Life in a Railway Factory

by Alfred Williams

LABOUR UNREST

Someone once asked the Greek Thales how he might best bear misfortune and he replied — “By seeing your enemy in a worse condition than yourself.” He would have been as near the truth if he had said “friend” instead of “enemy.” Everyone appears to desire to see every other one worse off than himself. He is not content with doing well; he must do better, and if his success happens to be at the expense of one less fortunate he will be the more highly gratified. This lust of dominion and possession dates from the very foundation of human society. It is a feature of barbarism, and one that the wisest teaching and the most civilising influences at work in the world have failed to remove or even very materially to modify. The idea behind the Sic vos non vobis of Virgil has always been uppermost in the minds of the powerful. This it was that doomed the captives of the Greeks and Romans to a life of wretchedness and misery in the mines. This was responsible for the subjugation of the English peasants, and their reduction to the order of serfs in feudal times. And this is what would enslave the labouring classes in mine, field, and factory to-day. It must not be permitted. There is a way to defeat it. That is by law. Not a law made by the depredators but by the workers themselves. They have the means at their disposal. If they would summon up the courage to make use of them they might shatter the power of the capitalist at a stroke and free themselves from his domination for ever.

A principal cause of trouble everywhere between the employer and the employed is the lack of recognition of the worker. I mean this in its broadest sense. I do not mean merely that great and powerful combinations do not want to recognise Trade Unions. We all know that. It is a part of their policy and is dictated by pride and the spirit of intolerance. But they make a much more serious and fatal mistake. They refuse to recognise a man. All kinds of employers are guilty of this. The mineowner, the trading syndicate, the railway or steamship company, municipal authorities, the large and small manufacturer, the farmer and shopkeeper are equally to blame. If they would recognise the man they might be led to a consideration of his legitimate needs. They must first admit him to be equally a member of the human family and then recognise that, as such, he has claims as righteous and sacred as they. That is where the representative of capital invariably fails. He will not admit that the one under his authority has any rights of his own. To him the worker is as much a slave as ever he was, only he is conscious that his treatment of him must be subject to the limitations imposed by the modern laws of the land. And as he flouts the individual so he contemns the collective organisations of the men. He is determined not to recognise them. He considers this to be a proof of his strength. In reality it is a badge of his weakness. Sooner or later it will prove his undoing.

I will give an illustration. Several years ago, working in the same shed as myself, was a grey-headed furnaceman. He was not an old man; he could have been no more than fifty. One day he met with a serious accident. While attending to his furnace, in a stooping position, someone in passing accidentally pushed him. This caused him to lose his balance and he slipped on the plate and fell head-first into a boshful of boiling water underneath the fire hole. His head and shoulders were severely scalded, and he was absent on the sick list for two months. When he came in again he was not allowed to resume work at the furnace but was put wheeling out ashes from the smiths’ fires. To my steam-hammer an oil furnace had recently been attached and several managers came daily to experiment with it. One morning, while they were present, the ex-furnaceman came to wheel away the debris. Then a manager turned to me and said —

“Who’s that? What’s he doing here?”

I explained who the man was and what he was doing.

“Pooh! What’s the good of that thing! He ought to be shifted outside,” replied he.

In a short while afterwards the furnaceman was discharged.

There is something even worse than this and much more serious in effect. That is a result of too great recognition. I am referring to the common fault of interfering with and penalising men of superior mental and intellectual powers. There is even a certain advantage in a man’s ability to escape attention. Especially if he is of a courageous turn of mind, has views and ideas of his own, and is able to influence others. He will live the more easy for it. Left to himself he can work away quietly, informing the minds and leavening the opinions of those round about him. If he can escape recognition. But he cannot. He is soon discovered, gagged, smothered, or got rid of. The safest way to strengthen a flame is to fan it. And if you want to intensify a man’s dissatisfaction with a thing attempt to prevent him by force from giving expression to it. That is a sure means of provocation and will bear fruit a hundredfold.

We hear a great deal about the “discontent” of the workers, and a degree of censure and reproach is usually conveyed with the expression. It is not half general enough. The average working man is too content. He is often lazily apathetic. Is the mineowner, the manufacturer, or the railway magnate content? Of course he is not. Strength is in action. When I hear of a man’s being satisfied I know that he is done for. He might as well be dead. I wish the workers were more discontented, though I should in every case like to see their discontent rationally expressed and all their efforts intelligently directed. They waste a fearful amount of time and energy through irresolution and uncertainty of objective.