AN INDUSTRIAL OBJECT LESSON. 725 



quences of suck a situation liave not been strikingly apparent. But 

 the mechanical advances in all branches of iron manufacture during 

 the last few years have been marvelous, and the consequent econo- 

 mies equally marvelous. The trades-unionists have carried on a silent, 

 secret, and to a large degree a successful movement against the effi- 

 cient introduction of these new methods in the shops under their 

 control. There is no good reason to doubt the statement, repeatedly 

 made by the iron masters, that Great Britain is, in consequence, far 

 behind the competing nations in many forms of iron manufacture, 

 in efficiency of equipment, and in product per man. 



So far as this fact is due to English trades-unionism, it must be 

 regarded as a triumph for that organization; and it is somewhat 

 difficult to get at the philosophy by which organized labor justifies 

 itself in standing athwart the pathway of mechanical progress. At 

 its basis undoubtedly lies the inherited antipathy of the English 

 workingman to labor-saving machinery. He possesses this antip- 

 athy to a degree and extent unknown in any other country. It has 

 come down to him through the generations, and its tenacity is one 

 of many evidences of the narrowing influence of insular condi- 

 tions. The time has long since passed when this antipathy takes on 

 the form of open violence, the smashing of machines, the burn- 

 ing of mills, and the maltreatment of inventors — things common 

 enough in the days of the Luddites, seventy-five years ago. The 

 modern manifestation of this inborn and inherited antipathy to 

 labor-saving machinery is a species of moral boycott — indefinite, 

 intangible, indirect, felt rather than seen. It frequently takes the 

 form of union regulations, under which the mechanic restrains 

 himself from turning out more than a given product in a day, 

 irrespective of the possibilities of the improved machine he operates. 

 The engineers' strike has inspired a great mass of literature showing 

 how the enforcement of these regulations has tended to limit output, 

 and thus handicap English manufacturers in their struggle against 

 foreign competitors. Here is one of many illustrations given by 

 Colonel Dyer, the chairman of the Federated Employers, in a recent 

 magazine article: 



We have a very large boring machine at Elswick ; this boring machine 

 is eighty feet long. We do very rough work on it — i. e., we take the center 

 out of the shaft by means of a trepanning tool. We took the center out of 

 a shaft the other day seventy feet long. Tbe whole center was trepanned 

 out. We selected a man for working the machine ; a man came round, a 

 very intelligent-looking man, and that was all we had to judge by — we can 

 not ask him what society he belongs to. We asked him if he could work 

 this machine. He said of course he could. We put him on the machine, 

 and he worked it about six or seven months. We could never get more 

 than four or five inches an hour out of the machine. We pressed him, 



