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It had not made him feel any more at ease when the Queen of the Bumblebees told him the worker's name. It was Peppery Polly. "Don't go too fast!" Peppery Polly told Freddie Firefly. "And I'll tell you now that I'll make it warm for you if you try to play any tricks on me to-night." As a matter of fact, Freddie hadn't thought of such a thing as playing a single trick on her.
Technical excellence in needlework, as in all other artistic crafts, is a question of the worker's perseverance and her ability in the use of tools. In embroidery these are few and simple, and are as follows: Needles. For most purposes needles known as long-eyed sharps are used. Tapestry needles, similar to these, but with blunt points, are useful for canvas work and darned netting.
Our rearguard straggles out into conditions which are crueller than barbarism. The unemployed artisan, the casual labourer, and the casual labourer's wife and children, the sweated worker, the infirm worker, the worker's widow, the under-fed child, the untrained, undisciplined, and exploited boy labourer it is upon these subjects that our minds should dwell in the early days of 1909.
The work should have some protection if the hand rests on it; the worker should wear a white apron with sleeves. The worker's hand should be cool, dry, and smooth; hot hands should frequently be washed. The use of pumice stone cures slight roughness, but fine work cannot be attempted if the fingers are for any reason constantly rough. Wools and silks need a case to keep them orderly and clean.
Surely mothers dream of the little ones that sleep under their hearts and fathers plan for their children before they hold them in their arms. Every work of man is first conceived in the worker's soul and wrought out first in his dreams.
Professor Schneider undertakes to enrich this barren soil by alternating the time of pupils between the shop or store and the school, thus coördinating the worker's experience, with the assistance of schoolmasters who go into the shops and follow the processes the pupils are engaged in and who see that the experience of the week in the shop is amplified and supplemented in the school.
Naturally, unless with exceptionally keen consciences, they find what is called "sin" an easier fact than starvation; and so the story goes on, and out of greed is born the misery, which, at last, compels greed to heavier poor rates, and thus an approximation to the distribution of the profit which should have been the worker's.
But if metal has come to wellnigh its utmost power of service, the worker's capacity has had no equality of development, and the story of labor to-day for the whole working world is one of degradation.
Moreover, the standards of workmanship which scientific management sets up are not the worker's own standards; he has had no part in the making of them or in deciding on the comparative merits of the results. He accomplishes the results as he follows directions, not for the sake of the result, not for the sake of good workmanship, but for the reward.
But let a worker and an educated man sit opposite each other in a railway carriage without exchanging a word, as is the fashion with the English, and which of their two silent judgments on the other will be superior? I am not sure, but I rather think the worker's. It will have a kind of deadly realism.
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