Certainly the organisation of industry was marvellous, and the
production of everything must be enormous. We spent three days going
through factory after factory. There was the same marvellous order and
cleanliness and perfect discipline, wherever one turned. On leaving
the works the men all marched in step, as if on parade. Inside, they
saluted their 'officers,' but the salute was of a special kind--the
hand was raised to the shoulder only, so as to avoid a sweeping motion
which might have brought it in contact with some object. One of the
triumphs of organisation, to which Lickrod called my attention, was the
arrangement whereby the workmen reached their work at the proper time,
got their midday meal, and reached home in the evening without any
congestion. Each separate workshop had its appointed time for beginning
work; some began as early as 6, others at 6.15, the last to begin were
a few that had a comparatively short day, starting at 7.30. The midday
meal began at 11.30, and was taken by relays until about 1.30. All the
women employed in the canteens were the wives and daughters of workmen,
who spent the rest of their time in household work at home.
At the end of the third day, as I was taking coffee with Conductor
Lickrod, I took advantage of his communicativeness, which was rather
a contrast to the brusqueness of Prigge, to get some light on several
matters that had so far puzzled me.
"Your industrial system," I remarked, "as a productive machine, appears
to me to be quite marvellous."
Lickrod beamed. "I knew you would think so," he said. "We have a word
in our language which, so far as I am aware, has no exact equivalent
in other languages, because their culture does not include the thing.
It means 'the adaptation of the means to the end.' Our industrial
system exemplifies the virtue connoted by that expression; but our
whole industrial system itself is only a means perfectly adapted to its
end. We have no 'Industrial Problem' in the old sense of that word. Of
course we are always effecting improvements in detail."
"But I have been wondering how it is," I said, "that with all this
marvellous efficiency in production, your workmen in the Fifth and
Sixth, and I suppose in the Seventh Class also, appear to work as long
as those in other countries; they do not appear to be richer and they
seem to have fewer opportunities of rising in the social scale."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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