WHAT WILL BE DONE?

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Tuesday, April 28, 1885

FromThe Review and Herald, Vol. 62, No. 17

WHAT WILL BE DONE?

The great cry now almost everywhere is, “Overproduction, lack of work, men idle, conflict between labor and capital,” etc., etc. The following statement which has appeared in several New York papers, shows that the great discoveries and improvements of modern times, are at least one of the important factors in this perplexing situation. The statement referred to relates to an improvement in the process of making steel, by which this article can be produced more cheaply than iron has formerly been; and the following is one of the items in the count, touching the manufacture of nails:—

“By the old puddling process of making iron plates for nails, the pig iron was melted in a great furnace, and a small army of men stirred up the melted mass with long rods until the impurities were burned out and the iron became pasty instead of liquid. By the new process the melted pig iron, in a big pear-shaped kettle, is subjected to a powerful blast of air, which is forced up through it from the bottom, until the impurities are burned out. Then another small amount of melted pig iron is poured in and the mixture is ready to be cast into ingots. By the old process twenty skilled men could turn out fifteen tons of nail plate in a day, while by the new process four common laborers and one skilled mechanic can turn out from 150 to 250 tons in a day. Naturally the puddlers must lose their occupation.”

From this statement, it will at once be seen what an immense effect the discovery of this new process has upon the question of labor. Take the lowest figure in the foregoing estimate, 150 tons of nail plate per day, by five workmen, only one of them a skilled workman. How much labor would it have taken formerly to produce this amount of iron plate? Twenty men ten days, or two hundred men one day, all skilled. That is to say, five men now do the work of two hundred men. How does this affect the other one hundred and ninety-five men?—They are thrown at one blow idle upon the market. Is it any wonder that there is distress among the laboring classes, and that armies of tramps are roaming over the country?