Workbench

“ 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. ”

“ Surely because in these latter days, in which as a matter of fact machinery has been invented, it was by no means invented with the aim of saving the pain of labour. The phrase labour-saving machinery is elliptical, and means machinery which saves the cost of labour, not the labour itself, which will be expended when saved on tending other machines. For a doctrine which, as I have said, began to be accepted under the workshop-system, is now universally received, even though we are yet short of the complete development of the system of the Factory. ”

“ Fig. 1.—End View of Work-bench.
The Workshop may be fitted up by the boy himself, and a suitable place can probably be found in the basement, barn, or woodshed. Here a corner large enough to contain a work-bench, carpenter's horses, and tool-cabinets, besides plenty of room to work in, should be partitioned off, and a window that will admit a good supply of light made in one side of the room, if one has not already been provided.
A Solid Work-bench, six feet long, thirty inches wide, and thirty-two inches high, should be constructed beneath the window. ”

“ That is to say, he must appeal first to the individual worker who exists now, rather than aim at the needs of a conglomeration in a factory, which will come about in the future. The tools should be simple in character, easily worked and kept in order, and without the application of quick-return and other mechanical devices so necessary for labor-saving with us. Light wood-working machinery can be made to supplant the present manual-labor methods; and a large field is open for all kinds of pumps, wind-mills, piping and other articles of hydraulic machinery. ”

“ In many respects the farmer has the advantage of the mechanic. In our time we have plenty of mechanics but no tradesmen. In the sub-division of labor we have a thousand men working upon different parts of the same thing, each taught in one particular branch, and in only one. We have, say, in a shoe factory, hundreds of men, but not one shoemaker. It takes them all, assisted by a great number of machines, to make a shoe. Each does a particular part, and not one of them knows the entire trade. The result is that the moment the factory shuts down these men are out of employment. ”

“ Thus, by the side of the trades which are carried on entirely at home by one or more members of the family, there are the trades in which the master keeps a small workshop attached to his house and works in it with his family, or with a few "assistants" -- that is, wage-workers. Or else the artisan has a separate workshop, supplied with wheel-power, as is the case with the Sheffield cutlers. Or several workers come together in a small factory which they maintain themselves, or hire in association, or where they are allowed to work for a certain weekly rent. ”

“ The Work-bench or Table.
Few work-benches or tables should be considered as absolutely satisfactory that do not permit the worker to do his work standing or sitting. Our ideas as to proper work-benches or tables, and as to the proper placing, height, etc., of machinery and tools have too often been prescribed to us by the manufacturers of the articles, who have thought more of what was convenient to manufacture than of what was least fatiguing to use. Such manufacturers are not to be blamed in the least for their attitude. They, naturally, have been guided by what would sell best. ”

“ Well, now, as to birdcage and hutch-making, you must have, first and foremost, a bench whereon to work. Any old table will do if it be strong enough. But one thing it must have, and that is a contrivance to hold the wood on which you are working with the plane or other instrument. This may either be the wooden screw apparatus, or what is cheaper, the bench-lug.
The tools and things you really want, and must have, to make anything like a job, are (1) a nice sizeable saw, one that will either rip or cross-cut, so it must not have a back to it. ”

“ The development of steam has created another army of skilled labor; the new appliances of electricity have called into existence a third army of working-men whose new craft demands far more skill than any of the older trades. Consider, again, the chemical developments and discoveries; consider the machinery that is required for almost every kind of industry; the wonderful and lifelike engine of a cotton mill, which deals as delicately as a woman’s fingers with the most dainty and fragile fiber, yet exercises power which is felt in every department of the huge mill ”

“ Going through the various departments of these two factories, the visitor would not be surprised if told that he was in an engineering, joinery, or almost any kind of industrial establishment; for all branches of the modern workshop are carried on in different parts of the premises. Nearly everything required for upkeep and packing is made upon the spot in the foundries, machine shops, carpenters’ shops and the marvellous tin can factory with its elaborate machinery that is almost human. ”

“ Fig. 9.
The Work Bench.—In its proper place we show in detail the most approved form of work bench, fitted with a tool rack to hold all the tools, conveniently arranged. In this chapter we are more particularly concerned with the uses of tools than their construction; and we impress on boys the necessity of having a place for everything, and that every tool should be kept in its proper place. A carpenter's shop filled with chips, shavings and other refuse is not a desirable place for the indiscriminate placing of tools. ”

“ In carpet weaving fifty years ago the workman drove the shuttle with the hand, and produced from forty-five to fifty yards per week, for which he was paid from 9d. to 1s. per yard, while at the present day a girl attending a steam loom can produce sixty yards a day, and does not cost her employer 1-1/2d. per yard for her labour. That girl with her loom is now doing the work of eight men. The question is, How are these men employed now? In a clothier's establishment, seeing a girl at work at a sewing machine, he asked the employer how many men's labour that machine saved him. ”

“ A good, substantial work-bench, fitted with drawers, tools, vise, steel rule cutter, etc., is an essential for the folding box maker. The box maker who is “handy” may readily build his own work-bench with the necessary lumber, but for the information of those who may not know about it, the American Type Founders’ Company has a steel work-bench which is very convenient for the purposes of a folding box making plant. ”

“ A carpenter bench that is used for all kinds of work must be [19] solid enough to permit hammering, driving nails, etc. Usually the top of the bench is straight, true and level and it should be kept free from litter and extra tools.
Good carpenters prefer a tool rack separate from the bench. It may stand on the floor or be attached to the wall. Carpenter tools on a farm are not numerous, but they should have a regular place, and laborers on the farms should be encouraged to keep the tools where they belong. ”

“ The bells in the many towers and the siren whistles of the mills call the people from sleep in the morning, telling them when to begin work and when to quit. Within the mills are long34 lines of machines set in parallel rows down which the workers easily pass. Each worker tends eight to twenty machines. Here is a broken thread to be tied, and there a new pattern to be set up. The clatter and roar of the machinery is unceasing. It is a part of the composite voice of labor that is sounding around the world. ”

“ In the little outside workshop, on the other hand, lengthy spells of enforced idleness are followed by short periods of most severe toil, during which the hours of daily labour are prolonged to an inhuman extent. At the same time, the workpeople employed in the ill-equipped workshop of the little master are competing with the much more efficient production of the factory provided with labour-saving machinery driven by steam or other mechanical power ”

“ The largest factories, however, employ but a few hands, the machinery being so perfect as to perform, with very little interposition from human hands, the whole work, from the first purification to the final arrangement. I saw a mass of ore as dug out from the ground put into one end of a long series of machines, which came out, without the slightest manual assistance, at the close of a course of operations so directed as to bring it back to our feet, in the form of a thin sheet of lustrous metal. ”

“ The growing resort to working methods requiring organised groups of workmen together with something in the way of collective industrial plant would greatly hasten the concentration of the ownership of the material equipment. Ownership in all ages is individual ownership; and then as ever any single item of property, such as a workshop and its appliances, would presently fall into the possession of an individual owner. The owners of the plant became employers of their impecunious fellow craftsmen and so came into a position to dispose of their working capacity and their product. ”

“ Acting upon the general idea he had been led to form, that the prejudice entertained against the use of machinery was most likely to be removed by a gradual introduction of small machinery, rather than by any sudden innovation in the more important works of the dock-yards, he at first attempted only to introduce in addition to saws such as are used in other countries, some sawing apparatus, and other engines, and small machines of his own invention for working in wood ”

“ The adoption of standard tools, appliances, and methods throughout the shop, the planning done in the planning room and the detailed instructions sent them from this department, added to the direct help received from the four executive bosses, permit the use of comparatively cheap men even on complicated work. Of the men in the machine shop of the Bethlehem Steel Company engaged in running the roughing machines, and who were working under the bonus system when the writer left them, about 95 per cent were handy men trained up from laborers. ”

“ The new men, the Italians, Greeks, Poles, Rumanians, and many other strange-talking, dark-skinned men who had come with the coming of the factories, went on with their lives on that evening as on all others. They worked in the night shift at the Corn-Cutting Machine Plant, at the foundry, the bicycle factory or at the big new Tool Machine Factory that had just moved to Bidwell from Cleveland. Those who were not at work lounged in the streets or wandered aimlessly in and out of saloons. ”

“ Woodware factories on a large scale are established in the city, where all kinds of building materials, such as doors, sashes, mouldings, &c., are prepared by machinery, which, in addition to providing employment for a great number of men and boys, is very convenient for building contractors. They can obtain from these mills all their requirements, ready prepared for erecting buildings, and the hard labour thus saved is simply enormous, not to mention the saving of time, and as the old proverb goes, "time is always money." ”

“ The peculiar relation of Machinery to the Factory System consists in the fact that the size, expensiveness, and complexity of machinery on the one hand, and the use of non-human power on the other hand, were forces which united to drive labour from the home workshop to the large specialised workshop—the Factory. ”

“ A small room, a few sewing machines, and people are all that a contractor needs to set up shop. Fifty or one hundred dollars will do very well for a start, and his workers are in his opinion worthy of little more consideration than his foot-power machines. To open a factory, however, he must have a steam engine with its connection to the improved machines. When he has gone to the expense of putting in power, he cannot afford to let any machines stand idle, and his employes have steady work. ”

“ This means that 90 per cent. of the work in the factories is done by machinery, or that one man, with the help of machines, is enabled to produce ten times more than he needs; in other words, to satisfy the wants of one man for one day, a factory worker requires only one hour, instead of ten, as he is working now. ”

“ Certain provisions of the Factory and Workshop Act, including those which are stated below, apply as if any premises on which machinery worked by mechanical power is temporarily used in the construction of a building, or in structural work in connection with a building, were a factory, and as if the purpose for which the machinery is used were a manufacturing process. ”

“ 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. ”

“ That is what has brought our modern industrial system to its present state of efficiency: the Division of Labor—one man who does nothing but make holes in washers, another who does nothing but slip the washers over the dinguses over which they belong; one man who devotes his whole time to running a car, another who specializes in cranking it. Now, in the early days of industry, when the guild was the unit of organization among the workers—"
George, having cranked the engine, motioned me into the driver's seat, and took his position beside me. ”