Onward Sweep of the Machine Process

The Onward Sweep of the Machine Process

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. Noth 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.

Industrial Efficiency and Its Antidote

Industrial Efficiency and Its Antidote.

By T. Glynn.

If indications count for anything, Australia is shortly going to be quite up to date in the science of exploitation. Though local exploiters have never exhibited any other tendencies than those characteristic of their class throughout the world in this respect, still their economic experts and politicians, Labor and Liberal alike, would appear to be of the opinion that there are a few tips on the "scientific" management of labor which their Australian paymasters would do well to study. So the various State Governments have jointly agreed to import a gentleman from U. S. A., "the land of the free and the home of the slave," where the art of wringing the last ounce of surplus-value out of the worker's hide has of late years made more progress than in any other country in the world.

The subject of "Industrial Efficiency" was briefly dealt with in a recent issue of "Direct Action" in reply to an article which appeared on the subject in the Sydney "Sun," but as the matter is evidently going to develop into something more than a "pious wish" on the part of the master class and their press, a more detailed explanation of the manner in which "scientific management" works out, so far as the worker is concerned, is necessary.

Perhaps one could not do better in this respect than quote the following extract from an article on the subject in the Sydney "Morning Herald" of June 19:

After pointing out that in "an ideal state of things the savings effected would be distributed between all three," capitalist, wage-worker, and consumer, the writer lets the cat out of the bag, so far as the capitalist system being "an ideal State" is concerned, by informing us that: "At the Bethlehem Steel Works wages were increased 60 per cent in this way. The new system of work here raised the output of iron per man from 16 to 59 tons, and the aggregate wages bill, despite the increase in the rate, was cut down by about $80,000 per annum. The net result, as Hobson points out, was in this case all in favor of the employers."

Whoever "Hobson" may be, it was scarcely necessary for him to point out such a very obvious fact. As we are not given the value of the total wages, or the value of the aggregate output, it is impossible in this case to determine the rate of surplus value (the proportion of profits to wages) realized by the employers; but, nevertheless, it is clear that if the rate of wages increased by 60 per cent (which, by the way, may be taken with the proverbial grain of salt), and the aggregate wages decreased by $80,000, somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 per cent of the workers formerly employed went to swell the "capitalist reserve army," the unemployed.

This is, as a matter of fact, how every scheme for intensifying exploitation, whether it be euphoniously called "scientific management" or any other name, must eventually, by the natural laws of capitalist production, work out.

Let us assume that the total social capital advanced in wages for a given period be equal to 100. If, in the process of production, values equal to 200 are produced we have a rate of surplus value equal to 100 per cent. (We leave aside the consideration of the value of the raw material, etc., as such value is always incorporated in the new product, and, therefore, in the long run, costs the capitalist nothing.)

Now if, by "scientific management" or other schemes for increasing the intensity of labor, the total values produced are increased to 250, we have still the same result, so far as the material position of the worker is concerned, only the rate of surplus-value, or, to put it more boldly, the rate at which he is robbed, has increased by 50 per cent.

The capitalist plea for Industrial Efficiency therefore, at best, merely amounts to saying to the worker: "The more you allow me to rob you, the more of the proceeds of the robbery I will be enabled to pay you." If, however, values equal to 200 are only needed to supply the solvent demand, we have the same result as that pointed out by the "Herald" scribe in the case of the Bethlehem Steel Works. Hand in hand with the increase in the intensity of labor goes unemployment, with the starvation and misery which follows in its train. And yet we have "economists" who pretend that the education of the working class is their first desire, and politicians of every stripe, informing us that the salvation of the workers lies in increased efficiency!

It may be contended that, as in the case of the Bethlehem Steel Works, the workers actually employed benefit by increased wages. Even assuming this to be the case, what of it? The position of the working class as a whole, is more insecure, more unstable, more parlous than ever. Competition for jobs grows more keen, unemployment becomes intensified in all spheres of industry, and wages ultimately fall, in consequence, to their former level.

II.

The capitalist system of production is conditioned upon three essentials: First, the value of the raw materials, wear and tear of machinery, etc., must be incorporated in the new product; in the second place, the laborer must reproduce the value of his own wages, and, thirdly, a surplus over and above the value of the capital advanced by the capitalist for the aforementioned requisites. Unless these conditions are fulfilled, we have not the capitalist system of production, but some other; consequently, when we hear reformers, politicians and Labor leaders wailing for "industrial efficiency first, and then a more equitable distribution of wealth," the cry arises either from ignorance of the economic laws underlying capitalism, or from a desire on the part of those who know better to lead the workers into economic quagmires.

It must be obvious at once that any method for increasing surplus value by increased efficiency, longer hours of labor, new inventions, etc., must be welcome to the capitalist; but what is not so apparent, and what the economic apologists of the capitalist system like to conceal, is that such increases have no internal relation whatever to the laws governing wages.

Labor-power being a commodity, its value, like all other commodities, is determined by its cost of production, and, being somewhat inseparable from the laborer, its value, therefore, is based on the minimum of the physical means of subsistence. It may rise above this minimum, according to the standard of social development, the degree of organized resistance to exploitation, or it may fall below, as in times of industrial depression, when unemployment is rife, and when, as frequently happens, the workers starve, not because of "decreased efficiency," but for the very opposite reason, that the markets are glutted with the products of their labor. What must be borne in mind is, and it is fully confirmed by the industrial history of capitalism, that the means of subsistence is the determining factor, the starting point from which all fluctuations in wages must be explained, and not as our "Industrial Efficiency" experts would have us believe, from the total product of the laborer.

Here it might be expedient to ask these advocates of efficiency a pertinent question or two.

If it is a fact that wages are determined by the pro of the laborer, why is it that in the last half-century, when the productiveness of labor by new discoveries and inventions, has been increased a hundredfold, when with the modern means of transportation and communication, the natural resources of what our forefathers called "the ends of the earth" have been brought within helloing distance, so to speak, of the great centers of European population—why is it that the great mass of workers are still getting but the bare means of subsistence and living in constant dread of the bread-line? Or, to make the question easier for our local "economists," why is it, as the figures of the Commonwealth Statistician show, that the Australian worker is receiving today a smaller proportion of his product than ten years ago, despite the fact that, as shown by the same statistics, the laborer's productivity has increased enormously?

Of course these gentry, whose hearts are overflowing with good intentions (?) towards the working class will tell us that things should not be so, that there is "room for improvement in the distribution of wealth," that "nobody sympathizes with the position of the workers more than I do," etc., etc.; but all this is merely equivalent to saying that Capitalism should not be Capitalism; that the capitalist system of production should not bring along its own natural laws; but the workers do not benefit by this insufferable hypocrisy and patronage. As well might they regret the tendency and danger of a smoldering volcano to work havoc among the adjacent inhabitants as soon as a certain degree of heat has been reached. Pious vaporings about an "ideal state of things" and what the worker "ought to get" won't alter facts.

III.

It is sometimes contended that every increase in the employer's profits increases his available capital, and, therefore, enables him to give employment to more wage-laborers, but this plea, as already indicated, is merely a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul. There is another aspect of the question, however. With the development of the Trust, production, in accordance with the economic demand, is more and more being regulated, always keeping in mind, of course, the solvent demand. As the Trust develops, therefore, there will be an increasing tendency to convert only that portion of the products of labor into capital which is actually needed to supply the economic requirements of society; hence, every increase in the intensity of labor, every method for increasing the total product, "industrial efficiency," in a word, which is so dear to the hearts of our exploiters, will have the very opposite effect to that claimed for it, as a lesser quantity of that portion of capital advanced as wages will be required.

So far as those spheres of industry are concerned, in which the Trust has not yet found a footing, the future of the worker is no less precarious—assuming, of course, that the little schemes of the capitalist class and their efficiency experts are allowed to come to maturity. The history of the capitalist system affords many illustrations of how blind competition among capitalists, with the resultant phenomenon of over-production, affects the economic and social well-being of the workers.

Marx throws a flood of light on this question of over-production in his third volume of "Capital" in dealing with the cotton crisis in Lancashire following the year 1860. Many authorities state that more cotton goods were produced in that year than were absorbed by the world's markets in the following three. As a result, over 50 per cent of the workers were thrown out of employment; those actually employed were obliged to offer themselves for any wages the manufacturers in their benevolence offered, 4 or 5 shillings ($0.96 or $1.20) per week being considered something above the ordinary; young girls left the factories because they could not earn as much as one shilling per week, and begged to be taken into the charitable institutions. One factory inspector reported that "had information concerning self-acting minders, that is to say, men who operate a few self-actors, who had earned 8/11 ($2.14) after fourteen days of full employment, and their house-rent was deducted from this sum. The manufacturer returned one-half of this rent to them as a gift." Marx parenthetically remarks, "how generous!" Thousands were obliged to accept employment on relief work at "a bare ordinary charity sum," those being lucky enough to obtain such work getting the magnificent wages of from 5 to 12 shillings ($1.20 to $2.88) per week, this last mentioned amount only being given to men with families of eight!

"It was," says Marx, "in a way, a golden age for the manufacturers, for the laborers had either to starve or work at any price profitable for the bourgeois. The Assistance Committee acted as watch-dogs. At the same time the manufacturers, in secret agreement with the Government, hindered emigration as much as possible, either for the purpose of having their capital, invested in the flesh and blood of the laborers, ready at hand, or of safe-guarding the squeezing of rent out of the laborers."

To what does all this point? Unmistakably to the fact that every minute worked by the cotton operatives, over and above the time actually required to reproduce their wages, every time a worker hastened across the floor of the factory when he might have walked more leisurely, every time a machine was oiled, when it ought to be allowed to run hot, every device of the capitalist for improving efficiency, but hastened the coming of the time when the workers should find themselves on the street corner, the unpitied wretches of a system that rewards them for their industry by starving them.

"But," someone will say, "this was in the sixties." Capitalism has not changed its nature since. Whatever restraint may have been placed on the Beast since those days—and it does not amount to much—his natural tendency is still to run amuck, and the advocates of "efficiency" are just the gentlemen who desire the workers to slacken their hold on the reins. Besides, if it were necessary, numerous occurrences of late years could be given as an example of the effects of over-production, its demoralizing effects upon the condition of the working class. The reader probably will doubtless recall some instances in which he himself was perilously near the bread-line after the boss had informed him "the job was finished" or "times were slack." Enough has been said to show that where competition reigns in production, every wail for industrial efficiency on the part of the master class and their satellites is at bottom but a cry for more profits, and should sound a note of warning to the workers if an increased proportion of their numbers is not to be dumped on the human scrap-heap.

IV.

To the student of economic development, this loudly manifested anxiety of the capitalist class for productive efficiency comes as no surprise. The rapidity with which Japan, South America and other hitherto backward countries, have entered into the arena of capitalist production is, wherever industry is not internationally trustified, engendering an ever keener competition for markets between the capitalists of the various countries, and the kudos will naturally gravitate towards that country where efficiency has reached the highest pitch; in other words, the country where "scientific management of the human factor," as the "Herald" expresses, has increased the rate of surplus value above all others.