The Workers: An Experiment in Reality. The WestWyckoff, Walter A. (Walter Augustus)
History
The Workers: An Experiment in Reality. The West
Wyckoff, Walter A. (Walter Augustus)
Unemployed -- United States; Working class -- United States
Barry’s Christian name I considered a poaching upon my preserve, and I
was feeling about for a new handy prænomen; but without waiting for an
answer he continued swiftly on his loquacious way, calling me “partner”
the while, as Clark had done, and “partner” I remained through the days
of our co-labor.
Barry was an old hand; he knew his way about the factory perfectly.
We pushed the truck before us into a warehouse and through a long,
dim passage between piles of various portions of the various machines
which rose to the ceiling in compact stacks on both sides of us as we
walked the great length of the building. It was as dark as a tunnel,
except where an occasional gas-jet burned brightly in the centre of
a misty halo. The cold, unchanging air that never knew the sunlight
chilled us to the bone, and near the gas we could see our breath rising
in clouds of white vapor. We came at last to an elevator, and, having
pushed our truck aboard, we rose to the next landing. Then down another
long, dark, damp passage we passed until we reached a covered bridge, a
run-way, as the men call it, which sloped upward to the paint-shop in
the main building of the factory.
The spring-doors at the head of the bridge flew open to the sharp ram
of our truck, and we followed into a large room which was flooded with
sunlight from its serried windows. There appeared to be hundreds
of “binders” in the room, all painted white and extending in long,
straight rows on wooden supports which held them a few feet from the
floor. Among these rows moved the men who “stripe” the binders. Their
hands and clothing were daubed with paint, and even as we passed we
could see the slender, even lines of brilliant color appearing as by
magic along the white surface of the machines under the swift, sure
stroke of these skilled painters.
This is their sole occupation. Along a side-wall of the room moves
slowly, on a ceiling-trolley, a long line of steel binders, all grimy
from the hands of the men who join the different parts. In one corner
is a tank of white paint, and by a system of pulleys each binder, as
it passes, is lowered to the bath, completely immersed, and then drawn
dripping back to the trolley. Presently it is lowered to a support, and
is there allowed to dry. The stripers move down the lines, following
close upon the drying of the paint, and the machines, soon ready for
shipment from their hands, are transferred to the packing-rooms, the
vacant places being quickly occupied by binders fresh from the bath.
This is one phase of the endless chain of factory production under high
division of labor.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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