Swords and Plowshares/The Machines
The Machines.png){kind=small}
I
BR-R-R-R-R-R-R-R!
What are the machines saying, a hundred of them in one long room?
They must be talking to themselves, for I see no one else for them to talk to.
But yes, there is a boy's red head bending over one of them, and beyond I see a pale face fringed with brown curly locks.
There are only five boys in all on this floor, half hid-den by the clattering machines, for one bright lad can manage twenty-five of them.
Each machine makes one cheap, stout sock in five minutes, without seam, complete from toe to ankle, cutting the thread at the end and beginning another of its own accord.
The boys have nothing to do but to clean and burnish and oil the steel rods and replace the spools of yarn.
But how rapidly and nervously they do it—the slower hands straining to accomplish as much as the fastest!
Working at high tension for ten hours a day in the close, greasy air and endless whirr—
Boys who ought to be out playing ball in the fields or taking a swim in the river this fine summer afternoon.
And in these good times the machines go all night, and other shifts of boys are kept from their beds to watch them.
The young girls in the mending and finishing rooms down-stairs are not so strong as the boys.
They have an unaccountable way of fainting and collapsing in the noise and smell, and then they are of no use for the rest of the day.
The kind stockholders have had to provide a room for collapsed girls and to employ a doctor, who finds it expedient not to understand this strange new disease.
Perhaps their children will be more stalwart in the next generation.
Yet this factory is one of the triumphs of our civilization.
With only twenty boys at a time at the machines in all the rooms it produces five thousand dozen pair of socks in twenty-four hours for the toilers of the land.
It would take an army of fifty thousand hand-knitters to do what these small boys perform.
II
BR-R-R-R-R-R-R-R!
What are the machines saying?
They are saying, "We are hungry.
We have eaten up the men and women (there is no longer a market for men and women, they come too high)—
We have eaten up the men and women, and now we are devouring the boys and girls.
How good they taste as we suck the blood from their rounded cheeks and forms, and cast them aside sallow and thin and care-worn, and then call for more!
Br-r-r-r-r-r-r-r! how good they taste; but they give us so few boys and girls to eat nowadays, altho there are so many outside begging to come in—Only one boy to twenty of us, and we are nearly famished!
We eat those they give us and those outside will starve, and soon we shall be left almost alone in the world with the stockholders.
Br-r-r-r-r-r-r-r! what shall we do then for our food?" the machines chatter on.
"When we are piling up millions of socks a day for the toilers and there are no toilers left to buy them and wear them,
Then perhaps we shall have to turn upon the kind stockholders and feast on them (how fat and tender and toothsome they will be!) until at last we alone remain, clattering and chattering in a desolate land," growled the machines, While the boys went on anxiously, hurriedly rubbing and polishing, and the girls down-stairs went on collapsing.
"Br-r-r-r-r-r-r-r!" growled the machines.
III
THE devil has somehow got into the machines.
They came like the good gnomes and fairies of old, to be our willing slaves and make our lives easy.
Now that, by their help, one man can do the work of a score, why have we not plenty for all, with only enough work to keep us happy?
Who could have foreseen all the ills of our factory workers and of those who are displaced and cast aside by factory work?
The good wood and iron elves came to bless us all, but some of us have succeeded in bewitching them to our own ends and turning them against the rest of mankind.
We must break the sinister charm and win over the docile, tireless machines until they refuse to shut out a single human being from their benefits.
We must cast the devil out of the machines.
BR-R-R-R-R-R-R-R!
What are the machines saying, a hundred of them in one long room?
They must be talking to themselves, for I see no one else for them to talk to.
But yes, there is a boy's red head bending over one of them, and beyond I see a pale face fringed with brown curly locks.
There are only five boys in all on this floor, half hid-den by the clattering machines, for one bright lad can manage twenty-five of them.
Each machine makes one cheap, stout sock in five minutes, without seam, complete from toe to ankle, cutting the thread at the end and beginning another of its own accord.
The boys have nothing to do but to clean and burnish and oil the steel rods and replace the spools of yarn.
But how rapidly and nervously they do it—the slower hands straining to accomplish as much as the fastest!
Working at high tension for ten hours a day in the close, greasy air and endless whirr—
Boys who ought to be out playing ball in the fields or taking a swim in the river this fine summer afternoon.
And in these good times the machines go all night, and other shifts of boys are kept from their beds to watch them.
The young girls in the mending and finishing rooms down-stairs are not so strong as the boys.
They have an unaccountable way of fainting and collapsing in the noise and smell, and then they are of no use for the rest of the day.
The kind stockholders have had to provide a room for collapsed girls and to employ a doctor, who finds it expedient not to understand this strange new disease.
Perhaps their children will be more stalwart in the next generation.
Yet this factory is one of the triumphs of our civilization.
With only twenty boys at a time at the machines in all the rooms it produces five thousand dozen pair of socks in twenty-four hours for the toilers of the land.
It would take an army of fifty thousand hand-knitters to do what these small boys perform.
II
BR-R-R-R-R-R-R-R!
What are the machines saying?
They are saying, "We are hungry.
We have eaten up the men and women (there is no longer a market for men and women, they come too high)—
We have eaten up the men and women, and now we are devouring the boys and girls.
How good they taste as we suck the blood from their rounded cheeks and forms, and cast them aside sallow and thin and care-worn, and then call for more!
Br-r-r-r-r-r-r-r! how good they taste; but they give us so few boys and girls to eat nowadays, altho there are so many outside begging to come in—Only one boy to twenty of us, and we are nearly famished!
We eat those they give us and those outside will starve, and soon we shall be left almost alone in the world with the stockholders.
Br-r-r-r-r-r-r-r! what shall we do then for our food?" the machines chatter on.
"When we are piling up millions of socks a day for the toilers and there are no toilers left to buy them and wear them,
Then perhaps we shall have to turn upon the kind stockholders and feast on them (how fat and tender and toothsome they will be!) until at last we alone remain, clattering and chattering in a desolate land," growled the machines, While the boys went on anxiously, hurriedly rubbing and polishing, and the girls down-stairs went on collapsing.
"Br-r-r-r-r-r-r-r!" growled the machines.
III
THE devil has somehow got into the machines.
They came like the good gnomes and fairies of old, to be our willing slaves and make our lives easy.
Now that, by their help, one man can do the work of a score, why have we not plenty for all, with only enough work to keep us happy?
Who could have foreseen all the ills of our factory workers and of those who are displaced and cast aside by factory work?
The good wood and iron elves came to bless us all, but some of us have succeeded in bewitching them to our own ends and turning them against the rest of mankind.
We must break the sinister charm and win over the docile, tireless machines until they refuse to shut out a single human being from their benefits.
We must cast the devil out of the machines.