MACHINERY AND THE QUALITY OF LABOUR.
Sec. 1. _Kinds of Labour which Machinery supersedes._
Sec. 2. _Influence of Machine-evolution upon intensity of physical
work._
Sec. 3. _Machinery and the length of the working day._
Sec. 4. _The Education of Working with Machinery._
Sec. 5. _The levelling tendency of Machinery--The subordination of
individual capacity in work._
Sec. 1. In considering the influence of Machinery upon the quality of
labour--_i.e._, skill, duration, intensity, intellectuality, etc., we
have first to face two questions--What are the qualities in which
machinery surpasses human labour? What are the kinds of work in which
machinery displaces man? Now, since the whole of industrial work
consists in moving matter, the advantage of machinery must consist in
the production and disposition of motive power. The general economies
of machinery were found to be two[198]--(1) The increased quantity of
motive force it can apply to industry; (2) greater exactitude in the
regular application of motive force (_a_) in time--the exact
repetition of the same acts at regulated intervals, or greater
evenness in continuity, (_b_) in place--exact repetition of the same
movements in space.[199] All the advantages imputed to machinery in
the economy of human time, the utilisation of waste material, the
display of concentrated force or the delicacy of manipulation, are
derivable from these two general economies. Hence it follows that
wherever the efficiency of labour power depends chiefly upon the
output of muscular force in motive power, or precision in the
regulation of muscular force, machinery will tend to displace human
labour. Assuming, therefore, that displaced labour finds other
employment, it will be transferred to work where machinery has not the
same advantage over human labour--that is to say, to work where the
muscular strain or the need for regularity of movement is less. At
first sight it will thus seem to follow that every displacement of
labour by machinery will bring an elevation in the quality of labour,
that is, will increase the proportion of labour in employments which
tax the muscles less and are less monotonous. This is in the main the
conclusion towards which Professor Marshall inclines.[200]
So far as each several industry is concerned, it has been shown that
the introduction of machinery signifies a net reduction of employment,
unless the development of trade is largely extended by the fall of
price due to the diminution in expenses of production. It cannot be
assumed as a matter of course that the labour displaced by the
introduction of automatic folders in printing will be employed in less
automatic work connected with printing. It may be diverted from
muscular monotony in printing to the less muscular monotony of
providing some new species of luxury, the demand for which is not yet
sufficiently large or regular to justify the application of
labour-saving machinery. But even assuming that the whole or a large
part of the displaced labour is engaged in work which is proved to
have been less muscular or less automatic by the fact that it is not
yet undertaken by machinery, it does not necessarily follow that there
is a diminution in the aggregate of physical energy given out, or in
the total "monotony" of labour.
One direct result of the application of an increased proportion of
labour power to the kinds of work which are less "muscular" and less
"automatic" in character will be a tendency towards greater division
of labour and more specialisation in these employments. Now the
economic advantages of increased specialisation can only be obtained
by increased automatic action. Thus the routine or automatic
character, which constituted the monotony of the work in which
machinery displaced these workers, will now be imparted to the higher
grades of labour in which they are employed, and these in their turn
will be advanced towards a condition which will render them open to a
new invasion of machinery.
Since the number of productive processes falling under machinery is
thus continually increased, it will be seen that we are not entitled
to assume that every displacement of labour by machinery will increase
the proportion of labour engaged in lighter and more interesting forms
of non-mechanical labour.
Sec. 2. Nor is it shown that the growth of machine-production tends to
diminish the total physical strain upon the worker, though it greatly
lessens the output of purely muscular activity. As regards those
workers who pass from ordinary manual work to the tending of
machinery, there is a good deal of evidence to show that, in the
typical machine industries, their new work taxes their physical vigour
quite as severely as the old work. Professor Shield Nicholson quotes
the following striking statement from the _Cotton Factory Times_:--"It
is quite a common occurrence to hear young men who are on the best
side of thirty years of age declare they are so worked up with the
long mules, coarse counts, quick speeds, and inferior material, that
they are fit for nothing at night, only going to bed and taking as
much rest as circumstances will allow. There are few people who will
credit such statements; nevertheless they are true, and can be
verified any day in the great majority of the mills in the spinning
districts."
Schulze-Gaevernitz shows that the tendency in modern cotton-spinning
and weaving, especially in England, has been both to increase the
number of spindles and looms which an operative is called upon to
tend, and to increase the speed of spinning. "A worker tends to-day
more than twice or nearly three times as much machinery as his father
did; the number of machines in use has increased more than five-fold
since that time, while the workers have not quite doubled their
numbers."[201] With regard to speed, "since the beginning of the
seventies the speed of the spinning machines alone has increased about
15 per cent."[202]
We are not, however, at liberty to infer from Schulze-Gaevernitz's
statement regarding the increased number of spindles and looms an
operative tends, that an intensification of labour correspondent with
this increase of machinery has taken place, nor can the increased
output per operative be imputed chiefly to improved skill or energy of
the operative. Much of the labour-saving character of recent
improvements, especially in the carding, spinning, and intermediate
processes, has reduced to an automatic state work which formerly taxed
the energy of the operative, who has thereby been enabled to tend more
machinery and to quicken the speed without a net increase of working
energy.
In the carding, slubbing, intermediate, roving, and spinning machinery
there is in every case an increase in the amount of machinery tended.
But carding machinery has been revolutionised within the last few
years; the drawing frame has been made to stop automatically when
there is a fault, thus relieving the tender of a certain amount of
supervision; in the slubbing, intermediate, and roving frames certain
detailed improvements have been effected, as is also the case in the
spinning mules and sizing machines.
To some extent the increased quantity of spindles, etc., and increased
speed may be regarded as set off by relief due to these improvements.
Moreover, though there has no doubt been some general speeding up, any
exact measurement is hardly possible, for the speed of machinery is
very often regulated by the amount of work each process is made to do;
for example, if a roving frame makes a coarse hank, the speed of the
spindles does not require to be so great as when the hank is finer; in
that case the mule draws out the sliver to a greater extent than when
the roving is finer, or, in other words, the mule in one case does the
work of the roving frame to a certain extent.
The general opinion seems to be that in the spinning mills, roughly
speaking, 75 per cent. of the increased output per operative may be
imputed to improved machinery, 25 per cent. to increased intensity of
labour in regard to quantity of spindles or "speeding up."
In the weaving processes more specific measurement is possible, though
even there much depends upon the quality of yarn that is used. Here a
reduction in the working day is followed by an increase in speed
without any labour-saving improvements. Previous to the Factory
legislation of 1878, the speed of looms was generally from 170 to 190
picks per minute during the ten hours' day. In the course of about two
years after the reduction of hours (6 per cent.) the general speed had
become 190 to 200 picks, without change in machinery or raw material,
a growth which must have proportionately increased the intensity of
the work of weaving. A deterioration in the quality of the raw
material used for producing cotton cloth is also commonly assigned as
a fact involving more care on the part of the weaver, and increased
danger and disagreeability of work owing to the heavy sizing and
steaming it has brought into vogue. It is not easy to argue much
respecting increased intensity of labour from the increased average of
looms attended, for, as was recently admitted in evidence before the
Labour Commission, everything depends upon the class of looms and of
goods they are manufacturing. "It is quite as easy to drive five looms
of some classes as two of others."[203] But the prevalence of the
"driving" system, by which the overlookers are paid a bonus on the
product of the looms under their charge, has admittedly induced, as it
was obviously designed to do, an increased intensity of labour.
Summing up the evidence, we are able to conclude that the shortening
of working hours and the improvements in machinery has been attended
by an increased effort per unit of labour time. In the words of an
expert, "the change to those actually engaged in practical work is to
lessen the amount of hard manual work of one class, but to increase
their responsibility, owing to being placed in charge of more
machinery, and that of a more expensive kind; while the work of the
more lowly skilled will be intensified, owing to increased production,
and that from an inferior raw material. I mean that to the operative
the improvements in machinery have been neutralised by the inferior
quality of raw material used, and I think it is fair to assume that
their work has been intensified at least in proportion to the increase
of spindles, etc."
The direct evidence drawn from this most highly-evolved machine
industry seems to justify the general opinion expressed by Professor
Nicholson, "It is clear that the use of machines, though apparently
labour-saving, often leads to an increase in the _quantity of labour_,
negatively, by not developing the mind, positively by doing harm to
the body."[204]
Sec. 3. When any muscular or other physical effort is required it is
pretty evident that an increased duration or a greater continuity in
the slighter effort may tax the body quite as severely as the less
frequent or constant application of a much greater bodily force. There
can be no question but that in a competitive industrial society there
exists a tendency to compensate for any saving of hard muscular, or
other physical effort afforded by the intervention of machinery in two
ways: first, by "forcing the pace"--_i.e._, compelling the worker to
attend more machines or to work more rapidly, thus increasing the
strain, if not upon the muscles, then upon the nerves; secondly, by
extending the hours of labour. A lighter form of labour spread over an
increased period of time, or an increased number of minor muscular
exertions substituted for a smaller number of heavier exertions within
the same period of time, may of course amount to an increased tax upon
the vital energy. It is not disputed that a general result of the
factory system has been to increase the average length of the working
day, if we take under our survey the whole area of machine-production
in modern industrial communities. This is only in part attributable to
the fact that workers can be induced to sell the same daily output of
physical energy as before, while in many cases a longer time is
required for its expenditure. Another influence of equal potency is
the economy of machinery effected by working longer hours. It is the
combined operation of these two forces that has lengthened the average
working day. Certain subsidiary influences, however, also deserve
notice, especially the introduction of cheap illuminants. Before the
cheap provision of gas, the working time was generally limited by
daylight. Not until the first decade of this century was gas
introduced into cotton-mills, and another generation elapsed before it
passed in general use in manufactories and retail shops.[205] Now a
portion of nature's rest has been annexed to the working day. There
are, of course, powerful social forces making for a curtailment of the
working day, and these forces are in many industries powerfully though
indirectly aided by machinery. Perhaps it would be right to say that
machinery develops two antagonistic tendencies as regards the length
of the working day. Its most direct economic influence favours an
extension of the working hours, for machinery untired, wasting power
by idleness, favours continuous work. But when the growing pace and
complexity of highly-organised machinery taxes human energy with
increasing severity, and compresses an increased human effort within a
given time, a certain net advantage in limiting the working day for an
individual begins to emerge, and it becomes increasingly advantageous
to work the machinery for shorter hours, or, where possible, to apply
"shifts" of workers.[206]
But in the present stage of machine-development the economy of the
shorter working day is only obtainable in a few trades and in a few
countries; the general tendency is still in the direction of an
extended working day.[207] The full significance of this is not
confined to the fact that a larger proportion of the worker's time is
consumed in the growing monotony of production. The curtailment of his
time for consumption, and a consequent lessening of the subjective
value of his consumables, must be set off against such increase in
real wages or purchasing power as may have come to him from the
increased productive power of machinery. The value of a shorter
working day consists not merely in the diminution of the burden of
toil it brings, but also in the fact that increased consumption time
enables the workers to get a fuller use of his purchased consumables,
and to enjoy various kinds of "free wealth" from which he was
precluded under a longer working day.[208] So far as machinery has
converted handicraftsmen into machine-tenders, it is extremely
doubtful whether it has lessened the strain upon their energies,
though we should hesitate to give an explicit endorsement to Mill's
somewhat rhetorical verdict. "It is questionable if all the mechanical
inventions yet made have lightened the day's toil of any human being."
At any rate we have as yet no security that machinery, owned by
individuals who do not themselves tend it, shall not be used in such a
way as to increase the physical strain of those who do tend it. "There
is a temptation," as Mr. Cunningham says, "to treat the machine as the
main element in production, and to make it the measure of what a man
ought to do, instead of regarding the man as the first consideration,
and the machine as the instrument which helps him; the machine may be
made the primary consideration, and the man may be treated as a mere
slave who tends it."[209]
Sec. 4. Now to come to the question of "monotony." Is the net tendency of
machinery to make labour more monotonous or less, to educate the
worker or to brutalise him? Does labour become more intellectual under
the machine? Professor Marshall, who has thoughtfully discussed this
question, inclines in favour of machinery. It takes away manual skill,
but it substitutes higher or more intellectual forms of skill.[210]
"The more delicate the machine's power the greater is the judgment and
carefulness which is called for from those who see after it."[211]
Since machinery is daily becoming more and more delicate, it would
follow that the tending of machinery would become more and more
intellectual. The judgment of Mr. Cooke Taylor, in the conclusion of
his admirable work, _The Modern Factory System_, is the same. "If man
were merely an intellectual animal, even only a moral and intellectual
one, it could scarcely be denied, it seems to us, that the results of
the factory system have been thus far elevating."[212] Mr. Taylor
indeed admits of the operative population that "they have deteriorated
artistically; but art is a matter of faculty, of perception, of
aptitude, rather than of intellect." This strange severance of Art
from Intellect and Morals, especially when we bear in mind that Life
itself is the finest and most valuable of Arts, will scarcely commend
itself to deeper students of economic movements. The fuller
significance of this admission will appear when the widest aspect of
the subject is discussed in our final chapter.
The question of the net intellectual effects of machinery is not one
which admits of positive answer. It would be open to one to admit with
Mr. Taylor that the operatives were growing more intellectual, and
that their contact with machinery exercises certain educative
influences, but to deny that the direct results of machinery upon the
workers were favourable to a wide cultivation of intellectual powers,
as compared with various forms of freer and less specialised manual
labour. The intellectualisation of the town operatives (assuming the
process to be taking place) may be attributable to the thousand and
one other influences of town life rather than to machinery, save
indirectly so far as the modern industrial centre is itself the
creation of machinery.[213] It is not, I think, possible at present to
offer any clear or definite judgment. But the following distinctions
seem to have some weight in forming our opinion.
The growth of machinery has acted as an enormous stimulus to the study
of natural laws. A larger and larger proportion of human effort is
absorbed in processes of invention, in the manipulation of commerce on
an increasing scale of magnitude and complexity, and in such
management of machinery and men as requires and educates high
intellectual faculties of observation, judgment, and speculative
imagination. Of that portion of workers who may be said, within
limits, to control machinery, there can be no question that the total
effect of machinery has been highly educative.
The growing size, power, speed, complexity of machinery, undoubtedly
makes the work of this class of workers "more intellectual." Some
measure of these educative influences even extends to the "hand" who
tends some minute portion of the machinery, so far as the proper
performance of his task requires him to understand other processes
than those to which his labour is directly and exclusively applied.
So likewise consideration must be taken of the skilled work of making
and repairing machinery. The engineers' shop and other workshops are
becoming every year a more and more important factor in the equipment
of a factory or mill. But though "breakdowns" are essentially erratic
and must always afford scope for ingenuity in their repair, even in
the engineers' shop there is the same tendency for machinery to
undertake all work of repair which can be brought under routine. So
the skilled work in making and repairing machinery is continually
being reduced to a minimum, and cannot be regarded, as Professor
Nicholson is disposed to regard it, as a factor of growing importance
in connection with machine-production. The more machinery is used, the
more skilled work of making and repairing will be required, it might
seem. But the rapidity with which machinery is invading these very
functions turns the scale in the opposite direction, at any rate so
far as the making of machinery is concerned. Statistics relating to
the number of those engaged in making machinery and tools show that
the proportion they bear to the whole working population is an
increasing one; but the rate of this increase is by no means
proportionate to the rate of increase in the use of machinery. While
the percentage of those engaged in making machinery and tools rises
from 1.7 in 1861 to 1.8 in 1871 and 1.9 in 1881, 2.0 in 1891, the
approximate increase of steam-power applied to fixed machinery and
locomotives shows a much more rapid rise,--from 2,100,000 horse-power
in 1860 to 3,040,000 in 1870 and 5,200,000 in 1880.[214] Moreover, an
increased proportion of machinery production is for export trade, so
that a large quantity of the labour employed in those industries is
not required to sustain the supply of machinery used in English work.
In repairs of machinery, the economy effected by the system of
interchangeable parts is one of growing magnitude, and tends likewise
to minimise the skilled labour of repair.[215]
Finally, it should be borne in mind that in several large industries
where machinery fills a prominent place, the bulk of the labour is not
directly governed by the machine. This fact has already received
attention in relation to railway workers. The character of the machine
certainly impresses itself upon these in different degrees, but in
most cases there is a large amount of detailed freedom of action and
scope for individual skill and activity.
Though the quality of intelligence and skill applied to the invention,
application, and management of machinery is constantly increasing,
practical authorities are almost unanimous in admitting that the
proportion which this skilled work bears to the aggregate of labour in
machine industry is constantly diminishing. Now, setting on one side
this small proportion of intelligent labour, what are we to say of the
labour of him who, under the minute subdivision enforced by machinery,
is obliged to spend his working life in tending some small portion of
a single machine, the whole result of which is continually to push
some single commodity a single step along the journey from raw
material to consumptive goods?
The factory is organised with military precision, the individual's
work is definitely fixed for him; he has nothing to say as to the plan
of his work or its final completion or its ultimate use. "The constant
employment on one sixty-fourth part of a shoe not only offers no
encouragement to mental activity, but dulls by its monotony the brains
of the employee to such an extent that the power to think and reason
is almost lost."[216]
The work of a machine-tender, it is urged, calls for "judgment and
carefulness." So did his manual labour before the machine took it
over. His "judgment and carefulness" are now confined within narrower
limits than before. The responsibility of the worker is greater,
precisely because his work is narrowed down so as to be related to and
dependent on a number of other operatives in other parts of the same
machine with whom he has no direct personal concern. Such realised
responsibility is an element in education, moral and intellectual. But
this gain is the direct result of the minute subdivision, and must
therefore be regarded as purchased by a narrowing of interest and a
growing monotony of work. It is questionable whether the vast majority
of machine workers get any considerable education, from the fact that
the machine in conjunction with which they work represents a huge
embodiment of the delicate skill and invention of many thousands of
active minds, though some value may be attached to the contention that
"the mere exhibition of the skill displayed and the magnitude of the
operations performed in factories can scarcely fail of some
educational effect."[217] The absence of any true apprenticeship in
modern factories prevents the detailed worker from understanding the
method and true bearing even of those processes which are closely
linked to that in which he is engaged. The ordinary machine-tender,
save in a very few instances, _e.g._, watchmaking, has no general
understanding of the work of a whole department. Present conditions do
not enable the "tender" to get out of machinery the educational
influence he might get. Professor Nicholson expresses himself
dubiously upon the educational value of the machine. "Machinery of
itself does not tend to develop the mind as the sea and mountains do,
but still it does not necessarily involve deterioration of general
mental ability."[218] Dr. Arlidge expresses a more decided opinion.
"Generally speaking, it may be asserted of machinery that it calls for
little or no brain exertion on the part of those connected with its
operations; it arouses no interest, and has nothing in it to quicken
or brighten the intelligence, though it may sharpen the sight and
stimulate muscular activity in some one limited direction."[219]
The work of machine-tending is never of course absolutely automatic
or without spontaneity and skill. To a certain limited extent the
"tender" of machinery rules as well as serves the machine; in seeing
that his portion of the machine works in accurate adjustment to the
rest, the qualities of care, judgment, and responsibility are evolved.
For a customary skill of wrist and eye which speedily hardens into an
instinct, is often substituted a series of adjustments requiring
accurate quantitative measurement and conscious reference to exact
standards. In such industries as those of watchmaking the factory
worker, though upon the average his work requires less manual
dexterity than the handworker in the older method, may get more
intellectual exercise in the course of his work. But though economists
have paid much attention to this industry, in considering the
character of machine-tending it is not an average example for a
comparison of machine labour and hand labour; for the extreme delicacy
of many of the operations even under machinery, the responsibility
attaching to the manipulation of expensive material, and the minute
adjustment of the numerous small parts, enable the worker in a watch
factory to get more interest and more mental training out of his work
than falls to the ordinary worker in a textile or metal factory.
Wherever the material is of a very delicate nature and the processes
involve some close study of the individual qualities of each piece of
material, as is the case with the more valuable metals, with some
forms of pottery, with silk or lace, elements of thought and skill
survive and may be even fostered under machine industry. A great part
of modern inventiveness, however, is engaged in devising automatic
checks and indicators for the sake of dispensing with detailed human
skill and reducing the spontaneous or thoughtful elements of tending
machinery to a minimum. When this minimum is reached the highly-paid
skilled workman gives place to the low-skilled woman or child, and
eventually the process passes over entirely into the hands of
machinery. So long, however, as human labour continues to co-operate
with machinery, certain elements of thought and spontaneity adhere to
it. These must be taken into account in any estimate of the net
educative influence of machinery. But though these mental qualities
must not be overlooked, exaggerated importance should not be attached
to them. The layman is often apt to esteem too highly the nature of
skilled specialist work. A locomotive superintendent of a railway was
recently questioned as to the quality of engine-driving. "After twenty
years' experience he declared emphatically that the very best
engine-drivers were those who were most mechanical and unintelligent
in their work, who cared least about the internal mechanism of the
engine."[220] Yet engine-driving is far less mechanical and monotonous
than ordinary tending of machinery.
So far as the man follows the machine and has his work determined for
him by mechanical necessity, the educative pressure of the latter
force must be predominant. Machinery, like everything else, can only
teach what it practises. Order, exactitude, persistence, conformity to
unbending law,--these are the lessons which must emanate from the
machine. They have an important place as elements in the formation of
intellectual and moral character. But of themselves they contribute a
one-sided and very imperfect education. Machinery can exactly
reproduce; it can, therefore, teach the lesson of exact reproduction,
an education of quantitative measurements. The defect of machinery,
from the educative point of view, is its absolute conservatism. The
law of machinery is a law of statical order, that everything conforms
to a pattern, that present actions precisely resemble past and future
actions. Now the law of human life is dynamic, requiring order not as
valuable in itself, but as the condition of progress. The law of human
life is that no experience, no thought or feeling is an exact copy of
any other. Therefore, if you confine a man to expending his energy in
trying to conform exactly to the movements of a machine, you teach him
to abrogate the very principle of life. Variety is of the essence of
life, and machinery is the enemy of variety. This is no argument
against the educative uses of machinery, but only against the
exaggeration of these uses. If a workman expend a reasonable portion
of his energy in following the movements of a machine, he may gain a
considerable educational value; but he must also have both time and
energy left to cultivate the spontaneous and progressive arts of life.
Sec. 5. It is often urged that the tendency of machinery is not merely
to render monotonous the activity of the individual worker, but to
reduce the individual differences in workers. This criticism finds
expression in the saying: "All men are equal before the machine." So
far as machinery actually shifts upon natural forces work which
otherwise would tax the muscular energy, it undoubtedly tends to put
upon a level workers of different muscular capacity. Moreover, by
taking over work which requires great precision of movement, there is
a sense in which it is true that machinery tends to reduce the workers
to a common level of skill, or even of un-skill.
"Whenever a process requires peculiar dexterity and steadiness of
hand, it is withdrawn as soon as possible from the cunning workman,
who is prone to irregularities of many kinds, and it is placed in
charge of a peculiar mechanism, so self-regulating that a child can
superintend it."[221]
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. But assuming that the difference in
recorded piece wages accurately represents difference in skill or
capacity of work--which is not quite the case--it seems evident that
there is less variation in capacity among machine-workers than among
workers engaged in employments where the work is more muscular, or is
conducted by human skill with simpler implements. The difference in
productive capacity between an English and a Hindoo navvy is
considerably greater than the difference between a Lancashire mill
operative and an operative in an equally well-equipped and organised
Bombay mill.
But this is by no means all that is signified by the "equality of
workers before the machine." It is the adaptability of the machine to
the weaker muscles and intelligence of women and children that is
perhaps the most important factor. The machine in its development
tends to give less and less prominence to muscle and high individual
skill in the mass of workers, more and more to certain qualities of
body and mind which not only differ less widely in different men, but
in which women and children are more nearly on a level with men. It is
of course true that considerable differences of individual skill and
effort survive in the typical machine industry. "Machine-weaving, for
instance, simple as it seems, is divided into higher and lower grades,
and most of those who work in the lower grades have not the stuff in
them that is required for weaving with several colours."[222] But the
general effect of machinery is to lessen rather than to increase
individual differences of efficiency. The tendency of machine industry
to displace male by female labour is placed beyond all question by the
statistics of occupations in England, which show since 1851 a regular
and considerable rise in the proportion of women to men workers in
most branches of manufacture. Legal restrictions, and in the more
civilised communities, the growth of a healthy public opinion, prevent
the economic force from being operative to the same degree so far as
children are concerned.
Those very qualities of narrowly restricted care and judgment,
detailed attention, regularity and patience, which we see to be
characteristic of machine work, are common human qualities in the
sense that they are within the capacity of all, and that even in the
degree of their development and practice there is less difference
between the highly-trained adult mechanic and the raw "half-timer"
than in the development and practice of such powers as machinery has
superseded. It must be recognised that machinery does exercise a
certain equalising influence by assigning a larger and larger relative
importance to those faculties which are specific as compared with
those which are individual.[223] "General ability" is coming to play a
more important part in industry than specialised ability,[3] and
though considerable differences may exist in the "general ability" of
individuals, the differences will be smaller than in specialised
abilities.[224]
The net influence of machinery upon the quality of labour, then, is
found to differ widely according to the relation which subsists
between the worker and the machine. Its educative influence,
intellectual and moral, upon those concerned with the invention,
management, and direction of machine industry, and upon all whose work
is about machinery, but who are not detailed machine-tenders, is of a
distinctly elevating character. Its effect, however, upon
machine-tenders in cases where, by the duration of the working day or
the intensity of the physical effort, it exhausts the productive
energy of the worker, is to depress vitality and lower him in the
scale of humanity by an excessive habit of conformity to the automatic
movements of a non-human motor. This human injury is not adequately
compensated by the education in routine and regularity which it
confers, or by the slight understanding of the large co-operative
purposes and methods of machine industry which his position enables
him to acquire.
FOOTNOTES:
[198] Cf. _supra_, chap. iii. Sec. 2.
[199] Karl Marx ranks the chief economies of machinery under two
heads--(1) Machinery supersedes the skill of men working with tools.
"The machine, which is the starting-point of the industrial
revolution, supersedes the workman, who handles a single tool, by a
mechanism operating with a number of similar tools, and set in motion
by a single motive power, whatever the form of that power may be." (2)
Machinery supersedes the strength of man. "Increase in the size of a
machine, and in the number of its working tools, calls for a more
massive mechanism to drive it; and this mechanism requires, in order
to overcome its resistance, a mightier moving power than that of man."
(_Capital_, vol. ii. pp. 370, 371.)
[200] _Principles of Economics_, 2nd edit., pp. 314, 322.
[201] _Der Grossbetrieb_, p. 120.
[202] _Ibid._, p. 117.
[203] Evidence given by Mr. T. Birtwistle.
[204] _Op. cit._, p. 82. Babbage, in laying stress on one of the
"advantages" of machinery, makes an ingenuous admission of this
"forcing" power. "One of the most singular advantages we derive from
machinery is the check it affords against the inattention, the
idleness, or the knavery of human agents." (_Economy of Machinery_, p.
39; cf. also Ure, _Philosophy of Manufactures_, p. 30.)
[205] Porter, _Progress of the Nation_, p. 590.
[206] Cf. Schulze-Gaevernitz, p. 115.
[207] For a fuller treatment of this subject, see the next chapter.
[208] Cf. Patten, _The Theory of Dynamic Economics_, chap. xi.
[209] _Uses and Abuses of Money_, p. 111.
[210] _Principles_, p. 315.
[211] _Ibid._, p. 316.
[212] Page 435.
[213] A similar difficulty in distinguishing town influences from
specific trade influences confronted Dr. Arlidge in his investigation
into diseases of employments. "It is a most difficult problem to
solve, especially in the case of an industrial town population, how
far the diseases met with are town-made and how far trade-made; the
former almost always predominates." (_Diseases of Occupation_, p. 33.)
[214] Mulhall, _Dictionary of Statistics_, p. 545.
[215] Cf. Marshall, _Principles of Economics_, vol. i. p. 315.
[216] D.A. Wells, _Contemporary Review_, 1889, p. 392.
[217] Taylor, _Modern Factory System_, p. 435.
[218] Cf. the comparison of conditions of town and country labour in
Adam Smith's _Wealth of Nations_, Bk. I., chap. x., part 2.
[219] _Diseases of Occupations_, pp. 25, 26.
[220] _The Social Horizon_, p. 22.
[221] Ure, _Philosophy of Manufactures_, chap. i. p. 19.
[222] Marshall, _Principles of Economics_, p. 265.
[223] Cf. chap. x.
[224] Cf. Marshall, p. 265.