Capitalism Forges Its Chain Gang
Capitalism Forges Its Chain Gang Industrial Laboratories Making Perfect Machines Of American Workers The choice in industry is no longer one of skill, but one of perfect mechanical machines....
...Transferred to a chart and reduced to decimal fractions, the information is studied in relation to the other facta that have been assembled...
...There It is for all men to read...
...America is the only country in the world to live in...
...they have been out of work from two weeks to six months...
...He has been doing janitor work for years in Washington and New York and is staying at some cheap Negro hotel and often goes hungry...
...That is the disadvantage of not being the permanent property of the capitalist buyer...
...Add the company union, antiunion, and "yellow dog" industries...
...Human labor loses its manhood in this grinding mechanism...
...Patiently they waited their turn to take a ticket and go into the kitchen for soup and bread and coffee...
...For factions and parties may swerve and change and bicker and alter, but the original need for Tamiment is present in more abundant vitality than ever before...
...automatic men uith neither heart nor brain...
...The facilities of the Socialist organization, including the use of speakers, meeting halls, and the Socialist press were offered to the printers...
...He tie room he is occupying with his son...
...Is this true...
...During 1 a three-hour visit, one man was sent to a job...
...There are blank spaces...
...There it is studied and the relation of each factor to the other is analyzed as a part of the general examination...
...The total is the modern treadmill worked out on this continent, the monstrous capitalism that has grown like a upas tree and that today overshadows the lives of millions of wage workers...
...The difficulties that face radical youth in the different trades and professions were discussed with great interest...
...The subject is "Negro and Unemployment...
...The mother died at its birth...
...Asked the reason for the present depression, he answered: "Why, it's this way, if these foreigners, these 3,000,000 foreigners were put out of Chicago and New York and sent right back to their own countries, why we Americana would have plenty of jobs...
...Observe each step and every motion of the arms...
...Get the most out of this Thing, but do not exhaust It by overwork as it is property like the cattle in the field...
...One morning, after we had used the subways for a lodging house, we sat in the waiting room at the Grand Central Terminal, waiting for the hour to arrive when we could renew the now 1 hopeless job-hunt...
...He, however, has been put out by these indignant ladies as they would not tolerate a father without employment He is a painter and porter but has been out of work for two months...
...He has been doing odd jobs for the last few months...
...The wonder is that hundreds of men in our position don't turn to crime...
...Later in life he tried to become i union man because he saw the usefulness of unions, but time and again he was blackballed...
...On April 13, with a very limited amount of funds in his pocket, the writer arrived in New York City from a Massachusetts city where he had lost his work, and where he had Jeft r-'s wife and two children...
...Wise tow, sacred taw...
...and "Whereas, the five-day week will reduce the unemployment * in the printing industry and lower the mortality in this nerve racking occupation where the product is often gotten out under high pressure...
...Hunter College Senior...
...has become a science...
...In less than a week, it became apparent that work in the newspaper field was impossible to secure...
...At the end of the month the charts and diagrams record with deadly accuracy whether this piece of ferment should be discarded for a fresh piece awaiting examination in the office, A Robot Gospel This Is not fiction...
...Thus, to keep himself from starvation, the seeker after work pledged himself to take any occupation available, stifling his pride...
...Most of the men seemed anxious :o speak...
...It was hinted, and apparently with good grounds, that the agencies are quite pleased to send a man to a job they know he cannot keep, since obviously the same job can thus be sold over and over again...
...there are very few "bums...
...The older two are working and are now running the home...
...most of them are American born...
...We asked him would he care to go to Welfare Island for a short rest as the guest of the city...
...The fundamental law referred to "persons...
...He came to us in dirty, almost ragged clothes, very depressed...
...no vacancies today...
...These jobs, let it be understood, were secured with surprising celerity and gave the j lie to the general impression that a released prisoner with his $5 gift from the state must return to crime because he cannot find work...
...How rearrange the plant organization to make this Thing ooze more Values into the pockets of the owners...
...Or trill it mean slavery and misery...
...Facts and figures to show how the unemployment problem has wrought havoc in the ranks of the Negro people, and how the problem can to some extent be solved immediately, will be presented...
...Does it want a place to the lock step...
...We toured employment agencies until our feet were blistred, combining this activity with visits to various restaurants, hofirOa, e t c , where private employment omces are maintained, un many nights, we "carried the banner," which i3 job-hunter's parlance for walking the streets with- ! out a place to sleep...
...There are so many younger men to take his job...
...And ten summers have added so much to the progress of this great summer organisation of health and joy that today, on the brink of the tenth anniversary summer of the camp with its celebration and a Decoration Day special rate in honor of this event preparations are now complete for the record crowd, both old and new campers, ever housed and fed and 3ported on this magic mountain top...
...William Lloyd Imes, well-known clergyman, and Frank Crosswaith, prominent Socialist speaker and lecturer...
...Just as a magnet attracts steel, so does a man without a job soon meet another, and there is an exchange of hard luck stories, and a concerted move in the search (or money to keep the wolf from the figurative door...
...Only a few Negroes are on the bread line, one, a man of 45 years...
...Labor U reduced to a Thing and if the modern gang task saps the workman's vitality at the age of 40 or 45 he can be turned adrift and a fresh Thing can be purchased in the market...
...By James Oneal npHE less time and labor employed in producing an article the better for mankind...
...that practically none of them were the professional "bums" who usually make up such a line...
...Another, a man of 39, is writing JS a series cf letters describing the campaign he secretly waged !or his boss in 1918 against the ;ffort being made by Elizabeth Hurley Flynn and others to organize the mill workers of the south...
...and only a man who has ridden the subways for a couple of nights knows what a privilege 1 that is...
...Nowhere could he find the words "slave" or "slavery...
...Its life history must be explored before It is purchased...
...In spite of his situation he declared...
...Several even wrote us ong histories of their lives of their ;wn accord, the most interesting oeing a man of 65, who had spent 20 years of his life in various prisons of thisi country...
...There must be no waste of time and energy...
...That is why new machines are introduced...
...How many motions a minute are re quired to shear this ton of sheet iron or to wrap this bolt oT clothe How many useless motions hav< been employed and how many can be eliminated...
...Youth Institute Has Permanent Organization The Youth Institute held at the Rand School on May 10 turned out to be a very lively affair...
...In a notable address he said: 'We are getting into the thralls of one of the most relentless systems of economic oligarchy that the world has ever known...
...A purchase is msste...
...He is going 'to see this battle through without aid from his family...
...To avert servitude to caDftaliam to the task to which this ass the next generation must be devoted...
...He attended for two years at college (Howard University...
...The buyers want a good article and they want to extract all that they can from this human ferment...
...He can still work...
...We j learned in a couple of days that it was a house maintained for I released prisoners, so that they might have a home while hunting for a job...
...Some Prosperous Americans An Unemployed's Own Story By Job-Seeker WHILE Republican leaders and financial experts have been busy issuing statements to the daily press with reference to alleged improvement in business conditions, the writer has had an opportunity to make an actual survey of the reflection of this purported prosperity in employment channels of New York City...
...walks the streets all night and often goe3 hungry for long periods...
...These overseers were generally semi-illiterates...
...Bat we are what the circumstances make us, not what a Federal statute says we are...
...In a letter addressed to Leon H. Rouse, president of "Big Six," Lewis transmitted the text of a resolution adopted at the recent city convention of the Socialist Party, pledging the...
...Another Thing is substituted and It falls into the lock step of the plant routine...
...among this latter class were included ourselves...
...This article offers an answer to these auestions...
...and "Whereas, These figures regarding unemployment to be of any value should be made public immediately...
...For more than a week, he and I lived without knowing on any particular morning whether we would find a place to sleep when evening fell...
...what purchase price do you expect, and so on till all qualifications are listed to detail...
...The march of human progress is being reduced to marking time in capital's chain gang...
...A3 one lord of the lash put it, the good overseer is one who is "able to discern what a hand is capable of doing-, and is never attempting to make him do more...
...violent crime...
...that was all there I was to offer...
...And Tamiment to ready right now...
...But one truth has tliinssl forth out of the trace and track of ten years of camp growth...
...Here Is a form to fin out...
...just as the bide, bristles, bones, blood and entrails of a hog are transformed Into wearing' apparel, brushes, glues, dyes and other commodities, so the wage worker is regarded as a pig or a lump of ore...
...New bungalows have been added...
...The editor of The New Leader, in ibis article, traces the process...
...His opportunity for finishing his education came to an end when his father died, leaving his mother and a sister to support...
...They were honest, hard-working toilers, principally laborers, strong, rugged, aad willing to work...
...It is a race between Capitalism and Socialism and tat hope la that the latter will wta N. Y. Socialists Back Demands Of Typo Union Party Offers All Possible Assistance in Fight for 5-Day Week ???w-jpUNTERS seeking a five-day MS work week from the publishers will have the whole-hearted support of the local Socialist movement, officials of Typographical Union No...
...65 years old, gray and wrinkled, dressed rather neatly, a hopeless look in his eyes...
...Long may * wave...
...all those we interriewed were most anxious to get :leaned up, to get work, and live lecent lives...
...At 6 in the evening, we j were given a wholesome meal, and j a bed...
...After varied experiences, which included a couple of days of caddying at a country club where the fee for 18 holes was $1.25, and where a man was lucky if he made two rounds in a day...
...He registered at the William Sloane House* YMCA in 34th street, and there learned that of the total registration of perhaps 400 young men, 150 were seeking work...
...only a small percentage understand the cause Df the present depression...
...The baby will starve if nothing is done...
...James Presbyterian Church, St Nicholas Avenue and 141st street The meeting, which will be open to the public, and to which all those interested in helping soiva the acute problem affecting the Negro workers and their families are Invited, will be addressed by the following well-known speakers: Norman Thomas, who was the Socialist candidate for Mayor in the last municipal campaign, and who has actively espoused the cause of the Negro workers in various ways: Heywood Broun, famous journalist, who has undertaken to help relieve the distress caused by unemployment...
...He relates atrocities committed by prison ruards, whippings, starvation diet, :haining to the bars of his cell !r-r 20 days and how one guard beat an inmate to death before lis very eyes...
...This was the second request the Senators received from the local Socialist organization, the fir3t having been sent by Lewis in the name of the City Executive Committee shortly after Parker's name was sent to the Senate...
...very few had more than a public school education...
...Add to it those Enterprises that rule out ferment that ha3 reached the age of 45...
...What about the muscular exertion, the posture of the Thing, the bench or floor upon which it siL3 or stands ? Time monotony and fatigue are explored and the data gathered are piaced in a diagram...
...Any man of 29, a painter, decorator and somewhat of an artist, has been out of work for the past six weeks...
...One victim of this system said to me that he had paid ST for a position which lasted him but four days, and for which his total remuneration was $12, leaving only $5 actually gained from his four days of toil...
...Camp Tamiment Opens I For Its Tenth Year rr-vHE summers march...
...It was reported, although not officially confirmed, that 100 men had been "laid off" by the New -York World...
...Food must be apportioned, so much to adults and to children, so ranch to house slaves and field hands...
...They also were to charge of Things, clods of human ferment worked in gangs and under a discipline intended to get the most out of the Things...
...No effort was made to help I us look for a position, and we were looked upon with considerable disdain by the other inmates...
...Doting that my companion had nodded to sleep, approached with 1 the usual question as to what 1 tram we we're taking, and when we explained that we had no destination and no funds, ceferred us ; to the Travellers' Aid Society, where, under assumed names and 1 addresses, we answered many ques- I tians and .were finally despatched j to an institution downtown, where we were promised a room and meals until we found a job, with the assistance of the management...
...He was then a lad of 17 and knew no better...
...that is why the human being as a worker is studied by experts...
...Senator Wagner is r e q u e s t e d to bring the matter to the attention of the Director of the Census, and to insist that these unemployment statistics be published as scon as they are obtained, fhe resolution reads as follows: "Whereas it is reported that the Census Bureau has decided to tabulate the results of the unemployment quiz after the population statistics are compiled, which will probably be some time in 1931...
...The lump of ferment ambles through the office, punches a time clock, receives a number, and a card index records the various phases of the Job task from day to day...
...The resolution adopted at the convention, follows "Whereas, the New York union of newspaper printers are demanding a five-day work week in common with millions of their fellow workers in the United States in other callings...
...This is an age of science and as we have exhausted the possibilities of the pig and the ore so we must exhaust the possibilities of this human ferment...
...r>"ot a Commodiity" Ah, but the Clayton Act says "That the labor of a human being is not a commodity or article of commerce...
...record your parentage and whether married or single...
...It even lacks that, protective feature which property to labor gave the Negro slave...
...A large meeting will impress upon the people of the city that to the discussion on unemployment the situation of the Negro ought to be taken into account...
...Then there was an old man...
...What should he do...
...and another day distributing advertising from 6 a. m. to 7 p. m. for $2.80, we finally joined the line at the soup kitchen maintained by the women's division of the Socialist party, in 25th street We had walked by that line on several occasions, never before mustering sufficient courage to cast all pride to the winds and step in with the jobless...
...On the Bread-Line By Florence Robbing For the past few weeks I have been studying the bread line, at the Little Church Around the Corner...
...It is a robotizing of human beings and another generation of it is likely to create a race of dull and witless workers, without hope, and without the will to conquer the monstrous thing that enslaves them...
...Vaca-i- tion dreams and actualities are hung up on the filing walls of memory...
...This summer Tamiment baa built still further to anticipation of an influx of capacity lists due to the need for a vacation spot of com- i plete satisfaction in the money class made necessary by the market slump and necessitating the closing of vacation spots catering to the higher prices...
...Principles of economics and politics, liberal, radical, educational, active, may be debated in all the lecture halls of the land, but Tamiment stands open to all in a unanimity of purpose and design, tactic and fruition...
...The milk company refuses to give him any more milk for his baby...
...A conglomeration of sorry looking j men, down-and-out and hopeless, lounged about, while a nearnest young man and a young woman assistant answered telephone calls and tried to place them...
...The outside world thinks he is too old...
...Just as chemists have studied various ores and have aided in extracting everything from them that can be marketed for a profit...
...Its roads are cleared...
...The buyers are few and the seDes are many...
...came to New York to find adventure and after a few weeks found himself among the unfortunates of the bread line...
...Like a bad piece of ore it cannot be used and it is turned out into the market where it was purchased in the nr3t place...
...Once they got into the place, however, they were Uke hungry wolves, devouring the food in rapid-fire time, and nearly all asking a second helping...
...This human pulp is found in large quantities in the market and there is no need of worrying over the supply...
...no, he wants work...
...We are not yet through with this lump of living ferment...
...They must carry on experiments to ascertain how that ferment can be used to produce the utmost values...
...Capitalism Forges Its Chain Gang Industrial Laboratories Making Perfect Machines Of American Workers The choice in industry is no longer one of skill, but one of perfect mechanical machines...
...Will the Thing be able to stand it long and, if so, how long ? What of the illumination, ventilation and temperature of the work place...
...Chemists, technicians, psychologists and other specialists are called in...
...The charting, indexing and analysis now have their text book in Hugo Diemer's "Wage-Payment Plans Tliat Reduced Production hosts'' and published by the Mc3raw Hill Book Company...
...Thomas, Broun, Crosswaith Talk In Harlem Next Sunday ir TOW the unemployment probJLI lem...
...Asked why he has trouble in finding employment, he answered, "They ain't hiring any...
...We found, in the line of perhaps 500 men...
...A police officer...
...Twenty-five years ago Albion W. Small of Chicago University even then saw what was happening...
...Having analyzed the lump ol ferment along these lines and obtained a permanent record on a chart, the experts turn to other methods...
...He describes how he vatched each suspect, made friends sf them and then uncovered them :o the authorities...
...This is as true v.here the worker is concerned as it is uith machinery...
...ultimately if you will to numbers of two, but never, unless the will is overbearing, to one And the summers march...
...A gala day ass evening program, under the direction of Don Hart-man, sods...
...Another drama was painted for us by a man 45, who has a wife and three daughters living in Jersey City...
...Lewis* also communicated the demand...
...all ages are represented, from 16 to 70...
...6. have just been Informed by Marx Lewis, executive secretary of the city Socialist organization...
...How careful is the state to find work for its felons...
...Yes, he says, no wonder that he learned to hate mankind and began to steal, rob and despise work...
...In the great industries today wage work is gang work and wage workers are simply Things that art purchased as commodities and consumed like raw materials under a> discipline that saps them of the maximum of vitality...
...He has also been living on the Bowery and has spent many nights walking the streets...
...It is...
...Yes, he has been out of work, for four months...
...some have had a better :ducation...
...Plant and machine experts are also on the job to survey tools, machines and location of equipment...
...Still we hunt a job, and still we find the same old answer...
...Most of the men on the bread line are single and homeless...
...On the third day we were asked to leave...
...Each interview Is one drama after another...
...He seemed rather brave in facing his fate and suggested that the government ought to establish an unemployment pension and to cut the working weeks to five days in order to distribute work more evenly...
...The Socialist forecast of the possibility of machine - slavery even under the forms of political democracy is being realized...
...Have we any work for him...
...Democrat, 122, RepubtkSS...
...That depends* If the factories and machines for producing the article are the property of a class the proprietors are likely to receive the benefits of the saved time and the increased product...
...Socialists to work for the achievement of the printers' aims...
...Ten summers ago Tamiment was built by a group of Rand School friends on a spot in the Pennsylvania hills so remote from the dust and toil and noisy tumult of New York and Philadelphia streets that the still echo of enchantment could not hear itself in that Indescribable babble of green on gold, blue of lake on white of cloudy depth...
...Negro workers are asked to keep that date open, and call the meeting to the attention of their friends...
...The mechanization of labor raises the entire problem of the future of the v/orkingman...
...He had a little money and It is only lately that he had to sleep on the Bowery...
...of the convention that Judge Parker be not confirmed as a member of the United States Supreme Court to both Senators Wagner and Copeland...
...Be careful that the stop watch is in order as the time to make each motion is tc be recorded on a chart...
...after he had a meal at the Socialist Women's Section Dining Room at 15 West 25th street Can we believe him...
...It was decided to set up a permanent organization representing six youth organizations to arrange for similar gatherings next year...
...The "crowd" almost immediately splits into Individual parties of acquaintance...
...He now says that Socialism is all right...
...The job task must reach a certain maximum...
...In addition to these, the city is flooded with newspapermen from other cities, victims of the "rapid growth of chains and the steadily increasing mergers of newspapers...
...the married men's families are broken up or are on the verge of breaking...
...The physician must also play his part What of the strain which the speeding-up imposes...
...The psychologist observes the mental state of the Thing, the nervous response to the experiments, the influence of incentive, of work periods and of personal habits in the daily routine...
...We turn to the variety of Instruction forms worked out by slave owners for their plantation overseers before the Civil War...
...Then we had a young adventurer...
...Ethelred Brown will act as chairman...
...Imposing tables of figures with recommendations are added to the other reports...
...to this the boasted "individualism" and "Americanism" shrined to presidential measures, to editorials, radio broadcasts, and Congressional speeches...
...And yet Tamiment Is never the crowd that its total guest list might superficially lead one to assume...
...The Thing we call the wage worker has already been subdivided on charts and diagrams into a hundred or more motions, emotions, reactions and stimuli but the experts want to know still more about it...
...Socialism with its aim of mastering Industry so that it will serve all is the hope of the working class, rhe future happiness and welfare of the working masses depends upon their awakening to the o slaving tendencies of the present...
...It is appalling...
...It' is this slave standard of efficiency in an acute form that has been applied to modern industry...
...Figuratively speaking, here is a clod of human ferment which we call a human being...
...The Sloane house maintains an "employment counsel," who, however, so far as could be learned, is able to do little in the line of actually giving the young men leads to positions...
...He has a little child six months old, motherless...
...This study of the productive capacity of the wage worker has become a profession...
...It is American industry...
...He sleeps on floors of missions, "carries the banner," that is...
...Not a "commodity...
...namely, that factions and optniosj and political philosophies tasj come and go, be rejected sad sV tered, be destroyed and bannaral but the summer ideal which Inspired the original playground st thought and body and which V Tamiment stands stronger, broader, clear and more certain that ever before on the eve of Ik worthy celebration...
...Will it mean freedom and happiness...
...This revolting system Is a challenge to the workers and their heirs...
...Therefore be it "Resolved, That we denounce this proposition to delay the returns regarding unemployment until after the 1930 elections and demand that the Census Bureau release the out-of-work figures at the earliest possible date, just as the population figures of various cities are already being published...
...who last purchased you In the market and why were you released...
...It has added to its equipment for sports, for social, theatrical and educational life to such an extent that its ten years represent so many years of new purpose and new need...
...Now then, get busy...
...Because his experiences stand out in such sharp contrast to the conditions which should be expected in a prosperous nation, he felt that a brief outline of the snags met by the job-hunter would be of interest to readers of The New Leader...
...Having assembled and analyzed all this information, certain conclusions are reached regarding the Thing...
...The pace is swift and God help the one who lags behind the gang...
...What is the bearing of all the data on hygiene ? A week or more of study and the physician emerges from the laboratory with another diagram which is added to all the others...
...If one fails it is a cull...
...Put this Thing to work at machines with other Things...
...Constitutions and laws have a way of ignoring the real worldWhile capitalism has reduced wage workers to Things the law says that they are not Things...
...More comforts have been' built to all over the bill whose bungalows one i cannot sea until the buses are well into the camp, so beautifully shaded and hidden axe they sj the perennial evergreens And the tenth anniversary special celebration Decoration day price is already beginning to tat the new office force of the cam* headquarters both here aad fe Philadelphia...
...At the same time, Lewis transmitted to Senator Robert F. Wagner, of New York, the text of a resolution adopted by the convention calling upon the Director of he Census to make figures relatng to unemployment available as rapidly as other census figures are made public...
...which affects all workers and their families, hits with particular and special force the Negro workers, and how the Negro workers can organize to overcome their special difficulties will be the subject on which famous speakers and students of economic conditions will speak at a mass meeting to be held on Sunday afternoon...
...The Thing on the slave plantation who could read might also get the same comfort by reading the sacred Constitution...
...The ultimate of what can be extracted from it has been ascertained and each gang must live up to expectations...
...His daughters are 19, 17 and 14 years old, respectively...
...you belong to a union or expect to belong...
...The Hrrman Machine Dissected...
...If married, how many children...
...They litwere surprisingly cheerful...
...and how careless of those who keep out of the toils of the law...
...It has dealt out health and radiant living and keen, swift laughter with a neutral benevolence...
...if other buyers can give you references, record names and addresses...
...But lately he can find nothing at all so he landed on- the Bowery...
...The making of "robots...
...director, will keep the guests bufj every moment...
...May 25, at 4 o'clock, at the St...
...many are seasonal workers or unskilled laborers...
...Eventually we heard of the work being done by Heywood Broun, aad we trudged uptown to his apartment in 58th street, only to find that this had been moved downtown, to 29th street...
...At a certain hour all must be' in the field and all must be in cabins at a certain hour at night Punishment should not exceed so many lashes and 24 hours must elapse between one punishment and another...
...Therefore be it "Resolved, That the City Convention of the Socialist Party is on the side of the newspaper workers in their struggle for a five-day week and not only extends its moral support but such other assistance as lies within its power...
...They have their instructions...
...Vote for Socialist Party The senior class at the city e* lege of the New York recast^ voted that their political preferences were as follows: SorttswV 164...
...He was sent to one of the missions for a short period of employment...
...He can???not employ himself and must sell himself to the owners of industry...
...Is this the thing for which Farmers and mechanics froze at Valley Forge ? Is it for this that they died at Gettysburg...
...A round of the Sixth avenue agencies disclosed that one must deposit from $5 to $10 in cash before being sent to a prospective position...
...Fill in with age and nationality, whether citizen or foreign bom...
...Arriving, we were allowed to wash...
...These figures are beng withheld, and it is reported Jiat they will be kept in "cold storage" until after the congressional elections...
...The first man I met in this fashion was a former restaurant manager who had lost his job, and who had loafed for several months, living a literal hand-to-mouth existence on funds advanced in small lots by friends, and on money he was able to secure on odd part-time jobs...
...Another man, 46 years old, is a shoe-cutter, a trade that is seasonal...
...A rather docile fellow, he is going home to his wife and children as soon as he gets a job...
...He is 22 years old...
...How Much Can He Stand...
...He refuses car fare to go- home and declares he is old enough to care for himself...
...Not an "article of commerce...
Vol. 10 • May 1930 • No. 15
