Page:The Advancing Proletariat (1917).pdf/18

16 the raw material passes in at one end of the machine and the finished product pours out at the other. Everything is thoroughly standardized and no man can say, "I did this—I did that." The individual effort is completely swallowed up—obliterated in the process of production. The workers themselves are grouped according to their peculiar mental or physical characteristics and guided in their tasks by "scientific" bosses, who prescribe by a fixed rule even the motions of their limbs and bodies. During the hours of their labor, they are no longer thinking men, but mere automatons, performing their functions mechanically and completely dominated by the will of another. BY GROUP EFFORT, OR SCIENTIFIC TEAM WORK ABOUT THE MACHINES, THE PROLETARIAT EARNS ITS BREAD.

The Proletarians necessarily touch the world at the point of production—their very lives depend upon gaining access to the machinery and processes of production—hence they think in terms of industry. Grouped about the machines they soon come to realize that the bulk of their product goes to the owners of the machines. Any increase in productive capacity does not redound to their advantage, but merely means the displacement of a portion of their number from industry and a consequent effort on the part of those so displaced to return to the machines on any terms that will prevent starvation. The workers yet employed view this event with alarm because they find themselves threatened from two directions: on the one hand, by a possible further improvement of the machines with the subsequent displacement of yet another portion of their numbers; and, on the other hand, by the displacement of themselves through the return to industry of those previously displaced, whose stomachs have compelled them to agree to yield up a greater portion of the product of toil for the PRIVILEGE OF WORKING. They see a vicious