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Show NO OLD MEN. The report of the committee cf working men and trades unionists from England who visited this country coun-try last summer has recently been published, and is full of interest for those of us who wish to see ourselves as others see us. On the whole it seems to be a very fair minded production, pro-duction, and gives full credit for the wonderful energy and enterprise which characterize industrial operations opera-tions In the United States, But these men, practical mechanics mechan-ics and working men who are no fools, pertinantly ask at what cost to humanity hu-manity have we obtained the wonderful wonder-ful ratio of production achieved by the mechanics in our shops and factories? One great difference between our manufactories and those of the old country impressed them more than anything else they saw. .There are no old men in our shops. Mrs. Mary E. Wilkins in the opening open-ing chapters of her recent novel, "The Portion of Labor," which promised to be great, but fizzled out into a very cheap and commonplace love story, describes the conditions obtaining In a New England shoe factory. Her picture pic-ture of the way a skillful and faithful faith-ful mechanic is turned off because he is becoming a little old and slow is nothing short of a fearful tragedy. It is a graphic picture of what these English workmen saw. This report states that the average ration of production per capita is lower in England chiefly because the workers are not driven beyond the endurance of the average man, and the employers of labor over there are not heartless enough to turn off faith- ful employes as soon as they have passed the age of forty or .forty-five years. This is a terrible indictment of our great captains of industry of whom we have been so proud. The worst of it is that those charges are true. Only the other day our greatest captain of industry, Andrew Carnegie, Carne-gie, visited a great iron works in the north of England owned by a friend of his. He had not many faults o find with the plant and general equipment, equip-ment, but he had with the workmen. The one piece of advice he gave was: "Why don't you get rid of all these gray haired old fellows Get young men and work them like we do in America." Am-erica." His English friend was shocked at such a heartless proposal and said that the traditions of the business practically compelled him to provide for faithful employees in their old age. Carnegie then told him that sentiment sen-timent had no place in business and that he could not hone to comnete with the Americans until he copied this feature of their system. It is the pace that kills. Our sta-tisticsians sta-tisticsians and our politicians point with pride to the higher wages paid in this country. But are they really high er? A man toils in a factory for the best fifteen or perhaps twenty years of his life and is then cast off like a wornout shoe. He is fit for no ether class of employment. All these years he has been the slave of a machine gaged to run at a high speed with which he must keep up. The moment his energy flags and he slips the belt onto smaller pulley so that he can still feed its greedy man another and a younger steps into his place. That belt must run on the high speed pulley pul-ley no matter how many lives it costs. The manufacturere says he cannot afford to give standing room in his shop to a man who cannot run that costly machine at Its highest high-est capacity. He must get Interest on hi:; investment and get his money out of that machine before some improve ment takes it place. Life and health count for nothing in comparison. Certain savage peoples, formerly practiced the custom of killing off their aged. Our captains of industry indus-try leave ours to die by the wayside. A world of tragedy is contained in the report of this English commission that there are no old men in our shops and factories. o |
