The Impact of Mechanization

135 THE IMPACT OF MECHANIZATION (1889)

hour giving but a single turn to his knife, which separates a joint. . . . A hundred others are on the same floor with him, each doing what may seem a trilling portion of the work, but before the carcass, which came in on one side in quarters, leaves the room, it is entirely bere{t of bones, and then wheeled away in small pieces ready for the curing and the canning. . . . In this cise the division is made into the various pieces familiar to household providers, viz., loiru, ribs . . . “Extra mess” is composed of chucks, plates, rumps and flanks, and the time of curing is twenry-four days. All hams are cut into three pieces, or”one-set”; time of curing, sixty days. Plates are cut into five pieces. Loins, ribs, and shoulders are also sold to the city butchers. “Prime” tallow is made from the kidney and caid fat only, while “regular” tallow is made from the other fat, bones and trimmings. Glue factories and fertilizing establish- ments use up the bones and refuse, and the hides find their way to the tan- neries. Not a scrap of the animal is wasted, or fails to yield some revenue to the buver.

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T h e l m p a c t o f M e c h a n i z a t i o n ( 1 8 8 9 )

The rapid adaptation oJ machinery Jor mass production created signifcant transforma- tions in the Aweican econoffiy in the post-CivilWar period.The author oJ thefol- Iowing exeerpt, Dauid A.Welk, realized the consequences of the machine age for both the business community anil society. His background as an inuentor, publisher of scien- tfic information, political actiuist, and a foremost economist who aduised Presidents Uncoln, Carfeld, and Crant on business and eurrency natters gave Wells a unique per- spectiue to obserue the technological changes taking place anil to analyze their implica- tions. In his book Recent Economic Changes, WeIk ofered a coffifttentary on the grouing size of businesses and how that afected the nature of enterprise. Wells was also among the ftst eeonomists to retognize that machines dkplaced workers-creating “technologieal unemployment”-4nfl that business was changing American society. His obseruations indicate that both business and society were adjusting to the technological progress of the time.

Q u e s t i o n s t o C o n s i d e r

1. According to DavidA.Wells, what were the most dramatic changes tak- ing place?

2. For what reasons does’Wells call these changes a “total revolution”?

3. To what extent can the common person participate in the economic advances described here?

4. In what ways would the American people respond ro rhe new methods of doing business?

3 1 0 C H A P T E R 1 8 T H E E X P A N S I O N O F B I G B U S I N E S S

Machinery is now recognized as essential to cheap production. Nobody can produce effectively and economically without it, and what was formerly known as domestic manufacture is now almost obsolete. But machinery is one of the most expensive of all products, and its extensive purchase and use require an amount of capital far beyond the capacity of the ordinary individ- ual to furnish. There are very few men in the world possessed of an amount of wealth suficient to individually construct and own an extensive line of rarlway or telegraph, a first-class steamship, or a great factory. It is also to be remembered that, for carrying on production by the most modern and effec- tive methods, large capital is needed, not only for machinery but also for the purchasing and carrying of extensive stocks of crude material and finished products.

. . . Hence, from such conditions have grown up great corporations or stock companies, which are only forms of associated capital organized for effective use and protection. They are regarded to some extent as evils; but they are necessary as there is apparendy no other way in which the work of production and distribution, in accordance with the requirements of the age, can be prosecuted. The rapidiry however, with which such combinations of capital are organizing for the purpose of promoting industrial and commer- cial undertakings on a scale heretofore wholly unprecedented, and the ten- dency they have to crystalize into something far more complex than what has been farniliar to the public as corporations, with the impressive names of syndicates, trusts, etc., also constitute one of the remarkable features of mod- ern business methods. It must also be admitted that the whole tendency of recent economic development is in the direction of limiting the area within which the inlluence of competition is effective.

And when once a great association of capital has been effected, it becomes necessary to have a mastermind to manage it-a man who is competent to use and direct other men, who is fertile in expedient and quick to note and profit by any improvements in methods of producrion and variatioru in prices. Such a man is a general of industry and corresponds in position and func- tions to the general of an army.

‘What, as a consequence, has happened to the employees? Coincident

with and as a result of this change in the methods of production, the modern manufacturing system has been brought into a condition analogous to that of a military organization, in which the individual no longer works as inde- pendently as formerly, but as a private in the ranks, obeying orders, keeping step, as it were, to the tap of the drum, and having nothing to say as to the plan of his work, of its final completion, or of its ultimate use and disaibu- tion. In short, the people who work in the modern factory are, as a rule, taught to do one thing*to perform one, and generally a simple, operation;

David A.Wells, Reant &onomk Chargo (NwYork, 1889),91-94,98, 109, 111

136 THE IMPACT OF MECHANIZATION (1889) 3 1 1

and when there is no more of that kind of work to do, they are in a measure he$less. The result has been that the individualism or independence of the producer in manufacturing has been in ^ great degree destroyed, and with it has also in a great degree been destroyed the pride which the workman for- merly took in his work-that fertility of resource which formerly was a spe- cial characteristic ofAmerican workmen, and that element of skill that comes from long and varied practice and reflection and responsibility. Not many years ago every shoemaker was or could be his own employer.The boots and shoes passed direcdy from an individual producer to the corxumer. Now this condition of things has passed away. Boots and shoes are made in large facto- ries; and machinery has been so utilized, and the division of labor in connec- tion with it has been carried to such an extent, that the process of making a shoe is said to be divided into sixry-four parts, or the shoemaker of to-day is only the sixry-fourth part of what a shoemaker once was. . . .

Another exceedingly interesting and developing feature of the new situa- tion is tlut, as machinery has destroyed the handicrafts and associated capital has placed individual capital at a disadvantage, so machinery and associated capi- tal in turn, guided by the same cofirmon influences, now war upon machin- ery and other associated capital. Thus the now well-ascertained and accepted fact, based on long experience, that power is most economically applied when applied on the largest possible scale, is rapidly and inevitably leading to the concentration of manufacturing in the largest establishments and the gradual extinction of those which are small. . . .

The same influences have also to a great degree revolutionized the nature of retail trade. . . . Experience has shown that, under a good organization of clerks, shopmen, porters, and distributors, it costs much less proportionally to sell a large amount of goods than a small amounr; and that the buyer of large quantities can, without sacrifice of satisfactory profit, afford to offer to his retail customers such advantages in respect to prices and range of selection as almost to preclude competition on the part of dealers operating on a smaller scale, no matter how otherwise capable, honest, *61 diligent they may be.The various retail trades in the cities and larger towns of all civilized countries are accordingly being rapidly superseded by vast and skillfully organized estab- lishments . . . which can sell at little over wholesale prices a great variery of merchandise, dry goods, manufactures of leather, books, stationery furs, ready-made clothing, hats and caps, and sometimes groceries and hardware, and at the same time give their customers far greater conveniences than can be offered by the ordinary shopkeeper or tradesman. . . .

From these specimen experiences it is clear that an almost total revolu- tion has taken place, and is yet in progress, in every branch and in every rela- tion of the world’s industrial and commercial system. Some of these changes have been eminendy destructive, and all of them have inevitably occasioned, and for a long time yet will continue to occasion, great disturbances in old methods and entail losses of capital and changes of occupation on the part of individuals. . . ,