Jobbery

“ No jobber can open his letters in the morning in the certainty of finding no tidings of a failure. No jobber, leaving his breakfast-table, can assure his wife and children, sick or well, that he will dine or sup with them; any one of a dozen railroad-trains may, for aught he knows, be sweeping him away to some remote point, to battle with the mischances of trade, the misfortunes of honest men, or the knavery of rogues and the meshes of the law. Once in the cars, he casts his eye around in uneasy expectation of finding some one or more of his neighbors bound on the same errand. ”

“ The Industrial Worker, wobbly organ of the imminent revolution of the proletariat, has for its columnist one T-Bone Slim, a gentleman I strongly suspect of originating many of the newer wobbly words and phrases. ”

“ But whatever Fate may have in store for my dear little Georgie and her chosen co-worker, of one thing I am sure,—that, fare as they may with worldly fortune, they will never be content, having tasted of the salt of work, to feed again on the honey-bread of idleness, or become drones in the working-hive, but will persevere to the end in the principles and practices of what in the best sense of the word may be called their Labor Union. ”

“ It was in the character of a workingman and not as a tramp, that I began, in the summer of 1891, a casual experiment, by which I hoped to gain some personal acquaintance with the conditions of life of unskilled laborers in America. Having no skill, I could count on employment only in the rudest forms of labor, and I maintained consistently the character of a laborer—a very indifferent one, I am bound to own—yet finding it possible everywhere to live by the work of my hands. ”

“ No matter how convincing may be the proofs of the division of labor of the cells in the organisms studied, man, if he has not parted with his judgment, will say, nevertheless, that a man should not weave calico all his life, and that this is not division of labor, but persecution of the people. Spencer and others say that there is a whole community of weavers, and that the profession of weaving is an organic division of labor. ”

“ The great movement of labor, extravagant and preposterous as are some of its demands, demagogic as are most of its leaders, fantastic as are many of its theories, is nevertheless real, and gigantic, and full of a certain primeval force, and with a certain justice in it that never sleeps in human affairs, but moves on, blindly often and destructively often, a movement cruel at once and credulous, deceived and betrayed, and revenging itself on friends and foes alike. ”

“ His presence in that little hut on the cliff seemed, now, a part of some plan that was not of his making. He was awed by the sudden conviction that he had not come to the Interpreter of his own volition, but had been led there by something beyond his understanding.
"Why should your fellow workmen not hate you, sir?" continued the old basket maker. "You hold yourself apart, superior, of a class distinct and separate. Your creed of class is intolerance. Your very business policy is a declaration of class war. Your boast that you can live without the working people is madness. ”

“ As though it were not precisely the factory system and the machinery belonging to it which had so shamefully crushed the hand-loom weavers, and as though the bourgeoisie did not know this quite as well as ourselves! But the bourgeoisie has interests at stake, and so a falsehood or two and a bit of hypocrisy won’t matter much.
p. 141Let us examine somewhat more closely the fact that machinery more and more supersedes the work of men. The human labour, involved in both spinning and weaving, consists chiefly in piecing broken threads, as the machine does all the rest. ”

“ The oppressed workers. The strikers would have won. The company would have been forced to climb down.
Thinking of themselves, they had turned their backs on the strikers. They went to all lengths cringing before the bosses, and found themselves working sixteen or seventeen hours a day. If the workers begin to concede an inch they are done for and become just like oxen with great heavy weights hung through their nostrils, which weigh them down. For ever they must go with bowed heads. ”

“ I have no hesitation in putting the Workingman, as such, in his place among the hewers of wood and drawers of water—a necessary adjunct to our modern life, if you will, but of little real consequence in the big events of the world.
But when I am confronted, in the flesh, by the "close up" of a workingman with any vestige of authority, however small, I immediately lose my perspective—and also my poise. I become servile, almost cringing. ”

“ The ruling industrial system, by making indispensable the assemblage of masses of workers at one point, gives the first impulse to the removal of the evil itself has created. As man first sees his own features in the mirror, so the laborer first awakens to a full appreciation of his own pitiable situation when, in the misery of masses of his comrades in suffering the image of his own lot stares him in the face. ”

“ And then, from every part of the crowd, the agitator saw individuals moving quietly toward the manager's car until between the two men in the automobile and the main body of the speaker's audience a small compact group of workmen stood shoulder to shoulder. They were the men of the Mill workers' union who had refused to follow Jake Vodell. And every man, as he took his place, greeted John and the old workman with a low word, or a nod and a smile. ”

“ Why was it necessary for men to quarrel and jangle, and strike and fight, all about the matter of getting work? Why wasn't there work for all?--Only that morning, and she shuddered with the recollection, she had seen two scabs, on their way to work, beaten up by the strikers, by men she knew by sight, and some by name, who lived in the neighhorhood. ”

“ So whadda ya want to break your back for the boss for,
When it don't mean life to you?
Do you think it right to struggle day and night,
And plow like Hell for the Parasite?
So whadda ya want to break your back for the boss for,
When there's more in life for you?
Slow up Bill! that's the way to beat the System;
Join the Wobbly Gang, they've got the bosses guessing
So whadda ya want to break your back for the boss for,
When it don't mean life to you? ”

“ If a striker lost his temper and talked as he ought not to talk, this latter specimen was always ready to encourage him; for whatever promised trouble for others promised profitable pastime for the criminal. If the real workers could keep clear of this class, as well as the idle, loafing element in their own profession, ninety per cent. of the alleged labor outrages would never be committed. ”

“ The bourgeoisie has left the working-class only these two pleasures, while imposing upon it a multitude of labours and hardships, and the consequence is that the working-men, in order to get something from life, concentrate their whole energy upon these two enjoyments, carry them to excess, surrender to them in the most unbridled manner. ”

“ The patterns and workmanship are astonishingly fine, showing extraordinary skill in manipulation: they are indeed so complicated and perfect that it is difficult to understand how they could have been produced by mere handwork, with hammers, punches, and moulds. ”

“ Superintendent Bell coughed. Sometimes he thinks Mr. Fortune lacking in reverence.
“Division of labour,” Reggie sank into the cushions of the car and lit a pipe, “the division of labour is the great principle of civilization. Perhaps you didn’t know that? In the morning I will look at the corpse and you will look for the butler.”
“Well, sir, I don’t care for my job, but I wouldn’t have yours for a hundred pounds.” ”

“ A leading signification gives us the manual laborer, to whom, in the division of labor, muscular exertion was allotted. As in his exertions the bodily powers are especially employed—such powers as belong to man in common with mere animals—his sphere has generally been considered low and humble. And as intellectual power is superior to bodily, the manual laborer has always been exposed in very numerous ways and in various degrees to oppression. ”

“ In the naïve rating of savage peoples workmanship appears to cover, perhaps uncertainly, notions of generation, nurture, tendance, and the like, without any sharp line being drawn between these various lines of effective endeavour on the one side and manual efficiency on the other. ”

“ Do you understand now, Mister basket maker, heh?"
The Interpreter bowed his head.
The agitator continued. "Already I find it very hard to accomplish much with this Mill workers' union. Except for our friend, Sam Whaley, and a few others, the fools are losing their class loyalty. Their fighting spirit is breaking down. It will not do, I tell you. At the McIver factory it is all very different. It will be easy there. The workingmen show the proper spirit—they will be ready when I give the word. But I am not pleased with the situation in this Mill of Adam Ward's. ”

“ Then he shouted to the workmen:
"Now, then! No shirking! Is the job going to be finished tonight, or is it not?"
As a matter of fact, he himself was the worst shirker in the artel [Workman's union] . True, he was also a first-rate hand at his trade, and a man who could work quickly and well and with skill and concentration; but, unfortunately, he hated putting himself out, and preferred to spend his time spinning arresting yarns. ”

“ Piece-work also shows that in the wage-earning world there is a group of men somewhat analogous to the retail shopkeepers, possessing the confidence of the employer, and not belonging to the proletariat class. ”

“ Bartlemy took his cap humbly off, saying, "Please, master, if you will employ me as a workman now, I think I can please you. Do try me; I will be industrious; indeed, I will."
"Oh," grumbled the master tailor, "sleeping out in the fields and going without supper and breakfast has done you good, has it? Well, take this coat and sit you down; but I warn you, beforehand, that if you are not more industrious than usual, I will lay my yardstick over your shoulder, and clear you out again." ”

“ The march of the workmen themselves was not without the semblance of order. But idle men on every corner joined them, vicious men, whose only occupation it was to prey upon society, fell into their ranks; hoodlums and hotheads, shouting their enthusiasm, went joyously along; the curious and sensation loving followed on behind in scores; even women and children [340] mingled with the crowd that was headed ominously toward the mills. ”

“ Matches and such things, sealing-wax, and patent mixtures for lighting fires are further resources of such venders. Others, so-called jobbers, go about the streets seeking small jobs. Many of these succeed in getting a day’s work, many are not so fortunate. ”

“ The jobs we did were pick-and-shovel jobs. But have you ever used a pick on hot slag? There is judgment and knack, and he is a fool who says that "anyone can do the job." Whenever the chance for special skill happened by, as in hooking the crane to a difficult piece of scrap, there was an abundance, and much rivalry to show it off. ”

“ We felt nowise inclined to exult over our friend’s failure, for we no doubt would have suffered defeat had we attempted to weave our spun warp. It required no little patience to work with warp the threads of which were every now and then breaking, for every thread had to be mended as soon as it broke, or if not, thin, flimsy places would occur all through the web, and the cloth would not wear long enough to pay for the trouble of carding, spinning, and weaving. ”

“ And amidst all the squalor on the other hand, amidst brutalities, ignorance, and drunkenness, suffered multitudinously their blameless victim, the Working Man. And we, almost at the first glance, had found all this out, it had merely to be asserted now with sufficient rhetoric and vehemence to change the face of the whole world. The Working Man would arise—in the form of a Labor Party, and with young men like Parload and myself to represent him—and come to his own, and then———? ”

“ In their talks over the Stone Parlour fire she and Wharton had gone through most of the properties, large and small, of his division, and indeed of the divisions round, by the help of the knowledge he had gained in his canvass, together with a blue-book—one of the numberless!—recently issued, on the state of the midland labourer. He had abounded in anecdote, sarcasm, reflection, based partly on his own experiences, partly on his endless talks with the working-folk, now in the public-house, now at their own chimney-corner. ”

“ Some of them are clearly songs of the chain gang as well as of free labor construction work. That they are fairly accurate portrayals of the worker and his task, of the captain and his ways, of the thoughts and customs of the worker and singer will be evident to any one who knows the field. To the uninitiated the laborer is merely a laborer, silent, reserved, certainly keeping back from the white man his innermost thoughts, wishes, and feelings. ”

“ Workers, fight!—our philistine “agrees” to this (as every bourgeois “agrees”, since the workers are fighting all the same, and the only thing to do is to devise means of blunting the edge of their sword) —fight, but don’t dare win! ”

“ You and I, my dear boy, are not Sybarites, we are not aristocrats, we’re not the spoilt darlings of fortune and nature, we are not even martyrs—we are workmen and nothing more. Put on your leather apron, workman, and take your place at your workman’s bench, in your dark workshop, and let the sun shine on other men! ”

“ The winders, like the threaders, have no specified working-time, being called upon whenever the spools on a frame are empty, and are liable, since the weavers work at night, to be required at any time in the factory or workroom. ”