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Our steamer lies alongside of the bank while the cargo is being landed, and its fuel of eng-wood is put on board. This is hard work, and is generally done by girls, who are paid by piece-work, and generally lose no time in the operation.
I, too, busied myself with the task of ripping, which I saw Bessie and Eunice were also doing; in fact, all the new-comers of the morning could be thus singled out. The practised hands availed themselves of the enforced rest by yawning and stretching their arms, and by comparing the earnings of the morning; for we all worked on piece-work.
Spinning is a more difficult task than speeding. Two rovings are here twisted together by the machines. The spinners have 104 bobbins on one side of a frame, and watch for breakage, and change the bobbins on three frames, or six "sides." Spinners formerly worked at piece-work rates and by watching eight sides, and frequently doing the work very imperfectly, would earn about $9.
These girls are working on the eight hours' shift system; and working so well that a not uncommon wage among them on piece-work, of course runs to somewhere between two and three pounds a week. "But there is much more than money in it," says the kind-faced woman superintendent, as we step into her little office out of the noise, to talk a little.
Wolf Larsen was undisguised in his admiration. "Salary, or piece-work?" he asked. "Piece-work," she answered promptly. "Eighteen hundred," he calculated. "That's a hundred and fifty dollars a month. Well, Miss Brewster, there is nothing small about the Ghost. Consider yourself on salary during the time you remain with us." She made no acknowledgment.
A man who earns by piece-work forty shillings per week, the usual wages for day-work being twenty, robs his fellows of a week's employment; therefore I denounce John Briars." "Let it go forth," said the other voice; "John Briars is denounced. If he receive another week's wages by the piece, he shall not have the option of working the week after for time. No.87, see to John Briars."
He celebrated his sixteenth birthday by going into the loom room and taking a loom. Here was an incentive again, for it was piece-work. And he excelled, because the clay of him had been moulded by the mills into the perfect machine. At the end of three months he was running two looms, and, later, three and four.
So that, when the machinists reported to the Superintendent that the machines were being smashed up because an incompetent foreman was overstraining them, the Superintendent accepted the word of the writer when he said that these men were deliberately breaking their machines as a part of the piece-work war which was going on, and he also allowed the writer to make the only effective answer to this Vandalism on the part of the men, namely: "There will be no more accidents to the machines in this shop.
From the girls and women near her, all swinging irons steadily but at high pace, came quick glances, and labor efficiency suffered to the extent of a score of suspended or inadequate movements. The elderly woman's cry had caused a tremor of money-loss to pass among the piece-work ironers of fancy starch.
To present a pure and noble ideal, to breathe forth a holy atmosphere for the soul, are constructive works. The trouble is not, that the ministers preach on social themes all themes that concern the life of man are social themes. It is that they do piece-work and patch-work of reform, instead of plain, direct upbuilding work in the souls and consciences of men.
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