safety, and comfort of operatives, which so frequently characterize industrial enterprises on a small scale; or, in other words, the maintenance of a high standard of industrial and commercial morality is coming to be recognized by the managers of all great enterprises as a means of saving time and avoiding trouble, and therefore as an undoubted and important element of profit. And it is to these facts-the natural and necessary growth of what has been termed the "capitalistic system"-that a recent English writer on the condition of the working-classes, largely attributes the suppression of the truck (store) system, the enactment of laws limiting the hours of labor, the acquiescence in the existence and power of tradeunions, and the increasing attention to sanitary regulations; reforms that have reformed away the worst features of the condition of labor as it existed thirty or forty years ago in Great Britain.* The larger the concern, the greater usually the steadiness of employment, and the more influential the public opinion of the employed. 66 Dr. Werner Siemens, the celebrated German scientist and inventor, in a recent address at Berlin on Science and the Labor Question," claimed that the necessity for extensive factories and workshops-involving large capital and an almost "slavish" discipline for labor-to secure the maximum cheapness in pro * "The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844," by Frederick Engles. |