726 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



and begged him to do better ; we were very busy at the time, but we could 

 never get above four. At last we could go on no longer ; we knew that 

 the machine should do more, and we said the machine was not giving satis- 

 faction, and he was discharged. We then selected a boy, a very intelligent- 

 looking young fellow, but he knew absolutely nothing about machines. 

 We said, " Will you learn this machine ? " He said he was most anxious to 

 do so. He buckled to, and the lad in three weeks had increased the produc- 

 tion of the machine up to six inches an hour, and the other day I got a 

 note that the machine was doing eleven inches an hour. 



Hiram S. Maxim, the great gun maker, who has had experi- 

 ence in manufacturing in three countries, declares that a given 

 amount of labor in the iron trade produces a smaller product in Eng- 

 land than in France, Germany, or the United States; and that a 

 given machine has a greater productive capacity in each of these 

 countries, and particularly in the United States, where the system 

 of payment by the piece generally exists. The Amalgamated Society 

 has generally successfully resisted the piece-payment system, and has 

 managed in many other ways to practically control the internal man- 

 agement of the shop. 



In a word, the purpose of the manufacturers has been to so 

 change the basis of their industry that they can increase production 

 by reducing costs, not through reduced wages, but through the more 

 complete utilization of modern mechanical inventions. They have 

 insisted that the individual workman would, in consequence, earn 

 much higher wages. The movement on the part of their em- 

 ployees was one to limit production by the shorter working day and 

 by the increased cost of increased overtime work at overtime wages. 

 The ends aimed at were diametrically opposite, and the intensity 

 and the prolongation of the struggle are thus explained. It was an 

 issue which admitted of no compromise. A truce might, indeed, 

 have been patched up, and the battle declared a draw; but any 

 conclusion short of the complete surrender of one side or the other 

 would have left the vital issue as unsettled as at the start. 



As that issue has been stated, the impartial student finds it dif- 

 ficult to understand why it should exist at all. If the iron masters 

 are right in their contention that reduced costs of production, 

 through greater machinery efficiency, are necessary for the preserva- 

 tion of English manufacturing against foreign encroachment, the 

 welfare of their workmen is as vitally involved as their own. This 

 is only another way of stating the time-worn truism that the interests 

 of capital and labor are identical, in any true analysis of their rela- 

 tionship. 



But the English trades-unionist does not see the matter in any 

 such light ; nor is his point of view at all obscured. Apart from the 

 latent antipathy to labor-saving machinery, which is not avowed, is 



