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قراءة كتاب Scientific American Supplement, No. 623, December 10, 1887
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Scientific American Supplement, No. 623, December 10, 1887
the street will be first met with inducements of other employment, with offers of money, afterward with threats, and, if opportunity occurs, with direct assault. All the features of persuasion, intimidation, and violence will be carried out as demanded, and strangers to everybody in the vicinity, but well known as experienced leaders in this kind of work in other places, be brought in to endeavor to make the strike a success. Then, young men, is the time to show your pluck, and our experience is that educated young men will do so every time. They can be depended upon to go straight ahead with duty through every danger, bearing patiently everything that may be said, defending themselves with nature's weapons as long as possible, and without fear using reserve weapons in case real danger of life is imminent.
In carrying through a very important strike against a mere desire to control and not to correct abuses, your speaker desires to pay the highest tribute to a number of educated young men, mostly from the technical schools, who fearlessly faced every danger, and by their example stimulated others to do their duty, and all participated in the results obtained by a great success.
We would not by such references fire your hearts to a desire to participate in such an unpleasant contest. It is the duty of all to study this problem intelligently and earnestly, with a view of overcoming the difficulties and permitting the prosperity of the country to go on. While conciliation may be best at some times, policy at another, and resistance at another, we must also be thinking of the best means to prevent further outbreaks. It would seem to be true policy not to interfere with organization, but to try and direct it into higher channels. Those of the humanitarians who claim that the disease will be rooted out eventually by a more general and better education are undoubtedly largely in the right, notwithstanding that some fairly educated men have acted against their best interests in affiliating with the labor organizations. It seems to the speaker that enough instances can be collected to show the utter folly of the present selfish system, based, as it is, entirely on getting all that is possible, independent of right in the matter, and by demanding equal wages for all men, tending to lower all to one common degradation, instead of rewarding industry and ability and advancing the cause of civilization.
Labor should not be organized for selfish ends, but for its own good, so as to secure steady and permanent employment, rather than prevent it by impracticable schemes and unwise methods, which will cripple manufacturers and all kinds of industry. The men should organize under the general laws of the State, so that their leaders will be responsible to the laws and can be indicted, tried, and punished in case they misappropriate funds or commit any breach of trust; and such laws should be amended if necessary, so that wise, responsible leaders of the organizations can contract to furnish labor for a certain time at a fixed price, when manufacturers can make calculations ahead as to the cost of labor the same as for the cost of material, and have such confidence that they will use all their energies to do a larger amount of business and benefit the workingman as well as themselves by furnishing steady employment. Such a plan as is here outlined can readily be carried into effect by selecting better men as leaders. It is well known how well the organization known as the locomotive brotherhood is conducted, and it should be an example to others. It has had its day of dissensions, when the best counsels did not prevail, which shows that any organization of the kind, no matter how well conducted, may be diverted by its leaders into improper channels.
When organized under the laws of the State and under by-laws designed to secure steady employment, rather than any artificial condition of things in regard to pay hours, and continuance of labor, the true interests of the workman will be advanced. It may be that some one of you will develop a talent in the direction of organization and be the means of aiding in the solution of this great problem. Please think of the matter seriously, watch the law of evolution while you are advancing your professional knowledge, and if the opportunity offers, do all you can to aid in a cause so important and beneficent.
One writer has criticised the technical schools because they do not teach mechanical intuition. The schools have enough to do in the time available if they teach principles and sufficient practice to enable the principles to be understood. The aptitude to design, which must be what is meant by mechanical intuition, requires very considerable practical experience, which you will readily learn if you do not keep yourself above it. If you have used your leisure hours to study why a certain piece of mechanism was made in a certain way rather than in another; if you have wondered why one part is thick in one place rather than in another, apparently in defiance of all rules of the strength of material; if you have endeavored to ascertain why a particular device is used rather than another more evident one; if you have thought and studied why a boss is thrown in here and there in designs to receive bolts or to lengthen a journal, and if you have in your mind, by repeated observation, a fair idea of how work is designed by other people, the so-called mechanical intuition will be learned and found to be the combination of common sense and good practice.
You will observe that some details have been copied for years and years, although thoughtful men would say they are not the best, simply because they are adapted to a large amount of work already done. This is particularly true of the rolling stock on railroads. The cost of a change in starting in a new country might be warranted, but it practically cannot be done when the parts must interchange with so much work done in other parts of the country. You will find in other cases that the direct strain to which a piece of mechanism is subjected is only one of the strains which occur in practice. A piece of metal may have been thickened where it customarily broke, and you may possibly surmise that certain jars took place that caused such breakages, or that particular point was where the abuse of the attendant was customarily applied.
Wherever you go you will find matters of this kind affecting designs staring you in the face, and you will soon see why a man who has learned his trade in the shop, and from there worked into the drawing room with much less technical information than you have, can get along as well as he does. Reserve your strength, however. Your time will come. Whenever there is a new departure to be taken, and matters to be worked out from the solid which require close computation of strains or the application of any principles, your education will put you far ahead, and if you have, during the period of what may be called your post-graduate course, which occurs during your early introduction into practical life, been careful to keep your eyes and ears open so as to learn all that a man in practical life has done, you will soon stand far ahead.
Reference was made to the use of leisure hours. Leisure hours can be spent in various ways. For instance, in studying the composition and resolution of forces and the laws of elasticity in a billiard room, the poetry of motion, etc., in a ball room, and the chemical properties of various malt and vinous extracts in another room; but the philosophical reason why certain engineering work is done in the way it is, and the proper way in which new work shall be done of a similar character and original work of any kind carried on, can only be learned by cultivating your powers of observation and ruminating on the facts collected in the privacy of one's own room, away from the allurements provided for those who have nothing to do. No one would recommend you to so separate yourself from the world as to sacrifice health and strength, or