CAUSES OF MANUFACTURERS' SUCCESS 295 



manufactories at Brockton or Lynn, near Boston, and again 

 you will see thousands of girls. The increase in the employ- 

 ment of women and children is altogether out of proportion 

 to the increase in the employment of men in the states. 



Here, then, you have the American manufacturer equip- 

 ping himself for commercial competition by getting the brains 

 into the machines and getting cheap labor to work them — 

 cheap labor, that is, in comparison with what he would have 

 to pay were his workmen skilled artisans, as they are in a 

 British workshop. But he goes further. He specializes. He 

 does not try to make twenty things in engineering. He 

 makes one thing, be it bridges or locomotives, or reapers, or 

 machine tools. He focuses on one thing, makes his splash 

 in advertising that one thing, gets a reputation for that one 

 thing. But in it there may be a hundred parts. He special- 

 izes his work people in making those separate parts. They 

 have one little thing to do, and they do that, and nothing 

 else, year in and year out. It may be the punching of a hole. 

 I have seen an American workman do a monotonous thing 

 a thousand times a day — a thing which you cannot get out of 

 your mind as positively deadening to the intellect, and which 

 you would think would drive a man of intelligence to mad- 

 ness in a fortnight. It is all done with a speed that is amaz- 

 ing, and which I fancy no English workman would continue 

 for a week. But the American finds fascination in his adroit- 

 ness, in the very clatter of multitudinous repetition. He is un- 

 equalled as a worker; but put him alongside an English artisan 

 and you find that in excellence he is far surpassed. Yet over 

 all that specialization is the marvellous administration of the 

 employer, so that parts meet parts and, like the action of a 

 beautiful piece of clockwork, the article is brought to com- 

 pletion. 



Here arises a very legitimate criticism, often heard in 

 Great Britain, that in wear and tear the American article 

 does not last as long as the British. That is correct. But 

 the American tells you, with a smile, that he doesn't make 

 things to last an eternity. He makes them to last only suffi- 

 ciently long. Take the manufacture of boots, about which 

 we have lately heard a great deal . The American manufac- 



