History 121
"He becomes almost a part of the machinery"--
A machinist describes specialization in the machine-tool industry, 1883
Testimony of John Morrison, August 28, 1883, U.S. Congress, Senate, Report of the Committee of the Senate upon the Relations between Labor and Capital (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1885), I, 755-759.
Q. Is there any difference between the conditions under which machinery is made now and those which existed ten years ago?
A. A great deal of difference.
Q. State the differences as well as you can.
A. Well, the trade has been subdivided and those subdivisions have been again subdivided, so that a man never learns the machinist's trade now. Ten years ago he learned, not the whole of the trade, but a fair portion of it. Also, there is more machinery used in the business, which again makes machinery. In the case of making the sewing machine, for instance, you find that the trade is so subdivided that a man is not considered a machinist at all. Hence, it is merely laborers' work and it is laborers that work at that branch of our trade. The different branches of the trade are divided and subdivided so that one man may make just a particular part of a machine and may not know anything whatever about another part of the same machine. In that way machinery is produced a great deal cheaper than it used to be formerly, and in fact, through this system of work, 100 men are able to do now what it took 300 or 400 men to do fifteen years ago. By the use of machinery and the subdivision of the trade they so simplify the work that it is made a great deal easier and put together a great deal faster. There is no system of apprenticeship, I may say, in the business. You simply go in and learn whatever branch you are put at, and you stay at that unless you are changed to another. . . .
Q. Have you noticed the effect upon the intellect of this plan of keeping a man at one particular branch?
A. Yes. It has a very demoralizing effect upon the mind throughout. The man thinks of nothing else but that particular branch; he knows that he cannot leave that particular branch and go to any other; he has got no chance whatever to learn anything else because he is kept steadily and constantly at that particular thing, and of course his intellect must be narrowed by it.
Q. And does he not finally acquire so much skill in the manipulation of his particular part of the business that he does it without any mental effort?
A. Almost. In fact he becomes almost a part of the machinery. . . .
Q. What is the prospect for a man now working in one of these machine shops, a man who is temperate and economical and thrifty to become a boss or a manufacturer of machinery himself from his own savings? Could a man do it without getting aid from some relative who might die and leave him a fortune, or without drawing a lottery prize, or something of that sort?
A. Well, speaking generally, there is no chance. They have lost all desire to become bosses now.
Q. Why have they lost that desire?
A. Why, because the trade has become demoralized. First they earn so small wages; and, next, it takes so much capital to become a boss now that they cannot think of it, because it takes all they can earn to live. . . .
Q. I am requested to ask you this question: Dividing the public, as is commonly done, into the upper, middle, and lower classes, to which class would you assign the average workingman of your trade at the time when you entered it, and to which class would you assign him now?
A. I now assign them to the lower class. At the time I entered the trade I should assign them as merely hanging on to the middle class, ready to drop out at any time. . . .