Page:Onward Sweep of the Machine Process (ca 1917).pdf/6

4 won't get any wages at all. So he proposes that, in order to uphold their interests, those outside the factory get together with those working in the factory.

And thus we have a union in embryo. The men begin to realize that if they want to live they will have to get together, all of them, and by so doing force their employers to pay them something for their work.

The Master's Method.

The above may not be exactly as it did happen, when the machinery came, but it is an illustration that holds good in general.

Since that time machinery has been improved; instead of the small individual workshop we have today the modern factory employing thousands of men and women. But the conditions created by the first machines still exist—although today we don't see the slaves in fifties or hundreds only outside the working places, but by the thousands, hundreds of thousands, and millions. Today they are standing outside the shops, factories, mills and mines, the same as the fifty, where the first machine factory whistle blew. And as machinery began to become dominant in society, those owning this machinery began to form organizations also, till today we have the employers' organizations—the trusts and the merchants' and manufacturers' associations. Since the time when the first machines made the workers get together they have kept on getting together—and they are still at it.

At first the shoemaker stood alone, competing with the other shoemakers. Then came the organizing of these "shoemakers" or shoe manufacturers, in order to uphold their interests. Today no shoes, or very few, are made by hand. They are mostly made in big factories, employing thousands of men and women. Not one of these workers could make a whole pair of shoes if he tried to. Everything is specialized; each worker does one little part of the whole, then it goes to the next, and so on down the line. The human being gets so used to his