The Mechanical Handling and Storing of Material

2 THE MECHANICAL HANDLING OF MATERIAL working hours, rather than in that of cheaper prices. The Americans, who are strenuous people, seem to prefer to work long hours and have a high standard of living. “Nowhere have the methods of rapid production been carried further than in America, and nowhere are higher wages paid. The benefit of rapid production may, therefore, be either a higher standard of living or more leisure, or a compromise between these two.” In the following H. J. Brackenbury is again quoted: “Imagine—and the cultivation of the imagination is not to be despised by the engineer—manufacturing processes so far improved that the amount of human labour required for the present production of the world were reduced by half. Many believe that the result of this would be to throw half the work-people out of employment. This would not be the true result. The true result would be that, other things remaining the same, every one would be as well off if the workers were paid the same wages as at present and worked for only half the time. “This, then, is the goal to which we should strive; the goal which we ourselves shall not see, but which will nevertheless be finally reached. If the masters’ and the men’s leaders would make common cause, and work to this end, much benefit might be obtained in a short time.” If the working classes can be taught that their hostile attitude towards the introduc- tion of machinery is against the technical and commercial progress of the country at large, and against their personal interest in particular, they will change their tactics and welcome modern progress. It is not to be supposed for one moment that the inventors and users of laboui- saving devices are moved by any philanthropic motive, solely to better the lot of then fellow-creatures ; neither on the other hand should it be maintained that the introduction of power-driven plant was instigated to deprive men of the opportunity to work; but rather to lower the cost of production for the manufacturer’s own benefit and that of humanity as a whole. “It is,” says H. H. Suplee,1 “ important to remember that the human machine, considered as a means of producing mechanical effect, is far too costly and too lacking in efficiency to be used for anything which can be done by manufactured power. Any idea that there is inherent dignity or merit in overstraining human muscle in a wholly undesirable and inefficient manner must be replaced by the certain knowledge that the true method of employing man is by the use of his trained judgment and skill in the control of manufactured power applied through properly designed machinery. Handling bulky and specifically heavy loads is very, hard work, which often leaves the worker unduly fatigued, a condition only too likely to produce in him a brutal tendency, which result is by no means desirable. From what has been said, it will be evident that the kind of labour which is most readily replaced by machinery is that of the untrained man, who works principally with his muscle, and that the performance of this portion of the world’s work by machinery will mean that the man who is to earn his living by his labour must be capable of using his head as well as his hands, and learn at the same time how to do things at once less onerous and more valuable than formerly. Technical progress can no longer be stigmatised as the enemy of labour, and where the introduction of automatic labour-saving machinery has dispensed with a few labourers, their- sphere of action has generally been transferred to more responsible and less laborious work. i In an article entitled £tThe Replacement oi Man by the Machine, in Cctssiet s Magazine.