The general opinion seems to be that in the spinning mills, roughly speaking, 75 per cent. of the increased output per operative may be imputed to improved machinery, 25 per cent. to increased intensity of labour in regard to quantity of spindles or "speeding up."
In the weaving processes more specific measurement is possible, though even there much depends upon the quality of yarn that is used. Here a reduction in the working day is followed by an increase in speed without any labour-saving improvements. Previous to the Factory legislation of 1878, the speed of looms was generally from 170 to 190 picks per minute during the ten hours' day. In the course of about two years after the reduction of hours (6 per cent.) the general speed had become 190 to 200 picks, without change in machinery or raw material, a growth which must have proportionately increased the intensity of the work of weaving. A deterioration in the quality of the raw material used for producing cotton cloth is also commonly assigned as a fact involving more care on the part of the weaver, and increased danger and disagreeability of work owing to the heavy sizing and steaming it has brought into vogue. It is not easy to argue much respecting increased intensity of labour from the increased average of looms attended, for, as was recently admitted in evidence before the Labour Commission, everything depends upon the class of looms and of goods they are manufacturing. "It is quite as easy to drive five looms of some classes as two of others."[203] But the prevalence of the "driving" system, by which the overlookers are paid a bonus on the product of the looms under their charge, has admittedly induced, as it was obviously designed to do, an increased intensity of labour.
Summing up the evidence, we are able to conclude that the shortening of working hours and the improvements in machinery has been attended by an increased effort per unit of labour time. In the words of an expert, "the change to those actually engaged in practical work is to lessen the amount of hard manual work of one class, but to increase their responsibility, owing to being placed in charge of more machinery, and that of a more expensive kind; while the work of the more lowly skilled will be intensified, owing to increased production, and that from an inferior raw material. I mean that to the operative the improvements in machinery have been neutralised by the inferior quality of raw material used, and I think it is fair to assume that their work has been intensified at least in proportion to the increase of spindles, etc."
The direct evidence drawn from this most highly-evolved machine industry seems to justify the general opinion expressed by Professor Nicholson, "It is clear that the use of machines, though apparently labour-saving, often leads to an increase in the quantity of labour, negatively, by not developing the mind, positively by doing harm to the body."[204]
§ 3. When any muscular or other physical effort is required it is pretty evident that an increased duration or a greater continuity in the slighter effort may tax the body quite as severely as the less frequent or constant application of a much greater bodily force. There can be no question but that in a competitive industrial society there exists a tendency to compensate for any saving of hard muscular, or other physical effort afforded by the intervention of machinery in two ways: first, by "forcing the pace"—i.e., compelling the worker to attend more machines or to work more rapidly, thus increasing the strain, if not upon the muscles, then upon the nerves; secondly, by extending the hours of labour. A lighter form of labour spread over an increased period of time, or an increased number of minor muscular exertions substituted for a smaller number of heavier exertions within the same period of time, may of course amount to an increased tax upon the vital energy. It is not disputed that a general result of the factory system has been to increase the average length of the working day, if we take under our survey the whole area of machine-production in modern industrial communities. This is only in part attributable to the fact that workers can be induced to sell the same daily output of physical energy as before, while in many cases a longer time is required for its expenditure. Another influence of equal potency is the economy of machinery effected by working longer hours. It is the combined operation of these two forces that has lengthened the average working day. Certain subsidiary influences, however, also deserve notice, especially the introduction of cheap illuminants. Before the cheap provision of gas, the working time was generally limited by daylight. Not until the first decade of this century was gas introduced into cotton-mills, and another generation elapsed before it passed in general use in manufactories and retail shops.[205] Now a portion of nature's rest has been annexed to the working day. There are, of course, powerful social forces making for a curtailment of the working day, and these forces are in many industries powerfully though indirectly aided by machinery. Perhaps it would be right to say that machinery develops two antagonistic tendencies as regards the length of the working day. Its most direct economic influence favours an extension of the working hours, for machinery untired, wasting power by idleness, favours continuous work. But when the growing pace and complexity of highly-organised machinery taxes human energy with increasing severity, and compresses an increased human effort within a given time, a certain net advantage in limiting the working day for an individual begins to emerge, and it becomes increasingly advantageous to work the machinery for shorter hours, or, where possible, to apply "shifts" of workers.[206]
But in the present stage of machine-development the economy of the shorter working day is only obtainable in a few trades and in a few countries; the general tendency is still in the direction of an extended working day.[207] The full significance of this is not confined to the fact that a larger proportion of the worker's time is consumed in the growing monotony of production. The curtailment of his time for consumption, and a consequent lessening of the subjective value of his consumables, must be set off against such increase in real wages or purchasing power as may have come to him from the increased productive power of machinery. The value of a shorter working day consists not merely in the diminution of the burden of toil it brings, but also in the fact that increased consumption time enables the workers to get a fuller use of his purchased consumables, and to enjoy various kinds of "free wealth" from which he was precluded under a longer working day.[208] So far as machinery has converted handicraftsmen into machine-tenders, it is extremely doubtful whether it has lessened the strain upon their energies, though we should hesitate to give an explicit endorsement to Mill's somewhat rhetorical verdict. "It is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day's toil of any human being." At any rate we have as yet no security that machinery, owned by individuals who do not themselves tend it, shall not be used in such a way as to increase the physical strain of those who do tend it. "There is a temptation," as Mr. Cunningham says, "to treat the machine as the main element in production, and to make it the measure of what a man ought to do, instead of regarding the man as the first consideration, and the machine as the instrument which helps him; the machine may be made the primary consideration, and the man may be treated as a mere slave who tends it."[209]
§ 4. Now to come to the question of "monotony." Is the net tendency of machinery to make labour more monotonous or less, to educate the worker or to brutalise him? Does labour become more intellectual under the machine? Professor Marshall, who has thoughtfully discussed this question, inclines in favour of machinery. It takes away manual skill, but it substitutes higher or more intellectual forms of skill.[210] "The more delicate the machine's power the greater is the judgment and carefulness which is called for from those who see after it."[211] Since machinery is daily becoming more and more delicate, it would follow that the tending of machinery would become more and more intellectual. The judgment of Mr. Cooke Taylor, in the conclusion of his admirable work, The Modern Factory System, is the same. "If man were merely an intellectual animal, even only a moral and intellectual one, it could scarcely be denied, it seems to us, that the results of the factory system have been thus far elevating."[212] Mr. Taylor indeed admits of the operative population that "they have deteriorated artistically; but art is a matter of faculty, of perception, of aptitude, rather than of intellect." This strange severance of Art from Intellect and Morals, especially when we bear in mind that Life itself is the finest and most valuable of Arts, will scarcely commend itself to deeper students of economic movements. The fuller significance of this admission will appear when the widest aspect of the subject is discussed in our final chapter.
The question of the net intellectual effects of machinery is not one which admits of positive answer. It would be open to one to admit with Mr. Taylor that the operatives were growing more intellectual, and that their contact with machinery exercises certain educative influences, but to deny that the direct results of machinery upon the workers were favourable to a wide cultivation of intellectual powers, as compared with various forms of freer and less specialised manual labour. The intellectualisation of the town operatives (assuming the process to be taking place) may be attributable to the thousand and one other influences of town life rather than to machinery, save indirectly so far as the modern industrial centre is itself the creation of machinery.[213] It is not, I think, possible at present to offer any clear or definite judgment. But the following distinctions seem to have some weight in forming our opinion.
The growth of machinery has acted as an enormous stimulus to the study of natural laws. A larger and larger proportion of human effort is absorbed in processes of invention, in the manipulation of commerce on an increasing scale of magnitude and complexity, and in such management of machinery and men as requires and educates high intellectual faculties of observation, judgment, and speculative imagination. Of that portion of workers who may be said, within limits, to control machinery, there can be no question that the total effect of machinery has been highly educative.
The growing size, power, speed, complexity of machinery, undoubtedly makes the work of this class of workers "more intellectual." Some measure of these educative influences even extends to the "hand" who tends some minute portion of the machinery, so far as the proper performance of his task requires him to understand other processes than those to which his labour is directly and exclusively applied.