The Harvest of Ruskin

by John W. Graham

Now the growth of this division of labour has been quite irresistible. Its advantages have been such that no manufacturer or nation of manufacturers could stand without it. The social organism has become more complex, and with that the differentiation of function has become more marked. It is a necessary accompaniment of an elaborate social state; and whether it tends or not to the welfare of the individual it greatly extends the productive power of the industrial organism, and so strengthens the organism itself viewed as industrial simply. Thus the highly differentiated organism has survived, though it may have sacrificed the individual worker, regarded as a human being. Is there, therefore, any means whereby we can modify the work of the monotonous mechanical labourer so as to give him some pleasure in it, and afford exercise to his other faculties besides that one called out by the single narrow function he has learnt to repeat day after day? If we can give scope for his higher faculties, his judgment, his invention, his knowledge, we shall be avoiding the present waste by which faculties which might aid production in better ways are wasted on routine.

The greatest cure hitherto found is inherent in the system itself. For when the work is such that it is done by a human machine, the step is not far distant when a machine will be actually invented, with a surer grip of the material, a readier tool for piercing, a straighter edge for cutting. This process is going on in every department of manufacture. Boards are planed, picture frames carved, table legs made, mouldings cut by machinery. Watches and sewing machines are made of interchangeable parts, each the product of a machine. The only limit to the taking over of every manufacture by machines seems to be that a large output is necessary to make it pay to invent and manufacture and sell costly machines. So great have been the triumphs of many-fingered machinery that we are not inclined to limit them. Thus, most of the monotonous, and most of the physically laborious work is done by the man of steel. For every textile operative in the country rather more than one horse power is provided by steam; which is equal to the strength of ten adult men. Self-feeding furnaces are similarly saving of human flesh and eyesight. Thus our manual workers have largely become makers and minders of machines. To help to make a machine, to watch and repair it, and take care of it—even to understand it and to feed it, is a not unworthy form of labour. To care for a complex machine requires intelligence and a wide-awake sense of responsibility. It is much better, at any rate, than hand-loom weaving was, or than nail-making by hand, or match-box-making is. Even so mechanical a task as working a sewing machine, poor as it is, may be a trifle less soul-destroying than working with a needle at plain sewing all day. And though minding looms is monotonous, yet they turn out so much more cloth per operative, that the evil of monotony of which we speak is probably a very small percentage per yard produced, of what it was when weaving was done in the weavers’ cottages by hand.

It is therefore in extending machinery for all articles which have no individual artistic value that we shall get rid of most of the lower and more degrading forms of labour—machinery for ploughing, sowing, reaping, binding, thrashing, dairying, laundry work, baking, cooking, cutting straight and smoothing clean, grinding and polishing, and for the processes of printing. These are true friends of man.

It is to be noted that every increase of the gross output which machinery enables man to produce, increases the demand for the more skilled portions of the work, for those which require judgment and character. The multiplication of the printing output of the country has increased the number of writers, of reporters, of proof-readers, of overlookers, and of men who can tastefully arrange a title page. It has also multiplied the demand for men who can draw, can photograph, or can reproduce illustrations. Similarly the “hands” who work the machines on a farm are fewer but are probably more intelligent than the agricultural labourer in a backward country.

It will be observed that this inquiry has left untouched and unaffected—

1. The skilled artistic crafts where a sense of the beautiful and a special value in human thought goes to each article.

2. The mass of unskilled and unspecialized labour at the bottom of the social ladder which division of labour and machine production leave largely untouched.

To the cleansing, quieting, moralizing of machinery, then, not to its extinction or supersession, social reformers should apply themselves. To the compulsory consumption of smoke, to sanitary factories and workshops, to the substitution of gas or electricity for steam, we must look with hope.

Therefore, out of the industrial hurly-burly, we must look forward, not back—accept the industrialization of the world which marked the nineteenth century, and go on to find a home for humanity in it. It is a world phenomenon, and it is the result of one thing, the exploitation of coal.

It is in the abuse of this very coal, on which all manufacturing and transport depends, that the most obvious wrong has been done to humanity. The first condition of human happiness to-day is to be found in the abolition or sufficient abatement of smoke, so keeping our skins and clothes clean.