5 88 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



becomes necessary to have a master-mind 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 produc- 

 tion and variations in prices. Such a man is a general of industry, 

 and corresponds in position and functions to the general of an army. 



"What, as a consequence, has happened to the employes? Coin- 

 cident with and as a result of this change in the methods of pro- 

 duction, 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 independently as formerly, but as a pri- 

 vate 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 distribution. 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, and, when 

 there is no more of that kind of work to do, they are in a measure help- 

 less. The result has been that the individualism or independence of 

 the producer in manufacturing has been in a great degree destroyed, 

 and with it has also in a great degree been destroyed the pride which 

 the workman formerly took in his work that fertility of resource, 

 which formerly was a special characteristic of American workmen, and 

 that element of skill that comes from long and varied practice and re- 

 flection and responsibility. Not many years ago every shoemaker was 

 or could be his own employer. The boots and shoes passed directly 

 from an individual producer to the consumer. Now this condition of 

 things has passed away. Boots and shoes are made in large factories ; 

 and machinery has been so utilized, and the division of labor in con- 

 nection with it has been carried to such an extent, that the process of 

 making a shoe is said to be divided into sixty-four parts, or the shoe- 

 maker of to-day is only the sixty-fourth part of what a shoemaker 

 once was.* It is also asserted that " the constant employment at one 

 sixty-fourth part of a shoe not only offers no encouragement to men- 

 tal activity, but dulls by its monotony the brain of the employe to 

 such an extent that the power to think and reason is almost lost." 



As the division of labor in manufacturing more especially in the 

 case of textiles is increased, the tendency is to supplement the em- 



* The following is a reported enumeration of the specialties or distinct branches of 

 shoemaking at which men, women, and children are kept constantly at work in the most 

 perfect of the modern shoe-factories, no apprentices being needed or taken in such estab- 

 lishments : " Binders, blockers, boot-liners, beaters-out, boot-turners, bottomcrs, buffers, 

 burnishers, channelers, counter-makers, crimpers, cutters, dressers, edge-setters, eyeleters, 

 finishers, fitters, heelers, lasters, levelers, machine-peggers, McKay stitchers, nailers, pack- 

 ers, parters, peggers, pressers, rosette-makers, siders, sandpaperers, skinners, stitchers, 

 stringers, treers, trimmers, welters, buttonhole-makers, clampers, deckers, closers, corders, 

 embossers, gluers, inner sole-makers, lacers, leather-assorters, riveters, rollers, seam-rub- 

 bers, shank-pressers, shavers, slipper-liners, 6ole-leather-cutters, sole-quiltcrs, stampers 

 stiffeners, stock-fitters, strippers, taggers, tipmakers, turners, vampers, etc." 



