Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/373

 THE WORKING BOY 359

compositors were obliged to leave the city. Others found work in the job printing and other branches of the trade, where they, in turn, contributed to overstock the labor market. Composi- tors, however, are relatively versatile men, better able to help themselves than men usually are in a trade requiring a less degree of intelligence. They form an apt illustration of the con- tention that the need of today is not so much skill as facility in acquiring skill and adapting oneself to the conditions of a new occupation.

What has befallen the compositors during the past two years is looming large upon the horizon of the locomotive engineers in the present year. These engineers have long been recognized as one of the most responsible bodies of skilled labor in the world. But the motorman is with us now, and he merely touches the button and the motor does all the rest. He is rapidly and surely undermining the suburban engineer, working 365 days in the year, his wages ranging from $i to $1.35 per day of twelve to sixteen hours. Indeed, all that saves the great body of skilled railroad engineers today is the fact that the motor, thus far, is confined to suburban traffic ; but no one is so fatuous as to believe that this restriction is a permanent one.

Most disheartening is the situation of the tailors. The intro- duction of the steam-cutting knife has enabled the American Clothing Trust to reduce the skilled cutters to the level of pre- cariousness of work and pay of the sweaters' victims. Some of the cutters being able men, and, like the compositors, relatively versatile, have developed into designers, traveling men, merchant tailors and sweaters on a small scale. These, however, are the chosen few ; while the general level of work and pay has suf- ered a deterioration from which there is not likely to be any recovery.

The custom-tailor, in turn, sees himself confronted with the

.tcr in the custom trade, and with the introduction of steam into the sweatshop, followed by the inevitable little girl at the machine. Moreover, the invention of an improved buttonhole machine enables a girl who can neither read, write, nor sew a sim-