Technology in the workplace has been challenged during the Industrial Revolution, on the farm, in the factory - everywhere jobs might be eliminated.
Many a treatise has been developed about the evils of technology, and what follows explains the two sides of the challenge, and a discussion of the effect of introducing the diesel motor into the workplace.
- From Elizabeth Gurley Flynn's 'Sabotage'
Its Necessity In The Class War
The employer wants long hours, the intelligent workingman wants short hours.
The employer wants low wages, the intelligent workingman wants high wages.
The employer is not concerned with the sanitary conditions in the mill, he is concerned only with keeping the cost of production at a minimum; the intelligent workingman is concerned, cost or no cost, with having ventilation, sanitation and lighting that will be conducive to his physical welfare.
Sabotage is to this class struggle what
the guerrilla warfare is to the battle. The strike is the open battle of the class
struggle, sabotage is the guerrilla warfare, the day-by-day warfare between two opposing
classes.
General Forms of Sabotage
Sabotage* was adopted by the General Federation of Labor of France in 1897 as a recognized weapon in their method of conducting fights on their employers. But sabotage as an instinctive defense existed long before it was ever officially recognized by any labor organization. Sabotage means primarily the withdrawal of efficiency. Sabotage means either to slacken up and interfere with the quantity, or to botch in your skill and interfere with the quality, of capitalist production or to give poor service.
Sabotage is not physical violence, sabotage is an internal, industrial process.
It is something that is fought out within the four walls of the shop. And these three forms of sabotage — to affect the quality, the quantity and the service are aimed at affecting the profit of the employer.
Sabotage is a means of striking
at the employer's profit for the purpose of forcing him into granting certain
conditions, even as workingmen strike for the same purpose of coercing him. It is simply
another form of coercion.
Technology can be a wonderful thing, oftentimes relieving dangerous work in unsafe
conditions, and making things possible that have no parallel in the 'manula' world. But it
often threatens the jobs of marginal workers, and since they often don't have any say-so
in the process, action tends to be more direct.
For instance, this 1917 article describes the effect of diesel technology in the workplace:
The
Diesel Motor, Barbara Lily FrankenthalFiremen and Machinists.(Note: fireman in this sense means 'the man who tends the fire - and shovels coal into the firebox to keep it burning') Fireman? The Diesel motor will fire him. It has no use for firemen, no more than it has for coal-passers. A turn of the valve of the oil-supply pipe is all that is necessary to do away with the drudgerous work of the firemen and coal-passers. The motor itself is so simple and so well regulated that trained machinists can be dispensed with. While they might be preferred, the number of their jobs will be greatly reduced. So, for instance, in the engine and boiler-rooms of these big modern ocean steamers about 300 to 400 coal-passers, firemen and machinists, are now employed. If Diesel motors are installed, thirty or forty machinists and helpers will be amply sufficient to run them. Coal Miners and Railroad Men.Without going into details as to what extent the world's output of coal will be affected by the advent of the Diesel motor as a power and heat-producing means, it is safe to say that coal miners will lose their best weapon in the struggle against the oppressing class by it. When the Diesel motor has supplanted the steam engine of the private and municipal plants, also of railways and steamships, the necessity of coal will be no more of such an imperative nature as it is today. Coal will then occupy but a secondary position in modern industries. Therefore, the future strikes of the coal miners will not have the same compelling strength and important consequences as they have at present. No more will it be possible to stop the country's railroads, to shut down factories and to cripple the world's commerce by tying up the steamships as it has been attained lately during the coal miners' strike in Great Britain. The same is the case with the railroad men. A well-organized railroad strike has the same, if not a stronger, effect than a miner's strike; the coal is of no use in front of the mines, the railroad men must first bring it to the place where it is needed. The coal traffic is indeed the chief item of railroad transportation, at least this is so in the United States. Not even a combined strike of the miners and the railroad men will have a reasonable fraction of the fundamental effect that a strike of either has today. The reason for this is that the oil for the Diesel motors undoubtedly will be conveyed to the industrial centers and to the sea coast through pipe lines, as it is largely done nowadays. Small Farmers and Farm Hands.More power is spent through the plow than in all the factories in the world. The toil of turning the cultivated face of the earth once each year by the plow consumes more power than all the railways, street cars and automobiles combined. For every single acre of land, a man with plow and team must traverse a distance of eight miles. In order to run the mechanism of the farms in the United States alone, it requires 20 million horses and mules. According to the United States Agricultural Department, a horse needs five acres yearly for keep, so that it necessitates 100 million acres to produce the motive power to run the farms. This is a larger area than is required for raising the country's crops of wheat, potatoes, rye and rice. On the other hand, the continuous rise in value of farm land does the rest to make a change for another source of motive power absolutely indispensable. And the change is at hand. It is the tractor that will replace the horses and most of the farm hands and also squeezes out the small farmer. The onmarch of the farm tractor is so sudden and victorious that the United States census of 1910 did not bring out any statistical figures about it, while now the yearly output is more than 50,000 of these machines. They may be considered as having a combined working capacity of about twenty-five horses and ten men, which can be doubled if circumstances call for it. The uses of the all-round tractor in the field, shop and barn are indeed numberless, and any intelligent farm hand can learn in a few hours to operate them. This tractor can do the plowing right behind the binder when it is too hot for the horses to do it, and, with a headlight, may be operated during the night. The plowing done by the tractor is not only better, but also one dollar cheaper per acre than it can be accomplished with horses. Besides it can be used for seeding, harvesting, threshing, hay baling, hauling grain to the market, pumping water, road building, and so on. This wonderful adaptability of the tractor can be exploited to its full advantage on big farms only, where there is enough work for it. On the other hand, it is too expensive for the small farmer to buy. The farm tractor was the missing link in the combination that made it possible to manage agriculture on a big scale and along strictly capitalistic business lines. Therefore, every improvement of the farm tractor will strengthen and hasten the passing of the small farmer. According to the United States census of 1910 more than 30,000 small farms went out of business in the three best middle west states of Indiana, Illinois and Iowa, while the population of their rural districts showed a decrease of 255,002 persons during the time of 1900 to 1910. Not only the capitalist's tractors do better, cheaper and quicker work, but also they stand in the barn without an extra expense during the winter or when out of work, while the small farmer's horses are eating their heads off. All tractors now in use are driven by high-priced fuel, such as gasoline, kerosene, etc. The coming of the Diesel tractor, therefore, will further lessen the running expenses of the capitalist farm and thereby contribute to outdistance the small farmer more and more in his struggle for existence. It is evident that many farm hands will lose their jobs as long as this kind of "progress" is going on. Conclusions.The foregoing lines give a clear instance of how the master class gains ground from the working class through one single invention. There come every day new inventions that have similar consequence to those of the Diesel motor. Almost every invention in machinery has as its purpose increased production with less human help, and that means a loss to the workers under present conditions. In order to avoid complete annihilation or to make any headway at all, the working class must completely change its attitude in the class struggle against the masters. Up to the present time the workers have fought only when they were forced to do so. They strike or take drastic measures when the cost of living has gone up to such an extent that they cannot live on the prevailing wages, or they cannot endure any longer the shameful working conditions. In short, the workers have always been on the defensive to recover lost ground, so that after the fight they are in the same position as some time before the fight. The spirit of defense, however, is "Not to lose." That is all. To go toward victory in the industrial revolution that is already in its beginning stage, the workers must embue their brains with the spirit of attack. That means, "To Win." |
If Freedom's road seems rough and hard, And strewn with rocks and thorns, Then put your wooden shoes on, pard, And you won't hurt your corns. To organize and teach, no doubt, Is very good, that's true, But still we can't succeed without The Good Old Wooden Shoe. Joe Hill |
| If we workers take a
notion |