October 22, 1859.] HANDS AND MACHINES. 347
being a builder in the full sense of the term. In
common parlance carriage-builders were at that
time analogous to watchmakers; they compiled
carriages just as watchmakers compile watches.
They bought wheels and axles, and springs, and
iron-work, and made wooden frames to which to
apply them. Thus joinery, painting, and upholstery comprised the whole of their art. They
were guiltless of steam-engines or labour-saving
processes. The sawpit, the axe, the hand-saw, the
plane, and the auger, were united to manipulate
masses of timber requiring three to four men to
lift them. Under the system of road-carriages,
one man and at most one mate executed a piece
of work, but a railway-carriage required several
men, one of them, the leader, being the artist to
settle the measurements, the others mere handicraftsmen.
So John Smith, instead of being a mere contributor of a part of a carriage, became in addition a carriage compiler also. But he very soon found that to do this profitably it must be done on a large scale. He therefore boldly built a factory in which steam and all like known appliances were got together. A commercial foreman to deal with prime costs and estimates, and a mechanical foreman to overlook construction, were engaged by John Smith upon the intelligible principle that while paying them a living salary, that salary should increase in a certain proportion with the amount of profits. And so once more to work.
Things did not go smoothly. On one occasion a complaint was made that some twenty carriages that should all have been of exact length varied from two to three inches. The workmen were appealed to, and denied the fact. They were directed to measure them themselves, and it then came out that each working by his own two-foot rule, and the rules differing from each other in length, some too short and some too long, the increase or diminution multiplied several times over became something considerable. Moreover, the cost of labour was so great, as to leave no profit.
So John Smith called unto him his henchmen or foremen, Goodwin Gamelye and Bowie Chanter, to hold council together, and John Smith opened the debate.
“Now, my good fellows, first of all, we can’t carry on business without profit, and the sum of wages is so large, that no profit is left.”
“I can’t make the wages less,” said Gamelye, “the men are paid no more than in other factories; and as it is, they don’t earn more than enough to keep themselves and families.”
“Quite right, so far,” said the master. “If we can’t afford to keep well-paid men we must give up business. But how do other people manage?”
“Why, sir, by means you won’t use. They get larger prices really by getting leave to depart from the specifications; the competition is not a fair one, for the execution of the work goes by favour.”
“Do they put less work in?”
“Less work and worse work, and worse mate- rial.”
“Well, Gamelye, but we don’t mean to compete in that mode. Can’t we manage to pay better wages than other people, and get the pick
of the workmen? Have more piecemen and less
daymen. ”
. “I don’t like the system!” put in Chanter.
“Your reasons,” said the master.
“Why, we make a bargain with a pieceman to do a piece of work for a price, because the piece- man can draw chalk lines on a black board, and knows how to put the work together, and then he employs five or six other hands at day wages, which hands can’t draw, and so, nolus bolus , they must play second fiddle.”
“What wages do the daymen get?”
“Whatever the pieceman likes to give them,” replied Gamelye.
“And so we get the men who will work for least money under the pieceman,” said the master.
“Exactly.”
“Well, then, as sure as my name is John Smith, we’ll have no more of that. Every man and boy shall have his own money paid into his own hands every Saturday afternoon, and by that means we will settle good living wages, and have all cheerful faces about us.”
“But,” said Chanter, “are we to find day-men for the piecemen?”
“No; let them find their own men, but we will pay them, and the piecemen will take their work with the understanding that we pay their day- men and deduct the wages from their account.”
“Won’t do, sir!” said Chanter; “they’ll bar- gain with those they take on, to give them back a part of their pay.”
“That we can’t help; but we can encourage the daymen to tell, and discharge any pieceman whom we find out, and keep a sharp look-out. More than that, we will let any dayman become a pieceman who shows the capacity. Whoever comes in at the gates shall rise from errand-boy to be a pieceman or draughtsman according to his natural aptitude. And now what next, Chanter?”
“Why the chaps pretend to find their own tools, but, having been long out of work, they are pawned, so when a fellow wants to bore a hole he runs off a hundred yards to borrow an auger from another man, and before he has finished boring the hole the man comes for it. So half the time is lost in running about. And so with chisels and hammers and other things. They seldom have more than two or three planes and a saw.”
“Well, Chanter, suppose we were to find our own augers and chisels and hammers, and lend them to the men instead of their lending them to the pawnbroker; how would that do?”
“Well, sir, that would do very well, if we keep back some wages to pay for breakages and loss. And there would be another advantage. The hole would be bored to the right size, instead of using a three-quarter inch auger for a seven-eight inch hole.”
This system was consequently put in practice with decided advantage. At the end of a few weeks John Smith again entered into council with Chanter.
“I think we had better put the chisels, augers, and saws in charge of the steam-engine.”
“How so, sir?”
“Use machinery for wood as we do for iron.”
“The men will all turn out, if we do, on strike.”