Workload

“ The writer has found, for example, after making many mistakes above and below the proper mark, that to get the maximum output for ordinary shop work requiring neither especial brains, very close application, skill, nor extra hard work, such, for instance, as the more ordinary kinds of routine machine shop work, it is necessary to pay about 30 per cent. more than the average. For ordinary day labor requiring little brains or special skill, but calling for strength, severe bodily exertion, and fatigue, it is necessary to pay from 50 per cent. ”

“ The common claim of the wage-worker that machinery displaces labor and increases the number of the involuntary idle, is met by our author with illustrations of how much invention, as in electricity and rubber manufacture, increases the demand for labor, and with statistics showing that while the population increased 62.41 per cent, from 1870 to 1890, the number of persons in all occupations increased 81.8 per cent. ”

“ You are to calculate your hours and your minutes of labor, and since the hour measures nothing,—since in one factory a workman can watch four looms at once, whilst in another he only watches two, you are to weigh the muscular force, the energy of brain, the energy of nerve expended. You are scrupulously to count up the years of apprenticeship, that you may value precisely the share of each one amongst you in the production of the future. ”

“ You Earth people try your utmost to continually increase the quantity of your individual worker's production through his own energy and by always adding and inventing new labor-saving methods and devices and machinery. By this method you can do away with the services of many workers and hire one to do the labor of many. At the same time, you have a terrific waste on account of a considerable number of constant labor turnovers. ”

“ The "long turn" of twenty-four hours and the "seven-day week" I have never heard defended, either in the mill by any foreman or workman, or outside by any member of the management, or even in a public statement. If, by an arrangement of extra workers, it were possible to eliminate these features and still keep the twelve-hour work-day for six days a week, there would, I think, be a certain number of men ready enough to work under that arrangement. I met one man, for example, who said: "Good job, [Pg 151] work all time, no spend, good job save." ”

“ We see that now, as then, each labourer is endeavouring to obtain by his exertions the satisfaction of his own desires; we see that although the minute division of labour assigns to each producer the production of but a small part, or perhaps nothing at all, of the particular things he labours to get, yet, in aiding in the production of what other producers want, he is directing other labour to the production of the things he wants - in effect, producing them himself. ”

“ The road is uphill, the going often rough and discouraging, but more often than not the load of management becomes lighter, easing overburdened muscles; the load of labor in a sense heavier, yet along with the added weight, as they warm to the task there develops a sense that they are trusted, are necessary to the success of the march, that they now are men, doing man-sized work. Perhaps in only a minimum of cases will the load ever be divided “fifty-fifty.” Too soon would [239] the workers tire of their added burden, too few could carry the added weight. ”

“ Professor Herzog, of Austria, says that 5,000,000 people with the machinery of to-day, employed at socially useful labor, would be able to supply a population of 20,000,000 people with all the necessaries and small luxuries of life by working 1 1/2 hours per day. ”

“ Effect of Machinery upon the Character of Labour. Next, what is the general effect of machinery upon the character of the work done? The economic gain attending all division of labour is of course based on the improved quality and quantity of work obtained by confining each worker to a narrow range of activity. ”

“ Are we to understand from this that, though the worker, with the best machinery and the most scientific management now possible, succeeds only in turning out less than $900 worth of goods in a year, he will be able, under collective management, to turn out from two and one-half to five times as great a product, while working just half as many hours? ”

“ Second, all the labor-saving machinery in the world will but slightly reduce the output of time and energy in the household work unless the worker will apply her mind to the problem, adapt herself to new ways of performing a piece of work, and be willing to think. ”

“ The working hours of a day are five, and even these could be reduced, for owing to the great skill of our highly trained population, and to the extensive use of machinery and the unlimited electrical power at our disposal, our productions are so abundant in all directions that every person on the planet, is supplied, and yet we have orders at times to cease producing and manufacturing for a while. ”

“ Every improvement of machinery increasing the number of spindles or looms a worker can tend, or increasing the pace of the machinery and thus enlarging the output per worker, is attended by a higher weekly wage, and in general by a shortening of the hours of labour. ”

“ The experience of other than mere professional athletes, the methods of animal trainers, the results of half-time schools, the progressive reduction of the hours of labor for working-men and shop-employees will furnish many more data of the same kind. It has been argued that two hours physical labor per diem would suffice, were the product economically distributed, to keep the whole world well supplied, so great has been the advance in labor-saving machinery, methods of transportation, etc. ”

“ Each time the parts enter the stores from the factory the work done is entered and the operatives are given credit for the work done, and the cards or books pass along to the wages office, where those who are on piecework rates are credited with the various amounts, and paid weekly, or the amounts are allowed to accumulate for a period settled between the shop stewards and the management, and the workpeople draw a weekly wage on time clocked, balancing the account at intervals. ”

“ As all work, men and women alike, and as machinery has been brought here to a wonderful degree of perfection, the actual labor necessary to maintain the people is, of necessity, very light. At first, a hundred or so years ago, in the early days of the community, the time of labor was fixed at five hours per day. But every decade, with the growth of the population, the labor hours have been diminishing. ”

“ This subdivision of labor makes it possible to train and employ almost at once the thousands of new arrivals, and out of the employment of these new arrivals and the conditions resulting from their ever increasing competition arise the sweat shop and its evils. The sweating system produces a condition of affairs in which the operative performs the maximum amount of work for the maximum wage, the length of his working day only limited by his endurance, and, even when he extends himself to the limit, in many cases he can earn scarcely enough to keep him from starvation. ”

“ It will be shown later in this paper that doing away with slow working and "soldiering" in all its forms and so arranging the relations between employer and employé that each workman will work to his very best advantage and at his best speed, accompanied by the intimate cooperation with the management and the help (which the workman should receive) from the management, would result on the average in nearly doubling the output of each man and each machine. ”

“ In working on the hide alone there are nine positions, at eight different rates of pay. A 20-cent man pulls off the tail, a 221⁄2-cent man pounds off another part where the hide separates readily, and the knife of the 40-cent [Pg 33] man cuts a different texture and has a different ‘feel’ from that of the 50-cent man. Skill has become specialized to fit the anatomy.”
Usually, however, when the division of labor becomes as minute as that described, the routine-like process is handed over to a machine. ”

“ It is obvious that men or women working from ten to sixteen hours daily will have little strength or leisure for study, or activity in revolutionary work. It is also patent that wages are bound to be higher where men toil eight hours a day than where they work sixteen hours. It requires two shifts of men, working eight hours daily, to run a machine that one man runs sixteen hours. ”

“ The Final Productivity of Labor.—If we assume that the capital of society is a fixed amount, we may perform an imaginary experiment which will show how much labor really produces. We may set men at work, a few at a time, until they are all employed, and we may measure the product of each of the detachments. We should make the different sections of the working force as similar to each other as it is possible to make them and call each section a unit of labor. ”

“ The Working Grind.—There are many manufacturing towns and small cities that are built on one industry. Thousands of workers, young and old, answer the morning summons of the whistle and pour into the factory for a day's labor at the machine. ”

“ Without organization, the helpless workers were compelled to labor sixteen hours a day.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century factory workers a to be on the job at 4 A. M. and work until dark for a wage that was a mere pittance. A first class mechanic got 50c a day. Laborers worked for three and four dollars a month and board. Women toiled in the cotton mills from dawn till dark for $1.50 a week. ”

“ Labour-saving contrivances—The nick in types—Tags of laces—Casting shot—Candle-dipping—Tiring a wheel—Globe-making—Domestic aids to labour—Aids to mental labour—Effects of severe bodily labour on health and duration of life.
We drew attention in the last chapter to a particular process in needle-making—the sorter's sheath—to show that great saving of labour may be effected by what is not popularly called machinery. In modern times, wherever work is carried on upon a large scale, the division of labour is applied ”

“ The sudden and extensive introduction of machinery at the close of the eighteenth century drove hand labor out of employment, and, for a time, caused great suffering among the masses; but in the end it created an ever increasing demand for labor—a new labor more skillful than the old. ”

“ Machinery has been called "labour-saving," but the immediate result of its introduction has been to throw people out of work—labour-saving in the sense of taking their work from them, or the bread out of their mouths. ”

“ What the last unit of labor adds to the antecedent output is less than was added by any of the other units, and the same is true of the last unit of capital. As we continue the process of enlarging the working force and adding to the [Pg 166] working appliances, we reach a point at which it is better to cease putting new men with their equipment at work on this piece of land and to set them working on a bit of land so poor that it was not formerly utilized at all. ”

“ The average increase in the daily earnings of each man was about 35 per cent., while, at the same time, the sum total of the wages paid for doing a given amount of work was lower than before. This increase in the speed of doing the work, of course, involved a substitution of the quickest hand methods for the old independent rule-of-thumb methods, and an elaborate analysis of the hand work done by each man. (By hand work is meant such work as depends upon the manual dexterity and speed of a workman, and which is independent of the work done by the machine.) ”

“ There is no question that the cost of production is lowered by separating the work of planning and the brain work as much as possible from the manual labor. When this is done, however, it is evident that the brain workers must be given sufficient work to keep them fully busy all the time. They must not be allowed to stand around for a considerable part of their time waiting for their particular kind of work to come along, as is so frequently the case. ”

“ The efficiency of labor, in this connection, is highly important in its practical aspects, and as affecting the labor question, because as a function of cost of labor, that is, as an element affecting the quantity of things advanced to the laborers in comparison with the quantity of things returned to the employer, it includes the whole influence of machinery, labor-saving devices, and the results of invention. The quantity of produce depends, for a given advance, on the kind of machinery, the speed with which it is run, and on the general state of the arts and industrial inventions. ”

“ On the one side it was generally alleged that the pace of work had been more or less intentionally reduced, though this is not substantiated by such figures for piece earnings as are available; and, though in factories there is some diminution of overhead expenses and waste time when the day's work is done in two instead of in three shifts, the general expense of salaries, interest on capital, rents, rates, etc., has to be met out of the diminished hours of work. ”

“ There is scarcely another condition of any portion of our working population thus free from external control. The factory operative is not only mulcted of his wages for absence, but, if of frequent occurrence, discharged altogether from his employment. The bricklayer, the carpenter, the painter, the joiner, the stonemason, the outdoor labourer, have each their appointed daily hours of labour, a disregard of which would lead to the same result. ”