CHAPTER XXXII
A FEW SOCIAL ASPECTS OF INVENTION
Why cities gain at the expense of the country . . . The factory system . . . Small shops multiplied . . . Subdivided labor has passed due bounds and is being modified . . . Tendencies against centralization and monopoly . . . Dwellings united for new services . . . Self-contained houses warmed from a center . . . The literature of invention and discovery as purveyed in public libraries.
The Drift to Cities.
In the closing chapter of this book it may be permissible to glance for a moment at a few of the social and national consequences of invention. While, as we have seen in earlier chapters, the economic gains of ingenuity surpass computation, the work of the inventor has brought in its train evil as well as good, and this evil, with the further march of invention, is being plainly lessened year by year. A century ago about one tenth of the people in North America lived in cities and towns; to-day these centers of population hold nearly one half the families of the continent. Many observers regard this drift from country to city and town with dislike and alarm, without recognizing it to be inevitable. They paint pictures of country folk attracted by the superficial allurements of the city, a poor exchange for the wholesomeness and freedom of life in the country. They argue that with wise education the boys and girls reared on the farm will remain there, greatly to the gain of themselves and the nation. These critics leave out of view the feats of the inventor. Between 1870 and 1880 the self-binding harvester was perfected and introduced. Before its advent six or seven men followed every harvester to tie its shocks of grain. After the self-binder came into vogue, five of these men were no longer needed. Other inventions, planters, corn-shellers, and the like, as economical of labor, have been placed in the farmer’s hands within the past thirty years. The result being that to raise on farms the food for a million men, women and children, a greatly reduced staff in the field suffices to-day in comparison with the number required thirty or forty years ago. And what has become of the country population thus thrown out of work by thews of steel and brass? It has quietly betaken itself to towns and cities where, for the most part, it is manufacturing new comforts and luxuries for all the people, whether in town or country. In 1870 out of 100 wage-earners in the United States, 29 were engaged in manufactures, trade and transportation; in 1900 the corresponding figure had risen to 40. Enter this morning the house of a thrifty farmer or mechanic: you tread on a neat carpet, you see good furniture, a piano in the parlor, a bicycle in the barn. On the walls are attractive pictures, flanked by shelves of books and magazines. In not a few such houses one may find a telephone and electric lamps. As recently as 1870 some of these things did not exist at all, even for the rich. To-day they are enjoyed by millions. So with clothing: it is to-day better and cheaper than ever before. Food, too, is more varied and more wholesome than of yore, thanks to the express train, the quick steamer, the cold storage warehouse. All these agencies of betterment, and many more, are conducted in cities as the centers of capital, industry and population. While invention has, in the main, tended to make cities bigger than ever, it is now modifying that tendency by its rapid trolley lines to suburbs, its steamboat and railroad services constantly quickened in pace and lowered in fares. On the outskirts of Greater New York it is still possible for a wage-earner to buy land for a house and small garden, the burden of rent, liable to yearly increase, being escaped for good and all.
The Factory System and Checks Thereto.
It was in England toward the end of the eighteenth century that inventors first lifted the latch for an industrial revolution. When James Watt devised his steam engine, and its power was applied to spinning and weaving, these tasks were driven from the home to the factory, there to be more economically performed. Other industries followed, all the way from paint grinding to nail making, so that in a few years a profound change came over the field of labor. Under a scheme of subdivided toil the factory hand succeeded to the journeyman who, with a few mates, had split nails or drawn wire in a shop no bigger than some day he might own for himself. With the need to occupy large premises, to install engines and elaborate machinery, the capital of an employer has to be vastly more than of old, creating a new dependence on the part of the workman, and rendering it all but impossible that he should ever have a factory of his own. While the factory system of production is general in America, it is far from universal. Many leading manufactures, those of textiles, of boots and shoes, and so on, are usually conducted in factories, while some important industries, that of clothing, for example, are for the most part carried on at the homes of work people, or in small shops. Massachusetts in 1900, according to the U. S. census of that year, had 200,508 hands in 1078 textile mills and boot and shoe factories. Apart from these industries were 28,102 factories and shops, employing 291,418 hands, an average of but 10.57 each.[44] Taking the United States as a whole, the census for 1900 reports that the hand trades in small shops representing a product of $500 or less each, numbered 127,419. Presumably in all these cases the worker toiled by himself, usually as a repairer or a jobber rather than as a maker of new wares. All the other manufacturing concerns, 512,675 in number, employed on an average only 10.36 persons each. It is clear that the American factory is not as engulfing as many critics believe it to be. In larger measure than is commonly supposed workmen are to-day their own masters, or are busy in shops small enough to give scope to individual ingenuity and skill.
[44] Quoted by Edward Atkinson in a paper on the tendencies of manufacturing. American Social Science Association, 1904.
Let us grant that a shoemaker, say in St. Louis, at work in a stall of his own is a better and happier man than if in a nearby factory he fastened eyelets, or burnished heels, day in and day out for years together. While the harm to the toiler wrought by extreme subdivision of labor is plain, its evils are being abated in more ways than one. First of all the productiveness of the modern factory has so augmented the joint dividend of capital and labor that while the working day grows shorter, wages are increased, every earned dollar buying more manufactured wares than ever before. Secondly, in some large railroad and other shops the workmen are given a variety of tasks in succession, so as to be more versatile, more useful in emergencies, than if ever punching steel, or threading bolts. Even if the result of such a plan is to diminish the total output in the course of a year, it is worth while to lose some money that human nature may be redeemed from stupefying monotony of toil. High wages and large dividends cost too much when bought at the expense of hurt to muscle, nerve and brain.