Accordingly, one fine morning, the members of the rival firm of Russett & Tan called at the factory, and asked to inspect the new machine.
“Certainly! certainly!” was Mr. Horne’s courteous reply, and he led the way to the cutting department, chatting pleasantly as he went.
The big machine was a splendid sight. An operator had just finished giving a polish to the shining brass balls of the governor on the engine. Every bar and rod and bearing was polished until it glistened. The nickel plate gleamed silvery white, the black wheels and castings were bright as mirrors, the brasswork shone like gold, and the knives glittered and sparkled as they flashed back and forth through the many thicknesses of leather. It was a goodly machine, and did its work with a noiseless, beautiful accuracy, a swerveless certainty of execution, and an unconscious magnificence of strength and power, that put to shame the puny efforts of the merely human laborers who toiled beside it, straining every nerve to keep the great knives fed and the way cleared before them.
There is nothing more magnificent than a great machine or engine at work. The locomotive, pulling its long trains up grades and across levels,—the great ocean steamer, walking steadily across the expanse of seas, the mighty press, turning off a thousand complete newspapers a minute,—all these evidences of human power and ingenuity are enough to make one proud of the age in which he lives, and the race to which he belongs.
Something of this sort Mr. Russett said to Mr. Horne, as the three gentlemen stood watching the machine at work.
“Yes, indeed! yes, indeed!” assented Horne. “We manufacturers, in particular, owe everything to labor-saving machinery. This machine, for instance, has enabled us to do away with nearly one-fourth of the men we heretofore employed. In fact, in the item of saved labor alone, it has nearly paid for itself since we put it in, about a year ago. Within the next six months it will have paid for itself, and we shall be in a position to realize fully from our foresight in securing it so early in the day.”
“What I want to see,” said Mr. Tan, laughing, “is a machine that will enable us to do away with labor altogether. The dictations of the workingmen are coming to be simply outrageous.”
“That’s what I say,” said Horne. “We employers and our capital are being crippled, handicapped, all but pushed to the wall, by the insatiate demands of labor. Labor is coming to absorb all our gains. Why, fully ninety per cent. of the entire income of the United States is now paid out for labor and wages, while only ten per cent. comes to capital as a remuneration for having saved it up to carry on useful enterprises. I declare, we have sometimes been tempted to go out of business altogether, and invest our capital in some safe, conservative way, so as to be able to enjoy life, and be free from the importunities of labor and the annoyance of strikes and arbitration courts.”
“I know how that is,” said Russett. “Our men struck, last year, on account of a paltry cut of ten cents on a hundred. There’s one good thing about a machine. It can’t strike.” And the three representatives of injured and hard-pressed capital returned to the business office.