Page:Onward Sweep of the Machine Process (ca 1917).pdf/7

Rh movements that his body becomes formed accordingly—he becomes a living mechanism of production.

The Skilled Man—The Molder.

Of late years machinery has been installed rapidly. There isn't one line of work which cannot be done, to some extent at least, by machines. Take the molder's trade for instance. No molder of 25 or 30 years ago dreamed that there would ever be any machines doing molding. He knew that it required the sensitive touch of the artist to finish a mold; he knew that the sand had to be just so hard, and never did he think that a dead thing, a machine, could pack the sand just right. But today there are foundries having machines which ram the sand for more than fifty men. Five men can do more work with these machines than could sixty by hand. Everything fits together, and there is hardly a sensitive touch by the human hand needed any more. The sand is shoveled in (in some foundries the sand comes down from above and no shovel is needed, either); the flask is put on a "gumper" (name of one kind of machine used for heavy work), the molder turns a handle, and the machine gives a jerk which packs the sand together; the molder counts the jerks and, what would perhaps have needed all day to do by hand, takes only a couple or a few seconds to perform with the machine.

And there are dozens of different molding machines. Some small ones, used on bench work, make one mold every minute. So this trade, which used to take (and is still SUPPOSED to take, of course) three or four years to learn, can now be picked up in a few days, a few weeks or few months at the limit. Now in case the molders go out a few unskilled can soon be broken in to do the work. As old molders usually say: "Nowadays they bring him in at seven in the morning and at ten he is a molder." Of course there is still some molding that requires skill, but it is getting less every year and will soon be a thing of the past. And so it is in