The Kenosha telegraph. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1860-1888, 1878-06-06

MA Inventions 10 telegraph full page
of newspaper almost at stroke cleo.
trio motors, electric lights, and electric
heats, are all portents of the near future,
with their attendant labor revolutions.
Having chained the ightnings to oul
service, what next
Let us see what have been the general
effects which have resulted from the use
of labor-saving machinery.
/. 1t has broken up and destroyed our
whole system OF agriculture as practiced
by our fathers, which required the whole
time and attention of all the sons of the
farm and many from the towns, Iii the
never-ending duties of food production,
and has driven them to the towns and
cities for employment, or remain in great
part idle.
2. It has broken up and destroyed
our whole system of household and fam
ily manufactures as done by our moth
ers, when all took part in the labor and
shared in the product, to the comfort of
all. and has compelled the daughters of
our country and towns to factory oper-
ations for ten to twelve hours day.
3. It has broken up and destroyed our
whole system of working in wood, and
iron, and leather, il small shops of one,
two, or it may be half dozen workmen,
in every town, village, or hamlet in the
country, with blacksmith shops in near
neighborhood upon every road.
4. 1t has broken up and destroyed
our whole system of individual and in
dependent action in production and
manufacture, where any man who pos
sessed trade by his own hands could
at once make that trade his support and
means of advancement, free of control
by any other man, and has compelled
all working men and women to a system
of communal work where, in hundreds
and thousands, they are forced to labor
with no other interest in the work than
granted to them in the wages paid for
SO much toll.
5. It has SO enormously developed the
power of production as to far outstrip
mans utmost power of consumption,
enabling less than one-half of the pro-
ducing and working classes, working
ten hours day, to produce vastly more
than market can be found for.
6. 1t has thrown out of employment
substantially one-half of the working
classes. In fact it has utterly destroyed
all regular or constant employment for
any considerable class in any industry,
and is constantly and steadily displae-
ing able and willing men and filing
their places with women and children
leaving no place to be filed by, and no
demand for, the constantly increasing
numbers developed in our increase Of
population, in this way also rapidly add
ing to the number of the unemployed.
1t takes married women in thousands
from their maternal cares and duties
and children, but little more than in
fants, from the schools, putting them to
the care of machinery in It's work, until
quite one-third of the machine-tenders
in our country are women and children,
thus breaking down the mothers,
Strengthening the infants, and giving
employment to any who obtain it only
upon such conditions of uncertainty, in
security, competition with the voorhees,,
and steady reduction in wages as creates
constant struggle to obtain the little
work they do have, and get such COM
pensation for 1t as will barely support
life even when in health.
The remedy certainly is not to be
found in turning the great mass of the
idle into any one industry, even though
the industry be that of agriculture, SO
often named by many of our most
worthy people. The accomplishment of
this idea would be a partial depopula-
ton of the manufacturing and trading
sections, and over-crowding of the agri-
cultural an enormous reduction of the
food market, and immense increase in
food products, with no market, inevita-
bly, resulting In still wider and deeper
distress. Agriculture is one of the bust
nesses most thoroughly revolutionized
by machinery. Already it is one Of the
most uncertain and Improbable of call
ings and, with the present rush and
development, will be sure to follow
widespread and serious disasters.
The relief is to be found in the dis
tribution of the work to be done among
all who will take part in it. Here is
the point I have been approaching, and
is the vital point in the whole discussion,
that the only way in which the great
idleness in our country can be remedied,
and the enormous distress and crime
resulting from that idleness can find re-
lief, is in the distribution Of the work
to be done among all who will work.
Instead of system that at best gives
but uncertain and transient employment
to not more than one-half of our work
ers, divide the work SO that every one
can count with reasonable certainty
upon constant, permanent employment,
then the first great element of universal
content aud prosperity will be estab-
lished. That, in short, normal days
work shall be established; the number
of hours per day shall be fxed-no
matter what that number may be-in
which all by working shall produce
abundantly for all. The standard for
fixing that normal day. which must be
flexible, must be the employment or
non employment of all who will work,
and the consumption of all products
facts as easily ascertained as thn market