Workmen's advocate. (New Haven, Conn.) 1883-1891, 1888-09-22
DISPLAClNG LABOR.
Inventions Assisting Capitalists in
Exploiting Workers.


labor of boys TO be used in the place
or that of the skilled workmen who
had been previously employed; and
when asked what became of the men
thus displaced, he replied to the
effect that he did not trouble about
them; they were left to the opera
tion of the ordinary economic laws.
Truly an admirable reply from the
standpoint of a benefactor of the
human race. There was nothing in
this to offend the ear of those fastid-
ious philanthropists who profess that
it is their nission to relieve misery,
but not to prevent it. lie might
have said, 81 am afraid that the
workmeG, who have spent many
years in acquiring the necessary skill
and knowledge, are in this way
driven to swell the ranks of the un
employed; to still further intensity
the severity of the struggle among
the unskilled laborers, and in many
cases to end their last days in the
workhouse, while their children are
being manufactured into criminals
and unfortunates. That would
have been a truthful answer, but it
would have given the impression
that some, at least, of the misery
and poverty Of the workers was due
to causes over which they had no
control, instead Of being entirely
due to the drunkenness, laziness
and other vices which, according to
some, would appear to be the dis
tinguishing characteristics of the
working classes; and it would have
opened up some of those awkward
questions which the "poets, idiots
and knaves," constituting the Social
Democratic Patty, seriously deal
with, but which hard-headed men,
whose ruling passion is self aggran-
dizement, either ignore altogether or
play the fool with.
Most people are aware that the
displacement Of labor by the intro
duction of invention has gone on,
and is going on to very large ex-
tent; but comparatively few realize
the full effects Of even very tritling
changes. An improved drill enables
the miners to raise more coal per
head, and some are therefore thrown
out Of work. An improved form of
engine gets more power out given
quantity of Goals, and there is less
demand for coal-less work for the
miner. A slight alteration in the
construction of looms not only adds
to the producing power of each
loom, but actually enables a weaver
to manage two or even more looms,
and, of course, increases the diff
Guilty Of finding employment. The
same kind of thing runs through
every trade to a far greater extent
than is generally acknowledged, be-
cause the operations are of a silent
and even stealthy character, and are
scarcely realized by the mass Of the
workers themselves.
Volcanic eruptions wildly impress
the imagination of every one with a
sense of the tremendous force dis
played, but far greater effects are
produced by frost, and other similar
silent causes, which by many people
are unnoticed and unappreciated.
So with Labor troubles; compare
lively sudden and violent displace-
ments of labor, such, for instance,
as took place during the Lancashire
Cotton Famine, are realized by most
people as terrible calamities, to miti
gate which something ought to be
done. But the far greater sum of
poverty and misery produced by the
never-ending changes of trade and
commerce is almost unnoticed, and
most certainly no practical remedy
is ever proposed except by Socialists,
who do not possess, 80 it is said, the
hard heads of those individualists
who have sold their brains to the
exploiters. If it was morally right
and economically sound not to leave
the Lancashire weavers without a
helping hand, but to organize their
unemployed labor, then the vast
army of out-of- workers now in our
midst at this moment have an
equally good claim to the same
modicum of justice. That this