Evening star., 1925-02-15
BY IDA NJ. TARBELL.

boilers and furnaces in the new plant.
They use thousands of tons OF coal
a week, but from the time that coal
leaves the yard in the cars it is not
touched by mems hands. Machines
controlled by men unload and powder
it and blow it into the furnaces. You
can walk in front of those roaring
fires today in a temperature which
never wavers the year round
equable, pleasant, perfectly con-
trolled. They have taken away the
they used to carry a half dozen men
a day-strong men, prostrated by
heat! r X X
Do you wonder that we want to
talk about that in Our Town-that
we want the outsider to know it? We
told this to one outsider, who looked
Mortified instead of glad. Don't you
see what they are doing? he said.
'displacing labor. taking the bread
from mems mouths-it is but an
other move Of capital to impoverish
the workingman!"
They certainly have displaced labor.
I should say where there had been 25
men in the old days there Is one now.
1 talked with the superintendent.
Had it noe occurred to YOU" he
said, contemptuously, that it took
men to make these machines that we
are using trained men, inventors
pattern makers; that 1t took skilled
steel workers to produce them, that
| 1t takes at least semi-skilled men to
| run them. Don't you see that instead
| of fewer men employed this plant
| means, If you follow it through to it's
| origin, more men Of higher grade
| employed? Why, if you who live in
| this town knew as much about these
mills as you ought to, you would
know that we are halving our un-
skilled labor and doubling our semi
skilled and skilled.
Perhaps We did have to do it:
guess we did. The truth is men are
pushing up in this country. We can
not get enough of them to do work
in the old way and we have to adapt
our Industries to mems ambitions.
They want something that pulls on
their minds rather than their mus
cles. 1t is brains that is making
steel now, not Drawn"
I talked to others about it. There
was a smelter. Yes, 1t Is true" he
said. Down in Arizona we have
built a mechanical plant that with
240 men is doing the work which in
!! our old-time plants required 1,400.
We had to do 1t, we could not get un-
skilled men enough"
y y y \
What had seen and what I was
hearing made mo think about some
thing I saw two or three years ago
in southern Idaho. In the center of
thousands Of acres Of redeemed sage
brush land a great electric plant.
through which the impounded waters
of the Snake River dam were dis
tributed to farms as they were need
ed, and one woman one lone woman,
was running the whole thing-in the
absence Of her husband, who was the
official engineer.
Her eye on the dials, her quick
hand on the levers turned waters on
and off through all the big territory
as the telephone told her they were
required. There were hardly enough
men in Idaho 20 years ago to have
done that work as efficiently as that
plant, run by one woman, was doing
1t at that moment.
AS we talked 1t over we agreed that
1t explained many things in Our
Town. 1t explained something that
the women had been noting-that
there were many more eligible young
men in town for our girls who had
been to business schools or college.
They were men, and yet they were
college men, engineers, chemists,
trained men. We had not asked how
1t could be that the type Of tho men