Peon (laborer)

“ The native agricultural labourer or “peon” is a very free and easy and light-hearted kind of person, and must be treated accordingly if his services are to be retained. He is never rude unless in answer to obviously intentional offence offered to himself, and will work very much harder for an employer he likes than for one he finds unsympathetic. ”

“ It is usual for a Peon who has been fortunate at play, to go to Monte Video and clothe himself anew in the shop of a slop-seller. While the shopman is looking out the articles he calls for, he deliberately places his dollars on the counter, in separate piles, assigning each to its destined purpose. He then retires to a corner, and attires himself; an unfortunate comrade invariably attends him, who examines his cast clothes, and, if better than his own, puts them on. ”

“ Wouldn't it make the daily labor more interesting to combine head with hand? For instance to put heads on pins all day long in a factory sounds monotonous, but the people to whom pin making is interesting find out what pins are made of, where the metal is found, how many things pins are used for; what people used as substitutes before pins were made. Once in England, a man took so small a thing as a needle for the subject of a play which has been well known ever since ”

“ They merely lay gilding on, which is fastened by the pressure of machinery. Some manufacturers have the gilding put on with a size. At C.'s, New York, the foreman told me they employ two girls, at $3 a week each. A powder is sprinkled on by boys, which, by the way, could be done by girls. The girls then lay the gold leaf on the powder. A machine then passes over the gold leaf, making an impression by a die, of the pattern desired. Another branch of labor in which they employed girls for a time, was the rolling of paper for the store. ”

“ I called in a segar-box factory where the man had four boys at work. The trade requires care, and some ability to calculate proportions. The work consists in driving small nails, gluing on tape, planing the edges, and similar labor. [Pg 286] Women could do it, and I expect do in Germany. If boys from ten to fifteen years of age can, why cannot girls? After two months, a boy earns something. Two of the boys had been working at the trade two years, and were earning each $3 a week. The wood is cedar, and so easily managed. ”

“ But can anyone believe that a shoe factory worker, one of a hundred men, each doing a small part of the complete whole, standing before a machine for instance and listening to this ticktack all day long—that such a man has any joy in his work or any pride in the ultimate product? The silk worker for instance may make beautiful things, fine shimmering silk. ”

“ Ah, that’s not in my line, Mr Penwynn. But to be frank with you, sir, I want work. I am a poor younger son who decided not to take to church, law, or physic, but to try to be a mining engineer. I am a bit of a chemist, too, and have studied metallurgy as far as I could. My education has taken nearly all my little fortune, which I have, so to speak, sunk in brain-work. ”

“ The flight of genius which has characterised the workers at the outset of modern industry has been missing in our professional men of science. And they will not recover it as long as alley remain strangers to the world, amidst their dusty bookshelves; as long as they are not workers themselves, amidst other workers, at the blaze of the iron furnace, at the machine in the factory, at the turning-lathe in the engineering workshop ”

“ At H.'s carpet-bag factory, I was told they employ seventy girls, and make from ninety to one hundred dozen bags a day. They keep their hands all the year, with [Pg 196] the exception of three weeks. Some work by machine and some by hand. They take learners when busy. A smart girl can learn in making two or three dozen bags—of course, is not paid while learning. They used to allow a few hands, accustomed to the work, to give instruction to learners, having the profits of their work for their time. Those that work by machine can earn from $3 to $4.50; hand sewers from $3 to $6. ”

“ The makers of the Washington medallion pen had some girls to come from England to work for them, but found they could not keep up the factory, because of the prices they had to pay for labor. The duty on steel pens is thirty per cent., yet they can be imported for less than it would cost to make them here. ”

“ W. thinks the prospect good of employment in that branch. He wanted several girls more. From the nimbleness of their fingers they can do their work better than men. More gold pens are made in this country than steel ones. A jeweller said learners should be paid from the first, and you may know he is not much of a man who would be willing to receive a woman's work for nothing. On Nassau street, N. Y., I saw a manufacturer who employs girls for stoning, frosting, and polishing pens. They are paid by the quantity, and can earn from $3 to $5 a week. They stand at a lathe while polishing. ”

“ A smart girl will of course soon be able to earn something, and has always the stimulus of increasing her gains. The class of girls in the store seemed to be superior to those in the workroom, more intelligent and refined. The workrooms were large and airy. The weavers, button makers, &c., work from eight to ten hours a day. Another [Pg 297] proprietor said a person to learn the business should go to a small place, where only a few are employed—not to a factory, as they will not be troubled with learners in a factory. ”

“ One of the most illustrious of such workers in modern times was unquestionably the late Sir Robert Peel. He possessed in an extraordinary degree the power of continuous intellectual labour, nor did he spare himself. His career, indeed, presented a remarkable example of how much a man of comparatively moderate powers can accomplish by means of assiduous application and indefatigable industry. During the forty years that he held a seat in Parliament, his labours were prodigious. ”

“ That this is not true of the most highly-skilled or qualitative work must be conceded, but it applies with great force to the bulk of lower-skilled labour. By the aid of machinery—i.e., of the condensed embodiment of the inventor's skill, the clumsy or weak worker is rendered capable of assisting the nicest movements on a closer equality with the more skilled worker. Of course piece-work, as practised in textile and hardware industries, shows that the most complete machinery has not nearly abolished the individual differences between one worker and another. ”

“ Potter, the chosen mouthpiece of the manufacturers, distinguishes two sorts of “machinery,” each of which belongs to the capitalist, and of which one stands in his factory, the other at night-time and on Sundays is housed outside the factory, in cottages. The one is inanimate, the other living. ”

“ He furnishes his operators with machines. He employs men to cut, because they do it faster than women. They cut with a knife twenty-four thicknesses of cloth. All factories furnish machines and needles. Troy is the great place for making shirt collars. The girls are paid by the piece in these factories, and the employers will not permit them to work more than eight hours a day, as they do not wish them to lose their health. A girl is not retained in these collar factories that cannot earn $7 a week—eight hours a day. The machines are moved by steam. ”

“ The factory had a homely feel. No one was rushed or driven. Paul always enjoyed it when the work got faster, towards post-time, and all the men united in labour. He liked to watch his fellow clerks at work. The man was the work and the work was the man, one thing, for the time being. ”

“ Were all the workers in the factory mere followers, the work would be stereotyped and the factory would be unable to compete with the other factory, where initiative and leadership obtain.
One psychologist avers that ninety per cent of our education comes through imitation; but, even so, it is quite pertinent to inquire into the remaining ten per cent. Conceding that we adopt our styles of wearing apparel at the behest of society; that we fashion and furnish our homes in conformity to prevailing customs; that we permit press and pulpit to formulate for us our opinions and beliefs ”

“ In the old days the tradesman saw the finished article gradually taking shape under his creative craftsmanship; to-day no worker sees anything but the single operation which he performs. As a result, there is little to minister to the instincts of a craftsman. The workman employed on such repetition work becomes quickly apathetic, his interest relaxes, his inventiveness atrophies, his initiative dies, he degenerates into a cog, and, being human, into an inefficient cog, in the vast mechanism of industry. ”

“ Here you may see it exemplified in the 'Penny Magazine.' Such works as this could not have existed without the printing machine." He was asked, "In fact, the mechanic and the peasant, in the most remote parts of the country, have now an opportunity of seeing tolerably correct outlines of form which they never could behold before?" To which he answered, "Exactly; and literally at the price they used to give for a song." "Is there not, therefore, a greater chance of calling genius into activity?" ”

“ At the store of this manufacturer, the bookkeeper told me that, if a person has a tooth extracted, the phosphorus will be absorbed by the jaw bone and cause it to decay, if the individual works in the factory before the gum is entirely well. A lady told me she knows a girl that earns $6 a week in a match factory. In H.'s factory, I saw small girls and boys putting matches in the frames to be dipped. They are paid sixty cents 100 frames, containing 1,500 double matches. They can seldom fill more than 85 frames a day. ”

“ To find the value of the labor of making a pin, it is necessary to begin by getting the exact time expended by every person who has contributed a necessary part towards the production of the pin. This includes the time of the man who sells the pin to you over the counter—for, of course, there will have to be salesmen under Socialism—the time spent by the miner who dug the metal from the earth and by every other individual who has had anything to do in handling it. ”

“ Button-hole makers earn $5 a week; some operators, $9. A factory in New Haven employs eight hundred women; two hundred work in the establishment, the others work out. The indoor work is done by machines. The other is finishing off, and is sent through the country. It consists in gathering and sewing in the sleeves, felling down the facing around them, stitching on wristbands, sewing in the bosoms, putting on the collar, and working the button-holes, for which they receive ten cents a shirt. ”

“ Pewter toys are made in New York, tin toys in Philadelphia and Connecticut. The reason more toys are not made in this country is the high price of labor and living. Children's drums are made both in the city and country. N. & Co., manufacturers of military and toy drums in Massachusetts, write: "We employ one woman only in our factory, who makes the straps for drums. She works by the piece, and earns $1 a day, boarding herself." A manufacturer of pewter toys, in New York, employs ten or twelve boys. He pays $1.75 per week, of ten hours a day. He could use girls just as well, but prefers boys. ”

“ Such a fashion of conceiving the operations and appliances of industry seems at the same time to fall in closely with men’s natural bent as given by the native instinct of workmanship; and fostered by the consistent drift of daily routine under the handicraft system this attitude grew into matter of course, and has continued to direct men’s thinking on industrial matters even long after the era of handicraft has passed and given place to the factory system and the large machine industry. ”

“ Button pitched him into the factory. These were times before kindly Education Acts and Factory Acts decreed that no boy under twelve years of age should work in a factory, and that every boy under fourteen should spend half his time at the factory and half at school. Paul's education was considered complete, and he had to plunge into full time at the grim and grinding place. He had joined the great army of workers. A wide gulf separated him from the gang of Budge Street. It existed for him no more than did the little girls and babies. Life changed its aspect entirely. ”

“ Since the total product of the factory, proceeds not from the worker but from the machine, a continual changing about of individuals could not exist, without an interruption of the labor-process. Finally the speed with which work at the machine is learnt even by children does away with the necessity of training a distinct class of workmen exclusively as machine laborers. ”

“ A skilful and industrious worker can head 20,000 pins per day, for which in England they are paid about 30 cents of our money. Pin heading is very sedentary work, and children seven or eight years of age are often kept at it for twelve or thirteen hours, with merely time for hasty meals. Girls at Sedgley and Warrington begin as early as five years of age to work in the pin factories. It is said that at Wiltenhall they are treated with much cruelty, if at all refractory. In Sedgley more women are employed than men, and receive the same treatment. ”

“ For varnishing the iron part of the shovel he pays 10 cents a dozen, and "yesterday a youth was able to do twenty-one dozen." This branch of work, we think, might be done by strong women.
209. Wire Workers. I was told at a wire manufactory, New York, that women are never employed to draw wire. If it be true that wire drawers are a very rough, coarse set of men, it is well girls do not work in the establishments; as the work is such, we presume, that all must be employed in the same apartments. The labor of drawing is such that the hands of the men become almost like iron. ”