While we were considering these matters, to which consideration we were led by a visit to the extraordinary machine works of Messrs. Hoe & Co., the inventors and manufacturers of the great fast power-presses, which have effected the revolution of which we have spoken, we accidentally stumbled upon the following article from the columns of the New York Tribune; and it is so entirely germane to the matter, that we have no hesitation in quoting the former portion of it, without alteration or comment.
The latter portion we omit, because we entirely disagree with Mr. Greely in the deduction which he draws from the admitted facts, as we do with most of his socialistic and communistic notions.
It is to the increase of demand, growing out of the increase and cheapness of production, that he must look for employment and profit, not to the catching at the empty bubble of ownership, or to the ambition of governing, with none to serve under him.
“LABOR AND MACHINERY.
A thoughtful laborer—for wages—sends us an account he finds current in the journals of the rapid progress of Printing by Machinery, as illustrated by a single cheap daily newspaper. That paper now prints 48,475 sheets—or 101 reams—per day, which it is enabled by rapid machinery to do from one set of types, whereas, if obliged to use the Hand-Press of former days, it would be obliged to set up its type twenty-nine times over for each daily edition, employing 812 compositors instead of barely 28, and 116 pressmen instead of some ten or twelve only. Hereupon our correspondent comments as follows:—
Mr. Greely:—It will be seen by the above, which I quote merely as a convenient text to illustrate the matter in hand, that in one establishment a difference is made of nearly or quite nine hundred men, in consequence of the invention or improvement of machinery, which has taken place within a less time than the last 25 years, from the number it would have been necessary to have employed to prosecute the same amount of business had no such progress been made. The same is true, I suppose, to an equal extent, of The Tribune and other journals of large circulation. The same—i. e., the alarming encroachment which machinery is every day making on what has heretofore been performed by human muscles alone—is not peculiar to any one branch of employment. The restless inquiry and invention of the present is rapidly and surely intruding iron muscles, which do not become hungry, or experience the depression of low wages and consequent low fare, into every department of human industry, crowding out and setting adrift thousands of the industrious, to seek new and untried means of subsistence, from which soon again to be driven, by—what many of them have come to look upon as their greatest, most persevering and relentless enemy—machinery.
Whither, I would thoughtfully and anxiously ask, do these facts, which stare us in the face from every quarter, tend? What is their mighty significancy? The unprecedented increase of the most cunningly adapted, durable, and economical machinery—on the one hand—to perform, in great part, the work heretofore done by us—the laborers; and—on the other hand—the sure and certain increase of that most reliable portion of humanity which we represent, and whose only capital is their muscles, and whose hope of bread for themselves and children is in the performance, to a large extent, of that same labor thus snatched from us by the offspring of invention. What wonder that the honest laborer, who knows no cunning but the use of the physical force which God has given him, or the mechanic who plies his trade, should stand aghast, and feel his heart sink within him, as he is forced from his legitimate occupation, to another and still another, and at last finds his employment altogether fitful and uncertain, from the number of his fellows driven to the same condition as himself. His labor is truly “a drug in the market,” and stern necessity is fast putting him, if it has not already, wholly at the mercy of capital. I could not but sadly ponder, as one—while watching the nicely adjusted movements of a cheap engine, which had ejected him and his fellow, in like condition, from the place whence, for years, they had obtained a livelihood for themselves and families—significantly observed to me that, “the best thing that could be done with that thing would be to break it to pieces, and pitch it out of the window.” They saw wood about town now, when they can get it to do, as the machinery, which they have in such successful operation in Chicago and some other cities for that purpose, has not yet been introduced here. Their daughters, too, who have, till within a six month back, had work at $2 50 per week, in the factories, are now out of employ. This, you know, is but one of countless similar illustrations which take place every day in poor families.
H.
We have thus allowed our friend to state his whole case—though he only submitted it that we might comment on its substance—and we now solicit his attention to some thoughts by it suggested.