2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



where tlie product of the worker is never more than a fraction 

 of any finished " whole/' and where no greater demand is made 

 upon the brain than that it shall see that the muscles of the 

 arm, the hand, or the finger execute movements at specific times 

 and continuously in connection with machinery, there are few 

 such compensations or alleviations ; and the general result to the 

 individual working under such conditions can not, to say the 

 least, be in the line of either healthy mental or physical develop- 

 ment. Happily, however, the number of industries, in which 

 division of labor and its subordination to machinery has been 

 productive of such extreme results, is not very large ; the manu- 

 facture of boots and shoes by modern machine methods, in which 

 every finished shoe is said to represent sixty -two distinct me- 

 chanical employments or products, being perhaps the most nota- 

 ble. And yet even here there is not a little in way of compen- 

 sating benefit to be credited to such a system. Thus, for exam- 

 ple, it is stated that "the use of machinery has compelled 

 employes to apply themselves more closely to their work ; and, 

 being paid by the piece, has enabled them to make better 

 wages." When shoemaking was a handicraft, "the hours of 

 labor were very irregular ; the workmen, who decided their own 

 hours of labor, working some days only a few hours, and then 

 working far into the night for a few days to make up for lost 

 time. It was once customary for shoemakers (in New England) 

 to work on an average fifteen hours a day ; " now the hours of 

 labor in the shoe-factories are not in excess of ten hours. It is 

 also claimed that the introduction of the sewing-machine into 

 the manufacture of boots and shoes has greatly increased the 

 opportunities for the employment of women, at better rates of 

 wages. In the manufacture of clothing, which, in routine and 

 monotony, is analogous to the manufacture of boots and shoes, 

 it is generally conceded that the influence of the sewing-machine 

 has been to increase wages, and that " notwithstanding the con- 

 stantly growing use of these machines, the number of employes 

 is greater than formerly, owing to the enlargement of the 

 business." * Furthermore, the " collective work which admits 

 of being carried on by the factory principle of great subdivision 

 of labor and by the bringing together of large numbers of peo- 

 ple under one roof and one control " does not at present, in the 

 United States, give occupation to more than one in ten of all who 

 follow gainful occupations in the whole country ; while for the 

 other nine the essential elements of industrial success continue, 

 as of old, to be found in individual independence and personal 

 mental capacity ; and this experience of the United States will 

 probably find a parallel in all other manufacturing countries. 



* " Report on the Statistics of Wages," J. D. Weeks, U, S. Census, vol. xx. 



