SLAVES OF MACHINERY
To multitudes of men and women the lure of levers, cranks, wheels and
pinions is as seductive, as insidious, as heavenly in its promises, and as
hellish in its performances, as the opium habit. The craving for opium,
however, is an acquired taste, while the passion for machinery is born in
thousands. We have seen children, while yet in their baby-cabs, fascinated
by automobiles, sewing machines, and even little mechanical toys. We knew
a boy on a farm who built a fairly workable miniature threshing machine
with his own hands before he was old enough to speak the name of it in
anything but baby-talk. We have seen boys work in the broiling sun day
after day hoeing potatoes, pulling weeds, gathering crops, and doing other
hard jobs for small pay, carefully saving every penny to buy a toy steam
engine.
Parents usually look upon these evidences of mechanical ability with
pleasure. They regard them as sure indications of the vocation of the
child and oftentimes do everything in their power to encourage him in
these lines. They little realize, however, the supreme danger which
attaches to this very manifestation. Nor have they looked far enough ahead
to see what is, in so many cases, the lamentable result.
THE RESTLESS "MACHINE CRAZY" BOY
The boy of this type hates to sit quietly on a hard bench in a school and
study books. Some of the boys who went to school with us had imitation
levers and valve-handles fastened about their desks in an ingenious way,
and instead of studying, pretended that they were locomotive engineers.
With a careful eye upon the teacher, who was his semaphore, such a boy
would work the reverse lever, open and close the throttle, apply and
disengage the brakes, test the lubrication, and otherwise go through the
motions of running a locomotive with great seriousness and huge enjoyment.
These boys usually have considerable trouble with their teachers. They do
not like grammar, frequently do not care for geography and history. They
flounder dolefully in these studies and are in a state of more or less
continual rebellion and disgrace. Because of their intense activity and
restlessness, they irritate the teacher. She wants quiet in the
school-room. Their surreptitious playing, rapping and tapping on desks,
and other evidences of dammed-up energy and desire for more freedom and
more scope of action, interferes with the desired sanctity of silence.
Outside of school hours and during the long vacation, the fatal
fascination of machinery draws these young people to factories, railroad
yards, machine shops, and other places where they may indulge their fancy
and craving for mechanical motion. The boy who hangs around a machine shop
or railroad yard is always pressed into voluntary and delighted service by
those who work there. In a small town in Wisconsin we once knew a boy who
worked willingly and at the hardest kind of labor in a railroad yard for
years, voluntarily and without a cent of pay. In time he was entrusted
with a small responsibility and given a small salary. Even if the boy does
not begin in this way, the result is substantially the same. He may take
the bit in his teeth, leave school and go to work at some trade which will
give at least temporary satisfaction for his mechanical craving, or he
may, through economic necessity, be forced out of school and naturally
gravitate into a machine shop or factory. Oftentimes a few dollars a week
is a very welcome addition to the family income. To the boy himself,
three, four, five or six dollars a week seems like a fortune. Neither the
parents nor the boy look ahead. Neither of them sees that when the little
salary has increased to fifteen, sixteen, eighteen or twenty-five dollars
a week, the boy will have reached the zenith of his possibilities. There
will then be no further advancement, unless, during his apprenticeship and
journeymanship, or previously to them, he has secured mental training
which will enable him to go higher, hold more responsible positions and
earn larger pay.
"MAN OR MACHINE--WHICH?"
In former days, the boy who left school and took up employment in a
factory learned a trade. He became a shoe-maker, or a harness-maker, or a
wheelwright, or a gun-maker. To-day, however, the work on all of these
articles has been so subdivided that the boy perhaps becomes stranded in
front of a machine which does nothing but punch out the covers for tin
cans, or cut pieces of leather for the heels of shoes, or some other finer
operation in manufacture. Once he has mastered the comparatively simple
method of operating his particular machine, the boy is likely to remain
there for all time. His employer--perhaps short-sighted--has no desire to
advance him, because this would mean breaking in another boy to handle his
machine. Also, it would mean paying more money.
Al Priddy, in his illuminating book, "Man or Machine--Which?"[9] thus
describes the case of the slave to the machine:
[Footnote 9: The Pilgrim Press, Boston.]
"The workingman has been taught that his chief asset is skill. It has been
his stocks, his bonds, the pride of his life. Poor as to purse and
impoverished in his household; his cupboard bare, his last penny spent on
a bread crust, he is not humbled; no, he merely stretches out his ten
fingers and two callous palms, exactly as a proud king extends his
diamond-tipped sceptre, to show you that which upholds him in his
birthright. 'My skill is my portion given to the world,' he says. 'I shall
not want. See, I am without a penny. I touch this bar of steel, and it
becomes a scissors blade. My skill did it. I take this stick of oak and it
becomes a chair rung. My skill is the grandest magic on earth, the common
magic of every day. By it I live and because of it I hold my head royal
high.'
"But the machine now attacks and displaces this skill. The cunning of
trained fingers is transferred to cranks, cogs and belts. The trade
secrets are objectified in mechanical form; able to mix the product,
compound the chemicals, or make the notch at the right place.
"Besides this loss of skill, the workman loses, in the grind of the
machine, his sense of the value of his work. Next to his pride of skill
the workman has always been proud to be the connoisseur: stand back near
the light with his product on his upraised hand, showing to all passers-by
what he has done. Perhaps it was a red morocco slipper for a dancer, or a
pearl button to go on the cloak of a little child, or maybe it was a
horseshoe to go on the mayor's carriage horse. On a day a party of
visitors would come to the little shop and the owner would pick up a
hand-forged hammer and say, 'See what John made!' But, in our modern
industry, no one man ever completes a task. Each task is subdivided into
twenty, forty, a hundred or more portions, and a workingman is given just
one to work on, day by day, year after year, for a working generation.
"After the time has come when the workman can find no distinct esthetic
pleasure in his work, his loyalty to his employers suffers a shock.
"Then, when this indifference or disloyalty is full grown, the employer
has full on him acute and formidable labor diseases. The man who should
stand at his shoulder faces him, instead, with a hostile poise. The mill
full of people over whom he holds power, upon whom he depends for his
success, and who, in turn, depend upon his initiative and capital for
their bread and butter, is turned into an armed camp of plotting enemies,
who, while they work, grumble, and who, while they receive their wages,
scheme for the overthrow of the entire concern! His mills, instead of
being shelters for his brothers and sisters, are nests of scratching
eagles--ready to rend and claw!
"It is further given out that the machine robs man of his industrial
initiative; that the complicated and specialized machine decreases his
mental alertness. In addition to his skill and his appreciation of his
product, the workman has ever prized the appeal his labor has made to his
individual intelligence. His work has brought thinking power with it. His
day's task has included the excitement of invention and adventure. In the
heat and burden of the week has come that thrilling moment when his mind
has discovered the fact that a variation in method means a simplification
of his task. Or, in the monotonous on-going of his labor, he has suddenly
realized that by sheer brain power he has accomplished a third more work
than his neighbor. He has counted such results compliments to his
initiative, to his thinking power. They have brought a reward three times
more satisfying than a mere increase in wage, for, in his eyes, they have
been substantial testimonies to the freedom of his mind, something which
every reasonable person puts higher than any king's ransom. But the coming
of the machine deadens the workman's inclination toward inventive
adventure.
"So the multitude of men and women stand before the cunning machinery of
industry, in the pose of helplessness before a mechanical finality. They
cannot help feeling that in so far as their special task is involved, the
machine has said the last word. The challenge dies out of their work. The
brain that has ever been on the quiver of adventurous expectancy relaxes
its tension, and the workman moodily or indifferently lets his machine do
its perfect work, while his undisciplined, unchallenged thoughts wander
freely over external, social, or domestic concerns. It may give an
indolent, unambitious, selfish type of employee a certain amount of
satisfaction to know that the machine frees his mind of initiative, but to
the considerate workman it is a day of tragedy when his brain power
receives no challenge from his work, and that day has dawned in the minds
of millions of men who throng our industries.
"So, then, when this machine-robber, without heart or conscience, makes of
little repute the workman's most shining glory--skill; steals rudely from
him the esthetic pleasure in his product, and leaves him mentally crippled
before his work, how little force has that honored appeal, 'The dignity of
labor'! Talk as we will, in this machine-ridden time, the 'dignity of
labor' is but a skeleton of its former robust self. Take away the king's
throne, the courtier's carpet, the royal prerogative, and then speak about
'The Divine Right'! All that 'dignity of labor' can mean in these days is
simply that it is more dignified for a man to earn a wage than it is to be
a doorway loafer. The workingman's throne--skill--has gone. His
prerogative--skill--has been taken away. The items that have formerly
given dignity to labor have been largely displaced, so far as we have
adventured, by the machine, and the future holds out no other hope than
this, that machines shall more and more increase. There is little
'dignity' in a task that a man does which may be equally well done by his
fourteen-year-old boy or girl. There is little 'dignity' in a task which
less and less depends upon independent knowledge."
But must these workers remain always slaves of machine? Is there no escape
for them? Is there no "underground railroad" by which they may win their
way to freedom?
Here is what Al Priddy has to say about it:
"The most convincing way in which man may master the machine is when he
invents a new and better one, or improves an old one. This is the real
triumph of mind over matter, of skill over machinery.
"With all its arrogance among us, machinery is always final in itself;
incapable of change; incapable of progression or retrogression. Till the
clouds fade from the sky, or the earth cracks, a machine will remain the
same from the day of its creation until the day of its last whirl--unless
man says the word to change it. Once started on its mission, there is
nothing in the world can change the motion and purpose of a machine save
man's mind. So, then, whatever relation man might have toward a machine,
this stands sure: he will ever be able to stand before it and say: 'I am
thy master. I can change thee, make thee better or worse. I made thee. I
can unmake thee. If thou dost accomplish such mighty works, more honor to
the mind which conceived thee!"
"But it is suddenly discovered by an industrial diagnosis that the
machine has never been properly operated, even by the most skilled
operators. It has been proved that 'there is more science in the most
"unskilled" task than the man who performs it is capable of
understanding.' This dictum of Mr. Taylor, a practical experimenter, has
been dramatically proved in many directions. In the task of the sand
shoveler, or the iron lifter, for instance, it was proved that by
scientifically undertaking such work, fifty selected men, properly
drilled, scientifically rested, intelligently manoeuvred, could accomplish
a third more than one hundred ill selected and improperly managed men, in
less time and under a larger salary. It is suddenly found that, contrary
to theory, a machine, to be economically operated, leaves open man's
chance for skill and does not rob him of it."
Perhaps a few cases taken from our records will indicate how men of this
kind are able to come up from slavery and take successful places in their
true vocations.
FROM BOILER-ROOM TO CHIEF ENGINEER'S OFFICE
G---- manifested very early indications of the lure of machinery for him.
While yet in his cradle, he would play contentedly for hours with a little
pulley or other mechanical trifle. Before he was able to walk, he could
drive nails with a hammer sturdily and with more precision than many
adults. This also was one of his favorite amusements, and it was necessary
to keep him provided with lumber, lest he fill the furniture with nails.
As he grew older he became more and more interested in machinery and
mechanical things. He took to pieces the family clock and put it together
again. He nearly always had the sewing machine partly dismantled, but
could always put it together again, and it usually ran better after he had
finished his work. He built water-wheels, wind-mills, and other mechanical
toys. When he was about fourteen years old he built a steam engine. He
used a bicycle pump for the cylinder and pieces of an old sewing machine,
a discarded wringer, some brass wires, and other odds and ends for the
rest of the parts. So perfect mechanically was this product that when
steam was turned on it ran smoothly, and with very little noise, at the
rate of three thousand revolutions a minute. In this engine he employed a
form of valve motion which he had never seen, and which had never been
used before. While not particularly efficient, and therefore not a
valuable invention, it at least showed his ability to adapt means to ends
mechanically.
After G---- began earning money for himself by mechanical and electrical
work, he would go without luxuries, food and clothing, tramping to the
shop almost barefoot one entire winter, for the sake of buying tools and
equipment to carry on his mechanical experiments. It is not surprising,
therefore, that he left school at an early age to engage in actual work in
railroad shops. He afterward secured a position as a locomotive fireman.
Circumstances arose which made it necessary for him to give up
railroading. He secured a position as fireman on a stationary engine.
A HARD FIGHT FOR AN EDUCATION
It was while he was engaged in this kind of work that the suggestion was
made to him that he ought not to try to go through life with only the
rudiments of an education. It was pointed out that, while he had undoubted
mechanical and inventive ability, he would have small opportunity to use
it unless he also had the necessary technical and scientific knowledge to
go with it. At first his interest in mechanics was so intense and his
interest in school in general so comparatively slight, that he did not
look with very much favor upon the suggestion. However, as time went on
and he saw more and more of the results of such action as he was
contemplating, he became more and more interested in completing his
education. He therefore entered a good preparatory school and, with some
little assistance from relatives, worked his way through by doing
electrical and mechanical work about the little college town. In this kind
of work he soon became well known and was in constant requisition.
Occasionally his ingenuity and resourcefulness enabled him to do
successfully work which had puzzled and baffled even those who were
called experts. Having finished his preparatory course, he began a course
in mechanical and electrical engineering in one of the best known of our
universities. About this time practically all assistance from relatives
had been withdrawn, owing to changed circumstances, and he was left almost
entirely dependent upon his own efforts. The story of his struggles would
fill a volume. Oftentimes he was almost entirely without food. There was
one month during which he was unable to collect money due him for work
done. Because he was a poor university student he had no credit. So he
lived the entire month on $1.25. He thus explains how it was done:
LIVING A MONTH ON $1.25
"After visiting all of my clients trying to collect money, I came to the
conclusion that it would be useless to expect anything to come in to me
for at least thirty days. At this time I had $1.25 in my pocket. My room I
had paid for in advance by doing a piece of work for my landlord. I also
had about a cord of good oak wood which I had sawed and split and piled in
the hallway under the stairs. I had a little sheet-iron stove which I used
for both heating and cooking. I sat down and carefully figured out how I
could make my $1.25 feed me until I could collect the money due.
Twenty-five cents purchased three quarts of strained honey from a
bee-keeper friend of mine. The dollar I invested in hominy. Every morning,
when I first got up and built the fire, I put on a double boiler with as
much hominy as would cook in it. While it was cooking I sat down and
studied hard on my calculus. By the time I had got a pretty good hold of
the pot-hooks and the bird-tracks in the calculus lesson, the hominy would
be ready to eat. Hominy and honey is not a bad breakfast. While perhaps
you would like some variety, it is also fairly edible for lunch. If you
are very, very hungry, as a growing boy ought to be, and have been hard at
work putting up bell wires and arranging batteries, doubtless you would
rather eat hominy and honey for dinner than go without. The next morning
the combination doesn't taste quite so good, and by lunch time you are
beginning to wonder whether hominy and honey will satisfy all your
cravings. In the evening, however, you are quite sure that, in the absence
of anything else, you will have to have some hominy and honey in order to
keep yourself alive. By the end of the first week you feel that you can
never even hear the word hominy again without nausea and that you wish
never to look a bee in the face. By the end of the second week you have
become indifferent to the whole matter and simply take your hominy and
honey as a matter of course, trying to think nothing about it and
interesting yourself as much as possible in calculus, generator design,
strength of materials, and other things that an engineering student has to
study.
"The month finally passed. I felt as if I had eaten my way out of a
mountain of hominy and waded through a sea of honey. Collections began
coming in a little and I went and bought a beefsteak. You may have eaten
some palatable viands. I have myself partaken of meals that cost as much
as I made in a whole week's work in my school days. But let me assure you
that no one ever had a meal that tasted better than the beefsteak and
fried potatoes which finally broke the hominy and honey regime."
After this our young friend hired a little larger room, laid in a few
cheap dishes and cooking utensils and took two or three of his fellow
students to board. He did the marketing and the cooking and made them help
him wash the dishes. Two were engineering students and the third was a
student in the college of agriculture, all working their way through
college. A few cents saved was a memorable event in their lives. Our young
engineer furnished table board at $1.25 a week, and out of the $3.75 a
week paid him by his boarders was able to buy all of his own food as well
as theirs, and pay his room rent.
THE HARD FIGHT JUSTIFIED
After many troubles of this kind, G---- finished his engineering course
and secured a position in one of the largest corporations in the United
States at a salary of fifty dollars a month. At the time when he went to
work for the big corporation there were probably three or four hundred
other graduate engineers added to the staff. So keen was his mind along
mechanical and engineering lines, and so great were his natural aptitudes,
that within a few months his wages had been increased to $60 a month and
he had been given far more responsible work. Almost as soon as he took up
work with the corporation, he began making improvements in methods,
inventing machinery and other devices, and thinking out ways and means for
saving labor and making short cuts. Within a few weeks after his joining
the force he had invented a bit of apparatus which could be carried in the
coat pocket, and which took the place of a clumsy contrivance which
required a horse and wagon to carry it. In this way he saved the company
the price of horses, wagons, drivers, etc., on a great many operations.
From the very first the young man rose very much more rapidly than any of
the others who had entered the employ of the company at the time he did.
Soon he was occupying an executive position and directing the activities
of scores of men. To-day, only nine years after his leaving school, he
occupies one of the most important positions in the engineering department
of this great corporation, and while he does not have the title, performs
nearly all the duties of chief engineer.
The point of all this story is that this young man, while he had plenty of
mechanical ability and enjoyed machinery, was not fit to be a locomotive
fireman or stationary engine fireman. He had, in addition to his
mechanical sense and great skill in the use of his hands, a very keen,
wide-awake, energetic, ambitious, accurate intellectual equipment, which
did not find any adequate use in his work as a mechanic or fireman. Nor
could he ever have found expression for it unless he had taken the
initiative as a result of wise counsel and secured for himself the
necessary education and training. With all his ingenuity, he would always
have been more or less a slave to the machine to be operated unless he
had trained his mind to make him the master of thousands of machines and
of men.
FROM TURRET LATHE TO TREASURY
About eight years ago, while we were in St. Paul, Minnesota, a young
mechanic, J.F., came to us for consultation. He was about twenty years
old, and expressed himself as being dissatisfied with his work.
"I don't know just what is the matter with me," he said. "I have loved to
play with mechanical things. I was always building machinery and, when I
had an opportunity, hanging around machine shops and watching the men
work. On account of these things my father was very sure that I had
mechanical ability, and when I was fifteen years old took me out of school
and apprenticed me in a machine shop. This shop was partly devoted to the
manufacture of heavy machinery and partly to repairs of all kinds of
machinery and tools. I have now been at work in this shop for five years.
I am a journeyman mechanic and making good wages, and yet, somehow or
other, I feel that I am in the wrong place. I wish you could tell me what
is the matter with me."
After examining the young man and the data submitted, we made the
following report:
ANALYSIS OF AN EMBRYO FINANCIER
"While you have undoubted mechanical ability, this is a minor part of your
intellectual equipment. You are also qualified for commercial pursuits.
You have a good sense of values. You understand the value of a dollar even
now and you have natural aptitudes which, with proper training and
experience, will make you an excellent financier. You also have executive
ability. You like people and you like to deal with them. You like to
handle them, and because you enjoy handling people and negotiating with
them, you are successful in doing so. While you are fairly active
physically, you are very much more active mentally. Your work, therefore,
should be mental work, with a fair amount of light physical activity
mingled with it, instead of purely physical work. You ought to hold an
executive position and ought to have charge of thee finances of some
concern which is engaged in the building and selling of machinery. You
have worked, up to the present time, with heavy, coarse, crude machinery.
But you are of fine texture, refined type, and naturally have a desire to
work with that which is fine, delicate and beautiful--something into which
you can put some of your natural refinement and artistic ability. You are
still young. You have learned a trade at which you can earn fairly good
wages. You ought, therefore, to prepare yourself in some way for business.
Work during the summer, and then during the winter resume your studies,
preparing yourself for an executive position in connection with
manufacturing and selling fine machinery. Study accounting, banking,
finance, salesmanship, advertising, mechanical engineering and designing.
At the earliest possible moment give up your work in a machine shop where
heavy machinery is manufactured and begin to get some actual experience in
the manufacture of something finer and more artistic; for example, the
automobile."
A few years later, in Boston, a young man came to us, well dressed, happy,
and prosperous. He said he wished to consult us. After a few minutes' talk
with him, we said: "We have given you advice somewhere before. This is not
the first time you have consulted us." He smiled, and said: "Yes. I
consulted you in St. Paul, some years ago. At that time you advised me to
secure an executive position in the automobile business. This advice
struck me at the time as being wise, and satisfied my own desires and
ambitions. I lost no time in following your directions and was soon
engaged as a mechanic in an automobile factory. I attended night-school at
first, but finally made arrangements to spend half my time in school and
the other half in the factory, learning every part of the business. At the
present time I am the vice-president and treasurer of the ---- Motor
Company, and one of the designers of the ---- Motor Car. We are doing an
excellent business and making money. Whereas I was certainly misfit in my
old job, I am well and happily placed since I have learned my true
vocation."
EVOLUTION OF AN ELECTRICAL ENGINEER
D.B., of Chicago, was a young man admirably endowed with mechanical
ability. From his earliest years he was especially interested in matters
electrical. His father told us that he always had dry-cell and other
batteries around the house. He used to try to make magnetos out of
horseshoe magnets, and at one time attempted to build a dynamo. When he
was sixteen years of age, having finished grammar school and having had
one or two years of high school training, young B. became so ambitious to
get into electrical work that his father, thinking that he was intended
for exactly this vocation, consented to his leaving high school and taking
a position as assistant to the linemen of a telephone company. He worked
at this a year or two, and finally became a full-fledged lineman. He did
well as a lineman and after a year or so attracted the attention of an
electric light and power company, who enticed him away from the telephone
company and gave him charge of poles and wires in a residential district.
Here his unusual ingenuity and quickness soon became so manifest that he
was taken off the outside and placed in charge of a gang of men wiring
houses and installing electric fixtures. This was a pretty good job for a
young fellow and paid good wages; at least, the wages seemed quite large
to young B. at the time. By this time, however, he was twenty-one and
decided to marry. He needed more money.
GETTING HIS BEARINGS
He had a long talk with a very kind and wise advisor, who finally said to
him: "See here, B., you have abilities that ought to be put to use at
something better than stringing wires and hanging bells."
"Why, I am a foreman now," said B.
"Yes, I know you are a foreman, but who plans all the work you do?"
"Why, the Super."
"Yes, the Super hands the plans down to you, but who plans the work for
him?"
"Why, the Chief."
"Now, look here; the Chief comes to his office at ten o'clock in the
morning. He uses his head until noon. He leaves at noon, and perhaps he
doesn't come back until two or three o'clock. He uses his head then until
five or, sometimes, until four; then he goes off to play golf. But as the
result of those few hours' use of the Chief's head, the Superintendent,
and you six or eight foremen, and all the two hundred men under your
direction work a whole day or a week, or even a month, as you know. You
are merely carrying out in a mechanical, routine kind of a way the
thoughts and ideas that another man thinks. Now, you have the ability to
think for yourself."
"I could think for myself," said he, "but I can't do all the figuring that
is necessary in order to decide just what size wire should go here, and
what kind of equipment should go there, and all the different things.
That's beyond me."
"Yes, it is beyond you now, but it doesn't need to be beyond you. You have
the mental ability to learn to use those formulae just as well as the
Chief does. The thing necessary is for you to learn how to do it, to get
needful education. Now, you are young, and you're strong, and you've got
lots of time before you. If you want to make more money, the way to do it
is to learn to use your head and save weeks, months of time, as well as
the labor of your hands."
"If I went off to college or university for two or three years, I don't
think Bessie would wait for me," said he. "She wants to get married. I
want to, too, and I think we ought to do it."
AN EDUCATION BY CORRESPONDENCE
"Well," said his counselor, "you don't need to go off to school. You can
take electrical engineering in a correspondence course, even after you are
married. You're making good wages now as a foreman. Your hours of work are
only eight a day, and you have plenty of time in the evenings and on
holidays and other times to study this subject. Besides, you will probably
make better progress studying it while you work at the trade than you
would in school and withdrawn from the practical applications of the
principles that you are learning."
The result of all this was that D.B. did take a correspondence course in
electrical engineering. It was pretty tough work. He had not studied for
years. One of the first things he had to learn was how to study; how to
concentrate; how to learn the things he had to know without tremendous
waste of energy. After a little while he learned how to study. Then he
progressed, a little at a time, with the intricate and complicated
mathematics of the profession he had determined to make his own. Again and
again he was puzzled, perplexed, and almost defeated. But his young wife
encouraged him, and when things got so bad that he thought he would have
to give it all up, he would go and talk with his counselor, who would
inspire him with new ambition, so that he would go to work again. So,
month after month, year after year, he struggled away with his
correspondence course in electrical engineering. Little by little, he got
hold of the technical knowledge necessary for professional engineering
work.
A VICTORY FOR THE CORRESPONDENCE SCHOOL GRADUATE
At first he was greatly handicapped by the prejudice of some of his
superiors against correspondence school courses, which were very much
newer at that time than they are now and regarded as much more of an
experiment. His superiors were graduates of universities and looked down
with contempt upon any merely "practical" man who tried to qualify as an
engineer by studying at home at night and without the personal oversight
of authorities in a university. But D.B. was dogged in his persistence.
Missing no opportunities to improve and advance himself, he was,
nevertheless, respectful and diplomatic. And he repeatedly demonstrated
his grasp of the subject. Eventually he was promoted to the position of
superintendent of the electric light and power company. There was only
one man then between him and the desired goal, namely, the chief engineer.
At the time B. became superintendent the chief engineer was a young
university graduate, and was perhaps a little too egotistical and dogmatic
on account of his degree and honors. Soon after B. took charge as
superintendent, the company decided to build a new central power station.
The design was left to the young chief engineer, and the practical work of
carrying it out to our friend. When, finally, the design was complete and
passed on to D.B. for execution, he felt that it was defective in several
ways. He spent several nights of hard study on it and became convinced
that he was right. He therefore took the whole matter to his superior and
tried to explain to him how the design was defective.
"I made that plan, and it is right," said the chief engineer. "Your
business isn't to criticize the plan, but to go ahead and carry it out.
Now, I don't care to hear any more about it."
"But," said B., "if we carry out this plan the way it stands, it will mean
the investment on the part of the company of something like $35,000 which
will be practically dead loss. I can't conscientiously go to work and
carry out this plan as it stands. I am sure if you will go over it again
carefully, pay attention to my suggestions, and consult the proper
authorities, you will find that I am right."
"That's what comes of studying a correspondence course," said the chief.
"You get a little smattering of knowledge into your head. Part of it is
worth while, and part of it is purely theoretical and useless, and because
you have had some practical experience, you imagine you know it all. Now,
you have lots yet to learn, B., and I am willing to help you, but I want
to tell you that that plan and those specifications are technically
correct, and all you need to do is to go ahead and carry them out. I'll
take the responsibility."
"Very well," said B., "if you want those plans and specifications carried
out as they are, you can get someone else to do it. I would rather resign
than to superintend this job which I know to be technically wrong."
His resignation had to be passed upon by the general manager, who, before
accepting it, sent for him.
"What's the trouble, B.?" said he. "I thought you were getting along fine.
We like your work, and we thought you liked the company. Why do you want
to leave?"
"I don't like to say anything about it, Mr. Jones," said B., "but the
plans passed on to me to carry out in the construction of that new
power-house down in Elm Street are technically wrong. They mean an
expenditure of $35,000 along certain lines which will be pretty nearly a
dead loss. When you come to try to use your equipment there, you will find
that it all has to be taken out and replaced by the proper materials.
"Suppose you get the plans, B., and show them to me, and explain just what
you mean," said the general manager, who was also a professional engineer
of many years' successful experience.
So B. produced the plans and explained his proposition.
"Why, of course you are right," said the general manager. "I'm surprised
that Mr. F. should have thought for a moment that he could use that type."
The result was that B. was reinstated and the chief engineer reprimanded.
Stung by his reprimand and angered because the correspondence school
graduate had bested him, the chief engineer resigned. His resignation was
accepted and B. became chief engineer of the company. Later, he was
promoted to the position of chief engineer of an even larger corporation,
and, finally, occupied an executive position as managing engineer for a
municipal light and power plant in one of the large cities of the country.
THE GENESIS OF AN INVENTOR
Some years ago we spent a few months in a very comfortable and homelike
hotel in one of the largest cities in the Middle West. Down in a nook of
the basement of this hotel was a private electric light plant. In charge
of the plant was an old Scotch engineer delightful for his wise sayings
and quaint philosophy. The fireman, a young man named T., was rather a
puzzle to us. He had all the marks of unusual mechanical ability, and yet
he seemed to take only the slightest interest in his work, and was
constantly being reproved by his chief for laziness, irresponsibility, and
neglect of duty. "What's the use?" he asked us, after we gained his
confidence, and had asked him why he did not take greater interest in his
work. "What's the use? After years of experience shoveling coal into a
firebox and monkeying around these old grease pots, I suppose I might get
an engineer's certificate. Then what would I be? Why, just like old Mack
there--$75 to $100 a month, sitting around a hot, close basement twelve
hours a day or, perhaps, twelve hours at night, nothing to look forward
to, no further advancement, no more pay, and, finally, T.B. would carry me
off because of the lack of fresh air, sunshine and outdoor exercise. No,
thank you!"
"Well, then, why don't you do something else?"
"I don't know what to do. I like mechanics, and some job of this kind is
the only thing I know how to do or would care to do. Yet, I don't care for
this. I must confess that I am puzzled as to what in the world I was made
for, anyhow."
"What you need is to give your time and attention to the intellectual side
of engineering rather than the purely mechanical and physical. You are of
the intellectual type, and you are as badly placed trying to do mere
mechanical work as if you were an eagle trying to cross the country on
foot."
"I believe you are right in that. I am going to get an education."
AMBITION, INDUSTRY, AND PERSISTENCE
He began at once with correspondence courses in mechanical and electrical
engineering. Twelve hours a day he shoveled coal in his basement
boiler-room. Some four to eight hours a day he studied in his little room
up under the roof. It takes an immense amount of courage, persistence, and
perseverance to complete a correspondence course in engineering, as anyone
who has tried it well knows. There is lacking any inspiration from the
personality and skill of a teacher. There is no spur to endeavor from
association with other students doing the same kind of work and striving
for the same degree. There are no glee clubs, athletic games,
fraternities, prizes, scholarships, and other aids to the imagination and
ambition, such as are found in a university. It is all hard, lonely work.
But what the student learns, he knows. And, somehow, he gains a great
knack for the practical use of his knowledge. Night after night T. toiled
away, until he had finished his course and secured his certificate of
graduation.
By this time T.'s ambition began to assume a definite form. He was
determined that he should have the honor and the emoluments which would
come to him as a result of solving one of the toughest problems in
engineering--one which had puzzled both technical and practical men for
many years. He therefore saved up a few dollars and, packing his little
belongings, departed to complete his education in one of the most famous
technical engineering schools of the country. Tuition was high. Board cost
a good deal of money. Books were distressingly expensive. Tools, machine
shop fees, and other incidentals ate into the little store he had brought
with him, and inside of two months it was gone. He hunted around and
finally secured a job running an engine. This meant twelve hours in the
engine room every night. In addition, he did what other students
considered a full day's work attending lectures and carrying on his
studies in the laboratories and classroom. He went almost without
necessary food and clothing in order to buy books, tools, and other
equipment. But he was young, he was strong, and, above all, he was happy
in his mental picture of the great object of his ambition. In due time he
had taken his degree, having specialized on all subjects bearing upon the
solution of his great problem.
PATIENT TOIL HIS GENIUS
Coming back from the university after having finished his course, T. found
a position as engineer in an electric light and power plant. Then he began
saving up money to purchase the necessary equipment for a laboratory of
his own. Finally, he had a little building and was one of the proudest
young men we ever saw. Little by little, he added to his apparatus the
things he needed. Several nights a week, after his hard day's work in the
engine room, he toiled, trying to solve the problem upon which he had
fixed his mind. About this time he married, and he and his wife moved into
a narrow little flat. Years passed, children came into the little flat,
and still he worked at his problem. Again and again, and still again, he
failed. Yet, each time he failed, he told us he was coming closer to the
solution. At last came the day, after many heart-breaking experiences,
when the problem, while not fully solved, had at least revealed a solution
which was commercially valuable.
His years of self-denial and toil seemed to be about to end in success.
But he found that he had only begun another long period of discouraging
and almost desperate work. It was a struggle to scrape together the
necessary funds for securing a patent. If he was to complete and perfect
his invention, he must have more capital. So, with his model, he made the
rounds of manufacturers of engines, manufacturers who used engines,
railroads, steamboat companies, electric light and power companies; in
fact, everywhere he thought he might get some encouragement and financial
assistance. His little family was living on short rations. He himself had
not eaten as he ought for years. One after another, the men in authority
said: "Yes, your proposition looks good, but I don't think it can ever be
made practical. Some of the brightest men in the engineering profession
have spent years trying to solve that problem, and have not found the
answer to it. I do not believe that it will ever be found. You seem to
have come near it, but yet you have not found it, and we cannot see our
way clear to put any money into it."
REAPING HIS REWARD
T. argued, pleaded, and demanded an opportunity for a demonstration, but
all in vain. Then, one day, a lawyer, who had been consulted by T., said:
"I have no money to invest in anything myself, but I'll tell you frankly
and honestly, it looks good to me. Now, I happen to be on very good terms
with Mr. J. over at the T. & B. Company. He has been interested in this
problem for years and has worked along toward its solution. He understands
every phase of it, and I believe he will do something with your device.
Unless I am mistaken, he will be interested in it, and will give you an
opportunity to demonstrate it. If your demonstration works out as well as
you think it will, he has the authority to put you in a position where you
can go ahead and perfect it if it is perfectible. I will give you a letter
of introduction to him." And thus began T.'s prosperity. He now lives in a
beautiful home on a wide boulevard. His invention, still short of
perfection, but highly valuable, is coming slowly into use, and would
probably be in very widespread use were it not for the fact that he is
constantly working on it, perfecting it, improving it, and hoping finally
to have a complete solution to the problem.