Porter (labor)

“ A person going through a silk mill, and viewing the operations of the various branches of the manufacture, would suppose that no human beings could be deformed and crippled by such light, clean, and beautiful work; consisting of little more than knotting threads of silk, clipping the edges of ribbon, and other things, which seem to a casual observer, more suitable for a lady's parlor than a factory. But when we look more narrowly into the matter, we find causes for the awful effects of factory labor in silk mills. ”

“ The dress factory job was like another world compared with candy, brass, and the laundry. In each of those places I had worked on one floor of a big plant, doing one subdivided piece of labor among equally low-paid workers busy at the same sort of job as myself. ”

“ I wonder how men and women bear the monotony of the workshop and of the factory, in which the division of labor is carried to its utmost, and in which they must work year in and year out, only on some small part of a fabric or an implement, never becoming capable of making the whole fabric or of constructing the whole machine. ”

“ In a factory, for the most part, the only way, during working hours, an employer can express himself and his humanness to his workman is through the steel machine he works with—through its being a new, good, fair machine or a poor one. He can only smile and frown at him with steel, be good to him in wheels and levers, or now and then perhaps through a foreman pacing down the aisles.
The question the modern business man in a factory has to face is very largely this: "I have acres of machines all roaring my will at my men. ”

“ With respect to the former, as the employer in many cases furnishes only the ruder and less portable machinery of the workshop, the workman has, to a certain extent, to provide his own tools; and in regard to the latter, clothing in general, and more especially cotton, woollen, and worsted articles of apparel, are nearly as costly as in London.
Of the social position of the workmen, and the rules of the trade Guilds, I have endeavoured to treat under the head of “The German Workman;” ”

“ I at once replied that my master had sent me to town to hire myself out for a few weeks, and that I was ready to go with him immediately. The joy I felt at finding employment so overcame me, that all thought of my wages was forgotten. Bidding farewell to the man who had given me my breakfast, and thanking him in my heart for his kindness, I followed my new employer, who informed me that he had engaged to remove a thousand bales of cotton from a large warehouse, to the end of a wharf at which a ship lay, that was taking in the cotton as a load. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ English weavers and spinners became very skilful and invented different mechanical aids for the production of yarn and cloth. These mechanical aids not only enabled one man to do twenty men’s work, but further utilization was made of water and steam power in place of manual labor. Then began the organization of the industry on a truly gigantic scale, combining capital and machinery and resulting in what is known as the factory system. ”

“ WHAT is the "conductor" of a Pullman car? Is he a private gentleman travelling for his pleasure, a duke in disguise, or is he a servant of the company placed on the cars to see to the comfort, &c., of the company's customers? I should like to know, for sometimes I have been puzzled to find out. The porter is an admirable institution, when he is amenable to reason, and I have been fortunate enough to find myself often entrusted to perfectly rational specimens. ”

“ When the porter-bar has been lopped off and the forging placed on the ground he examines it several times, going to the furnace and coming back to view his half-finished labour and making as much fuss as though he had just forged a battleship, till even the door-boy is disgusted and passes sarcastic remarks upon his ceremonious chief. Considerably more slotting and shaping will always be required on his piece than on that of the other forgeman, and his work will be left till last in the machine shop. ”

“ The great manufacturer [he says] who guides the operations of a factory of a hundred thousand spindles, in which fifteen hundred men, women, and [221] children earn their daily bread, himself works on a narrow margin of one fourth of a cent on each yard of cloth. If he shall not have applied truth to every branch of construction and of the operation of that factory, it will fail and become worthless; and then with toilsome labor a hundred and fifty thousand women might try to clothe themselves and you, who are now clothed by the service of fifteen hundred only. ”

“ Of the hand-weavers of the cotton industry we have already spoken; the other woven fabrics are almost exclusively produced on hand-looms. Here most of the workers have suffered as the weavers have done from the crowding in of competitors displaced by machinery, and are, moreover, subject like the factory operatives to a severe fine system for bad work. ”

“ The factory hand spends his working day in a great, dingy shop, with the maddening din of machinery in his ears. His associates are strangers, with whom he has little or nothing in common besides his work. He labors for an indefinite, far-away consumer whose manner of life is unknown to him. ”

“ The same principle was then carried into the different trades, and at last we find it fully developed in the cottage system of industry. Thus we find carding, spinning, and weaving carried on by separate members of the family. Carding and spinning, which required less bodily strength, was performed by the women, while the more laborious work of weaving was given over to the men. With the establishment of the factory and the introduction of machinery, means were supplied by which this system could attain its highest development. ”

“ Between the journeymen and apprentices, and the employer, there frequently intervened persons such as the “undertakers” mentioned [Page 55] in connection with the smallware trade, but these men were essentially employees, even though in many cases, no doubt, they might own three or four looms. In the factory, the workpeople, who previously had been scattered over a more or less wide area, were drawn together under one roof, and their operations supervised by foremen and managers; the capital of the employers was now embodied in materials, buildings, plant and machinery ”

“ 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 invention of machinery has very much done away with manual weaving. Fifty years back all woollen and most of cotton goods were made in that way. Some jeans, coarse flannel, rag carpets, coverlets, and other similar articles are still woven by hand. Now, shawls, dress goods, gloves, hosiery, fine carpets, cassimere, and cloth in all its varieties, are woven by machinery. The uniting of threads, and a constant attention to the machinery, are all that is necessary. The wages vary according to the places, the capabilities of the operatives, the goods woven, and the price of living. ”

“ Our first concern is with the social conditions existing in these great manufacturing cities. The factory system was first applied to the spinning of yarn; but weaving continued, for a time, as a handicraft. This period was one of great prosperity to the hand-loom weavers. Before the invention of spinning-machinery, several spinners were required to furnish one loom with yarn; and one half of the weaver’s time was spent in waiting for work. ”

“ Unless the particulars of work are ascertainable by an automatic indicator, they must be given to textile workers in writing, and in the case of weavers in the cotton, worsted and woollen trades the particulars of wages must be supplied separately to each worker, and also shown on a placard in a conspicuous position. In other textile processes, it is sufficient to furnish the particulars separately to each worker. ”

“ Now we have factories which make only coats, others which make only vests, others trousers, and there are children’s knee-pants factories and even ladies’ tailor [Pg 125] establishments where the former seamstress sees her precious skill dissipated among a score of unskilled workers. Thus the journeyman tailor is displaced by the factory, where the coat passes through the hands of thirty to fifty different men and women, each of whom can learn his peculiar operation in a month or two. The same is true in greater or less degree in all industries. ”

“ The men might have been parcels shifting one by one up to the packers’ tables and away from them, or those pieces of metal in a factory which trickle up leisurely to a whirling lathe, are seized by it, turned, poked, spun about with feverish haste for a minute by the machine, pushed out clear to resume their leisured progress while the machine jumps on the next piece and works its ordered will upon it. ”

“ In the making of ready-made clothing and the fabrication of hats, linen, boots and shoes, and gloves, we see the averages for the factories of this description going up to 80, 100, and 150 persons per factory. But it is here also that countless small workshops come in. It must also be noticed that most of the factories of ready-made clothing have their own special character. The factory buys the cloth and makes the cutting by means of special machinery; but the sewing is done by women, who come to work in the factory. ”

“ The skilled artisan who worked at home and either made goods for a master or sold to the trade verged into the shop keeping class. On the other hand, the lowest type of shopkeeper, the chandler, the dealer in old iron, the tripe shop, the milk retailer, the keeper of a cook shop or a green cellar belonged to the class of casual and unskilled labor. ”

“ The first noon whistle—work dropped—a rush for the washroom. Let no one think his hands ever were dirty until he labors at a foot press in a brassworks. Such sticky, grimy, oily, rough blackness never was—and the factory supplies no soap nor towels. You are expected to bring your own—which is all right the second day when you have found it out and come prepared. ”

“ The ground floor of each factory is devoted exclusively to store-rooms; beneath the sheds are the scales in which the money is weighed, for it is never counted. The weighing concluded, a Chinese is intrusted to examine the piastres. The operator is generally a quasi-gentleman; a man in a long dress of blue silk, with his pig-tail well plaited, and his head protected by a cap, who sits down with his legs crossed by the side of the balance, and examines one after the other every piece of money. ”

“ By-and-by a countryman comes up the road, evidently a labourer dressed in his best—he hastens to the 'Hotel,' instead of to the station, and finds from the porter that he is at least twenty minutes too soon. Then a waggon arrives, and stops while the carter drinks. Presently the porter and the labourer stroll together over to the platform, and after them a young fellow—a farmer's son, not yet a man but more than a boy—comes out and re-arranges the travelling rug in the pony cart. ”

“ One of the oldest established agencies for handling mill products is the dry goods jobber, and it is to be remarked that many large retail houses do also a substantial jobbing business, though generally less so in cottons than in other classes of fabrics. ”

“ The workers in the furniture factories—who are chiefly men, as few women or children can be employed in this industry—are few in number compared with the male employees in the cotton mills and, except in the case of a few towns, can hardly be discussed as a group at all. ”

“ Each important manufacturing industry has a number of industries which in their relation to it are secondary, although in some cases, having similar relations to a number of other trades, they may in themselves be large and important. In the large textile centres are found a number of minor industries, planers, sawyers, turners, fitters, smiths, engaged in irregular work of alteration and repairs upon the plant and machinery of the textile factories. ”