SPECIAL ARTICLE.

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume XXIV, 11 April 1927, Page 5

SPECIAL ARTICLE.

SLAVES THE. MACMWE.

(By “A Lately we have heard much of mass production, and having read decent articles on this subject in “John o’ London’s Weekly” from the pen of Lord Riddell, I have thought it would be of interest to readers to hear the views of a workman- on ths subject. Bluntly, from tile workman’s point of view, mass production as applied to engineering or macll-uie construction is the most soul-killing and nerve-raeking labour human- beings, have- ever been forced to undertake since the days of the galley-slaves First, lot us trndeestand clearly what is meant by mass production. In the fitting together of, say, an agricultural tractor oe a ear, a platform or chain, somewhat on the lines of a horizontal escalator, moves slowly—about a yard in three mijutes—between two rows of workmen. During the three-minute period each workman, as the tractor or ear sowiy passes, performs one simple operation. Perhaps, for instance, he places three bolts in position. The next man will place the nuts on the bolts and give them a half-turn. The next man will screw the bolts “hand tight,” and the next will tighten each bolt with a wrench.

At the top of the chain appears the barest possible skeleton of the car or tractor. By the time it reaches the bottom of the chain, the construction is complete, so complete in fact that, while the machine is on the last few yards of the chain, the tank is filled with fuel, an automatic starter puts the engine into motion, a man jumps into the seat and drives the machine away to the paint-shop under its own power.

It is very marvellous, but the weary monotony of doing the same thing day after day, week after week, in the midst of clanging, shrieking machinery, is more than any human being can stand.

The working hours are certainly short, but yon ean’t measure hours by the clock. Given congenial occupation, a ten-hour day is much shorter than a sixhour day ol such monotonous labour s I have described. The work, also, at chain assembly is physically easy, but hard work is not hard work when you enjoy the job, and when there is something to interest and occupy the mind. It is in this latter respect that mass production fails very badly. Men have “no love or pride for a mass-produeed machine. Nay, they positively hate it. When you have robbed a man, especially an en-gine-fitter, of the love of his job and pride in liis work, you have robbed him of one of the dearest things in life. I know what lam talking about. I worked at engine-fitting before mass production came along, with a very old-fashioned firm, so oldfashioned that, at the completion of a difficult job the boss would call us into bis office, ask us to sit down, give us a tot and a cigar; and his few words of praise meant more to us than an extra month’s wages. This brings me to another feature of mass production—as applied to engineering, The chain-assembly system not only kills all interest in work, but stifles goodfellowship amongst workmen. Just exactly how this comes about I find it difficult to put into writing. Of necessity, under mass-producing conditions every man is just a cog in a wheel.. He l.as to stick to his one and only job. He can’t leave it for a minute. If he does, he automatically stops, say, five hundred hands, sometimes the whole factory. Und'er the old system there was a spirit of camaraderie throughout the whole works. Perhaps the head carpenter would come along to me with a piteous tale concerning a consignment of wood chisels of which the cutting qdges were too “snappy” and which had produced snappy tempers among his men. Well, wood chisels were uo concern of mine,, but “Chippy” was a decent sort and would be invited to leave a few behind, and I would see what could be done during dinner-hour in the way of re-tempering.

The re-tempering involved a visit to the blacksmith’s shop. The right tempering medium having been determined, the information would be passed on to the smith—whose job it -was to temper tools—and one had the comfortable feeling of having helped two mates out of a difficulty. The matter did not stop there. Some evening we three would foregather and, over a glass of beer, talk for hours about the vagaries of tempering steel. Having all three worked aboard ship, yarn followed yarn, and those defective wood chisels would carry us round the globe before the night was done. Under the mass-production system you know only the men on either side of you, and you probably wish you didn’t. It is a levelling-down, not a levelling-up, system. For instance, when you apply for a job, _you are subjected to a very keen cross-examination. If it turns out that you have previous engineering experience, the fact is specially reported to the ganger. On putting you to work, the latter impresses upon you the absolute

importance of forgetting everything you know.

People in the higher walks of life may “boast of Dukes and Earls they dined with bnt yestreen.” Just so, and men who built the Forth and Menai Bridges and worked in the Mersey Tunnel are rather proud of it. Why, before my boys were properly breeched they had learned that their great granddad cast and assembled I the first steam-roller. When next some of you important people go rolling along in your motors on a smoothly-made macadam road, give a thought to the men wha made such roads possible by the introduction of the steam-roller. On the first steam-roller you meet you will note a rampant horse with the word “Invictas” written beneath. The old man used to say it was the only Latiu word he understood, or that any engineer needed to know.

Boys yet unborn will trace their ancestry to the man who, no matter how minor the part, had a hand in building the Cobham aeroplane.

Pride and tradition stand for a tremendous amount amongst engineers. That yarn —I think by C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne—about fitting a steamer with a new tail shaft in mid ocean isn't a yarn at all, but a true story. There are old men, on every water-front of the British Empire, who can supply the details. I can remember one December being on board an old traffip-steamer, off Ushant, with a cargo of iron pyrites, wallowing in a nasty sea, with not enough steam in the boilers to cook an egg, due to a breakdown in the water-feed donkey engine. The chief engineer, with nothing but hand tools, fashioned and fitted a cylinder head to that donkey engine out of a piece of cold foot-plate. As the only other sober member of the crew, I helped him to do it, Mac carefully explaining to me the while that he “didna min’ missin’ the Christmas feesteevities,” bnt he has promised his “auld lady to be hame again for the New Year.” One wonders what, in the face of any crisis similar to the above, the mass-producing engineers would be capable of.

It seems extraordinary how a man in Lord P.iddeH’s position can have got such a grip of the subject, and equally extraordinary how he seems to have overlooked the effect on the human material engaged in mass production—really a serious oversight for the author of “Some Things That Matter.”