Life in a Railway Factory

by Alfred Williams

There is a great deal of talk, chiefly with a political bias, about the sheds, of getting back to the land. Many of the men tell you they are sick of town life and conditions and would like to see themselves established upon a dozen acres of land far away from the noise of the factory, but they never make the slightest effort towards the consummation of the wish. The fact is that, notwithstanding all the punishments and hardships endured in the workshop, they are still strongly attached to it or to the life they are enabled to live by reason of it. They have no intention whatever at heart of changing their occupation. They are content to mix with the crowd, and are unable to withstand the novelty and excitement of the town existence.

During the many years I have spent in the works I have known of but one case in which a man left the shed to go back to the land as a small working farmer. He had always been careful and thrifty, and seemed to be well fitted for the agricultural life, but he could not succeed in it. After five or six years of hard labour, trying in vain to prosper, he returned to the shed, a disappointed and ruined man: he had spent his savings and lost the whole of his small capital. He is still working in the shed, and he has no intention of repeating the experiment. The wages at the works, though low as compared with those obtainable at other towns, are much higher than what the farm labourer receives. Youths of eighteen years of age in the sheds often draw more than the carter or cowman, who may have to maintain big families.

Consequently, while the cry of “Back to the land” is heard on all sides, there is at the same time a most passionate desire to get away from it and to come into the town to work and live; whoever is of the requisite age will be certain to appear at the factory gates to try and obtain admission there. The whole countryside, within a radius of six or eight miles of the town, is almost destitute of good strong workmen. Only the feeble and decrepit are left behind to work on the farms — those who cannot pass the physical tests and those who formerly worked in the factory and were discharged through old age or other causes of unfitness. Once a man becomes settled in the factory he is very reluctant to leave it. Notwithstanding the rigour of the system imposed, he usually remains there till the end of his working days, unless he happens to meet with an accident or dismissal. He soon loses his self-confidence and independent spirit. The world is considerably narrowed down in his view; he feels bound to the life with indissoluble fetters.

As for the work itself, men do that in the factory they would scorn to do outside or upon the farm. They would not be seen milking or “clod-hopping,” or carrying a yoke and pails, a truss of hay on their head, or a little pig in their arms, or driving cattle to market. At the same time they are not ashamed to scour down filthy roofs and windows, to do white-washing, to clean black and greasy engines, to wheel coal and ashes up or down the stage, to tar the axles and wheels of waggons and vehicles, to stand at the furnace or machine all day in a half-fainting condition choked with the smoke and dust of the shed; as though it were not more wholesome to have to do with cattle and crops than to be for ever penned up within four walls!

Although perhaps not as keen intellectually as are some of those who get their living in the town, and not receiving as much in wages, the best of the farm-hands are healthier, happier, and generally more well-to-do than are the factory labourers. At the same time, it is but natural that a man should desire to leave the country to come into the town. Though the work is much sharper and infinitely more painful while it lasts, the shorter hours and higher pay are powerful inducements for him to make the change. He will be free on Saturday afternoons, and there is no Sunday labour, while his wages will often be half as much again as what he would get on the farm. It is idle to say that the desertion of the countryside is a modern symptom; that has very little force, for it was always the same among highly civilised communities. The Greek husbandman left the soil and flocked to Athens to sit in the Agora, the Egyptians thronged the streets of Alexandria, and the Italians deserted the plough and sickle and crowded in Rome to see the circus games and other diversions of the “Urbs Terrarum.”

Those who, most of all, use the cry of “Back to the land” are they that obtain the highest wages in the sheds, and who are themselves the least likely to set the example. Men with families enlarge upon the blessings and privileges of agricultural life, but they take great care to get their sons started in the shed at the very earliest opportunity. As soon as they leave school they are brought along in knickerbockers and presented to the overseer, with the earnest hope of a speedy admission to work on the premises. I know of several cases in which workmen have been offered financial help in order to instal them in small-holdings, and they have refused point-blank. When I asked them the reason they replied that they “would rather go home at half-past five, if it made no difference,” and that is the crux of the whole matter. Not only this, there is the football match, the railway “Trip,” the privilege fares, the theatre, the cinematograph, the skating-rink, and the trams, all which must be sacrificed if the workman determines in favour of the simple life on the farm or small-holding. The class of men to secure for the land is the pick of the agricultural labourers, those who are uncontaminated with the life of the town; it is useless to think of reclaiming those who have once entered the factory and become established there.

Even very many of those who dwell outside the town are not content to spend their leisure in the village; in the evening and at week-ends they wash and dress and flock back to the street corners or parade up and down the thoroughfares. Innovations such as the cinematograph and the skating-rink, though harmless enough in some respects, are of little real value to the workman; with all their claims to be “educational” and “health-giving” the town could very well afford to dispense with them. There is little that is really manly and vigorous in roller-skating, and many of the cinematograph pictures serve only to indulge the craving for the novel and sensational. Half the boys of the shed, and even the infants of the town, can think of little but those ridiculously stupid and often debasing entertainments, of blood and thunder, crime, and mawkish love dramas; their minds are rendered quite incapable of imbibing sound and useful knowledge.

Even the trams, useful as they are, prove in several ways detrimental to the toiler and contribute to the restriction of his liberty. Scores of workmen I know wait at their doors or at street corners for five, and very often for ten minutes, in order to ride a distance of about a quarter of a mile. I have nothing to say against the habit provided the man can afford twopence or threepence a day for fares. At the same time, considered from the point of view of health, walking the distance would often be much better, and every copper needlessly spent by the worker tends to make him more and more dependent upon the shed. Where a man is engaged upon very hot and laborious work he is often too tired to walk home. The wages of such a one ought to be sufficiently high to enable him to make the journey in a taxicab, if he desired it.

Very different from this, however, is the lot of the small-holder. He must rise early all the year round — in summer and winter, light or dark, hot or cold weather. His work is not of five-and-a-half, but of six or seven days. Where cattle are kept there can be no such thing as a day off; dumb mouths must be fed and their needs ministered to. He has no trams to take him to work, very often no shelter from the storms and showers, no shade in summer and no steam-heated refuge in winter. His leisure is short, his companions few, his whole life laborious. But he is happy and strong, healthy, and vigorous in body and mind; he is in many ways a better man than is his confrère of the town. Considerably more skill, knowledge, and human feeling are also required on the part of the carter, cowman, and shepherd in dealing with their teams, flocks, and herds, than in the case of those who merely superintend mechanical processes and have to do with lifeless blocks of iron and steel, yet the countrymen are more or less despised by the factory workers and are greatly deficient in wages. Low wages are given on the farm simply because it is the custom so to do; if the Government were to intervene and fix a higher rate the extra money would be paid as a matter of course. This is the only kind of reform that would really popularise work on the land from the point of view of the poor man and help to check the wholesale migration to the towns. Not until such improvements have been made will the labourer be willing heartily to respond to the cry of “Back to the land.”

One thing is especially to be deplored in the factory, and that is the serious lack of recognition and appreciation of the skilful and conscientious workman; there is very little inducement for anyone to make efforts in order to obtain better results at the steam-hammer or other machine. If a workman proves himself to be possessed of unusual skill and originality, instead of being rewarded for it he is boycotted and held in check. Even the managers are not above exhibiting the same petty feeling where they find their ideas have been eclipsed by those of less authority. It is their habit to think that anything they suggest is the best possible of its kind.