The Beginning
When I was about six year old I went to fly a kite. We lived in West Des Moines,
Iowa – a middle class, residential neighborhood. At the bottom of the hill was
a playground with a creek flowing right through the middle of it. I was never
quick enough to catch salamanders or frogs – but I did get tree frogs (miniature
green frogs) and at night a toad was easy pickin’s, only, they always peed on
you.
Across the street from our house was the other row of houses on the street.
Behind them, the back of their back yards went up a hill – at least five feet topped
off by a fence. On the other side of the fence – as far as the eye could see was a corn field. Every spring, when the wind was blowing the right way,
you got the smell of the freshly laid manure.
Ahh… – a rose by any other name is a rose renamed…
In the summer, all you could see was the edge of the high corn.
This was late fall – the field was flat and you could make out the little squares of
the farmer’s house and area way off.
I was flying my kite quite high in the sky. The wind was so powerful it was
threatening to lift this little boy right off the ground. The kite was strong – and
would have been winning the battle, but I pulled and tugged on the
string and did everything I could to reel this monster in. I was wrapping the
string around my forearm. It’s all I could muster to be on the winning side.
I can’t remember if my hand turned red or not – but by the time I got home
and showed my mom and dad my mom was screaming to hurry up and cut
off and undo all that string I had wrapped around my arm.
I thought this was a little much. It was just string around my arm – and though
it was not the proper way to reel in a kite – I still felt like I was the one who was
victorous – but just barely. I had resorted to this. Well, it was either that or
let the kite go – and I wasn’t about to do that!
Today, it’s well over forty years later. And to me, I’m so glad Seabiscuit came
out with what it did. The industrial revolution and how it changed all those lives of the main characters in the story. Well, story? It’s true. Matter
of fact, when I
listened to the directors cut on DVD I think all the facts of the true story are even
more marvelous than the movie.
Where I work, things are increasingly being automated. The work done by a
hundered people in one day 40 years ago can now be done by one machine in
an hour. Isn’t that amazing?! But here’s what’s happening – the extinction of
the worker. Where we used to handle and look at the product and have a
personal relationship with it – it’s now zoomed through machinery. All we do
is load – which is the hardest job I’ve done yet. Is automation making things easier? Not for me. It’s getting to the point where all the plant will need
is a boss and maintenance technitions to keep the machines running.
The rest of the world is out of work. Or asking, “You want fries with that?”
From Self Help by Samuel Smiles – 1866. Yes, you read that right…
starting at page 37 -
One of the chief features of Vaucanson’s machine was a pierced cylinder
which, according to the holes it presented when revolved, regulated the
movement of certain needles, and caused the threads of the warp to
deviate in such a manner as to produce a given design, though only of a
simple character. Jacquard seized upon the suggestion with avidity, and,
with the genius of the true inventor, at once proceeded to improve upon it.
At the end of a month his weaving-machine was completed. To the cylinder
of Vaucanson, he added an endless peice of pasteboard pierced with a
number of holes, through which the threads of the warp were presented to
the weaver; while another piece of mechanism indicated to the workman
the colour of the shuttle which he ought to throw. Thus the drawboy and
the reader of designs were both at once superseded. The first use Jacquard
made of his new loom was to weave with it several yards of rich stuff
which he presented to the Empress Josephine. Napoleon was highly
gratified with the result of the inventor’s labours, and ordered a number
of the looms to be constructed by the best workmen, after Jacquard’s
model, and presented to him; after which he returned to Lyons.
There he experienced the frequent fate of inventors. He was regarded by
his townsmen as an enemy, and treated by them as Kay, Hargreaves, and
Arkwright had been in Lancashire. The workmen looked upon the new
loom as fatal to their trade, and feared lest it should at once take the bread
from their mouths. A tumultous meeting was held on the Place des
Terreaux, when it was determined to destroy the machines. This was
however prevented by the military. But Jocquard was denounced and
hanged in effigy. The ‘Council des prud’hommes’ in vain endeavoured to
allay the excitement, and they were themselves denounced. At length,
carried away by the popular impulse, the prud’hommes, most of whom had
been workmen and sympathised with the class, had one of Jacquard’s
looms carried off and publicly broken in pieces. Riots followed, in one of
which Jacquard was dragged along the quay by an infuriated mob
intending to drown him, but he was rescued.
The great value of the Jacquard loom, however, could not be denied, and
its success was only a question of time. Jacquard was urged by some
English silk manufacturers to pass over into England and settle there. But
notwithstanding the harsh and cruel treatment he had received at the
hands of his townspeople, his patriotism was too strong to permit him to
accept their offer. The English manufacturers, however, adopted his loom.
Then it was, and only, then, that Lyons, threatened to be beaten out of the
field, adopted it with eagerness; and before long the Jacquard machine was
employed in nearly all kinds of weaving. The result proved that the fears
of the workpeople had been entirely unfounded. Instead of diminishing
employment, the Jacquard loom increased it at least tenfold. The number
of persons occupied in the manufature of figured good in Lyons, was
stated by M. Leon Faucher to have 60,000 in 1833; and that number
has sicne been considerably increased.
As for Jacquard himself, the rest of his life passed peacefully, excepting
that the workpeople who dragged him along the quay to drown him were
shorty after found eager to bear him in triumph along the same route in
celebration of his birthday. (end of excerpt)
I don’t know if you can call that “fickle,” but what a turn of events! They go
from wanting to kill him to celebrating him. (Actually, the birthday thing never
happened – he wouldn’t let it…) At least back during these industrial revolutions
and inventions – though people were threatened they would no longer be able
to find a way to eat – it actually improved life more than they could
have dreamed.
I wish the same could be said for today’s computer age.
It seems to me the worker is becoming extinct
(if not relocated overseas where the cost is a penny to the dollars)
So this little boy, years later, is once again being tugged by the powers
that be skyward. The winds of change aren’t always accomodating. How can I keep both feet on the ground? I’m still trying to pull against the resistance
and wrap the string around my arm – which is only doing me harm. But what else can I do? I feel like I’m living the words given to Peter:
“When you were young, you girded your-
self and walked where you would;
but when you are old, you will
stretch out your hands, and an-
other will gird you and carry you
where you do not wish to go.”
What do you suggest a 50 year old man do?
Practical replies only.
