Foundry worker

“ It appears to us that the public are under great obligations to the National Association of Factory Occupiers, for undertaking the important but difficult task of ascertaining,—first, what the law is, as between factory employers and their workers ”

“ It is evident that we must build up such an order of workers' management of enterprises which would train the workers in the idea that every factory is the property not only of the workers of that particular factory, but of the whole working people. ”

“ These were the gentlemen who had educated their people up to the needs of the time; who carried them through the stress by unexampled generosity, and who now see in the factory population about them the most favourably circumstanced class of workers—if not citizens—in the kingdom. ”

“ Any man losing or damaging a mould, matrix, or tool, to make good the loss on the following Saturday. Any man leaving his lamp or candle alight after hours is to pay 6d., and the master for a similar offence is to fine himself 1s. Rubbers must grind their stones once a fortnight, “if requested to do so either by the master or foreman.” No work to be taken out of the foundry. Casters and rubbers must take their turn at carrying in metal. Breaking-off and setting-up boys shall earn 10d. a week for each man they set-up after. ”

“ Labor in the Old and the New Industrial Order.—So long as the system of hand-industry was in existence there was no sharp division of employers and laborers into two separate classes. The employer was himself a workman at the loom, the bench, or the forge. He might have as helpers a couple of apprentices who were learning the trade, and perhaps a journeyman or two; but rarely were there more than a half dozen men or women employed in a single establishment. ”

“ You, who have but few dependents, or, perhaps, but one drudge dependent upon you, whether as servant, apprentice, or hired labourer, do not think that you have not an ample opportunity for exercising the duties of an employer of labour. Do not suppose that these duties belong to the great manufacturer with the population of a small town in his own factory, or to the landlord with vast territorial possessions, and that you have nothing to do with them. ”

“ The Industrial Workers is essentially an educational organization—and one of the vitally important things it will teach the workers is the complete operation and control of the industry in which they are employed. Have you ever thought about that? Has it ever been brought to your attention in craft unions?
I have already reminded you that you workingmen have made all the machinery there is in operation everywhere; that only you can use it. Now, why should not you own it? Why shouldn’t you be your own employers? Why shouldn’t you be the masters of your own jobs? ”

“ I am not aware that any one else who has published upon the factory system can make a similar assertion. I have not only toiled, but have been a sufferer from protracted mill labor to a painful extent. My experience, therefore, of the factory system has been dear-bought experience. I can speak feelingly, and I trust temperately. I have endeavored to avoid to the uttermost, every unguarded expression, every word which it would not become an humble operative to use; and I can add with truth, that I am not conscious of one unkindly or resentful feeling towards any human being. ”

“ Under the old domestic system the employer resided as a rule in the neighbourhood of his work-people, but the new captains of industry, whose fathers had perhaps been content to follow the example of the domestic master by living next to their workshops and factories, built themselves country houses farther away from the town, whilst their employees festered amidst the appallingly insanitary streets and alleys which had grown up around the factories. ”

“ In the organization of the Knights of Labor the common or the unskilled laborer finds a home, a retreat where he can do that for himself which the skilled laborer does for himself in his organization. If the labor organization confers benefits, and none doubt the fact who know anything of their operations, why should not the common laborer, the unskilled workingman, participate in such blessings? Why should not the home of the common laborer be made bright and beautiful? Why should not the wife and children of the common laborer be surrounded with the comforts of life? ”

“ The next most pressing reform in our present industrial system is to secure for the individual worker a definite status in industry. To describe what is intended is easier than to define it. At present the individual worker complains that the government of industry is conducted by the employer entirely as the latter thinks fit. ”

“ The real feeling that the worker is trying to express is his sense of personal insignificance in a great factory, accentuated, when grievances arise, by the difficulty, in large works, of securing prompt discussion of them between the workers and the management. All that can be done is for the worker to report the matter to the shop steward of his particular craft in the [264] department, who will no doubt report it to the secretary of his Trade Union district committee. ”

“ The Rise of Trade Unions.—One of the most manifest effects of the introduction of the factory system was the intensification of the distinction between employers and employees. When a large number of laborers were gathered together in one establishment, all in a similar position one to the other and with common interests as to wages, hours of labor, and other conditions of their work, the fact that they were one homogeneous class could hardly escape their recognition. ”

“ In some cases the master workman became so prosperous that he employed a considerable number of other master workmen and devoted his time to superintendence, but whether he were in this way an ancestor of a modern captain of industry or were at the other end of the scale, an 9apprentice just under indenture, he was recognized as part and parcel of the trade guild. If he were not free of the guild he was not permitted to work at the industry excepting as an employee. As we shall see, there grew up in this way an intermediate class of hired workmen who were neither apprentices nor masters. ”

“ Factory Operatives.—There is a class of laborers, consisting of men, women and children, whom we never contemplate but with regret—we see them, at least, in imagination, subsiding, in spite of all their care, into utter dependence and poverty. Hence, we never look upon a factory or large manufacturing establishment with unmingled pleasure. The men and women, who ply its machinery, are too apt to become identified with such establishments in an improper degree. ”

“ The energetic workman, who at about thirty years of age leaves the factory, the forge, or the mine, to spend his days pitting his brains against those of shrewd employers and sharp-witted solicitors, has necessarily to concentrate all his energies upon the limited range of his new work. ”

“ Men used to working at home were generally not inclined to go to work in a factory. So there was an assortment of unskilled factory labor, such as country people driven from their villages by the growth of large estates, disbanded soldiers, and paupers. ”

“ Here also is the reason why factory labor, and, in short, all mechanical occupation in which one does but a part of the work, gives meagre satisfaction, and why an artisan who completes his work, or an agricultural laborer, is, as a rule, much more contented than factory operatives, among whom the social discontent of the modern world first uttered itself. The factory workman sees little of the outcome of his work. ”

“ There was a period of apprenticeship at a man’s entry into a Guild, during which he worked for a master; but in time he became a master in his turn. The existence of such corporations as the normal units of industrial production, of commercial effort, and of the means of transport, is proof enough of what the social spirit was which had also enfranchised the labourer upon the land. ”

“ The rank and, file, too, get the splendid training that is conferred when persons actually and not merely nominally work together for a common end. Their introduction to the great problems of labor is through their practical understanding and handling of those problems as they encounter them in the everyday difficulties of the shop and the factory and as dealt with when they come up before the union meeting or have to be settled in bargaining with an employer. ”

“ In Great Britain the Factory and Workshop Acts of March 27, 1878, cover all factory labour, and the bulk of workshop business, i.e. all workshops which employ such persons as are protected by the Act—children, young persons, and women. ”

“ With all means of production, distribution and exchange in the hands of the Commonwealth, there would naturally be but one source of employment for labor—The Commonwealth. If you wanted a job, John, you would have to go to the employment bureau of the Commonwealth and present your application, upon which you would be assigned to such a position as might chance to be open at the time your application was received. You are a machinist, but it might chance that machinists are not much in demand on the day you apply for the job. ”

“ But the apprenticed journeyman in the skilled handicrafts belonged, until com- paratively modern times, to the same social grade as his employer, and was indeed usually the son of a master in the same or an analogous trade. So long as industry was carried on mainly by small masters, each employing but one or two journeymen, the period of any energetic man's service as a hired wage-earner cannot normally have exceeded a few years, and the industrious apprentice might reasonably hope, if not always to marry his master's daughter, at any rate to set up in business for himself. ”

“ A bulletin of the office for June 25 states:
"Unskilled work is plentiful. Jobs in foundries and steel mills, in building and construction work, in light factories and packing houses, keep up a steady demand for semi-skilled laborers." ”

“ For a time after the factory system came into vogue there were small shops where the employer busied himself among his men and personally superintended them, but the large factory tends to displace the small workshop, the corporation takes the place of the individual employer, and the employee becomes as impersonal a cog in the labor system as is any part of the machine at which he works. ”

“ When machinery was applied to industry, and mill and factory took the place of the country blacksmith shop; when the workers were divorced from their tools and recruited in the mills; when they were obliged to compete against each other for employment; when they found themselves in the labor market with but a low bid or none at all upon their labor power ”

“ They would find an employer—and there must be many such—who really cares for the misery of his employees. Acting with him and by his advice, they would make themselves the friends of people employed or fit to be employed in his trade; they would show them the advantages of moving, and help them to move, both with counsel and money. They would organise the sending of work backwards and forwards, the employer perhaps opening an agency in the colony. ”

“ When, however, the capitalist builder or contractor began to supersede the master mason, master plasterer, &c., and this class of small entrepreneurs had again to give place to a hierarchy of hired workers, Trade Unions, in the modern sense, began, as we shall see, to arise. ”

“ A robust woman might go into a factory and earn more; but factory-work is unintermitted, twelve hours daily, week in and out, in the same movement, in close air, amid the clatter of machinery; and a person delicately organized [Pg 571] soon sinks under it. It takes a stolid, enduring temperament to bear factory-labor. Now look at Marianne's house and family, and see what is insured to your protégée there. ”

“ As has been seen, indented servants disappeared and every employee was free to break as well as to make an engagement for service. The establishment of the factory system of manufactures and the consequent substitution of mechanical for skilled processes of labor broke down the system of apprenticeship, and workmen of every occupation, except domestic service, ceased to be members of the families of their employers. A mobility of labor was made possible such as could not have been secured under the old system. ”

“ One of the great problems that has faced the Corporation in building the towns or settlements to house its mill workers has been that of the bachelor, or the man who has come to this country to work leaving his family in Europe or elsewhere. ”

“ What happens is that the popular workman is, by the votes of his fellow-workers, taken suddenly from the bench, the forge or the mine, at any age from 30 to 50, with no large experience than that of a Branch Official, and put to do the highly specialised work of one or other of the types that we have described. ”

“ The managers of the various factory establishments keep the wages as nearly equal as possible, and then let the girls freely shift about from one to another. When a girl comes to the overseer to inform him of her intention of working at the mill, he welcomes her, and asks how long she means to stay. ”

“ Among the chief contributors to a charitable institution are two gentlemen manufacturers. One a Mr. W., the other a Mr. M. D.
In the clothing factory of Mr. W. about four hundred workers, men, women and children, are employed. There the lowest wages are paid and a task system, combined with subcontracting and piece work, compels the workers to start at five in the morning, and if you pass at midnight you will still see the lights burning and hear the heavy rolling of the machines. ”