I am very glad that I have now received the appointment as checker
which my friend in office promised me some time ago. I shall no
longer have to be employed in the workshop. I only wish Franz had the
same good luck, and could get away from his compositor’s desk. Not
for one moment that we are above our trades, but I know that Franz
feels exactly as I do, and the style in which work is now done in all
workshops does not suit Franz and me a bit. One does not work merely
for the sake of a bit of bread, and nothing more. Schiller was one of
the bourgeois, but notwithstanding this, I always liked those lines of
his:
“’Tis this indeed mankind doth grace,
(And hence the gift to understand,)
First in his inward self to trace
All that he fashions with his hand.”
Unfortunately, our mates in the workshops nowadays are not conscious of
any such feeling. So far is this from being the case that anybody would
think workshops are simply places to kill time in, and nothing more.
The universal watchword is:
“Don’t push on too fast,
Lest the laggards be last.”
Piece-work and working in gangs have ceased. This is only natural, as
such styles of working could never be brought into harmony with the
ideas of equality of wages and of working hours. But what Franz does
not quite like, as he writes me, is the way they have now of spinning
the work out so. In spite of sure and regular wages, they say:
“If the job is not finished to-day it will be finished to-morrow.”
Diligence and zeal are looked upon as stupidity and perversity. And
indeed why should one be industrious? The most diligent comes off no
better than the laziest. No one is any longer, so writes Franz, the
forger of the links of his own happiness, but others forge the links
which shall fetter you just as it pleases them.
This is the strain in which Franz writes, and this time he is not so
much in the wrong as he usually is.
There is no describing the amount of damage done to material and tools
through inattention and carelessness. It would have driven me crazy if,
when I was a master, I had been plagued with such a crew of workmen as
I now have to work with. The other day it got rather too much for me,
and, my patience being exhausted, I made a little appeal to them in
these words:
“Colleagues, the Community expects every man to do his duty. We have
only eight hours’ work. You are all old Socialists, and you will
remember the hope Bebel used to have that, when the new order of things
came, the pure moral atmosphere would stimulate every man to excel his
neighbour. Only just reflect, comrades, that we no longer toil for
capitalists and plunderers, but for the Community. And everyone of us
gets back a part of whatever benefit the Community reaps as a whole.”
“Fine preaching!” they said mockingly. “It is a pity we have no longer
occasion for parsons. Bebel promised us a four hours’ day, and not an
eight hours’ one. The Community is a large affair. Shall I work and
slave for the 50 millions whilst the other 49,999,999 take it easy?
What could I buy myself with this one fifty-millionth part of the fruit
of my additional industry, supposing I were really to get it back?”
And then they all sang in chorus:
“Is our Community not to thy taste?
Get thee gone to another with all possible haste.”
Since that, I have, of course, not said another word. Franz has had
experiences similar to mine. The newspaper in their office is hardly
ever ready for going to press at the right time, although they have
half as many compositors again on it as in old times. The longer the
night the greater the quantity of beer which is drunk during work, and
the greater the number of printers’ errors.
Lately the foreman was unwell, and Franz had to take his place for a
day or two. Franz on one occasion respectfully asked the others to
make a little less noise, and upon this the whole body struck up the
“Marseillaise,” taking care to especially emphasize the words, “Down
with despotism.”
There are still masters and foremen in the workshops just as there were
formerly, only with this difference, that they are now chosen by the
workmen. When no longer acceptable to the workmen they are deposed.
Hence they have to take care to keep in with the leaders in a shop, and
with the majority. Those persons who, like Franz and myself, do not
altogether go with the masses, are in rather a bad fix. At one time
they get badly treated by the masters, and at another by the mates.
And the worst of it is, you can no more get away from such a workshop
than a soldier can escape from the company in which his drill-sergeant
ill-treats him.
The late Chancellor foresaw all this well enough, but he was unable to
alter it. The list of penalties enacted under his leadership against
all infractions of the duty of labour is to be seen in all workshops
where it has not yet been torn down. In this list penalties are
threatened against idleness, inattention, disobedience, carelessness,
impertinence to superiors, and a host of offences. These penalties
consist of the withdrawal of the money-certificate, the reduction of
the meat rations, the deprivation of the entire mid-day meal, and even
of incarceration. But where there is none to bring a charge there is no
need of a judge.
Directors and managers are chosen just in the same way as masters and
foremen, and they have to look to it that they do not ruffle those who
elect them.
In those rare cases where denunciations do take place, the judicial
proceedings are tedious, and full of detail. Recently, however, a
number of builders got denounced by passers-by, who had their patience
tired out by the lengthy intervals of rest taken, and by the careful
scrutiny applied to every individual brick. On another occasion, the
inmates of an entire establishment were transferred to another part
of the country. But, as a rule, this transference to other parts only
arises from political reasons. It is on this account that the Younkers
are now agitating to obtain for all working-men the same permanence
which judges enjoy in their office.
This matter of removal to other places has its odd side. The principle
of social equality requires that every man, no matter where he be,
finds everything precisely as it was in the old place. He finds exactly
the same wages, the same food, the same dwelling, and so on, as those
he left behind him.
Well, Rome was not built in a day. And this very spirit of selfishness
which we see so much of in our workshops, what is it other than the
evil inheritance left us by a state of society in which every man
strove to gain an advantage over every other man? Our new schools and
institutions will very soon create that “moral atmosphere” in which the
tree of Socialism will grow and flourish, and extend the welcome shadow
of its branches to the whole human species.