414 



THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



that case you just smashed cost this company just that," may 

 sound trite, but it is often effective. The war and this era of 

 high prices have taught workers to save through Liberty Bonds 

 and War Savings Stamps, and the lessons can very readily be 

 applied in the shop. Getting started right is half the battle. The 

 shipyards and munition factories demonstrated that green workers 

 often turn out better than experienced hands because they had 

 nothing to unlearn. It was possible to teach them the exact 

 methods of the concern without encountering opposition due to 

 methods learned in other shops. The story is told of an ex- 

 perienced carpenter employed in an airplane factory. All his 

 life he had been used to trimming off ends of boards that stuck 

 out. He ruined $700 of seasoned ash in a very few minutes by 

 sawing off the ends of some partially constructed planes. 



Some factories separate the training of apprentices entirely 

 from the regular departments, particularly in the case of shoe- 

 makers, tire builders, etc. In the mill room there is opportunity 

 for training operators through various stages. Operators come in 

 as helpers, whose duty it is to change rolls and carry stock ; later 

 they become mill men, then assistant calender hands, with the 

 chance to become calender men. Similarly in the cutting room, 

 workers can start as stock carriers and work up to clicker and 

 Parsons machine operators. 



RUBBER WORKERS OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 



But what of the old rubber workers who served their ap- 

 prenticeships forty years ago? No rubber shop to-day is com- 

 plete without them. What a picturesque lot they are, plying their 

 knives with sturdy strokes over in the far corner of the cutting 

 room where the long rows of machines have crowded them! 

 They openly scoff at the youngsters, to be sure. But spend a 

 lunch hour getting acquainted with them. They will tell you of 

 rubber shops long since closed and incidentally give you a 

 friendly tip on foremen who have come and gone. They swear 

 at the makers who are always "short" and ask you where they 

 lose or scrap the work, yet they cut it over just the same. They 

 chew tobacco and take snuff, but what of that? There are few 

 industries to-day which have as loyal and as hardworking men 

 in the ranks as these fellows of the old school. 



THE IMPORTANCE OF EFFICIENT FOREMEN. 



Rubber factory executives have gradually learned to appre- 

 ciate the fact that the labor problem rests a great deal with their 

 foremen. The college professor who went into the steel mills 

 during the war disguised as a laborer, was not far wrong 

 when he said to the general manager, "Your men are fine ; but 

 your foremen are a bunch of blackguards and slave drivers." 

 Foremen are being sent to school not only to learn the technical 

 side, but also to emphasize the human side. The day has gone 

 when the foreman can order his men as a sergeant would a 

 platoon. In those days there was a line of men waiting outside 

 to take the job of the man who fell down. To-day that man 

 can go across the street and get as good a job or better. And 

 he knows it. He cannot be bullied or coddled. The foreman 

 fires a man to-day only as a last resort in exceptional cases. 

 When he does, he has lost. 



It is an unwarranted assumption to take it for granted that the 

 workman is interested in the product. He is not. He is only 

 there because it brings him the wherewithal to get what he wants 

 and needs. And their interests are as wide apart as the two 

 poles. "John, how is the new baby getting along?"— "Mike, are 

 the hens laying well?" — "George, have you got your house painted 

 yet?" — these are the things that interest men. I saw a foreman 

 not long ago stop to admire the pictures of three children, 

 proudly displayed by their father, a rubber worker. The man 

 was a piece worker, yet he stopped five minutes to display them. 

 That production time lost was more than made up to the com- 

 pany by the good-will it created. Usually the way a man feels 

 toward his foreman is the way he feels toward the company and 

 his job. 



MAINTAINING PLANT MORALE. 



A wide-awake executive can scent trouble in his plant and nip 

 it in the bud. It takes very little these days to start wild 

 rumors. Some petty grievance of a workman is magnified by 

 gossip; piece rates obviously unfair; carelessly worded and am- 

 biguous notices; petty rules; a thousand little things can impair 

 morale irretrievably if not watched. Not many weeks past I 

 heard a workman berating the company as crooked. His argu- 

 ment was based on a story that six months previously a work- 

 man had left, having paid six installments on a Liberty Bond, 

 amounting to five or six dollars, and the company had only re- 

 turned SO cents to him. Upon investigation if was found that 

 there was nothing to the story at all; but that did not prevent 

 it from being repeated and doing harm. 



Many pay-rolls are full of unfairness, due to the weakness in 

 management which allows a group of workmen to secure a raise 

 for themselves by making threats, while the more efficient yet 

 timid ones plug along at the old rates. Records of work per- 

 formed are the true basis for promotion. And nothing is gained 

 by secrecy regarding production methods or records. Gradually 

 the old mists which have obscured rubber shops for a quarter of 

 a century are clearing away. Men are beginning to hark back to 

 Solomon who said "There is nothing new under the sun." The 

 old type of foreman who put off with vague and false answers the 

 ambitious workman with a desire to learn has now discovered 

 that his prized trade secrets are no longer of value to anyone 

 except himself as keepsakes. Education, fairness and equal op- 

 portunity for all, with the plums for ability, are the new- 

 standards. 



RUBBER WORKERS A FAVORED CLASS. 



Ten years ago the man just out of college who went to work 

 in a factory was scoffed at. Most of the graduates flocked to 

 offices and banks for a "white-collar" job. The personnel of the 

 graduates is changing now; the sons of the mill hands are be- 

 ginning to outnumber the sons of the directors. And the whole 

 thing is reversed. The factory worker's son seeks the office job, 

 and the director's son is going into the shop. What does he 

 find in the rubber factories? Instead of the bushy-bearded 

 I. W. W. he finds a cheerful, wholesome class of people, proud 

 of their occupation and holding shares in the corporation. If a 

 census were taken of the so-called labor class in the rubber in- 

 dustry many of them would be classed as capitalists. For rubber 

 workers are noted for sticking to their trade, and many are part 

 owners in the shops where they work. 



The purpose of this paper is not point out a ruyal road to a 

 cure-all for labor troubles. There is none. Rather is it to in- 

 dicate the tendencies of the times which combine to make the 

 problem. The actual solving of it depends upon the individual 

 manufacturer's condition which only he can know and analyze 

 for himself. 



LOOKING FOR BETTER HEVEA. 

 The scientific improvement of plants that are cultivated for 

 commercial purposes in tropical countries is urged as a neces- 

 sity by Professor W. Bateson in "Production." In his brief sur- 

 vey of rubber, one of the commodities he deals with, he takes 

 the same point of view as that of J. P. Romein in The India 

 Rubber World, October 1, 1919, and proposes much the same 

 mode of action. He thinks the government scientific stations 

 should pick out the best yielding Hevca hrasilicnsis trees and 

 distribute cuttings from them to planters. The attempt to do 

 this on a large scale at Peradeniya in Ceylon was a failure, as 

 only one cutting in 3,000 succeeded, but the method has worked 

 with no great difficulty in other cases. It is from cuttings and 

 not from seeds that improvement in Hevea must be looked for. 



"Rubber M.\chinery" by Henry C. Pearson, is filled with 

 i-aluable information for rubber manufacturers. Price $6. 



